Cabinet Assignment

As per your request, below find the Cabinet questions from Friday's class. You will not turn these in but are responsible for them none the less.

In your notes you are responsible for the following information about the Cabinet.

1.            What is the Cabinet?

2.            What does the Constitution say about the

     Cabinet?

3.            What president created the Cabinet?

4.            What did the first Cabinet consist of?

5.            How do you get to be a Secretary of an

     Executive Department?

6.            What must occur for another department to

be added to the Cabinet? In other words

how is a 16^th department added?

Part 2.    Take each department (there are 15) and write a mission statement. In other words, what is the most important task of that department for our country? This mission statement should be 1 or 2 sentences maximum.

Mr. Thompson

President's daily schedule

The first link is to the official website of the White House and President Obama. You can access all kinds of good stuff about our current administration.

The second link provides the President's daily schedule. Today the President started his day with a press conference at which he showed off his birth certificate to appease the skeptics. He then traveled to Chicago for a taping of the Oprah Winfrey Show with his wife. Then off to New York to speak to and on behalf of Democrats before leaving at 11:30 PM to return to DC.

Mr. Thompson

Looking for meaningful employment???

As we talked about in class, the Plum Book is the book given to each new president. The link takes you right to the 2008 version (most recent, the next version will be printed for 2012). Inside are over 7000 gov't jobs over 217 pages of text. The key to some of the codes is on page 4 so you can tell whether you only need to befriend a president or a majority of the Senate as well. At the end of the book are the pay scales on pages 210 and 211.

Mr. Thompson

Key words for Electoral College essay

Majority
Plurality (most or more than anyone else)

All
Popular Votes
Electoral Votes
Total # of Electoral Votes
Number of Electoral Votes per state
President (how do we know who wins)
Vice-President (how do we know who wins)

Mr. Thompson

Pork Barrell Spending

Pork Barrell Spending is money that Congress has allocated or set aside for localized projects specifically to bring federal dolloars into a member of Congress' district in order to benefit his constituents and gain the member popularity (votes). According to the Citizen's Against Government Waste, the 2010 US Budget had over 9,000 "pork projects" totalling over 16 billion dollars of your tax money. Here are a couple of examples of your tax dollars at work:
 - Delegate Madeleine Bordallo (D-Guam) for $500,000 for Brown Tree Snakes control and interdiction in Guam.(apparently there is a brown tree snake problem on the island)
 - Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) and Representative Ciro Rodriguez (D-Texas) for $693,000 for beef improvement research.(like Texas needs better cows!)
 - $4.8 million for wood utilization research in 11 states requested by 13 senators and 10 representatives. (almost $5 million to figure out how to make better use of that resource we all know and love as "WOOD"?????)

Check out the following websites to find out how much pork your favorite member of Congress has managed to coerce, tuck, hide, sneak into Congressional spending bills CAGW Homepage  and the CAGW Pigbook (this is the organization's disclosure of some of our Congress biggest porkers).

Some of this stuff is just too good to be made up,
Mr. Thompson

How to Save a Trillion Dollars!

This is the article I referenced briefly in government class the other day about how to cut money from the US military's budget.

Below find a chart. US, China, France, UK and Russia are the 5 biggest spenders on military in the world. Here is the link to the organization who published the graphic - Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

Finally a third link that shows again how much the US spends on its military as a percentage of what it produces domestically (A more accurate measure of spending) as compared to the rest of the world.

Enjoy,
Mr. Thompson

Test on Congress

Below find your review for your test next Wednesday April 20th

1. Review your chart on facts about House and Senate.
2. Review your list of vocab and quiz you took on the vocab.
3. Review your questions on committees in Congress.
4. Review your info on the US budget. Particularly vocab, largest expenses
    and largest sources of revenue.
5. Review the process of how a bill becomes a law.
6. Review your powers of Congress  expressed vs implied.
7. Know the people who represent you in Congress. Name, office and party!

Test is 50 points and will have several different parts including T/F, Multiple Choice, Completion/Fill-in-the-blank, and an Essay

President Obama's 2012 Budget proposal

Below find a link to President Obama's 2012 budget proposal and a link to the response that many of the GOP (Republican) contenders for president in the 2012 election said in response to the proposal.

President Obama's Proposal

Republican Response

Thanks, Mr. Thompson

Budget Stuff

Here is an interactive chart detailing President Obama's 2012 budget proposal. Click on the hyperlinked message "view an interactive breakdown of your tax dollars...." to access the data.

Mr. Thompson

There is a limit on how much debt the US gov't can have?

The following link has several questions and answers to the current "hot topic" about gov't spending, our debt and the recent aversion of a gov't shutdown. Debt Ceiling: The Battle Heats Up. Feel free to post a thought,  just remember to reference something directly from the article that you are choosing to comment on.

Mr. Thompson