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This program with Bill Moyers examines the effect of political contributions on public policy. The program shows how campaign contributions to key committee members of Congress helped cause the Savings and Loan debacle; how a loophole in the campaign finance law is permitting large cash contributions-so called "soft money"-to undermine the public financing of presidential campaigns; and how special interest money from the $700 billion health care...
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Gerrymandering is defined as the carving up of a state into districts in a way that allows one political party to gain more clout than another. It has also been called the most effective way to manipulate an election's outcome short of outright fraud. Focusing on the fight to pass Proposition 11 - drafted to give redistricting power to a bipartisan rather than legislative group - this documentary explores the ethical implications of gerrymandering...
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Can the shortcomings of representative democracy - failing political parties, increasing distrust of government - be addressed within the current system, or is it time to explore a new political model? In this program, five top thinkers in political sociology discuss issues in modern democracy. Fareed Zakaria asserts that the West has been unable to impose short-term pain for long-term gain; John Keane points to political innovation in South Africa...
5) Modern Presidential Campaigns: Volume 4Packaging the Candidates, Images & Sound Bites (1980 - 92)
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This fourth volume - "Packaging the Candidates: Images & Sound Bites" (1980 - 92) - moves from Ronald Reagan's successful media campaigns to Clinton's use of the "change" issue to overcome the Bush advantage of incumbency.
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Who should lead the world's only superpower? When is it acceptable to topple another country's leader? Are personal freedom and national security mutually incompatible? The answers to urgent political questions such as these are informed by 23 centuries of discourse that started with The Republic. This program focuses successively on the pivotal ideas of Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Rousseau, Marx, Mill, John Rawls, and Robert Nozick to elucidate the...
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This program chronicles the rise of the Conservative movement in America from the 1940s to the height of the Reagan era, explaining the intellectual premises of Conservatism while covering both the well-known and the less-chronicled back pages of Conservative history. It covers the Hiss-Chambers case, which galvanized the movement around the issue of anti-Communism; the organization of three Conservative think tanks; the birth of the Goldwater candidacy,...
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Pregnancy, once the most private of concerns, has become the center of public controversy. Contraceptives, abortion, fetal alcohol syndrome, and related issues have put the debate in the headlines, in the courts, and on the streets. Ruth Macklin, professor of bioethics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, has worked with medical students and professionals to suggest intelligent ways of thinking through the moral obligations they face...
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Once every four years, when the United States turns its attention to choosing a leader, a small snowy state in the northeastern corner of the country becomes the political center of the nation. This historical documentary travels to Laconia, New Hampshire, for the 1969 presidential primary, where the men who want to be president - Richard Nixon, Michigan's Governor George Romney, and Senator Eugene McCarthy from Minnesota - start the campaign with...
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President Obama made his feelings known on the 2012 Supreme Court Affordable Care Act ruling, citing "judicial activism" and "those who would overturn" the health care reform law. Some say he's gone too far. NewsHour correspondent Jeffrey Brown discusses the historical tug-of-war between the president and the Court with Georgetown Law's Louis Michael Seidman and Randy Barnett. Origina?
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Running through the 2004 presidential campaign, this program examines the new world order shaped by the demise of the Soviet Union and the rise of global terrorism. The video spotlights the Iran hostage crisis of Jimmy Carter's presidency, the Iran-Contra scandal and the Strategic Defense Initiative of the Ronald Reagan administration, George H. W. Bush's Gulf War, the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal, and the 9/11 attacks, during George W. Bush's...
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London. New York. Oklahoma City. Each was the site of a horrific and violent attack on the public, as were Madrid, Oslo, and many other urban areas. In the wake of every such tragedy has come a dramatic increase in security: not only more closed-circuit cameras, biometric scanning, and specially designed architecture, but also new laws that allow intense surveillance of individuals, organizations, and their activities. Clearly, the public needs protecting-but...
13) The State
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Winston Churchill said that democracy is "the worst system devised by the wit of man, except for all the others. Although the state has taken many forms throughout history, some consider it not a protector of its citizens and their freedoms, but a fetter on their liberty. This program provides a historical overview of the myriad forms of government that have existed and their organizing principles, whether it is a Greek city state such as Athens that...
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America is the only advanced democracy with a two-party system. Advocates says it helps unite a vast, multi-ethnic nation. But third-party candidates have had a major influence on American presidential elections. The coalitions that have held the two parties together in the past are now shifting. More so than in previous presidential elections, the 1996 race may see the emergence of one or more serious presidential candidates who say it's time for...
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In this program, world-renowned author and professor Bryan Magee and Ronald Dworkin, Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford, examine how the explosive issues of the 1960s compelled the reassessment of fundamental political ideas, and discuss the effect of this movement on political philosophy at the universities.
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Is the U.S. so divided into communities of the like-minded that people have stopped hearing any political opinion that differs from their own? This program reported by ABC News' George Stephanopoulos explores the polarizing phenomenon known as "the big sort" and how that detrimental force is reshaping activism, influencing the media, and suppressing bipartisan discourse in Congress. Stopovers at true-blue Montclair, New Jersey, and red-hot Franklin,...
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This program examines societal shifts towards imperialism, nationalism, capitalism, and egalitarianism by studying the impact of the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, the American Revolution, and British colonialism in Africa on how people thought. Featuring leading academics and clear explanations, the video consolidates a huge amount of information, putting it into context with excellent examples. Focusing on the British Empire and the...
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This program with Bill Moyers explores firsthand how citizens are taking action to improve their communities, focusing on Chicago, where citizens groups have joined with government officials to preserve manufacturing jobs, revitalize parks, and prevent crime. Members of the National Commission on State and Local Public Service provide a national perspective.
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This program with Bill Moyers examines leadership, the presidency, and the presidential election of 1992. Featured in the program are Abraham Zaleznik, author of Learning Leadership; Steve Pieczenik, former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State; Fernando Moreno, editor of El Diario, who talks about the Latino voice in the elections; and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Dean of the Annenberg School for Communications, who analyzes the campaign itself and...
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On July 1, 1990, President George H. W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. Towards the end of the confirmation hearings, allegations by Anita Hill, a law professor who had worked under Thomas at the Department of Education and EEOC, were leaked to the media. What followed was a media frenzy. This ABC News program investigates the charges made on both sides. Interviews with other women who worked with Thomas and back Hill's account,...