Policy Project: Agricultural Pesticides

In James Wilson's American Government, he discusses the importance of current environmental policies, stating that they are both extremely popular and controversial. Today, people are more willing to work with the environment than against it, creating an earth that is healthy and clean, but its rare to find a group actually willing to give up the resources to reach that goal. There are factions in businesses, government officials, and even amongst regular citizens. One main faction is between agricultural American farmers, mobilizing to continue the use of pesticides on their crops.

Congress has attempted to help the issue, but client politics are more at work in defining which laws can be passed. Client politics are when a policy has to take into consideration how their laws affect people. Catering to powerful sections can be more important in client politics than actually protecting the people. The agricultural sector has an important influence on politics because they supply us with all the food we eat. Subsidies from taxpayers allow farmers to grow more food than they actually need to. However, farmers agree that this could be done without pesticides but they see pesticides as for their own welfare because it keeps the bugs from destroying their crops.

These farmers could not make as much money without creating an abundance of products, and without pesticides these products would wast away. 50,000 pesticides are still on the market not because they're healthy but because they're too difficult to remove because of politics. Agricultural lobbyists are very large in congress, pressuring lawmaking in their favor.

An example of a past ban on pesticides that has been successful is DDT, which was a common one that was found harmful to people and animals. The DDT leaked into the water, the soil, and other nearby places where animals lived. In 1962, Rachel Carson, an environmental scientist, published the book Silent Spring against the chemical DDT to raise awareness about its effects. It received much coverage on the media because of its hazardous consequences on local endangered birds, like the spotted owl. Carson convinced the EPA to ban DDT because it was found to be connected with cancer. However, it took ten years to get the legislation passed.

Politics have to deal with factions all the time such as lobbyists, businesses, environmentalists, agriculturalists, and government officials. Not everyone can always get what they want when it comes to politics. Communication is key between the groups in order to come to a common solution that benefits as many people involved as possible.

New Hampshire

The winners for the New Hampshire primaries were released the other day, and with an unexpected victory, Hillary Clinton winning susbatially against opponent Barack Obama. The strange thing about Clinton's victory was that it had been polled and predicted earlier that New Hampshire would vote Obama in a landslide victory. That wasn't the case.
At 8 o'clock on January 8th, the poll predictions for New Hampshire were released, declaring that John McCain would take the republican vote while Obama and Clinton were to close to call for the democratic vote.

For the past few days the common belief was that Obama would take New Hampshire which would only increase his lead in teh democratic race, making his Iowa win seem small. However, Hillary won against common belief and took 39% to Barack's 37%.

This unexpected win really demonstrated the often faulty nature of polls. Although a poll had been taken earlier that morning, the results that evening were substantially different. This difference really illustrated the high amount of new voters becoming involved in this years election. We can only hope the same number of people will vote in the actually presidential race as did in the recent primaries.

Primaries

Since the primaries in Iowas recently, America has begun to get more and more involved in this years political happenings. The Democratic candidate, Barak Obama, won in Iowa, and the republican Mike Huckabee won as well. These victories were extremely unexpected, seing as both men were younger, less experienced, and Huckabee didn't put much effort into trying to win Iowa.
Even though Obama has been popular, it seemed more likely that Hilary Clinton would be victorious because she has more money, more exerience, and an established name. She was still abled to snag third place, behind Obama and John Edwards. The voting tally was Obama with 37.6%, Edwards with 29.8%, and Clinton with 29.5%. Obama received extra support from young voters and independents
It will be interesting to see how things change along the rest of the years at the upcoming primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina. Hopefully Edwards will be able to keep a substantial amount of delegates and stay in the race, but it looks like it will be Obama and Clinton facing off for democratic nominee.

Campaigners have recently discovered a valuable group of possible supporters: homschoolers. Often times people who have been homeschooled will vote in blocks for the person they prefer. They were educated with more liberty, and because of this they feel less restricted in their choices. Many times kids who have been homeschooled will even involve themselves in political campaigns. The candidate that most homeschoolers have found favorable is the republican Mike Huckabee.
Homeschooled families tend to have more religious values as well, which explains their republican support. However, the rest of the public does not respond as well to Huckabee's right-wing religious views.
There are round 2 million children in America today who have been homeschooled and during election time, we will see wheter or not their campaigning has made a difference.

Young Voters

The younger voters are being targeted differently these days, trying to pull the younger generations into politics and even just voting. Since the election in 2000, the age groups of voters have increased. Polititions are using things that the younger generations enjoy in order to persuade them to become politically active, and their newest bait has been Michelle Obama. Obama is more like the younger generation. It reminds voters of a more natural environment, where they are more comfortable. Because of this more young voters are attending fundraisers just to heard Obama speak in an auditorium.
Obama isnt the only one using these tactics. While Obama is using models like Tyson Beckford, Clinton is having Maya and the Goo Goo Dolls perform at her events.
This seems like it would be pretty effective. The younger generations are still very easily swayed and often times we give into flash and cheap antics.
This seems to work, but we really need to ask ourselves, where does it end? It's a great way to get people interested in politics, but in the long run is it really getting the point across, or just brainwashing kids into liking one person more than another?

Mapping L.A. Muslims

"We appreciate that today's LAPD is more diverse and generally more restrained than it was in the generations that gave it a reputation for violence and racial animus -- helping to plunge the city into the riots of 1992, only to suddenly go limp and let the riots spread. Today's LAPD is better at keeping public order, more effective at policing and more sensitive to the many communities it protects and serves. Still, just six months ago in MacArthur Park, it elected to broadcast dispersal orders in English only -- this, at an immigration rally -- then unleashed nonlethal projectiles and batons against a crowd that mysteriously refused to obey." ---LA Times Article

Basically, the Los Angeles Police Department is attempting to keep tabs on who they believe might be a threat to the people of L.A., trying g to look as though they are being more productive in the "war on terror." By keeping tabs on the Muslim people and communities, they are racially profiling the people of the city. They are blatantly discriminating against members of a certain race, even though they refuse to admit it.

This is outrageous. The LAPD should not have the right to stereotype and profile people as dangerous simply because of their race and/or religion. It's should not be the police department's number one priority to prevent violence they think might possibly happen, but rather to stop the violence that is happening at this very moment. They need to focus on the present rather than possible crimes in the future based on an assumption of someone's actions based on race.

"...it isn't surprising that Rudolph W. Giuliani, a self-described pro-choice candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, has been courting religious conservatives who disagree with him on legalized abortion. And it can be argued that if Christian conservatives shouldn't insist on a litmus test in evaluating Giuliani's candidacy, the former New York City mayor shouldn't insist that everyone whose endorsement he accepts agree with him 100%.That said, Giuliani's endorsement by televangelist Pat Robertson is a bizarre addition to the annals of politics making strange bedfellows" --LA Times Article

Strangely enough, Pat Robertson has endorsed Presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani's presidential campaigning although he does not agree with Giuliani's platform on legalizing abortion. Pat Robertson is probably one of the most conservative figures in politics at this time, therefore it came a shock when he publicly endorsed Giuliani, who has always been a more liberal Republican candidate.

It really makes one wonder, what in fact motivated Robertson to agree with Giuliani's presidential candidacy? For someone who is so strongly associated with conservative ideals, it is extremely out of character for him to support a candidate with extremely oppositing positions. This endorsement really illuminates the intense nature of the presidential race at this particular moment. Whether Robertson agreed to endorse Guliani for political reasons or because of other means, he agreed to support him nonetheless.