American Politics Commons^™

Qualitative Meta-Analysis On Three Aspects Of The Federal Budget: The Process, Politics And Policies, Morgan B. (Hittinger) Weiss

Selected Honors Theses

Over the last few years, policymakers and the media have paid special attention to the federal budget, deficits and the national debt as the recent recession plunged the nation into the red. In response, some called for fiscal tightening while others simultaneously advocated for further stimulus spending to accelerate the recovery. Beyond the debate on how to respond to the short-term deficits caused by the recession and a sluggish recovery are discussions of looming budgetary struggles. The medium to long-term budget concerns are driven primarily by the United States’ rapidly aging society and rising health care costs. These two factors …

The Infinite And The Finite: An Analysis Of The United States’ Energy Future, Elise Voorhis

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Last year the New York Times published a newsworthy article stating that the United States could become “Energy Independent” from the tumultuous OPEC countries. This groundbreaking revelation, supported by statistics from the International Energy Agency, claimed that newfound energy resources were spread throughout North America in the form of shale oil and gas. Politicians and the public clung to this possibility in the face of strenuous relations with the Middle East as the Arab Spring and the War on Terror waged on. However, the consequences of becoming “energy independent” have not been considered. What are the geopolitical implications of pursuing …

The Vicious Cycle: Fundraising And Perceived Viability In U.S. Presidential Primaries, Cameron A. Shelton, James J. Feigenbaum

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

Scholars of presidential primaries have long posited a dynamic positive feedback loop between fundraising and electoral success. Yet existing work on both directions of this feedback remains inconclusive and is often explicitly cross-sectional, ignoring the dynamic aspect of the hypothesis. Pairing high-frequency FEC data on contributions and expenditures with Iowa Electronic Markets data on perceived probability of victory, we examine the bidirectional feedback between contributions and viability. We find robust, significant positive feedback in both directions. This might suggest multiple equilibria: a candidate initially anointed as the front-runner able to sustain such status solely by the fundraising advantage conferred despite …

Hegemony And Humanitarian Norms: The Us Legitimation Of Toxic Violence, Eric Bonds

History and American Studies Articles

Despite widespread beliefs that the United States has not used chemical weapons since the distant past of World War I, this study suggests a more complicated history by examining U.S. use of herbicides and incapacitating gases in the Vietnam War and its use of herbicides in the "War on Drugs." This article places such use of toxic violence within a context of U.S. hegemony, by which U.S. officials have used contested forms of violence to secure geopolitical goals, but have also been pressured to comply with humanitarian norms or-when there is a gap between norms and state policy-to do legitimating …

North Dakota’S Oil Boom And Its Effect On North Dakota Politics, Nick "Nick" Nelson

Political Science Theses and Capstones

North Dakota’s oil boom is causing some of its countries to experience significant population increases. I study the effect this is having on the politics of North Dakota. To assess the effect of increased oil production on the population of counties and its effect on the politics of those counties I gathered statistics at the county level in the areas of oil production, populations including total, black, Hispanic, white, and male populations, and voting behavior (Republican or Democrat) from the United State Census, the North Dakota Secretary of State, and the North Dakota Industrial Commission, Department of Natural Resources. My …

Punishment First: A Study Of Juvenile Pretrial Detention, Richard V. Foster, David Tanenhaus, Heather Lynn Lusty

McNair Poster Presentations

How society and the legal system should respond to youth crime is a volatile issue. Much research exists on this topic broadly. A largely overlooked subset exists regarding the rights of juveniles in the United States who face pretrial confinement, specifically how juveniles accused of delinquency are treated by the courts. Delinquency or a delinquent act, in the context of this study, is “an act that would be considered a crime if committed by an adult.”7. Adults and children are processed by the courts differently, each with their own rights and court mandated procedures to follow. This report analyzes …

How Many Barack Obamas Does It Take: An Analysis Of The Effect Of Charter Schools On Real Estate And Crime, Aananditaa Kakkar

CMC Senior Theses

This study looks at the relationship between charter school presence and neighborhood quality in Los Angeles. Using data from the Los Angeles Department of Education, Zillow Real Estate, and the Los Angeles Sheriff, this paper attempts to find whether changes in charter presence influence the price of surrounding real estate or the occurrence of serious and petty crimes. The results find that charter schools tend to be associated with a decrease in home sale prices. The results on crime imply that crime increases upon the opening of charter schools, however they are statistically insignificant.

Struggling Recovery And Economic Policy Uncertainty: Testimony Before The Joint Revenue Hearing, House And Senate Ways And Means Committees, Massachusetts State House, Boston, Ma, Christian Weller

Public Policy and Public Affairs Faculty Publication Series

The U.S. economy is in the fourth year of a recovery that started in June 2009. The fact that the economy is in recovery, even modestly, is something of a miracle given how stacked the deck is against it.

This is absolutely unique in American economic history: There has never been a recovery without the housing market expanding substantially as well; There has never been a recovery with state and local governments shrinking for three years in a row; There has never been a recovery with households owing, on average, well more than 100 percent of their after-tax income in …

Government Documents On Rare Earth Minerals, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Rare earth minerals contain unique chemical and physical properties such as lanthanum, are found in small concentrations, need extensive precise processes to separate, and are critical components of modern technologies such as laser guidance systems, personal electronics such as Blackberries, and satellites. The U.S. has some rare earth resources, but is heavily dependent on access to them from from Afghanistan, Bolivia, and China. Losing access to these resources would have significant economic, military, and political implications. This presentation will highlight government information resources on rare earth minerals from agencies such as the Department of Energy (DOE), Department of Defense (DOD), …

Not A Partnership In Pepper, Coffee, Callico, Or Tobacco: Edmund Burke And The Vicissitudes Of Colonial Capitalism, Onur Ulas Ince

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This essay examines the tensions between liberalism and capitalism through an analysis of Edmund Burke's works on eighteenth-century liberal political economy and, specifically the challenges posed by colonial capitalism. When criticizing the East India Company Burke attempted to fortify "commercial" principles, on which British self-image rested, against the "rapacious" policies of British imperialism in India, which threatened this liberal self-image. His denunciation of the Company thus can be construed as an index to broader contradictions between the liberal self-image of capitalism and the coercive processes of colonial displacement and extraction that were an integral part of capitalism's emergence. The article, …

The Closure Of New Orleans' Charity Hospital After Hurricane Katrina: A Case Of Disaster Capitalism, Kenneth Brad Ott

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

Amidst the worst disaster to impact a major U.S. city in one hundred years, New Orleans’ main trauma and safety net medical center, the Reverend Avery C. Alexander Charity Hospital, was permanently closed. Charity’s administrative operator, Louisiana State University (LSU), ordered an end to its attempted reopening by its workers and U.S. military personnel in the weeks following the August 29, 2005 storm. Drawing upon rigorous review of literature and an exhaustive analysis of primary and secondary data, this case study found that Charity Hospital was closed as a result of disaster capitalism. LSU, backed by Louisiana state officials, …

The Staffing Of Presidential Assistants: Their Effects On Presidential Success In The House Of Representatives, Nicholas R. Jesteadt

Student Publications

This paper examines the Congressional success of United States Presidents based on the reported Congressional Quarterly Presidential Box Scores. Their individual success is examined as an effect of the senior staff member a President chooses and whether they are chosen from the campaign, personal experience, or previous administrations. It is important for a President to consider the origins of these staffers as these Assistants to the President act as the body of the President’s administration. The econometric analysis presented reveals several interesting results. First, the predominance of a President to choose staff members from his campaign shows no significant impact …

The Politics Of H-1b Visa Limits, Fang Fang

Political Science Theses and Capstones

In recent years, the number of H-1B Visa (Temporary Work Visa) issued has increased tremendously. Various lobbying groups are devoted to persuading Congress to revise immigration laws and to increase the work visa issuance cap. The purpose of my study is to find out the how the H-1B Visa policy is effected by analyzing the lobbying expenditures of different economic sectors. Although there are abundant studies on the factors that affect immigration policies, there are few studies that concentrate specifically on the H-1B Visa. I combined campaign finance data and annual work visa data to assess the relationship between lobbying …

The Staffing Of Presidential Assistants: Their Effect On Presidential Success In The House Of Representatives, Nicholas R. Jesteadt

Gettysburg Economic Review

This paper examines the Congressional success of United States Presidents based on the reported Congressional Quarterly Presidential Box Scores. Their individual success is examined as an effect of the senior staff member a President chooses and whether they are chosen from the campaign, personal experience, or previous administrations. It is important for a President to consider the origins of these staffers as these Assistants to the President act as the body of the President’s administration. The econometric analysis presented reveals several interesting results. First, the predominance of a President to choose staff members from his campaign shows no significant impact …

Review Of Daniel Mockli's "Strategic Trends 2012: Key Developments In Global Affairs, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

This review essay describes and analyzes the content of this annual compilation of international affairs essays published by the Zurich-based Center for Strategic Studies.

Finding Historic Indiana Documents In An Online Environment: Civil War Era And Later 19th Century, Bert Chapman

Libraries Research Publications

This presentation provides information on digitally accessing historic Indiana State and U.S. Government documents from the latter half of the 19th century. Examples of these resources include the periodical Indiana Farmer, Indiana Civil War Governor Oliver Morton's telegraph books, the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Indiana Adjutant General Reports, and the Brevier Indiana Law Reports covering Indiana General Assembly proceedings. These collections have been digitized by various Indiana libraries including Purdue University, IUPUI, and Indiana University. Accessing these primary source materials will enable users to gain augmented understanding ot the economic, military, and political issues facing Indiana …

Welfare Reform Policies And Their Effect On Poverty Rates Across The United States, Luke N. Welle

Political Science Theses and Capstones

We have all heard the arguments on the pros and cons of welfare reform, its effect on recipient’s lives, and its effectiveness in achieving its goals. In concluding whether or not it is effective in achieving its goals, the actual goals are broad and difficult to define. I consider the goal being reducing the number of citizens living in poverty. My research focuses specifically on how variations in the welfare system perform in reducing poverty rates across the United States. I investigate what governmental policies each state has in place and their effect on poverty. Those states, in which poverty …

Economic Circumstances And Support For Universal Health Care, Daniel Cotter

Political Science Theses and Capstones

There have been many differing opinions over the new health care bill passed in 2010. My research is aimed at finding what factors play a role in forming an opinion on the new health care bill. Specifically looking at the economic and demographic circumstances of citizens of the United States and how it has affected their opinions on the health care bill. I use data gathered from the Pew Research Center and ran crosstabs on various different variables including opinions on the current economy, demographic characteristics, as well as opinions on the current health care plan. I anticipate finding that …

The Politics Of Subsidizing Sports: Legislative Voting For Three Minnesota Sports Venues, Dave Hitchcock

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Since 1998 the State of Minnesota has funded the building of the Xcel Energy Center, Target Field, and TCF Bank Stadium. The focus of this research is to locate voting trends within the Minnesota House of Representatives towards these venues. I recorded the votes of each member on the legislation approving these venues from the Minnesota Journal of the House and then constructed data sets for all three buildings. From this data, trends emerge potentially linking the voting tendencies of members based on party, gender, and geographical location of their district. Initial analysis supports a fairly strong relationship between district …

Price Ceilings And Rationing: The Base Ingredients Of The Black Market Food Industry In Nevada During World War Ii, Richard B. Keeton

Psi Sigma Siren

After the Empire of Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Americans braced themselves for what would surely be a long, hard-fought war. In World War II, brave young United States soldiers made the ultimate sacrifice across the seas on both the European and Pacific fronts. However, the millions of citizens on domestic soil also made countless sacrifices in a national mobilization to support the war effort. People in Nevada and across the nation gave up everyday conveniences and seemingly ordinary items to show their support for the troops. Government agencies instituted tight rationing guidelines on a variety of consumer goods. Perhaps the …

Impact Of The Economic Downturn On Local Governments In South Carolina, William Tomes

Georgia Journal of Public Policy

Across the country local government revenues have decreased while operating costs such as fuel, materials, equipment, and health insurance costs have significantly increased. In addition to reduced revenues, interest earnings for city and county government investments are low. These factors combined have created a difficult financial arena in which local governments must operate. While economists are reporting signs of economic recovery, many city and county budgets are just now feeling the full brunt of the economic downturn that began in 2008. On a daily basis, news media nationwide report local governments addressing budget deficits by cutting services, eliminating positions, or …

The Effect Of U.S. State Taxes On State Economic Prosperity, Casey Dainsberg

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Policy makers today are faced with trying to create solutions for economic troubles that become increasingly more complex and foreboding. Tax cuts and tax hikes are proposed and considered as possible solutions to various economic problems. However, the question still remains regarding which policies are most effective. The purpose of this research is to asses these competing claims. It seeks to find evidence that will shed light on one of these views. I have done this by accumulating tax and economic data from the fifty U.S. States between the years 2001-2009. Previous research has concluded that taxes do affect the …

Revolutionary Critical Pedagogy For A Socialist Society: A Manifesto, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"As advocates of revolutionary critical pedagogy, we stand at the turning point in this process. Critical pedagogy is an approach that we have chosen as a necessary (albeit insufficient) vehicle for transforming the world. The work that we do has been adapted from the pathfinding contributions of the late Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, whose development of pedagogies of the oppressed helped to lay the foundations for approaches (feminist, post-structuralist, Marxist) to teaching and learning that utilizes the life experiences of students in and outside of traditional classrooms to build spaces of dialogue and dialectical thinking. We have renamed our critical …

The Housing Market 'Reset' And The Future Of American Housing Policy, Alan Mallach

Brookings Scholar Lecture Series

The foreclosure crisis and the collapse in housing prices that have engulfed much of the United States are fundamentally changing the ways in which the American housing market works, challenging many of the assumptions about the role of housing and the housing market that we have held for the past decades. In my lecture, I will discuss how and why those changes are taking place and how they vary across the United States and explore what they mean for American housing policy in the future, and how they are making us reconsider how we think about home ownership, rental housing, …

Unlv / Brookings West: Intermountain West Region Regional Survey, University Of Nevada Las Vegas, Brookings Institute

Brookings Mountain West Publications

The 2010 Intermountain West Public Opinion Survey documents responses from 2,000 residents of the Intermountain West (Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah). Gerstein | Agne Strategic Communications conducted the survey from August 23 – September 1, 2010. A minimum of 250 respondents for each state are included in the results for this survey. Respondents included 1,700 landline interviews and 300 cell phone interviews. Gerstein | Agne Strategic Communications provides strategic planning, communications, project management, and research services to a wide range of non-profit organizations, Fortune 500 companies, and candidates for elected office.

The survey includes an extensive series …

Deficits And Disaster, Ron Haskins

Brookings Scholar Lecture Series

The nation’s deficit path is unsustainable. The public debt is likely to increase by $1 trillion per year until 2020, and then increase at an ever increasing rate after that. Far from helping the nation address its exploding deficit, the last two administrations and every congress since 2000 have taken actions that have intensified the problem. It is time for Americans to face the high probability that due most fundamentally to their continuing demand for high spending and low taxes, sometime in the next decade or so one or more catastrophes will strike America. This presentation will lay out the …

Preservation Ethics In The Case Of Nebraska's Nationally Registered Historic Properties, Darren Michael Adams

Department of Geography: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation focuses on the National Register of Historic Places and considers the geographical implications of valuing particular historic sites over others. Certain historical sites will either gain or lose desirability from one era to the next, this dissertation identifies and explains three unique preservation ethical eras, and it maps the sites which were selected during those eras. These eras are the Settlement Era (1966–1975), the Commercial Architecture Era (1976–1991), and the Progressive Planning Era (1992–2010). The findings show that transformations in the program included an early phase when state authorities listed historical resources pertaining to the settlement of the …

Global Agricultural Price Supports: The Political And Economic Forces That Drive Unsustainable Agricultural Protectionism Policy, John Francis Hays

Dissertations

Agricultural tariffs and price supports are the last bastion of US and European protectionism. While all other areas of commerce have embraced change and welcomed open-market international commerce, agriculture has remained the lone holdout.

The small farmers for whom these support programs were designed no longer exist. Yet governments appropriate billions of dollars annually for the continued support of these outdated programs.

The fact that these governmental agencies resist change, even in an age of economic crises, record national debt, and one of the highest negative trade balances in history, is testimony to American civic indifference.

Public apathy precludes timely …

May Roundtable: The Downfall Of Human Rights? Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“The Downfall of Human Rights” by Joshua Kurlantzick. Newsweek. February 19, 2010.

Useful Government Information Resources For Public Librarians, Bert Chapman

Libraries Research Publications

Provides a descriptive overview of selected government information resources and the nationwide Government Information Online digital reference chat service for public librarians.