Draft 1 essay 4
With Election day closing in on Americans, the decision about who to vote for can be a difficult one. With issues including the War in Iraq, health care, our economy, education and energy, there is allot of information to consider before Americans cast there vote. For me, Energy is a huge category to consider. John McCain makes some pretty unbelievable promises, claiming he knows how to lead the United States towards a new and cleaner power source by shifting our economy. Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, authors of the book unSpun: finding facts in a world of disinformation, state that “ Without real data and hard evidence, it's easy to be led astray in all sorts of matters, especially when a dramatic story involving well known figures captures our attention”(108). It's easy to believe everything we hear, but before committing a vote to someone based on what they say they will do, evidence needs to be presented. The evidence presented for McCain's energy plan is both confusing and misleading.
John McCain has named his energy plan the “Lexington project”. The Lexington project includes McCain's thoughts on expanding domestic oil, natural gas exploration and production, clean alternative sources of energy, climate change, energy efficiency, oil prices , and breaking our dependency on foreign oil. McCain claims “Our nation's future security and prosperity depends on the next President making the hard choices that will break our nation's strategic dependence on foreign sources of energy and will ensure our economic prosperity by meeting tomorrow's demands for a clean portfolio.” (www.johnmccain.com//Informing/Issues) He's right, but what are McCain's tough choices? One of his major points in the Lexington project is that he plans to break America's dependence on foreign oil. How does he plan to do it? His idea is that if we all join in together and everyone helps, then we can stop relying on foreign oil. McCain has a couple of suggestions on how this can be done. First he suggests that the public take his “Clean Car Challenge”(witch he plans to promote by giving the buyer a $5,000 tax credit),and buy a zero carbon emission car. He also plans to have 50% of all cars made, to be flex-fuel vehicles by the year 2012. He has also designated a $300 million dollar prize for the person who can invent a battery package that has the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars. Well all of that sounds great and dandy, but how many Americans are able to afford any of this? I know I can't. He also promises that if we pull together, our Nation will achieve “strategic independence” , by 2025.
It sounds like John McCain isn't making very many “tough choices”. To me it sounds like he's relying on ALL America to pull together in order for any of his ideas to work. This shifts the tough choices on to the citizens of the United States, not the next President. Infact, even if Americans did pull together and work as a team, our nation would still have to rely on foreign oil. Statistics provided in a Newsweek article said “In 2006, coal, oil and natural gas provided 85 percent of U.S. energy. In 2025, regardless of what we do, they will almost certainly remain the leading energy sources. In 2025, oil would still represent a third or more of total energy use (it was two fifths in 2006), with more than half imported, projects the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Although these figures could change, dependence on foreign oil is unavoidable.”(Robert J. Samuelson) These statistics blow McCain's “strategic independence” plans out of the water. How is the Country suppose to be free of our dependence on foreign oil by 2025, when in 2025 we are still going to be needing to get half of our Nation's oil from other country's? I think the reason he's promising all this to happen by 2025, is because there is no way he'll still be in office by then, so why would he care weather or not it really happens. I also don't understand why McCain's campaign received 1.3 million dollars from Big Oil. Why would they be supporting him when McCain is stating that his goal is to alleviate the Country of foreign oil dependence. It just doesn't make any sense.
The world of politics can be a confusing one and sometimes it is difficult to weed through the misleading information. This is especially true when the people we are suppose to be able to trust are the ones misleading us. Luckley with the right information, like the information found in the book unSpun, we are able to evaluate the facts presented and compare them to the truth. Finding evidence may not be easy, but it's better than getting misleading or false information. This is especially true when our votes count on the truth.
Works Cited
http://www.johnmccain.com//Informing/Issues/17671aa4-2fe8-4008-859f-0ef1...
http://www.democrats.org/a/p/john_mccains_en.html
Jackson, Brooks and Kolawole, Emi “Obama's Overstatement” August 6th, 2008 http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/obamas_overstatement.html
Robertson, Lori “Wind Power Puffery” Agust 8th, 2008 http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/wind_power_puffery.html
Samuelson, Robert J. “The Great Energy Confusion” Newsweek August 9th, 2008 http://www.newsweek.com/id/151755
- Kimberly Puntney's blog
- Login or register to post comments
to kim p
The essay gets off to a good start but there are a couple of things you can do to start even stronger. First, take out the first person (I, me, we) and write only in the third person for the whole essay. That's not a big deal. The greater concern is the thesis makes a workable claim, but it doesn't commit to a particular argument. It would be easy to agree or disagree that the argument McCain makes is or isn't confusing and misleading. Be clear why it matters or what should come of it. You can argue that because he is confusing us, he must be either confused h himself or deliberately misleading us, neither of which is worthy of our vote. Take the level of specificity a step further and the focus will be more effective and workable as the essay's argument unfolds.
Once the thesis is taken care of, more evidence is needed to show how McCain's energy plan is both confusing and misleading. I suggest looking at each of the points touched on in the essay so far. Provide a paragraph on the car tax credits, the 300 million prize and the like. Each of these is worth looking into and will provide a good example and support and development of the thesis. With each point, open with a topic statement along the lines of "McCain is proposing a tax credit for those who purchase zero emissions cars." Then explain why this sort of thing might be good, or how the proposal itself is misleading and/or confusing; this requires giving your reader some examples. Then provide some research to illustrate how this example and its presentation could be misleading or confusing. It's misleading in one instance to think that everyone can take advantage of this, as you noted you could not afford to buy a new car to receive the tax credit. You are alone. It's safe to assume that because I'm well into my career I could better afford a new car and tax credit, but I sure don't want to try to sell my regular car and lose money and then go get into greater debt for a cleaner burning car. I can't afford that either. I'm sure you and I are not alone in this. In this respect, it is misleading as a solution to our energy concerns. Also, I saw a report on how SUVs are not selling and dealers are offering $10,000 cash back. The dealer said, "$10,000 buys a lot of gas," and it does. But that matters only if I can afford to buy a new SUV, and only for the couple of years it would take to spend that money on gas, which will only get more expensive. In the meanwhile, my excess use of gas is being subsidized and the energy situation worsens. Still, the tax credit is worth a paragraph, as are the other points.
The opposing view could be something along the lines of even if regular people don't fully understand the implication of the policy, that they don't really need to, they will reap the benefits anyway and those who do understand, or those who need to understand, are the people with the money who will make the big decisions and invest their money to make these things happen. Those of us lower on the political and economic food chain will still reap the benefits of these policies.
These points must then be refuted/rebutted to show how the confusion and misleading tactics of the McCain strategy don't serve the national interests, or whatever the thesis finally spells out. You could say that Americans need to know what they are voting for, and why they should vote for someone, that we shouldn't have to trust that they will serve our best interests, but that they will be straight with us, upfront about the choices and consequences, and McCain isn't doing that and therefore he doesn't deserve our votes.
Bradley
Intro sounds good you tied
Intro sounds good you tied it with text and thesis.
You chose an appropriate topic and good development of paragraphs.
the argument is good. Just make sure each paragraph ties with the thesis at the end.
Conclusion needs to be tied with thesis.
Work is cited.
Good job!
reply to KimberlyP
Introduction: Very good Intro, you gave a clear idea of what you would be discussing. Good job.
Essay Focus, Thesis or Main: Thesis is pretty good.
Development of Ideas and/or Experiences: I follow you
Organization, structure and/or paragraphing Effective: Direct and to the point.
Wording, Sentence Structure and Conventions of Standard American English: I like your use of the elections "closing in on Americans." It sounds like I feel.
Adequacy of response to assignment: I think you need to add to your response to the topic.
Appropriateness of topic: Yes
You have a good start for
Introduction: You have a good start for your essay.
Essay Focus: You stay focused on your thesis.
Development of Ideas and/or Experiences: Not sure that the examples you use really support your position. Not sure some of the argument can be supported by some of the facts you provide.
Organization: Could use some work.
Wording/ structure/conventions: There are some spelling errors you should fix. These words are homonyms of the words you are trying to use, witch and weather, they need to be changed to which and whether. Aslo, Luckely is spelled luckily.
Adequacy of Response to Assignment: I don't see the counter agrument for supporting the opposition. This should be worked on.
Appropriateness of Topic: Appropriate topic.
Kelly