Is the minimum wage high enough?

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20130909000983

This writing addresses that Korea had a low hourly minimum wages among OECD countries and the government needs to revise the current minimum wage system. The author claims that many people are appealing to the low minimum wage law in Korea. According to Woo Seok-jin, people have minimum living standard costs, and the minimum wage should be determined based on that level. A man said (policy claim), "as public utility prices rise the minimum wages of part-time jobs like at a general restaurant should be increased. I think $6 would be okay." He also criticized the government ministers who don’t know how the poor people work so hard and how they only are given a low wage (value claim). Some business representatives, however, asserted that raising the rate might hurt not only firms, but also workers as well because it forces the companies to lay off workers or hiring fewer new employees. Park Pil-kyu, a senior research fellow at the Korea Small Business Institute, said raising the rate would hit small businesses particularly hard (counter argument). In my opinion, it is definitely controversial issue in Korea because even though the government wants to make higher minimum wages for better life of the workers, it would be not good for both the workers and businesses in the long term. A rise in the minimum wage would cause replacement of Korean workers with foreigners in vulnerable jobs at small companies. Therefore, creating higher minimum wages should be considered since it will have a lasting effect on employee's happiness which affect quality of working environment.

"Woman To Hand Out 'Obese Letters' to Overweight Children on Halloween - www.foxnews.com

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/10/30/woman-to-hand-out-obese-letters-to-overweight-children/?intcmp=latestnews

Article:  "Woman to hand out 'obese letters' to overweight children on Halloween"

I read an article on www.foxnews.com about a North Dakota woman who is planning on handing out letters to young trick-or-treaters she deems are overweight.  Part of her letter states,  “…it takes a village to raise a child...your child is, in my opinion, moderately obese…my hope is that you will step up as a parent…” yet is left unsigned.  When asked  why she doesn’t hand out other items, such as  toys/stickers, etc…she claims she doesn’t want to be the “mean lady” in the neighborhood and “doesn’t plan to deny candy to any of the children”.

I believe her argument could be seen as a value or policy claim as this is her opinion (without specific facts to make it a fact based claim) and sounds like her ultimate goal is to “help” change the health of some children in her neighborhood.  My big issue with this is her lack of Kairos or knowing the full context including her audience, medium (sending an unsigned accusatory letter) and not having any full history of these families or children.   Although this is her 1^st Amendment right of free speech, I don’t believe Halloween is the best occasion to state her argument in this type of manner.   How could she possibly know everything going on with the child or the family…and really know they are overweight/obese without a full examination?  Unless she is a pediatrician and has met with each child, I would question her Ethos or credibility on this subject and quite frankly… in my opinion (my 1^st amendment right)…she’s a major “Debbie Downer”!!! 

NSA Infiltrates Links to Yahoo, Google Data Centers Worldwide, Snowden Documents Say

The Washington Post reported a fact claim that the NSA secretly tapped into the unencrypted links behind massive cloud networks from companies like Google and Yahoo. Evidences came from documents which were obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and  knowledgeable officials. As backing of the claim, in the preceding 30 days, field collectors of NSA had processed 181,280,466 “metadata”, including emails, videos and audio, from  millions of foreign and American citizens user accounts. In fact, not only the NSA itself took the operation, but the British GCHG joined the “MUSCULAR” operation as well. They relied on an unnamed telecommunications provider outside of the U.S. to offer secret access to a cable or Google and Yahoo servers. As rebuttals, White House officials and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversaw the NSA, declined to confirm, deny or explain why the agency infiltrated Google and Yahoo networks overseas. At the same time, officers of Google denied that they provided the government with access to their systems. Yahoo restated their strict controls in place to protect the security of their data centers as well. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-infiltrates-links-to-yahoo-google-data-centers-worldwide-snowden-documents-say/2013/10/30/e51d661e-4166-11e3-8b74-d89d714ca4dd_story.html

Texas dad makes ‘bully’ son wear sign in public punishment

I read an article, “Texas dad makes ‘bully’ son wear sign in public punishment” on Fox News. A 4^th grader spent the afternoon holding a sign that says “I am a bully. Honk if you hate bullies.” His father, Jose Lagares, says he came up with the punishment after his son got in trouble for bullying several times at school. He claims that bullying is a bad behavior and a serious problem that cannot be ignored. He makes his son wear a sign of shame to teach a lesson. Lagares anticipates opposing opinion about public punishment. He says that some people might consider this punishment as humiliation. However, he rebuts this predictable claim by providing a statement; bullying is also a form of public humiliation. Lagares says that, “My son understands that when he humiliates someone publicly that doesn’t feel good. Hopefully he will take that with him so the next time he tries to bully someone he will think about it twice.” I think he made a value claim that asserts the worth of something. He also made great rebuttal to the expected opposing opinion about public humiliation. On occasion, it is necessary for children to be disciplined when they misbehave.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/10/06/texas-dad-makes-bully-son-wear-sign-in-public-punishment/?intcmp=latestnews

ASPCA Pathos

The commercials for the ASPCA beckoning for the adoption of animals are visual arguments, that use some of the principles demonstrated in the Birdsell and Groarke article. The first principle used by the ASPCA in their commercials is the use of pathos. As Birdsell and Groarke mention, visual arguments rely heavily on pathos to forward their claims. The images of suffering animals conjure feelings of sympathy, anger, and guilt meant to elicit action on the part of the viewer. By simply reasoning with the viewer that animals are abused, the impact is reduced. The second principle that the ASPCA uses in its commercials that is mentioned in the Birdsell and Groarke article is the ineffectiveness of surrogate imagery. If the ASPCA used animals that were relatively well off and faked hardship -animal "actors" if you- then the impact would be greatly reduced as the viewer would know the images they were seeing were less then real, merely a simulacrum of the message.

Meriweather Makes a Scary But Good Point.

After multiple hits on defenseless players in the past few weeks, Brandon Meriweather was suspended for two games. An appeal reduced his sentence to one game but that didn't stop him from making a few comments that are sure to shake the offensive players in the league. His main point regarding the hit zone for defensive players is below.

 "I guess I just have to take people's knees out," Meriweather said. "That's the only way. I would hate to end a guy's career over a rule, but I guess it's better other people than me getting suspended for longer. You just have to go low now, man. You've got to end people's careers. You got to tear people's ACLs and mess up people's knees. You can't hit them high anymore."

A claim like this makes me believe he shouldn't be on the field when injuring players is on his mind. He provided examples of different injuries he was willing to give opposing players.

This article is a great example of a causal argument. Rule changes cause knee injuries. This argument has many examples of grounds because there are many great reasons for the rule changes. Head and neck injuries are the most important issues and as many steps as possible should be taken to keep them to a minimum. Therefore because of the rule changes, the players well being and lives are safer due to reduced concussions and head injuries, but they are at a much greater risk of career ending injuries because defensive players are going to be expected to tackle much lower. A countercliam will always be present that the league is softening, and all the rule changes are taking away from what drew fans to the games initially, Violence.


http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/9895448/brandon-meriweather-words-reflect-real-problem

Tiananmen Square Incident (CNN)

This article was about the recent vehicle explosion taking place at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. 40 people were injured and 5 were killed and until recently it was ruled an accident, but now with new evidence it is being ruled a terrorist attack. This article is a fact claim. According to a Beijing police spokesperson, a man named Usmen Hasan drove a jeep carrying his mother Kuwanhan Reyim and his wife Gulkiz Gini, through the famed square and died after the vehicle caught fire and exploded when crashing into the Jinshui Bridge. The evidence is substantial because after the vehicle was extinguished police found gasoline canteens, knives, steel sticks and a flag with extremist religious content (Jihad). Post-incident there have also been five new suspects detained after being found connected to the attack. The claim is that the attack was retaliation because of the tension between Muslim Uyghurs and the Han Chinese. The author primarily uses logos to make these claims because until now there has never been any notification of Chinese/Muslim tension, and with this new information comes solid backing for a terrorist attack.




http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/30/world/asia/china---tiananmen---arrests/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

US intelligence chief Clapper defends spying policy

This news reported that US intelligence chief defended spying policy, and the claim is that discerning foreign leaders’ intention was a key of the nations’ spying operations. The ground supporting that claim is that such efforts were the “top tenet” of US intelligence policy, according to Mr. Clapper, director of National Intelligence. The warrant is because leadership intentions is a basic tenet, surveillance on leaders is reasonable. Also the director of National Security Agency Gen Keith Alexander added that the information which led people believe that the NSA or US collected information is false was wrong and it was more important to defend the nation through surveillance to support the claim. Some background information was given, such as the Edward Snowden, who leaked documents about surveillance, and the significant criticism about President Obama. Even though someone is opposed to the action that collecting intelligence on leaders of US allies, and the fact is that there is no policy stopping such surveillance so far.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24729628