<p>Hey, I have a few last minute questions for those who would like to help me.</p>
<p>Difference between the following (what they do):
House Appropriations Committee v Federal Reserve v Office of Management and Budget </p>
<p>Difference between Fiscal and Monetary</p>
<p>My guesses on free response:</p>
<p>Limits on Campaign Financing? </p>
<p>Differences between House and Senate (what they do)</p>
<p>Thanks for your help!</p>
<p>House Appropriations Committee- This is one of the most important committees in the House. Every bill regarding money has to go through it. Since it is a House committee, it is responsible to RECEIVE introduced bills and RECOMMEND them back to the floor for a final vote.
Federal Reserve- This is a member of the bureaucracy, with the president nominating its chairman and several of its members as well. It is mostly responsible for taking care of INTEREST RATES for loans and the VALUE OF CURRENCY.
Office of Management and Budget- This is a member of the Executive Branch, and its main purpose is to ADVICE the president on making a budget as well as to ESTIMATE THE COST of bureaucracies and potential legislations. The most important part of the OMB is BUDGET!</p>
<p>Campaign Financing- know the McCain-Feingold Act. It increases hard money contributions to $1000 per individual to a certain candidate and $20,000 to a national party. PACs are allowed to give $5,000 to a candidate and $15,000 to a national party. These are all hard money, which means that all of them have to be declared. Soft money is illegal. (Now there are also loopholes, like 527 groups, and that provides a chance for some illegal soft money to go through as well.)</p>
<p>The House is considered the lower-house of Congress. It is elected in single-member districts. The Senate is the upper house, and each state elects two through state-wide elections. In general, the House and the Senate have almost equal powers. The House is generally more party-oriented (since they have to be reelected so quickly), while the Senate is more independent (they have 6 years to screw around). The major difference: the House has the right to start appropriations bill (which is kind of meaningless in the modern sense, especially since it has to go through both houses anyways). It has the right to vote on the articles of impeachment, and with a simple majority, it goes to the Senate for a vote. The Senate has the right to ratify treaties. It also has the right to try impeachment cases (with chief justice presiding), and if the 2/3 of the Senate votes "aye" to the counts of impeachment, the impeached person is out.</p>
<p>Hi, thank you for your answers, they have helped a lot.
I have two more questions:</p>
<p>I remember getting questions on how parties are organized wrong.. if someone could clarify this, it would be nice. </p>
<p>Difference between bureaucracy and interest groups.. this is my WEAK point, I have little to no knowledge of what these two do.</p>
<p>Also, is this correct: The reason two parties hold all (most) of the power is because elections are held in single-member winner-take-all districts.</p>
<p>PS: Difference between Fiscal and Monetary if anyone can answer that once again would be helpful!</p>
<p>I don't precisely know what you mean by "parties are organized wrong," but what I do know is that the Founding Fathers did not like political parties in general. They think they divide the country into factions (Federalist Paper No. 10, I think). That's why they put the Electoral College in place- the reason it doesn't work as pleasurably as some people want it to is because it was never intended to be for party politics. But I don't know if I necessarily answered your question, so I apologize.</p>
<p>Bureaucracy and interest groups are very closely related.
Their similarities: they usually tend to be extremely focused on a particular subject or topic; most of the members of both tend to be extremely knowledgeable about their topics (e.g. members of EPA and Sierra Club usually have some sort of knowledge about environmental science)
Their difference: In short, bureaucracy is funded by the government, while interest groups are usually non-profit. Bureaucracy is a part of the executive branch (although some people think it's our "fourth branch of government"), and so it helps to implement laws and legislation. Usually, bureaucrats actually write the laws as commanded by Congress. Interest groups usually try to PUSH bureaucracy to do things in their favor. For example, the Sierra Club would probably try to make the EPA more strict to crackdown on environmental violations. I hope that I made it more clear.</p>
<p>And finally. Yes, it is true that single-member district-ing (SMD) makes it hard for a third party to win nomination. Think about it: say in one district, the Republicans have 45% of the vote, Democrats 35%, and the Green Party 30%. Under SMD, only the Republicans would have any representation. But that's not the only reason. Remember: registering on all the ballots in all 50 states is usually extremely difficult, and the "mainstream" parties tend to steal the platforms of the 3rd party, effectively stealing their backers.</p>
<p>I'm really not sure about the fiscal/monetary one. I do know that "fiscal" tend to refer to the BUDGET of the GOVERNMENT. "Fiscal responsibility" refers to balancing the budget so that the government isn't in debt and that its income more or less equals its expenses. My guess would be that monetary deals more with the ECONOMY (people-related), not BUDGET (government-related).</p>
<p>Thanks for your help once again. I appreciate it.</p>
<p>Also, sorry my first question was wordy, I was stating that I got those types of questions wrong. The question is "How are political parties organized?"</p>
<p>No problem. It's helping me review, so it goes both ways. So thanks :D</p>
<p>Oh okay, my apologies. The alternative question.. geez, not something we talked a whole lot about. What I do know: There is a national party organization, usually led by a chairman, who is one of the most powerful (if not the most powerful) person in that party. The national party organization usually holds a convention once every four years at the national party convention to review platforms as well as to nominate a candidate for presidency.
There are also local-, county-, and state-wide party organizations. They work together with the national party, but they are HIGHLY INDEPENDENT. They don't have to take orders from the national party organization. These more local organizations tend to be the ones who give tons of money to candidates (mostly the state organization).
But as I said, this isn't my strongest point either, so that's about all I could tell you about it. Hope that helped! :D</p>
<p>Yep, that was very helpful. Thanks a bunch.
You can ask me any questions you have as well, by the way.</p>
<p>What powers does the Speaker of the House have? Senate?</p>
<p>
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PS: Difference between Fiscal and Monetary if anyone can answer that once again would be helpful!
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<p>This is more economics related, but fiscal policy is government spending and monetary policy is the government acting to increase or decrease the available supply of money.</p>
<p>The Speaker of the House is a powerful position. He (presently she) gets to decide which committees get which bills and work together with the majority leader to assign people to committees in the beginning of the session. She's only the "leader" of the House, and since the House tend to be party-oriented (as I mentioned before), chances are good that she could lead bills through.
As for the "Speaker of the Senate", the official person who holds it is the vice-president or the president pro tempore, neither of whom have very much say in the legislative process except for banging gavels and telling people to keep order. The real power lies in the majority leader, who like the Speaker of the House gets to assign members to different committees as well.</p>
<p>As for my question- which court cases should we know for tomorrow's test? I'm not too good at cases, and all the review books I've seen gave me at least 5-6 pages of cases to know..</p>
<p>Thanks for that explanation. Once again, it has helped a lot.</p>
<p>I'll name all the ones I know off the top of my head, I think these are standards that everyone should know.</p>
<p>Marbury v Madison
Schenk V US
Dred Scott v Sanford
Plessy v Ferguson
McCulloch v Maryland
Mapp V Ohio
Baker V Car
Brown v Board of Ed
Gideon v Wainright
Engle v Vitale
Miranda v. Arizona
Roe v Wade
New York Times v Pentagon Papers
US V Nixon
Planned Parenthood of PA v Casey
Shaw v Reno / Miller v Johnson
Griswold v Connecticut
Regents of the University of California v Bakke
Gratz/Grutter v Bollinger
Boy Scouts v Dale
Gibbons v Ogden
Texas v Johnson</p>
<p>You can ask about any of these if you're unsure what they've done.</p>
<p>Hmm, ok I guess we can post a case marathon... I believe the cases that dealt with incorporation of the bill of rights to be most important, so:</p>
<p>Gitlow v. New York: Incorporated freedom of speech (Due Process Clause)... Gitlow was passing out communist pamphlets and the Supreme Court upheld his conviction because he advocated overthrow of government. </p>
<p>Gideon v. Wainwright: Incorporated right to counsel, Gideon was denied a lawyer, while in jail, he wrote a letter demanding his rights (Due Process Clause)</p>
<p>Mapp v. Ohio: Incorporated right against illegal seizure. Mapp was found having pornographic materials but since evidence was obtained illegally, it was not allowed in court (Due Process Clause, specifically called exclusionary rule)</p>
<p>NY v. Sullivan: Only words expressed with malice (purposeful intent of tarnishing another's reputation) may be withdrawn. Held that prior restraint (censuring a publication before it was released) worked in only a few cases (only those with malice).</p>
<p>Baker v Carr: one man, one vote</p>
<p>Griswold v Connecticut: Court upheld use of contraceptives implicit in right to privacy in bill of rights</p>
<p>US v. Lopez: Dealt with second amendment and commerce clause. Stated that Congress may not use commerce clause to ban firearms in schools (I think)</p>
<p>which ammendments do we need to know? :) thanks</p>
<p>hey, one question: what committees exist only in the senate, and which only exist in the house? i thought the ways and means committee is only in the house and the rules committee is only in the senate... do i have them backwards? </p>
<p>thanks!!</p>
<p>Thanks for that. The ones I don't think I've heard of (or I just plain don't remember):</p>
<p>Shaw v Reno / Miller v Johnson
Boy Scouts v Dale</p>
<p>(is Boy Scouts the one about a gay scout leader? I could be totally off base here...)</p>
<p>oh, and could someone do me a huge favor and go over these cases: </p>
<p>Planned Parenthood of PA v Casey
Shaw v Reno / Miller v Johnson
Texas v Johnson
Gratz/Grutter v Bollinger</p>
<p>thanks again!!</p>
<p>Amendment question- you should probably know all of them. It's my experience that since technically there is only 17 more to memorize (besides the Bill of Rights), why not get all of them under your belt?</p>
<p>Committee- good question.. I don't know the definitive answer on any particular list of which is only in which, but both Rules Committee and the Ways & Means Committee exists only in the House. Rules Committee deals with how much time a bill will have on the floor, and exists in the House only. Ways & Means deals with money, and the Senate counterpart is the Committee on Finance..</p>
<p>Boy Scouts is the gay scout leader.. it established that the Boy Scouts could dismiss Dale because he was homosexual with the right of 'freedom of association' from the first amendment. It is not specifically stated, but can be inferred.</p>
<p>Shaw V reno /Miller V johnson have to do with majority-minority districting. It established the redistricting based on race must be viewed under 'strict scrutiny'</p>
<p>Yes agquizzer90, it's the gay scout leader case. The court allowed the boy scouts of america to prevent his membership. I would guess that the reason would be it was morally offensive to a christian-based organization so they had the right to deny membership.</p>
<p>House Ways and Means and House Appropriations Committee both deal with money. Ways and Means in particular deals with tax legislation. Appropriations deals with how money should be distributed to the bureaucracy and its programs.</p>
<p>Planned parenthood: PA abortion control law provisions upheld by SC because it did not create an "undue burden". I'm not too sure what the law was, might want to look that up. </p>
<p>Grats/Grutter: Admissions policy of University of Michigan violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment because its pointranking system gave an automatic point increase to all racial minorities.</p>