A Personal Honors History

1. What did you gain from your experiences as an honors student in the first semester (please consider novels, leadership opportunities, writing, history, projects, etc.)?

This first semester there were a lot of leadership opportunities that I utilized. For the Iconic book, I edited Artist’s Statements. In the Mock Trial, I was a lawyer for the prosecution. In the Senate Hearings, I was a lobbyist, which was a totally new and different project role. In Life: the Book, I was a Managing Editor. I read the Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne, which I never got around to doing before. In my writing, especially, I think I've improved in becoming more concise, succinct, and professional without being incoherent (as some professionals are, even if their writing is flawless a layman should be able to understand some of it). 

2. Discuss what you might have done differently if you could do this past semester of honors over again.

I think that I might have become a Senator during the Senate Health Care Hearings in order to help the Finance Committee make up their mind on where they stood on health care and explain to them, Senator to Senator, what the Bills actually proposed.

3. Discuss your goals for honors in the second semester.

I want to keep utilizing leadership opportunities when and where I can, in addition to further improving my writing...maybe in the creative sense, now? (see the answer to number four.)

4. If you could choose any specific parts of literature and.or history for our honors work next semester, what would you pick and why?

I would choose World War II, which we should be doing anyways next semester, and I would want to focus on creative writing. Now that the class has tried their hands at literary journalism, I think we're ready to move onto creative writing. It's probably not part of the standard curriculum, but this is High Tech High, isn't it? I also enjoy creative writing and think that we would be able to apply pretty much every writing tip we've learned thus far (and will learn in the future) to a story or poem of our own creation. It would also engage all the students and get them involved...and we could publish a compilation of short fiction stories.

What new deal can the New Deal inspire?

One government run program from the New Deal that could be effective during the Great Recession of today is the Economy Act of 1933. It was designed by the Roosevelt Administration to balance the budget deficit by cutting the salaries of government workers and veterans. Initially, the act was supposed to free up $500 million and allow the President to reorganize executive branch agencies (to a limited extent) that were ineffeciently run.

I think that the Economy Act had good intentions, but I disagree with the provision to cut the benefits of veterans—men who risked life and limb for the United States of America. If a bill similar to the Economy Act of 1933 was passed without the provision to cut the pay of veterans, then I think the bill would benefit Americans and help to ease the current economic crisis America is in because. In my opinion, the most beneficial part of the bill would be the president’s limited ability to reorganize the executive branch and all of the agencies that have sprung up in the past few decades that are a part of it, like the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Transportation, and Treasury, not including all the independent agencies, boards, commissions, committees, and bureaus that fall under the umbrella of the executive branch.

In the 1930s, there weren’t nearly as many executive agencies as there are today, even though many got their start, ironically, as part of the New Deal. President Obama passed passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 in order to ensure that “Recovery Act funds are expended for projects that further the job creation, economic recovery, and other purposes of the Recovery Act and are not used for imprudent projects.” In addition, I think that all the expenditures of the executive branch itself should be made public knowledge and society’s concern. If we reorganized executive agencies, of which there are, in my opinion, too many, then we would cut the national deficit and be able to focus those remaining executive agencies towards providing inexpensive public options for services whose rates are ever-increasing, like utilities and healthcare, which are necessities that are, for the most part, privatized.

I think we should give the president the power to cut government salaries and reorganize executive agencies so that Americans will have cheaper public options for necessary public services and so the government will be spending less money in the executive branch that they can use elsewhere.

Olson, James Stuart. Historical Dictionary of the Great Depression, 1929-1940. Santa Barbara, calif.: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001.

Lee, Mordecai. Institutionalizing Congress and the Presidency: The U.S. Bureau of Efficiency, 1916-1933. College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, 2006.
Feldmeth, Greg D. "U.S. History Resources"
http://home.earthlink.net/~gfeldmeth/USHistory.html (31 March 1998).


Botti, Timothy J. Envy of the World: A History of the U.S. Economy and Big Business. New York: Algora Publishing, 2006

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,748895,00.html

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Memorandum-for-the-Heads-of-Executive-Departments-and-Agencies-3-20-09/

Dear Mr. President,

Great men withstand the pressures of society, the world, even their peers, in pursuit of goals and reforms that they know to be true. Even before he was elected President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, “Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off.” I would go even further to suggest that when a cause is honest and just, the concessions that are made must never compromise the original objective. If anything, the elements conceded must only be given up as a sacrifice for a greater purpose. FDR had to sacrifice universal healthcare in order to pass the Social Security Act of 1935. However, today it is vital that this administration makes no compromises unless they are explicitly demanded and totally necessary. And we must acknowledge that this administration has not made significant, powerful changes in the United States. Expanding Bush’s stimulus package, negotiating a health care bill that gives no new public option whatsoever, and the new tax cut proposals that will include the cut the taxes of the rich as well as the poor—all of these are actions that leave the American people hoping, but nothing yet has fulfilled or justified their hope.

To go down in American History, not as the first African-American president, but as a great political leader that made a difference, I have two words: No War.

Roosevelt saw regulation as cooperation between individuals, or private entities, and a government that seeks the liberty of the community—disassociating mandated guidelines and parameters from socialism, totalitarianism, or any other brand that society may put upon something like universal, government-funded healthcare. And he also observed that the deficits of the Great Depression were “caused by payments for past, present, and future wars.” The most effective way to truly rise out of the Great Recession is to end the war in Afghanistan and possibly speed up the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. There are times for war, but now is the time to focus on the domestic crises that have arisen before we attempt to solve problems halfway around the world or win a war that has cost time, money, and lives. Society will support this magnanimous effort and if you take this step towards peace, you will regain more public trust and confidence so that you can promote change.

Change in the form of peace. If you withdraw from Afghanistan, you can show the public that you’re thinking of new things to do that are right. Then you can campaign for effective financial reform, fair tax cuts, reduced carbon emissions and pollution, gay rights, migrant workers’ rights, and better healthcare reform.

Don’t give up a just cause, even if you don’t support it now. The war on Afghanistan is a losing battle that isn’t ours to fight right now. Show the people that you will support them and they will start to support you.

Sincerely,

Noah Schlottman

Resources:

Obviously, the New Liberalism by George Packer and The Test by Steve Coll from the New Yorker.

Payne, Scott. "Obama's Loss Is Conservatives' Gain." Editorial. The Washington Examiner. 07 June 2010. Web. Dec. 2010. <http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/examiner-opinion-zone/obama039s-loss-conservatives039-gain>.

 John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project [online]. Santa Barbara, CA. Available from World Wide Web: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15250.

Smith, Jean Edward. FDR. New York: Random House, 2007. Print.

Burns, Steve. "Why Wasn't the War an Issue in the Election?" Editorial. OpEdNews. International Humanities Center, 09 Dec. 2010. Web. Dec. 2010. <http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-wasn-t-the-war-an-issu-by-Steve-Burns-101206-797.html>.

Federalism versus Anti-Federalism during the Civil War

The American Civil War was a conflict that raged between eleven southern states and twenty-three northern states from 1861 to 1865. It is a very clear example of Federalism vs. Anti-Federalism in that the South did not think that the federal government in Washington D.C. should have power or control over state policy. States thought that they should have the right to determine what is right and wrong in the area under their jurisdiction so that, ideally, the will of the people could be better carried out. States' Rights advocates saw the Constitution as a pact that unified the states, not a document that surrendered all their power to Washington.


On the other side of the coin were the Federalists who believed in the power of the strong, central government to enforce fundamental human rights. Abolitionists and Nationalists were two major groups that opposed anti-federalist efforts. The former thought that the federal government needed to step in and stop the South from violating human rights through slavery and the latter thought that States' rights would create a weak, inviable nation that was less one country than an assembly of smaller government entities that would not be able to function as a nation.


Ironically, although anti-federalists thought that states should be able to pretty much do what they want, Southern slave owners also thought that they should be able to take their slaves anywhere in the USA and still have them remain their slave despite laws that outlawed slavery in many northern states--basically, that meant that they were saying that people shouldn't have to listen to the federal government in these cases, but in those cases, you should.


During the Antebellum Era, the friction between and separation between the anti-slavery, pro-federal North and the pro-slavery, anti-federal South increased. The North tangibly discouraged slavery through laws that established tariffs on southern goods and compromises that threatened the South's slave-dependent economy. When Lincoln was elected president, the South feared that slavery didn't have a chance in...America. The voice of the slave states was already minor in federal government, so they decided that now was the time to secede from the Union. Before Abe even took office, seven southern states had seceded from America, receiving little resistant from Buchanan, who was a Lame Duck at this point. President Buchanan even said that declaring war on a state that has withdrawn from the union and entered the confederacy "is not among the specific and enumerated powers granted to Congress."

Nonetheless, Lincoln ended up fighting for the Union against the Confederate States of America, reunifying the country and freeing 3.5 million slaves at the cost of over a million casualties, a country that was still divided in the hearts of her people, the crushed southern economy that is perhaps still recovering, and, well, three and a half million slaves that didn't have homes, jobs, food, etc. Nevertheless, although Federalism won the Civil War, anti-federalism was not stifled in America but continued as a strong force even during the Reconstruction era.

'The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.' ~ Black Reconstruction in America (1935) by W.E.B. DuBois


Some Federal Issues
Nationalism
Abolitionism
Jurisdiction (extends to where?)
Tariffs


Some Anti-Federal Issues
States' Rights
Slavery




Interviewee: Roger Schlottman
All Questions were asked in the context of the Civil War


What do you think of States' Rights?
I believe in very, very strong States' Rights and a weak central government. The more responsive and local a government is to its people, the better and quicker it can react to their needs. People in different communities have different needs and different lifestyles, the people in La Jolla as supposed to Barrio Logan have different issues and community standards--what is right for one is often not right for the other.


But what does local government have to do with States' Rights?
As I already stated, the smaller the government, the more responsive it can be to its citizens' needs. One of the major challenges of a large, central bureaucracy is that it attempts to meet the needs of millions of diverse people with varying opinions, religions, practices, beliefs, and cultures. Basically, States are a form of a much more local government than a national government, which tries to make one size fit all.


And what does all of this have to do with the Civil War?
Because the federal government ignored the southern states' needs, like lower tariffs, cheap labor, etc. 
In order to free three and a half million slaves the federal government killed almost one million Americans and maimed almost five-hundred thousand. We also destroyed the economy of the South for the next hundred years and although African-Americans were freed from slavery, they remained slaves to discrimination, segregation, and the Jim Crow laws.
The most important point, in my opinion, is that slavery would have died out within the next 10 or 20 years. The U.S. was the last major industrialized country that had slavery.


Are there any Federal issues concerning the Civil War that you have an opinion on?
Conscription. Conscription happened for the first time under Lincoln. They also controlled the press and restricted freedom of speech. These precedents have, except for maybe World War II, not served us well (i.e., WWI, Korea, Vietnam).


Are there any good things about Federalism, especially during the Civil War?
No, can you? Wait a minute, I thought of something. It helped speed along the industrialization of the North producing war goods. The transportation and industrialization systems were in place after the war for the North to start expanding. 


But can't people's fundamental, constitutional rights be abused and violated without a strong, central government to enforce them?
Do you mean like the African-American's rights after the strong, central government prevented the secession of the South? No, just kidding. To bring it to today, I believe if you have a state that supports equal rights, equal pay for women, gay rights, etc. that those people will flock to a state where they are treated respectfully, where justice is done, and opportunity is available for all; and those states will flourish because of the rightness of their laws. That it will be a vibrant, strong, economically viable state as opposed to those other states that do not have an equal playing field in place, states which will suffer.
I call it the natural selection of government policy, where the most responsive, flexible, and honest government thrives. This would give us 50 different experimental governments that would show which ones would be the most viable over time, ideas that they could then share with the other states which they could decide if those policies would be a good fit for their state.


But wouldn't constitutional rights still be abused by some states?
Sure. But isn't that already happening today? And isn't this a more honest system, one that rewards good government behavior and open policies? Eventually, less constitutional rights, I believe, would be violated because that doesn't promote economic viability. For example, people are trying to get into the U.S., as opposed to any place where human rights are not respected and economic opportunity is not available.
In my state, all water and power would be operated on a non-profit basis. Public transportation would also be operated on a non-profit basis, with education and healthcare being funded by the state, giving all people a level playing field from which to pull themselves up. One last thing, my police wouldn't have guns.

A Brief Treatise on the Influence of the American Medical Association on HealthCare Legislation in the United States of America

The American Medical Association was founded when organized healthcare in America began to first take shape. After the association became more politically active around 1900, the AMA, which advocates in the interests of its member doctors and patients, soon became an institution that would not only alter the course of American healthcare legislation for the next hundred years, but one that continues to affect government health care decisions today. Any efforts concerning healthcare reform have always been either supported or opposed by the AMA, whose political viewpoints and endorsement have varied throughout the years.

In pre-WWI America, the Progressive Movement marked an era of social, federalist reform where an individual’s welfare and betterment was seen as the government’s responsibility. In 1916, a bill that would create compulsory healthcare in the United States was proposed and gained major support from the AMA, which said it would be “the inauguration of a great movement which ought to result in an improvement in the health of the industrial population and improve the conditions for medical service among wage earners.” The AMA’s president, Rupert Blue, described it as “the next step in social legislation.” However, after such socialist ideals were branded as “Prussian” and “Made in Germany” in 1917, the bill didn’t pass. However, the American Medical Association’s influence over the healthcare corridors of power has increased since.

By the Roaring ‘20s, the AMA, perhaps realizing the greater monetary potential in private rather than public healthcare, was totally opposed to a mandatory, government-run system. Thus, health reform was not an issue until the Great Depression, when FDR planned on including national healthcare in the Social Security Act of 1935, but stopped due to pressure from the AMA.

After WWII, President Truman (“an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”) saw the corruption of the American health system, where money was the priority and not patients, and where the AMA ran an expensive campaign opposing a government-run health system. This campaign succeeded in thwarting Truman’s efforts with Legislature and keeping the President on the defensive.

Under Eisenhower, the AMA stopped the Kings-Anderson Bill, which was the precursor to Medicare, from passing.

Fortunately, LBJ passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that, among other things, led to the desegregation of hospitals. However, the AMA originally opposed to the act and ignored or even obstructed the civil rights agenda.

Afterwards, the president was only able to pass the Social Security Act of 1965, which included Medicare and Medicaid, due to an extremely liberal House and Senate that the AMA could not defeat.

Recently, the American Medical Association backed President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which probably contributed to legislators passing it in March 2010. Although the AMA currently only represents around ⅕ of America’s doctors, the association spent $15,800,000 on lobbying in 2010.  Even though its membership has diminished, the AMA still remains a powerful force in shaping politics and healthcare, with the drive and the funding to achieve their goals.


Resources:

Edwin E. Witte, "Compulsory Health Insurance" (1973) in Robert J. Lampman (editor), Social Security Perspectives: Essays by Edwin E. Witte (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1962), 316-317. Print.

Soon or Later On: Franklin D. Roosevelt and National Health Insurance, 1933-1945
Journal article by Jaap Kooijman; Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 29, 1999

Derthick, Policymaking for Social Security, p.96

"Lobbying Stats." American Medical Assn. OpenSecrets.org, 2010. Web. Dec. 2010. <http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000068&lname=American Medical Assn>.

"Healthcare Timeline." Healthcare Crisis. Public Broadcasting Station. Web. Dec. 2010. <http://www.pbs.org/healthcarecrisis/history.htm>.

Kooijman, Jaap. ...And the Pursuit of National Health: The Incremental Strategy Toward National Health Insurance in the United States of America. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999. Print.

A Basic History of the American Government's Role and Involvement in the Shaping of Health Care in the United States of America [Short Edit]

In pre-20th century USA, for most Americans health care meant being looked after and tended to by family members or townspeople when one was ill or injured. The thought of paying a large sum of money so that you could visit a hospital would have been a foreign concept to most of America, which was rural at the time. However, there was the small-town doctor who could tend to colds and fractures, yet his fees were inexpensive (a little more than any other worker's) and his medical knowledge (in comparison to modern health) was relatively basic. In 1913, the American Medical Association (AMA) stated that only 10% of America's physicians were making a comfortable living. But times were changing.

With technological advances in the areas of transportation, communication, and medicine, there were more effective hospitals and doctors. They could now treat and cure more people; in some cases, these services were free, but in others meant lots of fees. There were different health plans in which a person could pay either a physician, hospital, or organization for his/her healthcare, but most were costly. However, some employers offered health insurance as part of the job, and the premiums weren't a lot of money at all. In Europe, healthcare 'reform' was one of the main issues. Specifically, in 1883 Germany, there was Compulsory Sickness Insurance, a precursor to national healthcare (socialized medicine). However, as healthcare and health insurance became increasing profitiable in the NineTeens, "critics said that it was 'made in Germany' and likely to result in the 'Prussianization of America' (Lepore, The New Yorker, 2009)." Obviously, the American government didn't even consider healthcare reform as the war with Germany continued. After the war was over, the cost of doctors and hospitals had not gone down, and neither had the anti-German sentiments that had helped silence the voices of healthcare reform 3 years previous. The Western world was trying to stabilize and return to normalcy; this, in addition the Red Scare of the Bolshievik revolution, meant no social reform of any kind was tolerated. As a result, the U.S. government did not regard it as an issue either until the Great Depression.

As America got deeper into the Depression, less and less people were able to pay the hospital and doctor's fees illness required, so less people even went to hospitals for treatment. Once again, some sort of national health coverage was considered in U.S. government. In 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wanted to include national healthcare as part of the Social Security Act, which was part of thew New Deal.  However, pressure from the AMA and private insurance interests dissuaded Roosevelt from including the reform in his already controversial bill. Nonetheless, later on in 1938, Roosevelt's Administration sponsored the National Health Conference in order to address the problem of  a large number of uninsured Americans--who would care for them and their needs? However, heavy publicity against National involvement in healthcare swayed public and political opinions against reform to the point that in 1939, the Wagner Health Bill, which included Federally-funded healthcare, was easily defeated in Congress. Moreover, that same year Germany invaded Poland and the Second World War began in Europe, shifting the earth's focus from the welfare of some Americans to the welfare of the whole of earth.

 After WWII ended and America quickly surpassed its pre-war status, President Harry Truman tried to increase federal involvement in healthcare. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" was the other Truman Doctrine. Despite this, his efforts only succeeded in preventing the passing of bills that would give the AMA and private insurance companies even more control over who got insurance and received treatment and who didn't. Truman based his actions on the belief that the lage profits physicians, hospitals, and insurance companies amassed were, essentially, ill-gotten gains taken from sick and ailing patients that had no other choice but to pay.

In 1960, the Kerr-Mills Bill gave Federal funding to States to aid the "medically indigent" (eldery) who were part of government health programs. However, many saw this bill only as a compromise between national healthcare and special interests. President John F. Kennedy, after his election, unsuccesfully attempted to convince Congress to consider Federal-funded healthcare. Nevertheless, Kennedy's fight against segragation and discrimination led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed into law by acting President Lyndon B. Johnson after JFK's assasination. It was the beginning of the end of segregation and places like hospitals now had to extend federal funded programs and charity to colored peoples. This paved the way for the Social Security Act of 1965--another law that reflected Kennedy's desires and goals. This Act included 2 key government programs that help millions of Americans with healthcare and have come to be dubbed Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare primarily covers Americans 65+ years old and Americans younger than 65 who are disabled. It is fully funded by the Federal government. In contrast, Medicaid is a program that States can voluntarily enter into, where they can provide up to half of the funds for the need-based programs they administer. Eligibilty is mainly based on income and financial resources, making Medicaid a welfare service.

After the Medicare and Medicaid of the 60s, President Nixon called for comprehensive health insurance and presented the Comprehensive Health Insurance Act, which would have required employers to get health insurance for their employees and created a Federal Health Plan that any American could join and pay into based on their income. It was never passed; however, the HMO Act of 1973 was passed to regulate and promote managed care. During the 1980s, a bill was passed to make sure that healthcare plans could extend after retirement.

In 1993, the Clinton health care plan was unsuccessful and only served to create disunity among democrats (who created their own different reform plans) and unity among its opponents. Dissenters of this health care plan dubbed it "HillaryCare."

The Patients' Bill of Rights (which is rather self-explanatory) was proposed in 2001. The initiative was strongly opposed by the AMA and major Pharmaceuticals and was not passed in 2002.

In 2003, the United States National Health Insurance Act was proposed but initially had small support and was therefore not a big issue. However, that same year, President George W. Bush passed the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act, which, among other things, gave people on Medicare prescription drug benefits.  In 2007, interest in the US National Health Insurance Act was renewed and in 2009 the bill was renamed the United States National Health Care Act and reintroduced to the legislative bodies. Although the bill is at the forefront of healthcare reform, focus is primarily on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Unlike HillaryCare and the health plans proposed by Roosevelt (either Teddy or Franklin, I'm not sure), Truman, and Nixon, the health plans that have been considered in Congress in the past 2 years only provide a subsidy, and don't address mandatory national healthcare. After a long process of politics as usual--Legislative debates, vote-counting, filibuster threatening, bill amending, compromising, and name-changing--the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was passed by the Senate and, eventually, the House of Representatives, after which it was signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010.  7 days later, Obama signed the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 into to amend the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. On March 23, a lawsuit filed by 13 states challenged the bill. Alas, among their reasons cited was a violation of States' Rights...anti-federalism, non?

The best conclusion to give at this point in history is: the debate over the issue of healthcare (or pretty much any issue) continues.

For more info., check out these resources:

http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec20171/index.htm

http://www.pbs.org/healthcarecrisis/history.htm

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/339640/a_brief_history_of_health_care_in_america.html?singlepage=true&cat=5

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_health_care_reform_in_the_United_States

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act

http://www.pnhp.org/facts/a_brief_history_universal_health_care_efforts_in_the_us.php

and, of course,

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2009/12/07/091207taco_talk_lepore