| Instructor Notes for Chapter 20 - Global Policy
Global Policy for the USA is becoming increasingly important as the world is more interrelated every day. Critical issues such as climate change, pandemic diseases, arms control, trade issues, terrorism, and others demand the nations cooperate to manage common issues. The textbook indicates that the American public shows minimal interest in international affairs. This dearth of interest in global issues is further deepened by the lack of reporting on International news by the corporate-owned media. When the electorate is neither knowledgeable nor interested in global affairs, it becomes even more critical that the policy making systems in the government function in a responsible manner for the common good of the nation. This last chapter of the textbook describes the players, structures, and primary issues that define the making of foreign policy in the United States. It is my hope that after taking this class, students will show a greater interest in global events and policy the general public.
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Saturday, May 9, 2015
Instructor Notes - Global Policy
Instructor Notes - Policymaking and Domestic Policy
| Instructor Notes for Week 15 –Chapter 19- Policymaking and Domestic Policy
“ . . . Now comes Wall Street's "third way" of hijacking the nation's wealth: it's trying to persuade Democratic supporters to support the dismantling of the social contract that has held our society together for 75 years. And it's using many of the same tactics -- and many of the same faces -- it used in its first two forays.
If you liked Wall Street deregulation, an inequitable bank bailout, and a get-out-of-jail-free card for bank executives, you're going to love this.
The Anti-Social Contract Movement
The goal is to cut the popular and successful programs they describe as "entitlements." Cutting Social Security benefits will reduce political pressure on the undertaxed wealthy, while creating new investment markets for Wall Street retirement funds. Directly or indirectly slashing Medicare and Medicaid benefits also reduces that pressure. It would be more effective, more humane, and more rational to reduce Medicare's costs by reducing the effects runaway greed at every level of our health economy - but that would be bad for their investments. . . .”
HuffPost Hill: FIGHT! - Social Security Works' Alex Lawson and Third Way's Jim Kessler battle for close to an hour on Social Security and the social contract. (Lawson's for it.) It's that rare thing in Washington, an actual debate, played out here on Ari Rabin-Havt's Sirius show The Agenda.
Read more about it here - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/wall-street-finds-a-third_b_2158836.html
11/14/2012 Jim Kessler of the Third Way and Alex Lawson of Social Security Works debate on SiriusXM Left's The Agenda with Ari Rabin-Havt.
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Minimum wage is another issue being debated at this time.
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Instructor Notes - Economic Policy
| Instructor Notes for Week 14 –Chapter 18 - Economic Policy
This Chapter and this topic are very important for the public to understand because there has been so much political rhetoric and misinformation distributed about the economy by the corporate owned media. The selftest is therefore a bit longer this week with 60 questions. There is much to learn and it is a topic that most people avoid if possible. However, the USA cannot afford to avoid this topic with the current unemployment rate and the need for the public to speak as loudly to influence Congress as the lobbyists for corporations and the 1%. The voters decided that they believed President Obama presented the best approach to creating jobs and strengthening our economy with his often repeated call to increase taxes for the wealthy. In spite of being outspent by his opponent’s super pacs three to one, the American public chose to reelect President Obama. If more of the public had truly understood the state of the income gap in the USA, I believe the President’s victory margin would have been much greater.
This is a great video that is well worth your time to watch. Economist Richard Wolff joins Bill Moyers to shine light on the disaster left behind in capitalism’s wake, and to discuss the fight for economic justice, including a fair minimum wage. A Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, and currently Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School, Wolff has written many books on the effects of rampant capitalism, including Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It. http://billmoyers.com/episode/encore-taming-capitalism-run-wild-2/
It would also be worth your time to listen to this debate that addresses the question our Congress must now actually face. Try not to succumb to the hollow “flat tax” argument as that is quite simply a regressive tax. There is a video and two versions of the audio one of which is condensed if you don’t have much listening time. Please check this out and you can debate all your family at your next Thanksgiving dinner.
Most Americans have no idea how much wealthier the top 1% have gotten in the last couple of decades. The data below is taken from 2007 figures and the situation has grown much more extreme since then.
Measuring the Top 1% by Wealth, Not Income
“But an analysis of the Fed data is still revealing in that it shows the wealth gap, as measured by net worth, is much more extreme than the chasm as measured by income.
The Times had estimated the threshold for being in the top 1 percent in household income at about $380,000, 7.5 times median household income, using census data from 2008 through 2010. But for net worth, the 1 percent threshold for net worth in the Fed data was nearly $8.4 million, or 69 times the median household’s net holdings of $121,000. . . .
Other nuggets about the wealthy from the 2007 Fed data:
— The wealthiest 1 percent took in about 16 percent of overall income — 8 percent of the money earned from salaries and wages, but 36 percent of the income earned from self-employment.
— They controlled nearly a third of the nation’s financial assets (investment holdings) and about 28 percent of nonfinancial assets (the value of property, cars, jewelry, etc.). These measures will be particularly interesting to revisit when the new, post-recession data arrives.
— Money may not buy happiness, but the Fed survey suggests it buys good health. About 90 percent of the 1 percenters describe themselves as being in excellent or good health, compared with 75 percent of everybody else. About 85 percent expect to live into their 80s, compared with 68 percent of everybody else.
— Nearly half of the 1 percenters own two or more pieces of real estate. That was true for just 5 percent of the rest of the population.”
The article below further explains the current decline in incomes.
September 12, 2012, 1:24 pm
Behind the Decline in Incomes By CATHERINE RAMPELL
The Census Bureau just released its sweeping annual report on income, poverty and health insurance coverage.
As my colleague Sabrina Tavernise writes, median household income declined last year to $50,054, a level last seen in 1996 when adjusted for inflation. Here are a few quick graphical bullet points from other findings in the report:
1. Median incomes fell from 2010 to 2011 for all races, although the change was not statistically significant for Asians and Hispanics.
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The Gini Index is a standard measure of inequality, in which higher values represent more unequal distributions of money income. The “equivalence-adjusted income estimate” (blue line above) takes into consideration the number of people living in each household, and how these people share resources and take advantage of economies of scale.
3. Men have gained more jobs in the recovery (dubbed the “he-covery”) but they also lost a lot more jobs in the recession (“man-cession”).
4. There’s more evidence that the work force is “hollowing out,” as there was significant job growth in the first, second and fifth income quintiles, but not in the third and fourth ones.
5. The share of people without health insurance fell. The biggest drop was among those 19 to 25 years old, who can now join their parents’ health insurance plans. (The number of insured children also showed a decline from 2010 to 2011, but it was not statistically significant.)
Source: Census Bureau
Instructor Notes - Equality & Civil Rights
| Instructor Notes for Week 12 - Chapter 16 - Equality & Civil Rights
It is amazing to many that the hard won civil rights we are studying this chapter this week are now being questioned by some in our society. Beginning with the issue of race, there is an excellent book entitled The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, the former director of the Racial Justice Project of the ACLU in Northern California. She also served as a law clerk to Justice Harry Blackmun on the U.S. Supreme Court. In it she says, “Recent data shows, though, that much of black progress is a myth. In many respects, African-Americans are doing no better than they were when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and uprisings swept inner cities across America. Nearly a quarter of African-Americans live below the poverty line today, approximately the same percentage as in 1968. The black child poverty rate is actually higher now than it was then. Unemployment rates in black communities rival those in Third World countries. And that's with affirmative action! When we pull back the curtain and take a look at what our "colorblind" society creates without affirmative action, we see a familiar social, political, and economic structure--the structure of racial caste. The entrance into this new caste system can be found at the prison gate.” An excellent synopsis of the book can be read athttp://www.econ.brown.edu/fac/glenn_loury/louryhomepage/teaching/Ec%20137/The%20New%20Jim%20Crow-from%20The%20Nation.pdf If you have not read it, I suggest you put it at the top of your list.
If you don’t have time to read the book, watch this video -
During the 2012 election cycle, we heard and read about irregularities with our various state voting systems and the number of voter suppression laws that have been passed in numerous states. It was not really that many years ago that women finally got the right to vote in this country and now many are being disenfranchised by these new laws.
Once again, the issue of affirmative action is before the Supreme Court of the United States. After integrating our schools with the famous Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case in 1954 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, we now see many of our schools walking back their integration policies used for years, i.e. here in the city of Wichita. The 2012 election cycle has also highlighted class wars between the top 1% and the 99% and the “War on Women” concerning equal pay for equal work and personal health choices for American women.
All of the above issues are still relevant today so pay close attention to this chapter this week and you will be better able to discuss these issues and make decisions about who you want to represent you and your family at the local, state and national levels.
Finally, with the most recent issues being raised about local policing and our civil rights, I'd like to share this video with students so that you will be protected if you are stopped by the police. Most of our officers follow the rules and will not use undue force with the public. But, it is good to know how to behave in these circumstances and hopefully have the best possible outcome. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDptsf81lVc&list=UUV3Nm3T-XAgVhKH9jT0ViRg
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Instructor Notes - Order and Civil Liberties
| Instructor Notes for Week 11 – Chapter 15 - Order and Civil Liberties Again, we are studying a very important chapter about a topic that can directly affect your lives. The textbook does a thorough job in describing the separation of church and state, freedom of the press, the 2nd amendment and others. It also discusses your Miranda rights but I think it is important for students to fully understand those rights. Everyone has heard Miranda recited on television numerous times and often seen the person detained talking verbosely to the police. This is not a good idea as many find when they later go to court and do find that their own words are held against them. Privately owned prisons are now a big industry in this country and they often contract for quotas that local law enforcement must meet. Yes, that is correct – the police need to send a minimum number of people to prison. Therefore, I strongly suggest that each of you take time to watch the video linked below and never forget what it says. Share it with you friends and relatives. You are an American citizen and you have rights. Don't Talk to Police Dana's Note:::I really do recommend the video in this post. Good information!!! |
Instructor Notes - The Courts
| Instructor Notes for Week 10 – Chapter 14 - The Courts Again, as in the previous chapter, this may sound like a very boring chapter to students but this is an important and fascinating subject area about a sector of our government that actually affect all Americans with their decisions on a daily basis. Anyone who has ever served on a jury, or has had to go to court as a defendant or a petitionerknows the sense of finality of a court decision. We need to understand our judicial system in this country as one never knows when one might find themselves in court being profoundly affected by the court process and/or decision. So, pay attention to this important section as it might be very critical to your personal life at some point and as the two cases below illustrate, the courts are making a difference in our political lives most of the time.
This is an especially critical time in our history with recent cases that have even affected the 2012 election campaigns. In June 2012, the Supreme Court upheld President Obama’s health care overhaul law, the Affordable Care Act, saying its requirement that most Americans obtain insurance or pay a penalty was authorized by Congress’s power to levy taxes. The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joining the court’s four more liberal members. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/us/supreme-court-lets-health-law-largely-stand.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Another important earlier case, Citizens United (2010), remains a quite controversial decision. In this case, the Court “held that private corporations, which are nowhere mentioned in the Constitution and are not political membership organizations, enjoy the same political free speech rights as people under the First Amendment and may draw on the wealth of their treasuries to spend unlimited sums promoting or disparaging candidates for public office. The billions of dollars thus turned loose for campaign purposes at the direction of corporate managers not only can be but—under the terms of corporate law—must be spent to increase profits. If businesses choose to exercise their newly minted political “money speech” rights, they must work to install officials who will act as
corporate tools.” http://www.thenation.com/article/169915/citizens-united-and-corporate-court#
Cartoon: Wasserman, The Boston Globe |
Instructor Notes - The Bureaucracy
Instructor Notes for Week 9 – Chapter 13 - The Bureaucracy
This may sound like a very boring chapter to students but this is an amazing subject area about the people who actually run our government on a daily basis. They provide continuity between administrations and in their often long careers, they learn to work with both parties to uphold the laws of our land. I worked in the state government in Topeka in both the Kansas Corporation Commission and also in the Governor's office. At the time, I had two degrees in Political Science and therefore a book knowledge of the government. I learned during my tenure that the bureaucracy is actually of a much higher quality than I had imagined. There are many dedicated and intelligent people working for our government - of course there are glaring exceptions and these are the ones who give the bureaucracy the bad/negative reputation. Enjoy this chapter and try to keep an open mind as you read, discuss and learn.
My sister had five degrees and worked for the Federal Government most of her adult life. She had an exciting career in the secret service for part of that time and achieved a G-18 rating. A government job can be a good career decision for college graduates.
"The National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR), originally the National Performance Review, was the Clinton-Gore Administration's interagency task force to reform and streamline the way the federal government works. It was the eleventh federal reform effort in the twentieth century. In creating NPR on March 3, 1993, President Clinton said: “Our goal is to make the entire federal government less expensive and more efficient, and to change the culture of our national bureaucracy away from complacency and entitlement toward initiative and empowerment.”The President asked the Vice President to report on the findings of this National Performance Review within six months. Vice President Gore, however, went far beyond preparing a report and led an effort that evolved into the longest-running and most successful reform effort in U.S. history to date. http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/npr/whoweare/historyofnpr.html
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