Immigration Reform

Briefly, a great article from the Huffington Post about Senate and House attempts to reform Immigration rules.

It has a great quote from President Obama's spokesman about the issue, which sums up nicely the relative power of President and Congress:

The White House praised the group's efforts but warned that Obama would not be satisfied until there was meaningful reform. The president "will continue to urge Congress to act until that is achieved," a White House spokesman said.

Presidential Cabinet

Not, admittedly the most fascinating part of US politics, but an understanding of the role and functions of the Presidential Cabinet is essential to understand the Presidency and its power.

The White House web-site has a great video about it, which you'll find through this link. Alternatively, Wikipedia has the same video and this can be found here:

Presidential Power

A major issue in the Unit 4C paper (US politics), is likely to be Presidential power and how much the President has in reality. With this in mind, below, you'll find the complete Inaugural address from the 2013 ceremony on Monday 21 January. Here is BBC coverage, and the Economist blogs have some interesting things to say here and here.

Ian Bremmer, a blogger and political commentator has summed it up thus:

"Together, we will pursue my objectives."



What does the inaguration say about Presidential power?

Vice-Presidential power

While looking for material on the power of the Vice-President, I came across this snippet of the 2008 Vice-Presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden.

Biden neatly sums up some of the powers and also discusses Dick Cheney:

And from August 2012 Dick Cheney on the pick of Sarah Palin as VP by John McCain:

And finally a brief set of highlights of Biden vs Ryan in 2012:

Current issues in UK politics - for revision!

Monday 14th Jan sees the Unit 1 exam. With this in mind, I thought I would do a quick run-down of current GB politics examples  which can be used.

By no means is this supposed to be exhaustive!

1. Election reform - democracy was enhanced, or perhaps even undermined by the Police and Crime Commissioners' election back in November; results can be found on the previous link (Conservative and Labour dominated, but there were 12 wins for Independents). Further analysis here; the primary concern was the very low turnout (on average under 15% across the UK).

2. The PCC election used the Supplementary Vote system.

3. Good examples of current Pressure Groups:

• Outsiders "Hacked off" campaign for a regulated press in response to the Levinson Inquiry last year. It has an e-petition which currently stands at 147,000 names.

• In September the Hillsborough Justice Campaign successfully get the government to release documents about the Hillsborough Disaster of 1989.

• In early January, an organisation, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, release a report  into wasted food - it looks as though it supports calls by a variety of Pressure Groups (Feed the 5000 and Sustainable Restaurants Association) to change the way food is produced and traded.

4. Mandate / Manifesto: Unusually for a Government the Coalition has released an audit of its successes and failures over the course of its 2.5 years in office. BBC analysis can be found here. Useful when discussing political parties and the issue of legitimacy / mandate and manifesto. Don't forget that no-one actually voted for the Coalition agreement, which was hammered out between the parties after the election.

Good luck everyone!

Fiscal Cliff

In any essay about US government, it will be very important to mention the problems of Congress, especially with the recent negotiations about the Fiscal Cliff. Here is a great graph from Wikipedia explaining the long term problems which the current negotiations are not coming close to solving:

Essentially in the long term Congress and the President will have to deal with ever increasing costs (thanks to things like pensions and health-care costs), and a tax system which does not take in enough revenue to cover these costs.

Certainly a good thing to use as an example in any essay on the "broken branch" of Congress, or the ability of the US political system to take important decisions.

The recent negotiations are essentially a short-term fix for the immediate problem, but not anything like the long-term strategic thinking which is needed. A good article about it here from the Economist.

The deal has got through both chambers of Congress.

Important to note the importance of VP Joe Biden negotiating because he is a former Senator.

All of which is great stuff for any essay on the importance of the Vice-President, Presidential Power, or Congress' weaknesses.

A thorough account of all the negotiations here from Politico.

[Picture credit - Wikimedia Commons]