Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize the way governments are run by increasing transparency, security, […]
The war in other countries is plentiful but few, in particular, have had the US dragged […]
Issue Assignment #2: Should illegal/undocumented immigrants be granted amnesty?
Yes, illegal/undocumented immigrants should be granted amnesty.
1. Illegal immigrants allow some business owners to hire them as low wage demanding workers. Some agencies, such as Bear Stearns, believe the estimated number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. is around 20 million. With this many illegal immigrants searching for jobs they often resort to low paying, and less skilled jobs that other Americans do not want. Also, the wages received by these immigrants are being taxed by the state and feds.
The process of government funding, whether it be how the funding is allotted or how the money is managed, can be changed for the better by instituting “good sense” policies. Our current advisors and analysts have many ideas about reforming the management of government funding; however, most of these ideas are a hapless attempt at “fixing” a strange and confusing aristocratic process that needs a major overhaul. The way of thinking used by these analysts is archaic; to create a better system of funding allotment and management, we can not use the old format to base our reform. If we were to go to the source of the mismanagement instead of trying to initiate a “quick fix,” our reform efforts would be ensured a fresh look and have a better chance of quelling the fears of the American public. The bureaucracy that we use now and have used in the past does not use “good sense” techniques; our focus needs to be on the source of the problem. We need to stop the “big-wigs” like Michael Levitt from using expensive funding for his own personal agenda (Ingersoll). His use of the GulfStream3 has prompted little attention from our elected officials, so our next move should be to make our voices heard. There have been many protests in the past, and the causes for most of the movements were well justified. Reforming the process of government funding and allocation is also justified, and while it may sound a bit blasé, it will have a definite impact on our future. The public needs to make a
From the beginning of John Kennedy's Administration into this fifth year of Lyndon Johnson's presidency, substantially the same small groups of men have presided over the destiny of the United States. In that time they have carried the country from a limited involvement in Vietnam into a war that is brutal, probably unsinkable, and, to an increasing body of opinion, calamitous and immoral. How could it happen? Many in government or close to it will read the following article with the shock of recognition. Those less familiar with the processes of power can read it with assurance that the author had a firsthand opportunity to watch the slide down the slippery slope during five years (1961-1966) of service in the White House and Department of State. Mr. Thomson is an East Asia specialist and an assistant professor of history at Harvard. AS a case study in the making of foreign policy, the Vietnam War will fascinate historians and social scientists for many decades to come. One question that will certainly be asked: How did men of superior ability, sound training, and high ideals -- American policy-makers of the 1960s -- create such costly and divisive policy? As one who watched the decision-making process in Washington from 1961 to 1966 under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, I can suggest a preliminary answer. I can do so by briefly listing some of the factors that seemed to me to shape our Vietnam policy during my years as an East Asia specialist at the State Department and the White House. I shall deal largely with Washington as I saw or sensed it, and not with Saigon, where I have spent but a scant three days, in the entourage of the Vice President, or with other decision centers, the capitals of interested parties. Nor will I deal with other important parts of the record: Vietnam's history prior to 1961, for instance, or the overall course of America's relations with Vietnam. Yet a first and central ingredient in these years of Vietnam decisions does involve history. The ingredient was the legacy of the 1950s -- by which I mean the so-called "loss of China," the Korean War, and the Far East policy of Secretary of State Dulles. This legacy had an institutional by-product for the Kennedy Administration: in 1961 the U.S. government's East Asian establishment was undoubtedly the most rigid and doctrinaire of Washington's regional divisions in foreign affairs. This was especially true at the Department of State, where the incoming Administration found the Bureau of Far Eastern Affairs the hardest nut to crack. It was a bureau that had been purged of its best China expertise, and of farsighted, dispassionate men, as a result of McCarthyism. Its members were generally committed to one policy line: the close containment and isolation of mainland China, the harassment of "neutralist" nations which sought to avoid alignment with either Washington or Peking, and the maintenance of a network of alliances with anti-Communist client states on China's periphery. Another aspect of the legacy was the special vulnerability and sensitivity of the new Democratic Administration on Far East policy issues. The memory of the McCarthy era was still very sharp, and Kennedy's margin of victory was too thin. The 1960 Offshore Islands TV debate between Kennedy and Nixon had shown the President-elect the perils of "fresh thinking." The Administration was inherently leery of moving too fast on Asia. As a result, the Far East Bureau (now the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs) was the last one to be overhauled. Not until Averell Harriman was brought in as Assistant Secretary in December, 1961, were significant personnel changes attempted, and it took Harriman several months to make a deep imprint on the bureau because of his necessary preoccupation with the Laos settlement. Once he did so, there was virtually no effort to bring back the purged or exiled East Asia experts. There were other important by-products of this "legacy of the fifties": The new Administration inherited and somewhat shared a general perception of China-on-the-march -- a sense of China's vastness, its numbers, its belligerence; a revived sense, perhaps, of the Golden Horde. This was a perception fed by Chinese intervention in the Korean War (an intervention actually based on appallingly bad communications and mutual miscalculation on the part of Washington and Peking; but the careful unraveling of that tragedy, which scholars have accomplished, had not yet become part of the conventional wisdom). The new Administration inherited and briefly accepted a monolithic conception of the Communist bloc. Despite much earlier predictions and reports by outside analysts, policy-makers did not begin to accept the reality and possible finality of the Sino-Soviet split until the first weeks of 1962. The inevitably corrosive impact of competing nationalisms on Communism was largely ignored. The new Administration inherited and to some extent shared the "domino theory" about Asia. This theory resulted from profound ignorance of Asian history and hence ignorance of the radical differences among Asian nations and societies. It resulted from a blindness to the power and resilience of Asian nationalisms. (It may also have resulted from a subconscious sense that, since "all Asians look alike," all Asian nations will act alike.) As a theory, the domino fallacy was not merely inaccurate but also insulting to Asian nations; yet it has continued to this day to beguile men who should know better. Finally, the legacy of the fifties was apparently compounded by an uneasy sense of a worldwide Communist challenge to the new Administration after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. A first manifestation was the President's traumatic Vienna meeting with Khrushchev in June, 1961; then came the Berlin crisis of the summer. All this created an atmosphere in which President Kennedy undoubtedly felt under special pressure to show his nation's mettle in Vietnam -- if the Vietnamese, unlike the people of Laos, were willing to fight. In general, the legacy of the fifties shaped such early moves of the new Administration as the decisions to maintain a high-visibility SEATO (by sending the Secretary of State himself instead of some underling to its first meeting in 1961), to back away from diplomatic recognition of Mongolia in the summer of 1961, and most important, to expand U.S. military assistance to South Vietnam that winter on the basis of the much more tentative Eisenhower commitment. It should be added that the increased commitment to Vietnam was also fueled by a new breed of military strategists and academic social scientists (some of whom had entered the new Administration) who had developed theories of counter guerrilla warfare and were eager to see them put to the test. To some, "counterinsurgency" seemed a new panacea for coping with the world's instability. SO MUCH for the legacy and the history. Any new Administration inherits both complicated problems and simplistic views of the world. But surely among the policy-makers of the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations there were men who would warn of the dangers of an open-ended commitment to the Vietnam quagmire? This raises a central question, at the heart of the policy process: Where were the experts, the doubters, and the dissenters? Were they there at all, and if so, what happened to them?
Has the British Welfare System been 'Americanised'?
"The need of a constantly expanding market for its production chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections...it creates a world after its own image."
“The idea of global distributive justice is utopian, incompatible with our natural partiality towards compatriots and irreconcilable with state sovereignty”. Discuss
We are now living in a global village. When the distance between countries is shortened by the fast development of transportation, interdependence brought by the growing international political and economical collaborations, the notion of “global justice” is becoming major in the study of international relations and political philosophy. However, such globalization does not necessarily bring global prosperity and integrity. According to the Human Development Report 2006, the poorest 20% of the world’s people, roughly corresponding to the population living on less than $1 a day, account for 1.5% of world income (UNDP, 2006: 44). Over the past few decades, many scholars are advocating the idea of global distributive justice, a principle that goes beyond the nations, in pursuit of developing a just and peaceful world. However, in practice, there are still many concerns that have to be taken into account. This essay examines the main arguments given by cosmopolitanism and utilitarianism before addressing some crucial disputes. In the end this essay will evaluate this idea from two principal dimensions of global justice: political and economical which implicate that amplifying the idea of global distributive justice is utopian in this global village in this century.
Napoleon Bonaparte was best known as the ruler of France. Not only was he this, but he was King of Italy, Mediator of the Swiss Confederation and Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, he is considered by many to be one of the best military commanders that ever lived. His rise, reign, and fall marked the end of the Monarchy in France, and the start of a Republic.
When coming to the presidential campaign, one most ask themselves which party would be best for our nation as a whole.
The world of politics is one with endless boundaries. Politics cover virtually every aspect of life and the legal infrastructure that we live today.