Gun control

On Friday, a gunman massacred 20 schoolchildren in their classrooms in Connecticut. Just a day before that, lawmakers in Michigan passed a bill, over the objections of the state’s school boards that would allow people to carry concealed weapons in schools. That same day, Ohio lawmakers passed a bill that would allow guns in cars at the Statehouse garage. Earlier in the week, a federal appeals court struck down a ban on carrying concealed weapons in Illinois. And Florida officials announced that they would soon issue their millionth concealed weapon and firearm license.

The legal and political debate over the nation’s gun laws was following a familiar trajectory: toward fewer restrictions. Now, as the country absorbs news of yet another mass shooting, this one claiming the lives of young children, both supporters and opponents of stricter gun laws are asking whether the carnage might change that pattern at the state or national levels. The gun control advocates hopes that the shooting would serve as a catalyst for change. Even President Obama expressed that he means to take “meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this.”

Even in a country as accustomed to gun violence as America, the murder of 20 children in their elementary-school classroom is uniquely shocking. Earlier this week, a masked gunman killed two people at a shopping center in Oregon. Over the summer, there were murderous gun rampages at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and at a cinema in Colorado. In September, a gunman killed five former colleagues at a manufacturing plant in Minnesota. That same month Mother Jones published a piece showing that of the 139 guns possessed by the shooters; more than 75% were obtained legally. America is not alone in suffering mass shootings. In 1996, a gun massacre in a Scottish school in Dunblane killed 16 children and one teacher. The political impact was significant. The next year the Firearms Amendment, which prohibited private ownership of cartridge handguns, was passed. Security in British schools quickly improved, too.

Gun control is undoubtedly an issue that most Americans have been exposed to. In 1989, guns killed 11,832 Americans. The National Rifle Association (NRA) members believe that it is their constitutional right to own guns, stating that guns are not the root of the crime problem in the United States. Gun control activists like the members of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV) argue that guns are responsible for the majority of violent crimes that take place.

Bureaucrats

Federal bureaucrats are career government employees who work in the cabinet level departments and independent agencies.

There are 15 Cabinet-level departments in the federal government today. There are more than 60 government agencies and 2,000 other sub units of the U.S. government. There are about 2.7 million employees in the executive branch. Nearly 30 percent of those work in the Postal Service and 33 percent work for the Department of Defense. The remaining workers are spread out among the rest of the governmental departments and agencies. Most government employees are part of the civil service. That means they take a test and are hired, at least in part, based on their test scores. Mid- and upper-level employees generally do not take a written test but are subject to strict qualification guidelines. The remaining 10 percent of the federal workforce is made up of person not covered by civil service system. These positions include appointive policy making positions, independent regulatory commissioners and low level non policy patronage positions. Nearly 3500 people are appointed by the president. These appointees are responsible for appointing high level policy making assistants who form the top of the bureaucratic hierarchy. Independent regulatory commissioners are also appointed by the president but they are independent of his direct political influence once they take office. The number of political appointees has grown.  Not all federal employees push paper. Some of the most highly skilled and efficient workers in the world work for the government, from biochemists working in the National Institutes for Health to computer programmers in the Census Bureau, zoologists at the National Zoo, forest rangers, statisticians, engineers, plumbers, lawyers and more. Federal employees are also a diverse lot basically representing the racial and ethnic composition of the population at large though women are less represented than men and often have lower-level positions under the proverbial “glass ceiling.”  Women make up 64 percent of the lowest GS levels but only 34 percent of the highest GS levels. Only 11 percent of federal workers work in Washington, D.C. The rest are scattered in regional, state, and local offices throughout the country.  Decentralization also helps distribute jobs and incomes across the county.

Many government jobs are hard to fill, especially the ones requiring high skill levels since government doesn't pay as well as business. One of the major concerns about federal workforce is the high rates of turnover in many of the most important positions.  The federal government also relies on hiring outside contractors for increasing numbers of jobs. This is a controversial practice that makes government look smaller than it is and may not always save the taxpayers’ dollars. This trend has been exacerbated during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan where private military companies have played key roles along with other contractors. Many of these private contractors are former government employees who can make much more money working for private companies. It is estimated that $538 billion of the federal budget was spent on government contractors in 2008. The Obama administration has sought to reduce the numbers of contract employees.

Bureaucratic Agencies

The modern bureaucracy is composed of more than 2.7 million civilian workers from all walks of life. In general, bureaucrat agencies fall into four categories: departments, independent agencies, independent regulatory commissions, and government corporations. 

The United States Cabinet is composed of the most senior appointed officers of the executive branch of the federal government. Cabinet officers are nominated by the President and confirmed or rejected by the Senate. The fifteen cabinet departments are major administrative units that have responsibility for conducting broad areas of government operations. Cabinet departments account for about 60 percent of the federal workforce. The vice president, the heads of all the departments, as well as the heads of the environmental protection agency, office of management and budget, the U.S. trade representative, the council of economic advisers  the U.S. ambassadors to the United Nations, and the president’s chief of staff make up his formal cabinet. Most departments are subdivided into bureaus, divisions sections or other smaller units.

The independent executive agencies are very similar to cabinet departments. They generally perform service rather than regulatory functions. The heads of these agencies are appointed by the president like the cabinet members. These agencies exist outside the federal executive departments. While most executive agencies have a single director, administrator, or secretary appointed by the President of the United States, independent agencies almost always have a commission, board, or similar collegial body consisting of five to seven members who share power over the agency. The President appoints the commissioners or board members, subject to Senate confirmation, but they often serve with staggered terms, and often for longer terms than a usual four-year Presidential term, meaning most Presidents will not have the opportunity to appoint all the commissioners of a given independent agency. Normally the President can designate which Commissioner will serve as the Chairperson. Normally there are statutory provisions limiting the President's authority to remove commissioners, typically for incapacity, neglect of duty, malfeasance, or other good cause. In addition, most independent agencies have a statutory requirement of bipartisan membership on the commission, so the President cannot simply fill vacancies with members of his own political party.

Furthermore, the independent regulatory commissions are agencies created by congress to exist outside the major departments to regulate a specific economic activity or interest. Regulatory agencies deal in the area of administrative law—regulation or rulemaking. The existence of independent regulatory agencies is justified by the complexity of certain regulatory and supervisory tasks that require expertise, the need for rapid implementation of public authority in certain sectors, and the drawbacks of political interference. Some independent regulatory agencies perform investigations or audits, and some are authorized to fine the relevant parties and order certain measures. Regulatory agencies are usually a part of the executive branch of the government, or they have statutory authority to perform their functions with oversight from the legislative branch. Their actions are generally open to legal review. Regulatory authorities are commonly set up to enforce standards and safety, or to oversee use of public goods and regulate commerce. Examples of regulatory agencies are the Interstate Commerce Commission and U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the United States, Ofcom in the United Kingdom, and the TRAI in India.

Lastly, the government corporations are the most recent addition to the bureaucracy. Dating back from the early 1930s, they are businesses established by congress to perform functions that could be provided by private businesses. Some examples of governmental corporations are federal deposit Insurance Corporation, the Tennessee valley authority, etc. Government corporations are often formed when the financial incentives for private industry to provide service are minimal.

Higher Education

There is growing concern in America about higher education. A degree has always been considered the key to a good job. But rising fees and increasing student debt, combined with shrinking financial and educational returns, are undermining the view that university is a good investment.

Concern springs from a number of things: steep rises in fees, increases in the levels of debt of both students and universities, and the declining quality of graduates. Let’s start with the fees. The cost of university per student has risen by almost five times the rate of inflation since 1983, making it less affordable and increasing the amount of debt a student must take on. Between 2001 and 2010 the cost of a university education soared from 23% of median annual earnings to 38%; in consequence, debt per student has doubled in the past 15 years.

At the same time, universities have been spending beyond their means. Many have taken on too much debt and have seen a decline in the health of their balance-sheets. Moreover, the securitization of student loans led to a rush of unwise private lending.  Despite so many years, universities have done little until recently to improve the courses they offer. University spending is driven by the need to compete in university league tables that tend to rank almost everything about a university.  Universities cannot look to government to come to the rescue. States have already cut back dramatically on the amount of financial aid they give universities. Barack Obama has made it clear that he is unhappy about rising tuition fees, and threatens universities with aid cuts if they rise any further.

In 1962 one cent of every dollar spent in America went on higher education; today this figure has tripled. Yet despite spending a greater proportion of its GDP on universities than any other country. Wherever the money is coming from, and however it is being spent, the root of the crisis in higher education comes down to the fact that additional value has not been created to match this extra spending. Indeed, evidence from declines in the quality of students and graduates suggests that a degree may now mean less than it once did.

One might argue that this shouldn’t matter so much since students are paid a handsome premium for their degree and on the whole earn back their investment over a lifetime. While this is still broadly true, there are a number of important issues. One is that it is easily possible to overspend on one’s education: just ask the hundreds of thousands of law graduates who have not found work as lawyers. Another issue is that the salary gap between those with only a high-school diploma and those with a university degree is created by the plummeting value of the diploma, rather than by soaring graduate salaries. After adjusting for inflation, graduates earned no more in 2007 than they did in 1979.

From Spoil system to the Merit system

When a political party comes to power, its leaders tend to place many of their faithful followers into important public offices. The use of public offices as rewards for political party work is known as the "Spoils System." The system is popular in numerous nations. Whereas the merit system is the process of promoting and hiring government employees based on their ability to perform a job, rather than on their political connections. Federally, it was instituted by the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. It is the opposite of the Spoils system

It is commonly assumed that the spoils system in the United States came into general use first during Andrew Jackson's presidency. However, it actually has an older history. President Thomas Jefferson, a Democratic-Republican, favored a policy of keeping rival Federalists out of government offices. By 1840, some sort of spoils system was widely used in local, state and federal government. In 1841, when William Henry Harrison became president, the practice had reached high proportions. Between 30,000 and 40,000 office-seekers converged on the Capital to scramble for 23,700 jobs that then comprised the federal service. Numerous persons hired through the spoils system were untrained for their work and indifferent to it.

In the early days, government work was simple. However, as government grew, a serious need for qualified workers developed. Pressure for reform began shortly following the Civil War. In 1871, Congress authorized the president to set regulations for admission to public service and appoint the oversight Civil Service Commission. However, this merit system ended in 1875 because of Congress's failure to provide the funds to see it through. Nevertheless, the experiment proved the merit system to be both functional and supportive. President Rutherford B. Hayes brought the merit system back and began to use competitive examinations as a basis for office appointments. Hayes favored the idea of the replacement of the spoils system with a merit system. Congress, however, failed to pass the legislation he proposed.

In 1881, a spurned office-seeker shot and killed President James A. Garfield. His death provoked further public outcry for civil service reform and spurred passage of a bill introduced by George H. Pendleton of Ohio. His bill became the Civil Service Act of 1883 and re-established the Civil Service Commission. The Act rendered it unlawful to fill various federal offices by the spoils system. It established a merit system of federal employment on the basis of open, competitive exams and created a bipartisan three-member civil service commission, which operated until 1978. Initially only 10 percent of the positions in the federal civil service system were covered by the law, but later laws and executive orders extended coverage of the act to over 90 percent of all federal employees. Since then, much has been done to avoid the evils of the system. Federal civil service legislation has been greatly expanded. Many municipalities and states have made training and experience the prerequisites of appointment to public office.

Tax increases and spending cuts

The "fiscal cliff" is a term used describe a bundle of momentous U.S. federal tax increases and spending cuts that are due to take effect at the end of 2012 and early 2013. The fiscal cliff is in many ways the culmination of a series of increasingly contentious fiscal showdowns between the Democratic and Republican parties over the last few years. The most noteworthy, the debt-ceiling fight of August 2011 threatened the country's ability to meet its financial obligations and resulted in an unprecedented downgrade in the U.S. credit rating by Standard and Poor's. The avoid the “fiscal cliff” of automatic tax increases and spending cuts at the years end, the republicans and democrats tried to work together. The republicans want to cut three big entitlements programs such as social security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Cutting these entitlements challenges Democratic belief almost as much as higher taxes challenges Republican. President Obama has admitted all along that spending has to shrink. During the campaign, he expected that a bargain would include $2.50 of spending cuts for every dollar of tax increases. But so far he has made few concessions on entitlements. The two deficit deals he struck with Republicans in 2011 fell almost entirely on flexible spending: items that Congress must authorize each year, such as education, transport, research, foreign aid and defense. But such spending is already approaching its lowest share of GDP since the 1950s. Big automatic cuts to domestic and defense discretionary spending will drive it even lower if the parties do not agree to override the cuts by January.

On entitlements, President Obama has proposed trimming federal and military retirement benefits and agriculture subsidies. Last year, President Obama and Mr. Boehner, speaker of the house, negotiated on this issue. At the negotiation President Obama offered two substantial concessions. He offered to raise the age at which Americans become eligible for Medicare from 65 to 67. He also offered to index social security benefits to less generous version of the consumer price index. These changes will take almost a decade to bring in the projected $225 billion because such changes can only be implemented gradually.

The re-elected President Obama is almost certain to reject both vouchers and block grants proposed by Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, just as he will tolerate no big changes to his health-care plan. But there may be other common ground, in particular on means-testing. President Obama has already proposed a modest increase in Medicare premiums for the affluent, and numerous bipartisan proposals would make Social Security less generous for richer beneficiaries. In all President Obama is trying reduce Americas’ long term deficit in order to avoid the upcoming fiscal cliff. 

The Balance of Power

The framers of the constitution originally envisioned that the congress, the president and the judiciary would have discrete powers and that one branch would be able to hold the other in check. The main function of Separation of Powers is to do just that, separate powers. The responsibilities of the Government are divided into the three branches in order to prevent one branch from having absolute power and in turn abusing that power. The basic idea of Separation of Powers is that each branch has its own areas of authority and its own roles. The idea of checks and balances, like separation of powers, lies in its title. Each branch has the power to check and balance the actions of the other two branches. This system was also put in place to insure that not one branch received too much power. Over the years, and especially since the 1930s, the president often has held the upper hand. In times of crisis, congress willingly has handed over its authority to the chief executive, for example, FDR during the great depression.

The balance of power between the congress and the executive has fluctuated tremendously over time. Although congress was most powerful in the early years of U.S. history, since the New Deal, the president has played an important role in proposing legislation and spending. For example, the president is named by the Constitution as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, giving him an incredibly powerful position in times of war. The Framers worried that the president's wartime role was too powerful, in fact, and thus gave Congress a powerful set of checks and balances on the president's war powers. Only Congress, not the president, has the power to declare war. Perhaps even more important, only Congress has the power to pay for wartime expenses. That means that if the president tries to launch an ill-advised military escapade, Congress can effectively pull the plug, forcing the president to bring his troops home by refusing to fund their continued deployment. Another example is that the president can veto acts of Congress. Thus if the executive tries to pass laws that the president believes are unconstitutional or even just bad policy, the president can veto it and prevent the bill from becoming law. The veto is perhaps the president's most powerful means of checking and balancing Congress. The framers also gave congress the power to re check the president’s veto power. The congress can override the president’s veto if it can get two-thirds vote from both its houses.  

Congress and the judiciary also have an ongoing power struggle. Although the judiciary can declare acts of congress unconstitutional, Congress also exercises control over the judiciary in a variety of ways. It has the constitutional authority to establish the size of the Supreme Court, its appellate jurisdiction, and the structure of the federal court system.