Governmental Action Through The Media
... around $1.6 million dollars, but nothing compared to how much the State and Federal governments gave. Local governments and their issues may look small and unimportant on paper, but if you add up all the little local laws and changes that have been made, you can see really how important they are. The powers not delegated to the central government by the Constitution or prohibited by the Constitution to the states are reserved to the states or the people of the states. (Struggle for Democracy, pg.63) This refers to the reservation clause that holds the right for each individual state to do the necessary endeavors it has to, in order to successfully represent the state. State powers are an extension of local powers in that they have more “pull” to make some of the bigger decisions that will in some way affect the entire state. The Daily Camera didn’t really have many state oriented issues, mainly because it’s a smaller newspaper that is more centralized with local and national governments. The few state issues that I did find talked mainly about Colorado and the drought that is currently going on. Because of the drought, there was a fire ban in all National Parks and forest areas of Colorado. This ban was lifted and was noted in the September 14th article in the Daily Camera. Governor Bill Owens along with Superintendent Vaughn Baker decided that it was safe to allow fires in designated fire pits in Rocky Mountain National Park and throughout Colorado. Also in the September 10th article in the Daily Camera, they talk about the Colorado drought. This article though is about what the state can do to actually help the drought; they proposed 700 new reservoirs and raising state sales taxes to pay for these additions. From these two articles, you can see that state governments deal with much more generalized issues that affect the state and how it functions. Along with how the state runs, the state government has a very important role in deciding the new president every 4 year. Each state has a number of electoral votes depending on how many senators and representatives they have. This proved to be very important in the last presidential election, where every little vote counted and had a huge effect on the outcome. The national or federal level of government deals primarily with issues that affect the entire country as a whole. These issues are usually dealt with by the highest officials in the national level. The national government for the most part does what is necessary and proper to carry out its enumerated responsibilities. This is stated in the elastic clause, which states that Congress has the authority to make whatever laws are necessary and proper to carry out its enumerated responsibilities. (Struggle for Democracy, pg. 40) An example of a circumstance that would affect the entire country and maybe even international countries would be the September 29th article about west coast port working on strike. This article talks about how the entire west coast port industry is on strike and how this strike could cost the U.S. hundreds of millions of dollars in lost produce and late goods being shipped. The national government needs to definitely step into this situation and settle it because each day they strike, more produce goes bad and more ships come in either to unload or load and nothing is getting done. Another big issue in the national level right now is the war in Iraq. There were many articles each day on the war and who was supporting it and who opposes it. This is definitely a national issue considering it affects our future with the Middle East and foreign relations with the countries in that area. From the many national articles, you can see that the national sector of government definitely deals with the more drastic and life threatening issues that the U.S. goes through on a daily basis. The findings and articles that I chose are not a definite representation of how the media writes on different levels of government. The Daily Camera for one primarily focuses on local government and the aspects of the Boulder, Denver area. It also gives the big issues that are happening in the national sector, but not much about other states and their state governments. Newspaper companies also ...