Congressional Ethics
Since the 20th century, there were a number of scandals in the Congress. Many of those scandals influenced the attitudes towards the Congress’ members in that way or another. While most of the accused members continued to reside in the House, some of them did not make it through the reelection. Crimes performed by members of the Congress involving ethics violations, corruption, and negative lobbyism as well as the penalties that followed them may affect the public’s attitudes towards some members which leaves them no choice but to resign.
One of the most notorious examples of such events is the system of frauds that Jack Abramoff created in his line of duty. He was charged with tax evasion, corruption and unethical behavior towards the citizens of the US (Dovi, 2014). In 2006 he was arrested and sentenced to six years in custody. He served five years of six and began to work as a prison clerk for a minuscule salary of twelve cents a day.
Personally, I believe that the sentence was well-deserved. Two reasons for that are: all of the accusations were proven, and the amount of fraudulent activity that Abramoff was involved in is terrific. However, I would not say that this example would affect my attitude towards the members of the Congress in general because one case is not sufficient to speak for the rest of the community.
Third Party Candidates
The fact that third-party candidates do not win presidential elections is well-known. Furthermore, certain conditions stipulate this predicament. First of them is that the government does not support any third-party candidates. The two-party system has actually been functioning for an extended period of time now, so the authorities do not find it necessary for this system to change. The second condition is directly connected to the lack of support from the government; it is the mindset that the community of the US has. The voters are much less likely to support a third-party candidate. It is more convenient to stick to the more familiar parties and their candidates.
However, should the changes occur, the two-party system is most likely to fall apart as the third parties are often much more concerned about the well-being of the community as a whole and that of separate minorities (Sifry, 2013). Therefore, if a third party would succeed in presidential elections, the Democrats and Republicans are most likely to lose most of their electorates in a short period of time.
Federal State and Authority
One of the current political and sociological issues that the United States are facing is the problem of the US’ authorities and parties ignoring the citizens with lesser incomes. As assumed in research by Rigby and Wright (2013), the low-income citizens are in fact not taken into account in the procedure of law-making. This creates a lot of tension in the community and the governmental institutions alike. The authors question whether this is indeed true, and parties tend to bias their activity regarding citizens with different income rates.
However, it is empirically proven by the authors that there is a strong connection between poor people’s needs and the actions undertaken by different parties. This allows assuming that this problem is currently worked on and that the preferences of the poorer strata of the population are taken into account during the law-making processes.
References
Dovi, S. (2014). The ethics of the revolving door. Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy, 12, 535-585.
Rigby, E., & Wright, G. C. (2013). Political parties and representation of the poor in the American States. American Journal of Political Science, 57(3), 552-565.
Sifry, M. (2013). Spoiling for a fight: Third-party politics in America. New York, NY: Routledge.