Daniel White
Political Science
Period 6
Final Project
1.) Based upon watching Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine”, I have come to the conclusion that America has more gun related deaths each year than the combined casualties of Britain, Germany, France, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and many more because of our violent Media propaganda and our large gap between the few rich and the growing population of poor. We cannot blame our countries death tolls on our violent history. Take a look at Germany, Russia or Great Britain. They are the kings of historical violence and ruthlessness; they have each been slaughtering the weak like livestock centuries before the Unites States was even founded. By saying, “Americans are just naturally more violent than other countries”, is not only false but it is an attitude of a quitter and Americans do not yield to anything. Second, we can’t blame our death tolls entirely on our easy to obtain arsenals of firearms. Yes, we are a gun crazy country but our friendly Canuks to the North are trigger happy hunters themselves. Roughly one out of every three Canadians owns a firearm and their gun related deaths are in the low hundreds while we remain in the ten thousands. Lastly, we cannot use videogames, porn, or ugly music as a scapegoat. Germans are the founders of the Gothic style and their level of demonic or sinful behaviors far outrank us Americans. Yet we still kill more than the Nazis! Also, Japan is the founder of violent video games, yet they also have miniscule death rates, so that rules out the “Mortal Kombat Theory.” Finally, pornography cannot be the direct result of violent behavior because European countries are swarmed with nudity. There are Burger King Ads with women topless in Germany and censorship is much more relaxed in most of the other European nations as well.
So, due to process of elimination, that leaves us with the question of what do we as Americans do different. One of the answers which are vividly clear if you travel to another country is our American Media. The sad fact is that our media has developed the principle of “if it bleeds it leads”, and by showing American constant violence it has helped spark more violence. Any American nutcase who wants to become a national icon of fear can do so because our media stations will happily reward their heinous crimes by granting them momentary fame. And the sad fact is our country knows how to create nutcases because we turn a blind eye to poor. The people in poverty who have nothing to lose and little hope to gain anything in life can easily get their picture shown throughout the entire country for a week just by killing little kids or many adults. It is a lose/lose situation for us Americans, we create potential “Columbines” through our lack of effort in helping the poor, then our Media tempt the poor by promoting murder 24/7 and we have to pay for it by living in constant fear and violence.
2.) The United States Congress has debated reforming campaign financing in this last decade. Two of the possible reforms are: Eliminating “soft money”, and “Raising limits on individual contribution”.
Soft money is the political money which individuals, corporations, and unions hand out to party comities which the amounts aren’t limited by the Federal Election Campaign Act. One of the arguments that proponents use to support the ban on soft money is that people do not allow individual officials to bribed, so why should we allow government parties to be bought. The whole process seems unethical to Americans and thus it has support for being banned. Another argument in favor the ban act is that what if the companies or individuals who are bidding for your candidate go against your own judgment. For example, what if a cigarette corporation was largely responsible for funding your candidate’s campaign and you never knew about it until he was in office? Your vote could then turn into a curse because your candidate would be likely to repay its investors by granting tax cuts or other benefits towards the group that helped it, regardless of how voters feel about cigarettes or other issues.
On the other end of the spectrum, it is argued that eliminating soft money would make it virtually impossible for the challengers to defeat the incumbent parties because the incumbents will have more access to “hard money”. Also, besides the fact that the elimination of soft money would tilt the balance of elections to one side, it would also decrease the little amount of voters American elections all ready have. It would decrease voter turn out because a lot of the soft money contributions are funded into programs like the “Get Out and Vote” message.
Raising limits on the individual contributions is another issue that is debated over congress. It basically means that a bill has been pressed in front of Congress that asks for raising the maximum amount of hard money one investor can donate to a candidate, which is $1,000, to three times the amount, which is $3,000. The argument in favor of this bill argues that the cost of living and campaign finances have grown tremendously since the federal campaign finance law was adopted in 1974, so they feel it is only right to evolve with the change. Also raising the limits is supported because if in fact, soft money becomes eliminated, campaigns will need the extra boost in hard money to make up for the slack.
Opposition to raising the limit of individual contributions firmly believes that few Americans can afford make large contributions and $3,000 is a lot to many families. In the 2000 election, when the contribution limit was $1,000, only about one ninth of the voting age population made the maximum contribution. So raising it three times will not help raise more money but will just further decrease the percentage of voters who donate the maximum amount.
Also some believe that the higher hard money contributions become the more damage it will do to the presidential public financial program. In short, it will create an uneasy relationship between wealthy individuals and Presidential candidates because they will become more dependent on obtaining checks and less concerned with helping the middle class and lower class America.
3.) I think that the media makes too big a deal with the personal lives of politicians. It is good to keep the average American informed on the individuals who manage our country but not to the point where if a Senator has an affair, that the whole world has to know about it. I don’t think there can be an unbiased decision for someone to make which deals with what the media can screen out to us of our political leaders lives. For example, I would vote that their religion be shared with the public and what type of organizations they are involved with because I hold faith as a determining factor in deciding whether or not someone is strong. Where as, a more liberal person would probably want to be informed if the politician ever eats red meat or cuts down a tree. There is no clear line of what should not be scrutinized but what should be scrutinized and punished if broken, are the State laws and even certain ethical codes. A politician must be an example and if he/she is a consistent scrooge to the poor, mocker of the weak, or just plain abusive then they should be dismissed. A leader’s personal life is sometimes all it takes to swing a voter’s support. In our last election I know people who voted for George W. Bush simply because the man talks about God and family a lot. Or they voted for George solely because John Kerry defies his Catholic faith by being pro-choice. I don’t think an election is ever completely determined on who is better fit to run the country, but more so on who is more an “average Joe” with the voters. In my opinion I think the only extent of candidate’s past that should be observed and used against them is whether or not they have committed a crime. However, I believe there should be lots of things that should be observed and considered when trying to boost support for a candidate, such as, military service time. Every American should respect the men and women who risk their lives for us and if a candidate has done so, than by all means exploit it to his advantage. Also I believe that good deeds should not be overlooked. If a candidate has saved a life, helped out a community, donated money to a charity, and anything else that benefits another life, then he/she should be rewarded. Instead of mudslinging I would like to see an election race where the politicians go back and forth trying to out-do the other by performing acts of kindness or charity, which to me is the biggest determining factor of who the best leader is.
4.) The most influential person to affect politics during these last 200 years is definitely Adolf Hitler. The man truly brought to life a period in Earth’s history where Hell was no longer a figment of imagination but reality. He founded the fascist government of Nazism which relied on the absolute power of one man, fear among the public, brainwashing propaganda, and large scale racism among anyone who was different. However, choking individual rights, promoting racist views, and creating lies of a fictional “Aryan race” were not enough for Hitler. He had to obtain more lebensraum, living space, for Germany and he would obtain it by starting a world war which would ultimately cause the lives of over sixty million people to end and fifty million would go homeless. Can you imagine what it would be like today if sixty million people just died? When the United States lost 4,000 men and women in the twin towers terrorist attack we considered it to be the most devastating event to ever occur in our history, but sixty million people dead is almost unimaginable. If the shear numbers aren’t enough to persuade you that Hitler had the most influence on politics and government than take a glance at this practices of humanity. Six million European Jews were targeted by Hitler’s racist government policies. He first made laws that denied Jews from taking office, then he denied them the right to own land, then he denied their citizenship, and finally, after he couldn’t deport any more out of Germany he denied them the right to live. The real brain buster behind Hitler’s logic is that he himself is a Jew. What kind of lunatic issues the genocide of an entire race of people, when it is your own race? Anyways, Hitler was pure evil and his reign of terror against all of the world is the ultimate reminder of what Evil can achieve when given the chance and hopefully its impact can do the unthinkable, and stop history from repeating itself and producing anymore Hitler’s.
Even now his impact has directly affected the American way of dealing with threats. No longer will we practice a method of isolationism concerning outside politics but will instead promote freedom and democracy to all nations. Saddam Hussein could easily have become the 21st century’s Hitler, but we did not wait to find out. Whether or not Hussein could have become as dangerous as Hitler is something we will never know, but because of Hitler we might never again gamble by appeasing a dictator and giving them the chance to start a World War III.
Political Science
Period 6
Final Project
1.) Based upon watching Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine”, I have come to the conclusion that America has more gun related deaths each year than the combined casualties of Britain, Germany, France, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and many more because of our violent Media propaganda and our large gap between the few rich and the growing population of poor. We cannot blame our countries death tolls on our violent history. Take a look at Germany, Russia or Great Britain. They are the kings of historical violence and ruthlessness; they have each been slaughtering the weak like livestock centuries before the Unites States was even founded. By saying, “Americans are just naturally more violent than other countries”, is not only false but it is an attitude of a quitter and Americans do not yield to anything. Second, we can’t blame our death tolls entirely on our easy to obtain arsenals of firearms. Yes, we are a gun crazy country but our friendly Canuks to the North are trigger happy hunters themselves. Roughly one out of every three Canadians owns a firearm and their gun related deaths are in the low hundreds while we remain in the ten thousands. Lastly, we cannot use videogames, porn, or ugly music as a scapegoat. Germans are the founders of the Gothic style and their level of demonic or sinful behaviors far outrank us Americans. Yet we still kill more than the Nazis! Also, Japan is the founder of violent video games, yet they also have miniscule death rates, so that rules out the “Mortal Kombat Theory.” Finally, pornography cannot be the direct result of violent behavior because European countries are swarmed with nudity. There are Burger King Ads with women topless in Germany and censorship is much more relaxed in most of the other European nations as well.
So, due to process of elimination, that leaves us with the question of what do we as Americans do different. One of the answers which are vividly clear if you travel to another country is our American Media. The sad fact is that our media has developed the principle of “if it bleeds it leads”, and by showing American constant violence it has helped spark more violence. Any American nutcase who wants to become a national icon of fear can do so because our media stations will happily reward their heinous crimes by granting them momentary fame. And the sad fact is our country knows how to create nutcases because we turn a blind eye to poor. The people in poverty who have nothing to lose and little hope to gain anything in life can easily get their picture shown throughout the entire country for a week just by killing little kids or many adults. It is a lose/lose situation for us Americans, we create potential “Columbines” through our lack of effort in helping the poor, then our Media tempt the poor by promoting murder 24/7 and we have to pay for it by living in constant fear and violence.
2.) The United States Congress has debated reforming campaign financing in this last decade. Two of the possible reforms are: Eliminating “soft money”, and “Raising limits on individual contribution”.
Soft money is the political money which individuals, corporations, and unions hand out to party comities which the amounts aren’t limited by the Federal Election Campaign Act. One of the arguments that proponents use to support the ban on soft money is that people do not allow individual officials to bribed, so why should we allow government parties to be bought. The whole process seems unethical to Americans and thus it has support for being banned. Another argument in favor the ban act is that what if the companies or individuals who are bidding for your candidate go against your own judgment. For example, what if a cigarette corporation was largely responsible for funding your candidate’s campaign and you never knew about it until he was in office? Your vote could then turn into a curse because your candidate would be likely to repay its investors by granting tax cuts or other benefits towards the group that helped it, regardless of how voters feel about cigarettes or other issues.
On the other end of the spectrum, it is argued that eliminating soft money would make it virtually impossible for the challengers to defeat the incumbent parties because the incumbents will have more access to “hard money”. Also, besides the fact that the elimination of soft money would tilt the balance of elections to one side, it would also decrease the little amount of voters American elections all ready have. It would decrease voter turn out because a lot of the soft money contributions are funded into programs like the “Get Out and Vote” message.
Raising limits on the individual contributions is another issue that is debated over congress. It basically means that a bill has been pressed in front of Congress that asks for raising the maximum amount of hard money one investor can donate to a candidate, which is $1,000, to three times the amount, which is $3,000. The argument in favor of this bill argues that the cost of living and campaign finances have grown tremendously since the federal campaign finance law was adopted in 1974, so they feel it is only right to evolve with the change. Also raising the limits is supported because if in fact, soft money becomes eliminated, campaigns will need the extra boost in hard money to make up for the slack.
Opposition to raising the limit of individual contributions firmly believes that few Americans can afford make large contributions and $3,000 is a lot to many families. In the 2000 election, when the contribution limit was $1,000, only about one ninth of the voting age population made the maximum contribution. So raising it three times will not help raise more money but will just further decrease the percentage of voters who donate the maximum amount.
Also some believe that the higher hard money contributions become the more damage it will do to the presidential public financial program. In short, it will create an uneasy relationship between wealthy individuals and Presidential candidates because they will become more dependent on obtaining checks and less concerned with helping the middle class and lower class America.
3.) I think that the media makes too big a deal with the personal lives of politicians. It is good to keep the average American informed on the individuals who manage our country but not to the point where if a Senator has an affair, that the whole world has to know about it. I don’t think there can be an unbiased decision for someone to make which deals with what the media can screen out to us of our political leaders lives. For example, I would vote that their religion be shared with the public and what type of organizations they are involved with because I hold faith as a determining factor in deciding whether or not someone is strong. Where as, a more liberal person would probably want to be informed if the politician ever eats red meat or cuts down a tree. There is no clear line of what should not be scrutinized but what should be scrutinized and punished if broken, are the State laws and even certain ethical codes. A politician must be an example and if he/she is a consistent scrooge to the poor, mocker of the weak, or just plain abusive then they should be dismissed. A leader’s personal life is sometimes all it takes to swing a voter’s support. In our last election I know people who voted for George W. Bush simply because the man talks about God and family a lot. Or they voted for George solely because John Kerry defies his Catholic faith by being pro-choice. I don’t think an election is ever completely determined on who is better fit to run the country, but more so on who is more an “average Joe” with the voters. In my opinion I think the only extent of candidate’s past that should be observed and used against them is whether or not they have committed a crime. However, I believe there should be lots of things that should be observed and considered when trying to boost support for a candidate, such as, military service time. Every American should respect the men and women who risk their lives for us and if a candidate has done so, than by all means exploit it to his advantage. Also I believe that good deeds should not be overlooked. If a candidate has saved a life, helped out a community, donated money to a charity, and anything else that benefits another life, then he/she should be rewarded. Instead of mudslinging I would like to see an election race where the politicians go back and forth trying to out-do the other by performing acts of kindness or charity, which to me is the biggest determining factor of who the best leader is.
4.) The most influential person to affect politics during these last 200 years is definitely Adolf Hitler. The man truly brought to life a period in Earth’s history where Hell was no longer a figment of imagination but reality. He founded the fascist government of Nazism which relied on the absolute power of one man, fear among the public, brainwashing propaganda, and large scale racism among anyone who was different. However, choking individual rights, promoting racist views, and creating lies of a fictional “Aryan race” were not enough for Hitler. He had to obtain more lebensraum, living space, for Germany and he would obtain it by starting a world war which would ultimately cause the lives of over sixty million people to end and fifty million would go homeless. Can you imagine what it would be like today if sixty million people just died? When the United States lost 4,000 men and women in the twin towers terrorist attack we considered it to be the most devastating event to ever occur in our history, but sixty million people dead is almost unimaginable. If the shear numbers aren’t enough to persuade you that Hitler had the most influence on politics and government than take a glance at this practices of humanity. Six million European Jews were targeted by Hitler’s racist government policies. He first made laws that denied Jews from taking office, then he denied them the right to own land, then he denied their citizenship, and finally, after he couldn’t deport any more out of Germany he denied them the right to live. The real brain buster behind Hitler’s logic is that he himself is a Jew. What kind of lunatic issues the genocide of an entire race of people, when it is your own race? Anyways, Hitler was pure evil and his reign of terror against all of the world is the ultimate reminder of what Evil can achieve when given the chance and hopefully its impact can do the unthinkable, and stop history from repeating itself and producing anymore Hitler’s.
Even now his impact has directly affected the American way of dealing with threats. No longer will we practice a method of isolationism concerning outside politics but will instead promote freedom and democracy to all nations. Saddam Hussein could easily have become the 21st century’s Hitler, but we did not wait to find out. Whether or not Hussein could have become as dangerous as Hitler is something we will never know, but because of Hitler we might never again gamble by appeasing a dictator and giving them the chance to start a World War III.
