American Politics Commons^™

Rebuilding Bell, California: Review And Recommendations For Continued Improvement Of Accountability, Oversight And Transparency, Jennifer G. Rodgers, Jacob Watkins

Local Government Reconsidered

Rodgers looks into the city of Bell, California and its corruption problems in 2010. Bell's city manager at the time, Robert Rizzo, had developed a plan to enrich himself at the city’s expense, and covered his tracks by involving numerous other city officials in his corrupt scheme, including the city councilmembers who were supposed to serve as a check on Rizzo’s power.

City Of Bell – Reformed And Reborn, Doug Willmore

Local Government Reconsidered

This article looks at the 2010 Bell scandal as the worst form of abuse of the public trust and treasury and how the people of Bell have started to rebuild their city. This paper focuses on the citizens of the Bell community reclaiming and reforming their government. Changes that have occurred since the scandal have included: implementing to enhance transparency and accountability, instituting better governance, and restoring the City’s fiscal health.

Megan Burke, Charlie Schlenker

Interviews for WGLT

Illinois Wesleyan University Sociologist Meghan Burke studies the way people talk and think about race. She has always been interested in how that shapes their desire to get involved in their communities. Her first book looked at that question among people in liberal diverse communities in the Chicago area. She has now focused on TEA party people in Illinois and neighboring states.

The book is "Race, Gender, and Class in the TEA Party." She tells GLT's Charlie Schlenker that the movement reflects much of America on these issues.

People Of Faith And Prophetic Voices: The Role Of Faith Voters And Activists In Recent Minnesota Political History, Eric S. Fought

Forum Lectures

In November of 2012, political scientists, other experts familiar with Minnesota politics and the general public were stunned by the comfortable defeat of two constitutional amendments by voters. Amendment one, also known as the marriage amendment, would have changed the state's constitution to ban same-sex marriage in Minnesota. Amendment two, known as the voter ID or voter restriction amendment, would have required voters to show a photo ID in order to cast a vote in Minnesota elections. The Voter ID question enjoyed 80% favorability just a year before the election.

In both of the campaigns against these ballot measures, highly …

Who Is Responsible, The Incumbent Or The Former President? Motivated Reasoning In Responsibility Attributions, Steven Nawara

Political Science Department Faculty Articles

This article establishes that transitions of power from one presidential administration to the next can act as a source of uncertainty regarding whom citizens view as responsible for national conditions. I argue that citizens confront this ambiguity in a partisan manner when making responsibility attributions of credit and blame. Using the economy and the Iraq War as examples, ordinary partisans frequently ascribe responsibility using motivated reasoning by crediting the president of their own political party for perceived successes and blaming the president of the opposite party for perceived failures.

Waste And Duplication In Nasa Programs: The Need To Enhance U.S. Space Program Efficiency, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

The U.S. Government faces acute budgetary deficits and national debt problems in the Obama Administration. These problems have been brought about by decades of unsustainable government spending affecting all agencies including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (NASA). An outgrowth of this fiscal profligacy is the presence of wasteful and duplicative programs within NASA that prevent this agency from achieving its space science and human spaceflight objectives. These problems occur due to mismanagement of these programs from NASA and the creation of these programs by the U.S. Congress and congressional committees. This occurs because congressional appropriators tend to be more …

¿Más Español Por Más Votos? Assessing The Impact Of Spanish Language Electoral Advertisements On Latino Voter Turnout, Alexander C. Ervin

International ResearchScape Journal

After Latino-Americans demonstrated their power in the 2012 presidential election, securing increased minority support at the polls has become a major goal for both main U.S. political parties. A reliable bloc of Latino voters on one’s side could mean more wins, but Latinos have a low voter turnout rate. This paper explores how to increase Latino turnout and argues that the use of the Spanish language in electoral advertising will have a positive effect. By comparing statewide Latino turnout data during the 2002 midterm elections, I find states with a sizable amount of Spanish-language get-out-the-vote messages do see slightly increased …

Punishment And Inclusion: Race, Membership, And The Limits Of American Liberalism, Andrew Dilts

Faculty Pub Night

No abstract provided.

Martin Luther King & Montana Medicaid Expansion, Evan Barrett

Highlands College

A Montana Public Radio Commentary by Evan Barrett.

Published newspaper columns written by Evan Barrett on this topic, which vary somewhat in content from this commentary, appeared in the following publications:

Montana Standard, January 21, 2015

Missoulian, January 23, 2015

Independent Record, January 23, 2015

Billings Gazette, January 26, 2015

Resistance To Unjust Immigration Restrictions, Javier S. Hidalgo

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

State employees use force or the threat of force to restrict immigration.Border guards forcibly detain and incarcerate foreigners who immigrate without state approval. When migrants evade or resist immigration restrictions, border agents sometimes deploy tasers to incapacitate migrants, pepper spray them, shoot them with rubber bullets, and, less frequently, beat migrants with batons, and even fire live ammunition at them. Thousands of migrants perish annually in attempts to evade border agents. 2 State officials also capture and deport migrants who reside in their borders without official authorization. Affluent states have deported millions of unauthorized migrants in recent decades.

Newsroom: Elorza Sworn In As Providence Mayor, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Living Proof: Autobiographical Political Argument In We Are The 99 Percent And We Are The 53 Percent, Doron Taussig

Media and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

People often cite life experiences as evidence in political arguments, though personal experience is far from generalizable. How do these arguments work? In this paper, I consider the rhetorical dynamics of “autobiographical political argument” by examining We are the 99 Percent and We are the 53 Percent, two blogs that use autobiographical stories to make discursive points. I argue that these autobiographical appeals efficiently use all three of Aristotle’s persuasive “proofs”—logos (logic), ethos (credibility), and pathos (emotion). Then I show that many of the blogs’ stories focus on “redemption,” a theme personality psychologists have found emphasized in the narrative …

Religious Accommodations And The Common Good, Mark David Hall

Faculty Publications - Department of History and Politics

"Citizens, civic leaders, and jurists interested in good public policy should look to history as a guide to the impact of laws and constitutional provisions aimed at protecting religious actors. American civic leaders and jurists, at both the national and state levels, have long created significant protections for religious Americans who object to neutral, generally applicable laws. At their best, Americans have agreed that government should not force individuals to violate their sincerely held religious convictions unless it has compelling reasons for doing so. Moreover, the nation and the states have still been able to achieve important policy objectives in …

Descriptive Analysis Of Bernie Sanders Announcement Speech, Christina Culotta

Rhetorical Analyses of the Announcement Speeches of Presidential Hopefuls

No abstract provided.

Chasing The American Dream: Marco Rubio’S Candidacy Announcement, Valerie Spreeman

Rhetorical Analyses of the Announcement Speeches of Presidential Hopefuls

No abstract provided.

The Last Word, Patrick Brady

Progressive Education in Context

A Bank Street School for Children student looking back on his years at the School, noting that he was the sole conservative Republican in his class of 19 students.

No Ordinary Field Trip: A Conversation With John Lewis, Sam Brian

Progressive Education in Context

Eighth grade students from Bank Street School for Children meet Congressman John Lewis in Washington D. C.

Challenging The Political Assumption That “Guns Don’T Kill People, Crazy People Kill People!”, Heath J. Hodges, Mario Scalora

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Every time an infamous mass shooting takes place, a storm of rhetoric sweeps across this country with the fury of a wild fire. “Why are we letting these people carry guns?” “Why were they not hospitalized?” “The government needs to crack down on this issue!” What is the government’s response to these cries of concern? Politicians and the media attempt to ease public fears by drawing tenuous connections among a handful of poorly understood tragedies. The salient commonality is that these high-profile shooters had some history of mental illness. A cursory review of the Internet will paint a troubling picture …

Vision Of Founding Fathers Becomes Blurred, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Concealed Carry In The Show-Me State: Do Voters Who Favor Right-To-Carry Legislation End Up Packing Heat?, Linda Ghent, Alan Grant

Faculty Research and Creative Activity

Objectives – The objectives of this study were to examine the relationship between a public vote on the right-to-carry concealed weapons in the state of Missouri and the subsequent demand for concealed-carry permits. Methods – Weighted logit analysis of the referendum vote and the proportion of the population holding concealed-carry permits was performed to investigate the factors that influence them. Results – We find vast differences in the factors that significantly influenced the vote and the decision to hold a concealed-carry permit. Crime rates are positively related to the vote, but have no influence on the decision to carry. Conclusions …

Reapportionment, Regional Politics And Partisan Gains, Kenneth C. Martis, J. Clark Archer, Robert H. Watrel, Fred M. Shelly, Gerald Webster

Geography Faculty Publications

Geographers and demographers have been analyzing U.S. regional population change for decades. From the perspective of politics and governance, understanding these population changes over time is very important because seats in the House of Representatives are reapportioned every decade in accordance with the U.S. Constitution. Representation in the House, in turn, affects the distribution of votes in the Electoral College and thus the impact of regional population change affects the presidency as well as the Congress. As political geographers we have studied the possible impacts of this population change on elections, issues in Congress and the nation, and if a …

‘Please Be A Lady… You Are Not Going To Be Heard’: The Debate Over The Ratification Of The Convention On The Elimination Of All Forms Of Discrimination Against Women, Kasie Durkit

International ResearchScape Journal

Why did the United States fail to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women? This overarching question forms the basis of this paper and will be answered using an array of primary and secondary sources. This paper gleans most of its evidence from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearings of 1994 and 2002, letters from both President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Congressional Research Service reports on CEDAW from 2013 and 2007, several Senators’ statements in the Congressional Record, Congressional testimony, and the text of the CEDAW treaty. This …

President Bush And Immigration Policy Rhetoric: The Effects Of Negativity On The Political Landscape At The State Level, C. Damien Arthur Phd, Joshua Woods

Political Science Faculty Research

The attention paid to immigration since September 11th has become more pronounced. We maintain that the increases in attention are due to a significant critical juncture: the Republican Party Platform of 2004 and President Bush’s subsequent reelection. The rhetoric has become more negative and exclusive, creating a pervasive immigrant narrative. What are the ramifications, if any, of this shift in discourse from such central political figures for immigrants? Attempts to change immigration policy, despite the rhetoric, have not materialized nationally. President Bush recognized the limitations of ‘going public’ and, instead, took his immigration policy proposals to state legislatures, wherein ideological …

Ua3/2/1 President's Office-Garrett Correspondence/Subject File, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

General correspondence and subject files regarding Western Kentucky University.

Excusing Murder? Conservative Jurors’ Acceptance Of The Gay Panic Defense, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Jessica Salerno, Bette L. Bottoms, B. L. Harrington, Dave Kemner

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

We conducted a simulated trial study to investigate the effectiveness of a “gay-panic” provocation defense as a function of jurors’ political orientation. Mock jurors read about a murder case in which a male defendant claimed a victim provoked the killing by starting a fight, which either included or did not include the male victim making an unwanted sexual advance that triggered a state of panic in the defendant. Conservative jurors were significantly less punitive when the defendant claimed to have acted out of gay panic as compared to when this element was not part of the defense. In contrast, liberal …

Life In Hampton Roads Survey Press Release #2: Crime And Politics, Social Science Research Center, Old Dominion University

Life in Hampton Roads Survey Report

This report examines regional and sub-regional perceptions of crime and politics from the 2015 Life In Hampton Roads survey (LIHR 2015) conducted by the Old Dominion University Social Science Research Center. Data from prior years is also provided when available to show comparisons in responses over time. Responses were weighted by city population, race, age, gender, and phone usage (cell versus land-line) to be representative of the Hampton Roads region.

Source Evaluation And The Alabama Virtual Library, Leigh Thompson, Derek Malone

Collier Library and Information Services

No abstract provided.

Implementing (Environmental) Justice: Equity And Performance In California's S.B. 535, Meagan Tokunaga

Pomona Senior Theses

This thesis evaluates the equity performance of a recent state environmental justice policy, California’s Senate Bill 535 (S.B. 535). “Environmental justice” refers to the disproportionate environmental harm imposed on low-income and minority communities. S.B. 535 uses competitive grants to provide funding to these communities. The research is centered around two questions: (1) to what extent has S.B. 535 experienced successful implementation in its first year of operation, and (2) how can policy actors improve implementation while balancing performance and equity goals? In regards to the first question, I utilize a case study of the policy’s implementation within 17 local governments …

The Voting Rights In Winter: The Death Of A Superstatute, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Faculty Scholarship

The Voting Rights Act (“VRA”), the most successful civil rights statute in American history, is dying. In the recent Shelby County decision, the U.S. Supreme Court signaled that the anti-discrimination model, long understood as the basis for the VRA as originally enacted, is no longer the best way to understand today’s voting rights questions. As a result, voting rights activists need to face up to the fact that voting rights law and policy are at a critical moment of transition. It is likely the case that the superstatute we once knew as the VRA is no more and is never …

The Political Correlates Of Sustainable Development: A Case Study Of Winter Park, Fl, Ariella Lvov

Honors Program Theses

How do cities find the path to sustainable development policy when confronted with constituent opposition? To address this dilemma, a case study of a small, land-locked city in Central Florida was conducted, whose long battle with sustainable development has been, at times, both successful and unsuccessful. Winter Park provides an excellent backdrop for studying which political correlates are requisite for the successful execution of growth policy. This study explores three sustainable development initiatives in Winter Park: (a) light rail, (b) SunRail, and (c) transit-oriented development. The researcher conducted an analysis of both archival research and structured interviews with local elected …