Policies | Political Science News

The Societal Gap Between the Rich and the Poor

When people complain about the extreme gap between the rich and the poor, socialist agendas are immediately conjured up. Why should a highly intelligent and hardworking person live at the same economic level as a person of much lesser capacity and no goals? This argument is at the heart of the protest against taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor.

Solving the Problem of Poverty

Alleviating poverty cannot be achieved through stripping people of their wealth. Higher taxes paid by the wealthy make sense to a certain extent, but when a welfare system is abused by the poor, the wealthy have a right to complain. Still, the problem of poverty remains and something must be done about it. Because there is enough food in the world to feed each and every human being on the planet, a conscientious humanity cannot sit idly by and let people starve.

A True Solution

The best way to eliminate poverty is to build up the capacity of the poor. Through greater access to education, healthcare and work opportunities, each individual can thrive with dignity. Teaching the poor to fish is a commonly touted argument in opposition of handing out money. When a human being’s capacity is developed, he feels better about himself and contributes to society in a way that benefits everyone.

The problem of poverty will not be solved in an instant. Effective solutions are required and must be implemented at every level. As long as hungry people exist on the planet, all human beings should be concerned about a solution.

Filed Under: Policies, Society Tagged With: Education, poverty

Understanding the Process

While it can be extremely confusing to those who are unsure about voting, it is everyone’s responsibility to choose a leadership body that will work for society. Though the media hype and confusing signals can through voters off the track of what is really important, it is vital that you everyone take a stand and make a selection. Without everyone participating in the process there is little hope for change. For those who believe one vote means little or nothing and they can’t make a difference, think about how that would affect the process if everyone felt the same way.

Choosing the right candidate is a matter of deciding what your beliefs are and how you feel about various important topics and then seeing how the candidates fair up in comparison. Keeping track of how the candidates feel about the important topics of healthcare reform, economy, unemployment and other vital topics will go a long way to making your job as a voter easier. This will help you to decide who will work the hardest for your country and represent your views the best. This is the most important thing to keep in mind when faced with the overwhelming amount of information coming to the voters on a regular basis about each candidate.

Taking time to be involved in the process of selecting a candidate to appoint as President or to any other position within the government is the only way that citizens in the United States can maintain the ability to have a say in their government and how their country works. This means that you should take the time to understand all you can about the process and the candidates. You can learn a great deal about each candidate in how they perform during one of the many debates that will be performed during the campaign.

Filed Under: Policies, Politics Tagged With: Politics, United States, Voting

Organize Your Options

Choosing the best candidate is not easy and it is even harder with the incredible amount of media that is overwhelming to most that are looking for the basics of what the candidates believe in. This means you may have to look a little harder at the candidates and their beliefs. You may want to consider making a list of all of the issues that are important to your decision making process and then go through and find the candidates’ perspective on each. This will help you to cut through the hype and get to the heart of the matters. You may find it easier to weed through the candidates with some basic information available to you when you are going through the many contenders that are available for you to choose from. In addition, it can be tough to keep all of these various contenders straight.

Finding the right candidate is a challenge of course to most, but it is important that you make a choice. Everyone needs to make a choice in order for the government to work that way it is intended. This may be hard for some who believe their contribution could not possibly be work the time and energy they put in researching the candidates. Without the votes from many there is no way to come together with on topics. The person chosen to represent the community should reflect the community’s beliefs. Regardless of the party that you are a part of you will want to review the beliefs and intentions of all of the candidates during an election year. Whether you choose to vote for that party or not it is important that you weigh the options before you make a choice. Choosing the right person for the job can be a challenge for sure.

Filed Under: General, Policies Tagged With: Candidate, Choice, Decision making

Understanding How Your Candidates Think

It is important that everyone understands how vital their vote is in the United States election process. Taking the time to understand the candidates and what they represent is important to making the right selection. This means that there should be a common base that attracts you to this particular candidate. You want to make sure they are basically on the same wave length that you are. This will go a long way to making you happy with your choice for Presidential candidate. The position of President is one that carries a great deal of responsibility with it. This is one of the reasons that you want to be careful about your choices whether you are a democrat or a republican.

Choosing a Presidential candidate is hard to do when you do not understand the current events affecting the country. There are so many to look at such as the healthcare reform issues, the environmental issues such as depletion of our resources and of course the ever changing economy. It is tough to find one candidate that shares your views on all subjects. This having been said you can be sure to find a candidate that has some of the same views you do and perhaps you will need to be selective in prioritizing those views.

When considering a candidate take some time to find out how they feel about the various views and then take time to listen to the debates and information regarding these debates. This will give you good insight to your potential candidates. It will also help you to come up with other potential issues you think need to be addressed. You will be able to monitor your favorite candidate on television, on the internet and on the radio for the most up dated information. This will keep you in the loop about their opinions and suggestions on topics that are important to you and your voting process.

Filed Under: Policies, Politics Tagged With: Candidate, President

Enough Is Enough With All the Labels

During the most recent political races the American people seemed to get bombarded with an answer to the question: Why shouldn’t you vote for the opposition? We were hit with ads, in all forms of media, telling us why not to vote for the other runner, who has done too many bad things, has made the wrong judgments in the past, or just won’t get the American people what they need. The question remains, if every politician is wrong than who is the correct candidate to vote for these days?

It seems as the years go by that the majority of political campaigning more and more focused on the negative. Of course there are candidates that don’t fall into this category but they seem to be few. What might help is to find out which candidates are willing to work beyond the just being the political parties.

A movement has begun that could help change the way campaigning is done. According to their website, No Labels, will host their official launch on December 13th. The launch will be spurred by a live webcast of a panel of congressman, governors, and others listed on the No Labels website. The panel will be addressing questions submitted by the public.

It really is time that we as Americans stopped fighting over whether we are Republican, Democrat, or Independent. History reveals Americans as problem solvers and community members that band together to protect one another and fight together for the benefit of the people. A quote from the constitution might sound inspirational here, but let’s go further. We, the American society have problems that must be solved for our way of life to continue. Our economy feels fragile and too many people are looking for work and can’t find it. Forget the label of Democrat, Republican or Independent. Let’s solve our mutual problem.

Filed Under: Policies, Politics Tagged With: Democratic, Republican, United States

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Continues to Hold Up the Congress

Don’t ask don’t tell, for anyone who doesn’t know the reference, it is the policy in the American military that does not allow homosexuals to openly serve in any duty in the armed forces. What does that mean, it means that if anyone else is aware of your sexual orientation, if it is homosexual, you will not be allowed to serve in the military. This is a policy, a rule that has been followed for decades. This leads to a question: Will we ever have equal rights in this country?

Currently, legislation is in Congress to repeal the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Gridlock between parties seems to be stalling the repeal there. It appears that we Americans always want to leave someone out. We are slow to accept people based on some characteristic that we deem unacceptable or an interruption to success. It raises a number of questions:

-What damage could be done if homosexuals are already in the military?
-What will it take for Americans, as a whole, to accept all people, regardless?
-Why stop any patriot, fully capable and qualified to serve in the military?
-Will we ever truly have equal rights in this country for all?

Currently the Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, has asked Congress to pass legislation to change this policy. The fear appears to be that if Congress doesn’t do it, the courts will. It appears Americans may end up being forced to accept the reality. The reality is that homosexuals already serve in the military. The reality is that homosexuals are part of our society. As a member of the public in America, we live our lives along side all types of people. We live with men and woman, of many races, disabled people, and gay and lesbian. Why do we continue to label and group everyone based on some external quality or characteristic?

Filed Under: Policies, Politics Tagged With: Don't ask don't tell, Homosexuality, Robert Gates, United States

A Bill To Patent Your Clothes

: Image via Wikipedia

This would make sense to you only if you wore fancy designer clothes or are a designer your self. The recent spates of copy cat clothes on fashion ramps have been a problem for designers. Until now there was no way to protect their designs of clothes and jewelry, but now there is. A bill is under processing which will increase the length of patent protection to fashion. This can be called as another accomplishment of the democrats after the health insurance bill. The same what that music, media and literature is protected under copyright laws, similarly fashion designs will be protected under this laws and can also be licensed to other design houses to manufacture and sell for a little profit sharing. These patents are supposed to last for duration for three years, which is more time than most of the designs are considered in vogue. The design patents only cover designs which are original and are nothing like any other design. This will give designers another way to use their designs to earn money.

The fashion industry immediately needed something like this since cheap knock off Chinese copies are ruining the fashion industry. This will give a legal means of acting against these copies and make fashion industry more profitable. Thou some fashion experts disagree with this bill and say that knock off dresses make their designs popular and make people find the original. But none the less this will increase the fashion designers scope and make the industry more competitive. Fashion houses will be know not just by celebrities wearing their clothes but also by the number of patents they hold. A new kid of patent wars can bring in more innovation. But what about old designs, people are going to rush in to patent them, it is going to be extremely hard to distinguish between original work and old work.

Filed Under: Policies Tagged With: Arts, Business, Clothing, Design, Fashion, Fashion design, Law, Patent

Cold War Politics

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Cold War politics are a fascinating thing. They are a tale of schoolyard interactions in a macrocosm; a grudge that is almost laughable in its application and yet deadly serious in the same instant. Societies were created, destroyed and drastically changed because of these politics.
With the Allied victory in World War II, alliances devolved into a feudal-like territory grab. While the Western Powers, led by the United States occupied nations with the dogma of rebuilding them, the U.S.S.R. did the same a la Soviet, installing regimes tied to Moscow. The history of Eastern Europe is not pretty. With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 20th Century, a dozen or so states sprung into being; states lined up geographically in epicenter of different continents, societies, religions and political practices. While the countries under Western protection had mostly similar cultures with their liberators, the Russian-controlled states were diverse and unique. In the attempt to assimilate these nations, Soviet regimes cracked down on cultural beliefs, icons, and religions. Coming just after the war to end all wars, the West (synonymous with the United States of America) was done with fighting on the continent. The battlefields of Asia therefore saw the real struggle of West vs. East, of democracy and communism duking it out.
Henry Kissinger deserves mention in this story. One of the more brilliant statesmen of the 20th century, Kissinger, serving under U.S. President Nixon, facilitated a renewal of relations with China. Since the defeat of the Republican faction of Chiang Kia-shek and the Communist takeover of the country, America had rejected and opposed the Peopleâ€™s Republic of China. At a crucial point in the Cold War, Kissingerâ€™s wisdom in showing friendship to China not only boosted economic opportunities for America, it also struck fear in the heart of Russia; here was their sworn enemy the pinnacle of the Democratic West becoming best friends with a Communist ally, albeit an iffy one. It was a blow that sent the U.S.S.R. off balance and altering their strategy. Twenty years later, Russia took a crack at democracy herself.

Filed Under: Policies, Politics, Society Tagged With: Cold War, Henry Kissinger, History, Soviet, Soviet Union, Twentieth Century, United States, World War II

Lines in Society’s Sand

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At the root of it all is money. Money can be exchanged for goods and services, and people like goods and services, so they want their city/state/federal government’s laws to give, or let them keep, money.

President George W. Bush’s tax cuts in 2001 were a welcome relief to most Americans, although the Democrats were a little miffed. Now, 10 years later, these tax cuts are about to expire. President Barack Obama and the Democrats, who hold the majority of seats in the Senate and the House of Representatives, plan to renew the Bush-era tax cuts, with one stipulation: households or businesses whose income exceeds $250,000 will not qualify for the cut. Their taxes will revert to pre-Bush amounts, which was just shy of 40%.

The Republican Senators are furious. Every single one has promised to vote against the tax cuts unless they are presented for ratification in their pure, upper-income-included form. The Republicans, while a minority in the Senate, still have enough presence to filibuster and halt the passage of the tax cut bill. John Boehner, the Republican leader in the House, stated that he would vote for the renewal of the bill, leaving out the upper-income households, if that was the only choice possible. In short, he wants taxes cut for as many people as possible.

President Obama’s strategy is to give up $4 trillion in theoretical government income over the next ten years in tax cuts. By leaving out the $250,000+ bracket it would reduce that loss by $700 billion. Not all of the Democrats are supportive of President Obama’s renewing the cut. A few Senators have pointed out that another year or two of tax cuts across the board, for the rich too, would help hoist the economy out of the toilet by creating jobs. The well-known Joe Lieberman (CT) spoke out in favor of letting people keep more of their money, which they will then turn around and spend on those goods and services that make the world go ’round and help get things going again.

The issue will be decided by the end of 2010.

Filed Under: Policies, Politics, Society Tagged With: Barack Obama, Democratic, George W Bush, Joe Lieberman, John Boehner, Presidency of George W. Bush, Republican, United States