Honors Blog

The Election of 1896 was the turning point of our country; it was the begging of a new way of thinking. It was advancements and changing political views that brought these gears in motion forcing this election to be very important. This turning point was brought about because of the United States struggling economy, the populist part and military ventures across the seas.

At the time when the gears of change were happening the economy was not in the best condition. People were losing their jobs and overall people felt there was no way to prevent it, and it was true. The economy wasn’t the only thing that was struggling, the government, and the corruption that comes with it, was at an all time high. A quote from Nation of Nations shows how these men who are elected to office are not only a benefit to there country but also to their parties. “But dismantling the reigning “spoils system” proved difficult for politicians who rewarded faithful supporters with government jobs regardless of their qualifications.” As the United States went through countless presidents who fought for their party rather than their nation and as years past the United States longed for a man that would lead them into the new century.

Populism, the response of countless years of farmers being put down whether it be from tariffs, agricultural price drops and loss of land. For many years farmers struggled and felt that companies and factories were being given benefits at the cost of the farmers so they tried whatever they could to get equal rights. These farmers formed organizations that sponsored picnics dances lectures to break the bleakness of farm life. The organizations then formed into what the press called the “Alliance Movement.” These alliances met and formed a national alliance; with this national power they issued the “Ocala Demands.” This quote talks about what the Ocala Demands said. “The manifesto reflected their deep distrust of “the money power” large corporations and banks whose financial power gave them the ability to manipulate the “free” market. The populist party was very successful being a third party, they were happy with the democrat president Grover Cleveland becoming president and for the first time ever Weaver polled over a million votes the first time a third party candidate has ever done that.

Imperialism was very popular in the late 1800s. Many countries were racing to see who could have the most colonies such as Spain, England and Portugal. Since everyone else was doing it, the why not the U.S? It would allow people to see them as a super power and allowed admirals to strengthen their decrepit and dwindling navy. This phrase “Manifest Destiny” has been tossed for the last 500 years. It was said when the English came to North America and now North America is using it to spread its influence on other countries, whether they ant it or not. These ventures were thought of as a way to get out of their depression and to thrust themselves into a world super power. Such places of interest were Cuba, Pacific Islands, Alaska and countries in South America. One of these wars was the Spanish American War over Cuba. This quote talks about how the war turned out, “The Navy, under Admiral William Sampson, blockaded the island, expecting the Spanish to flee under the cover of darkness. Instead, on July 3, the Spanish fleet made a desperate dash for the open seas in broad daylight. So startled were the Americans that several of their ships nearly collided was they rushed to attack their exposed foes. All seven Spanish ships were sunk, with 474 casualties. This was a fine display of United State will power and military might, and was a show of force that led presidents to see that war is always an option.

The election of 1896 was a big one due to the changes that were being made both politically, economically and ideologically. They caused a lot of different events to happen and forced people to stick up for what they believe in no matter the odds. In the end it was the economy, the populists and foreign expansion that brought the election of 1896 to be such a change of thought and a window to the true power that the United States can attain.

Advice for the President

Part 1.

There is a lot of things that i feel our president should address. One of those things is the fact that know one is buying anything freezing our economy and the market. What needs to happen is a stimulus needs to be put on people who buy things like tax rebates or something that drives people to buy items because with out it the economy will never get better and everyone will lose money due to inflation. This quote talks about a stimulus plan that helps the average worker. "The bill produced through negotiations in the Senate late Friday night and into Saturday is a $827 billion package of government spending and tax cuts. It cuts some $40 billion in aid to states from the House version of the bill and scales back President Obama’s signature middle-class tax cut. The Senate plan also creates new tax incentives to encourage Americans to buy homes and cars within the next year."
As well as giving tax cuts and allowing the American public to buy items again we also need to address the foreclosures that are happening. People are losing there houses at a alarming rate and its causing more and more people to become homeless. This affects everyone and especially the house market. This quote shows another part of this stimulus packages job and what it is going to do for the American people. "Well, let me say that there are really four things that we have to do. First and foremost, this crisis started as a mortgage crisis, but what is really driving the foreclosure crisis right now is that people are losing their jobs. And so job number one is to pass a recovery bill that will add three to four million jobs in this country." These two things are major factors that need to be looked and at are things that happened in the past. During the Great depression their was such a large amount of people losing their jobs which caused the economy to drop drastically and the stock market and banks turning over didn't help this either. These are things that need to be fixed and not fixed from the top and hope the wealth trickles down but from the bottom since it is the workers and middle class that owe the upper class due to loans that they were really never able to pay.

Even when we fix all this there are still may peolpe who believe that this wont be enough to stop this depression from happening. A quote from the New York Times by Paul Krugmen, who on the Nobel Prize for economics states, "Even if the original Obama plan — around $800 billion in stimulus, with a substantial fraction of that total given over to ineffective tax cuts — had been enacted, it wouldn’t have been enough to fill the looming hole in the U.S. economy, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will amount to $2.9 trillion over the next three years." This shows the true extent that these companies have caused and how this greed and distrust over such a long amount of years has pretty much sent out economy into a downward spiral and now were about to hit the ground, cue the sound affect guy because everyone in the United States is going along for the ride. This is in direct correlation with the historical events of the Guilded Age. After years and years of greed our economy crashed and equality was being threatened by big businesses. We need to fix this anyway possible before it gets to far to where all we can do is wait.
Part 2.

My interview will be record with a mac and will be done in the computer room on Tuesday with Jonathon and I interviewing my Mentor at the same time.

"HUD Secretary: We must limit foreclosures - Feb. 8, 2009 ." Business, financial, personal finance news - CNNMoney.com. 12 Feb. 2009
OTTERMAN, SHARON. "Treasury to Unveil Bailout Plan Tuesday - NYTimes.com." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. 12 Feb. 2009
KRUGMAN, PAUL. "Op-Ed Columnist - The Destructive Center - NYTimes.com." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. 12 Feb. 2009

What Makes a Good Interview

1. Setting up your interview


Before you are able to have a interview, you have to schedule it with the person you are going to interview. You have to first ask your mentor to make sure you are able to have an interview and decide on a time and place for it. After that is done you can work on getting prepared for your interview.

2. Structure/Order:

The questions have a logical order, this will lead to the person you are interviewing giving more focused answers. For example if you have all you questions relating about college and their college experience and not jumping from a question about their college to something about their internship experience (if they have ever had one) and back to talking about college you will get higher quality interview.

3. Goals

By setting goals your questions can be asked to get more detail and quantity out of the answers. For example, If I want to know more about how my mentor chose the job I will lead up to that point by asking a series of questions such as: What were some of your interests when looking for a particular job? Is the career your working in now suit those interests? Why did you choose this job?

All these design principles can be found in Dr. Feel It, an article written by Deborah Solomon.

Mentor Questions

1. Do you like your job
2. What is your favorite part of what you do
3. What caused allowed you to know you should go into education
4. Is their anyone who you want to keep in contact with through this job
5. What expectations do you have for me
6. How long have you worked here
7. Why did you work here rather than somewhere else
8. Have you met any interesting people while you were working here.
9. Whats your favorite part of being in education
10. Where do you go for lunch
11. In your opinion is SDSU ma good school
12. What is an average work day like
13. How many people do you work with
14. How were your interns last semester
15. What will i be doing during emursion
16. Are you the head guy of the LARC department
17. Are you married
18. Do you have children
19. Where did you go to school
20. Where did you work before here

Internship First Day

What happened today?????

I drove to SDSU, then i went and found a parking spot which took like 10 minutes, then i had to get a permit. Then i found my mentor who is pretty cool and we met all the other people who will be working with us. He gave us directions on 2 programs and we had to learn these or at least have a basic knowledege to help other students who come in. Other than that i played on the computer and listened to music.

How did you get to internship????

I drove their, i love having a license.

What did you do for lunch???

I went to In and Out since i havent gone their in such a long time

How did you get home??

I drove

How did everything go?

Everything went really well, my mentor is really chill and a very nice guy who is ok with me leaving early on thursdays to go to games so thats a plus. He is also very happy we are their and happy with any help that we give.

Eisenhower's Departing Words of Wisdom

Eisenhower Farewell Address

It is tradition for a president to give in inaugural address and a farewell address. These are things that presidents have done for many years and allow the presidents to thank certain people and to address the public with issues they hope to accomplish. One man who warned the United States about a pressing issue is President and supreme commander of the Allied forces, Dwight David Eisenhower. Eisenhower thanked many people and thanked the country for voting him into office but being a general in the armed forces he was aware of how influential private corporations can be in government, this influence of private corporations is called the industrial military complex. Through the years private corporations have extended their reach and the Iraq war is a prime example of an event where private companies and the government worked together to get oil, make money and start a new world order.

One man who was a strong supporter of the Iraq war was Dick Cheney. Dick was the vice president to George W. Bush and before becoming vice president was CEO of a Dallas based Oil Company called Halliburton. When he ran for vice president he retired from being the CEO but still had a large share of the company. Since Halliburton is an oil company and Iraq has a lot of oil, Dick made a contract with Halliburton to privatize the rights to drilling and harvesting of oil in Iraq before the war even started. This quote talks about how much Dick benefited from this contract. “Between 1992 and 1999, the Pentagon paid BRS more than $1.2 billion for its work in trouble spots around the globe. In May of 1999, the US Army Corps of Engineers re-enlisted the company's help in the Balkans, giving it a new five-year contract worth $731 million.” As you can see, Dick made a lot of money which makes people wonder if he was using his seat in government to make money for himself when he retired, which with these numbers and the large amount of shares he has in the company that would make a lot of sense.

Many people believe war has no winner, but in the Iraq War their was definitely a winner, and that would be the U.S. military. The military gets a large amount of money from taxes. This quote shows the huge amount of money that the military receives every year. “As MarketWatch's Paul B. Farrell points out, ours is no longer a manufacturing economy or an agricultural economy or even a consumer economy but a war economy, which requires Americans "to surrender 54% of their tax dollars to a war machine." The numbers alone are staggering: the United States presently spends more than $700 billion on its military, which accounts for 48% of the world's total military spending. The military-industrial complex has also helped erect a national security-surveillance state while perpetuating a military empire worldwide” This shows how we use this money for personal gain for the U.S. we go to war not to protect out country but to let private companies and organizations prosper like weapon companies. President Bush Senior is part of a company that goes and buys weapon manufacturers fixes them up and sells them for a much larger profit.

The Project for the New American Century is the spreading of American ideals and influence across the Nation. The person who started up this group is William Kristol and many leaders who were in office with George W Bush are also members of the group including Dick Cheney. Some believe that this is just a way that the U.S. is trying to take control of the whole entire world, which may be true but its true intentions will never really be announced until the events they set in motion are leading to their real goal. For now they say that "American leadership is both good for America and good for the world" which basically is saying that America should show people the right way to act and how each government should be which actually goes against our way of life. In the Bill of Rights, it says every person has the right to speech, religion, etc… yet when we do this to other people these rules to not apply so that is really the part that makes it feel unjust and giving many people ideas that this is just an organization with intentions to take over the whole world.

Eisenhower’s speech was a warning that we the people should heed, because if it is not followed it will be harmful for citizens and will just force us into wars for reasons that are not truly for the people. The Iraq War is just one example of how private organizations that wanted oil, money and power and will sacrifice people who fight for their country as pawns in their quest.

Sources

-Bryce, Bryce. "Cheney's Multi-Million Dollar Revolving Door." MotherJones.com | Home - Daily News, Political Commentary and Analysis. 25 Jan. 2009 .

-Jamil, Mohammad Jamil. "Can Obama restore US's image? | Pakistan | News | Newspaper | Daily | English | Online." The Nation | The Nation is the most credible of English Newspapers in Pakistan.. 25 Jan. 2009 .

-Turner, Douglas . "Bush failed to heed Eisenhower’s warning : Opinion : The Buffalo News." The Buffalo News. 25 Jan. 2009 .

-Whitehead, Jhon . "Will Obama Be a Peace Maker." Rutherford Institute. 9 Jan. 1925 < st="on">Buffalo News." The Buffalo News. 25 Jan. 2009 .>.

Inauguration Speech

"Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet."

1. Why did you choose this section?

I choose it because it addresses the main issue that is at hand. It shows people his main importance is the people and that he wants things to get back to the way they want it to. He wants people to know that he is for the people and whatever he does it’s for him.

2. How do Obama's words relate to the everyday life that you know and understand?

Obama’s words relate to everyday life because he talks about things that people worry about every day and affect the average people that live in America. He says things that relate to people and affect everyone rather than just people who have lots of money or big corporations.