American politics: history, institutions, and contemporary issues

American Politics

The three features of the American political system that anyone would try to control would be, and this of course is speculation, but I will give the reasons why: the U.S. Supreme Court; the U.S. Senate (two members are elected from each state in the union); and the U.S. House of Representatives (435 members are elected based on population density in all 50 states; in other words, states with a big population like California, have more Representatives because they have more people to represent; a state like North Dakota has very few because the population is very scant).

Supreme Court: QUESTION ONE: First, why any one try to control the U.S. Supreme Court? The Court is very powerful, and makes legal decisions that affect the economy, the society, the workers, the health care, the environment, and more. The members of the Court are very well protected by a high level of security, and if someone tried to approach a justice on the Court, there would be a very big fine and there would be imprisonment for such an act. And what if a justice was actually corrupt and was willing to take a bribe to vote a certain way on a legal case before the Court?

It is highly unlikely that a justice would be corrupt, because it takes many years as a judge at many different levels of the judicial system to get nominated by a president to the High Court, and if that jurist were corrupt, it probably would have been seen earlier. Also, when a judge is nominated for a seat on the High Court, the U.S. Senate has to hold hearings to investigate the nominee before the nominee is confirmed, and the FBI has to check the nominee's background very closely to see if there is any reason that person should not be confirmed.

U.S. Supreme Court QUESTIONS TWO, THREE, FOUR AND FIVE: Which group has most chance to exercise control over the Court? The president of the U.S. has "influence" on the Court because he nominates the justices; so if a president is conservative, as George W. Bush is, he can nominate a conservative judge which will render decisions that reflect Bush's political views. A recent case in point is the right of government workers to become "whistleblowers" when they see something illegal or terribly wrong and report it to their superiors. The Supreme Court recently ruled that "20 million public employees do not have free-speech protections for what they say as part of their jobs," according to the Associated Press (Holland, 2006). The vote on the Court was 5-4, with the two Bush appointees voting to take away whistleblowing rights for public employees. So, Bush got what he wanted, had his influence felt, in order to take away the rights of government workers at all levels to speak out to their supervisors on the job about corruption that they witnessed.

The president "exercises control" over the Court's decisions by putting the people in there that reflect the way he sees things. The specific groups that helped to elect Bush (conservative Christians, conservative business people, conservative and moderate citizens) get what they want when conservative justices are nominated. The justices don't receive any real financial or job "benefits" because they are appointed for life. They have an effect on California law because any federal law is able to trump a state law decision; in the case of the whistleblower decision, Los Angeles County prosecutor Richard Ceballos was a whistleblower and he had written a memo saying a county sheriff's deputy had lied, and he was demoted for doing that, and the Court ended up saying it was ok to demote him because he shouldn't have exposed the lie as a whistleblower.

U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives (U.S. Congress): QUESTIONS TWO, THREE, FOUR & FIVE: The social group that has the most control over Congress is that group of people called "lobbyists" and anyone with a "special interest" that has money to give to a member of Congress. Not all money is illegal, of course, since politicians running for office need money to pay for their campaigns. But some money given to members of Congress is given illegally and influence is given illegally. And the benefits that the lobbyists receive is money and power and free trips and a life of luxury, in most cases.

Take lobbyists, for example. The lobbyist is hired by a company or an organization; his or her job is to go to Congress and find members who will vote for the things that lobbyist's boss wants to have done through legislation. Jack Abramoff is a lobbyist, and he has pleaded guilty to "fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials"; he pleaded guilty, according to the Washington Post, in a deal that provides him with a lesser sentence if he will tell prosecutors inside information about others involved in his schemes.

According to the Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia, Abramoff was not the only lobbyist involved in this "Indian lobbying scandal," in fact Ralph E. Reed (the former head of the Christian Coalition), Grover Norquist and Michael Scanlon were also working with Native Americans and with Abramoff. "Abramoff and Scanlon grossly overbilled their clients, secretly splitting the multi-million-dollar profits," the Wikipedia story explains.

The following information answers the questions: which group has control over Congress; what benefits do they receive; and how do they do this at the national level in the state of California?

In the course of the scheme, the lobbyists are accused of illegally giving gifts and making campaign donations to legislators in return for votes or support of legislation," according to Wikipedia's story. U.S. Congressmen Bob Ney (Republican from Ohio) and an aide to U.S. Representative Tom Delay have been "directly implicated." Delay has resigned from his position as House Majority Leader because of several other scandals he has been involved with. What Abramoff did, among many other illegal things, was to become a lobbyist for the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.