The United States Congress and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez

The Soviet Union's dissolution in December 1991 marks the end of the Cold War and the elimination of the United States' main rival for global political-economic leadership. For decades U.S. foreign policymakers had formulated policies aimed at containing the spread of Soviet communism and Moscow's interventionist policies in the Americas. They now assumed that Latin American leftist revolutionary upheavals could also be committed to history. This study explores how Congress takes an active role in U.S. foreign policymaking when dealing with revolutionary changes in Latin America. This study finds that despite Chávez's vitriolic statements and U.S. economic vulnerability due to its dependence on foreign oil sources, Congress today sees Chávez as a nuisance and not a threat to U.S. vital interests. Devoid of an extra-hemispheric, anti-American patron intent on challenging the United States for regional leadership, Chávez is seen by Congress largely as a threat to the stability of Venezuela's institutions and political-economic stability. Today both the U.S. executive and the legislative branches largely see Bolivarianism a distraction and not an existential threat. The research is based on an examination of Bolivarian Venezuela compared to revolutionary upheaval and governance in Nicaragua over the course of the twentieth century. This project is largely descriptive, qualitative in approach, but quantitative data are used when appropriate. To analyze both the U.S. executive and legislative branches' reaction to revolutionary change, Cole Blasier's theoretical propositions as developed in the Hovering Giant: U.S. Responses to Revolutionary Change in Latin America 1910-1985 are utilized. The present study highlights the fact that Blasier's propositions remain a relevant means for analyzing U.S. foreign policymaking.

Menu Analysis: Review and Evaluation

In the article - Menu Analysis: Review and Evaluation - by Lendal H. Kotschevar, Distinguished Professor School of Hospitality Management, Florida International University, Kotschevar’s initial statement reads: “Various methods are used to evaluate menus. Some have quite different approaches and give different information. Even those using quite similar methods vary in the information they give. The author attempts to describe the most frequently used methods and to indicate their value. A correlation calculation is made to see how well certain of these methods agree in the information they give.” There is more than one way to look at the word menu. The culinary selections decided upon by the head chef or owner of a restaurant, which ultimately define the type of restaurant is one way. The physical outline of the food, which a patron actually holds in his or her hand, is another. These descriptions are most common to the word, menu. The author primarily concentrates on the latter description, and uses the act of counting the number of items sold on a menu to measure the popularity of any particular item. This, along with a formula, allows Kotschevar to arrive at a specific value per item. Menu analysis would appear a difficult subject to broach. How does a person approach a menu analysis, how do you qualify and quantify a menu; it seems such a subjective exercise. The author offers methods and outlines on approaching menu analysis from empirical perspectives. “Menus are often examined visually through the evaluation of various factors. It is a subjective method but has the advantage of allowing scrutiny of a wide range of factors which other methods do not,” says Distinguished Professor, Kotschevar. “The method is also highly flexible. Factors can be given a score value and scores summed to give a total for a menu. This allows comparison between menus. If the one making the evaluations knows menu values, it is a good method of judgment,” he further offers. The author wants you to know that assigning values is fundamental to a pragmatic menu analysis; it is how the reviewer keeps score, so to speak. Value merit provides reliable criteria from which to gauge a particular menu item. In the final analysis, menu evaluation provides the mechanism for either keeping or rejecting selected items on a menu. Kotschevar provides at least three different matrix evaluation methods; they are defined as the Miller method, the Smith and Kasavana method, and the Pavesic method. He offers illustrated examples of each via a table format. These are helpful tools since trying to explain the theories behind the tables would be difficult at best. Kotschevar also references examples of analysis methods which aren’t matrix based. The Hayes and Huffman - Goal Value Analysis - is one such method. The author sees no one method better than another, and suggests that combining two or more of the methods to be a benefit.

The Nevada Gaming Debt Collection Experience

In the discussion - The Nevada Gaming Debt Collection Experience - by Larry D. Strate, Assistant Professor, College of Business and Economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Assistant Professor Strate initially outlines the article by saying: “Even though Nevada has had over a century of legalized gaming experience, the evolution of gaming debt collection has been a recent phenomenon. The author traces that history and discusses implications of the current law.” The discussion opens with a comparison between the gaming industries of New Jersey/Atlantic City, and Las Vegas, Nevada. This contrast serves to point out the disparities in debt handling between the two. “There are major differences in the development of legalized gaming for both Nevada and Atlantic City. Nevada has had over a century of legalized gambling; Atlantic City, New Jersey, has completed a decade of its operation,” Strate informs you. “Nevada's gaming industry has been its primary economic base for many years; Atlantic City's entry into gaming served as a possible solution to a social problem. Nevada's processes of legalized gaming, credit play, and the collection of gaming debts were developed over a period of 125 years; Atlantic City's new industry began with gaming, gaming credit, and gaming debt collection simultaneously in 1976 [via the New Jersey Casino Control Act] .” The irony here is that Atlantic City, being the younger venue, had or has a better system for handling debt collection than do the historic and traditional Las Vegas properties. Many of these properties were duplicated in New Jersey, so the dichotomy existed whereby New Jersey casinos could recoup debt while their Nevada counterparts could not. “It would seem logical that a "territory" which permitted gambling in the early 1800’s would have allowed the Nevada industry to collect its debts as any other legal enterprise. But it did not,” Strate says. Of course, this situation could not be allowed to continue and Strate outlines the evolution. New Jersey tactfully benefitted from Nevada’s experience. “The fundamental change in gaming debt collection came through the legislature as the judicial decisions had declared gaming debts uncollectable by either a patron or a casino,” Strate informs you. “Nevada enacted its gaming debt collection act in 1983, six years after New Jersey,” Strate points out. One of the most noteworthy paragraphs in the entire article is this: “The fundamental change in 1983, and probably the most significant change in the history of gaming in Nevada since the enactment of the Open Gaming Law of 1931, was to allow non-restricted gaming licensees* to recover gaming debts evidenced by a credit instrument. The new law incorporated previously litigated terms with a new one, credit instrument.” The term is legally definable and gives Nevada courts an avenue of due process.

The United States Congress and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez

The Soviet Union's dissolution in December 1991 marks the end of the Cold War and the elimination of the United States' main rival for global political-economic leadership. For decades U.S. foreign policymakers had formulated policies aimed at containing the spread of Soviet communism and Moscow's interventionist policies in the Americas. They now assumed that Latin American leftist revolutionary upheavals could also be committed to history. This study explores how Congress takes an active role in U.S. foreign policymaking when dealing with revolutionary changes in Latin America. This study finds that despite Chavez's vitriolic statements and U.S. economic vulnerability due to its dependence on foreign oil sources, Congress today sees Chavez as a nuisance and not a threat to U.S. vital interests. Devoid of an extra-hemispheric, anti-American patron intent on challenging the United States for regional leadership, Chavez is seen by Congress largely as a threat to the stability of Venezuela's institutions and political-economic stability. Today both the U.S. executive and the legislative branches largely see Bolivarianism a distraction and not an existential threat. The research is based on an examination of Bolivarian Venezuela compared to revolutionary upheaval and governance in Nicaragua over the course of the twentieth century. This project is largely descriptive, qualitative in approach, but quantitative data are used when appropriate. To analyze both the U.S. executive and legislative branches' reaction to revolutionary change, Cole Blasier's theoretical propositions as developed in the Hovering Giant: U.S. Responses to Revolutionary Change in Latin America 1910- 1985 are utilized. The present study highlights the fact that Blasier's propositions remain a relevant means for analyzing U.S. foreign policymaking.