Australia Fights Tobacco With Taxes and Plain Packs

Australia Fights Tobacco With Taxes and Plain Packs; [Business/Financial Desk]
BETTINA WASSENER and MERAIAH FOLEY. New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Apr 30, 2010. pg. B.9
link to article
The article I have chosen is about Australia taking control over cigarette companies. The Australian government is going to raise taxes on cigarettes, so more people will stop smoking. In the article it says, "The measures announced on Thursday also include a 25 percent increase in the excise tax on tobacco products, which was to come into force as of midnight. That will increase the cost of a packet of 30 cigarettes by about 2.16 Australian dollars, to around 16.70 Australian dollars ($15.40)." The extra tax money will be used to help their health care plan, as it says in the article, "The additional tax revenue, estimated to total 5 billion Australian dollars over four years, would be invested in the nation's health system, the government said." This article points out the governments side and the cigarette companies side. The government tells cigarette companies that they have to use plain packaging. The cigarette companies doesn't want to use plain packaging, as they tell the authors of the article, "Plain packaging would seriously harm our brands and infringe the intellectual property rights in which both Imperial Tobacco and its shareholders have invested."
This article has many quotes from the government and the cigarette companies. The authors do a good job at getting both sides of the issue. The article is recent and provides specific examples on time, like when they say "...announced on Thursday..." The article i choose seems to be more in the favor of the Australian government then the cigarette companies.
In my opinion the Australian government are taking good and helpful steps to reduce the amount of people that smoke and helping their health plan at the same time. This article helped me realize that our government would be able to make more laws for cigarette companies if they wanted to. I think our government should put more taxes on tobacco as well, it would help our economy and the health of everyone.

Smoking

Smoking is bad for you, every one knows that. But some people say that cigarets are good because they help stimulate are economy. This picture of the watch atached to the cigarets, looks like a bomb. The picture means that cigarets are a ticking time bomb, and I agree.
There have been so many law suites filled against cigarett company's because people die from thier product. You would think something would be illegal if it's side effects cause pre-mature death. But no cigaretts aren't illegal, and it probably never will be because it stimulates the economy.
Our government cares more about stimulating the economy than about peoples lives. Cigaretts cause hundreds of deaths each year, not just for smokers but for people who get second hand smoke. People who get second hand smoke can't help it, but the government can help them by makeing cigaretts illegal!

Gran Turino

Gran Turino is one of my favorite movies. Clint Eastwood stars in this movie as a grumpy old man who lives in a neighborhood that has been over come with Asian immigrants. He ends up helping his neighbors when they have trouble with an Asian gang. The gang controls his whole neighborhood by creating fear. But Clint Eastwood's character is not afraid of them, and stands up to them when they give him problems.
Clint Eastwood helps his neighbor, a teenage boy when the gang comes around and hassles him. His neighborhood starts to see Clint as a hero. The boy owes Clint because he tried to steel from him, so Clint makes the boy help him and the other neighbors do chores. Clint teaches the boy good manners, like helping an older lady carry her groceries.
In the movie the boy's older sister gets gang raped by the Asian gang. She can't go to the police because if she does her family will be killed by the gang. Her brother wants revenge and goes to Clint so he will help. Clint comes up with a plan to make sure the entire gang will go to jail. Clint locks the boy in the basement and goes over to the gangs house alone. He does not take any weapons. When he gets their he makes sure that every gang member See's him. He reaches for his lighter, and the entire gang open fire on him. Clint Eastwood knew he was going their to die. He helped the entire community by his sacrifice. I don't know any one who didn't cry during this movie. This movie opened people eye's to the hardships community's go through when they have gangs.

she lick me like a lollipop

Many songs and music videos degrade women. Lil Wayne's video has many women in it. All of the women in his video are showing most of their skin, and are dressed very sexy. This video is a perfect example of how many woman dress today. I don't think it is right to leave nothing to the imagination. Women need to respect themselves, and dress more conservatively. Men loose respect for women when they see her dressed really sexy, they will think she is easy, and they wont treat women the way they should. If women don't start treating themselves better than they can't expect men to treat them good either.

CRAAP website evaluation

The website I used, 4parents.gov I found very useful. The website had an “about us” page which showed me who was responsible for the website and who wrote the articles. Also the web site had a good list of all their sources that they used to write their article. All of the links were working perfectly so it was easy to use the website, and it showed that the website was kept up and not old.
The article I read was called Teen Mom and it was very useful for my research topic. I know the article was relevant because it showed when it was last updated, which was August 13, 2009. The article was short but it was helpful. Also it gave another website at the end that might be useful to my research topic. Overall I think the article will be useful to me when I write my research essay on teen pregnancy.

http://www.4parents.gov/sexrisky/teen_preg/teen_preg.html