NOTES
Video VIDEO 2: -What is being brought with political contributions is access PAC on Jacobs -He now avoids getting money from PACs (political action committees) ------Most powerful committee in house is Weighs and Means, they cover tax laws, trade, Medicare and social securities leader of Weighs and means = Rostenkowski -faced and uprising from higher taxed states over a provision eliminating deductions on state and local taxes in NY and California -tom downey and rostenkowski settled this dispute for $65 billion and dropped the provision. This was the basic way of defeating interest groups. -----As power spread to sub committees, everyone wanted more staff, and these newly created groups had even more evasive tactics Gearld Ford on this: "I didn't vote for staff members to hand senators or congressmen questions to ask, I voted for the senators/congressmen to ask the questions themselves." One senator David Pryor on staff power: It's the senators fault. We used to only have one office, now our staff and groups have offices all over, this reflects the complexity of our current system." -staffers act as a copy clone of senators, but they can be easily influenced. Most time senators have less than 5 minutes to be informed on bills, and completely trust staffers for opinions. ---opposition game - speaker of the house vs president tipp oneal - was severely ridiculed by reagan. ============VIDEO 3: THE POWER GAME============= Why does the pentagon put out phony test results? -Corrupt process, the person who's selling it is testing it as well. Back in 1961, eisenhower warned of dangers of self serving alliances. They pushed for these bad weapons in order to create jobs and generate money, otherwise they will lose much money. Power triangles (basically running checks and balances on each other) -Iron triangle: Military services, defense industry -Dissident Triangle: inhouse critics and whistleblowers of pentagon, press whom is given leaked bad news, and individial members of congress Senator Danny Smith: credientials, High but came from oregon who is
49th out of 50th for military spending. Whistleblowers on military standings often lose their jobs. The Early Bird: Daily newspaper for pentagon. Shown to be very useful since it showed military weapon weaknesses. After frank carloucci wanted the early bird under tighter control, and removed highlights of weapon testing results. -In case of the Ticonderoga, this ship had said it was the "most tested", yet failed much of the time. SGT YORK - Divad Gun, even thought it's tests showed big problems, the army rushed it into production. But even though it was embarissing for the results, senators still supported it if it created many jobs in their districts. Many refused to retest it and the military testing group went so far to blow up planes from the ground to make people think that divad shot down the planes. -Secretary of Defense: Weinburger 1985 - cancelled Divad due to the many flaws and whistleblowers. -After Seargent York basically killed Divad, he was sent on some bogus mission in order to get him to retire, he did. After he tried to get a job there as a civilian, they refused to hire him, a typical case of the aftermath of a whistleblower. ============= VIDEO 4: The Unelected===== Press is much more power than anyone in the US senate. More than 23,000 lobbyists currently employed. Nightline was developed thoughout the Iranian hostage crisis. Newspapers had the same effect during the Watergate Scandal -Press exposure only succeeds when someone tries to cover up something. Ultimately in the case of the Watergate Scandal, Nixon resigned due to the overwhelming power in the case of the Newspaper. Presidential Race: Hart - Had to drop his canidancy due to press indulging too much into his personal life. Nancy Reagon - early 80s, she was portrayed as a woman with expensive tastes during the recession. -due to her portrayal, she appeared in a dinner singing a song about "second hand clothes". Press started to give her the benefit of the doubt.