WEEK SHEET
Week Nine: 11/21
Announcements:
1. I revised the last few weeks of the syllabus (basically reducing the reading and coverage.
The revised calendar is as follows:
Week 9: 10/21
The Executive Branch - The Bureaucracy: ADR 13, Handout on Title IX (Women’s Sports)
Week 10: 11/28
Thanksgiving No Class
Week 11: 12/5
Editorial Due
Rights and The Judiciary – ADR 14, Rourke 14 and Rourke 4
Week 12: 12/12
Final.
Reading:
Text: ADR Chpt. 13 and Handout on the Bureaucracy and Women in Sports
Lecture: Lecture on the Federal Bureaucracy
To Do:
1. Assignment: Exploring Maplight:
• Go to maplight.org • I suggest taking the video tour for an overview of the site, but this is not required.
Questions:
1. Under Example Pages, click on the Horse Protection Bill and then click on Horse breeders (under opponents of the bill) and tell me who the top four recipients of funds from horse breeders were.
2. Click on votes and tell me how much interest groups opposing of the bill gave legislators who voted against the bill compared to how much they gave to supporters of the bill.
3. Click on how each legislator voted, scan the results and tell me whether this was basically a partisan or non-partisan bill (a partisan bill is one which has a clear division between Democrats and
Republicans, the bill is non-partisan if there are a mixture of Democrats and Republicans on both sides of the bill.)
4. On the bar at the top of the page, click on “Bills”, then select “Energy and Utilities” and then to the right select the subgroup “Oil and Gas”. Click on the first bill listed which is the Consumer-First
Energy Act and tell me what this bill would do.
5. Click on “Votes” and you will notice that there was a vote for “cloture” on the bill. (if you do not know what cloture is review page 311 in ADR.) How did the Republicans in the Senate kill this bill and how many more votes did the Democrats need to move the bill forward?
6. To the right of “Interests who did NOT want this bill to become law.” change “show all” to just
“independent oil and gas producers” and tell me how much this group gave to legislators on each side of the debate.
7. The cloture vote took place on June 10th of 2008; Click on the time line of contributions and tell me which month had the largest spike in donations from groups opposing the bill.
8. Go back to the map light homepage and under current bills (on the left side of the page) Chose the
Credit Card Holders Bill of Rights Act. Click on votes to see whether this bill passed or not. Then click on Timeline of Contributions and scroll over to Sep. of 2006. Double click on the red bar so you can so who gave what to who and summarize in a sentence what you find. With all this spending, did the bankers win on this bill?
9. From the maplight home page now click Paycheck Fairness Act, note to yourself what the bill would do then click on “Votes” and the click on “How each legislator Voted”. Of the first five

members listed (who voted for the bill), how many of them received more money from supporters of the bill than opponents? What does this suggest to about money and votes?
10. Scroll through the list of votes. Was the vote partisan or non-partisan?
11. We are almost done, but just one more thing. Go to opensecrets.org (another tracking site) and on the top bar drop down under “Influence and Lobbying” and select “Heavy Hitters”. Under the list of top 10 donors, hit “View Full List” drop down to #68, which is Chevron. Notice that Chevron seems to prefer Republicans, but then click on sub bar near the top of the page where it says “Recipients” and tell me who Chevron’s two recipients currently are. What a surprise!
I hope you enjoyed the exercise and found some time to explore on your own. While there are real differences between the parties (as we saw in one vote above as well as when examining civil liberty and environmental votes a few weeks ago), votes regarding much of the “under the radar” special interest legislation is affected more by money than by party. To the extent that this dominates
Congress, we still have rule by what some call the “Demopublicans”.
2. Researching an Executive Branch Department:
Chose one of the following cabinet level departments of the federal bureaucracy and go to their webpage. You can find it dimply by Googling it. Spend about 20 minutes surfing the site including visiting some of the agencies linked to the department. Write a 300 word summary of what you learned from your visit. You have some flexibility how you want to do this, but you should provide some overview of the Department’s activities as well as unearth a few details of some of the information that could be gleaned from the site. For example, you might find an article or report on the site of particular interest and write a little about it.
Choices:
Department of Health and Human Services
Department of Commerce
Department of the Interior
Department of Agriculture
Department of the Treasury
Department of State
Department of Energy
Department of Labor
3. Case study on Administrative Law: Women in Sports (Answer both #1 and #2.)
1. Explain what the Handout on Women in Sports eaches us about the power of an executive agency to shape congressional law? (Answer in about 200 words.)
2. In what ways is the email survey used by the department an example of bad polling techniques?
Briefly list about 4 reasons.
To Think About:
1. Explain the difference between horizontal and vertical conflict in the federal bureaucracy. Discuss how and why these kinds of conflict can take place and provide examples of each.
2.
Explain how special interests can affect the bureaucracy through both iron triangles and the capture of regulatory agencies. Provide of examples of each.
3. Describe how administrative law can be used by the executive branch to reshape congressional legislation.
Consider how the Bush administration has done this in regarding to both Title IX and the EPA.
4. Describe what constitutes the Executive Office and the Cabinet and explain the basic difference between them in terms of their role and function.
5. To whom is the federal bureaucracy accountable and how effective is oversight of the bureaucracy.
6. What factors affect the federal bureaucracy’s effectiveness in carrying out the will of the Congress and the
American people.