A Life Of A Person

   I want to comment on the commentary of a woman named Helene Burns on the Austin American Statement “Burns: In Texas, no one should pay for an imperfect system with their lives.” She talks about the murdered case of her mother who was killed by her father. She was extremely angry at the murderer that she was even advocated and wanted a death penalty. However, this was also a family problem that the district attorney's office attempted to seek a sentence to life. So, after a long time had passed, Helene Burns was well educated. She realized that death penalty is not appropriate and it could kill innocent people. She strongly opposes it and said that the state of Texas could use their funds on law enforcement, cold case units, corrections and victim services instead of the death penalty. I totally agree all the things that she said above. Death penalty is an inhuman punishment. You are betting a person life on a scale where people are not 100 percent sure that victims are guilty or not guilty. For example, in 2001, Robert Springsteen was convicted of murdering four teens in an Austin yogurt shop in 1991. He was sentenced to death; however, his DNA did not match the DNA evidence from the crime scene. Therefore, he was dismissed all charges by State District Judge Mike Lynch. This was a luckily case that the almost killed the wrong person. Furthermore, till this day, there have been 205 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the United States and 15 of them were executed. As a result, instead of execution, I believe that our government should use their funds to build more jails or prisons. I would be safer for those who are innocent and have been convicted murderers because private detectives and investigators will always do their best to be more accurate on whether he/she is innocent or not.  

Services that help disabled are next on list of cuts.

    I selected the article from Austin News about the cutting services for the disability and aging people. State lawmakers are looking to cut as much as $27 billion from the state budget, and these cuts could affect more than 13,000 people who are at risk of losing more than $96 million each year. One of those that could be hit the hardest is the Department of Aging and Disability Services. Many protesters which included all the disability and poor people have gathered at the state capital on Tuesday morning to protest and let the lawmakers know that these cuts would hurt the poor and suffering people.

     I totally disagree with the State lawmakers. $27 billion is a big number. It needs to have a lot of cutting to decrease state budget, and services for the disability and aging people are one of them. However, I think that it is not such a good idea to let handicaps taking care of themselves without the help of the Department of Aging and Disability Services. The another issue is that the federal funding for services, such as the Medicaid waiver program runs out of this year which could fear the Disability and old people. As a result, these people are mad, and they marched to the capital and yelling at the government. I don’t think the Texas government will change their opinion about the cuts; however, it’s much better if we try to convince them. Maybe they could reduce the cuts and avoid cutting services for disability and aging people.