Ameican Politics
Intoduction to Kevin Phillips

Kevin Phillips is a well-known, contovesial yet espected wite and political analyst, who wites about the political and social wold of contempoay Ameica with a sense of liteay style and an "at the bottom of it" substance. His most ecent book, Ameican Dynasty: Aistocacy, Fotune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush, would seem to give the liteay and politically uninitiated all the infomation needed in tems of whee Phillips stands politically - his social and political/philosophical fame of efeence. It would be safe to say his investigative, had-hitting book on Geoge W. Bush's White House would pobably not get him an invitation to a Rush Limbaugh inside cocktail paty, and yet, Phillips has woked as a Republican stategist, and he was a top political adviso to Richad Nixon duing the pesidential ace in 1968.

In the book this pape eviews, Phillips puts his…...

mla

references for "the rich and powerful" - there were "650 special provisions" in the bill which were called "transition rules" and "technical corrections" which actually didn't hurt the rich but harmed the middle class.

On page 414, Phillips calls a section of his Afterward "The Democratic Deficit and the Rise of the Unelected." During the winter of 2000-2001, Phillips recalls, "when Americans watched the U.S. Supreme Court determine the outcome of the November presidential election..." And the Federal Reserve Board made "its critical judgments on the fate of the U.S. economy," the "migration of political authority" was thrown into "bold relief." For thinking Americans, these past few years have brought about radical and almost unbelievable events: first, Bush is elected on a 5-4 vote of the Supreme Court, five Republicans and four Democrats. And that happens notwithstanding the fact that Al Gore won the popular vote, and even won the Florida popular vote - once a coalition of news organizations hired lawyers and counters to count all the "disputed ballots" with "hanging chads" and the other flaws in the Florida balloting.

So, we have a president elected by a 5-4 vote by a judiciary that does not run for election or re-election, and a Federal Reserve Board, that is not beholding to the public, that does not run for election or re-election, making monumental decisions affecting millions of Americans.

And today, we see the enormous influence of giant corporations like Halliburton, formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney, which, we now know, received billion-dollar no-bid contracts before the attacks on Iraq even begun, contracts to "rebuild" Iraq.

After reading this book by Kevin Phillips, the rebuilding should take place not in Iraq, but in America. And what should be rebuilt is not just the power grids, the schools, the roads and the other key infrastructures that are rotting away (things Bush wants to rebuild in Iraq), but the whole system of how taxes and the economy always benefit the rich few, rather than the struggling middle and lower classes.

American Politics
Historically, the significance of the executive branch has increased during periods of war, crisis and economic turmoil, while the legislative branch has assumed greater responsibility during peaceful reprieves and ostensibly stable times. The relation between these two branches is complicated, but the increase of power and prestige of the president during crisis times must be approached in two ways: the president as a more efficient executive administrator of policy, and the president as symbolic leader.

The constitution provides the president with the certain powers that enhance his ability to perform in crisis situations, and, given the increased significance of the media in American politics of the last half-century, the president's role as a symbolic figure is more important than ever.

There is a generally perceived division between the executive and legislative branches: Congress is steeped in bureaucratic and intensely inefficient processes, while the president maintains the ability to act quickly. During…...

mla

Bibliography

Herring, George. America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam 1950-1975. New York: McGraw Hill, 1995.

Sandel, Michael Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Policy. New York: Belknap, 1998.

Tulis, Jeffrey. The Rhetorical Presidency. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.

American Politics
In the U.S. society, the political powers of groups are determined by the demographic and institution characteristics. The powers is divided into two models, these includes; the pluralism which was created by the Madisonian democracy and the elitism. Pluralism is a system where the decisions of politics are being made resulting to the bargaining and negotiation among the special interested groups. For this case, no one is allowed to hold a majority of powers, since the power is widely distributed. However, elitism is a system where the society are controlled by a few individuals who are at the top, here, the power is concentrated in the hands of some individuals who share a common interests. This paper examines how demographic and institutional characteristics are shaping the political power of the groups in the U.S., society. It also analyzes how pluralism which is created by the Madisonian democracy enshrined in…...

mla

References

Kenney, H. (2002). The calculus of consent and Madisonian democracy. London: Free Market

Foundation.

Prothero, S.R. (2006). A nation of religions: the politics of pluralism in multireligious America.

London: University of North Carolina Press.

Not all money is illegal, of course, since politicians running for office need money to pay for their campaigns. But some money given to members of Congress is given illegally and influence is given illegally. And the benefits that the lobbyists receive is money and power and free trips and a life of luxury, in most cases.
Take lobbyists, for example. The lobbyist is hired by a company or an organization; his or her job is to go to Congress and find members who will vote for the things that lobbyist's boss wants to have done through legislation. Jack Abramoff is a lobbyist, and he has pleaded guilty to "fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials"; he pleaded guilty, according to the ashington Post, in a deal that provides him with a lesser sentence if he will tell prosecutors inside information about others involved in his schemes.

According to…...

mla

Works Cited

Cable News Network. "Poll: Half believe Congress is Dirty." Available from www.cnn.com/2006/politics/01/01/poll.congressimage.(2006).

Holland, Gina. "High Court Trims Whistleblower Rights." Associated Press. Available at  http://www.sfgate.com .

Schmidt, Susan, & Grimaldi, James V. "Abramoff Pleads Guilty to 3 Counts." Washington Post

2006), available at  http://www.washingtonpost.com .

This rule is applicable to all states except North Dakota which does not require registration. Absentee ballots and mail ballot options are also available for voters who could not make it to the election booth. This is the election process in the United States.
Problems of the local governments

Local governments have a vital role to play in the country because they are the closest government body for the citizens. Despite this close association, the role of local governments is under-estimated due to a variety of reasons. They face many problems in reaching out to the public and in creating a better community for its residents. The primary problem is finance. Though the community gets a certain amount directly through taxes from the state government, it sometimes, may not be enough to bring about a real change in the community. This is more prevalent in communities that have a large number…...

The critical part of this decision is its date - 2002. McConnell v. Federal Election Commission decided the manor in which the 2005 election would be campaigned, and while the political world blistered in post-9/11 heat, the Bush v. Kerry campaign was taking on such importance that the Justices' opinion would be immediately decisive in the outcome of yet another election.

Although not as direct as their role in the Bush v. Gore election, the manner in which the BCRA was evaluated was just as critical to the role of money and attack ads in the forthcoming election. The effectiveness of these loopholes are most evidenced in retrospect, from the "Leave No Billionaire Behind!" motto with which liberals credited Bush to the Swift Boat Veterans campaign that essentially under-minded the Kerry movement as a whole. While the outcome favored the conservative party to which the dissenting Justices pay their political respects,…...

American Politics and Society
Americans have long struggled with 1970s decade to understand exactly how it influenced American political, economic and social fabric. It seemed that while historians were pondering over the role of 1960s and 1980s, the decade in between evaporated in thin air with no one paying much attention or been able to comprehend the role played by this decade. But when the confused teenager of 1970s grew up to become academics and journalists, a shift in history was noticed.

To most Americans, seventies was an era of defeat and depression. Americans were sorely defeated in Vietnam, they faced hostage crisis in Iran, met some serious inflation problems and oil shortage. Thus if anything, Americans would want to forget that 70s ever existed. But that is not the whole picture- its just one side of the coin. The other side shows a much different picture where 70s played as crucial…...

mla

References

Bruce J. Schulman. The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics. New York: Free Press, 2001

As the world economy grows increasingly interconnected, the president's role as Chief Diplomat and Chief Executive will grow further intertwined.
The President is also Commander in Chief of the nation's armed forces. However, given that you are a former law professor, you know that Congress has the official power to declare war. Many Commanders-in-Chief have attempted to circumvent that power, of course, such as when Lyndon Johnson used the Gulf of Tonkin resolution to vastly expand American involvement in Vietnam. But given your respect for the Constitution, you will surely honor Congress' Constitutional role, even while you also show respect for the U.S. military, and the valiant efforts of the men and women who serve in uniform.

Your role as Chief Crisis Manager will hopefully not be a presidential 'hat' you will have to wear very often, as was the case for George Bush during 9/11 and Franklin Delano Roosevelt during…...

mla

Works Cited

Ghitis, Frida. "World Citizen: Obama must parlay soft power gains into real results"

World Politics Review. April 9, 2009.  http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=3587

American politics, for the presidential party to lose congressional support in a midterm election. As any administration struggles in the early part of a term to define itself, it's likely to fall in and out of favor with a public still not inundated of the White House's identity and intentions. This is an opportunity rarely missed by the opposition, as sophomore year presidencies have commonly been forced to tolerate an exploitation of their greatest possible weakness. At the dual behest of the media and some genuine desire for social progress, the public has been prone to voicing protest in a midterm election. One prime example in recent history was Bill Clinton's first midterm election. He had taken a beating on the gays in the military issue in his first year. And as he grappled with a post-Reaganomics recession in those early years, people who were frustrated with unemployment and…...

George Orwell's 1984 And Contemporary American Politics And Society
Orwell's novel, entitled 1984, is essentially a fictional projection of possibilities and "what if" scenarios. While it is classified as a work of fiction, the foundations of 1984 stem from the author's personal experiences and insights into the way governments and political groups manipulate and even construct the truth to suit their own ends in an effort to gain and maintain power. Due to his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, Orwell became aware that often media reports were mere fabrications of the truth and not an accurate reflection of reality. This made him skeptical about reportage in the media and information from official government sources. The future scenario that the book suggests is in fact based on an understanding of human nature, and what Orwell saw as the trajectory that power structures in the world were taking.

There are many aspects of…...

mla

Bibliography

Bennett, John. Orwell's 1984: Was Orwell Right? Retrieved: March 17, 2005 from Institute for Historical Review. Web site: -- 9_Bennett.htmlhttp://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p

Greenberg J. (2004) Why Bush's America Feels Like Orwell's 1984.

Retrieved: March 17, 2005 from Buzzflash. Web site: http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/04/11/con04503.html

Neisig. E. 2005. 2005 is reminiscent of Orwell's "1984" Retrieved March 18, 2005 from Daily Trojan. Web Site:  http://www.dailytrojan.com/news/2005/01/20/Opinions/2005-Is.Reminiscent.Of.Orwells.1984-836138.shtml?page=2

nation's "first constitution," the Articles of Confederation, provided a framework and blueprint for American politics and government (Kernell, Jacobson, Kousser and Vavreck 24). Far more anti-federalist in nature than the Constitution, the Articles of Confederation provided only for a loose confederation of states. States had the power to override almost any federal law. Moreover, the states appoint federal officials rather than reverting to citizen voters to elect national leaders and lawmakers. The Articles of Confederation lacked the balance of powers embedded in the future Constitution, and for which the Constitution is renowned. ithout an executive branch in the federal government, and without a federal judiciary, the new nation seemed precariously weak under the Articles. Federalists affirmed the need for stronger centralization, particularly to bolster the American position vis-a-vis its European counterparts. Although the anti-Federalists retained some of the core principles of states' rights in the Constitution, ultimately the federalists…...

mla

Works Cited

Doernberg, Donald. "We the People." California Law Review. Vol 73, No. 1. Retrieved online:  http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2069&context=californialawreview 

Kernell, Samuel, Jacobson, Gary C., Kousser, Thad, and Vavreck, Lynn. The Logic of American Politics. 6th edition. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

American citizenry is somewhat in the position of the unfortunate citizens of some third-world countries who try to stay out of the cross-fire while Maoist guerrillas and right-wing death squads shoot at each other. eports of a culture war are mostly wishful thinking and useful fund-raising strategies on the part of culture-war guerrillas, abetted by a media driven by the need to make the dull and everyday appear exciting and unprecedented.
At the time of every election, both the Democrat and epublican presidential candidates begin spouting their strong political platform. Somewhere along the line of American history, and perhaps it was once true, there arose the belief that a major difference exists between the two parties' beliefs. In their book Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America, Morris P. Fiorina of Stanford University, Samuel J. Abrams of Harvard University, and Jeremy C. Pope of Stanford University combine polling data…...

mla

Reference

Fiorina, Morris et al. Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America.

Upper Saddle Ridge, NJ: Pearson Education, 2004.

hearing the name of Nobel Prize Winner Sinclair Lewis, The Jungle often comes to mind first because of the impact this book made in its time and ever since. Yet, It Can't Happen Here should be judged just as -- if not more -- important than any of Lewis' books. The work, which describes what would happen if America voted in a dictator such as Stalin or Hitler to "save the day," clearly reflects the fears of Lewis' own time. It also strongly warns today's readers what could occur if civil society does not keep watchful.
The main story of It Can't Happen Here revolves around Doremus Jessup, a moderate 60-year-old epublican and editor of a small-town newspaper in Vermont. Everyone, including Jessup, said in 1935, "If there ever is a Fascist dictatorship here, American humor and pioneer independence are so marked that it will be absolutely different from anything…...

mla

Reference

Lewis, Sinclair. It Can't Happen Here. New York: New American Library, 1970.

Power Elite
Every country has its own powerful and influential groups that seem to control and literally run the state. These groups have unlimited powers and they seem to exert an unhindered and unobstructed influence on the economic, political and military decisions. Wright Mills was one of the pioneers in the field of power elite theorists who closely examined the nature and function of the elite and explained how the three powerful groups i.e. The economy, politics and military merge to dominate the state affairs and to certain extent even personal affairs of people. This is because this power elite enjoys the privileges to make major decisions that affect everything including life of the common man:

The powers of ordinary men are circumscribed by the everyday worlds in which they live, yet even in these rounds of job, family, and neighborhood they often seem driven by forces they can neither understand…...

mla

Reference

Mills, C. Wright "The Power Elite," Oxford University Press: New York: 2000.

Factions: Help or Hindrance
James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, aided by John Jay, were responsible for writing eighty-five anonymous essays for the New York Journal in 1787 and 1788. These articles were known as The Federalist Papers, and they were intended to persuade people into ratifying the proposed Constitution. In The Federalist Paper Number 10, Madison responded to critics who had argued that the United States was too large, and had too many groups, or "factions," to be ruled democratically by a single government. Madison acknowledged the importance of factions in the opening paragraph, stating that, "Among the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction" (Rossiter, 1961). In prescribing how to rule and control the effects of factions, Madison detailed their relationships with other important concepts, such as liberty and property, and…...

mla

Works Cited

Rossiter, C. ed. The Federalist Papers. New York: New American Library, 1961.

It is difficult to answer any question that asks about how the founders felt about anything.  While there were many more people involved in the American Revolution, resulting in some disagreement about who was a founder, there is a list of 10 people that consistently get mentioned as founders or founding fathers.  However, these 10 people were not ideologically identical.  In fact, there was a substantial amount of disagreement among them about a number of topics, including the rule of the average person in democracy.  To get a better feel for their competing ideas, you can reference....

The social sciences refer to any academic discipline that deals with human behavior.  The fields that generally fall under this rubric include economics, anthropology, psychology, sociology, political science, historiography, as well as certain types of culture-specific studies.  Mixed method research refers to a research methodology that mixes traditional quantitative and qualitative research designs and discussing both types of evidence or data while considering the takeaways or conclusions of the research. 

Some topics for mixed method research in social sciences are:

1. Does the inclusion of minority police officers in a police force reduce the incidence of police brutality....

The Forgotten Chapters of American History: Uncovering Lesser-Known but Captivating Essay Topics

Beyond the familiar narratives of the American Revolution, Civil War, and westward expansion, American history is a tapestry woven with countless lesser-known stories that offer valuable insights and provoke thought. Here are some intriguing essay topics that illuminate hidden aspects of our nation's past:

1. The Forgotten Pioneers: Exploring the Contributions of Women in the Transcontinental Railroad

While the construction of the transcontinental railroad is often attributed to male workers, over a thousand women played a crucial role as cooks, laundresses, nurses, and telegraph operators. Their contributions were essential to the....

Topic 1: The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Election

Analyze the ways in which the pandemic affected the election campaign, voter turnout, and the overall results.
Discuss the role of technology in facilitating remote campaigning and voter registration during a public health crisis.
Examine the implications of the pandemic for future elections and the challenges it poses to democratic processes.

Topic 2: The Role of Social Media in the Election

Evaluate the impact of social media platforms on the spread of information, voter engagement, and the dissemination of misinformation.
Analyze the effectiveness of social media campaigns by both candidates....