Video Outline

For my video project outlining the debates surrounding limitation of union workers’ rights, I plan on creating an informative piece, as well as incorporating my own viewpoint on the matter.  I plan on using written facts to introduce the video, or even using them to introduce segments of the video.  For instance, use a fact about Wisconsin’s budget shortfall, and then use clips of round-table discussions or newscasts to provide further detail on the topic.  Most of my video will be taken from television news sources that have thoroughly covered the topic.  Beyond that, television news tends to lean in favor of one political party more than written news–which is not necessarily a good thing, but provides a better understanding of each sides’ viewpoints.  To introduce my own point of view, I can show video clips of the side I agree with that counter what is being said in other video clips from the other side.

Remidiation Inquiry Videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRcmeA1k-ik&feature=related

This video clip was taken from the Fox News program, The O’Reilly Factor.  The attempt of this clip was to discuss the influx of protesters from other states that made their way to Wisconsin to help support the teachers.  O’Reilly makes the claim that “someone is bussing these people in”.  He has a correspondent, who agrees with him.  They throw around the term “left-wingers” a lot, and clearly are biased on the issue.  However, in talking about the Wisconsin protests, O’Reilly uses footage from violent protests in California in order to make the Wisconsin rallies appear hostile.  Many “left-wingers” ended up watching this, and realized that there are palm trees in the background—proof that the footage was not actually from Wisconsin.  This caused a lot of publicity, and probably did not look good for the Fox News Network.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27EN1k4TSao

Regardless of what might have been being spewed by all sorts of “right-wing” news institutions, Wisconsin is actually in good financial shape—really good.  The state’s own non-partisan financial analysis office predicts that Wisconsin will actually have a budget surplus of $120 million.  So, point being, the Republican case that “Wisconsin is broke”, is simply not true.  However, there is still a $137 million budget shortfall—and it is not because of the workers.  Since taking office, Governor Scott Walker has given away $140 million worth of tax breaks for business—ironically about the size of the budget shortfall.  This video makes the case that the Wisconsin government does not need to crack down right now, and that this debate is solely political—an argument between Republicans and Democrats.

This video plays a lot on ethos, the emotional side of people.  This concerns a lot of people—really, anyone who works for the government, state or federal.  Also, money and financial stability is something on the forefront of every American’s mind, so wasteful spending provokes strong emotional responses.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXdBEXls1GU

This video shows that the idea to disassociate unions did not come from Scott Walker by himself.  Anti-labor groups showed up in Wisconsin in attempt to put down the protests, as they had received emails from Wisconsin Republicans pleading that they needed their help to succeed.  Essentially, millionaires and billionaires are doing the “dirty work” for Gov. Scott Walker.  Unions are really the only voice for labor workers when considering governmental bargaining and debate.  What this video argues is that a host of new Republican governors have joined together with a strategy to eliminate labor unions, thus granting the right-wing with more power.  This video features a guest speaker, and like the other videos, provokes the emotional side of the viewer.  I think this video did a good job getting its point across by effectively playing on the deep-rooted emotions that surround this issue.

This video is a round-table discussion that takes place on Meet the Press.  A guest on the show is Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin.  I enjoyed watching this video because rather than giving me straight forward facts objectively, the round-table allows for discussion of viewpoints, enabling opinionated voices to be heard.  This is much harder to do in a newspaper or news show, where opinionated voice is delegitimized.

This is actually a very similar video to the one posted just before it.  It is another clip from Meet the Press, though instead of Gov. Scott Walker, the guest is Michele Bachmann, a House Representative of Minnesota.  Because of the fact that this is a round-table, again there is a great variety of opinionated viewpoints that are explored.  Bachmann, a Republican, is very much in support of Walker and his plans to cut union rights and collective bargaining.  This video definitely accomplished its purpose, and though no consensus was reached, I felt much more informed about the viewpoints of both Republicans, Democrats, and union workers employed by the state.

Best Practices in Fair Use of Copywritten Materials

Comprehending the concept of intellectual property is essential in being able to understand the ways in which copywritten material can be used, in part, to create something new–to recycle the copywritten material.  Never before in our history has this idea been more important than it is now.  With the globalized spread of the internet, an entirely new outlet for musicians, videographers, and artists has arisen, giving their work much more exposure than what it might have gotten in the past–before the internet.  Often times, new artists will use materials that were produced in the past by older artists.  The purpose is not to copy their material, but to use it in a new way.  This has the potential to create some very interesting pieces, and it already has!  Video mixing and mash ups in music already provide clear examples of this.  However, it is important to note that artists can only use copywritten material to the extent that is legal–and that is where the line starts to blur.

After analyzing an article posted by the American University Center for Social Media outlining the best practices in fair use of copywritten material, I discovered the depth of thought that was put into making the laws that govern this recycling of culture.  There were some things that I knew about, but more that I didn’t.  What I didn’t realize was the extent that the lawmakers went to to outline every possibility of how a piece of copywritten material might be used in video, photography and other forms of modern culture.

Powerpoint Presentations

After considering the viewpoints on the usage of PowerPoint expressed by Edward Tuft and Don Norman, it is pretty clear that both arguments have elements that deserve merit.  Tuft contends that PowerPoint is an evil program, skewing the art of a well-prepared oral presentation—morphing it into a dry, unenthusiastic list of bullet points that the speaker ends up reading to intangibly to bore the audience.  All presentations have become, Tuft argues, are lists of words that are becoming more like sales pitches than anything else.  Businesses rely heavily on them, but the format of the slide presentation leaves little room for comparison, an essential point of a presentation representing data.  As slides progress one after the other, data gets lost, people lose interest, and the speaker goes on and on.  It is understandable to think this way.  Most of my childhood I was brought up on the same prescription—and yes, I do hate PowerPoints.  There definitely is some legitimacy to what Tuft is arguing.  Often times, PowerPoint presentations make interesting material, undoubtedly uninteresting.

On the other hand, I believe the argument that Don Norman presents is also worthy of some admiration.  He contends that you cannot blame the tool over the actual presenter.  I also think this is a good point.  There are so many times where rather than taking the time to develop a meaningful argument and a good presentation, people will simply “copy and paste” all of their information onto a PowerPoint slide and—boom, that’s it.  But yes, I do know how to read, and no, I don’t want to read your stupid slides.  A good presentation is made by someone who cares about what they are doing.  If the presenter doesn’t care about their presentation, you can be sure I am not going to care.  Therefore, it is important to realize that a good presentation is dependent on the quality that the presenter put forth.  Clearly a positive relationship.  Powerpoints can be useful tools, but only when used correctly.

On the other hand, there are other tools that are similar to PowerPoint, but with variations.  They are just different formats of slide presentations—made for the sole purpose of creating a slide format that isn’t as boring as PowerPoint.  They often include more movement and pictures to keep the audience interested.  These too, can be abused by the careless speech giver to make a poor presentation.  All of these slide formats do essentially the same thing, but the presenter needs to be focused in order for everyone to stay interested.  In the case of the Alisa Miller video, I think both Tuft and Norman would be impressed.  She used little information on her slides, incorporating more pictures and representative graphs as visual aids to her actual presentation.  She was clear, had notes present, and never read her slides!  She also used an alternate format, which gave her presentation extra spice.  Even so, it was very similar to a PowerPoint.  Her speech was effective though, and I never lost interest.  I think this video proves that the quality of a speech is proportional to the amount of time and effort the speech giver puts into it.  And in this case, I think both Tuft and Norman would have to agree this was a good speech.

Response to Kate Ronald Essay: Style

I’m going to be completely honest in saying that I did not, in any way, want to read this 16-page essay about writing style.  Let’s be real, it was probably not at the forefront of anyone in this class’ priority list.  I am also telling the truth when I say that before I knew it, I was already on page 7.  This was actually an interesting article for me to read, not to mention intellectually stimulating.  As I read, I found myself thinking about what was being said, and judging whether I agreed with the author or not.  I did in some cases—others not so much.  But, man I feel bad for anyone who chose to blow this one off and “BS” a response to it…

Writing was always my strongest subject growing up, and I attribute a lot of that to the use of style and the ability to separate myself from everyone else.  That being said, when I read about Plato and Aristotle being discontented by an “enchantment with style”, my reaction was like, “whaaaaat?”  Yes, I know that is not a real word, but you get the idea.  Clearly, I took offense that the two famous philosophers were “hating” on my bread and butter.  I contend that style is important—very important.  I think it is a cop-out to say what is being said is more important than how it is said.  How you say something is equally important as what you say.  No one will be interested in something just because of what is being said.  Emotion is important; it is what makes a reader interested in what you’re saying.

I spend a lot of time working on my final drafts before I submit them for grading, and that’s not because I am trying to figure out what to say, but rather how to say it.  There is an elegance to writing; it is truly an art like painting, drawing, sculpting or what-have-you.  I don’t buy the idea that use of style is a detriment to writing and a means of tricking the reader, like those philosophers thought.  Style doesn’t mean you’re embellishing anything; it just shows that you have put the time in to personalize your writing.

I agreed with Ronald in that not enough emphasis is put on the process of writing.  If it were up to me, I would say the hell with the 5 paragraph, intro-body-conclusion format.  Seriously, could you be any more unoriginal?  I would hate my life if I had to read an entire class-worth of those essays.  Writing should not be confined to any one specific structure—and I don’t care what you’re writing about.  No matter what you’re writing, do it in the way that makes the most sense to you.

I also liked the way Ronald argued that students should be willing to take risks—to go out on a limb with what they’re saying.  It will set the writer apart.  Isn’t that the goal?  When I wrote my rhetorical analysis paper, I compared a videogame to a porn stash.  I would be lying if I said I didn’t think about taking that out, but in the end, I said screw it—I like it.  I also started the paper by analyzing a Milwaukee’s Best advertisement with half naked women on it, and I added a lot of personality in my analyzation.  When I got the graded paper back, there was a comment on it that complemented me on the porn stash analogy (score!).  Personality simply makes writing more enjoyable—which is why people hate reading tax code and letters from attorneys…

One of the things I didn’t necessarily agree with was in Ronald’s advice at the end of the paper where she mentioned writing as if you were talking to somebody.  Key word in that last sentence was “necessarily”.  I do think this is a great way to add character to your writing, but it can only go so far.  If I wrote like I talked all the time, I would be writing C+ papers at best.  I think this is only useful to an extent.  It can show great personality, but if overused, it starts to detract from the legitimacy of what is being said.  If you are writing a paper about something, you are generally the “expert”.  Overuse of informal language and speech patterns makes your writing informal, and in my opinion, not as good.  I agree that this is a good technique, but it should be used in moderation.  Furthermore, there are only certain cases where this is useful.  For instance, this type of writing would make little sense outside of an English classroom.  I would never do that on a biology or chemistry lab report; that’s a great way to get points knocked off…

On the whole, I really enjoyed reading this article (which can probably be assumed by the amount of writing I just did).  There is a lot of really useful advice that Ronald gives.  It almost struck me as a cheat-sheet of how to do well in a class instructed by a connoisseur of modern rhetoric.  Like I said earlier, I feel bad for whoever decides not to read this.

Toulmin Analyzation of Sources (Wisconsin Collective Bargaining Debate)

Governor Walker Introduces Budget Repair

http://www.scottwalker.org/news/2011/02/governor-walker-introduces-budget-repair

This article, posted on the Wisconsin Governor’s website, claims that emergency measures must be taken in order to balance the state’s budget and ensure Wisconsin has the tools to navigate this economic crisis.  The claim is supported by economic data outlining the extent of the budget shortfall.  Wisconsin is currently facing a $137 million deficit for the current fiscal year, which ends on July 1, 2011.  Rather than increase taxes on the citizens of the state, Walker believes it better to cut some of the benefits for state employees that could potentially save $30 million by the end of the fiscal year.  The article provides no data to support that claim, however, other than that state employees would have to pay 5.8% towards their pensions (which the article claims is the private sector avg.), and that workers will pay about 12% of their healthcare benefits (approximately half the private sector avg.).  However, the biggest stipulation of the budget reform bill is to limit collective bargaining rights for state workers—excluding firemen and police officers.  This limits the power of state workers at the bargaining table to fight for wages only.  This decision to cut benefits like this is warranted by the idea that state budgets must be balanced to ensure economic prosperity.  As the country is facing a hard economic recession, it is understandable to cut back in areas of “wasteful” spending in effort to save money, which is why this bill was introduced—though many (state workers, Democrats) argue this is not wasteful.

Column: Wisconsin is About Power, not Money

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2011/02/column_wisconsin_is_about_powe.html

The claim in this article is that the slimming of collective bargaining rights is just one piece of the puzzle in state governments’ attempts to make sure they do not default on their loans.  This is backed by the logic that if state governments (or the federal government) do not pay back their loans (namely to China), we will be fiscally irresponsible, creditors will no longer lend us money, they will call us out on our loans, and our economy will slow dangerously.  Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to spend less, and pay back our debts.  One way governments are trying to do this is by cutting government employee benefits that cost the state money.

This article then makes the claim that power of creditors matters more than the power of say, state employees, who are taking the brunt of this budget cutting.  Those who lend us money have power over us—lots of power.  On the other hand, teachers and state workers are less important because they don’t have the power to wreck our economy.  The Wisconsin government had made the deal with teachers that if they accept lower pay than a private sector job now, they will get higher pensions in the future.  The problem is that now, with the loss of collective bargaining rights, teachers will not be able to fight back—whatever the government says, goes.  The claim that this is hurting teachers and government workers is warranted by the idea that collective bargaining makes things fair—both the government and its workers have a say in contracts, and the repercussions for reneging on them.  With the government holding much more power than the employees, the deals will become undoubtedly more lopsided, especially in order to cut spending.

What Union Voices Mean to the Wisconsin Debate

http://www.fair.org/blog/2011/02/28/what-union-voices-mean-to-the-wisconsin-debate/

This article is an analyzation of some things that were said over the weekend about the Wisconsin union debate on CBS’s Face the Nation.  Richard Trumka, a member of the AFL-CIO, the country’s largest union, claimed major shifting in Governor Walker’s arguments and reasoning for the collective bargaining limitations.  He justified this claim by countering arguments made by Republicans, those who support the governor.

“First he said it was–the budget crisis was caused because workers were paid too much in Wisconsin.  We now have studies that show they’re not overpaid, they’re underpaid,” said Trumka.  Educated public sector workers actually earn 25% less than those working in the private sector.

“Then he said it was about the pension.  Now we find out that his pension plan, unlike a lot in the country, is almost fully funded.  The assets match the liabilities.”  Trumka then went on to point out that the government employees actually accepted many of the terms outlined by Walker.  However, the Wisconsin government was in no way going to only let the workers accept some of the terms.  That being said, this bill effectively makes government employees choose between losing their rights, or losing their job.  That is the warrant for the unions’ case—no one should have to do that.  This is a free country, and that is something that should be reserved for oppressive dictatorships.

What is Collective Bargaining?

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-collective-bargaining.htm

This article gives a short background on the reasons for having collective bargaining rights, and what they entail.  It claims that it helps workers’ representatives and employers negotiate contracts that both sides can agree on.  Typically, things discussed involve hours, wages, working conditions, benefits, pensions, and rules in the workplace—the Wisconsin bill limits collective bargaining rights to wage discussion only, the reason for such stiff opposition from state employees.  This claim that collective bargaining helps workers and employers reach agreeable terms is warranted by the idea that workers should have some power when speaking to their employers.  This is backed by history, in that collective bargaining arose in opposition to poor working conditions in the late 19^th century.  In order to improve the conditions, workers joined together, using power in numbers to persuade employers to give concessions and improve working conditions.

The data supports this claim also, as collective bargaining often creates a better environment for workers and employers alike, through cooperation.  Contracts resulting from collective bargaining set clear guidelines by which everyone must act.  There are clear expectations, and everyone knows what is required of them.  There may be some discontent, but both sides make concessions in order to find a middle ground.  On the other hand, without the rights collective bargaining offer, the deals become more and more lopsided—in Wisconsin’s case towards the power of the government, which is the reason for the outrage.

Note:  This article also has a space for comment, which has some strong arguments that can be analyzed.

Visual Rhetoric

Clearly, when people make websites, nothing is an accident.  Every logo, word, and backdrop has a purpose and is intended to illicit a targeted response in the reader.  Even colors are chosen carefully when websites are designed.  But these rules do not only apply to websites.  Everything from advertisements to movie posters to sets in a television show or movie can be analyzed rhetorically.  Things are placed where they are for a reason.  It was interesting to look at advertisements and websites I had seen frequently in a different setting, and for a different purpose–that being to analyze them to derive meaning.  For instance, in magazine advertisements, because we read from left to right, the logo is almost always placed in the bottom right of the screen.  Why?  The eyes follow a natural path along the page, ending in the bottom right; the perfect spot for the advertiser’s logo.  It is just a little bit different on a website.  The logo is generally in the top left of the home screen.  Websites require the reader to scroll down the page, and often, readers never get to the bottom, meaning that placement in the bottom right like a magazine advertisement would not be nearly as effective.  Thus, most websites put their logo in the top left so it can be seen by everyone as soon as they reach the website.

 

 

 

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