Tag: U.S. extemp topic brief Page 1 of 3

On November 19, 2009

By Logan Scisco

Since the summer, the Obama administration has attempted to push healthcare reform through Congress. With 46 million Americans uninsured, the administration and its Democratic colleagues have emphasized the urgency of passing healthcare reform that would provide insurance to these individuals who do not possess insurance because of choice, their economic condition, or because a pre-existing medical condition excludes them from obtaining quality health insurance. The current economic situation in the country, where the official unemployment rate is the highest in 26 years at 10.2% (some have the actual number of unemployed at 17%), would seem to help the administration pass this reform. Another added advantage of the administration going into the healthcare debate is that the Democrats control both houses of Congress and have a crucial filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

However, Obama’s initial push to pass healthcare reform by the end of the summer bit the dust and when representatives went back to their constituents they faced hostile town meetings. While the media debated the merits of these meetings, they showed how divisive healthcare reform can be as violence was reported at some of the town halls and one man even had a finger bit off. Furthermore, although the House of Representatives succeeded shortly after the 2009 elections in passing a healthcare bill, the Senate is facing a series of complications in ensuring healthcare reform can clear its chamber.

This topic brief will provide an updated focus on the healthcare debate. It will examine the future of the public option, the new controversy involving abortion in the healthcare legislation, and the chances of the Democrats getting a healthcare bill through the Senate.

As a side note, I cannot recommend enough that extempers read as much as possible about the healthcare debate, looking at medical journals such as the American Journal of Medicine and other publications to get a sense of the problems that effect American healthcare. It would also be wise for extempers to read about other “national” healthcare systems that exist in Canada, Great Britain, and France because comparisons in speeches are never a bad idea.

Topic Brief: Kerry-Lugar Bill

On October 21, 2009

By Logan Scisco

Since September 11, 2001, the Pakistani government has been a friend to the United States. Although Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) organization helped to establish the Taliban and was friendly to the Taliban government in Afghanistan, the Pakistani government under Pervez Musharraf made an about face after that date. Musharraf’s cooperation helped to secure billions of dollars in military and civilian aid for his country and also helped to silence Bush administration officials who might have otherwise been angry at the Musharraf regime’s handling of human rights issues (not to mention a lack of true democracy being practiced in the country).

In August 2008, Musharraf stepped down as President of Pakistan and was replaced by Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Under his leadership, the Pakistani government has gradually adopted a harder line on Islamic militants inside of the country (after first trying to accommodate them) and Pakistan’s resolve has been in contrast to the current U.S. position in Afghanistan that looks indecisive and shaky.

However, U.S. officials have always been wary of Pakistan. The army acts as an independent force from the government and has been known to meddle in political affairs. The army has participated in three coups against the Pakistani state. With this backdrop, U.S. officials have wanted to tighten conditions for aid that is sent to Pakistan and this is where the Kerry-Lugar bill, passed last month by Congress, comes into play. This brief will describe some motivations of the Kerry-Lugar bill, the Pakistani people’s reaction to it, and how it could damage US-Pakistani relations.

Topic Brief: Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize

On October 14, 2009

Before we jump into this week’s topic brief, check out the official video from NobelPrize.org’s YouTube channel on their rationale for the selection of Barack Obama as a 2009 Nobel Laureate.

By Logan Scisco

When people first heard the news about Barack Obama being awarded the Noble Peace Prize they probably thought it was some kind of joke. I can admit to having this reaction. The reason is not that Obama is a failed president or I have some type of anti-Obama bias. It is simply because the Nobel prize traditionally has awarded individuals based on their actions, citing concrete achievements and progress as opposed to hopes for what might happen in the future. With President Obama having been in office for only nine months and without any significant changes

The Nobel Peace Prize is an award that comes from the estate of Alfred Nobel, the creator of dynamite. Nobel created five awards, given for peace, chemistry, literature, physical science, and medicine. The peace prize and these other awards are determined by a Norwegian committee. The criteria given for the peace prize, which carries with it a $1 million reward is the following: that a person should “shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

Obama’s victory in the prize came as a shock to many and has prompted a debate over the merits of the prize and sparked a small political controversy in the United States. The controversy might be the only thing that unites conservatives with Hamas and Hugo Chavez. This brief will examine the justification behind Obama receiving the award, the reaction of the globe and fellow politicians in the U.S., and how this prize could play a part in Obama’s future agenda.

Topic Brief: “You Lie!”: The Joe Wilson Incident

On September 14, 2009

Last week, President Barack Obama tried to change the message on the healthcare debate. As the American public has grown more skeptical of the President’s agenda, Obama’s team has tried to retake the initiative in the media and part of that was Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress. However, during Obama’s speech when he said that illegal immigrants would not receive coverage in his healthcare plan he was interrupted with a shout of “You lie!” by Joe Wilson, a Republican representative from South Carolina. For anyone who has not seen the video, it is worth a look just to see Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s facial expression after the incident.

Wilson’s remarks started a political firestorm. Some have argued that his actions demonstrate everything that is wrong with the Republican Party. Others have argued that there must be something bad in the water in South Carolina, where Republican Governor Mark Sanford is trying to fight off impeachment by January. Then there are those who believe Wilson did the right thing in standing up to Obama and calling him to task for a lack of enforcement mechanisms in healthcare legislation to keep illegal immigrants from getting coverage.

Considering that healthcare is a central tenet of Barack Obama’s domestic agenda and that the Republican Party is hoping to regain control of the House in 2010, it is important that we look at the Joe Wilson incident this week. To do so, this brief will break down the incident in two ways. First, we will look at the issue that raised Wilson’s ire: the coverage of illegal immigrants in the healthcare legislation before Congress. And second, we will look at the political fallout from Wilson’s outburst and if it works more in favor of Democrats or Republicans.

Topic Brief: Budget Deficit Politics

On September 3, 2009

By Logan Scisco

During the “off season” after NFL Nationals, the issue of the budget deficit has come to be a major one in American politics. It has the potential to shape the outcome of the midterm elections in 2010 and is playing a role in President Barack Obama’s declining popularity ratings. As extempers get ready for the 2009-2010 season, which starts in less than six weeks with the Wake Forest National Early Bird, they will face questions about an array of economic issues such as unemployment, the effectiveness of the stimulus package, and the level of international trade as well as the controversial issue of healthcare reform. All of these issues have something to do with the budget of the United States government and by proxy the deficit the U.S. government currently finds itself facing.

Americans in the late 1990s got used to seeing fiscal discipline on Capitol Hill between the executive and legislative branches. President Bill Clinton worked with Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, a relationship that was often tense through impeachment proceedings and a government shutdown, to craft a budget that was balanced and that ran a surplus totaling $128 billion. In fact, the major issue of the 2000 election between Vice-President Al Gore and then-Texas Governor George W. Bush was over what to do with this budget surplus, with Gore arguing that it needed to be used to shore up entitlement programs such as Social Security in a “lockbox” and Bush arguing that it needed to be given back to the American people in the form of a tax cut. After the first presidential debate between the two men in the fall of 2000, Saturday Night Live had a hilarious mock debate over this issue.

After Bush won the election, he was able to get Congress to approve his tax cut package and celebrated the occasion as a victory for small government. However, thanks to September 11^th and a U.S. recession that began after Bush was elected, the federal government started to see deficits early in the Bush administration. By the time Bush left office, he and Congress, which was controlled for six years of his administration by Republicans, left the country with nearly a $500 billion deficit. To put this into perspective, that number represents nearly three percent of America’s gross domestic product (GDP), the total value of goods and services produced within the U.S. in a given year.

Therefore, this topic brief will describe the state of the budget deficit under the Obama administration, how Congress and the Obama administration are trying to cope with it, and the political fallout on the budget deficit issue.

Topic Brief: Bill Clinton’s Visit to North Korea

On August 11, 2009

As has been the case over the last several years, international attention was focused on North Korea last week as former U.S. president Bill Clinton went on a “humanitarian” mission to seek the release of two American journalists detained there. Unlike other attempts at international reconciliation with North Korea, Clinton’s visit was a large success, winning the release of the journalists and possibly opening a new arena of dialogue between the U.S. and North Korea over its human rights record and nuclear program.

Clinton’s visit to North Korea was the first high profile U.S. visit to the country since Clinton sent his Secretary of State Madeline Albright there a decade ago. Under Clinton, tensions between the U.S. and North Korea were high, with some experts predicting a renewed Korean War in the post-Cold War world. However, thanks to the 1994 Agreed Framework between the two countries, those tensions simmered down until North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) in 2003.

The visit of the former president granted a degree of prestige to North Korea’s ailing leader Kim Jong-il, whose recent belligerent actions in regards to nuclear weapon and missile tests are said to be designed to shore up his standing in the country with the military and ensure that his third son takes his place. In fact, it has been reported that the North Korean government informed the United States that if President Clinton came to visit them that they would grant the release of the two journalists.

This topic brief will provide some quick background of the dispute over the journalists, explain how the release of the journalists could impact international mediation over the North Korea nuclear issue, and how it could have major political and foreign policy impacts for the Obama administration moving forward.

Topic Brief: Budget Deficit Politics

On August 4, 2009

During the “off season” after NFL Nationals, the issue of the budget deficit has come to be a major one in American politics. It has the potential to shape the outcome of the midterm elections in 2010 and is playing a role in President Barack Obama’s declining popularity ratings. As extempers get ready for the 2009-2010 season, which starts in less than six weeks with the Wake Forest National Early Bird, they will face questions about an array of economic issues such as unemployment, the effectiveness of the stimulus package, and the level of international trade as well as the controversial issue of healthcare reform. All of these issues have something to do with the budget of the United States government and by proxy the deficit the U.S. government currently finds itself facing.

Americans in the late 1990s got used to seeing fiscal discipline on Capitol Hill between the executive and legislative branches. President Bill Clinton worked with Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, a relationship that was often tense through impeachment proceedings and a government shutdown, to craft a budget that was balanced and that ran a surplus totaling $128 billion. In fact, the major issue of the 2000 election between Vice-President Al Gore and then-Texas Governor George W. Bush was over what to do with this budget surplus, with Gore arguing that it needed to be used to shore up entitlement programs such as Social Security in a “lockbox” and Bush arguing that it needed to be given back to the American people in the form of a tax cut. After the first presidential debate between the two men in the fall of 2000, Saturday Night Live had a hilarious mock debate over this issue.

Topic Brief: The Politics of National Security

On May 27, 2009

Last week, extempers were given the treat of seeing President Barack Obama and former Vice-President Dick Cheney give speeches on national security. The Obama administration has continued to advocate that the Bush administration’s policies were negligent in winning international support and made hasty decisions concerning the treatment of detainees in the conflict. Not to take these allegations lying down, Cheney has fired back that Obama is trying to compromise with an enemy that will never compromise and is endangering America’s national security when he is releasing information about interrogation techniques and wanting to close Guantanamo Bay.

On top of this, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has been under fire for accusing the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of lying before Congress and for arguing that she was unaware that waterboarding techniques where being utilized on detainees. This has created yet another partisan, and some would say distracting, conflict on Capitol Hill that augurs ill for Obama’s promise of getting past the politics of division.

With NFL several weeks away, extempers need to brush up on their understanding of America’s national security debate. Even international extempers could face questions about how America’s image abroad is being impacted by the domestic debate we are seeing play out. Thus, this brief will provide a quick overview of the conflict between Republicans and Democrats on national security, the steps being implemented by President Obama to settle some of these national security issues and what the GOP is doing to attack Democratic opposition, and then provide some political impacts for the current national security debate.

Topic Brief: Social Security & Medicare Spending

On May 19, 2009

Last week Social Security and Medicare trustees released a chilling report that documented the dire financial straits of the programs they oversee. According to the trustees, Social Security will start taking in less money than it sends out in 2016 and by 2037 the fund will go bust, four years earlier than anticipated. Also, Medicare’s hospital fund is already running a deficit and is now in danger of going bust by 2017.

Social Security and Medicare are two of the largest federal government programs. Social Security provides an array of services for disabilities, child insurance, and most importantly, a supplemental income to retiring Americans. Medicare helps to cover hospital costs and medical costs for senior citizens, including a generous prescription drug benefit that the Bush administration added to the program in 2004. The point of these two programs was to prevent seniors from falling into poverty when they were no longer working.

Solutions to these programs have been advocated before by think tanks and task forces. However, Congress has long delayed looking into reforming these programs because of the unpopularity such moves would cause.

This brief will explain the current fiscal status of these programs and why they are in dire straits, proposed changes to these programs, and political impact the dire status of these programs could have in the near future.

Topic Brief: David Souter Retirement

On May 5, 2009

Last Friday, Supreme Court justice David Souter announced his retirement, pending the confirmation of a successor. Souter has been a liberal vote on the court, progressively moving in that direction since arriving to the Court in 1990. He was a former New Hampshire Attorney General, New Hampshire Supreme Court justice, and First Circuit Court of Appeals justice before serving on the highest court in the United States.

As most extempers are aware, mostly from their U.S. history classes in high school, the Supreme Court is one of the more powerful branches of government. It derives its power from judicial review, the power to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional. This was a power that was not expressly given to the Court in the Constitution, but was created in the 1803 Supreme Court decision of Marbury v. Madison.

With Souter’s retirement, President Barack Obama will have his first opportunity to appoint a Supreme Court justice, enjoying this power earlier in his presidency than his predecessor George W. Bush, who had to wait until his second term to receive his first Supreme Court appointment (and he selected John Roberts).

This brief will explain Souter’s arrival to the Court and his legacy, discuss possible successor options, and the political minefield that this decision creates for President Obama.

Topic Brief: Swine Flu Outbreak

On April 28, 2009

In International Extemp, Topic Brief, U.S. Extemp

The last several years have been fortunate for the world’s medical watchers. Fearing an avian flu pandemic across the globe several years ago, these experts have only had to watch the progression of the virus in isolated parts of the Eastern Hemisphere. Also, avian flu never became a human-to-human transmission problem, reducing the urgency required or the threat of avian flu becoming a global problem. However, the recent outbreak of swine flu, if it can be aptly called that since this strain of flu borrows from swine influenza, avian influenza (albeit not its most dangerous components), and human influenza components, which has infected nearly 1500 people globally at the time of this writing, can aroused fears that this is the next global flu pandemic. This is compounded by the fact that swine flu appears to be spreading from person to person, regardless of their contact with infected animals.

This brief will attempt to sort through the mess generated by the latest swine flu outbreak. This brief will provide some details concerning swine flu and its significance, measures currently being taken to stop the spread of the virus, and the implications it has for the globalization movement and President Obama.

Topic Brief: Tea Parties & State Sovereignty Resolutions

On April 21, 2009

In a time of federal bailouts for corporations, aid to homeowners who are facing trouble paying their mortgages, and budget plans that call for trillion dollar deficits, a segment of the American population has had enough. Clinging to their signs and cries of showing Washington that power still rested with the people, 800 locations around the country were the site of “tea parties” last week, denouncing the policies of President Barack Obama and the Democratically-controlled Congress.

To supplement these protests, 24 states are considering legislation that would reargue the principles of the 10^th amendment, the amendment to the U.S. Constitution that delegates all powers not given to the federal government to the states. This showdown over the concept of federalism has intrigued constitutional experts, as well as some voters, who are seeing Texas Governor Rick Perry arguing that Texas has a right to succession (although Perry later toned down those remarks).

This grassroots action against the D.C. establishment will be analyzed in this week’s topic brief, which might be useful to extempers competing in U.S. extemp at NFL. It may also be useful to extempers preparing for CFL, as the topic areas are slanted 5-3 in favor of U.S. issues. This week’s brief will break down these competing ideas, providing background for the tea parties and their purpose, the fight in state legislatures over sovereignty bills, and an evaluation of how these actions could impact the American political scene.

Topic Brief: Space Junk

On March 31, 2009

by Logan Scisco

Although space issues are a well researched area by extempers, who focus more on domestic politics and international situations such as those involving North Korea, they do arise in the later rounds of tournaments when question writers have exhausted all possible options for questions. The chance of drawing a question concerning space issues also increases at a national qualifying tournament or at national competitions when “science and technology” is an often used topic area, especially at CFL Nationals and as one of the thirteen topic areas for United States extemp at NFL.

Considering that nationals keeps creeping up and recent events surrounding the issue of space junk, such as the collision last month of a U.S. and Russian satellite over Siberia, and how the International Space Station (ISS) was almost struck by a piece of space junk last week, an issue that is followed by scientists has started to become an issue of public debate. As this debate grows and as “close calls” in space become more reported, extempers have a higher likelihood of getting a question on space junk.

This topic brief will provide some informational facts concerning space junk, the reason it is a concern for space programs, and its implications on future space policies.

Topic Brief: AIG Bonuses

On March 24, 2009