Causal Argument- phillygirl

Intensive abuse within foster homes

There are kids who are suffering deeply due to the abuse they experience within foster homes. Even after leaving foster homes, children may struggle with a lot of things in their life because of what they’ve gone through in foster homes. Children suffer from physical, mental, and emotional pain while being under these foster care units. Because of the abuse a child has faced while living in foster care, that abuse may play a huge role in a child’s future. Especially if they’re at a young age. Usually as they get older, they might start to form insecure attachments or may struggle with emotional development later in life.

There was evidence that shown how foster care decreases the risk for physical harm and substance-abusing parents. However, nothing ever shows the effects of children being abused while in the care of foster homes. Young children placed in foster care homes at young ages has a significantly elevated risk for mental health problems. Young children also exhibit oppositional behaviors such as crying or clinging which leads to further disruptions in care. The child’s behavioral issues causes the child to be replaced into a different foster unit, and this causes the child to become distraught and to have similar disruptions later in their life.

Even with children being removed from the care of an abusive or substance-abusing parent. It is still difficult for a child to be removed from their primary caregiver. However, children still expects to be placed somewhere they will be comfortable, loved, and acknowledged. Instead, children are taken away from their biological parents to be placed in an even harmful environment where they are abused by total strangers they are suppose to refer to as a “parent.” That is mental abuse.

Works Cited
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/106/5/1145

Click to access jn_20130201_WhyDoChildrenExperienceMultiplePlacementChangesInFosterCareContentAnalysisOnReasonsForInstability.pdf

Click to access Effectsoffostercareplacementonyoungchildren.pdf

Click to access foster.pdf

http://www.liftingtheveil.org/foster04.htm
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED277460
http://www.liftingtheveil.org/foster04.htm

 

Rebuttal Argument– Splash305

Suicide Among Cops and FBI Agents

Many people who work in this kind of field deal with many mental stressers. Many of police officers and FBI agents get so overwhelmed with the things going on in and out of the work place, they can’t seem to find healthy ways to deal with them. In most cases when cops feel the need to commit suicide because of whatever they having going on they can’t deal with, they often do it in directly. They will have another cop shoot and kill them. As explained by Elizabeth A. Arias she gives us a specifice case study where this took place. A 36-year-old Caucasian male (A.A.) drove into a local convenience store to obtain gas for his car. He put $11.75 worth of gasoline in his vehicle and drove off without paying. A civilian followed A.A. and persuaded him to return to pay for the stolen gas. Police officers had already been called to the scene and upon A.A.’s return to the store, they approached him while he was still in his car. He refused to speak to the officers, backed his vehicle up, nearly striking two other officers, and began what turned into a high speed chase. During the chase, A.A. drove recklessly, reaching speeds up to 100 mph, and several times turned off his headlights and turned on a blue strobe light. Deputies attempted to block the vehicle several times, but A.A. managed to elude the roadblocks. The chase ended after about 10 min. When the officer’s approached A.A.’s car, he exited his vehicle with a thermos in one hand and a 0.45 caliber semi-automatic handgun in the other. After he pointed his weapon at an officer, he was fatally shot. It was later determined that A.A.’s gun was not loaded. Inside the thermos were several bags of cocaine which police believed were stolen from the police evidence room.

A.A. had previously served as a sheriff’s deputy for 13 years, but at the time of the incident—and for the prior 5 years—he was an identification and evidence technician for the local police department. On the day of the incident, he was off-duty and was driving a police department van with the police decals removed. It is not clear whether he was the one who removed the decals. The van and A.A.’s use of the blue strobe light led officers to believe that the suspect they were chasing was indeed a police officer. Of importance is that all local police officers were allowed to get free gas directly across the street from where A.A. stole it, which suggests his motivation for creating the incident.

In the months preceding the deadly encounter, A.A. spoke with his supervisor about his financial hardships: mounting bills, growing debt that was covered with borrowed money, maxed out credit cards, and a re-mortgaged home. Approximately 2 weeks prior to the incident, A.A. told his supervisor that his wife had incurred even more debt and he felt increasingly depressed over the situation. Other police officers who were in contact with A.A. on the day before the shooting did not observe anything remarkable. He had no psychiatric history and had always been in good standing with the police department. Although a toxicology report was positive for cocaine and amphetamines at the time of his death, A.A. had never failed a drug test with the department.

 

Works Cited

Arias, Elizabeth A., et al. “Police Officers Who Commit Suicide by Cop: A Clinical Study with Analysis.” Journal of Forensic Sciences, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 25 Aug. 2008, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1556-4029.2008.00861.x/full.

Rebuttal Argument—Yoshi

The Police Problem Isn’t A Police Problem

P1. Overall, more white people than black people are killed in police shootings because, in America, there are nearly one hundred and sixty billion more white people than black people. But when the population is proportionalized black people are twice as likely to get killed over white people. The killings, according to data, are not a racism problem. The problem here is that America has a violence and gun problem causing many police to walk around in fear.

P2. In 2014, U.S. residents committed more than 14,000 murders along with about 1.15 million other violent crimes. 68% of the homicides were caused by firearms. This is not surprising; considering there are 300 million guns owned by residents of the United States. This raises the concern that police should often fear their own lives considering, most of the people they encounter are in fact carrying a weapon on them. Not only that but police are usually in a crime ridden areas, trying to diminish the crime rate. So this stirs up the thought that black people are killed more often than white people because of the impoverished areas they live in; which make it more likely for a police to encounter a black person over a white person.

P3. Although this is a good point they are not necessarily true. The Virginia Police Department conducted a study of what red flags police look for before stopping someone at a traffic stop. The study determined whether the police stopping the victim had anything to do with race or socioeconomic factors. The three finding the study found was Virginia Police Officers stopped people based of off the crime rate in the neighborhood, the searching was determined from the percentage of the black population, and the percentage of stops that ended in an arrest was an impact of both the percentage of Black population and the crime rate of the area. This racial bias is not only apparent in the Virginia Police Department’s study, but also in New York City’s racial biased “stop and frisk” program. The Stop and Frisk Program was designed to allow police officers to stop anyone that they deemed suspicious. During the first three months of this 83% of the people that ended up being stopped and frisked were minorities. Leaving only a maximum of only potentially 17% white people being stopped which is tremendously less. This study speaks loudly on the very obvious targeting that happens from police.

P4. There is also the claim that black people are more likely than white people to flee from police, resist arrest, and attack police. When put in life or death situations police have only a couple seconds to determine whether or not they should shoot. In some cases police officers should shoot, but they react too late; and in other cases police officers shoot for the wrong reason. Many Americans believe it isn’t fair to name police as racist because they are put in tough situations where sometimes it is hard to always make the right decision. Josh Correll, a psychology professor from the University of Colorado, ran test with a video game. His findings showed police officers avoid shooting unarmed targets of all races, but as soon as they were allowed to shoot they would shoot more quickly against blacks suspects over white ones. This shows that officers do display some racial bias in shooting suspects.His research found that the public and police are less likely to view black people as “innocent.” In another study of Cornell’s, police officers and people of the community were challenged to make fast impulse shooting decisions with speed and accuracy. The data from both groups of people showed a racial bias in the speed of their shooting. The police and community members shot more black targets than white targets, and the police and community members shot so fast that it was deemed an instinct.

P5. America has had a problem with racism for centuries now. Everyday black people have to overcome their racial-based discrepancy in schooling, employment, economic status, etc.. Black people are more likely than white people to be unemployed, less likely to finish high school, and more likely to live in poverty or go to jail. A study done by a sociology major, shows that employers are less likely to hire someone with “Black sounding names” than someone with a “white sounding name” even when their applications were identical. Similarly enough, only a racial bias can explain why a white man with felony charges is more likely to get an interview than a black man with the same qualifications and a clean record. Even black children get treated unfairly compared to white kids. Tamir Rice for example a little boy that was playing with a gun, at the park that had an orange tag on it. The orange tags indicates that the gun is a toy gun. The officer shows up to the park and within two seconds the officer shoots Tamir Rice, leaving him dead at the park. In the same instance two boys from Ohio were playing on the street with BB guns. The police was called but this time they did not see an orange tag on the boys gun. The officers did not draw their weapons on the two boys. Instead, the officers approached the boys and arrested them. The same incidents in both situations, but the single black boy with a specified toy gun was killed in two seconds; while the two white boys were calmly approached and arrested.

P6. Black people are seen as a threat in not only police related situations, but also in communities. Yes, white people are shot more often than black people, but that doesn’t account for the 160 billion more white people in the world. Yes, black people get shot more because police are usual in crime ridden areas; so there are more encounters with black people over white people; but the reason they do get shot is because of the racial bias police have implemented throughout their training and work life not because they are doing something wrong. Research shows that police officers gain a cognitive bias based on their instinct. Police are more inclined to shoot at black males over white males even if the reasoning is the exact same.

Works Cited

Brooks, Rosa. “America’s Police Problem Isn’t Just About Police.” Foreign Policy, Foreign Policy, 5 Jan. 2016.

Juzwiak R, Chan A. Unarmed people of color killed by police, 1999-2014. Gawker. 2014. Available at: http://gawker.com/unarmed-people-of-color-killed-by-police-1999-2014-1666672349. Accessed March 30, 2015.

Adams, Kenneth, Geoffrey P. Alpert, Roger G. Dunham, Lawrence A. Greenfeld-Garner, Mark A. Henriquez, and Patrick A. Langan. 1999. Use of Force By Police: Overview of National and Local Data Series [Research report]. Washington, DC: U.S. National Institute of Justice. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1745-9133.12269/full

Kyle Wagner. U.S. Police Shootings Database, http://goo.gl/Su60Cm; 2014. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0734016805275675

Klinger DA. On the Problems and Promise of Research on Lethal Police Violence: A Research Note. Homicide Studies. 2012;16(1):78. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1088767911430861

Black, D. (1976). The behavior of Law. New York: Academic Press. Google Scholar. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0734016805275675

Rebuttal Argument-LifeisSublime

Our government doesn’t care to help the people it was built to serve.  Looking over the healthcare system in progress makes that statement more true because it become proves the point that everything the government sets out to do it for money. The other side of this argument would be that the government does help it’s people, and the healthcare system is there to help us; that side is wrongly mistaken on morals though if that’s the case.

The healthcare system currently being used by American’s all around the country is relatively new. It was put in place by Trump shortly after taking office; he changed the policies, prices, and name to what was initially ObamaCare. Newly name, TrumpCare doesn’t provide healthcare for all, but only for people who could afford it. Along with all the other bills people need to pay, healthcare insurance premiums have skyrocketed making it almost impossible for families to make enough to have it.  For people who then decide not get health insurance, maybe to cut out that monthly bill, and then happen to admitted into the hospital will have a surcharge of more than 30%. What the point is is that most of this is all for those dollar bills to multiply and grow, and at what expense? The expense of the people that the government has vowed to serve, their people getting sick and dying because they don’t make enough to live a stable life. Money over morals, and if you ask me that’s pretty messed me, because people should never be compared to money.

 

Work Cited

http://www.dailywire.com/news/14226/9-biggest-problems-trumpcare-aaron-bandler#

 

Rebuttal Argument

In more cases than not, taking a knee is a sign of great respect. This is not only seen in ancient societies, such as the knighting of an individual in England, but also seen closer to home, on the playing fields that Americans love so dearly. For example, when a player is injured on the field of play, many players from both sides will kneel out of respect, but never in sports do you see kneeling as a sign of disrespect. That is until during the playing of the National Anthem; Colin Kaepernick so boldly knelt for the playing of our National Anthem before the preseason game at Levi’s stadium in San Francisco, California.

There has been a lot of controversy over Kaepernick’s debacle, and rightfully so. It seems that the United States as a country has become divisive with a majority of white Americans and military supporting families protesting Kaepernick’s actions. In contrast, a majority of the black American population support his stance and the black lives matter movement backs Kaepernick one hundred percent. Realistically Kaepernick’s explanation of his actions was vague in the   post-game interview. Kaepernick alluded to his position; however, he never fully expressed in that interview that his protest sheds light on police brutality against black Americans. Kaepernick only stated that his people were oppressed, they are killed in the streets, and their killers are rewarded with paid leave for murder. One can conclude that he protests police brutality, but Kaepernick never completely explained his protest, in his much sought after interview.

Kaepernick’s protest poses absolutely no effect on law enforcement officers, who killed 223 black Americans in the year following Kaepernick’s protests according to data released in a Huffingtonpost article. The same article goes on to say that “It’s likely that more black people were killed by police during that period of time” [from the time of Kaepernick’s protest to the end of the year].   This can only conclude two things; blacks felt more empowered; therefore,  more willing to test police officers because of the protests and to be known as martyrs, or that police officers exerted more force to show that the protest will not affect them in any way.

The United States has a problem with police brutality considering incidences such as the Philando Castile murder, the shooting of Michael Brown that lead to the Ferguson riot, and Eric Garner, a man choked to death in the streets of New York City. These occurrences were all the work of our law enforcement officials. As much of a problem that police brutality poses, there has also been an extreme increase of black on black crimes since 2016, when the protest was started. An article by the New York Post released the FBI crime logs for the year of 2016, and stated that black on black crimes rose in number by nine hundred compared to 2015. Black Americans are simply ignoring the outrageous number of the murder of their own kind, by their own kind, and focusing on a very small percentage of killings between law enforcement officers and black Americans. Some black Americans will also ignore the fact that black males have made up forty- two percent of cop killers in the last ten years, as stated by New York Post. Police officers now fear for their lives because of the drastic increase of police murders at the hands of black men is significantly higher. A study from National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago concludes that “half of all Americans, regardless of race, say fear caused by the physical danger that police officers face is a major contributor to aggression against civilians.”While cops fear for their lives in the line of duty,  there is still no reason for the killing of innocent black Americans, like Philando Castile, or any Americans for that matter, by police officers.

When traveling most parts of the country, one observes cops patrolling towns daily and writing the occasional traffic violation. In other parts of the country, like the deep south, where oppression of black Americans still appears alive and well, one will see some, not all, cops using their power in a negative way. These cops are the ones that give all cops a bad name by trying  to instill fear into civilians and abusing the power that they were given to “protect and serve.” This display of police brutality demonstrates racial tensions in the southern states that remain in place in America fifty years after turmoil for equality ravaged the country. With roots from slavery in the deep south, the southern states tend to be more racially prejudice than other areas in the country, possibly due to the antiquated rationale that blacks are slaves and plantation workers, never died.

The 2016 presidential election map shows a majority of the republican voters in southern states (Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Florida) who are predominantly white individuals. These white citizens of the deep south historically have roots to plantation owners, who owned land, which represented wealth and power. These white plantation owners needed slaves to work the fields and harvest crops such as cotton. Some slave owners passed down their land along with their opinions of black Americans on to future generations.  Even though slavery was abolished in 1865 with the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment, the racism and prejudices that remain at the center of Kaepernick’s debate.

The feud between black and white Americans may never die in the United States. Some radical whites hold on to the traditions of the old south, with the notion of blacks as chattel slaves. Some me blacks will never relinquish of the fact that their ancestors were brutally kidnapped from Africa and forced into American slavery. Either way, slavery is in the past and it is the duty of Americans to move past it through learning the facts and black history. But education itself cannot overcome the prejudices and ignorance to black Americans. Both black and white Americans must learn to cast aside their opinions and respect each other as humans to unite in one great nation.

Works Cited

Donald, Heather Mac. “All That Kneeling Ignores the Real Cause of Soaring Black Homicides.” New York Post, New York Post, 27 Sept. 2017, nypost.com/2017/09/26/all-that-kneeling-ignores-the-real-cause-of-soaring-black-homicides/.

University of Chicago, NORC. “Law Enforcement and Violence: The Divide between Black and White Americans.” Law Enforcement and Violence: The Divide between Black and White Americans Issue Brief | APNORC.org | APNORC.org, http://www.apnorc.org/projects/Pages/HTML%20Reports/law-enforcement-and-violence-the-divide-between-black-and-white-americans0803-9759.aspx.

Waldron, Travis. “Police Killed 223 Black Americans In Year After Colin Kaepernick’s First Protest.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 25 Aug. 2017, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/colin-kaepernick-police-killings-black-americans_us_599c4099e4b04c532f447939.

“2016 Presidential Election Actual Results.” 270toWin.Com, http://www.270towin.com/maps/2016-actual-electoral-map.

Rebuttal-Flyerfan1974

Do We Just Change the Helmets?

 

Taking helmets out of football is a very counterintuitive idea itself. It may seem as if this will hurt the players, but in fact it will help protect the players. No helmets will make keep players from taking risky, hard hits, and cause them to have more caution when playing the game. They all will be protected from severe concussions, spinal cord injuries, and developing CTE later in life. There is however, some opposition to this counterintuitive idea. Many people feel as if there would be no change to the amount of head injuries sustained in a football game. They feel as if players will still hit hard, and make risky plays.

Today football helmets are evolving more and more everyday. Great minds are developing technology that will save the game of football. The new Vicis Zero 1 helmet is the latest in state of the arc brain saving technology. With all the brain trauma happening in the NFL, the league was distributed grants for companies to develop better equipment, that company was Vicis. The Seattle company developed the Zero 1 helmet to help the win the war on concussions. The new helmet flexes on contact, instead of the traditional helmet that has a hard outer shell, sort of like a battering ram. The new helmet has the same idea as a car bumper, it flexes and absorbs blows. The Zero 1 helmet also features 4 layers of brain saving protection. These include a lode shell, a core layer, an arch shell, and a form liner. The lode shell is an outer layer that makes contact with other helmets, it consists of bendable plastics. The core layer is made up of hundreds of flexible columns that act like shock absorbers. his layer is the heart of the Vicis helmet, and was developed with the help of Per Reinhall, head of the University of Washington’s mechanical engineering department and a co-founder of Vicis. The columns vary in length and thickness depending on their position in the helmet. They are made up of a resistant polymer that bends in any given direction when bent. It is kind of like a knee or elbow joint. When you jump, your knees absorb the force when you land by bending. In the helmet the polymer bends, absorbing the shock. Under the core layer is the arch shell and form liner. The arch shell is the base of the polymers, while the form liner fits custom to the persons head, adding more protection. The Zero 1 has gone through many test to see if it is safe for our player. These include a drop test where a dummy head in dropped onto an anvil, and a rotation test, where a moving pendulum strikes the helmet form the side. Both tests concluded that the Zero 1 helmet reduced the force of impact from 20-50 percent compared to traditional helmets.  With a helmet like this, the NFL is a lot safer, chances of head trauma are reduced significantly and players minds can rest at ease. The helmet is no longer a weapon, but a vital part of a players padding and safety.

President Trump took many shots at the NFL at his Alabama campaign rally. He slammed  players for kneeling during the national anthem, but he said a particularly disturbing comment. The president suggested that the NFL is being ruined now that they are addressing brain injuries. His exact words were “Because you know, today if you hit too hard — 15 yards! Throw him out of the game. They had that last week, I watched for a coupled of minutes. Two guys, just really, beautiful tackle. Boom! 15 yards. The referee goes on television, his wife’s so proud of him. They’re ruining the game! They’re ruining the game.” He basically said that efforts to make players safe ruins the game.

Helmets may have been upgraded, and made to absorb hits, but they still do the same damage. Risk compensation is when protective equipment prompts individuals to act more aggressively which increases the potential for injury. If you give an individual better protective equipment, they are going to have an increase in aggression, causing more injuries. Before, players with traditional helmets felt protected, so they made more riskier hits, causing more injuries. Now the players will feel even more protective, causing even more riskier hits, and even more injuries. Also even if these helmets are more protective, Vicis said they reduce the force of impact by 20-50 percent. This still is not a solution that will make football 100 percent safe. Players being prompted to act even more aggressively on the field, combined with not 100 percent helmets will even make the game more dangerous. Our efforts are not working, according to the NFL, head injuries have increased 58% since 2014. This proves our efforts are doing nothing, and show we need a huge change in the game.

President Trumps comments were very disturbing at his rally. These players are human beings, they are the same as you and me. We all are humans, we get sick, we all are susceptible to injuries. The president basically is saying that efforts to protect players from early CTE related deaths makes his game watching experience unenjoyable. There are probably many people out there that feel this way, but do not have the means, nor the courage to say comments like this. That is fine, it is their opinion. Here is a way we can all enjoy the game, and our players are 100 percent safe. Take away these weapons, let players not be prompted to take those dangerous hits. Helmets need to be put on the sidelines.

Helmets may be evolving, but as they evolve, they hurt our beloved players. The advancements of Vicis’ Zero 1 helmet only sets player safety 3 steps back. Players are going to act more violent, causing more and more injuries, it is simple logic. Players are still going to make those concussion causing hits, only harder. And with harder hits comes more severe concussions, which leads to a rise in the number of players who acquire CTE later in life, cutting their life expectancy by a significant amount of years. Taking helmets out of football with significantly reduce the number of concussions NFL players experience. This in turn will cause a chain reaction, reducing the amount of CTE in retired players, reducing the number of early deaths in individuals.

 

Stinson, Elizabeth. “This Flexible Football Helmet Wants to Save Your Brain.” Wired, Conde Nast, 3 June 2017, http://www.wired.com/2016/01/the-zero1-flexible-football-helmet-may-save-players-brains/.

Hagel, Brent. “Risk Compensation: A.” Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine, July 2004, journals.lww.com/cjsportsmed/Fulltext/2004/07000/Risk_Compensation__A__Side_Effect__of_Sport_Injury.1.aspx.

Loria, Kevin. “Trump Suggested the NFL Is Being Ruined Now That It’s Addressing Brain Injuries – Here’s What Collisions Do to Players.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 26 Sept. 2017, http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-nfl-criticism-concussions-brain-injuries-cte-2017-9.

Vinton, Nathaniel. “Concussions up 58% This Season in NFL Regular Season Games.” NY Daily News, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, 29 Jan. 2016, www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/concussions-rise-nfl-league-data-reveals-article-1.2513828.

Rebuttal – theintern

“Every business lies about its ethics” Enron suffered a horrible loss because of their lack of ethics. Enron was a fast growing American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. The company’s worth was $70 billion. Enron was founded in 1985 but then in 2001 they were finally caught by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for knowingly manipulating accounting rules and masking the enormous losses and liabilities of the company. When a company does not establish rules of ethics that company like Enron will no more be in business. If Enron were to play by the rules their company would have still been in business and so would have Arthur Andersen. Enron lied about being ethical we could tell by the profits that Enron was making within a small span of time. Once the company Enron knew that they had made committed too much fraud they tried to cover it up with bringing Arthur Andersen, one of the big five accounting firms in the world. Enron convinced Arthur Andersen to money launder their money but since their profit margins were too high the SEC became very suspicious of this amount of money Enron was profiting. In the business world no one is forced into committing these crimes; Arthur Andersen had the choice to decline the offer from Enron to help them with money laundering but because they had no ethics they joined alliances with Enron. Once Enron fell apart they brought Arthur Andersen down too. Enron went bankrupt because of all the dues and imprisonment of the CEOs and Arthur Andersen was destroyed with the bad reputation that no company wanted them to do check their books.

Corporations find ethics to be a drain on profits; but every corporation claims to promote strong business ethics. Businesses promote that they are truly ethical but how can we believe and trust big time companies when their fraud crime scandals were announced to the business world. Most of the big companies say that they are ethical but in reality there aren’t from what we see on the Forbes website most of the world’s top ethical companies are not the very big ones makes tons and tons of money every year. If we were to trust a company I’d say it would have to be a small one because all the big companies get away with almost anything just like Enron did for 12 years. For example Wells Fargo a well known bank and is one of the largest banks in the United States though it is not on the list and why is that because they created thousands of phony accounts to be able to make a profit and meet their margins. These phony accounts were opened up in several of different customers accounts without them noticing. This was a very unethical action that Wells Fargo employees did, I see it that in this world to more about making profit then having ethics.

Works Cited

That’s exactly what happened to Wells Fargo customers nationwide. “5,300 Wells Fargo Employees Fired over 2 Million Phony Accounts.” CNNMoney, Cable News Network.

Kauflin, Jeff. “The World’s Most Ethical Companies 2017.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 14 Mar. 2017.

Investopedia. “5 Most Publicized Ethics Violations By CEOs.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 5 Feb. 2013.

Tribune, Chicago. “Ties to Enron Blinded Andersen.” Chicagotribune.com, 12 July 2008,

Rebuttal Workshop

Rebuttal Workshop

in Preparation for Rebuttal Essay Deadline

“Why Men Aren’t Funny”
by Lindy West, New York Times, WED NOV 15, 2017

“Louis C.K. Responds to Accusations: These Stories Are True”
New York Times, FRI NOV 10, 2017

First, some context. President Trump has been accused of rape more than once and settled out of court without ever apologizing to anyone. Harvey Weinstein has been accused of dozens of sexual molestations with women over whom he held at least ostensible power, almost all of them involving indecent exposure, inappropriate touch, or actual physical sex, has admitted nothing, apologized to no one, and spent a fortune discrediting his accusers. Bill Cosby has gone to trial for drugging and raping his dozen or so credible alleged victims, most of whom, like Weinstein’s victims, thought he could help them in “the business,” and has hidden behind the fairy tale that the women he abused were consensual sex partners once he provided them the drugs they needed to relax themselves. Not a single even half-hearted apology among them.

Louis C.K., on the contrary, said this in his written response to the allegations that he showed women his dick and sometimes masturbated in front of them:

These stories are true. . . . The power I had over these women . . . I wielded . . . irresponsibly. I took advantage of the fact that I was widely admired. There is nothing about this that I forgive myself for. And I can hardly wrap my head around the scope of hurt I brought on them.

However crafty Lindy West finds that apology to be, however carefully worded, in today’s world of “I regret the offense that others took to my actions,” and non-apologies like “The fact that others suffered weighs heavily on me,” C.K.’s apology comes close to a model of “grownup owning up.” Of course, the words do not undo the wrong. And no one would suggest that admitting to the truth of his repulsive behavior exonerates him or will ever satisfy his victims, or us, as sufficient redress. He’ll have to pay one way or another and make restitution for his personal actions, however his industry may have enabled him to exert his perceived power on vulnerable hopefuls.

But parsing the grammar of C.K.’s response, as West does, to assert that he gives his industry a moral hall pass is an unfair reading of the text. In the same response in which C.K. heaps recrimination on himself for his personal corruption, he additionally blames the Hollywood comedy machine that keeps women down and shuts them up when they complain about oppression and abuse:

When you have power over another person, asking them to look at your dick isn’t a question. It’s a predicament for them. The power I had over these women is that they admired me. I took advantage of the fact that I was widely admired in my and their community, which disabled them from sharing their story and brought hardship to them when they tried because people who look up to me didn’t want to hear it.

He put his puny manhood out there for them to see and dared them to say they’d seen it, secure in the knowledge that nobody would listen. Lindy West ignores that part of his response when she asserts in “Why Men Aren’t Funny” that she’s had enough of “solemn acknowledgments” from powerful male comedians. She read those words and heard this:

The careful message is “I, one man, made one mistake,” not “I, among many others, preyed upon vulnerable women in my industry, on purpose, because I am both a defender and a beneficiary of an entrenched system of oppression.”

Her reading of the industry dynamic might be altogether true, but her reading of C.K.’s response is disingenuous. She says C.K. wants it both ways: to appear apologetic, but at the same time leave a door open for his eventual return to big-ticket comedy by taking all the blame for himself. Says West:

It’s easier to get your old job back if the power structure that gave it to you in the first place stays intact.

We’ll find out together if C.K. ever works again, and we’ll all applaud if the entertainment industry gets the shakeup it needs to open its doors wider to performer diversity of all kinds. But for now, let’s at least acknowledge that the man did not deny (which would have been common), did not disparage or impugn his accusers (the Trump-Weinstein approach), did not insist the acts were consensual as Cosby has (once C.K. abandoned the flimsy “I always asked first” defense).

He hasn’t exonerated Hollywood. He didn’t shirk his own blame. The only participants he gave a pass to are the women he abused.

Causal Argument – collegegirl

Providing to Our Youth

Police brutality has been an issue for many years and it remains a major concern for people of minority communities. In 2014, Barack Obama created a movement that provided young black men a place to go to seek guidance and influences. This movement has caused young men to be more successful and have better futures.

The White House has six milestones to define the MBK movement. The six milestones can be defined as the following, to ensure all children enter school emotionally and physically ready, ensure all children read at grade level by 3rd grade, ensure all youth graduate from high school, ensure all students complete post secondary education or training, ensure all youth out of school are employed and lastly, to ensure all youth to remain safe from violent crimes and have a second chance. These milestones can ensure that the younger crowd will have a better future and be more successful. Let’s break the milestones down to see how they will help our youth be successful. When kids are physically and mentally prepared to go to school, they are ready to learn on a day to day basis. Statistics has proved that 75 percent of students who struggle with reading in 3rd grade, never catch up, which is why all children should be able to ready at grade level by 3rd grade. Teens graduating from high school is a milestone in general. Completing college is the next phase. Getting a degree is extremely important when it comes to getting a job since good paying jobs now a days require a degree. Lastly, when it comes to keeping our youth safe, it is obviously very important. Young people are the future. They are the ones who are going to make changes in our communities and workplaces. Keeping them out of trouble should be our main priority.

Because the movement has so many goals and milestones that it would like to achieve, it really is a powerful movement. Providing our youth with guidance and responsibilities will cause them to want to make their communities better and help them with their future as well. Taking their minds off of what is happening in the world we live in today with police brutality, will help the youth feel like they aren’t stuck in the communities they live in and that their is a light at the end of the tunnel.