Ashlyn's AP Government and Politics Blog: May 2015

Political Issues Project

May 31st 2015

The Death Penalty

Summary:

In the article The Death Penalty Ends in Nebraska, the death of Omaha police officer Kerrie Orozco is explained to the readers because not too long ago it would have been held up as the sort of crime that the death penalty was meant for. Only days after Kerrie Orozco's death, lawmakers in Nebraska voted to ban capital punishment forever. The state's unicameral Legislature has a majority of Republican's, but in the final vote, overriding a veto from the day before by Gov. Pete Ricketts a Republican was passed in a 30-19 vote. That override made Nebraska the first predominantly Republican state to ban the death penalty in over 40 years, and the 19th state overall. The article then evaluates the vote and why people voted the way they did. The article explains how Nebraska's vote was passed by a mix of Republicans, Democrats, and independents, many who were newly elected to their positions in office. It states that many people of all political ideologies have recognized that capital punishment is a heinous and unjustifiable practice and if that can happen where the majority party is Republican, it can happen anywhere else.

Analysis:

This article, just recently written on May 28, 2015, was released from The New York Times explaining Nebraska's decisions made on May 27 in the final vote to ban the death penalty for good. Throughout the article the readers will get to here about a case which back before now would have been an acceptable crime worthy enough to deserve the death penalty. Statistics are given about the death penalty and how it has reached a new low of supporters at 56% in a survey that was done by the Pew Research center released in April. No one has been executed in Nebraska since 1997 but there are currently 10 men on the state's death row. As well as in a poll conducted by A.C.L.U. only 30 percent off people would support capital punishment. Some of the lawmakers voted for the ban said that it was the lengthy, costly capital appeals process that convinced them to go against the executions. There were also others who had moral objection, or concerns about if the state could procure the lethal-injection drugs that were necessary. The article also informs readers that this is the 3rd time Nebraska lawmakers have tried to end capital punishment; a 1979 ban and a 1999 moratorium were both vetoed. This article showed that Nebraska has had mixed views on the death penalty practice for a while now, since they tried to ban it back in 1979. I, myself, have mixed feelings on the subject whether the death penalty should be kept or banned. I think that the death penalty has done a lot of good for convicted criminals but then again it has troublesome since wrongly convicted criminals have been put to death through the use of executions. The death penalty is a sensitive subject to many individuals and comes with both positive and negative connotations.

Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/28/opinion/the-death-penalty-ends-in-nebraska.html?_r=0
Photo: http://stevedeace.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/7-27-13deathpenalty.jpg
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucLguOZhonQ

Unit 5
May 12th 2015

Public Policy Schools

Summary:

In the fall of 2013, Georgetown University announced that there was going to be a creation of a new school of public policy. This was all able to be done thanks to an alumnus donation of $100 million. In October of 2013, the University of New Hampshire announced that the school would use a $20 million gift/donation to launch a public policy school of its own. The first of the public policy schools were founded in response to the creation of New Deal government agencies in the early 1930s. "They trained many people who went into government and did good things," said John DiIulio, who runs the Fox Leadership Program at the University of Pennsylvania and was the first director of President George W. Bush's White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. He said that their training was a virtue of those schools, "they wired the house of American bureaucracy." The institutions missions began to change in the 1970s, when the Ford Foundation issued multimillion-dollar grants to eight universities, including Yale, Duke, and the University of Michigan. When John J. DeGioia, President of Georgetown University, announced the university's new policy school, he explained that "the availability of massive data to provide new analytic tools have resulted in an invaluable opportunity for our university." It has shown that many schools have began to "mishmash" the academic departments from which their faculty members are apart of. Those such as political science, economics, and sociology. The article then states that "those people may have no more or less interest than colleagues from their home departments in shaping actual policy." The article ends with the statement of "If policymakers ignore policy school research or can't understand it, what can policy professors and graduates possibly accomplish?" Wrapping up the whole article asking what is really the point/motives of these schools nowadays and how do they plan to solve this current issue.

Analysis:

It has been said that there is a critical need to reexamine public policy and it's impact on people's lives. The challenges we now face in our world are more complex compared to before. Challenges and issues which include things like climate change, demography, and budget problems. It requires Universities to seek for more ways that they can harness resources around it and expand the schools capacity so that they are able to respond to these complex challenges that we are facing. Fulfilling missions about continuing to do good. It is no longer just about studying, learning, and teaching, but it is about the impact and effect we can have on the world. Problems are not a package deal that all look the same. People, such as faculty members, are needed to have opposing opinions and viewpoints to be able to make good policy. The colleges will be bringing experts from many different areas of study to come together to find solutions to specific issues that have risen. Anyone working in the businesses like sociologists, lawyers, politicians, people from different walks of life assist policy making by contributing their different viewpoints. The key to policy formation is the use of evidence, the data that is available is exceeded expectations and data analysis is becoming an important skill to obtain. It is expected that schools like Georgetown University will have a trans-formative impact on the study and implementation of public policy. So here it is stated that, yes, there is a lot of benefits in public policy schools but there may be some drawbacks. I think that the implementation of the public policy schools in Universities is a good idea and will have a positive impact in the world. This article fits into our current unit of study by dealing with policies and public policy is a key subject in unit five.