IHSS Blog 2020-2021

  Alex Gross Mr. Roddy IHSS 5 February 2021 Wall Street, Gamestop, and Classism In the past few weeks there was one of the most peculiar phenomena in the stock market that I’ve seen in my lifetime. The price of Gamestop stock had a range of 10 dollars to 350 dollars per share in January alone. The article that I read from the New York Times discussed why this happened and what effect it had on the investors. Many Wall Street investors and companies had the Gamestop Stock shorted which means they were betting that it would go down. Millions of small investors, many of which had never invested in the stock market before, were encouraged to drive up the price of the Gamestop Stock on Reddit. I believe that on both sides of this phenomena (Wall Street investors shorting the stock and Independent Investors from Reddit buying the stock) that what is going on right now is foolish. On the side of the Independent Investors, there are people trying to take advantage of a mere anomaly; an...

  Ariela Kluk Mr. Roddy IHSS 02/23/21 Some people live in neighborhoods, and towns where there are not grocery stores nearby, they cant walk to the store or even take a five-minute drive, because there are no stores nearby, this is called a food desert. A food desert is when at least a third of the population lives more than a mile away from a grocery store. More than 500 thousand people in Houston live in food deserts and this situation has worsened due to COVID-19 and this recent cold front that hit Texas. Most people who do not live in food deserts go to the grocery stores at least once a week to get groceries, and if they forget an item they go back to the store with no issue. People who are not as lucky and live in food deserts, do not have this easy access to food and even less access to fresh food. Living in a food desert has so many consequences and inconveniences, it also limits the number of nutritious meals people can eat. There are two perspectives to this situation, pe...

  One of the biggest supporters of liberty in the world was Baron de Montesquieu. His belief of liberty was when a government would not restrain its people's lives and opinions. He also supported the idea that in order for there to be liberty, there needed to be three branches of government. Here in America we have three branches of government known as the Legislative branch, the Judicial branch, and the Executive branch. The Legislative branch makes laws and would be Congress and the senate. The Judicial branch is somewhat similar to the Legislative branch because it evaluates laws and it consists of the Supreme Court and the Federal Judicial Center. And finally, the Executive branch is responsible for carrying out laws/finalizing things before they can be passed. This branch contains the president, the vice president, their advisors, the cabinet, and most federal agencies. The reason Montesquieu believed in such a thing is that in his opinion, in order for liberty to exist the la...

 Montesquieu says that true freedom is not good or practical and laws are required and liberty is freedom with guidelines it is similar to how some monarchies run themselves the monarch has total power with a few restrictions/limitations. He also has a dim view of tyrants and he doesn't seem to be in love with the idea of purity in political matters such as he doesn't like pure power to the heads of government nor does he want pure freedom to the people because it seems that he acknowledges humans imperfections and sees that people will take advantage when given the chance. He sees anything done not through necessity as tyrannical and he does not think highly of that. Our own goverment seems to be modeled after this way of thinking almost exactly the constitution seems to give everyone exactly what Montesquieu says he wants a system where there is no absolute power and every citizen can pursue an interest they like as long as it brings no intentional physical harm to other peop...

  Nabeel Meghani IHSS Mr. Roddy 2-8-21       Liberty Although liberty is translated as freedom in society, that freedom should be controlled so that people can be ensured with safety from a higher authority. To provide this safety governments must be structured in a complex fashion that will be able to limit power to just one person. For example, the three different branches of the United States government each have their own responsibilities and can hold each other accountable so that one branch does not have more power than the other. Some parts of the government are allowed to make laws so that people are not able to commit crimes against other civilians. Montesquieu says that there should be no law protecting God because he is almighty and cannot be harmed. For example, in the American government laws of God are upheld although God cannot be offended. Real liberty is a liberty of justice-- to ensure that people are given justice whe...

 Sofi Savarese  Mr. Roddy  IHSS  2/8/20  Liberty  Montesquieu argued that liberty is composed of order and not freedom. Liberty is not the freedom to do anything that you want. If this were the case many inhumane things would be justified such as murder and theft. Liberty is built off of two things, one being ordered. An example of this is how laws are set in place to keep everyone safe. The second thing that Liberty is built on is trust. We as a society must trust that others follow these rules so that everyone is kept safe and there is little conflict. He argues that laws should only be based on keeping citizens safe, otherwise the regulations would be too restrictive and wouldn't be considered liberty. In order to provide the best liberty, Montesquieu believed that the government must have certain traits. Separating the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government help prevent abuse of power. Montesquieu had many different opinions such as...

 Ethan Zweig Mr. Roddy IHSS February 8, 2021 Liberty          Montesquieu has a very interesting view on Liberty. He made some very good points. For example I agreed with his point when he was talking about how Liberty isn't the freedom to do whatever you want, it's the freedom of letting people do as much as they want under laws that protect people from harm. He also made the point saying that since the laws will protect us from harm, that will leave people to do as many things as possible. Another one of his arguments that I agree with was when Montesquieu said that there should be laws that make it where citizens can protect themselves from punishment without committing crimes.