Blog Post 2.5 "Trump Administration So Far"

1. There have been 53 separate rules that they have completely undone and 32 more that are in the rollback process.
2. American oil output has soared to the point where net imports of crude oil and petroleum products are at their lowest level, and natural gas output has soared to record highs.
3. Trump's administration has allowed states to put an employment requirement on Medicaid.
4. In Arkansas, nearly 20,000 people lost insurance.
5. Tax cuts have increased the federal deficit the most.
6. The SEC has gotten way more lax about its enforcement of regulations about the stock market, and the stock market practices have gotten riskier.
7. The banking industry has been way more profitable because of relaxed regulations, but they have gotten riskier.
8. Trump has canceled DACA, made it difficult to get H-1B visas for skilled technology workers, put in place a travel ban.
9. cut down by 80%
10.  Trump has doe 46 judges in 3 years, while Obama did only 55 over eight years.

Blog Post 2.4 "Trump & Social Media"

1. Trump has spent $1.6 million on Facebook about the impeachment process.
2. He is targeting his base rather than the voters who live in the states that will decide the outcome of the 2020 elections.
3. The ads all say that the impeachment is a political plot against the president by Democrats, and they all push conspiracies.
4. Political groups spent $284 million on Facebook during the 2018 midterm elections.
5. 30% of Trump's advertising is about impeachment.
6. Boomers
7. States that could help him win the 2020 election like Wisconsin and Michigan.
8. Trump is basically aligning himself against anyone who might oppose him, Democrat or Republican.
9. Trump has $50 million more than the Democrat with the most money.
10. Warren is dedicating her ads to states with a lot of people because she's list-building.

Blog Post 2.3 "ERA is Back!"

1. The "Democrats took control of both the House and Senate in Virginia on Tuesday."
2. The Equal Rights Amendment proposed in 1972 would guarantee equal rights regardless of sex.
3. When it was originally proposed 35 states ratified it, and recently Nevada and Illinois ratified it in 2017 and 2018, respectively.
4. There needs to be three-fourths of the states to ratify the amendment, which is 38 states.
5. Congress sent it to the states to be ratified with a seven-year deadline.
6. Virginia got close to ratifying the ERA last year, but the GOP-controlled legislature ultimately rejected it.
7. Congress can literally just vote to move the deadline lol.
8. The current 27th amendment, which gives pay raises to Congress, was held off for 190 years until it was actually ratified. If that can get ratified, then the ERA can.

Blog Post 2.2 "2020 Election Check In"

1. The Liberty and Justice Celebration dinner is important to candidates because it is historically the largest gathering of voters in Iowa, and it marked the beginning of a final push to the caucuses at a moment when support for a number of candidates has seen major shifts.
2. 29% of voters are still undecided on who to choose, and 20% of voters know for certain who they will caucus for.
3. Mayor Pete and Elizabeth Warren have seen a large increase in support in recent Iowa polling, and Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have seen a decrease in support.
4. Pete Buttigieg says, "Because I believe these things - not based on my age, but based on my experience."
5. Elizabeth Warren says, "I'm running a campaign from the heart."
6. Sanders hosted a watch party for his supporters rather than buy seating.
7. February 3, 2020, is the caucus date.

Blog Post 2.1 "Impeachment"

1. Clinton had high approval ratings and his party supported him.
2. For the Clinton impeachment, the inquiry was founded "on the findings in Starr's report." However, for Trump's impeachment, the Democrats are building their case "in real time, which makes it harder to predict where the public will ultimately land."
3. Public opinion on the Clinton impeachment declined leading up to the formal announcement in December.
4. Republicans lost seats in the 1998 midterm elections because of the impeachment.
5. In the impeachment inquiry, 31 Democrats voted in favor of impeachment, but in the actual impeachment vote, only 5 Democrats voted for impeachment.
6. 10 Republican senators voted to support Clinton.
7. Deomcrats should consider that like the Democrats during the impeachment inquiry process of Clinton, many Republicans will view the inquiry as a purely political attack, and there will be overwhelming support for Donald Trump.
8. Starr's investigation into Clinton was seen as completely politically driven, and the Republicans relied solely on his findings. The Democrats looking to impeach Trump don't have a completed investigation that they are basing their inquiry off. Instead, new evidence keeps coming out about Trump.
9. "The allegations against Clinton were personal and moral, and the conduct at issue in Trump's case is much more closely linked to his power as president."

Blog Post 1.6 "Impeachment & the Public"

1. The most basic finding of the polls that have been released in the last week is that there has been an increase in support for impeachment of the president, but the majority of Americans still do not support impeachment even if they disapprove of Trump's actions.
2. The YouGov/Economist poll found that 52% of Americans said it is inappropriate for the president to request a foreign government to open an investigation into a potential political opponent.
3. 62% said that it is inappropriate for the president to threaten withholding foreign aid to a country if it refuses to "take an action which personally benefits the President."
4. The Quinnipiac poll found that there was a 5% point increase in support for impeachment overall and a 12% point increase among Democrats.
5. This poll was conducted from the day before the story of the call with the Ukrainian President broke until the day before Nancy Pelosi announced the impeachment inquiry.
6. None of the polls account for the following: changes in public opinion following Pelosi's announcement of an official impeachment inquiry, public reactions to the memo of the phone call between Trump and Zelensky, the testimony of Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire before Congress.
7. 32% of Americans are not paying attention to these developments.
8. Warren and Biden are pretty much tied at the lead.

Blog Post 1.5 "Congress and POTUS"

1. Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the House.
2.  President Trump has allegedly attempted to have Ukraine interfere in the 2020 presidential election.
3. Nancy Pelosi's goal is to pass laws that make clear when and how a sitting president could be indicted once Trump is no longer in office.
4. Pelosi said that the thing harming Congress's ability to investigate the Executive Branch is the Justice Department's guidance that says a sitting president cannot be indicted by passing a law that makes the procedure for indictment explicit.
5. The Director of National Intelligence did not relay the whistleblower's complaint to Congress, which is illegal.
6. Adam Schiff is the House Intelligence Committee chair.
7. Moderate Democrats want to avoid impeachment because they are afraid that it will alienate their voters.
8. 70% of Democrat respondents support impeachment proceedings, while only 6% of Republicans said the same.

Blog Post 1.4 "Judicial Impeachment"

1. There has to be majority approval for an indictment to impeach in the House, and "a two-thirds supermajority of the US Senate must convict for the judge or justice to lose their office."
2. The impeachment process for a US Supreme Court Justice has only happened once, but there have been none which have been removed.
3. Article II, Section 4 sets up the impeachment process in the Constitution.
4.  The reasons for impeachment for the five most recent cases: falsifying income tax returns, receiving a $150,000 bribe to reduce the prison sentences for members of the mob and perjury and tampering of evidence, perjury, obstruction of justice for lying about sexual abuse of female employees, and accepting bribes from lawyers and "failing to recuse himself from cases involving people who allegedly bribed him."
5.The men who were impeached before did not have many supporters in the Senate and they had all clearly committed something illegal. Kavanaugh and Thomas both have a good number of supporters in the Senate and it is not clear that Kavanaugh "committed perjury in his statements about the judicial memos."
6. It's hard to tell which are "impeachable offenses" for a judge because not all misbehaviors or misdemeanors are illegal, some are just unforgivably bad, and it's really up to the Senate to decide if something is bad enough to warrant impeachment.

Blog Post 1.3 "Preparing for the Iowa Caucus"

1. The Iowa Democratic Party's plan for changes to this year's Iowa Caucus is to make it a "virtual caucus" over a phone system alongside the regular caucus.
2. The Democratic National Committee decided to recommend rejecting these plans because of internet hackers who could bring down the entire system.
3. The reason why the virtual caucus is even in question is because of "longtime criticism that Iowa's caucus should be accessible to voters who can't show up in person."
4. Because Iowa is the first contest, its caucuses show which candidates have potential. According to David Redlawsk, "Iowa doesn't decide who will be president, but it decides who will not."
5. The reason why caucuses are controversial is because of the complexity and openness involved in letting the "caucus-goers sort themselves into groups based on the candidates they support." The really controversial part is the exclusivity of caucuses because it is difficult for those who have other commitments or disabilities to attend.
6. Because there has been an increase in participation over the years, it is getting harder to control the number of people who show up to the caucuses. In the past, there used to be about 50 to 100 people, so 1,000 is much more difficult to control.
7. When they tested the system, they found that it was very easy to manipulate the system even though "some state party officials said the networks that were hacked weren't the same as the virtual caucus they were building..."
8. Iowa really, really likes its first caucus position, and if turns into a primary state, it would have to hold its primaries after New Hampshire.
9. New Hampshire can ensure that it is the first primary because of an NH state law that allows the New Hampshire governor to move the primary date up a week if some other state tries to hold their primaries first.

Blog Post 1.2 "marijuana Law Issues"

1.  More than a quarter of the US population lives in a state that allows marijuana for nonmedical purposes.
2. Colorado and Washington were the first states to make marijuana fully legal.
3. In states where it is legal, there are variations in how much cannabis someone can legally possess, and visitors from other states typically face stricter limits.  In Vermont and DC, they don't allow sales even though the residents are allowed to grow it.
4. Marijuana legalization takes away all government-enforced penalties for possessing and using marijuana. Marijuana decriminalization eliminates jail or prison time for limited possession of marijuana, but some other penalties remain in place, treating a minor marijuana offense more like a minor traffic violation.
5. ACLU argues that marijuana prohibition is bad for the government because it has failed to notable reduce marijuana use, and it has created a very lucrative black market.
6. Some argue against legalization because they believe that there would be "Big Marijuana" companies, like those of alcohol and tobacco, that would profit of the widespread use and misuse of marijuana.
7. From 2000, public opinion on marijuana leaglization has shifted in favor of legalization with an over twice as much approval in 2018 than in 2000.
8.  The US government classifies marijuana as a schedule 1 drug, which means that it has no medical value and a high potential for abuse.
9. The Obama and Trump adminsitrations both have had a pretty relaxed approach to marijuana laws, pretty much allowing states to choose what they would like to do.
10. Many marijuana businesses in "legal states" are operating in cash and not using banks because it is still illegal in the national level, so they don't want to risk losing their money.

Blog Post 1.1 "David Koch"

1.    The Koch brothers worked to fight against environmental and business regulations, claiming that they were an assault on American liberty and economic freedom, but really, they fought these regulations because it helped their company to do so. They participated politically by first funding and supporting libertarian economic policies and politicians. Then, they focused their time and money on Republican politicians. 

2.    The Koch’s father, Fred Koch, started an oil refinery company, and when his health began to fail in the 1960s, he started giving more and more control to his son, Charles. Charles is the one who built the company into the giant that it is now. He and David are two of the wealthiest men in the world. 

3.    In 1980, David Koch ran for vice president of the United States as a Libertarian. This was really more for public awareness than an actual attempt to win the presidency, and they only got 1 percent of the entire vote. 

4.    The Koch’s escalated their political efforts when Obama became president because he tried to pass a lot of laws that were environmental and business regulations that would have slowed down business for the Koch Industries. In the best interest of their company the Koch brothers fought the efforts to reduce carbon emissions and combat climate change by claiming that these efforts “threaten to erode our economic freedom.”

5.    The Kochs were able to support the Republicans in their midterm elections in 2010 through a complex web of dark money groups, informally known as the “Kochtopus.” These groups spent money on organizing and ads, and though the Kochs gave a significant amount of funds, they also got many other wealthy Republicans to donate some of their funds as well. 

fun fact

I have a scar on my face from about 16 years ago when I fell off a motorcycle that my cousin put me on, and my mom still hasn't forgiven him for it.