Garret, I will try to tell you about the American government and try to not
be too detailed. Mayors preside over cities or towns and usually work in
conjunction with city councils. Governors preside over their particular
state and have legislative branches in each state that they work with. Of
course, the mayors and each city are under the auspices of the governors and
the state governments. Even so, each city has a certain amount of autonomy
as does each state. All states are under the auspices of the federal
government. The federal government is divided into three parts, the
judicial, the executive, and the legislative. The judicial is the court
system and there are many courts; city courts, regional courts, state
courts, federal courts and the highest is the Supreme Court. The executive
is the area of the president. The legislative is the House of
Representative and the Senate. All three branches work together and have
different powers and do different things. Gets pretty complicated but that
is it in a nutshell. All of these representatives of both houses are
elected officials and may serve for their entire lifetimes if they keep
getting elected. The President is of course also elected but can only serve
two terms, maximum. Federal judges are appointed as are the judges on the
supreme court and are in their positions for their lifetimes, if they
choose.
The FBI and the CIA are governmental agencies that have the jobs of
surveillance and that kind of thing. Subversive kinds of activities. Hope
that helped. Mack
and i may have got some of that messed up but somebody will help, I am sure.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Catherine McKay" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Garret" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2001 6:47 PM
Subject: Re: forgive my ignorance NJC
> --- Garret <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > I would like to know something about the Federal
> > Government- what is it? How
> > does it work? How does, for example, a mayor and a
> > governor fit in there.
> > And what is the role of the FBI etc? I think that
> > this knowledge would
> > further my understanding of the relief effort
> > currently being discussed by
> > the Mayor of NY on television.
>
> Here's a Canadian butting in. I'm not that familiar
> with how American politics work either, and, like you,
> I'm pretty apolitical (even though I ALWAYS vote) but
> I think I get some of it - I can only do this by
> comparing it to our system, which is kind of like the
> British one, but I'm not sure how this works in
> Ireland (I believe you have MPs too - members of
> parliament?)
>
> Where the = sign doesn't really mean "equals" but more
> like "comes close to being equal"... They're not
> really equal because, although much of our political
> system is similar to the U.S. one, there's also a lot
> that is different. I think there are some political
> scientists on the list who could probably do a good
> job of explaining this. Let's hope there's a
> quick-and-dirty (American politics for idiots)
> explanation for those of us who only want the
> "executive summary."
>
> US President = Canadian Prime Minister (elected head
> of federal gov't)
>
> US Governor = Canadian Premier (sometimes also called
> Prime Minister, but is the elected head of a
> provincial government)
>
> U.S. state = Canadian province (I'm not sure how this
> works in England or Ireland, where I believe you have
> counties, but they may be more like states or
> provinces than what we call counties. We have
> counties too, which are kind of a larger political
> thing than cities, but smaller than a province (or
> state). To confuse matters, some of the larger urban
> areas (in Ontario, the province where I live anyway)
> are now called "Regional Municipalities", rather than
> counties.
>
> U.S. Mayor = Canadian Mayor (elected head of a city -
> in a case like a city as large and powerful as New
> York, the mayor is a major political player).
>
> There's more, but after this, I get confused too. In
> Canada we have senators, as they do in the U.S., but
> in the U.S. their senators are elected, whereas ours
> are appointed by the government in power at the time
> (hence, they tend to support the gov't in power and
> this is a source of great controversy here, where
> people are always talking about either abolishing the
> Senate or making it work the way the U.S. system does,
> as elected by the people. If a bill is voted into a
> law, it must be approved by the Senate. In Canada, it
> is highly unlikely that the Senate would veto any law
> that had passed through parliament, mostly because
> they are appointed by the gov't in power - however, it
> could happen if the previous gov't had appointed a
> whole bunch of *their* people just before an election
> that resulted in a different party coming into power -
> our senators are appointed *for life* which is another
> thing many Canadians aren't too crazy about. In the
> U.S. senators are elected, so they have to change
> every few years and you could, and often do, have
> Democrats in one house but Republicans in the other
> (senate). Also, in the U.S. the president is elected
> separately from the local representatives, so yuo
> could have a Democractic president, but the majority
> of the representatives are Republicans. In Canada,
> it's the head of the political party that wins the
> most seats in parliament that becomes Prime Minister,
> so if there's a Liberal majority (which there is now),
> then the head of the gov't is likewise a Liberal.)
>
> And then again, the U.S. is a republic, as is Ireland,
> but Canada is not. We are a democracy but we are
> still part of the British Commonwealth, whatever that
> means, and so we have a Governor General, who is
> appointed, but who is supposed to be the Queen's
> representative. He or she signs any act passed into
> Parliament as a representative of the Queen (Royal
> Assent). A bill becomes law here only when it has had
> Royal Assent. I'm not aware of any case of a governor
> general refusing to sign a bill that had passed
> through parliament and I suppose it's highly unlikely
> - a Gov General is more or less a figurehead who
> attends special events with much pomp and
> circumstance, but has no political clout that I'm
> aware of at all. This is another Canadian/British
> thing that seems kind of quaint and cute - the GG
> arrives at special occasions or tea with the royals
> when they visit us colonials, in a horse-drawn
> carriage and so on, but doesn't IMO have much
> practical value whatsoever and is most likely not a
> very good use of the taxpayers dollar, although I
> believe they are supposed to be sort of a "neutral"
> presence, without any noticeable political leanings.
> Get your free @yahoo.ca address at http://mail.yahoo.ca
