General | Reform Politics

Essential Information on the Reform Party

The United States of Americas’ Reform Party, also known as RPUSA and Reform Party USA is typically referred to as the Reform Party. This political party was found by Ross Perot in 1995. Ross felt that Americans were basically unaware of state politics being corrupt in addition to not being able to handle essential issues and wanted to create a viable alternative to the Democratic and Republican Parties which resulted in the Reform Party.

The Reform Party nominated candidates such as Ralph Nader who is a liberal, Pat Buchanan who is a conservative, and Ross Perot who is a centrist. The most notable victory of this party came in 1998 when Jesse Ventura was elected the new governor of Minnesota.

Although the reform party is an alternative, it is very important to be knowledgeable about every aspect of our political system. It’s not enough to just belong to a particular party but they should also know something about those they will elect into office and what they stand for. Information about reforming your stance from reformpartyofoklahoma.org can help individuals become aware of just how important it is to know the candidate and not merely practice “straight ticket voting”.

Some of the aspects of the Reform Party platform includes: paying down the federal debt, campaign finance reform, maintaining a balanced budget, opposition to illegal immigration and enforcement of current immigration laws, term limits for senators and U.S. representatives and more. However, social issues are absent from the platform which includes gay rights and abortion. The representatives from this party believe they are unable to bring people together on the gay and abortion issues.

Filed Under: General, Politics Tagged With: Ralph Nader, Ross Perot, United States

Government Agencies Becoming More Transparent

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The U.S. government is encountering issues that are new to many in office, and requiring that modifications be made. Being held accountable is one of the biggest requirements, as many citizens are demanding to see where their money is being spent. This requires the offices to become more transparent and eliminate practices that don’t work. Informational technology improvements are a great way to spend money more wisely, and having to deal with systems that are slow and outdated cause a lot of extra expense and frustration.

Modernization is crucial in staying on the forefront of current technological advances, and while it may seem expensive to make these changes, it will certainly pay off in the end. Government technology is no exception to this, and many offices are making improvements to the technological systems that are used by both consumers and employees. This makes everyone’s job a little easier. It also saves valuable time and money, which makes taxpayers much happier. President Obama has made transparency one of his key goals, emphasizing the relationship between trust in the government and availability of information to citizens. He then asks in return that citizens collaborate with the government to make the process as simple as possible for all involved, whether working with non-profit, private, or public organizations.

Maintaining a sense of transparency is very important to many Americans. Feeling involved in the process of government will help to keep satisfaction with the current political leaders. It also helps prevent corruption in the government, since officials know that their every move is being documented and can be accessed by just about anyone.

Filed Under: Business, General Tagged With: Citizenship, Information technology, United States

(Re)Forming Your Stances

Most people belong to a political party. Unfortunately, many people use this party affiliation as an excuse to not actually get to know political candidates, and instead to practice “straight-ticket” voting, just voting for every candidate that matches a political party. While it is certainly normal for you to agree with many of the people that run under the party you are affiliated with, you should still take the time to find information about the candidates and their stances. In doing so, you might even get more information about your own stances, or even change some of your own opinions.

Getting to know political candidates is not difficult. Most candidates have several webpages with information about them. One of the simplest ways to find information about a candidate is to go to the website of the party with which they are affiliated. Many party sites offer information about individual candidates, or about the party as a whole. Also, using a search engine, such as Google or Yahoo, can be an easy way to find information about candidates. Also, many candidates also have profiles on social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. Of course, if you get the chance, it can be both exciting and educational to go to a political rally. These can either be run by a political party, a party’s affiliates, or by non-partisan groups.

Becoming involved in politics does not have to mean dedicating all your free time to lobbying and fund raising. Sometimes it just means you form your own opinions on matters and do not let a political title make your decisions for you.

Filed Under: General, Politics Tagged With: Political party

Information On Youth Voting

The 2008 presidential election was a huge success and part of the success what thanks to the youth voting. Because of this, it was almost hard to determine who was going to win since a lot of it boiled down to the youth vote.

Up until 1971, you had to be 21 if you wanted to be able to vote. Thanks to the 26^th Amendment, it was changed to 18. The first election that allowed 18 to 20 years olds to cote was in 1972 when President Richard Nixon was re-elected. During this election, 55 percent of those voted were 18-29, making it the highest youth vote… that is until the 2008 election when President Barack Obama won the election. Both the 1996 and 2000 elections had the lower amount of youth votes turn up, which was at about 40 percent.

Youth voting has different behaviors. For instance, 85 percent of the youth votes are from those finishing up high school or attending college. 73 percent of the youth voters feel that voting is extremely important and that more young people should be voting.

Even though the younger voters are voting in the main election, not many are voting in the primaries. In fact only 17 percent voted in 2008.

Politicians are quickly learning just how important youth voting is in their political campaign. Three states currently have high youth voters in Maine, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Targeting the younger demographic could make a huge difference in a presidential election. If political candidates were smart, they would go after the youth votes. The younger generation could make or break your campaign.

Filed Under: General, News Tagged With: Barack Obama, Voting, Youth vote

Total Bankruptcy Implies More is Lost than Just Finances

It might be that never before in America’s history has political reform been more necessary than in the early years of the twenty-first century. Seemingly without fail, news coverage of politicians and their deeds revolves around the crimes which they engage in during their time away from the office. Whether it involves illicit trust violations such as marital infidelity, or the less frequent but by no means uncommon event of hiding one’s true sexual nature, it seems the ranks of politicians are populated with troubled people.

Ignoring the risks to their reputations and careers, politicians from both main parties have seemingly embarked on self-destructive courses of action which have shed their parties in a poor light. It’s never a good thing to hear or read that a senator has been caught in a sex sting. It makes their party look bad, it makes the country look bad, and it wreaks havoc on the façade that they’ve been living at home of pretending to be a happily married person. Engaging in such actions outside the home or office can lead to total bankruptcy.

It’s not just a financial bankruptcy that occurs. The subsequent media explosion and exposure also often offers a glimpse into the moral bankruptcy involved, as the politician, with dry eyes, laments their disgraceful actions which have led to this moment of shame. Accompanying the script, there will be inevitable references to trying to take some time to spend with their family to work things out. Americans should expect more out of their leadership. Leading implies having someone at the helm that is capable of recognizing that things need to be “worked out” long before they feel a need to go engage in less than respectable acts with another person. It is a rare news story that portrays this sort of true leadership, and as such, one can expect the bad news to continue.

Filed Under: Business, General, News Tagged With: Bankruptcy, Financial Services, Great Depression, Harvard University, New York City, Ohio University, Society for Human Resource Management, United States

A Short Biography of Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky is a singular figure on the American political scene. Love him or hate him, he has successfully stuck around for half a century as one of American society’s most vocal, serious, and controversial political thinkers. He has steadily produced thorough critiques of American society and political policy for decades, and he is considered to be a major 20th century political writer and philosopher.

Born in 1928, Chomsky received an intellectually rich upbringing. He attended an experimental, progressive school “from infancy,” and an academic, college-oriented high school. Even outside of school he was surrounded by lively, informed political discussion. He didn’t start his academic career as a political activist, or even with the intent to become one. He started out in linguistics, and he was very, very good at it. In fact, he was so good that his work was considered transformational to the field, although even in linguistics his work is controversial. He received his doctorate in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1955, after four years as a junior fellow at Harvard, and was immediately hired (in 1955) by MIT. Throughout his career, he has given many prestigious lectures, and received many prestigious awards, for both his political and his linguistic work.

Chomsky’s political activism, as with many individuals of his generation, began with his dissatisfaction over the Vietnam war. Unlike most who protested the conflict in Vietnam, Chomsky made societal critique his major life work. He saw that from his position of relative comfort and security, as a tenured professor at an elite school, he had opportunities to speak out that many others did not. Besides participating in protests and rallies, Chomsky has produced a large body of work in political analysis. A few of these many works include, Manufacturing Consent (with E.S. Herman), The Culture of Terrorism, Year 501, and Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War and US Political Culture.

Filed Under: General, Politics Tagged With: Culture of Terrorism, Linguistics, Noam Chomsky, Rethinking Camelot, Rethinking Camelot: JFK the Vietnam War and U.S. Political Culture, United States, University of Pennsylvania, Vietnam War

Oil Independence and Social Change

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American society has a funny relationship with big oil. We find oil corporations, and oil politics, to be suspect. According to a TED talk by Lisa Margonelli of the New America Foundation Energy Policy Initiative, we’ve felt this way about oil politics ever since the time of Standard Oil. Standard oil was arguably the first multi-national corporation, and in the 1860s, it was stunning–maybe even terrifying.

The United States has four or five percent of the world’s population, and we have two percent of the world’s remaining oil reserves (while more than half of the world’s remaining oil reserves are found in the middle east). In contrast, our consumption of oil is a quarter of the world’s oil production. Margonelli points out two other facts about the place of oil in our society that are particularly stunning. First, much of what we pay for our oil dependence, we don’t pay in consumer prices; for every gallon of gas that is purchased at the pump results in something like twenty-nine cents of in health care costs. It has also been well established from many sources that often political or societal instability is the result of international oil interests disrupting local politics; Chad, Sudan, and Nigeria are all filled with tragic examples of this.

Second, keeping up a car that runs is more important to getting and keeping a job than having a GED. This reveals how deeply structural our society’s dependence on gasoline is. If we are to break our dependence on foreign oil, American workers must have other, better options for transport. There are many political policies we could enact to encourage this. Insurance companies could give discounts to drivers who drive less miles, cities and neighborhoods could start car-sharing programs, and communities can work to become more bike friendly by enforcing traffic laws and making sure there are bike lanes. These options would encourage people to walk, bike, carpool, and take public transport more, and having more options available would help American workers who are having a tough time in the recession to get back on the job.

Filed Under: General, Politics Tagged With: Business, Energy, Energy policy, Oil and Gas, Oil reserves, Operating Companies, Petroleum, United States

Society Chooses to Buy Car Insurance Online

Society often acts in unison. For example, until a few years back, homosexuality was considered to be taboo to speak about in society, not anymore. Smooth flow of information from all quarters made this possible. Of course the transition of views and opinions is slow and a difficult process. Something similar could be said about buying car insurance online. When the Internet was made available to the general public, some believed companies would make fraudulent claims and squeeze money out of unsuspecting consumers. From credit card frauds to unethical sales of insurance products, Internet users have experienced many scams. Reputable companies with new security protocols are changing the minds of consumers.

Initially, only a few companies sold their products online. But as the reach of the Internet increased, this new-age media caught attention of a variety of business entities simply because of its effectiveness. As a large number of companies started using the Internet as a sales point, competition increased bringing in better ethics and customer support. Simply put, rather than doing business as usual, the Internet became more like the traditional business practices of brick and mortar companies.

Websites have become sophisticated sellers of everything, including a full product line for motorcycles, autos and boats insurance products right online. Traditionally, an individual would sell an insurance product to the end-user for a high commission. Innovative business minds worked together to eliminate this practice and began to generate revenue from in-depth online information only. The result, websites that sell insurance products online now are not dependent on satellite stores with sales representatives. Instead, they generate more traffic with advertisements, promotions and commercials. They have also found the value of being ethical and clear in their practices.

All this has changed the perspective of end users who flock to websites to purchase their goods. Society has adapted to computers and instant purchases.

Filed Under: General, Socities Tagged With: Car Insurance Online, Society

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Filed Under: General Tagged With: Programs, Television, Twitter

Overspent on Your Night Out? Get Help With a Payday Loan

If you’ve been out on the town and had a bit too much fun financially, you don’t have to struggle to pay your bills until you get your next paycheck. Instead, you can simply get a payday loan. That way you’ll be able to pay your bills, and once you get them out of the way you can feel better about your situation. Then, when you get your next paycheck, you’ll just pay off your loan. Your friends don’t have to know about that, so you don’t have to worry about your reputation being damaged or your friends thinking less of you because you don’t have a lot of money.

Society has a lot of pressures. Succumbing to them occasionally by spending a bit too much to keep up with others is natural and human. As long as you’re not regularly getting yourself into financial trouble, you’re not doing anything that’s cause for alarm. If your friends are going out and they invite you, of course you’ll want to go along and have a good time. That’s especially true if it’s a special occasion or a weekend. You’ve been working hard all week, and you need a break. Going out can be just the thing to make you feel happy and relaxed, but not if you spend the entire time worrying about money.

It’s nice to know that you have options, and you don’t have to tell your friends that you can’t go along because you can’t afford it. No one likes to admit that, especially if he or she is just making some friends, getting established and trying to build a name for themselves with their employer. Staying home all the time isn’t any fun, either. You need to be able to go out and live a little, so you can enjoy all that life in your city has to offer to you.

Filed Under: Business, General Tagged With: Loan, Money, Payday loan