My Campaign trip to Colorado...

So my trip started off flying out of Reagan at 5 am to Denver. 8 AU students ended up going along with 8 GW students. It was an all expense paid trip to Colorado to Campaign for John McCain and Colorado U.S. Senate Canidate Bob Schaffer. Overall it was a good trip, I had a lot of fun. But it was also a behind the scenes look at how campaigns are run. I think I learned more about elections in those 5 days than I learned in any text book I've read.

When we first arrived in Denver we were picked up by campaign staff which took us straight to McCain and Schaffer Headquarters, which we in the same building. There we started working right away. At first we just did basic volunteer work. We put together yard signs and literature that we would distribute. We also did some phonebanking and we got to know a lot of the staff/ask them any questions we had about the campaign. Later we got to meet Mr. Shaffer and ask him questions about why he was running and about his campaign. He was really nice and open about the amount of work and money it takes to run a campaign. He started campaigning a year ago and has had a staff employed for about that long. Most of his staff was relatively young, with most just graduating from college a few years ago. The rest of the day we spent doing whatever the campaign needed from us. When we finally got back to the hotel which was around 1 a.m., we were all exhausted from our early morning flight, but had to be at headquarters by 7 the next morning.

Sunday we sign waved early in the morning, did some phonebanking, and spent the rest of the day for about 7 hours canvassing different neighborhoods. We knocked on doors talking to people and passing out literature. The neighborhood I went to was really nice, and most of the people I talked to were polite, even if they didn't support McCain. Later that night we were supposed to meet Sarah Palin at a rally in Colorado Springs, but the campaign decided to leave us behind to do things at the office while the staff went to the rally. We were all pretty disappointed, but we still had fun hanging out together in the office. However, we did get to meet someone cool that night when Mitt Romney decided to stop by our office. He was such a nice guy and is really easy to talk to, I was really excited to get a picture with him. He ended up straying for about an hour. Once people found out he was there, more people started showing up to see him. Eventually we had to move outside so he could talk to everyone becuase the building had become too small.

Monday we were driven to different campaign offices to work, (I went to the office in Greely)then we split up to canvas different neighborhoods all day. This neighborhood, unlike the first, was kind of bad. I was kind of mad that they left us there by ourselves, especially since I had two cars stop and I was chased by a dog when I went up to a house and didn't notice the rottweiler that was sitting on the porch on a leash. We ended up walking for 7 miles passing out literature. Later that night we went back to our different campaign offices and did more work and phonebanking. We ended up going to bed around midnight even though we had to get up really early on tuesday.

Election Day was the most fun I had on the trip. We got up at 2:30 and were at headquarters by 3 a.m. to go "signing." I learned you have to do this early in the morning so the city won't remove your signs. This is because canidates in Colorado (I'm not sure about the rest of the U.S.) are not alloweed to put up signs on highways or on city property without permission, but they do it anyway. At first I was a little hesitant to dress in dark clothes and get into cars to put up signs illegally, but I felt better when I realized that both parties do it, and if we wouldn't have, we wouldn't have had any signs up, while the democrats would have becuase they were out doing the same thing. It was a lot of fun to compete with the other campaign to see who could put up more signs. We did mess with each other's signs, which your not suppossed to do either, but it was done in friendly competition. We even posted signs in front of the democrat party headquarters, which were removed within 5 minutes. lol We watched our signs get taken down, and had some people yell at us, but we also ran into people who helped us and honked as we put up our signs. That was the most fun I had the whole trip. In the afternoon we passed out more literature at the polls, and then spent the rest of the time, until the last polling place closed, phonebanking. We called reminding people to vote and offering people rides to get to the polls until the last minute. Everyday we were at headquarters there were a lot of people volunteering and phonebanking, but election day was crazy. People used their own cell phones because the campaign ran out of phones, and people were everywhere sitting in the hallway and even in the stairs making phone calls. I was shocked by how many people came from far away to campaign in Colorado. I personally met volunteers from Texas, Nevada, Utah, Alaska, an American citizen from Germany, and a family from Illinois. Also, during the day a lot of congressmen stopped by to talk to people working and to campaign. We didn't really get to watch the news or see any results until after they had started coming in because everyone was running around doing things until the last second of the campaign. The atmosphere in the office was the best part, because even though we were down in the polls the campaign did a good job of making us hopeful. They held competitions to see who could make the most calls, and had an endless supply of food. lol I don't think I've ever eaten that much at one time before. Everyone was in such a good mood and very optimistic.

Afterwards, we went back to our hotel and changed for the "victory party" at a hotel downtown,which didn't turn out to be a victory party afterall lol. By the time we got there we already knew that both McCain and Shaffer had lost the election. It was a really formal event and it was nice to see everyone all dressed up, but it was also really depressing to be at, although the speakers tried to motivate us for 2010 and 2012, it was hard to listen to. However, I am glad I was in Colorado with other republicans, instead of on AU's campus from what I heard and saw on the news. Being in D.C. probably would have made me go crazy, even more so than I already did after the election. lol We ended up having a good cry, lamenting on how much work we had put into campaigning, and then having a late night dinner party afterwards.

Although I'm very moderate, this loss devestated me, and continues to make me very sad. Before I left for the trip I thought I would be ok with Obama as my President, but having put so much work into campaigning this past week and since the beginning of summer (back in Ohio) before then, and meeting him, and other supporters, I am not. Say what you you want about McCain, but he is my hero. I look up to him as a canidate, and as an overall good person. He is the person I supported for President from the beginning, he is someone I trust. I think America made a mistake and I can't wait until 2012!!! I would like to write more about the election and of McCain's loss, but I'll do it in another post.

Blog Post Week...I dont remember all I know is that we are almost done

According to Dictionary.com, Wealth is:
1.a great quantity or store of money, valuable possessions, property, or other riches: the wealth of a city.
2. an abundance or profusion of anything; plentiful amount: a wealth of imagery.
3.Economics.
a.all things that have a monetary or exchange value.
b.anything that has utility and is capable of being appropriated or exchanged.
4.rich or valuable contents or produce: the wealth of the soil.
5.the state of being rich; prosperity; affluence: persons of wealth and standing.
So to summarize all these different definitions, wealth is having a lot. Ruggie’s argument how a wealthy state is one that has full employment and a wealthy individual is one with a job has some merit but just having a job does not make one “wealthy” in my book. Having a job is very important to an individual but it is not the only thing that makes a person wealthy. Wealth for the individual has many levels: emotional, financial, social. Emotional wealth is when a person is happy. If a person is happy they have enough to consider themselves wealthy. Social wealth is having a well structured strong social support system that can help you up when you fall. Financial wealth is the most obvious kind of wealth, the more money you have the wealthier you are. I am wealthy but I only am socially and emotionally wealthy but I do not consider myself financially wealthy. As I said in class, I have a great family and good friends (most of you are included in that list), so i feel that I am lucky and wealthy in that aspect, but when it comes to finances, I am pushing the “lower middle class.” When my mother is struggling to pay the mortgage or when I am relying on Federal and private loans to pay for my education and have to worry about paying for next year. When my family can barely afford to pay the bills, I don’t consider myself wealthy. But wealth is more than a job, it about how one is emotionally, socially and financially.

When it comes to the wealth of the state, full employment is impractical for wealth. For a state to be productive it needs to keep up with technological changes. Full employment would cause a state to become too concerned with getting people in jobs. With people wanting more jobs, machines would have to be replaced with people. We would be going backwards technologically. Why would a state that wants to be wealthy want to go technologically backwards? Full employment though giving everyone a job means going in the wrong direction in technology and falling behind. A wealthy nation is one where the people of the nation have wealth. The US is wealthy because most of the population is living above most people in the world. Though Washington, DC has a high poverty level, most of the African nations are worse off.

Wealth, I still don’t have an exact definition. Wealth, in my belief, is all relative. Like the “Mainwaring Line”, the “Schnoor Line” is what I can judge wealth on. When it comes to the wealth of a state, that has to do with the wealth of its people. Thus I am done and to all of those who voted McCain, I'm sorry but it was a good fight, to those Obama supporters, YES WE DID!!!

i now know what guy fawkes day is!!!

Is a wealthy country one with full employment?  I bring up the question we discussed during Tuesday’s class, what is wealth?  According to my Macro class a nation’s wealth is based on its GDP.  Based on this definition the United States is the world’s richest nation.  Yet, the statistic I found says that the US has an unemployment rate of 4.8% (I’m not sure if this number takes into account of our current financial crisis).  So, if being rich equals being wealthy then unemployment is not a big enough factor in defining a nation as poor.

We also said that wealth could be based on having opportunity.  As the US is known as the “land of opportunity” and the classic American story is from going from rags to riches.  According to this definition, again, the US would be considered wealthy, despite the fact that is had unemployment.

Looking at the other side would be a country with a zero percent unemployment rate.  Take Andorra for example.  Despite its high employment it is considered relatively poor with a GDP of only $2.77 billion.

I see only one argument that would support the idea that a nation’s wealth is based on its unemployment rate: if all of a nation’s citizens have work it would ensure that every individual was independently wealthy.  However, just because an individual is employed does not mean that he or she is wealthy.  It is possible that a person is employed let’s take an example of Mr X, for some extenuating circumstances he has no excess monetary wealth (perhaps his expenditures are greater than his means), his low amounts of assets does not allow him to obtain his wants, he has constant worries and anxieties of how is future will turn out, and finds that due to some reason (maybe his lack of education, or limitations by the government) has little opportunities. A state populated with employed Mr. and Mrs. Xs would be considered wealthy because its citizens would not be independently wealthy.

I continue to think that wealth is a relative term.  Until we have a standard like the “Mainwaring Line,” there is no set definition.  You can define a state’s wealth according to its GDP, opportunity, or ability to obtains its wants but there is not way to define wealth overall.

HAPPY GUY FAWKES DAY!!!

http://www.wisegeek.com/which-countries-have-the-highest-gdp.htm

http://www.nationmaster.com/red/graph/lab_une_rat-labor-unemployment-rate

Response 11

At the level of the state, the proposition of the Breton Woods systems articulated by John Ruggie -- that a wealthy state is one with full employment -- strikes me as eminently reasonable. In some ways, this initial reaction is the most important reason why, regardless of what further reflection and logical analysis argue, I will  be inclined to agree with Ruggie's proposition. Most of the class, if not all of it, seemed to agree with Ruggie's underlying argument that wealth is subjectively and socially constructed; therefore, if I construct a wealthy state as one with a full employment, then a wealthy state is one with full employment. I'm further inclined to believe this construction is widespread, and most people associate low unemployment with prosperity. Many large-scale poverty reduction programs, including Indiana's WorkOne program, are based exactly on the on the connection between unemployment and poverty -- reflecting a degree of political agreement on the construction.

At the level of the individual, I react far more skeptically to the idea that a wealthy person is an employed person. I can simply think of too many cases where this isn't the case and employed people aren't what I consider wealthy. No matter how hard I worked at my job, for example I was never able to exceed the Mainwaring Line representing wealth.The volunteers we spoke with today at Bread For The City mentioned the political rhetoric appealing to the "working poor," a rhetoric which is rarely challenged and directly contradicts the values expressed by Breton Woods.

Does this mean that our construction of wealth at the individual level fundamentally differs from our construction at the state level? Maybe, but not necessarily. Wealth may not be fundamentally constituted by employment, but in a large population there is nonetheless a strong correlation between the two. However, with small sample sizes the strength of the correlation decays (I'm not sure if I'm articulating the mathematical logic correctly, but the principle fundamentally works out; I'm drawing a blank on statistics right now) We can then tangentially discuss another question: if employment is only a proxy for wealth, is a monetary policy that pursues employment the best way to pursue wealth? My instinct is no, following the general logic expressed by Seamus McGregor in his most recent post that we shouldn't be maximizing labor input but rather productive capacity. But I'm not going to tackle this issue in detail; monetary policy is my weakest are in macroeconomics (although, to be fair, my high school econ class consisted mostly of watching The Apprentice and I'll leave it up to BoVice and MNadler to argue the finer points of full employment. 

Only 51 days left to get Dustin the BEST GIFT EVER!!!!

Halloween has come and gone and now begins the start of the Christmas shopping season. Only 51 days left people!!! But this Halloween was the first time since 9th grade that I went trick or treating. Going to the different embassies was probably the most fun I had when all I got was a few pieces of generic bubble gum. India and South Korea actually let us into their embassies. Looking at the exhibit in the South Korean embassy gave me new insight into their history and culture. Not to mention the plum candy was actually good to eat. The whole irony was my costume. Kim Jong Il finally invaded South Korean territory. The whole experience of walking down Massachusetts Ave with about 300 college students dressed as Kim Jong Il and standing next to a chicken was something that I probably never forget. But time to move on to something more pressing, insecurity.

Sometimes things work out so that when I'm writing a paper on CNN in college writing I can talk about it in World Politics. The media presents the stories that believe their viewers want to see. They are still a business after all. But they also like to tell stories that just compare statistics to make one threat look more severe than the other. That story I found in class about how motorcycle accidents killed more marines than combat in Iraq. (http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/10/30/marine.motorcycles/index.html) The story is more about motorcycle deaths than a threat to marines, but the way the title puts it, the story is made out to be more than it is. Though the story does talk about a more common threat, it still seems funny to be comparing death by combat to death by motorcycle crash. It was also the top story for a while on Friday. The media will sometimes not talk about the real threat but talk about what makes the people happy or more scared. The media’s influence on our feeling of security is something that should be looked into more before some crazy network starts scare tactics to make money.

Third Time’s a Charm

Saturday was my third visit to Arlington.  The first time I was seven and only know I went because my dad told me I did.  The second, the infamous eighth grade trip to Washington so, Arlington was squeezed into a day of “see as much as you can”-- the only thing I remember being affected by was the Columbia Space Shuttle memorial because I vividly remembered the disaster that took place only a year earlier.  On that visit Arlington was just another tourist destination.  So, despite the fact that I have been there twice already I felt like Saturday was my first “real” visit to Arlington.

The first thing I noticed was a sign on the gate that said “no jogging.”  I didn’t know what to think about that.  A visitor might assume that it had to do with being respectful, however my dad told me that when he lived in Roslyn he jogged in (not around but in) Arlington every morning.  This made me wonder if it was a security issue.  Does Arlington seem safer without people treating it like a park?  If so, (or even if it was a security issue) why wasn’t the rule in place twenty years ago.

Of the paper PTJ gave us on Arlington the topic that stuck out the most to me was identity.  I do not usually consider myself very patriotic, but walking through the cemetery I felt an immense sense of pride for my country and a deep respect for those who have fought to give me the freedoms I am accustomed to.  I felt a deep respect for those who sacrificed their safety for me.

The most memorable park of my visit was what I mentioned during our pizza dinner, the guard yelling at a tourist to stand up during the changing of the guard.  When this first happened I was appalled.  Although personally I would always stand as a sign respect during the ceremony I did not think it was necessary for the guard to yell at the man.  Though standing is the respectful thing to do, I was thinking that it was that individual’s personal freedom to not stand.  When the ceremony was over I expressed my concern to SilenceDoGood who had a very different reaction than I had.  She pointed out that Arlington is not public cemetery it is military cemetery.  Therefore, the military has every right to not only ask for respect, but demand it.  

That is what was most interesting about Arlington to and made it different from most cemeteries-- its not public.  I may treat it with the same respect that I would another but at the end of the day if I did something wrong it would not be an issue of morality but of legality.

I had some thoughts that I never expressed during Friday’s class that I never had a chance to say.  I think feelings of insecurity derive from instances with massive consequences (think 9/11, Katrina).  The article we read mentioned that well are at a much higher risk on a train or in a car, yet people are not usually afraid to ride in them.  On the other hand people are afraid of plains because they have seen incidents with massive amounts of casualties in the media.

I also wanted to say what I thought would happen if security was removed from the airport.  I think people would freak out, mostly because they are used to it.  It would not so much be the lack of security but the drastic change from lots to none.  When we use other methods of transportation it does not bother us that we do not go through the security check.  I think people’s feeling of insecurity would increase significantly.

Reflection 10

I normally don't care about getting in the last word, but on Friday I was hoping I could conclude the discussion. I wanted to bridge last week's topic -- insecurity -- to next week's topic -- prosperity -- by proposing a simple hypothesis: at a national level, security is inversely related to prosperity. The more prosperous we become, the less securer we are as a nation. 

At an individual level, the relationship between security is fairly strong but direct. The more resources an individual has -- in other words, the more prosperous he or she is -- the more likely it is that the individual will be able to satisfy the conditions of survival regardless of external circumstances. If I have ten loaves of bread, it is less likely that mold, rats, or robbery will leave me without enough food to survive; furthermore, I am less susceptible to externalities because I can feed the fire department or trade my bread for water. It does seem logical that, because personal security and personal prosperity are related in a particular manner, that the relationship will apply in the same manner on a larger scale. But if we recognize that a nation or state is constituted by a particular arrangement of social relations, not merely a collection of isolated individuals, the logic does not necessarily apply; states and people are not analogous. An increase in productive capacity creates a surplus of resources which are exchanged rather than directly and immediately consumed, thereby creating more flexible and dynamic social interactions and power relations. The security of crystallized relationships that constitute an institution are eroded by exchange and interaction.

It is a common axiom that technological advancement has created all kinds of new and horrific methods of destruction -- automatic firearms, land mines, nuclear weapons -- that have elevated the scale of war. This may be true, but it is incidental. The casualties and fatalities that result from the application of destructive technology, John Mueller notes, are ultimately marginal; they do not approach such a scale that the security of the state is threatened by the insecurity of individuals.

Bovice has criticized Mueller’s thesis as shortsighted because it treats national security as the sum of constituent individual securities. Mueller recognizes terrorism only as a threat to the security of the person, articulated through the destructive technologies of guns, bombs, and airplanes; he does not consider the threat to the security of the social order, articulated through constructive production and communications technologies. The modern institutions of the market and the media amplify the level of social interaction – which is critical in efficiently distributing resources and realizing prosperity – but the amplification leads to a feedback effect. Large but diffused threats to the individual security – disease, for instance – are muted and cancelled out by means of the sheer number of interactions that take place in the contemporary world. Relatively small but concentrated threats – terrorism, in Mueller’s view – reach a certain critical threshold and begin to color the overall social discourse. While tragic, the actual 9/11 attacks influenced a small proportion of American society – however, they influenced a small proportion of American society in a sudden, unexpected, and immediate way. The flaming, smoking towers of the World Trade Center were no longer located in New York, but on virtually every TV network and newspaper across the planet. It could very much be seen like an epidemic plague, leaping from person to person in the confines of the crowded metropolis until reaching the point of saturation.