Bush Bailout Article Review

In this article about Bush's influence on the bailout bill from the Washington Post, Bush is presented as having little or no power over the outcome of the bill. It directly quotes the President saying, "With the improvements made to this bill, I'm confident that members of both parties will support it." Unfortunately for Bush, the exact opposite happened, and the bill was defeated, in large part because of opposition from over 100 Republicans. It was the largest legislative defeat of Bush's presidency and reveals Bush's slipping hold over a Congress that he was able to get to vote on wars, taxes, and surveillance. I would agree with the articles assessment that Bush has lost his power with the legislature. Normally, when the President declares something a national crisis and calls for legislation to fix it, the legislation will be handily passed. Since Bush has little sway over the Congress now, though, the bill was not passed even though he so publicly and whole-heartedly endorsed it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/29/AR2008092903360.html

House of Reps Powers vs. Senate Powers

The House of Representatives and the Senate have almost exactly the same powers except for certain specific powers. The Senate has the exclusive power that they have to ratify treaties by a two-thirds majority vote and that appointments require a majority vote of approval. The Senate determines the punishment for impeached officials, but the House has to be the chamber to impeach an official. They can also choose the President in an electoral deadlock and can legislate spending bills. All bills have to be passed in both chambers to be sent to the President to be signed.

Courts or Legislature? -- Desegregation

Historically, Congress had the greatest impact on desegregation. In schools alone, the percentage of black schoolchildren attending school with whites skyrocketed after 1964's Civil Rights Act. This piece of legislation was, however, ten years after the initial Brown v. Board decision, so it would be unfair to say that the courts were ineffective during the ten years after Brown because there was really no significant civil rights legislation until 1964.

The criticism of Brown about limited enforcing power and about generating incredible backlash that worsened race relations is not all that fair. First, the Court is designed to be able to make tough decisions that the majority of people may not agree with but that are constitutional. I seriously doubt that there would not have been any backlash if Congress had written legislation regarding desegregation. Second, Brown was simply a start-up point for civil rights since the decision was needed to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson. Pursuit of federal legislation would not have been a better strategy because it would have taken an incredible mobilization of civil rights activism to get enough support to pass legislation through in 1954. In reality, it took the combined efforts of the Supreme Court and Congress to achieve desegregation.

Federalism, mandates, and devolution

Unfunded mandates are a form of state regulation imposed by the national government in which the states receive no funding from the federal government to comply with the mandate. Unfunded mandates impose national standards on states but make the states pay for any expenses that come with the mandate. An example of an unfunded mandate is the No Child Left Behind Act. States and local governments (and rightfully so) saw unfunded mandates as an extremely unfair method of control by the federal government since they were forced to give up power to the federal government and had to provide the funding to carry out these mandates.

The Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 stated that any mandate with an uncompensated state and local cost of more than fifty million dollars a year, as determined by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), can be stopped by a point of order raised on the House or Senate floor. Devolution, on the other hand, is the strategy of delegating to the states more and more authority over a range of policies that had been under national government authority, plus providing the states with a large portion of the costs for these former national programs.

In actual practice, devolution would be much more effective at reducing unfunded mandates. During the first year of its operation, UMRA stopped only eleven mandates, so there were still fifty-eight mandates with costs of less than fifty million dollars a year imposed on the states. The most important impact of UMRA was that it acted as a deterrent to mandates in the drafting and early consideration of legislation. So it made Congress think twice about a mandate before passing it but did not prevent mandates from being passed. Devolution though puts the policy-making power in the hands of state and local governments and gives them significant amounts of funding for their new policies. This strategy has many positives. It allows states and local governments to decide what is best for them instead of Congress. Second, since every state is different, there is no longer only one blanket policy for all states but instead many different ways for states to accomplish the same end. For example, when welfare was changed from a combined federal-state program into a block grant to states, states were able to find the welfare policy that best met the needs of their citizens instead of a standard policy for all states, as had been done under the federal-state welfare program. Last and related to the second point, devolution allowed states to act as "laboratories of democracy" by experimenting with different approaches for a policy to find the one that best served the needs of their citizens. This point is evinced by the diverse approaches to welfare programs by the states.

Selective Incorporation

Selective incorporation is the inclusion of specific clauses from the Bill of Rights into the due process clause of the 14th Amendment through Supreme Court decisions. American federalism slowed down the process of incorporation because the Bill of Rights are specific to things that Congress cannot do and have nothing to do with states. Therefore, Congress had to wait until the 14th Amendment was ratified to have any power to intervene in state affairs to protect the privileges and immunities of citizens, to prevent the deprivation of life, liberty, and property without just compensation, and to give citizens equal protection of the laws. However, since it is the Court's job to interpret the laws, the Supreme Court then had to decide what parts of the Bill of Rights should be incorporated into the due process clause of the 14th Amendment through individual court cases.
The Supreme Court case Barron v. Baltimore differs from Gitlow v. New York and Palko v. Connecticut because it took place in 1833, which was well before the 14th Amendment, so the Bill of Rights only applied to federal government, not states. In the case, Barron claimed that the city of Baltimore had violated his 5th Amendment right requiring just compensation for the taking of his private property, but since the Bill of Rights only applied to federal actions and since Maryland did not have property protection as part of its constitution, Barron did not have any legal grounds to his claim.
The Supreme Court case Gitlow v. New York differs from Palko v. Connecticut because it incorporated freedom of speech as a liberty that is protected under the 14th Amendment's due process clause. Palko v. Connecticut dealt with the 5th Amendment right of not being tried for the same crime twice, called double jeopardy. The Supreme Court ruled that double jeopardy was not one of the provisions of the Bill of Rights incorporated in the 14th Amendment, and Palko lost the case.

Government's Role in Terri Schiavo Case

The federal government should have no level of involvement in a case like Terri Schiavo's because that level of government does not have the power to intervene in a situation like that. The federal government only has the powers granted to it explicitly in the Constitution, so it doesn't have the right to take over state jurisdiction as Congress did in the Schiavo case when it transferred jurisdiction from state judiciary to federal district courts. No matter how much the public demands for action from the federal government, if it does not have the power to do anything, it is illegal for the federal government to try and override state governments, as Congress tried to do in the Schiavo case.

State governments, on the other hand, have the jurisdiction over these kinds of matters since any power not granted to the federal government is reserved to the states. The parents of Terri Schiavo would be able to take legal action all the way up to the state judiciary but not past that, and any other actions by the government should only be at the state level.

Similarities and Differences between the MBA Honor Code and the US Constitution

There are two main similarities between the MBA Honor Code and the US Constitution. First, it explicitly says in the Constitution in Article VI that all legislatures, executives, and judicial officers are bound by an oath to support the Constitution. This oath that all public servants must take is similar to the pledge that MBA students sign that says that they will uphold the Honor Code. Second, both the US Constitution and the MBA Honor Code are built on the ideal that everyone will act ethically and honestly at all times.

The differences between the two are much more obvious. The US Constitution is a formal document that organized the structure of our government and defined its powers and sections. The MBA Honor Code, on the other hand, is an oath that holds us to acting with integrity and morals and really creates a community based on these ideals.