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26. The term third party is used in the United States for a political party other than one of the two major parties, at present, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. It is used as (innumerate) shorthand for all such parties, or sometimes only the largest of them. The term is often used dismissively; also called minor parties. See also Third party (politics).

Historically, in the U.S. since the formation of organized political parties in the 1830s, the country has had a two-party system. Following Duverger's law, the Electoral College with its "winner take all" award of electors in presidential elections plus, for Congress, single-seat plurality voting, have, over time, created the two-party system. Another contributing factor is the division of the government into three separate branches, which differs from the parliamentary system.

Although third parties rarely win national elections, they can have an effect on them. Third parties can draw attention to issues that may be ignored by the majority parties. If the issue finds resonance with the voters, one or more of the major parties may adopt the issue into its own party platform. Also, a third party may be used by the voter to cast a protest vote as a form of referendum on an important issue. Third parties may also help voter turnout bringing more people to the polls. Third party candidates at the top of the ticket can help to draw attention to other party candidates down the ballot, helping them to win local or state office. In 2004 the U.S. electorate consisted of an estimated 43% registered Democrats and 33% registered Republicans, with independents and those belonging to other parties constituting 25%.

In the United States , a Political Action Committee, or PAC, is the name commonly given to a private group, regardless of size, organized to elect political candidates. Legally, what constitutes a "PAC" for purposes of regulation is a matter of state and federal law. Under the Federal Election Campaign Act, an organization becomes a "political committee" by receiving contributions or making expenditures in excess of $1,000 for the purpose of influencing a federal election.

 

Interest Groups and Political Action Committees: Liberal

Interest Groups and Political Action Committees: Conservative

Interest Groups and Political Action Committees: Other

27. The United States district courts are the general trial courts of the United States federal court system. Both civil and criminal cases are filed in the district court, which is a court of law, equity, and admiralty. There is a United States bankruptcy court associated with each United States district court. Each federal judicial district has at least one courthouse, and many districts have more than one. The formal name of a district court is "the United States District Court for" the name of the district court for example, the "United States District Court for the Southern District of New York". In contrast to the Supreme Court, which was established by Article III of the Constitution, the district courts were established by Congress. There is no constitutional requirement that there be any district courts at all.

In the United States, the Supreme Court of the United States is the highest Federal court in the country, with powers of judicial review first asserted in Calder v. Bull (1798) in Justice Iredell's dissenting opinion. The power was later given binding authority by Justice Marshall in Marbury v. Madison (1803).

Each U.S. state has a state supreme court, though some do not actually use the term "supreme court" which is the highest authority interpreting state law.In Maine and Massachusetts the highest court is styled the "Supreme Judicial Court"; the latter is the oldest appellate court of continuous operation in the Western hemisphere. In New York, Maryland, and the District of Columbia the highest court is the "Court of Appeals." (In New York, the "Supreme Court" is the trial court of general unlimited jurisdiction and the intermediate appellate court is called the "Supreme Court — Appellate Division".) In West Virginia, the highest court of the state is called "Supreme Court of Appeals." Oklahoma and Texas each have two separate highest courts, one for criminal appeals ("Court of Criminal Appeals") and one for civil cases ("Supreme Court").

The United States federal courts comprises the Judiciary Branch of government organized under the Constitution and laws of the federal government of the United States.  While federal courts are generally created by the United States Congress under the constitutional power described in Article III, many of the specialized courts are created under the authority granted in Article I. Much greater power is vested in Article III courts because these courts are much more independent of Congress and the President. If Article I courts were able to exercise that level of power, the balance of power between the branches of government would be threatened. Notably, the only federal court that can issue proclamations of federal law that bind state courts is the Supreme Court itself. Decisions of the lower federal courts on issues of federal law are persuasive but not binding authority in the states in which those federal courts sit.[1]

The right to fair trial is seen as an essential right in all countries respecting the rule of law. A trial in these countries that is deemed unfair will typically be restarted, or its verdict quashed.

The right to a fair trial is explicitly proclaimed in Article Ten of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and Article Six of the European Convention of Human Rights, as well as numerous other constitutions and declarations throughout the world.

Judicial review is the power of the courts to annul the acts of the executive and/or the legislative power where it finds them incompatible with a higher authority, such as the terms of a written constitution. Judicial review is an example of the functioning of separation of powers in a modern governmental system (where the judiciary is one of several branches of government). This principle is interpreted differently in different jurisdictions, which also have differing views on the different hierarchy of governmental norms. As a result, the procedure and scope of judicial review differs from country to country and state to state.

28.

  • Republicans Believe that the United States were founded on the fundamental principle that individuals have certain rights and freedoms which cannot be infringed upon and may be restricted only to the degree necessary to preserve the rights of others.

Democrats Believe that our Founding Fathers did not really mean what they said when they guaranteed certain constitutional rights such as the right to freedom of religious expression, the right to keep and bear arms, and the right to retain the use of private property.

  • Republicans Believe the money you earn is yours and that government in a free society has the right to take only as much as is needed to perform those limited functions, which are appropriate to it.

Democrats Believe government has a right to use your money as it sees fit to redistribute wealth, establish new spending programs in times of budget surpluses, and to return to you only that portion of your money which is politically expedient.

  • Republicans Believe the traditional family and the values it fosters are the foundation of American society and their preservation is essential to our Nation's continued success.

Democrats Believe American society must redefine its values and the role of the family to fit new lifestyle concepts, which have resulted from the 60's counter-culture movement and an attitude that promotes an abrogation of individual responsibility.

  • Republicans Believe parents have the right to determine the values with which their children will be raised and to have the widest possible choice among public, private and religious schools and that competition will improve public education.

Democrats Believe the federal government has the right to determine the values which will be taught in public schools and parents' choice of schools must be limited to avoid exposing public schools to competitive forces which would encourage reform and increase accountability.

  • Republicans Believe that the free enterprise system is the most effective engine of economic progress.

Democrats Believe that government regulation and federal control of economic activity can better distribute wealth and services to the American people.

  • Republicans Believe high taxes, runaway government spending, and over-regulation of business and farming punish initiative and stifle economic growth.

Democrats Believe penalizing achievement with higher taxes and increased government bureaucracy and spending will not stifle economic growth but instead guarantee prosperity for everyone.

  • Republicans Believe that with freedom comes responsibility and that individuals must take personal responsibility for their own actions and our criminal justice system must be based on this idea.

Democrats Believe individual behavior, including criminal behavior, can be blamed on "society" and that spending on social welfare programs and improvements in prison living conditions can combat crime.

  • Republicans Believe that your property is yours and you have the basic right to make use of it without unreasonable government restrictions.

Democrats Believe the government has the right to regulate the use of private property in accordance with narrow special interests without giving just compensation to owners.

  • Republicans Believe the preservation of our rights and freedoms must be entrusted to a strong national defense and of the ability of the United States to negotiate with other nations from a position of strength.

Democrats Believe we can afford to drastically weaken our military despite the threats present in an unstable, post-Cold War international environment and the United States must subjugate its interests to those of the United Nations.

  • Republicans Believe it is imperative today to re-affirm the traditional freedoms and values of America to preserve our great Republic.

Democrats Believe that America must adopt a politically correct, multi-cultural set of values which denies common American heritage and will further divide American society.

  • Republicans Believe there can be differences of opinion and that such differences such result in opponents, not enemies.

Democrats Believe that all whom oppose them are to be treated as enemies.

  • Republicans Believe that all of America's citizens can enjoy the rights and freedoms of our country without diminishing the rights of others.

Democrats Believe that some must give up a portion of their rights and freedoms that others may enjoy those same rights and freedoms.

  • Republicans Believe that public servants, particularly those whom we elect to office, must be held accountable to the highest standards of ethical conduct. "If a man cannot be trusted with the government of himself, can he be trusted with the government of others?" [Thomas Jefferson]

Democrats Believe that loyalty to a discredited leader is a virtue and if other office holders have committed indiscretions, a sitting office holder should not be criticized for failing to uphold the highest standards of ethical conduct.

29. The economy of the United States is the largest national economy in the world.[11] Its gross domestic product (GDP) was estimated as $14.2 trillion in 2008.[12] The U.S. economy maintains a high level of output per person (GDP per capita, $46,800 in 2008, ranked at around number ten in the world). The U.S. economy has maintained a stable overall GDP growth rate, a low unemployment rate, and high levels of research and capital investment funded by both national and, because of decreasing saving rates, increasingly by foreign investors. In 2008, seventy-two percent of the economic activity in the U.S. came from consumers.[13]

Major economic concerns in the U.S. include external debt, entitlement liabilities for retiring baby boomers who have already begun withdrawing from their Social Security accounts, corporate debt, mortgage debt, a low savings rate, falling house prices, and a large current account deficit. As of September 2008, the gross U.S. external debt was over $13.6 trillion,[14] the most external debt of any country in the world.[15] The 2008 estimate of the United States public debt was 73% of GDP.[16] As of March 2009, the total U.S. federal debt exceeded $10.9 trillion,[7] about $37,850 per capita.

Sectors: Mining Utilities Construction Manufacturing Wholesale trade Retail trade Transportation & warehousing Information Finance & insurance Real estate & rental & leasing Professional, scientific, & technical services Management of companies & enterprises Administrative & support & waste management & remediation service Educational services Health care & social assistance Arts, entertainment, & recreation Accommodation & food services Other services (except public administration)

Agriculture is a major industry in the United States and the country is a net exporter of food.

Agriculture - products: wheat, corn, other grains, fruits, vegetables, cotton; beef, pork, poultry, dairy products; forest products; fish

Manufacturing

USA is the leading manufacturer in the world with a 2007 industrial output of US$2,696,880 millions. Main industries are petroleum, steel, motor vehicles, aerospace, telecommunications, chemicals, electronics, food processing, consumer goods, lumber, mining.

30. Class mobility

Class ascendancy—namely that each successive generation will have a higher standard of living than its predecessor—is a central theme in American literature and culture and plays a key role in the American dream. While social class in the United States is thought to be largely based on achievement, climbing the social ladder is more difficult for those born into less advantageous positions.[5][13] Occupation (perhaps the most important class component), educational attainment, and income can be increased through a lifetime. However, factors such as wealth inheritance and local education system—which often provides lower quality education to those in poor school districts[38]—may make rising out of poverty a challenge. Class mobility in the United States decreased between the 1970s and the 1990s.[39]

Social Mobility
Like many countries, the United States has a social class structure. Unlike most countries, though, except at the very highest level, it is possible for an American to move up to a higher social class one step, or one generation at a time. Immigrants from many countries have arrived by the millions, started at the bottom of the ladder, and within a generation or two have become part of the mainstream of American middle class life.

U.S. Social Security is a social insurance program funded through dedicated payroll taxes called Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA). Tax deposits are formally entrusted to[3] Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, or Federal Disability Insurance Trust Fund, Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund or the Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund. The main part of the program is sometimes abbreviated OASDI (Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance) or RSDI (Retirement, Survivors, and Disability Insurance). When initially signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935 as part of his New Deal, the term Social Security covered unemployment insurance as well. The term, in everyday speech, is used to refer only to the benefits for retirement, disability, survivorship, and death, which are the four main benefits provided by traditional private-sector pension plans. In 2004 the U.S. Social Security system paid out almost $500 billion in benefits.[4] By dollars paid, the U.S. Social Security program is the largest government program in the world and the single greatest expenditure in the federal budget, with 20.9% for social security and 20.4% for Medicare/Medicaid, compared to 20.1% for military expenditure. [5] Social Security is currently the largest social insurance program in the U.S., constituting 37% of government expenditure and 7% of the gross domestic product[6] and is currently estimated to keep roughly 40% of all Americans age 65 or older out of poverty.[7] The Social Security Administration is headquartered in Woodlawn, Maryland, just to the west of Baltimore.

31. Health care in the United States is provided by many separate legal entities. Including private and public spending, more is spent per person on health care in the United States than in any other nation in the world.[1] A study of international health care spending levels published in the health policy journal Health Affairs in the year 2000, found that while the U.S. spends more on health care than other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the use of health care services in the U.S. is below the OECD median by most measures. The authors of the study conclude that the prices paid for health care services are much higher in the U.S.[2] In 1996, 5% of the population accounted for more than half of all costs.[3][4]

Active debate over health care reform in the United States concerns questions of a right to health care, access, fairness, efficiency, cost, and quality. The World Health Organization (WHO), in 2000, ranked the U.S. health care system as the highest in cost, first in responsiveness, 37th in overall performance, and 72nd by overall level of health (among 191 member nations included in the study).[5][6] The WHO study has been criticized in a study published in Health Affairs for its methodology and lack of correlation with user satisfaction ratings.[7] A 2008 report by the Commonwealth Fund ranked the United States last in the quality of health care among the 19 compared countries.[8] However, the U.S. is a leader in medical innovation, with three times higher per-capita spending than Europe.[9] The U.S. also has higher survival rates than most other countries for certain conditions, such as some less common cancers, but has a higher infant mortality rate than all other developed countries.[10]

As a proportion of GDP, public health care spending in the United States is larger than in most other large Western countries.[11] On top of that, there is substantial expenditure paid from private insurances. According to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the United States is the "only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not ensure that all citizens have coverage" (i.e. some kind of insurance).

Insurance in the United States refers to the market for risk in the United States of America. Insurance could be said to be

  • the benefit provided by a particular kind of indemnity contract, called an insurance policy;
  • that is issued by one of several kinds of legal entities (stock insurance company, mutual insurance company, reciprocal, or Lloyd's syndicate, for example), any of which may be called an insurer;
  • in which the insurer promises to pay on behalf of or to indemnify another party, called a policyholder or insured; and
  • that protects the insured against loss caused by those perils subject to the indemnity in exchange for consideration known as an insurance premium.

Various associations, government agencies, and companies serve the insurance industry in the United States. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners provides models for standard state insurance law, and provides services for its members, which are the state insurance divisions. Many insurance providers use the Insurance Services Office, which produces standard policy forms and rating loss costs and then submits these documents on the behalf of member insurers to the state insurance divisions.

In recent years this kind of operational definition proved inadequate as a result of contracts that had the form but not the substance of insurance. The essence of insurance is the transfer of risk from the insured to one or more insurers. How much risk a contract actually transfers proved to be at the heart of the controversy. This issue arose most clearly in reinsurance, where the use of Financial Reinsurance to reengineer insurer balance sheets under US GAAP became fashionable during the 1980s. The accounting profession raised serious concerns about the use of reinsurance in which little if any actual risk was transferred, and went on to address the issue in FAS 113, cited above. While on its face, FAS 113 is limited to accounting for reinsurance transactions, the guidance it contains is generally conceded to be equally applicable to US GAAP accounting for insurance transactions executed by commercial enterprises.

32

It is clear that women in America enjoy much more personal freedom and independence than women in many other parts of the world. This freedom is something we hold dear and one of the things that define contemporary American culture. However, it is also clear that many immigrants, coming from very different-thinking cultures, view such women with at least suspicion and at most contempt.

Here, females, just like males, are expected to move away from parents’ homes and set up on their own in order to prove themselves successful, fully functioning adults. True, a woman can more easily remain at home with her parents than a man can here, but past about age 25 others would begin to look at her askance. So expect the women here to live on their own, in apartments or homes that they own, and consider such a situation to mean simply that such a woman is an adult and that she can afford such accommodations.

Further, in many other places in the world, women are expected to hold marriage and children as their primary goals and interest. Here, women are generally more interested in these things than the men are, but they do not necessarily place them first on their “to do” lists. In America, a woman is just as likely to decide that her education, for instance, needs to be completed before she can consider marriage or family. She may decide that her career needs to develop to a certain point first. In short, an American woman may have the same kind of broad concerns about conducting her life that men have around the world. In the case of men, most folks would consider holding such priorities as prudent in preparing for life’s challenges, but women can still come under scrutiny for the same priorities. Here, it should not be surprising to find women delaying marriage and family into their thirties, forties or even fifties.

Independent women in America should be viewed through the same lens through which most folks would view men. A woman living on her own and conducting her own personal and professional business can run the whole gamut from dutiful, traditional and chaste to self-involved, nontraditional and sexually free. One would need to engage the individual woman in order to find out the truth.

 

33. The wealthier the community the more money they spend. The public schools are very much community schools. They must have local public support because citizen vote directly on how much they want to pay for school. There are a great many state , city or country-owned colleges and universities, and many are supported by states. Private universities are supported by private donations (endowments), special organizations and funds, tuition fee. Colleges and univer-s whether state or private are quite free to determine their own individual, admissions, requirements.

The responsibilities of the federal government toward education as they have evolved today are to provide encouragement, financial support and leadership.  The Congress of the United States has constitutional powers to allocate funds for education, but it has no direct control over education.  Several departments within the federal government (e.g., the Department of Defense and the Department of Agriculture) also make large expenditures on specific educational programs. 

The state board of education determines educational policies in compliance with state laws.  Board members are elected by the people or appointed by the state governor and usually serve for terms ranging from two to six years.  They are empowered to formulate policies relating to educational affairs such as allocation of school funds, certification of teachers, textbooks, curricula, library services, sports facilities, and provision of records and educational statistics. 

34.

General Pattern of Education in the USA

The general pattern of education in the USA is an eight-year elementary school, followed by a four-year high school. This has been called 8—4 plan organization. It is proceeded, in many localities, by nursery schools and kindergartens. It is followed by a four-year college and professional schools. This traditional pattern, however, has been varied in many different ways. The 6—3— 3 plan consists of a six-year elementary school, a three-year junior high school, and a three-year senior high school. Another variation is a 6—6 plan organization, with a six-year elementary school followed by a six-year secondary school.American education provides a program for children, beginning at the age of 6 and continuing up to the age of 16 in some of the states, and to 18 in others.
The elementary school in the United States is generally considered to include the first six or eight grades of the common-school system, depending upon the organization that has been accepted for the secondary school. It has been called the “grade school” or the “grammar school”.

There is no single governmental agency to prescribe for the American school system, different types of organization and of curriculum are tried out.
The length of the school year varies among the states. Wide variation exists also in the length of the school day. A common practice is to have school in session from 9:00 to 12:00 in the morning and from 1:00 to 3:30 in the afternoon, Monday through Friday. The school day for the lower grades is often from 30 minutes to an hour shorter. Most schools require some homework to be done by elementary pupils. Elementary Schools, High Schools and Institutions of Higher Le

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