C) The executive branch (the President, the Vice President and the Cabinet).
The executive branch, which includes the President, the Vice President and the Cabinet, is responsible for administering and executing the laws.
The President of the United States is elected every four years to a four-year term of office, with no more than two full terms allowed. The President is elected directly by the voters (through state electors). The President must be a native-born citizen at least 35 years old and live in the US for not less than 14 years.
The U.S. President is the head of the state and the government, and the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. He proposes laws, and approves federal laws after Congress has approved them. He is responsible for relations with foreign countries and chooses US ambassadors to foreign countries. The President chooses the fourteen cabinet members who head departments, such as Justice, Defense, or Education. Within the executive branch, there are 14 executive departments. All the Secretaries of the executive department make up the cabinet. They advise the president on issues related to their departments. There are many independent agencies in the executive branch such as the FBI, NASA, or the CIA and the president chooses heads of agencies. He also chooses who will run as vice president and appoints federal judges.
The Vice President leads the Senate and combined meetings of both houses of Congress. He serves on special government committees. If the President dies, or resigns, or can’t work, the Vice President becomes President. So, the qualifications for Vice President are the same as for the President.
D) The judicial branch. The system of federal courts.
In the United States there is a dual court system composed of a federal judiciary and 50 state judiciaries. The federal judiciary consists of the Supreme Court and the system of federal courts. The judiciary, especially the Supreme Court, makes sure that laws are constitutional.
The Supreme Court is the highest judicial organ of the USA. It meets in the Supreme Court building of white marble on Washington, D.C. The Supreme Court is made up of the Chief Justice and eight associate justices. They are all appointed for life.
Immediately below the Supreme Court stand the Courts of Appeals, created in 1891 to facilitate the disposition of cases. With few exceptions, cases decided in the district courts go next to the appeals courts. Only the Supreme Court reviews the decisions of the appeals courts.
District courts are located in the states. Most cases and controversies start in district courts. Here nearly all accused of committing federal crimes are tried.
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Individual states make all the laws concerning sales taxes, education, speed limits, environmental protection, unemployment benefits, gambling, drinking and selling alcohol, and divorce. That is why regulations can vary so much from one state to another. Every state and every city also has its own police force.
Federal laws apply to all citizens, wherever they live. The armed forces and national taxes are controlled by the federal government. When a federal crime, such as kidnapping, drug offenses, or threatening the president, is committed, the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) investigates. The FBI is the only nationwide police force. People convicted of federal crimes are sent to a federal penitentiary rather than to a state prison.
E) Major political parties (the Republican Party, the Democratic Party).
The two leading national parties are the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Other smaller parties, such as the Libertarian Party and the Labor Party, do not play a role in national politics.
The United States began as a one-party political system. In 1787, when the Constitution was written, the people were divided over whether to ratify it, although they were not yet organized into definite political parties. The question of who should be the new President began to divide people into political organizations. Thus by 1800 the one-party Revolutionary government of the United States quickly split up into a two-party system.
The Democratic Party is the older of the two, tracing its history back to the time of Andrew Jackson in the 1820. The Republican Party, which followed the Federalist Party and the Whigs, was organized in the 1850 primarily as an antislavery party. In 1860 the Democratic Party was split into two factions, the northern and the southern Democrats, each putting up its own candidate for president. The Republicans received more votes than either faction of the Democrats, and Abraham Lincoln was elected President. The symbol of the Democratic Party is the donkey and that of the Republican Party is the elephant. They were invented in the early 1970s by the cartoonist Thomas Nast.
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Over the years the positions of the two major parties have been changing and adapting themselves to the currently important problems of public policy. If one reads the platforms of the two parties, one finds that there is very little difference between them.
That the two parties greatly resemble each other comes about chiefly because of the two factors. One is that on a national basis each political party is actually a loose association of the party organizations within the various states. The second reason is that each party is more interested in winning elections than in putting across a particular policy or law. It has been aptly said that each political party is not a single party, but a collection of fifty parties which are temporarily drawn together every four years for the purpose of winning the presidency.
Political parties in the United States are entirely free of the party discipline that characterizes political parties in Europe and Asia. It is not necessary to make an application to join the Democratic or the Republican party; there are no membership dues; party leaders cannot expel a member. The nature of the election laws in some states, in fact, makes it possible for a voter to keep his political party affiliation secret.
The Republican Party votes come generally from higher income groups, while the lower income groups generally vote Democrat. Many American voters do not bother to vote. The United States is such a large and diverse country that it is difficult to label American parties as conservative or liberal. A Democrat from Nebraska probably has quite different views from a Democrat in Florida or New York, but on the whole, Democrats are thought of as more progressive than Republicans.
The major political parties have less power than in some countries, because many voters will vote for an individual candidate rather than for the party that candidate represents. Elected officials do not have to support their party’s program if they do not agree with it.
Presidential candidates are nominated at the Republican and the Democratic conventions. These take place after the candidates have toured the country making speeches and running in primary elections in many states. The results of the primary elections indicate if a candidate has enough support to be the candidate of his or her party.
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