The Phillippines Relief Project

After thousands of lives lost in the tragic storm in the Philippines, efforts are being made to help those in need. But some are more important then others when is a crisis. Priority number one in this case should be clean and portable water. Without water people will die and as seen in Hati, without clean water disease will spread.

To solve this problem, I recommend putting funding towards establishing teams with supplies of clean water and water filtering devices into the most troubled cities in the Philippines like Manila or
Guiuan.

As far as selecting an organization to lead this project, there are many options. Red Cross has the most disaster experience, but they would also take the biggest cut of funding. On the other-hand OXFAM is a less established organization, but other 78% of their funding goes towards their disaster relief programs. Personally I would choose the American Red Cross as they are well established and have proven their abilities on multiple occasions in the past. Despite the extra funding needed, they guarantee results.

For my invention. I think a safe way of transporting clean water overseas without complications is an essential piece of reacting faster to natural disasters. Therefore our government should develop a system of cargo ships exclusively made for transporting clean water and filtering supplies to overseas disaster areas. This way nobody struggles with finding transportation of needed water in these situations.

Watergate: Deep Throat

A secret source in a time of great corruption. This was Deep Throat or as he was later known by his real name W. Mark Felt. Throughout the Watergate scandal, Felt provided important information to the Washington Post that helped surface the corruption taking place during the Nixon presidency. He was a key component of exposing the fraudulent executive branch of our government.

Felt was a top-ranking FBI agent during the Nixon era. He was in consideration to replace J. Edgar Hoover when he stepped down as Director of The FBI. But felt was not selected for the position because Nixon's administration did not trust Felt to run things in the moral gray area that Nixon came to represent. As a top-ranking agent, Felt had many contacts in the white house and in the government. He knew Nixon was using wire-taps and breaking the law in order to keep his public appearance intact. Felt decided he had to do something to expose what was going on. This is where the press came into play, because Felt was known at the time for tipping off reporters about critical upcoming news. So Woodward and Bernstein at the time were low level reporters looking for their big scoop. When the opportunity to break the Watergate scandal come to them they knew this was a world-altering news story.

When leaking information to the press, Felt would meet with Woodward and Bernstein of The Post in a parking garage very early in the morning. At the time, Felt was worried his phones were being tapped so he developed a system of coded-signals to stay hidden.

The risks being taken by Felt were insane. He was not only defying the president, but the entire government. But Felt knew the importance of what he knew about the Nixon administration and his willingness towards illegal activity. "He knew was taking a monumental risk," said Woodward, now an assistant managing editor of The Post. Felt took a chance that no was willing to take for the sake of the morally righteous government.

The importance of Felt's efforts to up hold the truth during a time of corruption cannot be understated. Without his leaks to the press, the public may have never known the truth about the Watergate break-ins. Without that information getting to the public, Nixon may have never stepped down and our government would have become a symbol of ethics of the morally questionable.















Sources:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/fbis-no-2-was-deep-throat-mark-felt-ends-30-year-mystery-of-the-posts-watergate-source/2012/06/04/gJQAwseRIV_story.html

http://www.history.com/topics/Watergate

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/power-players-abc-news/why-did-deep-throat-leak--revisiting-the-watergate-leaks-and-the-garage-where-it-all-began-213911831.html

AP Gov Essay 10/31/13

 As time has gone on, our government has changed it's policies. This also goes for the constitution as it is amended and tweaked over time. There are two ways to amend the constitution both formal and informal. The formal approach includes proposal and ratification. The informal route includes more propaganda and proposal, rather then ratification.The informal methods are used more frequently because they require less effort, but could still warrant a result.

A major system of government at play today is federalism. It is the layering of government to create a system of shared power. One of the benefits of federalism is categorical grants, which limit the uses of the grant money so it can't be overused. Also another benefit would be federal mandates, which help regulate the relations between state and local government.

But as the state and national government found their boundaries, there were certain instances that required the states to have more power. An example of such power would be the tenth amendment. This amendment gave the states implied powers that weren't directly addressed in the constitution. Also block grants would be another example of power to the state government. These grants gave states funding for broad programs such as community development.