"Robin hood" Opinion leads

Did you know that $1.50 for every 100$ worth of your property taxes may not even be going to your community? That’s right the state of Texas has historically been very much against taxes but now insists on redistributing funds taxed from anyone who owns a home via the Robin hood act.

    I am sure you, like every other reasonable human being on the planet, enjoy being able to keep your money or at least see your taxes have a positive effect on your community. But the issue is that your home is being taxed with $1.50 for every $100 worth of market value to pay for schools in communities hundreds of miles away because of the Robin hood act.

    Sitting behind their desks in a well lit room a team of workers crunch numbers on the municipal tax revenue for the year. The room is a buzz with clicking of the keys and the faint hum of a host computer monitors softly glowing in the worker’s faces. They reach the section on property taxes and you think that they are gathering  all of this money to be used to improve the city. But no, they are actually taking $1.50 of every $100 worth of property taxes and shipping of millions of dollars to other cities and districts throughout the state of Texas.

Daily Show as News Opinion Leads

Twist: Political satire television shows, such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, are primarily comedy shows. They aren’t seen as a real source of news. However, what The Daily Show does that those from conventional news sources do not is catch the attention of an audience that wouldn’t otherwise pay much attention.
Startling statement/Rhetorical Question: 47% of people between the ages of 18 and 29 are “informed at least occasionally” by comedy news programs, such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Is that really as dire a situation as the newscasters of CNN and Fox News would lead you to believe?
Rhetorical Question: What makes news from The Daily Show, a self-proclaimed “fake news” program, not the news?

Felix Leads

Here they are:
    Comparison: The first state to legalize interracial marriage in the U.S did it in 1780. Texas was 187 years late when it was forced in 1967 to do so. This has a very negative connotation for nearly everyone in Texas, and many other states look down on us for it.
    Rhetorical Question: Whose job is it to decide who each person can legally love?
    Comparison: 230 years ago, many a couple moved to Pennsylvania to get married because they looked different than one another. In the present, people have to move to California to get married because they are the same gender.  It seems like Texas should have noticed what was going on years ago, because it might be 187 years late again, and shame many of it’s future citizens. 


  

Who wants to read my crappy leads?

Hello, friends and classmates. Apparently, we're supposed to post our leads on our blogs. For the record, I prefer to write my story and then write my lead. Whatever. It's not like anyone reads this blog, anyway. We get to pick codenames, which is cool. Here are my four choices for a codename: A) Brutus (a reference to the Roman senator who killed the tyranical Julius Caeser), B) Banquo (the name of a character in Macbeth- pretty cool name, right?), C) Masada (Masada is the name of the fortress where freedom-loving Jews resisted the tyranical romans- I'm starting to notice a pattern in my name choices.), D) Guiteau (Guiteau was the name of the man who killed President Garfield.).


Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. These are my leads (sorry that they suck).


1. His face is twisted, haunting, almost gleeful. His smile is... grotesquely mesmerizing. His favorite books are the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf. He was thrown out of community college and described as a security threat. Yet, this man, Jared Lee Loughner, is allowed to purchase a weapon that holds 30 bullets.
2. January 8th, 2011. Justice John Roll is on his way to thank a congresswoman who backed his appointment. 9 year old Christina Taylor-Green is going to visit the same congresswoman. She is a little league star and a member of her school’s student council. Christina, Justice Roll, and more than 20 other Americans are planning to visit Rep. Gabrielle Giffords at a “Congress on your Corner” event. Little do these people know that this trip might be their last.
3. It’s another morning in Tuscon, Arizona, but something just feels different. Shoppers file through the lines of the Casas Adobes shopping mall, ignoring the horrific events that occured there. Students at the Pima Community College are filing in to classes, trying to avoid the memory of a peer’s deeds. Meanwhile, over 600 miles away, the bell at Columbine High School rings. Past events linger quietly over each setting, haunting and stunning those who think of them. In all these places, the question is the same: How could this happen?

Posted by "Banquo"