Obama and Small Business

In President Barrack Obama's 2010 State of the Union speech, many topics of great importance were discussed such as the cost of education and rampant unemployment in the US. But one of the topics that really took center stage was that of small business in the states.
I like many other students in our American Studies class, am the child of a small business owner. My parent's company was at it's peak 12 people, but because of the recession it has shrunk to 7. The company manufactures athletic clothing for small children, and then distributes it to megastores such as Wal-Mart, Kohl's and Target. My step-dad, the owner of the business, voted for Obama but has been feeling the repercussions of Obama's "just tax it" mentality. I sat down and we discussed exactly Obama has done to hurt small business.
The first thing he made clear is that all companies are divided into two main categories (each of which have several branches), S-corp (small business) and C-corp (larger business'). C-Corp companies are often publicly traded or belong to a group of investors, therefore they are liable for any collapse of the business. S-corp companies are often on a much smaller scale and are owned by five or fewer (in most cases) people. C-corp companies are directly taxed on their income, whereas S-corp companies do not encounter a corporate tax. Now here is where the twist comes. The income that comes from the business is absorbed by the owner(s) if the business, so it appears that the money belongs to the owners but in reality it stays in the business to pay the expenses of the operation and only a portion of that initial money is pocketed by owners. So in conclusion, small business owners appear to be much wealthier on paper than they actually are. Now most people that are aware of Obama's policies known of his plan to tax the nation's highest earners, 250,000 dollars and up. So this poses a problem for my small business owners. They appear to make more than that amount on paper, and are consequently taxed on money they don't have.
Obama is also proposing a new health care plan that he intends to have the top tax brackets to pay. So again, small business owner are going to get slammed by additional taxes if the health care plan gets passes.
The third thing Obama is doing to hurt small business, ironically enough, is to stop what Bush had started. Bush was infamous for lowering taxes on the nations highest earners, a policy that is set to expire this year, which Obama has the ability to renew. By doing this, small business owners that appear to be among the nation's wealthies people, will get taxed again.

Although Obama is attempting to appeal to the hearts of average Americans by trying to help small business, he is instead raising taxes three times over for small business' that employ more Americans than any other type of business. I was, as most were, mesmorized by Obama's incredible public speaking. It is often hard to think critically of his ideas when they are worded so eloquently, but Obama's new pledges to help small business are not going to compensate for the damages that have already been done.

Where the Wild Things Are

I think that most kids that did not live under a rock during childhood, knew and adored the story of Where the Wild Things Are. To revisit the story, it is the tale of a boy names Max. Max is never happy and resorts to being mischevious by dressing up in a wolf costume. His mom, as punishment sent him to bed without dinner. While in his room, Max dreams up a wild realm where the "wild things" run free. This realm was created by Max's imagination but it temporarily becomes a reality for him. He is at first scared of the wild things but then shows them some courage by staring them in the eye, and he is consequently deemed king of the wild things. He then gets lonely in a place that is not his home, and sails back to his room. When he gets back to his room, he finds a nice hot meal waiting for him, most likely from his mom.

The hidden message, I believe, is that even when kids feel something unfair is happening to them and they want to rebel, that is simply not the answer. Max rebels by going away to this other magical land but in the end he becomes lonely and he wants to go home. He also comes home to find a hot plate of food waiting for him, which would mean his parent still did really care for him. So the author may have been trying to say that even when parents punish their kids, it is for a reason, but that they will have compassion in the end. It is also important to note that there is never really a mention of the father. It is the mother that disciplines the child in the home, but it is also her that cooks the meal that is left in his room upon his return.

What other hidden messages can you find in this story? Do these messages correlate at all to the theme of women and children in American society?

Sidenote

I had written the previous four posts over the course of the break but was forced to post them all now for a very interesting reason. I was told that the french government monitors the internet looking for anything descriminatory. I was told there could be fines and other minor consequences for posting hateful material on the internet. Although I do not feel as if what I said was offensive, I decided to wait until I got home to post these blogs. I think this just speaks to how strict France as a country has become, going as far as sensoring the internet, things that I thought only really happened in Communist countries like North Korea and China. This is not really intended to be a post but rather just something I thought should be shared along with the posts.

Those Americans...

It has always bothered me that people from other countries, notably Europeans, have a somewhat negative opinion of the US and its inhabitants. So one goal of mine while over there was to find out what exactly the French thought of the states.

One thing I learned quickly is that the French find Americans a little afraid to speak their minds, especially from a political aspect. It is common for there to almost daily debates over politics, most of which are for the sake of conversation and rarely become heated. I learned that the French think that Americans are afraid to discuss real issues, whether national or global because it is seen as taboo to really express opinions so publicly. They see, that as a result of this reluctance, conversation is often superficial and limited to essentially unimportant topics.

A second thing that I learned is that the French are troubled by the similarities between the political parties here. In France, the left and the right try to contrast themselves as much as possible. If the right is for something, it is almost systematic that the left will find a reason to be against it, and the opposite is true as well. So French people are a little confused at the fact that republicans and democrats can even at times agree on certain issues.

The third thing that I learned is more of a social issue. In France, you go to high school in your town, if your lucky you go to college, which will almost definitely be local, and you will then move back somewhere around where you grow up. With this said, it is normal for people to have the same friends from childhood well into adulthood. The same is not always true in the states. It is common for Americans to move around throughout their lives and consequently lose friends and then make new ones in their new location. When people move to new place, they will make friends based on common interests, if one person likes to play golf, they may make friends that like to play golf as well. This also serves to gather people with similar opinions, so by moving around and finding friends with the same interests, they are creating a kind of microcosm in which everyone they know feels the same way they do.

Although it would have been fun to run into these people, I did not meet anyone that was intensely anti American. For the most part, people that have been to the states think more highly of it then those who have not. Ask yourself what you think foreigners might think of Americans? Were you surprised by any of the things that French people saw in Americans?

Problems from Across the Pond 2

This is the second installment in a series concerning the problem of immigration in France. This issue takes place principally with the group known as the Maghrebins which is a blanket term used for people of Algerian, Moroccan or Tunisian descent. The figure now hovers around five million of these Maghrebins in France, a country of sixty million people.
France has worked to paint itself as a beacon of light in Europe by adapting a socialist political ideology. There are a couple reasons why the Maghrebins choose to come to France. The first and most important reason that they come to France is the security that the government affords immigrants. This security comes not only from an economic aspect but a social one as well. Somehow, either the government or society has made it such that it is acceptable to be an undocumented person living in France and reaping the benefits of a socialist government. Over the past few decades this topic of immigration has become taboo, thus making it less likely that the issue will be discussed seriously in a political forum. France has a system of social security that gives money to people unable to provide for themselves (similar to the American system but on a much larger scale). They also have a very loosely monitored universal health care system. What I mean by loosely monitored is that basically anyone that may be able to get their hands on documentation of some sort, whether legal or not, could head into any hospital unannounced and receive medical attention for little to no cost. If I were an immigrant is a third world country this would sound awesome, free money and health care. The French people see a problem with the fact that people can just come to their country and easily benefit from the tax money that they contribute each year. There is an even larger issue that goes along with this, the issue of national identity which French President Nicolas Sarkozy has launched a campaign to define, which will be the focus of my next post.

This previous viewpoint was explained with information provided by a very conservative older, and natural born French person. But I am attempting to cover both sides of the issue, so I found a family friend who is 17 to give me his opinion on the issue. He began, interestingly enough by telling me that me referring to it as an issue or a problem was getting off on the wrong foot. He sees no problem at all, the situation is all just a matter of circumstances. In France, the bad neighborhoods form in the outskirts of major cities, this term is commonly referred to as the banlieu. Poor immigrants, when looking for a place to immigrate to in France gravitated to these already struggling neighborhoods. It just so happened that a very good percentage of the people immigrating happened to be of Arab descent, thus forming a relatively large Arab population in France. The 17-year-old proceeded to explain to me why crime became a staple of the banlieu. The reason is simply that there is nothing to do there, so people resort to crime to pass the time. So, when all these circumstances are taken into consideration, Arab crime is just a product of the environment. Crime occurs in the banlieu because there is nothing else to do, and it just so happens that there is an overwhelming Arab population so they get a lot of heat for being the cause of crime in France.
These are the two contrasting viewpoints on the issue, coming from both ends of the political spectrum. I won’t give my opinion just yet, but I will share in the third and final installment in this series of posts.

Problems from Across the Pond 3

With the previous two posts I have only given background to the current problem that is taking place in France. The issue can be summarized in two words, national identity. The immigrants that come to France and take advantage of the socialist governmental system refuse to refer to themselves as French. The Maghrebins for some reason flaunt the fact that they live in France and take advantage of it, and still refuse to assume a French identity. Like I said before, government officials are not able to single out this particular group because that would be an outward act of racism, and therefore not an action that can be taken by a modern government such as that of France. So this leaves the French government between a rock and hard place, unable to solve this problem because it would leave them looking unprofessional. President Nicolas Sarkozy has launched a campaign to define national identity, a kind of indirect way of attacking this issue. He has to attack it indirectly because of this issue of political incorrectness. Because this specific group of immigrants is not agreeing to have themselves seen as French, Sarkozy has started this initiative to answer the question of what being French really means.

In my opinion, this fight is really not worth fighting. Natural born French people are renouncing their country, something that I see no point in, but they should nonetheless be allowed to say whatever they want. But this should not be made a racial issue, like most people in France are making it. If people are renouncing their country that is their problem, but if they are committing crimes they should be punished and even more severely if it is done blatantly to spit on their country. Although France doesn’t exactly abide by the same constitution as the states do I think freedom of speech should be protected. This issue should not be racial, because if someone does something illegal, they should be punished, but if one were to say something that wasn't exactly ideal in the eyes of the government, that should be protected