Please answer each question separately. Each answer needs to be at least 250 words. Please make a responds to 3 of the below answers. Each responds needs to be 150 words.

Question 1: What are some of the benefits associated with interest groups—for active participants and those who benefit from their labor? Do any problems created as byproducts of these benefits? Explain. Question 2: Contrast the particular tactics used by various interest groups in both the textbook and the articles provided. Do you think their strategies are effective in influencing public policy? What about public opinion? Responds 1: People join interest groups when they have an issue or a cause they are passionate about. Through their interest group they meet with other like-minded individuals and can talk with Congress members or other representatives of the government and discuss their ideas. These groups can become very powerful such as the American Association of Retired People (AARP) and the American Medical Association (AMA). Special interest groups such as these can promote political candidates, raise money for political donations for elected officials who support their cause and engage their representatives through various means. All of these can contribute to them influencing legislative outcomes and funding litigation for laws that have a positive effect on their special interest group population. One byproduct of these groups is free riders, or individuals who aren’t active in the special interest group but benefit from the outcome of its member’s work. Responds 2: One great examples of how interest groups would affect community issues and also day to day events, the following articles is the following statement “To illustrate, let us consider rent control in New York City. Some would treat this example as demonstrating the power of special interests (in this case, the power of the existing renters). I agree that rent control is a costly and inefficient regulation. I would therefore argue that this explains why rent control is relatively rare, at least in the United States. While others see the existence of rent control as proof of the power of pressure groups; I see its rarity as proof that pressure-group explanations for policy outcomes are not that powerful in this domain.5 In a similar fashion, while some might point to the existence of any tariff as illustrating the power of pressure groups, I would find the relatively low tariffs that we now have in the U.S. as illustrating the weakness of pressure groups in getting their way.”(Wittman 2008) the following statement is describing how special interest groups and their powers of becomes an issue relating to the issue in hand. The current statement is about rent control, as a fellow New York resident I understand how rent control can benefit the people but as a business of owning a building this would be an issue concerning as how as time passes fixing issues in a building can be costly. But for the tenants it helps with keeping costs low and not raise them periodically. Responds 3: An interest group is a body of people who have a similar set of beliefs about a particular subject and wish to influence public policy based on their set of beliefs. Usually the interest group is very public about their opinion and how politicians feel about the particular opinion that the interest group believes in. For example, an interest group might be very concerned with gun laws because they believe that anyone should be able to buy a gun at any time because the Constitution says they have the right to bear arms. This interest group might try to get media involvement if a particular politician does not believe in gun rights. The interest group might say that the politician does not believe in the core values of the Constitution because they are not on the same page as the interest group. Not every interest group is that extreme, but that’s just an example. Some interest groups aim to get politicians elected and fund parts of their campaign while others aim to educate both politicians and citizens regarding their issue (Browne, 1976). One major benefit to having a successful or significant interest group is that it gets the core belief of the interest group attention. Attention might come to the group by means of swaying policy making or by economic assistance (Randolph & Tasto, 2012). Many times in special interest groups there is economic aim to their campaign for their cause (Randolph & Tasto, 2012). This type of interest group might be fighting to lower property taxes for high-income households and, therefore, have a lot of contributions from high-income households which enables the interest group to have more resources when defending its campaign. The problems created by interest groups is that the ones with more money end up being able to make more influence on political decisions and in support of particular candidates. Business groups use lobbying as a means of supporting candidates that share their beliefs or goals and if the business is a successful business, they are able to give the candidates significant resources in order to make their goals a reality (Browne, 1976). This automatically gives unfair advantages with interest groups with more resources not because their goals are what the people want but because they have the money to support politicians or campaigns.