HIS 1302 Exam 5

Identify the Watergate break-in.

After Muskie's demise and Wallace's shooting, the main Democratic contender was George McGovern. With the Democrats reeling from their bungling of the Vietnam War under Johnson, they wanted a combat veteran for military credibility, and McGovern had won a Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal as a B-24 bomber in WWII (he led 35 missions over Europe without losing a plane). He was liberal by mainstream standards, though. He wanted to grant amnesty to Vietnam draft evaders that had escaped to Canada and the CRP combined that with his pro-choice, pro-marijuana legalization stance into the 3 A's: Acid, Amnesty and Abortion. They knew that many voters didn't know the difference between marijuana and LSD. -Nixon wanted to know what McGovern knew, just in case, so he okayed a break-in at the Democratic National Committee's office. The DNC headquarters were at the Watergate Plaza -Nixon's worst-case scenario was an "October Surprise" whereby, just before the early November elections, Democrats would reveal to the public some of the shenanigans the administration had been up to. -We know from tape recordings, for instance, that Nixon ordered them to "empty the safe" of the centrist/near-left Brookings Institution think-tank in 1971, but also overrode Plumber Charles Colson's idea to firebomb the building. Subsequent investigations never proved decisively that Nixon himself authorized the Watergate burglary. -Either way, the actual Watergate break-in crime was minor, but Nixon committed several felonies trying to cover it up and established a track-record of unrepentant criminality before that with the establishment of his black-ops Plumbers. -Nixon's men set up a room at the Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge across the street from DNC headquarters at the Watergate Complex, plotting to wiretap ("bug") and monitor the Democrats as part of the CRP's Operation Gemstone. Alone among presidents, Nixon had staff commit crimes with the word operation in front of them. The Plumbers broke in once and tapped the phones, then went back three weeks later for files, in June 1972. When they broke in the first time, they duct-taped open a normally locked door from the hallway to the stairwell, grabbing the attention of a security guard who removed the tape. They did the same thing the second time and the same guard noticed again, leading to their arrest. -It did and the tape recorder Nixon insisted on running under his desk revealed plenty about the bribes (hush money) and threats the administration undertook to snuff out the story. They were also bugging and trying to sabotage the Washington Post since they were the only paper covering the story at first. -Nixon committed his own crimes during this cover-up, not the break-in.

Explain how deregulation impacted Wall Street in the 90's and early 00's.

Commentators often speak of the Law of Unintended Consequences to describe how either passing or eliminating laws often has unforeseen consequences (e.g. defensive treaties leading to World War I). In this case, three deregulations (eliminations of laws) contributed to a financial meltdown a decade later. Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 (GLB) repealing the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act from FDR's New Deal that had set up a firewall between riskier bank investments and regular bank customer savings. for the half-century after Glass-Steagall, there hadn't been many bank failures in America — the reason reformers like Texas Senator Phil Gramm argued that the law was outdated. In retrospect, though, Glass-Steagall might have been partly why the U.S. didn't have bank failures The GLB Act didn't affect the major investment banks involved in the 2007-09 meltdown (other than allowing some mergers), but it affected commercial banks like Bank of America and Citibank on the periphery of the crisis. A big cause of the 2007-09 meltdown and the danger it posed to the rest of the economy was a three-fold loosening up of leverage ratios by the SEC in 2004. investment banks could now gamble their clients' money on a 30:1 ratio, rather than 10:1. A third deregulation was the repeal of obscure laws that originated after the Panic of 1907 and 1929 Crash outlawing bucket shops Bucket shops were gambling parlors, essentially, where people without actual share ownership just bet on the stock market the way one would bet on horses or football games. No official transaction occurs on any institutional exchange. Congress quietly repealed portions of those laws and another from the New Deal in the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, on the last vote of the last day of the 2000 session That changed how big financial firms bought and sold complicated financial products called derivatives.

Review why partisanship — though a mainstay in American politics — has worsened in recent decades, creating more animosity between voters.

With the world's top 1% now worth more than the bottom 99%, it's likely that liberal parties will pursue increasingly socialist means to redistribute wealth (e.g. "Jobs-for-All" with $15 minimum wage, right) while conservative parties steer the conversation away from economics, or at least discourage "class warfare." In American domestic politics after the Reagan Revolution, the GOP moved to the right and the Democrats followed by moving part way to the right on economics but not culture, and the gap between the two parties grew because of factors we covered in the last half of the previous chapter: media fragmentation, enhanced gerrymandering, and uncompromising, rights-based party strategies, along with the Monica Lewinsky scandal and contested 2000 Election in the optional section. -All this amplified the partisanship that's been a mainstay of American democracy, creating near dysfunctional Gridlock in Congress worsened by increased parliamentary filibustering that can require 60% super-majorities on Senate bills. Some gridlock is a healthy and natural result of the Constitution's system of checks-and-balances, though New Yorkers invented the actual term gridlock in the early 1970s to describe traffic. However, too much gridlock disrupts the compromises that keep the political system functioning. -Americans remained divided on guns, with control advocates pointing out the ownership correlation to murder (and suicide) by country and state, while pro-gun lobbies stressed the need for more guns for protection amidst the mass shootings. -While the U.S. embraced military weapons for civilians and the NRA and its legislators pushed to re-legalize silencers and loosen background checks, the U.S. simultaneously went in a more liberal but likewise libertarian direction on many social issues, including legalization of marijuana in some states and same-sex marriage everywhere -nd they've sorted themselves better than ever, often into conservative rural areas and liberal cities, reminiscent of the rural-urban divides of the 1920s. As we saw in the previous chapter's section on gerrymandering, this geographic segregation results in partisan districts of red conservatives and blue liberals, with interspersed purple that defy categorization (most Americans live in suburbs). -The fragmented and partisan media encourages and profits from animosity between citizens, selling more advertising and "clickbait" than they would if politicians cooperated and citizens respectfully disagreed over meaningful issues.

Interpret Jimmy Carter's popularity among voters in 1976.

- anti-Nixon, anti-Vietnam, anti-Watergate - Born Again peanut farming governor from Georgia w/ zero experience in Washington - outsider candidate - independent and fiscal conservative Like Richard Nixon, he had a fortress mentality in the White House, not initiating relations with congressmen on Capitol Hill. He alienated conservatives by creating the Department of Energy to try to wean the country off Arab oil (the GOP didn't want more bureaucracy, and oil companies feared breakthroughs on alternative energy), and he alienated Great Society Democrats by overseeing deregulation and insisting on a balanced budget. In that way, Carter was more of an independent and fiscal (budgetary) conservative than a party-line Democrat.

Analyze why the USSR collapsed in 1991.

- lost Eastern bloc countries in 1989 (sick of net economic liabilities) and culminated in tearing down of Berlin Wall and reunification of Germany in 1990 -Eastern Bloc countries, led by Lech Wałęsa's Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania, cast off Soviet domination in 1989. Their revolution culminated in the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and reunification of East and West Germany in 1990. - It wasn't simply a matter of the USSR trying and failing to hang on to Eastern Europe. Russians were as sick of the satellite countries as the satellites were of Russia because most of them were net economic liabilities. Russia subsidized them more than they contributed to the USSR, though these puppet governments did provide the Soviets a geographic buffer. - at Malta: Bush and Gorbachev declared Cold War over -Off the island of Malta in the Mediterranean, weeks after the Berlin Wall fell, Bush 41 and Gorbachev discussed future cooperation and declared the Cold War over. Their meeting is sometimes called the Seasick Summit because they met on ships anchored offshore in choppy seas. - Yeltsin assumed leadership and state of Russia broke away on its own -The Soviet Army decided to overthrow Gorbachev and reassert more traditional communist control, undoing his liberal reforms. They failed, but the man who stood up on their tanks and gave a confrontational speech to save the government was not the Soviet leader Gorbachev, but rather Boris Yeltsin, the President of Russia. -As Yeltsin assumed leadership within Russia, the Soviet Union collapsed quickly and peacefully, and the rump state of Russia broke away on its own. In December 1991, ten countries within the former confederation, including Russia and Ukraine, formally announced that the USSR no longer existed, and Gorbachev resigned on Christmas. -1991 announced no longer existed -In December 1991, ten countries within the former confederation, including Russia and Ukraine, formally announced that the USSR no longer existed, and Gorbachev resigned on Christmas. Bush 41 eventually threw his weight behind Yeltsin, Gorbachev retreated into retirement, and the USSR (1922-1991) was no more.

What does the textbook argue is largely forgotten about America's role in Kosovo and Serbia?

-A second round of warfare broke out in the Balkan country of Kosovo in 1998-99. Forgotten by many militant Muslims and Americans alike, the U.S. and U.N.-NATO fought to save Muslims both in Bosnia and in Kosovo from slaughter at the hands of Serbian Christians. Serbia was trying to take over Kosovo and a majority of Kosovo Albanians are Sunni Muslim. The U.S. ended the small-scale genocide in Kosovo through aerial bombardment. -It was one of the only times in history anyone had success exclusively through that method. American intervention in Kosovo alienated Russia since they supported the Slavic Serbians, just as they had in WWI. -balkanization: come to mean fragmented, fighting -contain fragmentation: prevent spread into N Europe (WWI triggered by tensions in Baltic) -largely forgotten: US fought to save Muslims in both Bosnia and Kosovo from slaughter at the hands of Serbian Christians

Evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of deregulation during and after the Reagan Revolution.

-Another key to the Reagan Revolution was deregulation. Reagan was adamant in his aforementioned philosophy that government is not the solution to our problem(s); governmentis the problem. -The financial changes, especially the evolution of Special Purpose Entities (SPE's), contributed to problems like the Savings & Loan Crisis, Michael Milken's junk bond-related fraud, and Enron in the late 1990s. -On the other hand, allowing accountants to "cook their books" may have stimulated the economy and Milken used some of the money he stole to help fund medical research. -Advantages: May have stimulated the economy, helped medical research -Disadvantages: financial changes (e.g. evolution of Special Purpose Entities) contributed to problems like Savings & Loan Crisis, Michael Milken's junk bond related fraud, Enron, FCC removed rule requiring TV and radio broadcasts to be faired

Describe why the main political parties' embrace of globalization opened the door for Ross Perot and Donald Trump.

-As we saw in the previous chapter, Bill Clinton's embrace of free trade created a window of opportunity for Ross Perot to garner significant third-party support in 1992, and Hillary Clinton's ongoing support of globalization along with mainstream Republicans partially explains Donald Trump's appeal in 2016. -Trump and his advisor Steve Bannon blasted through a door cracked open by Perot a quarter-century earlier, winning big in rural areas and the Rust Belt hit hard by globalization. This will continue to complicate traditional partisan alignments because politicians, by and large, are aware that globalization is probably a net gain for Americans, but there are economic pockets that have suffered a net loss. It's tempting to appeal to those voters and those voters deserve to be heard. -In 1992, Bill Clinton (D) wanted open trade borders with the United States' neighbors to the north and south, Canada and Mexico, and, in 2000, he normalized trade relations with China. With the two major candidates, Clinton and George H.W. Bush, supporting free trade in 1992, that left the door open for a third-party candidate to focus on the outsourcing of labor. In his high-pitched Texan accent, Ross Perot quipped, "Do you hear that giant sucking sound? That's your jobs leaving for Mexico." He focused on Mexico because the issue at hand was whether the U.S., Canada, and Mexico would open their borders to each other for freer trade through NAFTA, the trilateral North American Free Trade Agreement (logo, left) that Ronald Reagan promoted in the 1980s.

Analyze the challenges American leaders have faced in trying to broker lasting peace between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims.

-Bill Clinton held the status quo in Iraq of maintaining American control over the air space (the no-fly zone), embargoing Iraqi oil, and monitoring U.N. inspections for nuclear weapons. -He cited future regime change as the ultimate U.S. goal and referred to the country as an "Axis of Evil," a term later used more famously by Bush 43. Clinton was trying for a lasting land-for-peacesettlement between Israel and the Palestinian Muslims who live within and around Israel. -this Two-State solution would create an autonomous Palestinian state and, in turn, Palestinian Muslims would recognize the existence and legitimacy of Israel -Rabin's assassination by a right-wing fundamentalist Israeli in 1995 and renewed violence by the Palestinian Hamas terrorist group (e.g. mass-murdering commuters on rush-hour buses with suicide bombers) led to the election of Israeli-American Benjamin Netanyahu from the center-right, uncompromising Likud Party. T Netanyahu and Clinton didn't get along and, as a veteran of Israel's wars against Arabs, Netanyahu only dealt with Arafat reluctantly to preserve Israel's American alliance. Clinton was anxious to redeem Rabin's legacy and the Labor Party's Ehud Barak's election in 1999 opened a new window of opportunity (Barak was also a decorated veteran). -At Camp David, Clinton seemed to have a land-for-peace agreement in reach, with Palestinians recognizing Israel's existence and the Palestinians getting their own country carved out of eastern Israel. But when the leaders returned home, Arafat changed his mind. Why, exactly, no one knew - The map left the Israelis with control over Palestinian utilities and retained existing checkpoints used to interrogate Palestinians as they traveled in between their autonomous pockets.

Summarize [Newt Gingrich's] Contract With America and explain why Gingrich & the GOP failed to defeat Clinton in 1996.

-Clinton stumbled out of the gate for two reasons in 1993. First, like the other state governors who became president in the post-Watergate era (especially Jimmy Carter), he brought with him to Washington a fairly inexperienced team. Second, his administration's attempt to repair the nation's troubled health insurance system, about which you'll read in the following chapter, mostly failed. -The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich of Georgia, seized on Clinton's first-term problems and spearheaded the Republican Revolution of 1994, whereby the GOP took over both houses of Congress in the mid-term elections. -Working "across the aisle" with Republicans like John Kasich of Ohio, Bill Clinton was the first president since 1969 to balance annual budgets (receipts=outlays), but the overall, long-term debt didn't go away. -Gingrich promised a Contract with America that would pass a balanced budget amendment, reform (reduce) welfare, make the day-to-day workings of Congress more efficient, roll back Social Security, and cut funding for environmental initiatives like the Superfund and Safe Drinking Water Act. Gingrich favored cutting benefits for the working poor and taxes for the rich, blaming increasing wealth disparity on "radical seculars." In cutting back on the size of congressional committees and limiting the power of senior committee chairs, Gingrich's reforms seemingly made Congress leaner and more transparent. -However, in a classic case of how reform can have unforeseen consequences, by the early 21st century, it became harder for party leaders (or anyone, for that matter) to assert leadership in Congress as increased transparency made everyone less likely to make deals that might alienate their constituents. -Gingrich overstretched a bit with his Contract, not taking into account that only 38% of Americans had voted in the 1994 midterm elections. Clinton cherry-picked the popular portions of the Contract (welfare reform and the balanced budget — not as an amendment, but at least as a reality for a few years) and held firm against the rest. -Clinton backed Gingrich down and rode the momentum to victory in the 1996 election. He had good economic tailwinds at his back, including improving information technology, the post-Cold War "peace dividend" of reduced military spending, heavy worker immigration, and Baby Boomers passing through peak years of productivity. And Clinton played to the centrist popularity that helped get him elected in 1992 by beefing up police forces and reforming the worst abuses of the welfare system.

Over the next few sections, analyze and discuss how one could see a conservative swing coming in American politics during the Carter presidency, even before Ronald Reagan arrived on the scene in 1980.

-Conservative Ronald Reagan won the 1980 presidential election by arguing that "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." The Departments of Energy (1977-) and Education (1979-) expanded federal bureaucracy some, but the public mood was shifting back toward smaller government at all levels. -The brewing conservative resurgence wasn't just about cutting taxes, but also reducing government intervention in the economy and reinjecting religion into politics. With the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, the conservative revolution launched under Barry Goldwater in 1964 led to a fundamental changing of the guard in Washington and in many states. -By the 1976 election, the public wanted the most anti-Nixon, anti-Vietnam, anti-Watergate type candidate they could find. They found it in Democrat Jimmy Carter, a Born-Again peanut-farming governor from Georgia untarnished by Washington politics. -Watergate began a trend toward outsider candidates, resulting in state governors Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Bush the Younger all winning the presidency. Jimmy Carter -n independent and fiscal (budgetary) conservative than a party-line Democrat. As a fiscal conservative, Carter alienated Democrats by refusing to go further into debt and Republicans by refusing to cut taxes. His main, seemingly intractable, problem was stagflation. - Carter alienated Democrats by refusing to go further into debt, and Republicans by refusing to cut taxes - Iran plagued Carter as he approached re-election; hostages released within minutes of Carter leaving office - Misery Index (stagflation) It's hard to say whether the Iranian Crisis cost Carter re-election or not. More fundamentally, Americans were ready for a conservative change of pace. The Misery Index (stagflation) as economists came to call it, set the stage for Republican victory by Californian Ronald Reagan over Carter in 1980.

Assess how deregulation changed media.

-Deregulation also impacted communications in 1986 when the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) removed their 1949 Fairness Doctrinerequiring TV and radio broadcasts to be fair and "tell both sides of a story." Such a rule was arguably a violation of the First Amendment, but its retraction fragmented news into what it is today, where most conservatives and liberals just listen to spins on their own tribe's websites, networks or radio shows, with little center of gravity in the middle to rely on for "straight news." -In addition to the basic responsibilities of citizenship, like voting and paying taxes, Americans now have to filter news to find out what's going on. -Since it's human nature to suffer from confirmation bias and easier to confirm preconceptions, most people just choose their "truths" from a virtual buffet table of options and at least some modern politicians are learning to take advantage of what commentators are calling the "post-truth" era. -he better part of the 20th century was, in retrospect, a unique time in journalism when readers valued objectivity. Most newspapers self-identified as Democratic or Republican with op-ed pages that leaned left or right, but the rest of the paper was neutral and factual, or at least aimed to be; exceptions were sensationalist tabloids near the grocery check-out. That ideal of objectivity has been more the exception than the rule, historically, though.

Read the first four paragraphs (above the table of contents) of this Wiki entry for Edward Snowden; then compare and contrast Daniel Ellsberg and Snowden.

-Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American computer professional, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee, and former contractor for the United States government who copied and leaked classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013 without authorization. -Snowden flew to Hong Kong after leaving his job at an NSA facility in Hawaii, and in early June he revealed thousands of classified NSA documents to journalists -On June 21, 2013, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed charges against Snowden of two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and theft of government property[2] following which the Department of State revoked his passport.[3] Two days later, he flew into Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, but Russian authorities noted that his U.S. passport had been cancelled and he was restricted to the airport terminal for over one month. -Russia ultimately granted him right of asylum for one year, and repeated extensions have permitted him to stay at least until 2020. In early 2016, he became the president of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, an organization that aims to protect journalists from hacking and government surveillance. -A subject of controversy, Snowden has been variously called a hero, a whistleblower, a dissident, a traitor, and a patriot. His disclosures have fueled debates over mass surveillance, government secrecy, and the balance between national security and information privacy. -Daniel Ellsberg: sold CIA documents to NY Times called Pentagon Papers - showed US in combat before public knew and CIA said trying to impose will on resistant population - Edward Snowden: copied and leaked classified info form the NSA in 2013 without permission; revealed numerous global surveillance programs; sat down with journalists; violated Espionage Act of 1917

In the sections below, assess how (if at all) partisanship and lobbying have complicated debates over globalization/trade, healthcare insurance, and high finance. ????????

In the early 21st century, hyperpartisanship and biased media complicated and clouded debates over globalization/trade, healthcare insurance, and high finance that would've been complicated enough to begin with. These are three primary areas we'll cover below, with some brief economic background to start. Healthcare: -Similar to ACA, polls showed that Americans favored much of what was in Clinton's 1993-94 legislation when posed questions about items in the bill and opposed it when Hillary's name was mentioned in conjunction with those same items. -Both are telling examples of how spin can trump substance in politics, and how the way questions are spun dictates how respondents "frame" the question. Partisanship is now such an overriding factor in politics that when a Democratic president pushed a conservative idea in Congress, zero Republicans voted in favor, and many confused voters thought a socialist revolution was at hand, while others feared Nazism (in 2012, two of the top five books on the New York Times bestseller list, by Anne Coulter and Glenn Beck, argued that Obamacare would lead to concentration camps). -Nixon and Bush suffered similar, if less inflammatory, responses from Democrats when they pushed mandate plans in 1972 and 1992. Much of the public misread the mandate idea as socialist in 2009 because they were spring-loaded to suspect President Obama of being a leftist and were unaware of its right-wing origins and purpose. globalization/trade: -As we saw in the previous chapter, Bill Clinton's embrace of free trade created a window of opportunity for Ross Perot to garner significant third-party support in 1992, and Hillary Clinton's ongoing support of globalization along with mainstream Republicans partially explains Donald Trump's appeal in 2016. Trump and his advisor Steve Bannon blasted through a door cracked open by Perot a quarter-century earlier, winning big in rural areas and the Rust Belt hit hard by globalization. This will continue to complicate traditional partisan alignments because politicians, by and large, are aware that globalization is probably a net gain for Americans, but there are economic pockets that have suffered a net loss. It's tempting to appeal to those voters and those voters deserve to be heard. -Globalization continues to be a controversial topic in American politics and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. The 2016 election saw two populist candidates, Trump (R) and Bernie Sanders (D), opposed to free trade and they even pressured Hillary Clinton (D) into taking an ambiguous stand against President Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership that loosens trade restrictions between NAFTA (U.S., Canada, Mexico) and twelve Pacific Rim countries that constitute 40% of the world economy Fiance: -The Great Recession also caused a class conflict within the GOP between business-oriented "Wall Street" Republicans and "Main Street" Tea Partiers/Freedom Caucus who resented banks and corporate power despite their social conservatism and dislike for financial (or any government) regulation. -The government shares blame for the Great Recession with Wall Street bankers, duped voters, corrupt rating agencies, and citizens anxious to live in houses they couldn't afford. Their bipartisan contribution to the meltdown was an unfortunate combination of deregulation, low interest rates, and intervention in housing on behalf of more ownership.

What was Gingrich's impact on bipartisanship in Congress and in society at large?

-Gingrich understood how politicians can help hammer home peoples' worldviews through repetition. In 1990, he and his GOPAC action committee issued a list of negative terminology: corrupt, betray, bizarre, cheat, devour, disgrace, greed, steal, sick, traitors, shallow, radical, advising Republicans to never speak of Democrats without associating them with those terms. This "Newtspeak" mandated calling the opposition the "Democrat Party" or "Dems" because Gingrich feared the adjective Democratic had positive connotations -Gingrich's embrace of partisanship, combined with aforementioned media fragmentation and the decline of swing districts proved remarkably effective at getting citizens to subconsciously place a higher premium on cultural and political tribalism than patriotism or policy. The merit of any given policy is often reduced to whether or not it has a (D) or (R) attached to it. One huge advantage of negativity and fear-mongering is that it raises more money than promises to craft legislation through compromise. - politics no doubt grew increasingly toxic starting in the 1990s, or at least toxic politics grew more mainstream and sensationalist media grew more profitable -America's Overton Window of acceptable mainstream discourse widened as the market grew of people disposed to think along those lines, with the Internet and social media fueling the fire and no agreed-upon go-to anchor of neutral information.

Explain the advantages and disadvantages of globalization & free trade

-Globalization didn't start in the 20th century. -The pro-globalization argument is that free trade and outsourcing improve profit margins for American companies, boost American exports, and lower prices for consumers while providing higher wages and economic growth in developing countries. Free trade also offers consumers a wider range of products, ranging from BMWs and Samsung electronics to Harry Potter novels. -Another pro-globalization argument is that it creates more jobs than it destroys, as foreign companies who otherwise wouldn't operate in the U.S. open plants and hire American workers. -Honda, from Japan, builds almost all the cars and trucks it sells in America in America. I -Opponents of globalization point out that American manufacturers are undersold, costing jobs and lowering wages as companies exploit and underpay foreign workers.

Define Reaganomics and contrast it with FDR's approach during the New Deal.

-Just as FDR wanted to jump-start the economy through government spending, Reagan's supply-side economics reversed the concept of Keynesian stimuli, focusing not on government spending but on tax cuts, especially for the wealthy and corporations. -In other words, did Reaganomics really steal from the poor and give to the rich, the opposite of Robin Hood? Yes and no. He helped the rich plenty, but his record was mixed on the poor. He cut food stamps, most forms of student aid (e.g. Pell Grants), and painkillers from disability coverage, leading to a black market in drugs like oxycodone. -However, spending continued through Reagan's presidency on most of the core New Deal entitlement programs and much of the welfare from the Great Society. Some tax burdens were shifted to the states but still came out of paychecks just the same. Really, Reaganomics kicked off an era when Americans continued to spend on core entitlements while voting themselves tax cuts -The result of Reagan's concession to core New Deal programs, when combined with increased military spending, was ballooning debt Reaganomics refers to the economic policies promoted by U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. These policies are commonly associated with supply-side economics, referred to as trickle-down economics by political opponents and free market economics by political advocates. -FDR's New Deal-The New Deal was a series of domestic programs enacted in the United States between 1933 and 1938, and a few that came later. They included both laws passed by Congress as well as presidential executive orders during the first term (1933-37) of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Identify and describe the purpose of Nixon's "Plumbers."

-Like FDR, Kennedy, and Johnson before him, Nixon kept a reel-to-reel tape recorder going under his desk in the Oval Office because he wanted a record of what people had told him, and he "bugged" his own phone. The tapes reveal a discussion over whether or not they should "neutralize Ellsberg." -They didn't kill him, but they resolved to "plug any future leaks" by assembling a rogues gallery of "plumbers" to patch them up. -The Plumbers were a black-ops offshoot of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CRP, or "CREEP" to Democrats) set up to prepare for the 1972 election. -The CRP trained young Republicans on college campuses in self-described "dirty tricks seminars" directed by a young Karl Rove, George W. Bush's future adviser. -Another favorite trick was waving false flags: holding up stupid or offensive signs on behalf of causes they opposed. Their full repertoire was on display in the 1972 campaign and their range and skill were impressive -On this last item, the modern political parties aren't necessarily a whole lot different than CRP. -Often when Democrats propose a certain law, what they really want is money from whatever group or industry wouldn't benefit from the law. A sufficient donation will make the law go away. It's an elaborate way to ask for (blackmail) a donation. -What set Nixon apart was the routine use of government agencies or even local police as cudgels to harass people on their enemies list, which in Nixon's case included all media.

Describe Nixon and Kissinger's détente policy and how it changed America's foreign relations. In what ways did détente succeed or fail?

-Nixon and Kissinger realized that, while China & the USSR were both communist countries, they weren't allies. They had different forms of communism and sharing a border for three thousand years engendered hostility. -By 1971, an ongoing border dispute made Sino-Soviet relations worse than they'd been at any point since China went communist in 1949. *Nixon and Kissinger pitted China and the USSR against each other for American affection.* -*In other words, they triangulated the relationship by cozying up to each in the hopes of warming relations with the other* -*As part of their détente strategy (French for relaxation of tensions), the U.S. exported corn and wheat to the Soviets and talked arms reduction. * -And, while Kissinger initially thought there was only a "fat chance" of improving Sino-American relations, Nixon wanted to visit China and do just that. They opened up American relations with the Chinese for the first time since the 1949 revolution and gave the Chinese satellite photos showing Soviet armaments along the Sino-Soviet border. he hoped that building relationships with the USSR and China would ensure that both honored America's ongoing role in global affairs. -The U.S. even greased the skids by sending a ping-pong team to China first, before they arrived on diplomatic missions. -Then, to avoid public scrutiny, they established Chinese relations through the "back-channel" of their embassy in West Pakistan (now Pakistan) rather than directly. -The U.S. shared intelligence on Soviet maneuvers with China and (we now know that) Kissinger even suggested to chief diplomat Zhou Enlai that the U.S. would eventually withdraw from South Korea and help China check Japan's potential military re-emergence, neither of which happened. -The U.S. also pledged through its revised One China Policy to turn the tables and recognize China instead of Taiwan diplomatically — the opposite of U.S. policy from 1949-71 — even though the U.S. continued to sell arms to Taiwan to defend it from potential Chinese aggression and promise protection via the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act. -*Nixon and Kissinger's détente worked insofar as it thawed Cold War tensions and improved relations between the U.S. and its two biggest rivals, the USSR and China* -*Peaceful framework in china led to the country's economic growth and pulled millions of asians out of poverty* -détente jumpstarted the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I) between the Americans and Soviets and led to the cooperation between the two powers' space programs that Kennedy had envisioned. -*But détente failed to accomplish its secondary goal. Based on what they called linkage, Nixon and Kissinger hoped détente would end the Vietnam War because the Chinese and Soviets would order the North Vietnamese out of the South in order to not botch their improved American relations.* -It turns out that the North Vietnamese were happy to take weapons and supplies from the Chinese and Soviets, but not orders -They weren't retreating out of the South regardless of what happened in the larger context of the Cold War. For that matter, neither were the Soviets or Chinese trying to bail the U.S. out of its Vietnam predicament anyway; they were happy to let the U.S. twist in the wind. In fact, they both increased their support in the early 1970s. Ultimately, Nixon was forced to accept a truce in Vietnam under the realization that America's South Vietnamese allies wouldn't be able to fend off the North Vietnamese communists. -A positive spin on détente credits this brief retreat from the more militant Cold War of the 1950s and early 60's as a necessary breather before the "jump forward" (stepped up tensions) of the 1980s.

Identify the GOP's Southern Strategy, and how it contributed to a seismic shift in American electoral politics.

-Nixon's key interest in domestic politics, aside from using FBI-directed covert ops like COINTELPRO to infiltrate and disrupt long-hairs, commies, and Blacks, was elections. -In 1968, his chief strategist Kevin Phillips masterminded their Southern Strategy to help siphon the old southern Democrats into the Republican's camp. -coined the term Sun Belt and prophesied an emerging Republican majority in the South and West -One need look no further than the 1964 electoral map to see the seismic shift caused by the Civil Rights Act of that same year — a bill GOP candidate Goldwater opposed despite a majority of Republican senators voting in favor of it. -As we saw in Chapter 16, the GOP won the Southeast for the first time ever, defeating a Texas Democrat, no less. FDR, Truman, and Kennedy had avoided being seen as too pro-black in order to not drive away the Democrats' "Solid South," though all three made some headway on civil rights. The Texan LBJ severed the party's racist ties once and for all but lost the South. -On the face of it, Nixon and Phillips' Southern Strategy seemed innocuous enough, even progressive, because it called for black voter registration drives, the same kind promoted during the Civil Rights movement. But Nixon's goal wasn't to empower Blacks; it was for Blacks to vote Democrat which would, in turn, scare Whites into the arms of the Republicans. -Phillips wrote, "Whites will desert in droves the minute it becomes a black party." -Of course, the strategy could cut the other direction, scaring non-racist Whites out of the GOP. -Was successful -today virtually no conservatives vote Democrat -The mainstream "establishment" GOP shed the racism it temporarily capitalized on/tolerated with minorities like Condi Rice, Colin Powell, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio taking an active role. Meanwhile, some voters in the conservative base fight what they perceive to be a rearguard action on behalf of persecuted "Americans" [Whites].

Analyze what new challenges the end of the Cold War created for American foreign policy.

-No one who lived through the Cold War ever imagined it would end so quickly and peacefully, but its conclusion didn't rid the world of danger. Would Russia have good relations with the U.S. and Europe? What about the soldiers and weapons, including nuclear warheads, located in all those former Soviet countries besides Russia? What about the experts who knew how to use them? They would be up for sale to the highest bidder. -With the Nunn-Lugar Act, the U.S. quickly moved to curb nuclear proliferation as best it could, hoping to keep nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons out of the hands of people who dislike America, aka rogue states. -by 1990 the U.S. stood as the lone economic superpower and top military power and had to decide what it would do with that opportunity. Would it work to make the world a better place? Would it just look out for its own interests? Would it work together with its allies? Would America go it alone? These were challenging questions for the post-Cold War administrations of Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43 and Obama -the agreed-upon goals included curbing nuclear proliferation and continuing to protect American oil interests in the Middle East. On the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sam Nunn (D-GA) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) pushed through the non-proliferation act and led efforts to buy uranium from Russia to use in American power plants -shipped enriched uranium from Russian decommissioned nuclear weapons to American power plants. For twenty years, an astounding 10% of all electricity on the American grid was powered by uranium from former Soviet nukes. - soldiers and weapons and experts who knew how to use them - bought uranium from Russia to use in US power plants - arms reduction

Trace how conservatives' reaction to the long-term threat of single-payer universal healthcare coverage led to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) in 2010.

-Richard Nixon's idea of an employer mandate suffered a similar fate to Bush's in 1972, defeated by Ted Kennedy and other Democrats hoping for a simpler, more thorough-going single-payer system. -In 1993, Republican Senators John Chafee (RI) and Bob Dole (KS) introduced a privatized mandate plan called HEART, for Health Equity & Access Reform Today Act, to counter Hillary Clinton's Health Security Act, which they called "Hillarycare." -For many conservatives, an individual mandate for each household was preferable to an employer mandate and discouraged "free riders" that, for instance, took advantage of emergency rooms without buying any insurance. -Ironically, Barack Obama, the man destined to become famously associated with the idea, opposed mandates during his 2008 campaign. Ted Kennedy later regretted his opposition to Nixon's 1972 plan, but his home state of Massachusetts pioneered a mandate plan under Republican Governor Mitt Romney in 2006, that became the basis for the national government's Patient Protection & Affordable Healthcare Act in 2010, aka Affordable Care Act (ACA) or "Obamacare."

Contrast a single-payer system with that of a health insurance mandate.

-Single-payer healthcare is a healthcare system financed by taxes that covers the costs of essential healthcare for all residents, with costs covered by a single public system (hence 'single-payer').[ -A health insurance mandate is either an employer or individual mandate to obtain private health insurance instead of (or in addition to) a national health insurance plan. -Single payer system: state pays for all healthcare costs -Health insurance mandate: compromises that require employers or indiv to purchase insurance from private companies but force companies to cover sick patients

Explain the WTO riots in Seattle in 1999. Identify the potential disadvantage of bilateraltrade agreements as opposed to multilateral.

-The 1992 campaign drew attention to globalization, as did the protests and riots at the 1999 World Trade Organization conference in Seattle. The WTO is the successor to GATT, part of the economic framework the West created after World War II, along with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, to stimulate global capitalism -The rioters were protesting against the WTO's free trade policy and the tendency of rich countries to lend money to emerging markets with strings attached, sometimes mandating weak environmental regulations and outlawing unions. -At the WTO riots, protesters threw bricks through the windows of chains like Starbuck's that they saw as symbolizing globalization. -Looking at America's negative balance of trade (importing more than we export), Donald Trump sees deficits as disadvantageous, though many economists point out that wealthier countries tend to import more than they export because they have more money to spend. Trump would like to get out of broad multilateral agreements and renegotiate bilateral one-on-one "beautiful deals" with each country that favor America. -But economists point out that when one country overplays its hand, other countries ice them out and sign separate agreements with each other (above) — thus the advantage of multilateral pacts. Countries are more willing to lower their own tariffs if it gives them access to multiple countries, not just one

Describe the failure of Clinton's 1993 healthcare initiative.

-The main problem was escalating costs that outran inflation in the rest of the economy. -It's important to distinguish between healthcare insurance and the healthcare itself, which also remains in private hands in America's system and that of most other countries with socialized coverage (Japan and England are exceptions, along with communist countries). Most countries, and all developed nations outside the U.S., at least partly socialize insurance for those of any age. That way everyone pays in and everyone's covered. The overall cost is lower per taxpayer than what American employee/employer combinations pay because, unlike profit-motivated private insurance companies, governments operate the system at cost. T -Bill and Hillary Clinton made the biggest push since Harry Truman (or maybe Richard Nixon) to reform the system, though they didn't end up pushing for universal coverage because they understood that private insurers had enough pull among politicians to block any legislation that would've cost them their business. Even as it was, when the Clintons crafted a patchwork bill in 1993 to address the most serious of the aforementioned problems, insurers filled the airwaves with baloney about how people would no longer get to choose their doctors. -he bill lost in 1994, but a watered-down version passed in 1996 forcing companies to hire formerly sick workers. The hitch was that insurance companies retained the right to charge more. It was a classic case of corporations paying politicians to water down legislation. Insurance companies are among the biggest donors in Washington. -In response to the long-term threat of universal coverage, conservatives at think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation formulated the mandate system.

Identify the Pentagon Papers and their influence on Nixon's administration.

-What derailed Nixon ultimately was his paranoia, and the event that kicked off his most destructive paranoid phase was the leaking of classified materials by Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg was the Julian Assange or Edward Snowden of his day, if you're familiar with recent leakers of classified information. -As an employee of the Rand Corporation and CIA, Ellsberg spent time in Vietnam in the early 1960s and started as a true believer in the cause, even distinguishing himself as unusually courageous in covert combat. But Ellsberg turned against the war, partly because of his wife's influence (they dosed on LSD) and that of journalist Neil Sheehan, and he began to Xerox® classified documents at CIA headquarters. -He sold the material to the New York Times and later the Washington Post, Boston Globe, and L.A. Times-Examiner, with the Times and Post first publishing it in serial form, bit-by-bit. -The Pentagon Papers revealed nothing incriminating about Nixon's handling of Vietnam because they stemmed from the Kennedy and Johnson eras. -showed that the U.S. was in combat in the early 60's before the public knew about it, that LBJ chose to escalate months before the Gulf of Tonkin while lying to the public, and, most damning, the CIA's opinion that the U.S. wasn't really involved in a civil war so much as it was trying to impose its will on a mostly resistant population. "help friend [South Vietnam], but rather to contain China." -Despite Nixon's lack of direct involvement in either leak, the notion that classified materials could be leaked worried Nixon and Kissinger, especially considering how secretive many of their actions were. What about Nixon's treason in sabotaging the 1968 (Paris) peace talks in Vietnam? -The FBI and NSA knew about that. After winning the election, the administration had abused the power of the FBI and IRS to harass opponents on their Enemies List, extort donations, and infiltrate the counter-culture and civil rights movement.

Identify which of the deregulated laws the textbook cites as leaving American taxpayers on the hook, tripling the amount of risk bank investors were allowed to make.

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Describe the misunderstanding over NATO toward the end of the Cold War and why George Kennan feared a second Cold War.

A decade later, Putin wrote that his resentment stemmed from negotiations over NATO. Would the attack-on-one-is-an-attack-on-all alliance that formed in 1949 to counter Soviet expansion continue after the Cold War? If so, would NATO expand to include a unified Germany and Eastern Europe? NATO did expand but, in Putin's view, the West promised that it wouldn't during the negotiations for a Soviet withdrawal from East Germany. For many years, Western leaders insisted that they promised no such thing. Meanwhile, NATO formed various agencies that fostered goodwill with Russia (e.g. NRC), but the country wasn't invited into NATO since the group's main post-Cold War purpose was/is to protect America's European allies from Russia. The result was an alliance that excluded Russia that pressed up directly against its borders, at least in the case of the Baltic States. Diplomat George Kennan (Chapter 13) said that NATO expansion in Eastern Europe was unnecessary to begin with and would only provoke Russia in the future. In his diary, Kennan wrote that it was clear the "Russians would not react wisely and moderately to the decision of NATO to extend its boundaries to the Russian frontiers...I would expect a strong militarization of Russian political life, to the tune of a great deal of historical exaggeration of the danger, and of falling back into the time-honored vision of Russia as the innocent object of the aggressive lust of a wicked and heretical world environment...There will be efforts by the Russian leadership to develop much closer relationships with Iran and China with a view to forming a strongly anti-Western military bloc as a counterweight to a NATO pressing for world domination...Thus will develop a wholly and even tragically unnecessary division between East and West and, in effect, a renewal of the Cold War."

Assess the government reaction (attempted solutions) to the economic meltdown of 2008-9.

After Lehman Brothers' collapse in September 2008 sent markets into their biggest downturn since 1929, the government realized they had to plug the dike by bailing out the others as markets nosedived. Bush signed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act that became known as "the bailout." However, the Federal Reserve's solution wasn't a mere bailout. They didn't just give banks and endangered corporations money, but rather invested in them through the unpopular but successful TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), which also scooped the most toxic assets out of those institutions Meanwhile, the U.S. lent money to foreign banks who'd over-invested in American mortgage-backed securities, though the meltdown has had a ripple effect abroad that's outlasted the worst danger at home (i.e. Eurozone Crisis).

Identify some industries that deregulated in the 1970s and early 80's.

After consulting with economists, he deregulated some industries that had been under the government's control, including transportation (airlines, trucking, rail) and natural gas lines. Communications followed the same trend, triggered by a 1974 anti-trust lawsuit causing the breakup of Ma Bell in 1982-84 into the new "Baby Bells" of Verizon, AT&T, CenturyLink, and others. That opened up telecom for competitive pricing just before the advent of cell phones. Also, credit card companies won the right to charge unlimited interest rates. arter also signed off on legislation allowing for the creation of Business Development Companies (BDC's) that gave small investors a tax-friendly way to invest in private businesses and riskier start-ups than those allowed in the SEC-regulated public stock markets.

Identify the term balkanization and explain why the Europeans and NATO tried to contain fragmentation in SE Europe during the 1990s.

After the Cold War, the area now known as the Former Yugoslavia, or Yugosphere, experienced hyperinflation and broke apart into its traditional divisions. The Balkan Peninsula sits on the traditional fault-line of the Christian and Muslim worlds and tends toward conflict and fragmentation. In fact, the word balkanized has come to mean fragmented. Consequently, when Bosnia and Croatia spiraled into the Yugoslav Wars of 1991-95 (see map), NATO intervened to break up the wars and prevent their spread into northern Europe, ultimately segregating the three religious groups in Bosnia. Sadly, NATO and U.N. forces couldn't prevent numerous incidents of ethnic cleansing (genocide) in the Balkan Wars. Irregular Serb forces murdered 8k Bosniak men and boys in Srebrenica, in July 1995 for instance, the worst violence in Europe since World War II.

Analyze the role of OPEC in the world oil economy.

Arab countries vowed to make the West pay for Israeli occupation of the post-1967 territories. Their punishment took the form of an OPEC-organized oil embargo followed by a price hike announced in Tehran by the Iranian Shah (Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi), from $3 to $12/barrel He announced that the embargo and price hike weren't just about Israel, but also a response to decades of Western wealth generated by exploiting cheap Middle Eastern oil. OPEC is an oil cartel consisting of Middle Eastern, African, and South American countries that agree to limit production and set price basements under which no member can (or is supposed to) sell. As we'll see in the next chapter, the 1973 Oil Embargo sunk the American economy into its worst downturn since the Great Depression as the country struggled to cope with stagflation, a toxic mix of unemployment and inflation caused by oil prices that were already rising even before the Yom Kippur War. America has had several recessions since tied to oil prices, that are in turn often tied to Middle Eastern instability. Oil isn't just fuel for cars, trucks, planes, and furnaces; petroleum is used in asphalt, lubricants, cosmetics, packaging, wax, etc. Most important are oil's important roles in factories and food production (farming, processing, shipping).

Explain how the Democratic Leadership Council, including Bill Clinton, advocated coping with the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s.

Bill Clinton was prominent in the Democratic Leadership Council, a group of "third way" policy wonks who argued that the Democrats should stay competitive by moving to the right (toward the center) and acquiescing in the Reagan Revolution. At its worst, it just meant that Democrats would sell out to corporations and high finance, giving Wall Street virtual control over both parties. Liberals organized an anti-DLC conference in Washington under the motto Because One Republican Party Is Enough. While they advocated slightly higher taxes for the rich than Republicans, the new Democrats appealed as much to the leisured classes as the inner-city poor. A key difference for the new Clinton-led Democrats was their support of free trade. Unions had weakened a lot by the late 20th century and Democrats needed other sources of money, so they turned increasingly to corporate contributions Clinton defined himself as an "Eisenhower Republican," dedicated to balanced budgets, strong markets, and free trade. Clinton's long-term historical role was ratifying Reagan's conservative revolution as a Democrat in the same way that Eisenhower ratified FDR's New Deal as a Republican. Clinton saw globalization (free trade) as good for the American economy and a key to diffusing world conflict, yet the Democrats' support of globalization opened a window of opportunity for Ross Perot, whose protectionist-fueled popularity foreshadowed Donald Trump's nomination among Republicans 24 years later.

Identify and summarize the Powell Doctrine (this overlaps with LO 18-11).

Bush followed the recommendation of the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, to use overwhelming aerial bombardment early and they destroyed Iraq's Air Force as their first order of business. As a Vietnam veteran, Powell formulated his namesake Doctrine aimed at winning wars early and decisively with full public support, while always maintaining exit strategies. doctrine aimed at winning wars early and decisively with full public support while always maintaining exit strategies

Why would a character like Carter win the presidency in the mid-1970s?

By the 1976 election, the public wanted the most anti-Nixon, anti-Vietnam, anti-Watergate type candidate they could find. They found it in Carter. untarnished by Washington politics. Watergate began a trend toward outsider candidates,

Explain how economic changes during Alan Greenspan's reign as Chair of the Federal Reserve helped raise risk in the economy.

By the mid-90's, the emerging Internet fueled explosive growth in the technology sector and better-than-anticipated petroleum discoveries drove oil down to one-fifth the price of the Carter years, adjusted for inflation. A tax hike on the rich from 36% to 39.6% didn't inhibit things either. The government ran annual budget surpluses for the first time in decades. It's easy to see, then, why Clinton would've gone along with Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan, his two Secretaries of Treasury (Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers), bank lobbyists and Republicans in loosening up Wall Street regulations even further than they'd already been loosened by Reagan. Greenspan kept interest rates low, fueling a speculative bubble in real estate. Low interests rates not only encourage borrowing, they also fuel the stock market because comparison shoppers prefer investing in stocks to low-yielding bonds. Between 2001 and '05 the Fed pumped cash into the economy to keep it healthy after the 9/11 attacks and the collapse of the dot.com bubble. Greenspan believed that traders would naturally self-regulate as they pursued their selfish interests. But with the Federal Reserve's role, this wasn't a purely free market economy. Greenspan's system privatized profit while socializing risk because markets either went up or the Fed lowered interest rates to bump them up. Greenspan's high growth but bubble-prone policy ultimately made markets more erratic and he later testified before Congress that his strategy of deregulation had been a mistake.

Explain how enhanced Gerrymandering magnifies partisanship in American politics.

Drawing congressional district boundaries also took on greater importance in American politics in the late 20th century; though, like media bias, this too has a longer history, is impacted by technology, and transcends the conservative resurgence Gerrymandering, named after Revolutionary-era Massachusetts politician Elbridge Gerry's salamander-shaped district (right), is as old as American politics and stems from the problem of how to divide up a state's congressional districts Gerrymandering maximizes one party's capacity to win votes by herding opponents' voters into as few districts as possible, or by spreading and diluting those votes across districts Also, like the media deregulation mentioned in the previous section, enhanced gerrymandering has increased partisanship. Both phenomena divide and sort us. Per the Voting Rights Act of 1965, courts have generally struck down gerrymanders aimed at racial discrimination but sanctioned those aimed at partisan discrimination. Obviously, there's a lot of overlap between racial and partisan discrimination since minorities have tended to vote Democrat since 1964

Discuss why U.S.-Saudi Arabian relations have been complicated over the last century.

During the Cold War, the heavy hands of the U.S. and Soviets had at least served to keep smaller wars from escalating. Now that dynamic was gone with the USSR's collapse and countries like Iran and Iraq no longer felt as though they were on either the American or Soviet leash. Iran threatened shipping lanes out of tiny oil-rich Kuwait, resulting in the U.S. flying the American flag over Kuwait's ships. That led, indirectly, to the USS Vincennes accidentally shooting down an Iranian airliner (Iran Air Flight 655) in 1988, killing 290 passengers. Meanwhile, desperate to pay off debts run up in their 1980-88 war against Iran, Iraq rolled into Kuwait in 1990 looking for oil and port access to the Persian Gulf, claiming American support. Whatever the initial U.S. reaction was, American allies weren't happy with the Kuwait invasion, especially Saudi Arabia (just south of Kuwait), Western Europe, and Japan, who relied on Middle Eastern oil Neither was al-Qaeda, comprised mostly of Saudi Arabians who wanted to repel Saddam themselves, without U.S. help and without the U.S. using the occasion to beef up its Saudi bases The argument over who would have the honors of removing Saddam from Kuwait caused the initial rift between the U.S. and its old ally from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Saudi Osama bin Laden, though no one in America took notice of it at the time. In 1990, Bush 41 employed his New World Order plan of strengthening collective security, hoping to beef up the United Nations (U.N.) now that the Cold War was over and have the U.S. lead the world multilaterally through its allies. He worked overtime on the phone, getting Coalition Forces arrayed against Iraq, though Israel was excluded at Saudi Arabia's insistence

How did the "Watergate Baby" Democrats of 1974 also contribute to the long-term demise of Congressional bipartisan compromise?

Gingrich's reforms seemingly made Congress leaner and more transparent These reforms in the House of Representatives built on earlier attempts by the so-called "Watergate Baby" Democrats elected in the wake of the namesake scandal. They, too, objected to the glacial pace of the House with its seniority-dominated committees and unwritten codes against young Congressmen speaking up and initiating bills or amendments. The 1980s, in retrospect, were the last decade (so far) in American history when politicians of opposing parties socialized together. Newt Gingrich's popularity in the mid-1990s signaled a new type of confrontational politics that demonized opponents and discouraged bipartisanship and compromise of the sort that made Great Society and Reagan Revolution legislation possible in the 1960s and 80's. The key was to hammer home simple messages on selected media that misrepresent the opposition and assume they aren't acting in good faith.

How was it arguably a good thing, even if it was premature in its assessment?

HELPED LOWER CARBON EMISSIONS Premature application of Peak Oil theory so many analysts wrongly thought world's oil reserves insufficient --> CONCERN FOR ALTERNATE ENERGY

Explain how Colin Powell's view of Vietnam shaped the way the U.S. conducted the Persian Gulf War.

Having kicked the Iraqis out of Kuwait during the Gulf War of 1990-91, aka the Persian Gulf War, the U.S. and U.N. had to decide whether or not to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam. At first, Bush encouraged protesters against Saddam to rise up in Iraq, but then he changed his mind. Colin Powell and Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense, opposed the move, hoping Saddam could serve as a bulwark against Iran. Bush 41 explained how overthrowing Saddam would have overstepped the United Nations mandate to simply protect Kuwait. It would have left the U.S. "occupying a hostile country with no viable exit strategy" and they might have had difficulty apprehending Saddam. In most ways, his concerns proved prophetic, the only exception being that U.S. forces were able to apprehend the fugitive dictator during the Iraq War of 2003-2011 when the U.S. decided to overthrow him (more below). For Bush 41, the prevailing historical lesson was Vietnam, where the U.S. had jumped in without thinking through an exit strategy, finding itself in a quagmire.

Analyze and access how liberal and conservative historians vary in their interpretations of Reagan's role in the Cold War. ??

He got flak from right-wing critics for negotiating with the Soviets, but the talks were constructive and saved the U.S. money At home, Reagan's emphasis on defensive weapons turned many liberals into reborn advocates of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). As argued in this Rolling Stone article by William Greider in 1986, SDI might have upset the delicate balance of terror that had, in its own warped way, stabilized the world for decades, preventing major wars The U.S. presidency, in particular, is a powerful office on matters relating to war and foreign policy. Reagan "standing tall in the saddle" (negotiating from strength) and then working constructively with Gorbachev, was an important factor that influenced the demise of the USSR. Reagan supporters emphasize his hard-line stance and arms buildup, while others emphasize the structural weaknesses of the Soviet economy and, to a lesser extent, their disastrous foray into Afghanistan that lowered military morale and triggered a domestic drug epidemic. The truth is no doubt somewhere in between. More so than the wider public, professional historians are skeptical of theories that put too much weight on individual actions. While it's safe to say that most people outside the historical profession over-interpret individual actions to explain cause-and-effect, you can rest assured that Reagan's liberal critics would've blamed him if things had gone awry with the Soviets in the 1980s. Likewise — though the topic isn't nearly as important — conservatives quick to deny Barack Obama any credit for bringing down Osama bin Laden would've heaped scorn upon him had the Navy SEALs' 2011 mission in Abbottabad, Pakistan gone awry for reasons outside his control.

How did American involvement in Afghanistan create future problems for the U.S.?

However, there was a fly in the ointment. The CIA had empowered anti-Western rebels that morphed indirectly into the Taliban over the next twenty years. Wilson later conceded that the U.S. probably should've followed through in Afghanistan more after the Soviets left, developing a better relationship with the militia that took over the country in 1996 and financed al-Qaeda. Osama bin Laden was a veteran of the fight against the Soviets.

Identify Rachel Carson and explain her impact on the environmental movement.

In 1970, Congress strengthened the 1963 Clean Air Act, the second anti-pollution law in world history behind the British. Though they focused on different toxins, the 1963 law was spurred by publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962), that alerted the public to the dangers of pesticides and the chemical industry's policy of misinformation (which, in turn, launched a smear campaign against her that continues today). Carson was perhaps the most influential muckraker since Upton Sinclair, whose Jungle (1906) helped reform the food industry the former marine biologist Silent Spring led to drastic reductions in DDT use in the U.S., a compound used on crops for pests and in homes to reduce mosquitos.

Explain why Donald Trump's presidency might signal a shift in U.S. policy toward Europe and Russia.

In Foreign Affairs, Kennan accurately predicted that, after such events as Russia's Georgian crackdown and Crimean conquest, proponents of NATO expansion would "say that we always told you that is how the Russians are" — thinking that danger justified expansion without realizing that NATO's expansion was what caused it in the first place. This dynamic changed with Donald Trump's election in 2016. Putin rooted for Trump, interfering directly in the election via WikiLeaks and other shenanigans with Trump's encouragement, perhaps on the bet that Trump was willing to withdraw American support for NATO in Eastern Europe or at least support for the new pro-Western Ukrainian government in exchange for Russian cooperation in the war against ISIS in the Middle East or in winding down the Syrian conflict (note: this reasoning is pure conjecture According to the controversial Steele Dossier — funded first by Trump's Republican primary opponents then Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton — Putin hoped that Trump would lift Ukraine-related sanctions in exchange for energy contracts, while the June 2016 Trump Tower Meeting pointed to a quid pro quo of sanction relief for dirt on Clinton Shortly before taking office in January 2017, Trump called NATO "obsolete," though he softened his stance and declared conditional support after he took office as long as other members started contributing a higher share to defense spending. In April 2017, Trump said NATO is "no longer obsolete," but when he spoke at NATO headquarters in Brussels the next month, he avoided underscoring the an-attack-on-one-is-an-attack-on-all commitment of Article 5, instead berating the other leaders for not contributing their fair share. The following month, Trump reiterated American commitment to Article 5.

Explain how the resulting scandal changed future American politics.

In some ways, this loss of innocence was helpful because it showed the free press in action and made the electorate less naïve about politics. I'm presuming, reader, that when you learned a few paragraphs ago that Attorney General Mitchell went to prison, you didn't faint or even gasp, even though he had been the highest presiding law officer in the country. But Watergate also jaded the public and that dovetailed with the Reagan Revolution's anti-government ideology of the 1980s to give many Americans an overly conspiratorial and negative view of politics. In that way, Watergate might have ironically damaged the Democrats more than Nixon's Republicans. It's not healthy for citizens in a democracy to have full faith or fully lack faith in their leaders. In neither case do voters hold politicians accountable or stay engaged themselves.

Identify key new weapons in the Cold War as of the late 1970s.

In the 1970s, each side was testing submarine-based ballistic missiles (SLBM's) and air-launched cruise missiles that could be loaded onto traditional bombers like America's B-52's. The U.S. placed medium-range cruise missiles similar in design to the Nazi's old V-1 "flying bombs" in southern England, loaded onto mobile launch pads in the payloads of trucks parked in underground bunkers. → cheap warheads had a 2k-mile range and could incinerate a small city and burn everyone to death in a ten-mile radius Each side additionally worked on neutron bombs that could wipe out life without destroying property, though the U.S. shelved plans to arm NATO with the new weapons due to public pressure.

Identify the 1973 Yom Kippur War and describe how the Arab reaction to the conflict affected the American economy.

In the 1973 October War, or Yom Kippur War, Israel once again caught wind of an impending invasion but, this time, Prime Minister Golda Meir let the enemy shoot first, fearing that a preemptive strike might compromise American support. Egypt invaded the Sinai Peninsula on the holiest Jewish Holiday, the Day of Atonement, attempting to reclaim the region. The U.S. initially rearmed Israel's beleaguered military but ultimately reigned in its ally, not wanting the situation to escalate into WWIII or to disrupt oil flow from Arab countries that opposed Israel. Nixon and Kissinger saw the Middle East as linked to the broader Cold War, as had their predecessors, but they also presided over a country that no longer could supply all of its own oil. Consequently, they strove to balance the traditional Israeli alliance with improved Arab relations. The U.S. had secured oil concessions in Iraq, Turkey, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia by mid-century. By the early 21st century, Jewish-Palestinian conflict in Israel continued to exacerbate Muslim relations with the West, creating a conundrum for the United States.

Briefly describe the origins of modern Israel and why Jerusalem is a contested city

In the Middle East, Nixon and Kissinger modified America's unconditional support for Israel, also as part of their linkage plan to relax world tensions. Since its creation in 1948, the U.S. viewed Israel as an important democratic ally in the Middle East and source of intelligence regarding its neighbors. -American military contractors profited from building Israel weapons and, similar to England's strategic role in World War II, former Secretary of State Alexander Haig described Israel as our "unsinkable aircraft carrier" in the Middle East. History -ritain controlled Palestine (present-day Israel) after WWI. During that war's Arab Revolt, Britain promised Arabs in the region independence in order to rally their support against the Ottoman Empire (allied with Germany) while simultaneously promising to secure a new Jewish homeland in the Balfour Declaration. After WWII, though, Britain struggled to balance their obligations to both camps. -the deportation of the Exodus 1947 passengers helped fuel the cause of Zionism — the idea that a new state should be created in the region that Jews inhabited during Biblical times. -An odd combination of post-Holocaust sympathy and ongoing anti-Semitism, expressed in anti-immigration policies, buttressed Zionist support among Gentiles after World War II. -In 1947, the United Nations sanctioned Israel's creation out of Palestine, a small portion of the eastern Mediterranean Levantinhabited by a mixture of Palestinian Jews and Arabs. In the resulting 1948 War, Israel took more land, expanding their original territory from 56% to 80% of British Palestine, and much of the remaining Palestinian territory was scattered rather than contiguous -he U.S. increased its support for Israel in the 1960s as Lyndon Johnson coveted Israeli intelligence on Soviet aid to surrounding Arab countries -Jerusalem was the heart of Judea after the Jewish Exodus from Egypt and the epicenter of Jesus' ministry and site of his crucifixion. In the 8th century CE, Muslims built their Dome of the Rock atop the sacred Jewish Temple Mount, the purported site where God created Adam and Eve and Isaac bound his son, and of the old Jewish temples. Jerusalem is also the site of Muhammed's western-most journey and purported ascent into heaven.

How did it succeed and/or fall short?

Luckily, the U.S. merely sank into the Great Recession rather than the aforesaid abyss. Moreover, the rescue came at little cost to the American taxpayer, because the government got the TARP money back and more as the financial crisis passed. Yet, five trillion dollars — almost a third of the country's annual GDP — disappeared from the economy and many Americans lost their jobs (8 million) or homes (6 million) or took pay cuts. The economy slowed as businesses and households began to "deleverage" or "unwind" (pay down) excessive debt. The 2009-19 Stimulus Package helped stave off a worse slowdown but gave way shortly thereafter to Tea Party-inspired budget austerity (belt-tightening). After the 2007-09 meltdown, consumers, companies, and government all struggled to pay down debt during a long, slow, gradual recovery. Many small businesses laid off workers as they could no longer borrow from suddenly conservative, risk-averse banks. Mortgages that were too easy to qualify for a few years prior were now overly difficult, making it more challenging for first-time buyers to come up with a down-payment (often requiring 20% down instead of 10%). Many existing homeowners found themselves "underwater," meaning that their mortgages were more than their homes were now worth. While TARP was successful as an emergency room operation in saving the life of the patient (staving off a collapse of the financial system), it didn't heal the underlying illness or stimulate any dramatic recovery. The government — with both political parties taking money from Wall Street donors — still didn't break up the big banks, limit executive bonuses, or even attach many strings to the bailout

Based on material at the beginning of the chapter and the section titled "Cold War Ends," evaluate Ronald Reagan's record on Soviet relations.

dropped detente instead trying to win the Cold War outright, saying that Soviet economy couldn't keep up with US in another arms race ARMS BUILDUP He was bargaining with power, as the U.S. had modernized its forces in the 1970s-80's and the Soviets were worried that America would develop a missile shield of lasers, the Strategic Defense Initiative. Known informally as "Star Wars," SDI was expensive, didn't work, and lacked popularity, but Soviets took the threat seriously The two leaders most important meeting was the Reykjavík Summit in Iceland in late 1986. The graph also indicates that much of the defense spending in the Reagan era was on things other than nukes since America's overall military spending rose despite cutbacks in missile development. Reagan was also the first president since Nixon to visit Moscow. . He got flak from right-wing critics for negotiating with the Soviets, but the talks were constructive and saved the U.S. money While the Soviets kept up with America in the arms and space race and performed well in Olympic sports and the fine arts, they underestimated the pull of Western consumerism that accelerated after World War II. In other words, they could build ICBMs but had no answer for the Beatles, Levi's® or bootleg VHS tapes. Young people behind the Iron Curtain yearned for American and British pop culture, even as liberal Western college students gravitated toward Marxism. - alarmed the Soviets but didn't cause any changes in military spending, economic problems more fundamental than high military budget PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH - paved the way for most constructive dialogue but no real evidence Reagan and Gorbachev had constructive relationship Gorbachev opened up the press some and allowed for some free-market play in the economy through his perestroika and glasnost programs.

Identify stagflation and explain why it occurred in the 1970s.

Normally prices don't rise during a recession but, by the mid-1970s, the U.S. was mired in stagflation: the unlikely combination of inflation and high unemployment. why -LBJ's Great Society and the lengthy Vietnam War raised the federal deficit, contributing to inflation. So, too, did President Nixon decoupling American currency from the Gold Standard in 1971, due to too many trade surplus nations swapping greenbacks for a dwindling gold supply; h. Caught in between its two mandates — curbing inflation and supporting job growth — the Federal Reserve didn't raise interest rates to stem inflation because they feared that would further weaken the job market. - ongoing energy crisis is what really triggered - OPEC embargoed oil in 1973; US had reached Peak Oil (tried to offset by building Trans-Alaska Pipeline) -prices remained high, and oil is so important to industrialized societies that it can drive up inflation even during a recession, thus the stagflation - Volcker raised interest rates -In a desperate move to stop double-digit inflation, which stood at a staggering 13% by 1980, Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volcker raised interest rates dramatically, slowing the economy because fewer people could borrow, but at least reversing inflation's rise. As the short-term borrowing rate between banks soared to 20%, the nation dipped into its worst recession since the 1930s, this one deliberately caused. -Slamming the brakes on the economy by raising rates also raised unemployment, which Volcker supporters like Milton Friedman claimed hovered naturally around 5% anyway. Unemployment shot up to nearly 11%, above. In truth, the country was in a bind that didn't offer any easy solutions, and Carter sided with the conservative approach of Volcker and Friedman. America took its Volcker chemotherapy, killing inflation cells along with growth and employment cells.

Peak Oil is the concept that production (or extraction) has peaked and gone into decline, and/or will no longer be able to meet future demand. Explain how the Peak Oil idea affected the American economy and foreign policy starting in the 1970s.

OPEC tried an embargo after the 1967 War but it didn't work because U.S. domestic production hadn't peaked. It had by 1973, though, and prices quadrupled by the end of the decade. By then, America was passing into Peak Oil, variously defined as either declining production or domestic production not keeping pace with consumption. American oil wells were maxing out production by 1970 while Eisenhower-era quotas still limited imports to avoid addiction to foreign oil. The embargo's results were higher prices due to changes in supply and demand, rations, long gas lines, and even fistfights at the pumps. Nixon abandoned Eisenhower's limits on oil imports, freeing up supply but spiking world oil prices and ushering in an age of increased military ventures in the Middle East. From 1973 on, the U.S. has continued to support Israel, but more as an intermediary trying to negotiate peace between Israel and its surrounding neighbors. It has also tried unsuccessfully to broker a lasting peace between Palestinian Muslims and Israeli Jews. America also stayed committed to protecting the flow of Middle Eastern oil to itself, Japan, and Europe as its big oil conglomerates began to cede direct control of the precious commodity to nationalized Arab companies. While the Nixon administration propped up Israel with one hand, they militarized Israel's enemies Saudi Arabia and Iran with the other to maintain strong oil alliances - 1973: US oil peaked so OPEC embargo caused prices to quadruple - Higher prices, rations, long gas lines, and fistfights - US supports Israel from 1973 on but as an intermediary trying to negotiate peace - US committed to protecting the flow of ME oil to US, Japan and Europe but conglomerates ceded control to nationalized arab companies e.g. Saudi Aramco - militarized Israel's enemies to maintain oil alliances

Distinguish between the concepts of Bush 41's multilateralism/collective security and Bush 43's unilateralism. What are examples of each?

On the important matter of whether to work with others or go it alone, Bush 41 and George W. Bush (Bush 43) mostly parted ways with their multilateral and unilateral approaches. Bush 43, and the later incarnation of Dick Cheney, his vice-president, mostly preferred the go-it-alone unilateral strategy, with the exception of Britain and Spain, who allied with the U.S. in the Iraq War after experiencing terrorist attacks on their own soil, and Poland. - Even in the case of the Bush 43 team, though, they worked with NATO, the old North Atlantic Treaty Organization set up in 1949 to blunt the communist threat in Europe. NATO has been more active than the U.N. in the War on Terror, used for training in Iraq and part of the coalition that fought in Afghanistan. NATO was also active in the Balkan Peninsula in the 1990s. - Multilateralism: got Coalition Forces arrayed against Iraq - Unilateralism: go-it-alone, Iraq War

Contrast how Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan dealt with the Iranian hostage crisis.

Reagan -Reagan wanted to pay Iranians ransom in the form of Israeli weapons to release more American hostages being held in Lebanon by a group Iran influenced called Hezbollah. -The U.S., though, was formally embargoing Iran and giving weapons to its enemy, Iraq. Reagan was adamant about not negotiating with kidnappers during the 1980 campaign, but many suspected his camp negotiated with Iran even then to delay the release of the earlier, larger and more famous group of 52 hostages we read about in Chapter 20. -There is testimony suggesting that a deal was struck, including that from Reagan/Bush staffer Barbara Honegger and Iranians. After he was no longer under indictment and had no motive to plea bargain, arms dealer Djamshid Hashemi said he participated in the meetings, and Iranian president Abolhassan Bani-Sadr later insisted that they were negotiating with both campaigns, Carter's and Reagan's, and that Reagan's camp even threatened him personally if they didn't accept their deal of delaying the hostage release in exchange for unfreezing Iranian assets in U.S. banks and shipping weapons from Israel to Iran. . -Reagan said that his campaign staff did, indeed, negotiate with Iranians during the election not to delay their release, but rather to strike a deal to get them released as soon as possible. -if he succeeded because he was offering weapons and to unfreeze assets while Carter was only offering to unfreeze assets, that explains why Iran released the hostages when Reagan was sworn in. -Whatever happened, Iran concluded that Reagan would negotiate if they took more hostages, so they subsequently aided Hezbollah terrorists in doing just that in Lebanon in 1984. These were the hostages that Reagan's staff tried to get out by sending American-made weapons from Israel to Iran, leading to the Iran-Contra scandal. To kill two birds with one stone — Middle Eastern hostage release and aid to Central American guerrillas — the Reagan administration used a secret CIA cell to sell weapons to Iran (via Israel) in exchange for the hostages in Lebanon and payments. Jimmy Carter -Iran had been negotiating with Carter for their release earlier that fall and those talks broke down inexplicably, with Carter announcing they wouldn't be released until after the election. -For some reason, maybe just to punish Carter and not because of any deal with Reagan, Iran finally released those hostages twenty minutes after Reagan was sworn in as president in January 1981 as befuddled Americans watched both events simultaneously on a split screen. -Reagan unfroze Iranian financial assets in the U.S. but Carter was also willing to do that. Reagan's purported ploy was to prevent his opponent, incumbent Jimmy Carter, from getting an "October Surprise" boost at the polls just before the election n other words, Reagan's camp might have inadvertently delayed the hostages' release by outbidding Carter and offering a better deal even if that wasn't their specific intention. More likely, they outbid Carter and secured the delay.

Explain what one commentator meant in saying that "Goldwater lost against the New Deal, but Reagan won against the Great Society."

Reagan = conservative approach much different the great society which was liberal and about expanding ppl rights/eliminating racism & poverty

Identify Charlie Wilson and his role in weakening the USSR.

Reagan bounced back after the Iran-Contra Affair by continuing to pursue arms reduction with the Soviets The CIA funded the Mujahedeen resistance in Operation Cyclone (1979-89), one of the largest covert operations in American history. Through the back-channel dealings of Texas Congressman "Good Time" Charlie Wilson, the CIA delivered to insurgents anti-tank missiles and the handheld anti-aircraft artillery (stinger missiles) they needed to shoot down Soviet planes and helicopters The Afghanis' victory ultimately helped bring down the Soviet Union and end the Cold War, though Gorbachev had already decided to withdraw Soviet troops before American aid kicked in.

Explain how Trump and the GOP would like to reform the healthcare system.

Supposedly, Donald Trump's 2016 election meant that the ACA would be dismantled or reformed, as he promised during his campaign that he had a better plan that would cover everyone for cheaper without reducing Medicaid. But unless congressional Republicans really replace and improve upon the ACA rather than just repeal it, they will deprive millions of Americans, including many Trump voters, of their insurance. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that a simple repeal with no replacement will throw 32 million Americans off insurance within a decade and double premiums — numbers that discourage all but the most libertarian conservatives Now, in the words of Senator Lindsey Graham (SC-R), the GOP is like the "dog that caught the car," with no agreed-upon replacement strategy as Trump was bluffing about his secret plan. A month into his first term, the new president conceded that revamping ACA would be "unbelievably complex....nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated." President Trump said that people were now starting to love Obamacare, but "There's nothing to love. It's a disaster, folks." Congress wrote a repeal bill but it didn't pass in December 2017, Congress passed a tax reform bill that removed the mandate as of 2019. Stay tuned; the story of the Affordable Care Act is far from over. For now, the insurance exchanges and subsidies for poor subscribers remain even without the mandate. Whatever happens next, the key for voters will be whether or not some solution can at least bend the curve on medical inflation (premiums and provider costs) while maintaining quality care and shielding families from bankruptcies and premature deaths.

Why does our textbook argue that Medicare is more "socialist" than Obamacare?

The Affordable Care Act version mandates free preventive care to lower costs, caps insurance company profit margins at 15% (20% for smaller companies) to bring costs more in line with other countries, prevents insurance companies from capping annual payouts to patients, and, at least through 2016, taxes those in the wealthiest bracket an extra 3.8% on investments (capital gains) and 0.9% on income to pay for expanded Medicaid coverage. There's also a 40% excise tax on premium "cadillac" insurance plans for the wealthy. Around half of those who gained insurance coverage through the ACA did so through these subsidized Medicaid expansions. Insurance companies can't cut off sick patients/customers, but the young and healthy have to buy insurance to help balance that out. Premiums for the elderly can't be more than 3x higher than those for the young. Also, companies with over fifty full-time employees have to provide insurance. The ACA also taxes insurance companies and medical equipment makers The plan is often mistaken for socialism by conservative critics, but at their core mandates preserve health insurance for the free market by forcing individuals and companies to buy insurance rather than the government providing it for them. That's the whole point. It is partly socialist because of the taxes and Medicaid expansion, and customers below the poverty line are subsidized on the exchanges. However, conservative think tanks pioneered the idea to stave off a full-blown socialist alternative whereby taxes provide insurance for everyone the way they do for those over 65 with Medicare Plans A and D or for some veterans with Veteran's Affairs (VA). What is also socialist in the current and pre-Obamacare system is that employers who subsidize healthcare can deduct that from their taxes, meaning that all taxpaying Americans, including ones that aren't covered, help subsidize those that are covered at larger companies. The widely popular Medicare is also socialist insofar as taxpayers fund a government-administered plan

What are the main features of Dodd-Frank?

The Dodd-Frank legislation that followed subjected the derivatives market to the same transparency as the regular stock market and forced stricter capital requirements on the banks, with twice as much of their cash safe on reserve (20% not invested, as opposed to 10%) and leverage ratios dropped back down to 16.66:1 as opposed to 30:1. also created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to help protect citizens against fraud. but banks in charge of overseeing market, hurt small businesses; also requires companies reveal ratio of pay btwn CEOs and average employees but doesn't have a limit

Explain how the Great Recession impacted the two political parties (Republican & Democrat).

The Great Recession also caused a class conflict within the GOP between business-oriented "Wall Street" Republicans and "Main Street" Tea Partiers/Freedom Caucus who resented banks and corporate power despite their social conservatism and dislike for financial (or any government) regulation. During the 2016 campaign, Democrat Hillary Clinton supported reinforcing Dodd-Frank but WikiLeak videos of her at Goldman Sachs fundraisers revealed her suggesting to bankers that Wall Street had been simplistically scapegoated for the crisis as a matter of political necessity (though she stuck with her commitment to Dodd-Frank). Unlike Tea Partiers, democratic socialist Bernie Sanders wanted to regulate and reform Wall Street, but he shared their opposition to the bailout and had voted against TARP as a Vermont senator Many of the more populist economic Republicans supported Donald Trump in his candidacy as he argued that his own participation in high finance gave him insight into corruption. Trump promised to "drain the swamp" of lobbyists, especially those from Goldman Sachs that he said corrupted Republican rival Ted Cruz and Democratic opponent Clinton. However, once he won the presidency, Trump followed in the footsteps of preceding administrations by filling his cabinet with Goldman Sachs alumni

Identify the Reagan Democrats and how they helped build a new GOP coalition that propelled Reagan to victory in 1980.

The Misery Index (stagflation) as economists came to call it, set the stage for Republican victory by Californian Ronald Reagan over Carter in 1980. The actor and former liberal Democrat had turned to the right in the early Cold War and become governor of California in 1966 -For the first time since the 1930s, Republicans managed to pry away a significant chunk of blue-collar workers. Many of these Reagan Democrats wanted to restore military pride or, in the case of some Christians, opposed the Democrats' pro-choice abortion platform. -The Supreme Court legalized abortion in Roe v. Wade (1973). In general, Reagan tapped into public skepticism about government agencies and programs launched under Johnson in the 1960s. -Reagan Democrats: traditionally Democratic voter in US (esp. white working-class Northerners or Midwesterners) who defected from their party to support Ronald Reagan -Reagan was continuing with a variation on the GOP's Southern Strategy, begun under Nixon to siphon off the racists left over from the Democrats' endorsement of civil rights in the 1960s. -Republicans gained control of the South, fulfilling LBJ's prophecy about the Civil Rights movement, partly through various Southern Strategies on race, partly through their general limited government philosophy (including cracking down on welfare abuse among all races), and partly through their new alliance with Christian Fundamentalists. -Fundamentalism had been growing since the 1970s and abortion, legal since Roe v. Wade in 1973, gave Republicans an excellent wedge issue to galvanize their alliance around, along with Christian nationalism. Consequently, many Reagan Democrats, North and South, Protestant and Catholic, crossed the aisle and voted GOP for the first time, regardless of their economic class. -Economically, they were either willing to sacrifice their interests on behalf of outlawing abortion and strengthening the military or were convinced that helping the wealthy would ultimately create working-class jobs through trickle-down economics (more below on Reaganomics).

Compare and contrast Nixon's situation in 1972-74 with that of Donald Trump more recently.

The Saturday Night Massacre and tension between the president and Justice Department is in the news lately because of speculation that Donald Trump might fire prosecutor Robert Mueller (R), Special Counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, or at least try to get Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein (R) to fire him. Senator Lindsey Graham (SC-R) warned that firing Mueller would be the "beginning of the end" of Trump's presidency. In an interview with NBC's Lester Holt, Trump claimed responsibility for firing Mueller's successor as FBI Director, James Comey (R), for failing to let go of the Russia investigation (Comey's words), -exposing Trump to obstruction charges and contradicting the previous day's official line that they were upset that Comey had treated Hillary Clinton unfairly the previous summer in an email server investigation. Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani later said Trump fired Comey because he refused to say that he wasn't a target in the investigation. -Trump's team argues that it wasn't obstruction because Comey, by his own testimony, wasn't intimidated and that they were just fighting back, but it's illegal to pressure an investigator to exonerate a suspect. -So far, though, instead of firing Mueller or Rosenstein as Nixon did Cox, Trump is trying to discredit the investigators (and, by extension, the U.S. intelligence community), claim independent control over the DOJ (citing the precedent of AG Bobby Kennedy protecting POTUS John), and deflect attention elsewhere (i.e. Hillary Clinton, Seth Rich conspiracy theories, or FBI "deep state" corruption, framing, or incompetence in the Iraq War run-up). -Trump currently has more media and congressional advocates than Richard Nixon did early in the Watergate probe, with most of the GOP trying to deflect Russiagate

Identify and define major legislation like TARP and Dodd-Frank.

The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) is a program of the United States government to purchase toxic assets and equity from financial institutions to strengthen its financial sector that was passed by a Democratic Party controlled Congress and signed into law by Republican Party President George W. Bush on October 3, 2008. It was a component of the government's measures in 2008 to address the subprime mortgage crisis. TARP successful but didn't heal underlying illness; Gov't didn't break up big banks or limit executive bonuses and ringleaders didn't go to prison TARP → gov invested in banks

Why would critics compare her to Hitler, Stalin, and Mao?

The chemical mitigated typhoid epidemics in Europe during WWII by reducing lice. Since malaria-carrying mosquitos continue to wreak havoc worldwide, critics like Breitbart have grouped Carson with mass-killers Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. However, the U.S. ban didn't extend to other nations and, in any event, Carson understood the need for chemicals and to control pests. She didn't call for DDT's elimination but rather more judicious use, so that mosquitos wouldn't develop resistance which, in fact, they later did in some areas.

Explain how we still feel the impact of the Democrats reversing their stance on race

The political parties' shift on race had long-term implications, making it difficult for the Democrats to win in the South and challenging for the GOP to cast a wide demographic net in the 21st century despite minority candidates and modest appeal among minority voters attracted to the party's cultural conservatism. Historian Gary Wills put it best in 1975: "American politics is the South's revenge for the Civil War."

Analyze the connection between the 1988 campaign and minimum mandatory sentencing.

The post-Reagan era kicked off with what seemed then like a depressing campaign — one that served mainly to underscore the superficiality of media coverage and tendency in democracies for campaigners to manipulate voters by appealing to their worst instincts. That wasn't because either of the candidates was bad. The 1988 race pitted Reagan's VP, George H.W. Bush against Democrat Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts. Dukakis led midway through the summer, but Bush's media consultant Roger Ailes (Chapter 16, future head of FOX News) and campaign manager, the forenamed Lee Atwater, came up with an ad attacking Dukakis' weakest point besides his unfortunate photo-op in a tank. As governor of Massachusetts, Dukakis oversaw a prison furlough program that allowed prisoners out on temporary weekend probations. One of the convicts, Willie Horton, broke into a home and raped a woman. Horton was black and a group called Bush for Americans flooded the airwaves with his mug shot (left), asking viewers if they wanted someone soft on crime. Since such shenanigans are typical of political campaigns, none of this would normally be worth mentioning. However, like the 1964 campaign during the escalation of the Vietnam War, the 1988 campaign had a lasting impact that transcended just deciding the next president. Fellow Democrats learned from Dukakis' Willie Horton fiasco and vowed to be tougher on crime In a case of bipartisan agreement, they "crossed the aisle" and by and large supported Republican policies of tougher sentencing (Democrats had always supported increased funding for staffing more police). Consequently, American prisons filled with small-time offenders through mandatory minimum sentencing, whereby judges didn't have the discretion to lower sentences, with the proportion of African American prisoners growing substantially.

What fundamental theory behind TARP would you imagine that both Tea Partiers and Bernie Sanders rejected?

Unlike Tea Partiers, democratic socialist Bernie Sanders wanted to regulate and reform Wall Street, but he shared their opposition to the bailout and had voted against TARP as a Vermont senator

Explain what Nixon meant when he said that he didn't become president to "fix an outhouse in Peoria."

While the environmental/conservation movement had a long history, it wasn't really until the Nixon era that Americans began to think seriously about the constraints of energy supply. But the president himself was more known for his interest in diplomacy than domestic issues like the environment. Nixon once said he wasn't in the White House to "fix an outhouse in Peoria," meaning that he preferred to focus more on foreign than domestic policy.

Identify the concept of systemic risk and whom it potentially impacts.

in finance, systemic risk is the risk of collapse of an entire financial system or entire market, as opposed to risk associated with any one individual entity, group or component of a system, that can be contained therein without harming the entire system The new financial products were too complicated for many bankers, regulators, analysts, and professional investors to grasp, either. Complexity wasn't the core problem, though; greedy investors gambled too much borrowed money on the housing market, creating systemic risk that threatened the whole economy Consideration of systemic risk and the relationship between Wall Street and the rest of the economy is an important concept to consider as a citizen and voter because it will impact what financial policies you will favor going forward. - saving the rest of us - paychecks bounce, cash machines freeze up, panic, cash shortages, breakdown of confidence Because of systemic risk, if big banks would've failed due to a sudden market correction in real estate, paychecks would've bounced and cash machines would've frozen up in an instant, causing a cascading effect of panic, cash shortages, and breakdown of confidence. Undoubtedly, there would've been at least some rioting, looting, and violence. These would've been the short-term effects, along with a near-total stock market crash.

Discuss Jimmy Carter's record on foreign policy. What were the highlights and lowlights?

the one big feather in Carter's foreign policy cap was negotiating peace between Israel and its most formidable rival, Egypt. Carter built on the Shuttle Diplomacy initiated by Henry Kissinger in the early 1970s, whereby the U.S. no longer supported Israel unconditionally but rather tried to broker peace between Israel and its neighbors. -the Soviets invaded Afghanistan to support communist forces in a civil war there against the jihadist Mujahideen. In response, Carter embargoed agricultural trade, boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics, and issued a doctrine stating America's intention to protect its oil interests in the Middle East. However, nothing could compel the Soviets to relent in their misguided quest to conquer Afghanistan, and arms reduction talks stalled. -West of Afghanistan, resentment had been building in Iran against the U.S. ever since 1953 when the CIA overthrew their socialist democracy and replaced it with a dictatorship (the Shah) that sold the West cheap oil. -When fundamentalist revolutionaries took over the country in 1978, the Shah escaped to Mexico, then sought cancer treatment in the U.S. Granting the Shah exile was thestraw that broke the camel's back, and the new leaders seized the American embassy in Tehran, capturing diplomats and Marines in the process. - Highlights: improved Chinese relations, negotiating peace btwn Israel and Egypt; invited both to Camp David for a retreat; Camp David Accords-- Israel swapped Sinai Peninsula for Egypt's recognition of Israel's existence In the Camp David Accords, Israel agreed to swap the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for Egypt's recognition of Israel's right to exist. The two have been at peace ever since, though the democratic revolution in Egypt in 2011 threatened the relationship. - Lowlights: detente with Soviets unraveled, arms race renewed, USSR invaded Afghanistan (and Carter embargoed agricultural trade and Moscow Olympics), Granted the Shah exile and new leaders seized embassy in tehran and captured diplomats and Marines (Iranian Hostage Crisis), military rescue failed and helicopter crashed killing 8

How was the world, in some ways, an even more dangerous place?

their world was frightening and challenging, but simpler.

What does the textbook suggest are some of the causes (other than increased incarceration) for dropping crime rates?

there are other factors impacting serious crime, including better surveillance (especially in the post-9/11 era), GPS-enhanced phone records, more thorough cross-checking of databases with small-time criminals having already entered their fingerprints, and broken windows strategies to reduce serious crime by curbing petty crime and cleaning up garbage. Studies and experience have shown that improving physical surroundings (garbage, graffiti, broken windows, etc.) and strictly enforcing minor crimes lowers the rate of serious crimes like murder, rape, and armed robbery.