HTHI Government & Socioeconomics!

Welcome back from your ridiculously long weekend!  By the end of this week every student must have all of their NJE cells complete.

There is also one important piece of info that must be addressed NOW: remember how we looked at our Congressional maps using the layer that was automatically in Google Earth?  Well… those boundaries were re-drawn.  Yes… Eli made a huge mistake.  We’ll take the first part of today to correct these errors.  Again, when looking for your NEW/REDRAWN districts (as of 2011), do NOT go search online – the only place you can for real trust is wedrawthelines.ca.gov - the California Redistricting Commission’s website.  Here are the files that will open up in GoogleEarth: (CA Senate & CA Assembly are the same as what we’ve looked at before)

• U.S. Congress.kmz.
• CA State Senate.kmz.
• CA State Assembly.kmz.

HOMEWORK: All of your FINAL NJE cells are DUE by Monday… not some rough draft… the FINAL (checked off by Eli) draft.  It’s crunchtime, people.

Happy Thursday!  Seeing as how tonight is Grad Night (!!!), tomorrow is a snow day (!!!), Monday is a staff day (!!!), and Tuesday is your special day (!!!), we won’t see each other for quite some time.  We continued working on our NJE cells today, and will do the same next week.  We also need to use next week to call the candidates who did not reply again to ensure we get as many candidates as  possible to attend Voter Information Night.

HOMEWORK: Finish your NJE cells.

We’re slowly but surely hearing back from candidates about whether or not they can make our May 30 Voter Information Night.  Hopefully we can get a ton of candidates to come!

Today we worked on our NJE Cells – 2 new cells were due at the end of the period.

Welcome back!  I hope everyone had a ton of fun at the zoo or at volunteership yesterday!  Today we had a grand ‘ol time calling various candidates to invite them to our Voter Information Night – Wednesday, may 30 from 6-8pm.  How cool will it be if we have a ton of candidates milling around during exhibition!?  Indeed, cold-calling is a skill to be learned, and it was nice to see all of you get on the phone to rope these candidates into coming!

HOMEWORK: 2 new NJE cells.  Please have them printed.

Happy Friday!  Please please please remember to send Eli your Request for Individual Form for Monday’s volunteership day!  Here it is: Request for Individual Fieldtrip Form.  You can scan and e-mail it to Eli… or just take a pic of all 3 pages and e-mail those to Eli.

Happy Labor Day!  Ironically, today we labored to pump out more NJE cells.  Please continue checking the GoogleDocs with all of the info regarding which cells you’re responsible for.  We’ll keep this going tomorrow and Thursday.

Welcome back!  Our Navigating California’s June Primary Election exhibition is only 1 month away, so mark your calendars for Wednesday, May 30.  Exhibition will run from 6-8pm, which means we need to be completely ready to roll by 5:30.  Other logistics to follow later.

So what did we do today?  … a few things…

1. If you have any NJE cells you still need to complete, those must be submitted to Eli.  No doubt, there are still some NJE charts that need to be filled in, but please have completed whatever cells you’re currently assigned to.
2. Are you caught up with your volunteership blog?  Probably not.  Now would be a great time to catch up.
3. Still can’t get over how money influences politics?  Go to the ‘resources’ page of the website, scroll down to ‘money in politics’, and continue to take a look at your representatives.  The best thing about MapLight is that it has a ton of information on CA State Senate and Assembly!!!  Interested where local candidates (mayor & city council) get their money?  See here: https://ssl.netfile.com/pub2/Default.aspx?aid=CSD.  Just like MapLight, play around with this.

Happy Thursday!!!  Tomorrow we’ll be in various places – the Museum of Contemporary Art, USD’s math thing, maybe even here at school – so today is sort of like our Friday!

With all of our discussion about the Citizens United case, looking at Maplight to see where our politicians receive money to fund their campaigns, and general thoughts on the logic of having private funding of public office campaigns, it’s a bit tough to think about how in the world ordinary people who don’t have money to ‘donate’ to their legislatures can ever have an equal say in deciding who can run as their elected representatives.  That’s why today, aside from reading Lawrence Lessig’s two pieces in the course reader, we watched this interview:

With all of this discussion about money in politics, it might be nice to see which of our politicians (specific to U.S. Congress, President, and U.S. Senate… for now) get money from where.  The ‘Resources’ page of the course website – under ‘Money in Politics’ – has a ton of useful websites that showcase how private funding is all over our public office elections.  Let’s take a look.

Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission!  What was the logic behind SCOTUS’ majority opinion to allow corporations and unions to give unlimited campaign contributions?  Does money have a corruptive force in politics?  We’ll take a look at options for funding campaigns that do not involve private contributions at a later date.