Juliet Blog

“Despite environmental issues becoming high profile in the 1970s, and despite several highly publicized climate talks, summits, conferences, etc. very little concrete progress has been made” This shows that there needs to be a more unified message sent through citizens’ activism to politicians about the importance of implementing policies that address the serious issues of climate change. I chose this quote because it underscores the relative success that the nuclear disarmament movement had in stemming the proliferation of nuclear weapons through the coercive power of citizens’ voting power worldwide. Because the environmental movement is relatively new, it has yet to achieve the repertoire that could see significant changes in policies that could slow climate change. Indeed, much could be said for the rash of activism the movement did in recent years which culminated with the Climate Strike last September that saw over 6 million activists, mostly young people, take to the streets. Th...

‘[G]overnment running schools is not “justifiable in its own right in a predominantly free enterprise society.” ‘ -Milton Friedman I chose this quote because it exemplifies how ill-conceived ideas can be used to demolish sound ideations in tpolicy-making process that were implemented for the ‘greater good’ in society. The New Right and the New Democrats alike advocated for the government to get out of the business of education and that it should instead be privatized. For example, the use of vouchers as a form of purchasing education. However, Head Start under the Early Childhood Education and Care  (ECEC) which was created in the 1960’s was created to ensure that disadvantaged groups of children who would have otherwise fallen through the cracks of the educational system get an early advantage in the educational process. Therefore, the ushe e of vouchers along with the privatization of education would reverse the very improvement that the government programs like Head Start ...

“It has become impossible for elected officials to ignore the simple fact that Social Security is a solution and not a problem, and that the only thing wrong with it are that benefits are too low.”-Lawson, (Jilani, 2016). I chose this quote because it highlights that the misconception that government officials hold on Social Security and its worth to the common man gets in the way of them making sustainable and substantive changes to the program so it can keep up with the time and be a long-term benefit to those who are reliant on it for their economic survival. Social Security was implemented by President Franklin Roosevelt's administration as a part of the New Deal that was created in response to the Great Depression in the 1930s. As such, it was rightly placed under the government's mandatory spending part of the budget and that has saved it from the usual political meanderings which can see programs slashed or be eliminated according to the political climate. However...

[I]f the Federal Reserve can literally create trillions of dollars out of thin air to bail out Wall St. and corporations, why can it not do the same for healthcare? This quote was chosen to show that governmental policy-making is usually skewed towards the interest of big corporations! Healthcare has been a volatile topic for many years and have been the crux on which many presidential candidates have hung their proverbial hats. In recent years, during President Clinton’s tenure in the White House, he introduced a universal healthcare plan which failed miserably based on its complexity. The ACA was the latest remedy proposed in the ongoing debate for a more universal healthcare system. However, the problem with requiring individuals to purchase healthcare ties into the problem of affordability. The argument against the ACA is that of ‘uncompensated care’. However, under social contract the government depends on the individual tax payers as the major source of its funding and, as such, ...

   “[W]e all contribute to government, whether we engage through voting or other civic involvement, or whether we simply go to work and pay our taxes. ”     I chose this quote because it speaks to the irony and inequity that exist in the American society starting at the federal level.     Big corporations are able to avoid paying their fair share of taxes through ‘loopholes’ that are provided by the federal government. Two of the main strategies for companies evading taxes are through ‘offshore’ tax havens and accelerated depreciation which allows companies to write off the expense of machinery and other equipment before their worn out period. Increasingly,   there is evidence of multi-billion dollar corporations having a tax code of zero dollars. Also, through their use of lobbyists, companies are able to ‘curry favor’ with members of Congress to introduce tax codes that are favorable to their bottom line. So…where does this leave the ...

“Power itself, moreover, derives not only from position, meaning actors’ ability to wield power, but also from purpose, since actors’ ideas and discourse about how to wield power might reinforce or undermine the power they derive from their position, depending on the responses of their audience to their stated purposes.” -Vivien Schmidt I chose this quote because it explains how a social movement develop by actors who are seen as relatively powerless can ultimately gain success for their stated grievance in the way they generate, frame, and present their claim in a public forum. In the chapter we see where Discursive Institutionalism is explained as logically communicating the way in which political actions through institutions are arrived at to make the policy it espouses as legitimate. Unlike the three other objective ways of explanation, the rational which sees institutions as good or not, their agents as influential, and their interest as objective; the historical which sees in...