The book was better than the movie. Most of us have heard those words so many times that they’ve become a cliché. In the case of Starship Troopers, it would be more accurate to say that the book bears almost no resemblance to the movie. Citizens in the fictional society of Starship Troopers don’t take politics lightly, because they’ve earned the privilege to vote the hard way — through blood and personal sacrifice. The people of the Terran Federation are either "Citizens" or "Civilians". On the other hand, reading William L. Riordon’s Plunkitt of Tammany Hall provided an insight on many different themes at the turn of the twentieth including: honest graft, civil service reform, patronage, and how to succeed as a statesman. This book was an …show more content…
However people of higher levels of authority also have to suffer tougher repercussions of their actions: e.g. a lieutenant could hang for making a mistake that a private would merely be dismissed and maybe lashed for. Corporal and capital punishment are practiced by the government. Plunkitt of Tammany Hill was an interesting look into the politics during a time when the Industrial Revolution flourished and the American people looked for leaders. In the Plunkitt of Tammany hall, the heart of a political machine is based on a patronage system. Special favors are performed for constituents who show their gratefulness by voting for the machine. In essence, they are bribed to vote. Progressive reformers saw this as anti-democratic. One of Plunkitt’s main mottos was to stay close to the people. A statesman is more likely to be elected if the voters can relate to that candidate. Plunkitt boasted of his riches and of himself, which only distanced himself from the common people. At one point in the book, Plunkitt claimed his “enemies” told the townspeople that Plunkitt bought a very nice dress suit and an even nicer car the day before one of his elections. He maintained these statements were malicious lies and finally “did him in” or cost him the election. Why would his “enemies” have to make up contradictions about Plunkitt when he clearly states …show more content…
He admitted that his fondest dream was of the city becoming its own state. He commented, “The people wouldn’t have to bother about nothin’. Tammany would take care of everything for them in its own quiet way.” This was the kind of talk that probably alarmed progressive reformers. One might argue that he relied too heavily on the spoils system, that today is still present, but a candidate cannot rely solely on this system. Plunkitt’s opinion of woman in politics as un-American would not go over well with today’s voters or at least half of the voters. In the twenty first century, most Americans look for a well-educated and well-dressed statesman, who at the same time can relate to the common people. The American people hold a higher standard today for political figureheads than at the turn of the last
During the Gilded Age—a period that began in the 1870s wherein the United States experienced tremendous economic growth—affluent industrialists such as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew W. Mellon, Cornelius Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan, and Andrew Carnegie exercised, owing in large part to their wealth, enormous influence over the direction of American politics. Though left unaddressed during the Gilded Age, the issue of corporate involvement in political affairs was eventually identified as a corrosive problem in President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1904 State of the Union address. In his address, Roosevelt asserted that corporate spending in federal elections had the potential to engender corruption—or the appear...
Rings and alliances within political forces allowed powerful individuals to dictate the outcomes of decisions that would further increase their power and influence. By exploiting the desperation of powerless workers and immigrants, prominent figures like Mike Scully were able to rig elections, keeping specific people in power by buying votes with money replaceable to him, but invaluable to the desperate. The democratic party, to which Scully belonged, remained in power by giving the poor man so little that he was eager to undertake any task for the sake of money. When Jurgis was offered bribes for his vote, he realized that it was not “supposed to be right” to sell his vote, but also that refusing the money would not make “the slightest difference in the results” (Sinclair 134). Sacrificing the bribing money to take a stand was not an expenditure that the poor man could afford, and the working class was thus forced to facilitate the medium of their
When driving west down Lamar in Memphis, Tennessee, the street turns into E.H. Crump boulevard. That is about as much as I knew about the name E.H. Crump. Never would I have guess what the name meant to the city of Memphis and the amount of weigh t it once carried. It was not until I enrolled into this Tennessee History course that I began to realize how significant the man behind this name was. Before Elvis Presley put Memphis on the map with his Rock n Roll music, Willie Herenton took office, or various Memphis musicians claimed to be the “King of Memphis”, there was one man who undoubtedly ran the city, and his name was Edward Hull Crump. Political bosses in American were not something that was uncommon in the early 1900s. According to dictionary.com a political boss is “a leader in a political party who controls votes and dictates appointments”. Crump emerged from humble beginnings to become the most powerful man in Memphis in a reign that would span over a few decades.
Roosevelt led the reform committee that brought Tammany to its knees – by the 1960s, the once glorious machine had been destroyed. The urban political machine was a force that provided stability and growth for the “out-of-control” urban population. Cities grew at uncontrollable rates and organizations like Tammany Hall instituted public improvements and created millions of jobs because of the torrential flow of immigrants into Ellis Island. It can even be argued that Tammany and other political machines made the transition easier for these immigrants, without whom the cities would not have been able to prosper to the extent that they did. The political machine created a type of politics that was purely practical in nature, and although it allowed for an immoral amount of corruption, the contributions it made to growth, stability, and production cannot be understated.
George Washington Plunkitt was a complicated politician from New York in the 1900’s. He had his own questionable way of seeing what’s right and what’s wrong. Plunkitt’s Ideas of right a wrong sometimes seemed to be off. However, some of his ideas about things that needed to be reformed were as true then as they are now. Plunkitt seemed to be a man that knew how to get what he wanted out of people with very little effort. From the perspective of an outsider this could make him hard to trust, but to people then this wasn’t a problem.
Shmoop Editorial Team. "Politics in Progressive Era Politics." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 05 Apr. 2014. .
5. Perry, Elisabeth Israels, and Karen Manners Smith. The Gilded Age and Progressive Era: a student companion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Print.
Following the years of Congressional Reconstruction during the Johnson administration, former Union General Ulysses S. Grant was elected president, despite his lack of political experience. Although Grant was an excellent soldier, he proved to be an insufficient politician, failing to respond effectively to rampant corruption throughout his two terms in office. Both government and businesses were plagued by corrupt schemes, as Republican leaders used the spoils system to gain political favors and “robber barons,” such as Jay Gould and James Fisk, stole large sums of money at the public’s expense. New York Mayor William “Boss” Tweed, leader of the “Tammany Hall” political machine, took advantage of the influx of immigrants to the United States by manipulating newly arrived immigrants, promising employment, housing, and other favors in return for their electoral support. This blatant corruption severely damaged the opinions of many Americans regarding their government, and prompted the election of numerous reform-minded politicians. Rutherford B. Hayes and James Garfield both attempted to restore honest government following the tainted Grant administration, yet political divisions between the “Halfbreed” and “Stalwart” factions of the Republican Party prev...
When considering the presidents of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt is almost always associated with ideas of imperialism, progressivism, and masculinity. Bederman uses Roosevelt as the perfect example of manhood and exposes his form of racially dominant manhood. She writes, “for Roosevelt, race and gender, were inextricably intertwined with each other” (214). Evidence of this can be found in her discussion of Roosevelt’s African
As the years dragged on in the new nation the roles of men and women became more distinct and further apart for one another. Women were not allowed to go anywhere in public without an escort, they could not hold a position in office let allow vote, and they could only learn the basics of education (reading, writing, and arithmetic). In law the children belonged to the husband and so did the wife’s property and money. The only job women could think about having was being a ‘governess’ which would give other women education.
When the our criminal justice system introduced punishments, sanctions for criminal behavior tended to be public events which were designed to shame the person and deter others. These punishments included ducking stool, the pillory, whipping, branding and the stocks. As years progressed, these punishments have slowly started disappear from our penology and capital punishment was introduced. According to Kronenwetter,
Society has long since operated on a system of reward and punishment. That is, when good deeds are done or a person behaves in a desired way they SP are rewarded, or conversely punished when behaviour does not meet the societal norms. Those who defy these norms and commit crime are often punished by organized governmental justice systems through the use of penitentiaries, where prisoners carry out their sentences. The main goals of sentencing include deterrence, safety of the public, retribution, rehabilitation, punishment and respect for the law (Government of Canada, 2013). However, the type of justice system in place within a state or country greatly influences the aims and mandates of prisons and in turn targets different aspects of sentencing goals. Justice systems commonly focus on either rehabilitative or retributive measures.
There are several types of punishment that can be inflicted upon an offender including, fines, community sanctions and imprisonment (The Judicial Conference of Australia, 2007). Punishment is described as a sanction which inflicts a certain amount of pain and loss on the offender, used for payback and deter (The Judicial Conference of Australia, 2007; Carlsmith, Darley, & Robinson, 2002). There are three ways society justifies punishing offenders, through the
Punishing the unlawful, undesirable and deviant members of society is an aspect of criminal justice that has experienced a variety of transformations throughout history. Although the concept of retribution has remained a constant (the idea that the law breaker must somehow pay his/her debt to society), the methods used to enforce and achieve that retribution has changed a great deal. The growth and development of society along with an underlying, perpetual fear of crime are heavily linked to the use of vastly different forms of punishment that have ranged from public executions, forced labor, penal welfarism and popular punitivism over the course of only a few hundred years.
According to David Garland, punishment is a legal process where violators of the criminal law are condemned and sanctioned with specified legal categories and procedures (Garland, 1990). There are different forms and types of punishment administered for various reasons and can either be a temporary or lifelong type of punishment. Punishment can be originated as a cause from parents or teachers with misbehaving children, in the workplace or from the judicial system in which crimes are committed against the law. The main aim of punishment is to demonstrate to the public, the victim and the offender that justice is to be done, to reduce criminal activities and to deter people from wanting to commit any form of crime against the law. In other words it is a tool used to eliminate the bad in society or to deter people from committing criminal activities.