#bc the downfall of any non-republican

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What you should know about politics but don’t

A non partisan take on issues

VOTING

- Hanging chad and how all machines are controversial voting systems

- Gerrymandering set after a census every 4 years

- Generally incumbents are voted in until they die? How again?

- Campaign funding is controlled by large organizations technically not associated but largely supported by the candidate

ECONOMY

- Great Recession bail out and why it was necessary, as well as the Dodd-Frank laws to constrain proprietary trading

- Taxes and how the rich are taxed at higher rates, while supply-side and trickle down Reaganomics believe tax cuts for the rich stimulate the economy with investments from the rich (largely not true), and types of taxes like income, capital gain, death tax and sales tax, some of which is double taxation

- Deficit and why it’s especially unfair to young people, why we have to keep China, Japan, Brazil, and Britain happy, and why whoever in power says deficit is ok, how Germany lent to Greek and fell due to the banking crisis in the US, and how deficit means higher interest rates for everyone

- Oil and how selling oil in Euros spiked the price for Americans, and how Russia and Iran approach oil differently

FOREIGN POLICY

- Opinions of war policy range from passive to active: liberal internationalists (diplomacy first), paleocons (weak today but at the time willing to fight in strategic situations), realists, liberal hawks, and neocons (super aggressive)

- Difference in realist and neocons are their motivation for security vs ideology. Liberal hawks are somewhere in the middle

- Middle East is a mess with the US invading Iraq for preemptive reasons when Bin Laden was in Afghanistan and then Pakistan

- Iran also has power with nuclear power and is clearly anti American

- Arab Springs led to the downfall of many governments, including an especially gory revolution in Syria

- Russia: oil, India and China: economic powers, and North Korea: built nuclear bombs without US consent

MILITARY

- military contractors: are they a good thing or is it dangerous to give power to wealth, connect private companies with government? Needed bc military is made up of volunteers but bad given they answer to no one

- don’t ask don’t tell: should we have repealed or were we merely protecting gays?

- drones: are they ethical? Or do we risk violating rights and killing civilians?

HEALTHCARE

- Universal access

- Healthcare is too expensive

- HMOs

ENERGY

- Coal is big in the US and though it is dirty it powers most of our electricity — most politicians are ok with it

- Electricity prices are controversial, as the FERC does not cap wholesale prices, leading to the great heatwave in 2000 in CA

- Oil is controversial bc the suppliers are Russia, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi. OPEC controls prices, and we are shifting towards Canada. Countries like Iraq have invaded Kuwait for oil, and some say the US Iraq war is for the same thing. The risk for the US all depends on when the Hubbert peak occurs

- Nuclear power is risky but most of France runs on it, due to what happens when it leaks

- Democrats want alternative energy and efficiency (CAFE sets average mpg rules for cars) and Republicans want more of what we have

ENVIRONMENT

- acid rain: spent billions to reduce acid rain being caused by coal burning

- ozone hole: easily reduced because had technology to replace it

- both Republicans and Democrats generally believe environment is a problem; started EPA with Republicans through Teddy

- aesthetics >> public health

- environmental moralists, utilitarians, deregulators

- Kyoto Accords cancelled eventually in 2009, but the US didn’t sign it; developing markets didn’t need to reduce

- Cap-and-trade market vs carbon dioxide tax, both strategies to reduce energy and adopted in the US in small ways

- renewable energy vs. Alaska for more oil: wind (disrupts nearby habitats), biofuel (needs a lot of land), solar panels (expensive and requires sun), hydrogen (need electricity to power)

CIVIL LIBERTIES

- philosophical inconsistencies between libertarians and executivists, along party lines

- free speech - Vietnam War and Occupy Wall Street led to questionable police behavior towards peaceful protestors, as well as obstruction of press

- gun violence - Brady Gun Law, urban and rural split

- Warrants and wiretapping - controversial during Bush era of PATRIOT ACT, but it helped prevent a lot of attacks, lenient post wiretapping approval

- Torture - rendition to other countries that will torture or move to offshore places helps get past US habeas corpus, which Obama didn’t really back down on, leaves the US in morale low ground

- Declaring war - similar lenient Congress support but presidents usually ignore this, saying only large world wars need congressional approval

- Capital punishment - is this cruel and unusual? Varies by state

CULTURE WARS

- Abortion: Rode vs Wade, not consistent by state

- Right to Die: Republicans support Terri’s Law to prevent state sanctioned murder, physician-assisted Suicide

- Stem cell research: not super political but Republicans don’t believe in it as much due to Bush’s restrictions that Obama incrementally lifted

- Gay marriage - prop 8 in California in 2008 legalizing gay marriage supported by Mormons

- Pledge of Allegiance, Ten Commandments - allow people to not say it, not put it on public facilities

- Mostly people don’t care about culture wars any way these days, except for the Christian Right

SOCIOECONOMIC POLICY

- Immigration: while everyone agrees illegal immigrants should not be here and that immigration should be controlled in numbers for practical reasons, we cannot figure out ways to deal with illegal immigrants already in the US

— Allowing drivers licenses to immigrants allows for better tracking of them but leads to risks like illegal voting, etc.

— Immigrants kept prices for low income work low as they increased supply with increased demand

— Deporting parents leads to higher costs for the children

- unions are supported by democrats in theory and criticized by republicans for taking jobs overseas

- social security - argue for privatization because government always loans from it, helps the poor or financially illiterate bc there is a cap on how much you get annually, and it is always projected for bankruptcy

- unemployment subsidies and the costs of hiring a woman

- agriculture subsidies - food wonks, food protectionists, and food free marketers; almost everyone supports it; it is needed to compete for markets in Europe that will pay more for food and to bring together dispersed interests

- food stamps and welfare - in the past food stamps were sold to buy drugs but has been fixed with electronic swipe system; today still mostly Democrats support stamps only, believing it is a private matter to support people;

- welfare was important in the Great Depression but became a dependency to be reduced; many poor immigrants work harder and better than the poor; culture is the root cause

HOMELAND SECURITY

- Pork infrastructure jobs get hired through ricision or earmarking, eg bridge to nowhere, and generally politicians support infrastructure for whatever region they represent

- Republicans usually favor privatization of roads, transportation. However Amtrak and private airlines are both examples of how this fails

- roads remain heavily subsidized with tolls or taxes (people prefer tolls on the turnpikes)

- Department of homeland security started after 9/11 by Republicans — doesn’t receive federal employee benefits of non-firing

- Infrastructure is failing, e.g. 2007 bridge collapse in Minneapolis

- Disaster response from FEMA is terrible, demonstrated by Katrina. However more of that could have been a wealth issue

EDUCATION

- has always been connected to race and class, with Republicans favoring freedom and Democrats favoring improvements to public schools

- busing, desegregation of schools in 1950s

- affirmative action quotas were outlawed but a middle ground was allowed as long as individual consideration still happened

- vouchers for private school is controversial given 70% or private schools are religion

- NCLB by Bush failed 50% of schools and was lifted by Obama, not providing support to failing schools — compassionate conservatism or just support McGraw for its political funding

TRADE

- protectionist (Democrats) vs liberalist or free traders

- Great Depression was the start of the trade wars of tarifs for all foreign imports, with protectionism generally looked down upon

- bureaucratic tariffs like more checks etc also exist

- After WW2, created:

—- World Bank to loan money to European banks suffering

—- WTO to regulate trade and provide IP protection

—- IMF to provide cash when a country goes bankrupt

- from this emerged the free traders, who believe developing worlds should not have free trade or protectionism pushed onto them

- free traders believe in morality issues and protectionists believe it hurts the US:

—- lose jobs to people overseas

—- pollution in China makes its way here

—- lack of labor standards abroad is immoral

—- corporations getting around taxes with overseas taxes

—- trader deficit since US imports more than it exports is a bad thing for the US

—- race to the bottom to compete within developing world for jobs from the US, hurting those in developing markets while the US affords more

- agreements like NAFTA pop up around the world: Arab, ASEAN, CAFTA, Malaysia and China, Russia and China, EC or parent of EU, with some challenging trade in the dollar

- banana war: forced EU to buy US Dole bananas thru sanctions and the WTO, angering the EU

- steel tariffs from GW Bush harmed auto industry buying steel in US