PeaceFlower1016

  I was absent on 9/15.   Today in class, we worked in our groups (countries) to discuss how we would run our country. Mr. Paterson occasionally gave us information, like information about taxes and political views.    I personally believe that the tax system should be value-added tax and progressive tax rate. First, progressive tax rate should be used for income tax and corporate tax. I thought this way because I believe that the country shouldn't exploit the poor, and the rich should distribute their wealth. And I also think this is that best way to lessen the wealth gap. Second, value-added tax rate should be used for sales tax. This is because I think that necessities such as food should be more accessible for people with less income. There are other ways of doing this like giving out food stamps but it can be predicted that people who pay higher taxes would argue about how the country uses their taxes so I thought using this tax system is a easier way.  ...

   Today in class, Mr. Paterson talked to us about the "killer coke" campaign and the "kick coke off campus" campaign. He first mentioned how Coca-Cola was a sponsor for a soccer tournament but players moved them out on interviews. Christiano Ronaldo, a very popular soccer player amongst young people, moved the coke out of the way and said that kids shouldn't drink them. He got into trouble after that of course. Then he mentioned why Coca-Cola is being hated by some people. How in Egypt Coca-Cola sabotaged Pepsi to get their profit go down. And in India, they used up all the lake water to make the drinks so the locals had no more water to use for their own. In the last part of the lesson, Mr. Paterson talked to us about the history of Fanta which surprised me the most.   The facts I learned about Coca-Cola were really shocking because I've drunk beverages from Coca-Cola for years but never heard of these problems. When I searched about the Killer Coke Campai...

  Today in class, Mr. Paterson talked to us about how regular newspapers tell their opinion compared to Fox News. In newspapers, page 2 or 3 of it are the editorial columns and these columns can be biased. The writers' opinions should only be on these pages and never outside of them. This is because their biases will get in the way of the news and interfere with the opinions the viewers might have.    In Japanese newspapers, there is a section called 社説 and in this section, the writers express their opinion on the news. This section became a hot topic in May when Asahi Shimbun wrote on the "shasetsu" section demanding to cancel the Tokyo Olympics. This sparked controversy because no other newspaper talked about this big topic. I was very surprised and very excited when I heard this news because I thought this would trigger not only officials to talk about this topic more but citizens outside of Tokyo to talk about this topic. However, Fox News is different. They only repo...

  Today we discussed what we saw in the documentary "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism". First Mr. Paterson taught us about how politics works in America. There are the democrats and republicans, the left-wing and the right-wing, but he also mentioned that democrats are slightly in the right on a global scale of politics. Media are meant to report both sides of these political parties but Fox News went to to the extreme. They became the business of propaganda under Murdoch. Then in class, we discussed events that might have influenced the documentary during the course of creating it; between 2000-2003. In these few years, there was an election between Al Gore and Bush. This was the only American election that was decided by the supreme court and not the citizens. Gore and Bush had very close votes, and Gore requested a recount since the election was a mess. But since there was a risk that Bush might lose their party declined and eventually the supreme court had...