Presidential Cabinet Appointments

Sometimes I wonder if my personal political ideology will be a challenge to my teaching; as much as Americans try to boast about getting involved with and supporting their community, that wars with their personal piece of the American dream pie. To have their own success, particularly financially as that seems to be the direction for most, doesn’t mean sharing their personal wealth with the less fortunate in the community. Understanding that I tread precipitously close to the edge of socialism and communism, I still don’t see much in the way of society as a whole here in the U.S. sacrificing their personal gain [financially] for the advancement of the poor. Not only these chapters but study after study, article after article, can make a clear connection between wealthy suburbs with wealthy tax bases supporting the best schools with the best facilities and the best teachers producing the best students. So why can’t the money be redistributed more appropriately? Why don’t Americans want to share their fortune with the lesser? It’s because that is not the American dream: what’s theirs is theirs and will only serve to make them more successful. If others cannot succeed with what they have or what they can do, that is on them. The lack of a

Kyrsten Sinema has been leading a life unlike many others’; going from a middle-class early childhood, to homelessness, to co-valedictorian, to practicing lawyer with a PhD, and to “Prada Socialist” in Congress. Sinema was born to an upper middle-class family in 1976. She and her two siblings were raised by both their parents in a five-bedroom house in Tucson, AZ. Her father, Dan Sinema Sr., was a lawyer and her mother, Marilyn, was a stay-at-home mom. Her father lost his job during the 1980s recession since clients were complaining about him, a Real Estate claim gone badly, and IRS debts. This was when the family went from a upper-middle-class status into debts and foreclosure.

Fundraising success correlates strongly with electoral success. In 2002, 95 percent of House winners raised more than their opponents. In 2004, more than 95 percent of House winners outspent their opponents. (4 “Money Is the Victor in 2002 Midterm Elections,” Center for Responsive Politics, Nov. 6, 2002. 5 “2004 Election Outcome: Money Wins,” Center for Responsive Politics, Nov. 3,

Although change is needed and would help out plenty of people, these polices are hard to change due to the fact that both political parties have strong incentives to cater to the well-off. Reeves sometimes gets caught up with the idea of catering to the rich, such as when he praises President Barack Obama’s short-lived proposal to trade the tax break for 529 plans for expanded higher-education tax credits available to families with annual incomes of up to $180,000. Later on Reeves does call out free-college proposals. He states that they are “yet another boondoggle for the upper middle class.”

     Will Durant, a businessman and the founder of General Motors, once said, “Education is the transmission of civilization.” Unfortunately, education is still one of the most deliberated and controversial issues in the United States. Thus far, the privilege or right to receive education has not attained the level of equality throughout the nation; poor districts obtain less educational funding while rich districts obtain more, creating an immense gap between the quality of schools in poor and rich areas.

In the 2016 election cycle, over 1.4 billion dollars was given to presidential candidates (Federal Election Commission 2016a). This is more than any other presidential election cycle in history (Price 2016). Another billion dollars was given to U.S. House of Representatives candidates, and about 600 million dollars was given to U.S. Senate candidates (Federal Election Commission 2016b). The majority of this money went to funding the candidates’ campaigns. This money controlled whose ads voter’s saw on television and which candidates were able to afford to travel the country campaigning for votes. In many cases, the candidate with the most money available won their election. Most campaigns are financed in large part by a small number

The Democratic and Republican presidential nominees for 1999 raised an astounding 126 million to finance their campaigns in the primaries (Godfrey). The U.S. national political parties raised a record 107.2 million dollars in soft money contributions in 1999 (Campaign Finance Reform). During the 1995-96 elections, public citizens estimated that an astounding 150 million dollars was spent on "phony" issue ads designed to support or oppose congressional and presidential candidates (Campaign Finance Reform). This outrageous influx of money into congressional and presidential campaigns has placed a blanket of corruption and injustice over our nation’s elections. With the rise of campaign corruption, many

On the first day of class, the professor showed a graph to illustrate how much wealth has deviated to the right most part of the curve. A question was then raised: what does it take to be in the top ten percent? Most students rushed to get their answers through, but none of them ever thought about their chances of being on the left side of the graph, a graph that depicts inequality of wealth in America. In “Who Got Rich Off The Student Debt Crisis”, James B. Steele and Lance Williams showed how the elites, like former Sallie Mae CEO Albert Lord, used money and lobbying to bring the government and school officials in their favor as they siphoned educational funds and retired like kings, and how it affected millions of lives of small people like Jessie Suren.

The election of members to Congress in the United States of America is contingent on the financial muscles of the candidates and their supporters. It all starts with a deep pocket investment. The recently concluded election will yield a new administration with new cabinet members. The election of Donald Trump as the next U.S President is partly attributable to the synergy and efforts made by some of the most influential people in the Republican Convention. With Trump already appointing some of his chief strategists, it is necessary to conduct a deeper analysis of the financial input of other members of the Congress in an attempt to gain seats.

Education is the most powerful tool one can arm themselves with. Education provides people with the power to innovate, invent, and change the world. Recognized on a global basis as the ultimate key to unlocking one’s potential, education is one of, if not the most important aspect of a human being’s life. Despite this recognition of education as a necessary aspect of positive advancement, there has lately been a high amount of controversy surrounding the education system in the United States. A large amount of this controversy surrounds the views of the new secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, who strongly believes in the concept of school-choice vouchers, which are essentially subsidies given directly to parents to

Financial budget cuts that have occurred in schools are mentioned in support for Moore’s argument that the American value of education has declined. Moore shows his case and point by stating that, “The person who cares for our child every day receives an average of $41,351 annually; A Congressman…$145,100” (136). Moore later brings up budgetary evidence and says that, “Oh, it’s on the funding list-somewhere down between OSHA and meat inspectors” (136). He works to pull politics into the picture when he cites the irony that at the time former librarian and First Lady Laura Bush “kicked off” a national campaign for American libraries, and just a week later President George W. Bush proposed to cut almost 19 percent of federal spending for libraries. Moving on he talks about how 10 percent of U.S public schools are over their maximum capacity for the buildings that house the students by 25 percent. Continuing his attack he

In a country built from unparalleled equality, our election system is not inclusive of the less affluent candidates. Inevitably, monetary funding has become a centralized focus point for American politics and has provided a reckless entry way for candidates not prepared for the presidency. Taking this current election for example, Hillary Clinton, democratic presidential candidate, received a donation of 25.6 million dollars from the Hedge-Fund, this being only a small fraction of her over all funding. Contrastingly, Jill Stein, Green Party Candidate, has only received 3.2 million dollars in total funding for her campaign. The difference is striking. Providing a

The idea of money in politics has always been a polarizing issue. For over one hundred years the discussion of individuals and corporations financing campaigns has led to a debate of corruption versus free speech. Is money in politics a corrupting influence that always leads to quid pro quo? Or, is it an issue of allowing individuals to use their money as an extension of their freedom of speech? Recently, campaign finance reform has been a very dynamic issue. With the last major supreme court case Citizens United v. FEC, money in politics has taken a significant turn from the status quo. With only seven years after the Citizens United ruling we can already see the effects of less regulated free speech in politics.

Wood and Waterman’s 1991 article on the Bureaucracy attempted to change the view on Congressional and Executive control over the many different bureaucratic agencies. There have been many different views on who controls who and to what degree that control reaches, as well as different reasoning’s for the same view. Their question was what were the “causal mechanisms” that determined to what extent congress and the presidency controlled bureaucracies, and how effective were these mechanisms? After looking at years of data and research on the subject and seeing the differing opinions on both congressional control and presidential control they began to see that first and foremost, most studies were on one or the other. Very few looked at both Congress and the Executive and how they influenced the bureaucratic agencies. Another thing that they noticed was that there are a lot of limitations when it comes to analyzing the President, because by 1991, there had only been 41 Presidents. This makes finding data on the influence of the Presidency as a whole difficult, especially when all you have is data that could have more to do with individual Presidents than it does the influence of the position in general. It also, especially when you are looking for quantitative data, is restrictive to whatever time frame you want to look at for the data. Wood and Waterman noticed that almost all of the studies that were performed, the data they used was based on terms, which could be 2-4 years

Every day in our government there are a multitude of decisions made by our elected officials. It may appear that our country’s administration fairly represents the community, but many of the lower income citizens find themselves invisible. They find do not get to voice their opinions and they receive unequal treatment. In the current generation, it is a sad fact that money controls not only people but even the government. This leads to the lower class to get poorly represented or even misrepresented. Unfortunately, the government is a large part of everyone’s lives and many of the decisions can be viewed as questionable. From local to state, and