Foundations of American Government

Government, or societies perception of it, is kind of an abstract concept. The world is constantly changing, so what a society expects of it’s government is fluid as well. The problem with this concept is that governmental systems are very hard to change, and whatever change that is necessary ends up being very hard to achieve. That’s the beauty of most governmental systems, they have been being used since the days of ancient Greece and Rome, but merely slightly adapted to fit each different countries needs. Everyone knows basically how government works, but no one knows well enough to ask questions, except for those in power who will be answering said questions. The expectations of government have changed so much, but the system itself has

When problems arise in our nation, we are left with a complicated crisis as to whose job it is to do what and who exactly should be taking care of any bad situation that seems to pop up with daily life anywhere in the world, but in this case, America. Certain governmental systems, such as Federalism, can be considered a solution to these crises. Federalism can be defined as the relationship between the individual state governments of America and the national or federal government of the United States; and works to balance the power of a large central government, and the power of the smaller regional governments.

The United States has experienced fundamental changes that are dramatically detrimental to democracy. Voters’ ability to define political discourse has been so diminished that even decisive election results like Barack Obama’s in 2012 have little impact. That’s because powerful interests — freed to, in effect, buy elections, unhindered by downsized and diffused media that must rely on revenue from campaign ads — now set the rules of engagement. Lobbying involves working to bring pressure to bear on policy makers to gain favorable policy outcomes. In order to accomplish their goals, interest groups develop a strategy or plan of action and execute it through specific tactics. The particular strategies developed and the specific tactics used, however, vary widely both among and within political

In New York City the mayor is trying to ban sugary sodas to decrease the amount of obesity. Two-thirds of adults in New York are overweight, 40% of elementary and middle school students fight obesity. Is this because of the intake of sugary sodas or is it the lack of self control? "Liz Berman, the coalition's chairwoman" states "We are smart enough to make our own decision about what to eat and drink."

Put in quote about Operation Wall Street being anarchy as an attention grabber. The Founding Fathers (who include George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Adams) studied a small, select group of Greek historians and orators who possessed backgrounds (and concerns) that were similar to the Founder’s themselves, in developing the structure of American Democracy. The Founders’ literature also abounded with references to Homer, Sophocles, Plato, Euripides, Herodotus, Thucydides, Cleisthenes, Xenophon, Aristotle, Strabo, Lucian, Dio, Polybius, Plutarch, and Epictetus from Greece. The democracy of Athens influenced the founding of the U.S. political system.

In this essay, I would like to reflect an online article on CBS News website, ‘‘Behind the closed doors of Washington Lobbyist” October 7,2012 by Sharyl Attkisson. According to Legal dictionary, ‘‘Lobbying is the process of influencing public and government policy at all levels: federal, state and local’’. This article describes how the lobbyist fingerprint are all over the bills coming from congress, the rules and regulation coming from the government. This means that they defeat bills and rules they don’t like or negatively affecting their clients while they promote and advocate the ones they like it. Thus, this article gives us a complete picture of the lobby business do its work in Washington DC.

The article is about banning the use of food stamps to buy sugary drinks. Hence, the major Michael R. Bloomberg acquired the permission to bar the purchase of sodas using food stamps. Nevertheless, according the city statistic, I found that 40% of children from kindergarten to a 8 grade students are obese and overweight. This is a terrifying problem, but the thing the surprised me the most is that it only affecting communities with low-income. In addition, poor neighborhoods are the one whom have higher rate of obesity and the development of diabetes. On the other hand, I have to agree with the article that banning the use of food stamps to buy sodas will have dramatic change upon New Yorkers citizens. In fact, To address this problem

Most people think that obesity is a choice well, the New York City Health Department doesn’t think so. As of Thursday, the New York Health Department became the first in the nation to ban the sale of sugared beverages larger than 16oz. at restaurants, mobile food carts, sports arenas and movie theaters (Park). The New York Health Department feels that they need to start to make a change against how people have their diets so people aren’t as lazy and have more motivation. This is important, because if people have more motivation to do certain activities such as cleaning, playing with their children, going out of the house, as long with much more that they cannot do as an obese person. As people can see, most people who are active and eat healthy have a good life style and tend to live longer as well. This ban against sugared beverages would prevent retailers who sell prepared food from also dispensing sugared beverages.

While the new law bans these large sized containers, one can “still buy as much soda as [one] wants, just in a smaller container” (MSNBC). To counter the opposers of the law, the mayor clearly establishes that he is not controlling anyone’s soda intake. This way, Bloomberg is not violating any basic human rights because anyone can still drink as much soda as they feel fits them. While the law prevents buying twenty oz drink containers, sixteen oz and smaller sizes are still available to the public. Bloomberg continues to use logic when explaining the government’s duty to its population. He uses various data evidences to establish that “sugary drinks are affecting the health of the country’s population” (MSNBC), which helps his case because public health is one of the main concern of the government .. Since these sugary drinks which causes obesity is one of the main causes of a deteriorating public health, the government should intervene, just like if a disease or an epidemic spread across the country and was damaging public health. The main duty of the government is to protect its citizens Bloomberg spins the perception of the law from the government taking rights away from the citizens, to the government saving the citizens from themselves. Overall, Bloomberg logically explains his side of the argument, where the law is simply there to protect the health of the New York society, while not taking any rights away from the citizens but in parallel effectively enough to justify the law being passed and put into action in New

The principles enshrined in the Constitution do not change over time. But the application of those principles evolves as society changes and as experience informs our understanding. The Framers recognized the need to create a government that would be flexible enough to meet the needs of future generations.

The debate on what form of government the United States should assume was a highly controversial and debated topic. After the American Revolutionary War, the United States of America’s first constitution was ratified by all thirteen states in 1781. The constitution that unified the thirteen colonies by law was the Articles of Confederation; it established a weak central government that was adherent to the states. Therefore, the first form of government the United States officially had was a confederacy; which is where power is given to the central government through states. However, the new central government the Articles of Confederation created several shortcomings; for example, the national government did not have the ability to raise

The United States is one of the few countries that govern through the federal system. Federalism was created to organize a form of government where multiple levels of government have authority. It was meant to decentralize and divide powers and responsibilities to prevent a tyranny from ever taking over. Although the United States adopted federalism as their system of government, the balance of power has been broken, drastically shifting it to the central government. Now, it is no question that the federal government held supreme power over the states and in the past few decades as well. People argue that it is more important to have a strong federal government because they have the ability to enact the policies that strongly affect the

According to many studies and “We the People” there has been a steady decline in the trust our nation has in the government system. From the mid 1960’s until 1980, a drastic decrease in trust occurred. This marked a time when trust in government had dropped to extremely low levels of about 25 percent. Between that time period and the new millennium the trust in government fluctuated, but for the most, not much change occurred. By the year 2001, soon after 9/11, trust had risen to the above 50 percent level. However, by 2011 trust in government had reached an all-time low point of nearly 10-15 percent, and has not made much of an increase since. This causes many problems in the United States for many different reasons. The government controls a huge part of every American citizen’s daily life, and because of this we must place a lot of trust in our government; this makes trust a highly important trait for U.S Politics. When levels of trust are high, the government can function more to their full potential.

In early 2013, Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City attempted to regulate health by proposing the Portion Cap Rule. This rule banned all food services within city limits from selling sugary drinks with a quantity of 16 ounces or more. Although this proposal was approved by the Board of Health unanimously, the New York Supreme Court rejected it, stating that this regulation was outside of their delegated authority. There is not a clearly defined boundary for where the government can and cannot interfere with the personal lives of the general public. When considering health, the placement of this boundary is often called into question. The responsibility for public health lies with both the government and the individual, as the government

Thesis: The American government, put under pressure from the Organization of American States, which promoted democracy, alliances, and healthy relations with Latin countries, was forced to recognize the dictator Trujillo’s human rights violations despite initially maintaining close relations with him.