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Politics in recent years.At the end of the Persian Gulf War, President Bush enjoyed a large approval rating from the voters, but the declining economy cost him a second term in office as Democrat Bill Clinton won the election. Ross Perot, a third-party candidate and a billionaire businessman running as an “outsider,” surprisingly won 19% of the popular vote, hurting Bush’s reelection effort.
• Although Clinton began his presidency with Democratic majorities in both the House of Republicans and the Senate, he did not get much of his legislation passed as easily as expected. To help the economy, he tried to reduce the deficit by raising taxes and to end the recession by increasing spending. His first budget passed by only two votes.
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• He lost his battle to establish a national health care system. In the midterm elections of 1994, the Democrats lost control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. However, despite the more hostile Congress, Clinton managed to come up with a program of welfare reform that was agreeable to all. This reform eliminated guarantees of federal assistance and gave states authority to run welfare as they saw fit with federal money. It also limited the amount of aid a family could receive.
• Clinton easily won a second term in office, but scandal soon overwhelmed his presidency. First, Clinton was charged with having been involved in some fraudulent land deals in Arkansas in the Whitewater affair. Another charge said the president had accepted illegal campaign donations, but Clinton was cleared on both counts.
• However, trouble continued to brew on the horizon when it was found during the Whitewater investigations that Clinton had had an affair with a White House intern. He lied about the affair under oath in a separate sexual harassment charge, thus committing the crime of perjury. Clinton was then impeached on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. Although most of the country disapproved of Clinton’s actions, the majority thought impeachment went too far. Clinton avoided removal and remained popular as the economy continued to grow.
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• The election of 2000 proved to be one of the most contentious in the history of the country. Texas governor George W. Bush ran against Al Gore, Clinton’s vice president. The campaign mostly focused on domestic issues surrounding the federal tax surplus. Bush wanted to give it back to Americans, whereas Gore wanted to use it to shore up Social Security and pay down the national debt
The election was so close that although Gore had won the popular vote, a recount of Florida was necessary to determine the electoral vote. After a month of haggling about how many votes to recount, the Supreme Court stopped the recount and Bush won the presidency.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and Communism, the United States tried to promote democracy in the former Soviet countries and began to work with them on controlling the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
• South Africa gave the world a pleasing surprise as its government, reacting to worldwide economic sanctions against it, finally ended apartheid policies in the early 1990s, holding its first interracial elections in 1994. Despite fears of civil war, the transition was handled peacefully.
• China also began to work closely with the United States to normalize trade between the two countries.
• In Somalia, U.N. armies were sent to stop the bloodshed.
• In Yugoslavia, ethnic wars broke out between the Serbs and the Muslim Albanians
• There was also violence in Northern Ireland until the Irish and British came to a peace agreement.
• In the Middle East, violence increased after the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Domestic Terror –Oklahoma City April 1995
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Columbine, CO April 1999
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On September 11, 2001, the violence hit home when Muslim extremists led by Osama Bin Laden
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a Saudi dissident, carried out terrorist attacks using airplanes to hit the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon.,
Another plane, headed for Washington had its attack foiled by passengers who forced it down in Pennsylvania.
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The attack on the World Trade Center caused the collapse of the buildings
23and the deaths of nearly 3,000 people.
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• This attack sparked the War on Terror, which led the United States to attack the country of Afghanistan for protecting terrorists, including bin Laden, and allowing them to train there.
Later, the United States put together a peacekeeping force to stop the development of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq because Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s refusal to cooperate with U.N. investigators. Saddam Hussein was captured in December 2003, but Iraq was immersed in an ongoing civil war. President Bush has faced much criticism for his handling of the war in Iraq.
• The War on Terror has affected Americans at home as well. President Bush created a new Office of Homeland Security, the largest reorganization of government departments since just after World War II. The new department is charged with preventing terrorist activities within the United States.
As the twenty-first century approached, it became clear that American demographics were changing.
Over 80% of legal immigration during the twentieth century came from Asia and Latin America rather than Europe. The nation is now made up of a wide diversity of ethnicities and races. There has been heated debate over the issue of immigration because many Americans fear that continued immigration could hurt jobs and cost billions in social support programs. Immigration has also provoked debates about the best way to educate non-English speakers, with some states even outlawing bilingual education programs.
• The country is also facing the challenge of keeping up with changing technology. In 1984, only 8% of all American households had computers; by 2003, over 60% owned computers. Computers have changed and continue to change the way we work, shop, learn, and use information. The rate of change is so fast that it is difficult to predict changes from one day to the next.
The U.S. is 20th in the world in
broadband Internet
penetration.(Luxembourg
just passed us.)
In 2002 alone Nintendo
invested more than $140 million
in research and development.
The U.S. Federal Government
spent less than half as much on
Research and Innovation in
Education.
1 out of every 8 couples married in
the U.S. last year met online.
There are over 100 million
registered users of MySpace.
(August 2006)
The average MySpace page is visited 30 times a
day.
There are over 2.7 billion searches performed on Google each
month.
The number of text messages sent and received every day
exceeds the population of the
planet.
More than 3,000 new books are published . . .
Daily.
It’s estimated that a week’s worth of
New York Times . .
Contains more information than a person was likely
to come across in a lifetime in the 18th
century.
It’s estimated that 40 exabytes (that’s
4.0 x 1019) of unique new information will be generated
worldwide this year.
That’s estimated to be more than in the previous
5,000 years.
The amount of new technical information is
doubling every 2 years.
It’s predicted to double every 72 hours by 2010.
Third generation fiber optics has recently been
separately tested by NEC and Alcatel . . .
That pushes 10 trillion bits per
second down one strand of fiber.
That’s 1,900 CDs or 150 million simultaneous
phone calls every second.
It’s currently tripling about
every 6 months and is expected to do so for at least
the next 20 years.
The fiber is already there, they’re just
improving the switches on the ends. Which
means the marginal cost of these improvements
is effectively $0.
47 million laptops were shipped
worldwide last year.
• The new technology has also helped make the economy increasingly global. Countries around the world have been working to lower tariffs and create free trade zones. Over 25 European nations have put their resources together to establish the European Union and replace their individual monetary systems with a single currency called the euro.
• The United States encouraged greater cooperation in North America with the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1992 and with the formation of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which had power to negotiate trade agreements and resolve trade disputes between nations. Many people complained that these organizations favor large, multinational companies, but the WTO officials say that labor and environmental standards can be improved though free trade.
• The U.S. economy saw huge gains through 2005, although the Bush tax cuts of 2003 as well as the cost of the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina did put a strain on the budget. The rate of change in our population and technology as well as the increasingly global economy will continue to provide new challenges as America heads further into the twenty-first century.
