What role does religion play and what role should religion play in family policy?

When I was reading articles on the immigration bill for my family issue paper, I was interested to find multiple references to the LDS church, one of which I have provided. According to the articles, various people supposedly representing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (I say supposedly because certain experiences have led me to question journalists as reliable witnesses) were involved in an entity called the Utah Compact, which was involved in getting the recent immigration bills passed. It has been stated that the main interest of the LDS church in this issue was the preservation of family units, something that new bills do address. The articles state that the LDS church is responsible, at least in part, for this aspect of the legislation. As religion has been implicitly or explicitly related to multiple entries on this blog, I would like to pose the admittedly delicate question that makes up the title of this entry: what role do you all think religion does play and what role should it play in family policy?

Students will pay more as state support erodes

This article might be of interest to all of us because we are going to college now and most likely will want our children to obtain an affordable education themselves. This article points out that college tuition has doubled in the past decade. Looking into the future, it seems like the price will continue to rise. What are some solutions to help make a college education affordable to everyone while the state's budget continues to tighten?

Ron's opinion of government

This is a clip from the show Parks and Rec. I thought of this during our class discussion on state and federal government involvement. Enjoy the whole clip, but the part I'm referring to is at the end. It starts at 4:05 and ends at 4:30.

5 Myths About Nuclear Energy

Hi everyone;

I came across this article and found it pretty interesting. I would like to know some of your thoughts about using nuclear energy. I know it's not specifically about family policies but I argue the point that a nations stance on energy sources influences families directly through cost, such as: utilities, gasoline, propane. From an environmental viewpoint, those costs can also be associated with decreasing air and water quality through pollution.

I am personally a huge fan of nuclear energy. It is also the most cost effective clean energy source available with todays technology, even more so than wind farms which require extensive maintenance to even keep them operational. The argument against this is that nuclear plants are expensive to build, which they are very expensive to build, and that they are not clean because of nuclear waste. However, opposition to these arguments include the long life of power plants (i.e. they are expensive but they last a very long time) and by expanding development of Fast Neutron Reactors (FNR power plants) nuclear waste can be dramatically reduced and potentially decrease current nuclear waste stock piles. This is possible because FNRs use the nuclear waste from other nuclear power plants as fuel turning it into almost pure plutonium (commonly referred to as military or weapons grade plutonium). The plutonium waste from FNRs can then be recycled (numerous times), this form of reactor is also much more efficient that traditional reactors. The down side is these reactors are even more expensive to build than traditional reactors (although they are also more resistant to over heating, i.e. safer) and people don't like the idea that the byproduct is military grade plutonium, event though it is recyclable and can be disposed of safely once it has been recycled numerous times. (See http://www.world-nuclear.org for more info)

If through nuclear reactors electricity can be made inexpensive enough it would solve most if not all of the United States dependence on oil, this is a contradiction from the article. He states that oil will still be required for cars and such but he is not entirely correct. By making electricity less expense the expansion of hydrogen vehicles instantly becomes a viable option. Although companies like GM have pushed for hydrogen vehicles for decades (Honda, Toyota and others also make hydrogen vehicles), the push for these vehicles has been slowed by the costs of hydrogen production. While hydrogen is the most abundant element, making up almost 2/3 of all matter. The difficult comes from extracting hydrogen, while easily extracted form water it requires large amounts of electricity. Thus, high energy costs and energy being produced from environmentally damaging methods does nothing to encourage hydrogen vehicle production even though their only byproduct is water vapor.

8 Reasons Why The "Gender Pay Gap" Is A Total Sham

Have any of you done any research in this area? The source of the information is certainly legitimate, but I personally have looked into this debate very little. The argument presented here makes a lot of sense to me, however.

I ran across this article a day or two ago, and I thought of it during our class discussion today.

What say ye?

Hi All
So I might be showing my age by posting these but I thought they might make for a nice break from the regular grind. These are the two School House Rock bits on laws and the three branches of government. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLQg7G3hkGY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEJL2Uuv-oQ

Taking Action on Proposed Budgets

http://www.zerotothree.org/public-policy/action-center/policy-vidoe-library.html

Hi All
Not sure how many of you are human development folks but if you are at all interested in little ones zerotothree.org is a great resource. Above is a link to a couple of videos they have posted to help get the word out about upcoming proposed budget cuts to child care and Head Start funding. Regardless of where you sit politically I urge you to watch them. I will admit, they are a bit dry, but the first one has an excellent and simple explaination of how the budget process works at the federal level and the second one gives a great synopsis of what is happening right now budget wise and what the continuing resolution's mean. These are great insights and examples of what work is being done in family policy. Yes . . . it is child care again (because I love it!) but the information on federal budgets is great and afterall . . . children may just be our most important resource :).

Should parents monitor their children's online activity

This video made some interesting points about online safety. It mentioned that parents are the first line of defense. They should make sure that they do "walk-bys" and establish rules. They also mentioned that it's actually a good idea to install spyware and monitor kid's activities online.

They mentioned that if you tell them that you will be monitoring it is no longer spying. As soon as you mention that you will be doing it, it's enough to deter a lot of teens and kids from doing that risky behavior.

Do you think this is going too far? Should it be a last resort and only happen if you have a reason not to trust them? Is it something that works or will kids still be able to hide their activity?

Do Taxes Affect Families?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110308/ap_on_re_us/us_broken_budgets_anti_tax_pledge

So I just read this article on yahoo news and it brought up some interesting questions for me. I had never really heard of the "pledge" to not raise taxes that was being discussed but I did find it disconcerting. If we consider the theory of paradox it would seem that a pledge of this sort would limit any side from being able to work towards a compromise.
It also occured to me that, though tax increases are not always discussed in the family policy realm they do weigh heavily on family policy and family perspective. On one hand families may be burdened with increased taxes that they really can't afford in tough financial times and on the other hand if tax increases don't happen many states will be cutting services to those very same families, again placing a burden on them to make up the difference.
I also think this article, though I will admit bias towards the left, provides an excellent example of how groups outside of government can really guide and affect policy . . . and this group isn't even big oil or big food.
The comments posted were also very interesting and continued to bring up questions for me. I don't really know if there is a right or wrong answer on this issue but I would love to hear your comments as well!

Mother finds herself and decides to leave kids

The video is about 7 minutes longer and somewhat shocking. The written story isn't that great, it's a good introduction but the video is most informative.
It is about a woman who decided to leave husband and two kids. Her explanations of why seem a little shocking to me. I personally don't respect her decision at all. I think it gives a bit of a glimpse into how individualistic Americans can be. Surprisingly the individualism came out in a collective culture.
She left her kids 10 years ago and now has a relationship with them but still does not appear to be very involved. She calls the time together quality time but it seems she is not interested in any quantity of time.
The informal today show poll about how 28 percent of the women polled wanted to leave kids was kind of shocking.
In the video she did not show very much affect, she was rather flat. She almost smiled when talking about time with her kids now.