Raising Youth Turnout: The Role of Campaigns and Political Involvement Organizations

This paper will explore a different side of the youth voter and the mystified year of the youth voter by examining the elections of 1992, 2004, and 2008. In investigating this issue, instead of examining the actions of the young voters during these elections, the actions of campaigns and get out the vote organizations are examined. It seems that the disappointment in young voters is not an issue for which young people hold sole responsibility. The other actors in the election, too, must do their part in courting the young voter. They must spend the time, effort, and money necessary to attract this group of voters and address the needs of this group. These entities are rarely to never examined in relation to the youth vote due to difficulties quantifying their role. The conclusions address the campaigns and organizations efforts towards young people as well as issues with the concepts behind the myth of the youth voter

Who Will Let the Good Times Roll? A National Survey on Jobs, the Economy, and the Race for President

This survey and report contains the views and perceptions of American workers regarding the views of the Presidential candidates in the year 2000 on economic and job issues. Workers rate the Presidential candidates on a range of topics

Purchasing Power: The Corporate-White House Alliance to Pass the China Trade Bill Over the Will of the American People

The passage of China Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) by the U.S. House of Representatives in late May 2000 over the overwhelming will of the American people was the result of the most forceful and aggressive corporate legislative campaign in history. Despite four-to-one public opposition, the bill was passed by the use of unprecedented amounts of corporate money in political contributions, advertising, lobbying and rented "experts," as well as the application of the White House s full resources. To fulfill their own overlapping goals, the corporate coalition and the White House worked in such tight coordination that the General Accounting Office has reported that federal law on Executive branch lobbying practices was violated. Deaf to pleas from even pro-PNTR House Democrats, the administration launched the China PNTR crusade to build a legacy for the President knowing it would damage Democrats chances to regain a House majority. To celebrate the House PNTR vote, President Clinton went out that night to a corporate political fund-raiser boycotted by many Democratic House Leaders. The corporate interest was in eliminating the annual Congressional review of China trade and to obtain unconditional, unlimited access to the U.S. market for goods produced in China. The day after the House vote, the Wall Street Journal and other papers finally reported that the corporations were not so much interested in access to the Chinese market to sell goods there, but rather sought guaranteed U.S. access for goods they could produce in China with its remarkably high-quality, cheap, government-controlled labor and lax environmental controls. Passing China PNTR was an important priority for both players for another important and symbolic reason: the proponents of corporate globalization and corporate managed trade had been defeated for five years by a determined citizen s movement that recognized that the corporate and White House globalization agenda was benefitting narrow corporate interests at the expense of working families and the environment. The Clinton administration and the corporate lobbies had pushed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) which established the World Trade Organization (WTO) through the Congress during the administration s first term. While the NAFTA and WTO fights required concerted corporate lobbying and public relations efforts, obtaining political support for expanding existing globalization policies had become much more difficult. Polling showed that people had become aware of the all-too-real down sides of what its proponents dubbed "free trade," but was increasingly revealed to be corporate managed trade. Several years after NAFTA's passage when its negative impacts became apparent, public opinion, never supportive of the corporate-White House trade agenda, turned frosty. Significant relocation of high-wage manufacturing jobs to Mexico, increased border pollution and health problems, and the declining safety of America s increasingly imported food supply made the public increasingly skeptical of the promises and projections made by the "free trade" proponents. The complete executive summary and access to the full report available via the link below

Management, Control, and the Dilemmas of Presidential Leadership in the Modern Administrative State

To assess the virtues of strong presidential leadership in the regulatory process, we need to have a richer sense of the dimensions of presidential leadership in regulatory decisionmaking. The set of proposals put forward by the National Performance Review (NPR), a task force established by the Clinton administration last year, provides a useful focal point for the examination of this issue. In Part I, the author considers how the trend toward President-led initiatives fits with our growing skepticism about the capacities of legislators and bureaucrats to improve regulation and administration. In Part II, the author traces some of the conceptual underpinnings of the President\u27s expanding regulatory role. The author adds to this mostly theoretical discussion the particulars of the NPR Report in Part III. Ultimately, the Clinton administration\u27s opening salvo into the thicket of regulatory reform is of a piece with contemporary trends in presidential politics and regulatory administration

Economic Analysis and the Formulation of U.S. Climate Policy

Economic analysts within government agencies as well as outside government has played a noticeable and increasing role in formulating U.S. climate policy. However, that role has remained limited; in particular, economic analysis has largely been ignored and occasionally even derided in the context of setting targets for GHG control. This paper explores this uneasy relationship between analysis and policy during several U.S. administrations. Some of these problems stem from the incompleteness of the economic analyses themselves, and economic analysts sometimes have not been the most effective advocates for their own findings. However, I think one of the biggest obstacles to more effective use of economic analysis in climate policymaking has been a basic lack of desire among many policymakers for the fruits of the analyses. This reluctance has been especially marked when the economic analysis clashes with strongly held preconceptions – from either side – about what climate policy ought to be.climate change, Kyoto Protocol, Council of Economic Advisers

Building the Clinton Legacy Through Frame Alignment

This article examines Clinton’s rhetorical strategy for creating a legacy in light of the imminent end of his second and final term as president. By examining Clinton’s public discourse from 1997 to 1999, with special attention to the period from September 1998 to June 1999, this article argues that Clinton used the frame of his race initiative to centripetally incorporate varied events and policies to redefine and bolster his legacy in the aftermath of scandal and political polarity. Specifically, President Clinton, with an eye on the legacy of the president and the identity of the Democratic Party, gathered the war in Kosovo and the shootings in Littleton, Colorado, along with their attendant disparate policies into one rhetorical frame, thereby supplying a conception of what Clinton’s 6 years as president had been about, a vision and mission for America, and an identity for the Democratic party distinct from the Republicans

National Environmental Policy During the Clinton Years

We review major developments in national environmental policy during the Clinton Administration, defining environmental policy to include not only the statutes, regulations, and policies associated with reducing pollution, but also major issues of public lands management and species preservation. We adopt economic criteria for policy assessment and highlight a set of five themes that emerge in the economics of national environmental policy over the past decade. First, over the course of the decade, national environmental targets were made more stringent, and environmental quality improved. Most important among the new targets were the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for ambient ozone and particulate matter, issued by EPA in July 1997, which could turn out to be one of the Clinton Administration's most enduring environmental legacies. Also, natural resource policy during the Clinton years was heavily weighted toward environmental protection. Environmental quality improved overall during the decade, continuing a trend that began in the 1970s, although improvements were much less than during the previous two decades. Second, the use of benefit-cost analysis for assessing environmental regulation was controversial in the Clinton Administration, while economic efficiency emerged as a central goal of the regulatory reform movement in the Congress during the 1990s. When attention was given to increased efficiency, the locus of that attention during the Clinton years was the Congress in the case of environmental policies and the Administration in the case of natural resource policies. Ironically, the increased attention given to benefit-cost analysis may not have had a marked effect on the economic efficiency of environmental regulations. Third, cost-effectiveness achieved a much more prominent position in public discourse regarding environmental policy during the 1990s. From the Bush Administration through the Clinton Administration, interest and activity regarding market-based instruments for environmental protection, particularly tradeable permit systems, continued to increase. Fourth, the Clinton Administration put much greater emphasis than previous administrations on expanding the role of environmental information disclosure and voluntary programs. While such programs can provide cost-effective ways of reaching environmental policy goals, little is known about their actual costs or effectiveness. Fifth and finally, the Environmental Protection Agency placed much less emphasis on economic analysis during the 1990s. EPA leadership was more hostile to economic analysis than it had been under the prior Bush Administration, and it made organizational changes to reflect this change in priorities.

Everything You Know About the Bush Environmental Record is Wrong

Conventional wisdom says that George W. Bush has 'declared war on the environment.' Yet actual instances of Bush anti-environmental policies are few, while the new president has received no credit for significant actions to reduce air pollution. What's the political and media dynamic that makes everyone feel so sure that Bush is anti-environment?