Author Archives: hanying.jiang

05/15/11

State Children’s Health Insurance Program

 

President Obama signed the State Children’s Health Insurance Program on February 4, 2009. This program was designed for children in families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, but too little to pay for personal health insurance. The program was only providing to U.S citizens or legal residents who under 21 and pregnant women. “This bill will enable to cover more than four million uninsured children by 2013, while continuing coverage for seven million youngsters. The bill will increase tobacco taxes to offset the increase in spending, estimated at more than $32 billion over four and a half years.”(Congressional Budget Office).

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/us/politics/05health.html

Back to 1993, President Bill Clinton did the exact same thing as President Obama; however, the plan was not successful.

05/10/11

Global Economic problems


According to Eric, in the 1990s, countries all over the world have economic problem. In Western Europe, the unemployment rate was much higher than the United States. Russia had more economic problems then they could handle. The Russian President, Boris Yeltsin, asked for advice from the U.S. government and U.S. economists. As a result, “they imposed severe cuts in wages, and guaranteed jobs, health care, and housing Russians had become used to under communism.”(Erin: 1011).
Most of the countries had to borrow some major loans money from foreign banks, and had trouble paying back. Some foreign investors were able to pay back the loans, but most countries had to cut- back on their budgets to pay off some of their loans.

05/1/11

Protest Songs



“Where have all the flowers gone?” (1960-1970) by pete seeger. The song is about wives to soldiers, who love to pick flowers. But then, their husbands are to go to war, and the wives receive horrible news that their husbands have been killed. So, in the end, the flowers that the wives pick end up on the husband’s graves. The wives have picked so many flowers, that there are barely any more flowers left for anybody else. “What I’ve Done” (2000-2010) by linkin park. The song is about people who litters and pollutes and does so many other bad things to the earth. But one day, they wake up and realized what they had been doing was terrible and wrong. So they asked themselves, “What Have I’ve Done?” and that is where the song title comes from. “Where have all the flowers gone?”, and “What I’ve Done”, are both about horrible things that happen to people. But, “Where have all the flowers gone”, is about people who are just trying to protect their country, instead of being rewarded, gets death, and the other song is about people who actually do bad things to harm someone/ something but no one gets hurt.
“Where have all the flowers gone?” changed society, because when people heard it, they realized that war is not necessary, that problems can be solved without death, and that way, less people would die like the soldiers in the song, and their families would not be miserable. “What I’ve Done” protests against pollution and other ways of damaging the earth.

04/21/11

The Great Society

Great Society was opening up opportunities for people and improving the quality of life for all. This program helps people in many ways. Such as “provide health services to the poor and elderly in the new Medicaid and Medicare programs and poured federal   funds into education and urban development”.(Foner:927). Also it cutting personal and corporate income taxes, originally proposed by Kennedy. The purpose of the tax cut was to stimulate the economy by placing more money in the hands of investors and consumers.

“War on poverty” was created a new government office to administer the problem established by the act. These included Head start, an early childhood education program. It was job training for youths, legal services and provides scholarship for poor college students. And VISTA which was a domestic peace corps of volunteers performing services in dressed areas.

04/10/11

Roles of women had changed

One of the most important changes during that time was roles of women. Before 1900s, women usually stay home to take care of their children, cooking, sewing, cleaning and gardening. They are not allow work on outside, men are the head of the family. Women social roles greatly expanded in the 1900s, many women worked during WWI, as men off to Europe to fight for democracy, women took their place, working in factories. After WWII, women’s work had changed again, most of women lost the industrial jobs, but they looking for other jobs, as part-time, to support their family. During that time, Films, TV shows, and advertisements portrayed marriage as the most important goal of American women. (Eric: 880)

04/3/11

Taft-Hartley Act (1947)

This act restated the right of workers to bargain collectively for improved working conditions. However, its major thrust was to limit some of the extreme practices of unions. The act prohibited union form engaging in certain types of strikes, charging excessive initiation fees, and engaging in secondary boycotts.

03/16/11

New Deal- The Banking Crisis

The cartoon was published in 1933. Reprinted by permission: Tribune Company Syndicate, Inc. As we know over t ten thousand banks had failed during the Great Depression. This cartoon show the person lost all the money he saves in the bank, since the bank had failed. I think the artist was trying to show how bad is economy in the America and federal government has responsibility for the smooth running of the American economy, so people can get their money back. New deal was a major turning point in American history and solution to the Great Depression. Roosevelt closed all the nation’s banks just after his inauguration by declaring a bank holiday. Each bank was permitted to reopen only after the government inspected its records and found it was financially sound.

03/8/11

Great Depression (1929-1940)

The Great Depression is worst depression in our nation’s history, not ending completely until the United State entered WWII.

During the depression, thousands of the business failed, half a million farmers lost their farms, one-quarter of the banks failed, and millions of people were out of work(picture in the left side). There was no safety net as in today’s economy – no unemployment insurance, retirement benefit, or bank deposit insurance. Private charities were overwhelmed. People went hungry; children suffered from malnutrition.(picture in the right side)

03/7/11

A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER


This video clip is produced by Kmcldukel in 2009. Schenck was a leader of the socialist party and was protesting against the draft.

During the WWI, Schenck was arrested and convicted for publishing and distributing literature that encouraged men to resist the draft. Schenck claimed his First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and press had been violated.

The Supreme Court ruled that there are limit to free speech. The court said that free speech should not used to protect someone from causing panic by falsely shouting “fire” in a crowded theater. Total free speech could not be allowed in the face of a “clear and present danger.” The decision became a guide by which to measure the limits of free speech.

03/3/11

Volation of freedom of the seas

The main reason for the American entry into World War I was the German use of submarine warfare (1917), violating the United State right to freedom of the seas. German was suffering from near- starvation due to a lack of supplies and food. German military leaders feared they would lose the war unless they could defeat Britain and France quickly. They therefore took a risk by announcing they would they would sink any ship in the blockaded areas. This was a clear violation of the American principle of freedom of the seas that neutral parties have the right to ship non-war goods to nations at war. When German followed up its threat by ordering its submarines to sink three unarmed American merchant vessels, Wilson asked congress for a declaration of war against German.

03/1/11

The Fourteen points

One important change that occurred during WWI was The Fourteen Points. Foner’s mentions the Wilson view of the war, and reasoning why he wants the fourteen points, but I think he should go more in details about The Fourteen points, not just summary what is it about, so people can understand better. However the main point about The Fourteen Points is demanded that each nationality should have its own nation and government. It called for freedom of seas, free trade, reduced armaments and open diplomacy (an end to secret treaties), Wilson felt the most important points in his plan was the creation of a League of Nations. Wilson hoped to create a world of peaceful, democratic nations in which future was would be avoided.

02/25/11

Jane addams

Jane Addams was born in 1860, the daughter of an Illinois businessman. In the 1889, she founded Hull House in Chicago, a “settlement house” provided service to the urban poor, such as classes to teach English to immigrants, child care, nursing of the sick, and help in obtaining naturalization. By the 1910, over 400 settlement houses had been established in cities throughout the country.

02/18/11

Immigration

Left are German immigrants, Quebec City 1911. Right are Italian farm family pick berries, 1910. The different between these two pictures is one see like a middle class and one are lower class. People from the lower class need to work hard in order to support their children.

02/13/11

THE DAWES ACT

The Dawes Act (1887) was passed to hasten the Americanization of Indians. Under the provision of the act:

  • Native American tribes were officially abolished.
  • Each male American Indian was allotted 160 acres of reservation land as his own private property. Private property was expected to replace tribal land ownership, as each Native American became a farmer.
  • Those who adopted this way of life were given United States citizenship and the right to vote. In the 1924, all Native American were made citizens.

Source: http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=old&doc=50#

http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/fed-indian-policy/

02/7/11

Cold War

The war was “cold” only in the sense that because they had nuclear weapons the two superpowers never confronted one another directly in open warfare. however, their global competition led to frequent world crises and regional confrontation on every continent.

02/6/11

Some events is not over

Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. By David W. Blight. I think this book is very interesting because it brings history back to what happened in the Civil War. It refreshes people memory, what we learned in the history class. But just read the review, we can found a lot detail that we did not learn in the class. So this is very good book to read if you want to know more about the Civil War. Everyone can benefit from the reading because the civil war was the most divisive war in the American history. Most American died in this war than in any other.  So people can get more detail in the book. This book review shows that race is very important part of the civil war, I think  African –Americans  should treated equal than white, because they are sacrificed their live just like white people, they are also the hero of the America too.

The one of example remembered in many different ways is Nanjing Massacre. As a Chinese; this is first thing come to my mind. On December 13, 1937, during this period, hundreds of the Chinese civilians and disarmed solider were murdered and 20000-80000 women were raped by solider of the Japanese army. This is terrible thing in the Chinese history.  People in that time, like live in the hell, people worried their will die soon, or their family. After short time, Japanese government try to clean up this history, they are pretending no things happen. So this never mention in Japanese textbooks.

02/1/11

Benefit of Technology

          Technology can have many benefits to the historians, because it makes things simple and easy. Historians can easily find the information online; don’t need to read whole bunch of book to get the information. The link about the twitter is one of the examples that show the technology can make historian life easier, they can go to the account to research the people and have the information that their need, also in the article “ Wiki Leak and the historical community” Wiki Leak is other example show the technology is good for the historians. However, privacy is a big issue, if the historian can find out your information; someone can find out also, there have not privacy anymore. So it’s not necessary to write down all the information you have.