6. Obama campaign now on Tumblr

Chapter 7 covered how technology is changing politics. 

"In 2008, Obama made good use of Facebook to reach out to what was then a largely younger audience on the social networking site, and get them excited by and involved in his campaign."

Facebook is just one example of the technologies that are making an impact in politics. Just recently a Tumblr blog was made for Obama's campaign.

"We’d like this Tumblr to be a huge collaborative storytelling effort — a place for people across the country to share what’s going on in our respective corners of it and how we’re getting involved in this campaign to keep making it better,"

The fact that more and more, politicians are using online and social networking for their campaigns and policies is a perfect example of the ways that politics is being changed by new technologies.


http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/24/8471085-obama-campaign-now-on-tumblr

5. Political Polls

In chapter 6 there was a section on polling. In it it mentioned a Gallup poll. gallup.com has tons of polls on it, aptly named after Gallup.
An example from the Political Polls section, there is a poll taken on Occupy Wall Street.

It isn't told how many people were asked the questions, or how the answers were obtained, only that the results were based on a October 15-16 USA Today/Gallup poll.

From the results, it can be drawn that of the people that felt they know enough to comment, more approved than disapproved of the goals and how the protests are being conducted. But the percentage that answered is 26% and 10%, respectively, lower than the amount of people that felt they do not know enough to comment.

4. "Obama Administration Abandons a Piece of Health Care Reform"

"The Obama administration is giving up on a big piece of its health care reform, the  Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced today. The CLASS program would have created a new long-term health insurance plan that would have allowed workers of any age or health status to buy in, pay premiums, and then collect insurance if they became disabled. But the administration wasn't able to figure out a way to get enough healthy people to sign up to offset the program's costs, Sebelius said in a letter to Congress. Today's announcement isn't terribly surprising given that at the end of last month, much of the program's staff left, including the actuary whose job it would presumably be to calculate how to finance the program."

The sixth line of the preamble to the Constitution is to "Promote the General Welfare." Health care easily fits into general welfare. If the health care reform mentioned above had passed, it would have made it possible for any worker to get health care, despite age or current health. This would have helped general welfare by allowing anybody working to have health care, instead of being denied or charged too much for their budget by health insurance companies.



http://news.yahoo.com/obama-administration-abandons-piece-health-care-reform-213054851.html;_ylt=A2KLJkeP45lO60EAAkOyFz4D;_ylu=X3oDMTNncDc3OW11BG1pdAMEcGtnAzU4NzQzZGRkLWMxNGYtM2ZiYy1iNDM3LTQxYzNhYmZkYTBmYQRwb3MDNgRzZWMDbG5fQ29uZ3Jlc3NfZ2FsBHZlcgNmOTg5ZTgwMC1mNmFiLTExZTAtYmZmMS1lYzU5NDJiZmMzYmE-;_ylv=3

3. US Budget & Millionaire Tax

"Senate Democrats are rewriting portions of President Barack Obama's jobs bill to include a new 5 percent tax on income above $1 million."


"According to the IRS, in 2008 there were 321,294 U.S. taxpayers with an adjusted gross income of $1,000,000 or more." A 5% tax on them would draw over $32 billion dollars, as only about 141 thousand of the total is $1-1.5 million a year. The roughly 180 thousand remaining make over $1.5 million a year.

In class we went over the 2012 U.S. Budget, showing a $1.1 trillion dollar deficit. If a 5% tax was set in place (using numbers from 2008,) the deficit could be down a bit from the current $1.1 trillion


Sources:
http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=96981,00.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/30-years-spending-priorities-federal-budget-2012/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44785065/ns/politics-capitol_hill/#.TpnW_PYr27s