argument29 十二月高强组第二周周三作业

waidswUID: 2256074

题目：ARGUMENT 29 - When Ida McAllister ran for mayor of Lake City four years ago, she failed to win even 30 percent of the vote. But since then, McAllister has made public her commitment to environmental causes. She would be wise, therefore, to announce her intention to close all Lake City parks to automobile traffic, thus following the example of the former mayor of Plainsville, Alecia Yu . On the recommendation of a small group of concerned citizens, Mayor Yu prohibited automobile traffic in all Plainsville parks, and therefore was credited with solving the pollution problem and improving the quality of life in Plainsville. This action would have great appeal to the citizens of Lake City, most of whom participate in the community's recycling program, and would guarantee McAllister's success in her current quest to be Lake City's new mayor.
字数：529          用时：0:44:04          日期：2006-11-29
1， 没有证据说明上届市长的环保名声是因为那禁止汽车
2， 没有证据说明居民真的对环保感兴趣， 而且居民还有很多别的关心的方面
3， 没有证据说明MA在影响选举的其它方面也做得好，还有没有与其他候选人的比较
The arguer claims that MA will be guranteed to be the new mayor of Lake City. To justify this claim, the arguer provides that MA announced her intention to close all Lake City parks to automobile traffic following the example of the former mayor AY, who was credited with solving the pollution problem and improve the quality of life. In addition, the arguer also points out that this action would have great appealing to the citizens since most of them participate in the recycling program. The claim is specious as it stands with several flaws.

To begin with, the arguer fails to prove us that the credit of the former mayor in environment is due to the implement of the action that close the parks to automobile traffic. Perhaps others issues cause the former mayor honored as environmental sound mayor rather than the prohibition of the traffic. What’s more, the prohibition was adopted by virtues of recommendation of a small group of concerned citizens. Which means this action was supported by certain citizens in that time. Nevertheless, there is no proof to demonstrate that citizens at present still support such proposal. Without any persuasive information about the effectiveness of the prohibition, we can assume that maybe the efforts that MA made were nebulous to win the support of voters.

Secondly, the arguer fails to convince us the citizens are actually appealing to this environmental commitment. The mere fact that most of the citizens participate in recycling program does not necessarily means that the citizens indeed care about the environment. It is possible that joining the recycling program is a popular activity .Therefore most people want to illustrate to others their concerning about the environment, but actually it is not the case. If so, MA’s commitment will have no use to attract the voters. Moreover, commonly there are many other issues that citizens may focus on, such as the tax rate, the community security, the health care and so on, without any information about whether MA does well in this aspects, it is to hasty to conclude that MA will win.

Thirdly, there are many other facts that influence the success of the election, such as the advertisement, the member of the candidate team, and the financial conditions. None of these has been illustrated by the arguer which renders the claim that MA will win the election specious. In addition, here must be other candidates in this election, whereas none of them the arguer has mentioned.  Even if MA did a good job in the commitment, others did better. Absent the compare between MA and other candidates, I do not know the advantage of MA. Hence I do not agree with the arguer’s claim the MA will win.

  
To sum up, the arguer is unpersuasive as it stands. To strengthen the claim, the arguer has to offer more information to persuade me that the citizens of LC are truly concerned about the environments and the commitment is effective to obtain the support form the citizens. To better evaluate the claim, I still need to know that MA was outstanding in other respects which arouse citizens’ attention compared with her competitors.