Author Archives: Damien Hobday

Posts by Damien Hobday

Public Health

Posted on May 5, 2015 by Damien Hobday

Public policy on health issues is always something that will touch each and every one of us directly. Here in New York City the population is stuffed into a dense metropolis causing normal health problems to be magnified and others to arise where they might not have in less dense areas. Since the list of health issues is so immense, it is out of the realm of possibility to write on them all in a mere post, so I will be focusing on three: AIDS, vaccinations, and school lunches.

 

Bringing up again the fact that New York City is so dense allows us to better understand the first problem, AIDS. In New York State as a whole, there are about 129,000 people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. Out of that 129,000, 80% of them live in NYC. On average, there are about 15 out of 100,000 with HIV/AIDS in the United States. In New York City, 60.4 out or ever 100,000 are living with HIV/AIDS literally making the city the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic not just in the state, but the whole country. Our dense population allows easily for the spread of this virus, that paired with the fact that many in the city are not properly educated on the topic of safe sex causes this to be a huge concern.

 

Our next issue is on the topic of vaccinations. Currently a few vaccinations are required when entering different years of the New York City school system, but parents have the right to refuse some or all of the vaccinations. Although this topic requires a much larger argument to be fully discussed, vaccinations need to be required, no matter what the parent’s desire. Science is not an inhibitor; vaccinations that are developed now prevent diseases that are life threatening, and not one person should be without them. The issue here lies with our legislation and the allowance of some to refuse vaccinations.

 

The last issue is something that at first glance may not seem too bad, but upon closer inspection can be a major worry. School lunches are just flat out unhealthy. Our youth are being thrown into a school system where they are required to spend most of their day, for most of the year. The lunches that we are offering for them whilst they are in school are not providing nutrition for a healthy lifestyle, causing many of our youth to be obese and sick.

 

For a solution I will focus on the school lunches problem. In order for us to fix this issue it is simple, we need healthier lunches. Yes, this has been tried, but has not really succeeded. I propose that a partnership be set up. The public school system in NYC should partner with New York farmers as a way to bring in healthy options for our kids. Contracts will be formed on the premise that we consistently buy bulk from local farms and they offer affordable prices, as we will be allowing them to consistently have a consumer for their goods. This partnership can then be paired with a campaign educating the importance of healthy options in our school systems. All this would hopefully cause for parents to want to see healthier options and healthier options to be sought after by our education officials.

Gender and Economic Growth Solutions

Posted on April 21, 2015 by Damien Hobday

In my previous post I mentioned a phenomenon known as the glass ceiling. This is an imaginary barrier that allows people, in my case specifically women, to see a higher position in their career, but not achieve it due to certain prejudices associate with their gender. The numbers are mind-blowing when you take a look at them; only 4.6% of Fortune 500 companies have a woman as their CEO. How can we fix this?

 

After looking into what is exactly causing this problem, I came up with a few ways it might be solved. The main issue seems to lie in societal norms. Since women are looked at as the caretakers, they are supposed to not have as much time for a job, and thus cannot commit to being a CEO. Times are changing and this isn’t the case anymore. Since more women are entering the workforce, and more women are making work a priority, the title of CEO should be more accessible to them. In order to do this some standards should be set. There should be policies instated requiring companies to at least consider women for higher-level positions. A certain percentage of potential employees should be women when companies are looking to hire, and not fulfilling this standard will result in some sort of fine. This will not only give more women a chance at showing what they can do, but it will open up the company’s eyes and show that women have the potential to do just as well as a man. Even if a woman is not hired for the first position applied for, the company may consider her for something else.

 

The other side to this issue is the insecurity in women about achieving these high-level positions. Since they believe these societal norms and are scared that they will never be considered for high-level positions, they don’t even take the chance to apply. In order to fix this an organization should be formed, one full of women with high success in these better positions. This organization’s task would be to essentially show-off women who have made it big, giving those who may not believe as much the confidence to try and get to the top. Counseling can be provided on stipulations that if success is achieved, the counselors receive some sort of compensation. Rallies and events will be formed to reach a mass amount of people, spreading confidence to go for high-level positions to many. The organization will be run of equal parts man and woman to show that everyone is equal and an organization with both genders can be successful.

 

In the end it comes down to changing mindsets. If the companies looking to hire would consider women, and women would consider applying to some of these high-level positions, the glass ceiling can be shattered bringing equality to another sector in our country. It is not an issue that can be tackled overnight, but with enough dedication on both sides of the issue, it is something that can be done.

 

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/report/2014/03/07/85457/fact-sheet-the-womens-leadership-gap/

Kim Wales Questions

Posted on April 16, 2015 by Damien Hobday

1) What is your most important tool when crowdfunding?

2) What does Wales Capital get in return for helping start-ups?

Gender and Economic Growth Problems

Posted on March 31, 2015 by Damien Hobday

Although the United States may be one of the most progressive countries in the world, we haven’t met a standard in which all are given equal rights. Gender inequality affects both men and women in this country proving to us that we are not as perfect as we say we are.

 

The glass ceiling is one of the biggest problems when it comes to gender and economic growth. The glass ceiling is an imaginary barrier, in which people, such as women, can see the next level of advancement in a job or career, but not achieve it due to certain prejudices associated with their gender. A study starting in the 90’s and continuing for about 15 years found that a measly 1.3% of CEO’s were women. This problem arises from the practices of a few centuries ago. It used to be that men would go out and make the money while the woman of the house would stay home and raise the family. This is now changing. More women than ever are getting jobs and working the same amount of hours that a man might work in order to better themselves and their family. The association of household and women still lingers and causes many to look at women and less-than-viable options for high-level positions. In addition to the societal associations, women themselves are also the problem because they do not believe they can hold high-level positions. After years of oppression, the common woman may think that a top position is not achievable simply because of standards that are true now.

 

Another gender problem in our country is the percent of women in government positions. Currently, on a state level, women hold a little less than 25% of government positions. This is a major issue because not only are the voices of women not being herd by the masses, these numbers completely go against our ideals of a country to be equal, free and democratic. The problem is not that there aren’t any women that are capable of holding these positions; it is that our political parties do not encourage women to run for these roles as much as they should by not backing them as they would a man. Women have statistically been shown to introduce more bills and policy changes than men, so it is not a question of if they want to or if they can, it is a question of who will help them run.

 

A final gender inequality problem focuses not on the women, but the men. Just as looking at women as someone who needs to be at home is a huge problem, looking at a man as someone who cannot be at home is just as big an issue. Sometimes women do hold the job that brings more income to the house and thus spend more time out of the house than the man of the family may, making the dad the stay at home parent. The problem in our society is that this is frowned upon. A stay at home dad is looked at as weak and not providing for his family where he is doing something just as important. Paired with this judgment is the fact that a man cannot get any leave from a job to take care of a newborn, a task that is just as important if it were to be done by a woman.

 

In the end, gender inequality is a huge problem in society today and needs to be fixed. This affects both men and women in different ways and the standards associated with each gender need to be abolished to create a truly equal society.

 

http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/glass-ceiling.html

http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/hole-glass-ceiling-getting-bigger

http://www.forbes.com/sites/margiewarrell/2013/08/04/glass-ceiling-or-glass-cage-breaking-through-the-biggest-barrier-holding-women-back/

http://www.thenation.com/article/178736/why-does-us-still-have-so-few-women-office#

http://www.debate.org/opinions/is-gender-inequality-still-an-issue-in-america

Work Solutions

Posted on March 17, 2015 by Damien Hobday

The future of work in this country is unforeseeable. Problems that have plagued the job environment recently are only becoming worse and we need change. As I mentioned in my last post, the need to be proficient in “soft” skills is one of the biggest problem in the job market. Not having these “soft” skills is preventing recent college graduates from getting jobs and creating a never-before-seen rate of unemployment in this new generation of workers.

Investopedia defines soft skills as, “the character traits and interpersonal skills that characterize a person’s relationships with other people.” These types of skills are vital in the workplace as employers look at these as compliments to hard, technical skills. Without soft skills one would not work well in a collaborative work environment and as we move into the future, collaboration is becoming a very common and quite necessary practice.

In order to increase the amount of college graduates that get hired directly out of college we need to emphasize the importance of soft skills while students are still in school. My first solution that would do this would be to add a senior group project, something similar to a senior design project, as a graduation requirement. Senior design projects and theses allow for the individual to do research on something in the field they are studying. The student then either writes a paper or designs a project based on the research done. This is a great way to culminate all the technical skills learned throughout your college career, but completing this graduation requirement lacks the need for any use of soft skills. My idea would add a senior group project in which you do research and design a project as an assignment. You would work with members of the same major on a project that you come up with together. This allows for the technical skills you have learned to be put to use in a group environment where soft skills are necessary for success. A committee of professors and staff members from your specific major will do the final evaluation of the project as you display your presentation with your group members.

Now the senior group project will definitely help put together all soft skill necessary for a job in the real world, but I also feel we need more opportunities to learn these soft skills before the project. My idea for this would be to change speech class requirements in schools. It is common knowledge that one must take some sort of public speaking or speech class in order to graduate with any degree. I think that this class should be expanded, possibly given more required days to attend. With this extra time in class I think group presentations should be emphasized and focused on so that one may learn soft skills in a classroom setting. This would allow for one to gain the knowledge needed for the senior group project when it comes to working with others and would ultimately allow for better interpersonal skills allowing for better chances of being hired.

With the implementation of group projects and classes that focus on soft rather than hard skills the future of work can be saved for the recent college graduates that are looking for jobs. Many problems are arising regarding with the future of work, but if we understand the situation we are in, the problems can be stopped.

 

References:

http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-admissions-playbook/2014/05/12/hone-the-top-5-soft-skills-every-college-student-needs

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/soft-skills.asp

Work Problems

Posted on March 10, 2015 by Damien Hobday

As a child my parents told me, “Go to college and get a well-paying job so you can support us when we are old and wrinkly.” It seemed so simple. All my life I thought that if I continued with my studies until I eventually graduated, I would be set. A job would be waiting for me the minute I stepped off my campus with my degree. The harsh truth is that no job is waiting for me when I graduate. In the United States today, adults between the ages of 18-34 account for half of the 10.9 million people unemployed. Finding or even keeping a job in this market is not a simple task, and there are many reasons for this.

 

Colleges are teaching us the skills. We are learning how to do the technical work, how to solve an equation or memorizing definitions. The problem does not seem to lie in the skills that must be put to use in a job; the problem is how we implement these skills. A survey done by St. Louis Community College shows us that 60 percent of employers said that applicants are lacking communication and interpersonal know-how. This is why the applicants are not being hired. Not because we don’t know how to do the work, but because we as a whole do not know how to work together. We become so focused on the grades and technical aspects of college that we forget successful work requires collaboration and communication. Employers value both “hard” technical skills and “soft” interpersonal skills equally, but our generation is very one sided.

 

The next problem has to do with how we are paid. Recently minimum wage has been a huge topic of controversy in the United States. Many feel that minimum wage should be increased because the current standard does not provide enough to survive. Although true, raising the minimum wage and just minimum wage in general is a huge problem. If one cannot survive off what they make if they are making minimum wage, they might be forced to be unemployed. This raises unemployment and hurts the economy tremendously. More people will be out of jobs, the flow of money in the economy goes down, businesses sell less and it just becomes an overall mess.

 

From this arises another issue, automation. With minimum wages not being sufficient for low-wage workers, calls to raise the wage are made clear. Companies do not want to pay more than what they already are paying for the same work so they are looking towards other options, specifically robots. Companies are finding it cheaper to automate tasks that are normally done by humans because instead of paying hourly wages, they are paying only cents to keep a machine running with electricity. A robot doesn’t get tired, wont make mistakes, can work endlessly and won’t even complain! It becomes not only a cheaper option but also a more efficient one that helps the company but hurts the workforce. This raises unemployment and increases competition for higher-level jobs which both harm the workforce and those who are really trying to get a job.

 

It is not as easy as it seems. Getting a job and keeping one becomes harder and harder as we move into the future. If we don’t make a change now, it will only get worse.

 

References:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101373230#.

http://valuesandcapitalism.com/minimum-wage-good-intentions-bad-policy/

The Shift From Low-Wage Worker to Robot Worker

Questions for Debera Johnson

Posted on March 10, 2015 by Damien Hobday

1) What exactly is your connection to the Pratt Institute? How does partnering with such a big name benefit the BF+DA?

2) Does your PALS program and the collaboration done there help accomplish the goals of the BF+DA? If so how?

Policing Solutions

Posted on February 26, 2015 by Damien Hobday

One of the more serious problems with law enforcement today lies in the way our prison system is structured. With punishment being at the forefront of our concerns, enormous amounts of people are jailed. This in turn puts our country at the top, causing us to have the highest rate of incarceration in the world. There are a few solutions that may work when trying to solve this problem, but the one I am going to focus on is rehabilitation.

There are currently 4,575 operating prisons in the United States, more than four times the number of Russia. With this high number of prisons we also have a large number of prisoners. About 1.57 million inmates are behind bars in federal, state and county prisons or jails. Half of these prisoners that are in federal prisons serving a year or longer sentence are there for drug crimes. This is where rehabilitation comes in. Drug rehabilitation has been shown to work. Some facilities have boasted drug treatment rates of 75%-80%. Although this number is high it is promising. The average treatment rate for drug rehabilitation centers lies somewhere around 50%. With so many criminals behind bars for non-violent drug crimes, I believe that putting these people through rehabilitation programs would be much more effective than sentencing them to time in prison.

Currently it costs on average $31,000 a year to incarcerate an individual in the United States. The average rehab program lasts a month and costs $7500. The numbers speak for themselves. Rehab would cost less and focus more on making a person better, not focus on punishment as our system currently does.

My idea for implementing rehabilitation over incarceration would start with the smallest sentences. Every non-violent drug related crime with a sentence that would normally be under a year should be converted to a sentence to rehabilitation. This would allow for the person to better him or herself and hopefully cause less of a risk of relapse of either using the drug or taking part in criminal activity associated with the drug. Other sentences over a year would be shortened with a rehabilitation sentence appended onto the end of their prison time. Again, this would allow for less of a probability of relapse.

Another way to fix this problem is to lessen the charges for drug related crimes period. Too many time we see people being sentenced to ridiculous sentences for small drug related crimes. Most of our legislation regarding punishment for drug related crimes is extremely outdated, and although drug reform is popular today, it is not popular enough; drug reform must begin to take place on a national level.

In the end, the solution is simple, keep more of our citizens out of prison. We need to start focusing on rehabilitation of people who have committed wrong doings, not focus on punishing them so that they can relapse and “hate the system”. With a combination of reforming legislation and our mindsets on viable punishment options this can take place and hopefully solve some of our incarceration issues.

 

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/09/17/3568232/the-united-states-had-even-more-prisoners-in-2013/

http://www.salon.com/2012/10/15/us_has_more_prisoners_prisons_than_any_other_country/

http://www.wisegeek.com/does-drug-rehab-work.htm#didyouknowout

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-cost-of-a-nation-of-incarceration/

http://www.rehabs.com/about/frequently-asked-questions-about-addiction-rehabilitation/

Milk Not Jails Questions

Posted on February 24, 2015 by Damien Hobday

1) As I understand it your organization’s goal is to make the northern NYS economy rely on milk production instead of incarceration. Is this you assuming that NYS arrests people solely for economic gain? If not, your idea would reduce the amount of prisons, where would all the prisoners go?

2) Dairy farms have been shown to be unstable as a business, what is to say that creating more dairy farms won’t drive the demand for milk down, essentially ruining your argument for more farms?

3) Why do you prefer 2% over whole milk?

Questions: 32nd Precinct

Posted on February 19, 2015 by Damien Hobday

1) What are your opinions on the controversial Stop-and-Frisk program?

2) With recent events causing mistrust between citizens and police, how are you taking steps to increase trust with the public, and how has this mistrust affected your ability to effectively do your jobs?

Comments by Damien Hobday

"The issues you mentioned definitely show some severe defects in our policing system. I found your take on police training to be quite interesting. I do agree that showing police academy students these videos of violent actions taken against officers does in fact instill fear into the soon-to-be cops, but don't you think it is necessary? If an officer is not aware of the multitude of potential life-threatening situations that can arise on duty, how are they supposed to react in a manner that will both protect them, and cause little to no harm to the suspect? Policing is a dangerous and sometime life-threatening job, especially in NYC, so officers must be aware of what can possibly occur. The problems you mentioned with the Stop and Frisk program are interesting. I like how you connected the program with the ever growing sense of mistrust between citizens and the police that are there to protect them. I feel this would be an intriguing topic to look further into. Mistrust causes officers not to do their job properly, and citizens to not call for help of police. If this situation could be improved, I feel our whole law enforcement system might be a little more efficient, and our streets a bit safer."
--( posted on Feb 18, 2015, commenting on the post Policing Problems )
 
"Problems with our prison system are vast and most look at the ways in which prisons are flawed while convicts are still in jail, the fact that you took an in-depth look into post-incarceration was interesting. We tend to look at convicts as outsiders, separating them physically with walls and barbed wire while in prison and after, shunning them from society. These people become our neighbors and the fact they have no second chance is disheartening to myself and damning to them. It would be cool to see you take a look into the psychological aspect of this problem; what does a prison sentence do to the mind? This might also tie into another one of your mentioned problems, the waiting in jail for a court case. It seems ridiculous that some can be serving time without a proper verdict. This must have huge psychological effects on those waiting for a trial and probably cause some trouble with assimilation back to their normal lives, even if they are eventually found innocent. As for the abuse of power in our law enforcement system, there needs to be change. Just because one is given some power over others does not mean it should be abused. Even with this you may be able to look at how psychology causes this problem. It would be interesting to find out why those with power tend to abuse and use it for personal gain. Overall great post, you mentioned many problems at the forefront of our policing system today."
--( posted on Feb 18, 2015, commenting on the post Policing Problems )