Multi Modal Essay- Taylor Wisnieski

Taylor Wisnieski

10/23/11

Professor Lutz

Multi Modal Essay

The War in Iraq and Afghanistan

                September 11, 2001 will be the day that no one will ever forget, the day that the World Trade Center  towers was hit by three airplanes, we later came to find out that this was done by 19 Iraqi hijackers. Now, ten years later, our president, Barack Obama has announced the ending of the war all together. Before I go any further, I came across a youtube video from 2008 that discusses President Obama ending the war. This video was from two years ago but what he says is going to happen during the process of ending the war is exactly what is happening now, only two years after he said it would be over.  

Ending of the Iraqi War

       This just proves that though President Barack Obama had the intentions of ending the war a year ago he was a little late on ending it. Since the war ended a year late, more Americans have died and more U.S citizens have had to pay thousands of dollars to support the war. The thing that worries most Americans is that if in 2008 when President Obama told us he was sending our troops home by the summer of 2010, how can we believe him now when he says that our troops will be home by the end of this year? While asking myself this question I did some research and though our troops will be leaving Iraq they may be sent to Afghanistan where there is still currently a war between the U.S and Afghanistan. Now that Obama has plans on sending the troops home from Iraq he has other things to deal with in Afghanistan, he has pledged to end U.S combat roll in Afghanistan within three years. October 7, 2011, the U.S led war in Afghanistan marked its 10th year, having passed two milestones: The Taliban has been forced out of power and Osama bin Laden is dead. Though our troops have been in Afghanistan for ten years, there's no sign of our troops coming home any time soon. Lately there have been many high-profile attacks such as, the assassination of Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani last month. With these types of attacks still happening in Afghanistan it is raising many questions by the U.S and is jeopardizing our peace negotiations with the country. 

The Taliban

          With Presient Rabbani dead, the Taliban now has the opportunity to take over the Afghan government and many western leaders do not doubt that this will be the case. Taliban are students of religious seminaries who have existed in Afghanistan long before modern schools existed. The beginning goals of the Taliban were to disarm the country, end lawlessness and enforce the Islamic law on a united Afghanistan. In June of 2011, the International Crisis Group reported that the Taliban had expanded in the south and southeast to central-eastern provinces. This is just proof that the Taliban is capable of expansion and of being in control of other countries. The Taliban are people who most are afraid of because of how powerful they are and how they are not scared of killing people. Pictured below is of Taliban insurgents in front of a burning German military vehicle in northern Kunduz Province. 

The war between the U.S and Afghanistan has now become a war between the United States and the Taliban. The Taliban is now recruiting non-Afghan soldiers to fight against our American soldiers.Having this Taliban influence in Afghanistan is only causing more pain and trouble for the people of Afghanistan and it's only getting worse. Corruption and cooperation with the Taliban reach the highest levels of local governance. Widespread abuse of power from simple shakedowns to outright collusion with the Taliban will very likely outlive U.S military combat. As Afghanistan is failing to do any better, Obama tries to shed some light on these problems by proving that the military has done a great job in Afghanistan and that they are ready to be sent home. In my opinion I think that our troops should have been sent home a long time ago and that since we have been in Afghanistan and Iraq we have only made problems worse. You never heard any bad things about Afghan or Iraqi government before the terrorist attack in 2001. It's not our job to be involved in another country's problems when we should be worrying about our own here, like our economy and how it's falling.

Treatment of Soldiers

           This brings me to another problem that not just me but most American's are having with our troops being in Afghanistan and Iraq, the way they are being treated there and when they return home.  

" In a 2006 report in the Journal of the American Medical Association, it was found that one-third of US military personnel from the war in Iraq accessed mental health services after they returned home. Among 222,620 Iraq veterans, 31 percent had at least 1 outpatient mental health visit within the first year postdeployment, while the annualized rate of such services was 35 percent.”(Mitchell 2)

This statistic stuck out to me because it's clear that soldiers who came back with PTSD did not always receive the treatment they needed. This also shows that many troops are coming back with PTSD and at least some of them are getting help. Thinking more about this situation I came across a study of troops returning from Iraq or Afghanistan who have experienced some form of PTSD, whether it be alone or the problems they have had in relationships or parenting since returning. In this study, the participants who have children reported significant concerns about impairments in parenting. These participants then went on to say they would rather go through family therapy instead of therapy alone, in order to deal with the PTSD together. I enjoyed reading about this study because it showed that troops with families are more willing to get help so they don't ruin relationships between them and their family. As I was thinking to myself about the treatment of these soldiers when they return home I knew I'd have to do research on how they were being treated overseas. I came across an article where a doctor was quoted saying, “Pain needs to be consistently assessed and treated all the way across the continuum of care, from that initial point of injury all the way down the road.", he later went on to say that as of lately the methods of treating and following a patient from the time of injury until they are fully healed has been lacking. If any other person experienced an injury such as tearing your ACL, they would be at the doctor continuously until they were completely healed, so my question is why should it be any different for soldiers? Just because they are coming back from a different country doesn't mean their care should stop once they return to the U.S. 

Continuing War in Afghanistan

       Though the war in Iraq will be coming to an end by December of this year, the war in Afghanistan will still be continuing for the next three years. As I was thinking to myself about how if the troops in Iraq are able to be sent home why can't the troops in Afghanistan be sent home I found a video from May of this year petitioning the end of the war. This video was made after Osama bin Laden's death.

I completely agree with these people who are trying to petition the end of the war, I never once thought our troops should even be in Iraq and Afghanistan in the first place. I never saw the point in reacting to the terrorist attacks in the first place, yes hundreds of people in the U.S died from the attack but what gives us the right to go and kill their people? It makes us look just as bad as them, clearly we are no better than the Iraqis or the people of Afghanistan. When President Bush sent us to Iraq to help "create" a government for their people he was stepping on their territory and that is why they've reacted so negatively towards us, because it's not our place to fix another country's problems. Since being in the war we have spent billions of dollars and lost thousands of U.S citizens and what can we say we've accomplished really? We have attempted to establish a government in another country that isn't our own while our economy here is diminishing. While thinking about how I felt I had to do research on how other people felt and I came across a quote from an article that really stood out to me, "...there is little reason to believe that the continuing commitment of tens of thousands of troops on a sprawling nation-building mission in Afghanistan will make America safer." I agree with this 100%, nothing we are doing over there is making here any safer. We have more important needs at home like high unemployment and the flood of foreclosures while we are spending $10 billion a month in Afghanistan. After everything our country has been through I think it's finally time to get our troops home.

Adam Feeley

Professor Lutz

25 October 2011

Drug Testing

                    The improvements with modern technology and the study with medicine have greatly changed. When growing up playing sports you can be pressured into many situations that you feel like you need an edge. With the professional sports being the ideal icon to many teenagers the players can be a great impact on how the teenagers act with their friends or family. If they can have an impact on how they act and even look with the clothes they wear, the teenagers will even want to have their type of body meaning big, cut and thinking it’s a healthy body. Teens are going to try anything to achieve that type of body or style of performance. This can lead to an unhealthy lifestyle for many young men and women because there are more bad side effects of using performance-enhancing drugs than good effects. Lately, with Major League Baseball and the National Football Association there have been more cases with players using steroids or drugs to be able to play while hurt or have an unfair advantage. Steroids have been proven to build muscle and boost their athletic performance, but many people don’t realize the bad side effects that affect your health down the road. High school athletes that include freshman until your senior year of high school should be drug tested while playing sports and throughout the off-season. By drug testing high school athletes it will stop the growth of steroids and illegal drugs that occur in high schools in today’s society.

First, understanding how steroids work. Anabolic steroids are synthetic versions of the male sex hormone testosterone. Steroids work by filling the cell receptors that tell the cells to make new proteins. While it’s normal for the body to create new proteins, the steroids just tell the cells to create the proteins at a faster rate (Rogozkin). They enter through the blood stream and enter through the liver and are distributed throughout the body, manly to the muscles right after a workout. When you work out you create small tears in your muscles that need to be built up by protein which steroids make happen at a faster rate. Not only does steroids work to build muscle and to build bulk for bodybuilders or athletes, it also works for sprinters or pitchers because it helps athletes who need a faster turnaround from soreness. It is found more in baseball players which you may be asking yourself why baseball players? When it’s one sport you don’t need to be big to be successful. Baseball players use steroids because it enhances their hand eye coronation which makes their reaction time faster. With this being said, it makes there fast twitch muscles stronger so they can have a faster bat which will produce a longer ball or more homeruns. For pitchers, it enhances their rotator cuff muscles so they can whip the ball around faster and its one reason why we have seen pitches reach up to 106 miles per hour during the season.

One writer Julian Savulescu said in a debate about the use of steroids in sports “to say that we should reduce drugs in sport or eliminate them because they increase performance, is simply like saying that we should eliminate alcohol from parties because it increases sociability.” I understand where he is coming from but talking about a serious life threatening drug that not only cheats the game by increasing your ability to perform, it puts that athlete a greater risk. He talks about this as if it means nothing or is not as big deal. To not eliminate a drug that increases your performance is ridiculous when other people are willing to put their body through hell the hard way to reach their lifetime goal, it shouldn’t be interrupted by people who are taking the easy way out. There are many life threatening effects that come with using steroids such as “aggressiveness, acne, injury to the connective tissues, damaged liver and negatively altered cholesterol levels” (Steroid Abuse). Some people know these effects that can occur to their bodies but most people are not aware because the media does not do a good job by advertising against steroids. Here is one commercial that was displayed on ESPN in the past years but has not been aired in a long time which I think is wrong because it never gets old. They should run this commercial during the Little League World Series when most young kids are watching to put awareness into young teenager’s minds. By seeing this is makes you think about using steroids because of how they destroy the body and how they do such a good job demonstrating the effects that it can have on a person’s body.

An article off of East Carolina baseball’s website had a statement from their head coach on what he thought about steroids and baseball. "I think steroids in college baseball is getting out of hand," said East Carolina head coach Randy Mazey, although he said it has not been an issue with his team. "It filters down from the majors. Steroids in college baseball is a problem."(Powell Jr). This quote has a great impact on how coaches around the country view drugs in the game of baseball. It is getting out of hand, but it is coming down from the majors which is also true because if that’s what it takes to play at that level so many young players and teens are going to follow because they want to play at that level and the major league players are making it seem like that is the only way you can reach the pro’s. 

 

-this is just a rough draft, I’m struggling where to go from here.

 

Michaela Dempsey's Multimodal Essay Rough Draft

Michaela Dempsey

Professor Lutz

English 151

October 31, 2011

Hunger and Poverty

           There are nearly seven billion people living on this Earth. Out of these seven billion, over three billion are living on less than $2.50 a day (Shah). While so many men, women, and children are dying due to lack of food and water, poor health facilities, and inadequate living conditions every day, it makes one wonder what is being done to help these people. What methods are being implemented to improve the lives of the large portion of the population that is living in poverty and how effective are these methods? Something needs to change in order to save the innocent lives living in underdeveloped countries.

The Devastation

Consider your everyday life. When you feel hungry, you can walk into your kitchen and choose from a variety of different foods. When thirsty, you can easily turn the faucet on your sink and drink a glass of water. When you feel sick, there is a doctor nearby who can treat you. People living in extreme poverty lack all of these essentials that people who are not impoverished take for granted. 

Populations living in developed countries have the opportunity to choose from an abundance of material goods and food to provide for their needs. Even if they do not have the money to afford the goods, they have a chance to make a living that could eventually afford them because of the resources available to the people. The populations of undeveloped countries do not have the numerous opportunities offered to them; they must work extremely hard to merely keep themselves alive. The standards of living in underdeveloped countries are shockingly lower than the standards in developed countries.

Hunger is one of the most devastating aspects of poverty. According to worldhunger.org, 925 million, or every one out of seven people, are going hungry each and every day. That number is so extremely shocking. By that statistic, three people in an average English class at Ohio University would be suffering from hunger. Of course, it doesn’t work like that though. The people who are suffering from hunger are all from impoverished and underdeveloped nations. The following video demonstrates the reality of hunger all over the world:

The images shown are of children who have been ravished by hunger. They have wasted away to almost nothing. While so many people in countries in Northern North America and Europe are working toward losing weight and eating food that is better for them, people in the countries shown at the beginning of the video are struggling to obtain enough food to even stay alive. And what is most upsetting about this? “The world produces enough food to feed everyone,” (worldhunger.org). This is extremely frustrating. The world has the resources to support all of its inhabitants yet so many people go without. According to worldhunger.org, there is an abundance of food in some countries and a depletion of food in other countries because in a lot of impoverished countries there is poor soil or growing conditions available to them.

           So why aren’t the people of underdeveloped countries able to produce enough food to feed their population? As the population has grown over the years, the farming techniques have stayed relatively the same. Meaning that while in the past they may have had enough food to feed everyone, because of lack of new techniques that will produce more food and the rising population, underdeveloped countries are left behind the rest of the world and become stricken with hunger. Basic changes would be beneficial to the entire population of Africa, “Africa is so far behind the rest of the world agriculturally that it would make great gains simply by applying existing technology and developing the infrastructure that is common in the rest of the world, such as farm-to-market roads, basic irrigation systems, crop-storage facilities, and commodities exchanges” (Thurow). If the people of Africa received education on new techniques and infrastructures that improve the efficiency of farming, they could make great leaps toward feeding the entire continent.

Solutions

           There are countless organizations all over the world that focus on breaking the poverty chain. For example, there is a “food for work” program described in “Hunger and World Poverty”, “…the adults are paid with food to build schools, dig wells, make roads, and so on.” This method has two main benefits: it distributes food to impoverished people and creates establishments and resources that help to improve the underdeveloped country. Receiving food as payment feeds the individual and their family in an extremely simple way. It removes the process of obtaining food. People who live far away from markets must pay for transportation to and from the market, thus wasting money that could be spent on food. The actual work that these people are doing is extremely beneficial to the community in which they live in. By building wells they are providing water for everyone. By building roads they are increasing the revenue brought into the community by giving people outside of they community the opportunity to come and purchase items from local markets. Building schools allows children to get an education and eventually have higher paying jobs. Programs like this also offer children the opportunity to receive food in exchange for attending school. This helps to feed starving children while ensuring that they are getting the education that they need.

           Another group of people that are working toward ending poverty are the faculty and the students at EARTH University. As described in the blog, “Semester at Sea Maymester: Costa Rica”, the students at this university are discovering ways in which they can grow food in the worst agricultural settings, like hot and humid places where the ground is hard and rain is rare. Creating sustainable gardens, whether in the ground, hanging, or in pots that can be moved inside and outside, and then teaching the people of underdeveloped countries how to accomplish this themselves is the goal of EARTH University. As well as feeding themselves, teaching people how to grow their own food has a variety of benefits, “Local foods help grow the local economy by providing extra income and saving money for families,” (Semester at Sea Maymester: Costa Rica). Having food ready for you in your backyard saves money in purchasing food and also reduces the reliance on transportation to visit a market, thus, saving even more money.

           There’s also another organization called the Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Programme (or ISRDP) who describes themselves as, “…a comprehensive campaign against poverty and underdevelopment in the rural areas of South Africa and involves all three spheres of government as well as the private sector and community-based organizations,” (Harmse). This group works in the poorest sections of the world to rebuild infrastructure and effectively reduce hunger and poverty through education.

Works Cited

"2011 World Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics." Worldhunger.org. Web. 24 Oct.

2011.<http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm>.

Every 5 Seconds - YouTube. Dir. Pumpuriukas. YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. 22 Nov.

2007. Web. 24 Oct. 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNK5pcoeA3o>.

Harmse, Alet. "Node selection for the Integrated Sustainable Rural Development

Programme in South Africa." Development Southern Africa 27.3 (2010): 429-445. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 27 Oct. 2011.

"Hunger and World Poverty." Poverty.com - Hunger and World Poverty. Web. 23 Oct.

2011. <http://www.poverty.com/index.html>.

"Semester at Sea Maymester: Costa Rica." Web log post. Institute For Shipboard

Education Blog. 6 June 2011. Web. 24 Oct. 2011. <http://blog.isevoyages.org/2011/06/06/ending-poverty-and-food-insecurity-proves-to-be-an-elusive-goal/>.

Shah, Anup. “Poverty Facts and Stats.” Global Issues. 20 Sep. 2010. Web. 23 Oct.

2011. <http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats>.

Thurow, Roger. "The Fertile Continent." Foreign Affairs 89.6 (2010): 102-110. Academic

Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 27 Oct. 2011.

Cassie Wolff

Professor Lutz

ENG 151

20 October 2011

Planned Parenthood Funding

History

            Planned Parenthood has been stirring since 1916 as the first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York. Indeed Planned Parenthood is a major provider for women’s health care involving breast exams, pap tests, STD testing and even cancer exams. Yet, along with those they also engage in another act known as abortion. Abortion is the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy which has two major sides against or for consisting of pro-life or pro-choice. Planned Parenthood is described as the country’s largest provider of this injustice.

Controversies, as we all have heard and seen have developed over government funding for Planned Parenthood. The issue is that Planned Parenthood has abortions available for anyone who is wanted to terminate their pregnancy. Some believe in abortion funding that people should have a choice as to whether they carry their child full term, while others which includes the point of view I strongly believe is that abortion kills a human being, and isn’t that what we have been told over and over not to do by the government? The real problem being brought up is what percentage of the governments federal funding goes to abortion if any and how much goes to other dependable services.

Pro-Life!

Saint Luke's Catholic Church

              "State legislatures and their governors are trying to predict each states' abortion policy preferences that may give them some insight into potential state actions" (Gohmann 19). Who cares what other states have to think, abortion is not right in America's morals or values. So, this is where the pro-life involvement movement begins. Being pro-life indicates that you are supportive of a child’s life in the womb, with the understanding that life has begun the moment the child is conceived. Abortion is just as much a murder as pulling out a gun or knife to end one’s life.  During the first trimester is when a baby’s heart begins to beat along with all other organ and brain developments. Pain receptors are also beginning to appear during the seventh week of pregnancy. Therefore, the baby has already started its life inside of the womb and during an abortion the baby unwillingly gets their life taken away along with feeling the procedure happen, even in the slightest way.

Women who become pregnant should carry out what they had started, whether the baby was planned or unexpected. Some pro-lifers believe every aspect of this but can argue that abortion in the cases or rape are completely acceptable. "As an estimated 5% of rapes result in pregnancy, at least 4,623 rape-related pregnancies may have occurred in 2006" ( Kacanek 1). Rape is something that sticks with you the rest of your life no matter what, and having a baby come along with the tragic event may not be the best for some individuals. 

 A baby is just as much a human being as the rest of us who should have a chance to be born and experience what we all get to experience during our lifetime. We want to prevent these abortions that happen every day which is currently around 126,000. That is nearly 46 million babies’ that do not get the chance to live outside of their caregiver’s womb a year. These brutal procedures can do a lot of scarring to the mother of the child, leaving her or even the families involved with feelings of guilt mostly triggered by moral or religious values.

Tom Lehner

Religious values come in to hand with the concern of disobeying one of the Ten Commandments, though shall not kill. Yet, aren’t the actions of getting an abortion deliberately ending a child’s life as stated above? The bible expresses multiple times in up to as much as 1200 pages that people should not kill other people. Every child is a gift from god and deserves the maximum amount of love, and just because if by chance it had a mental or physical challenge by all means does not mean that the child is worthless. 

More than one option

Fox Searchlight

      Just like almost every other decision we humans make, you are almost always handed more than one option for any situation. Approximately one-half of the 6.4 million pregnancies in 2001 in the United States were unplanned… These three million unplanned pregnancies include 1.3 million that ended in abortions; 1.4 million live births that woman reported were unplanned at time of conception. Some women who accidentally become pregnant are not fit to become mothers or do not feel as if they are ready to carry on such a dependable responsibility. In this type of situation you can get the chance to put your baby up for adoption. If adoption is an option you choose instead of abortion or raising the child yourself you are given the opportunity to research the different kinds of families available and willing to adopt the baby into their family by looking at their values and backgrounds. For 25% to 30% of infertile couples, the reason behind infertility is never found. Women or couples who cannot get pregnant themselves often depend on adoptions for a hope of having a family.

Another option besides abortion would be a support group that makes the women feel like she has a better view on how to raise her child. Counseling centers are available almost anywhere to help educate you on your unexpected pregnancy such as what you don’t know about pregnancy and even post-pregnancy. This is a resource for pregnant women that needs to be taken advantage of, 11% o.f pregnant woman are diagnosed with Post Partum Depression. This statistic may not be much but with counseling services still being offered by Planned Parenthood we could get that lowered. Getting online to just do a little research to find woman who have had the same situation as you and what they chose to do besides abortion could help you in your decision making. Women who get pregnant and are too young to be on their own, such as the 468,988 babies are born to teenage mothers each year, can involve their family or the father’s family to help out whenever needed if capable.

Keep Funding Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood is a service that is here to help people regardless their age, race, income, etc. They believe that respect and value for diversity in all aspects of their organization are essential to their well-being. Planned Parenthood’s mission is to also ensure that they respect patients’ right to privacy in anything that happens inside those doors.

Planned Parenthood as we all know is not just for abortions of unwanted pregnancies. It is a health care center that helps men and women all over the world to educate them make smart decisions for themselves and others around them. This is an excellent addition to communities’ in the United States for young people who do not want to share their sexual life or questions with their parents. Planned Parenthood has numerous ways educate young people about safe sex and the risks of having unprotected sex, such as unwanted pregnancies. At the clinic they offer all different kinds of birth controls to prevent pregnancies such as abstinence, birth control implants, patches, shots, pills, sponge, vaginal rings, condoms, and withdrawal methods. Planned Parenthood consists of testing for diseases as well as having support groups and pamphlets for anyone interested or curious about anything they have to offer.

If Planned Parenthood is completely cut by funding from the government teenage pregnancies and unwanted pregnancies will grow at an exceptional rate it is believed. This is so because some girls and boys will no longer have the availability they feel comfortable with to learn about safe sex or able to get those birth control ways and condoms if they are sexually active. Most kids are embarrassed or feel uncomfortable just going to a Drug Mart or Walgreens to practice safe sex by purchasing a condom, so getting rid of that advantage some kids use could increase the cases of abortions in which we are trying to stop in the first place.

Birth control pills

Another downfall of cutting all funding would be the exams and testing people can get at Planned Parenthood would no longer be offered. These exams make people aware of what is going on with their body and help reduce the spreading of STD’s and other viruses by giving patients the proper cure they need without telling an adult figure if that is the case for some individuals. Planned Parenthood isn’t just for sex related things either; Planned Parenthood also helps with general health care such as cholesterol for example. They have flu vaccinations, helping with the decision to quit smoking, high blood pressure problems and so much more. Believe it or not Planned Parenthood also has help and support available for the people out there with different sexual orientations.

Getting rid of Planned Parenthood completely is a mistake. Some may not realize this but birth control  pills that more than a handful of girls take on a daily basis are more than just to prevent pregnancies. Birth control pills are used for all different kinds of purposes. Woman who develop cysts on their ovaries are given the option of take birth control pills in order to prevent this kind of thing from happening again because the cysts could lead to not being able to bear children in later years. 

What the Government Should Do

Planned Parenthood has many more advantages than people see, all the focus goes to the abortion aspect but if Planned Parenthood was cut all of its funding how would teens or other individuals get there help if all they depend on is this service? It is here to help make communities a better place by educating and providing services. Without it could you imagine what it could be like? Abortions only represent 3% of total services provided by Planned Parenthood. Federal funding is given to Planned Parenthood, but none of it is used toward abortion services. 

Lori Robertson

Abortion funding needs to be cut; it is an immoral act of killing a human being that did not have the chance to live. As the whole Planned Parenthood funding goes, we would end up being ashamed of ourselves if we dropped it on its feet. So many things could go wrong by ending it completely. Planned Parenthood’s major mission is to provide women health care like testing and exams to protect their body and other people that could end up being infected.

Multimodal Essay

Whitney Daugherty

10/31/11

Professor Lutz

Multimodal Essay

The author of this picture is David Stern and 

was found at writeorflight.wordpress.com

The NBA lockout is a hot topic and has many players and fans upset and very aggravated. Some people go out to say that the lockout is fully on the players. They say that because the players earn 57% of NBA revenue. Therefore concluding that the players are being too stingy and expect to get paid $70 million a year which is pretty ridiculous. A huge reason they want to reduce the players’ share of revenue and place a cap on how much each team can pay players is because last season they lost $300 million per year over the last several years. NBA players receive 57% and they are only willing to go down 2.7% to 54.3%, which isn’t enough. Now this is the controversy and that’s why there is a lockout because they can’t find a happy medium. They say that two of the main players that aren’t helping the cause is LeBron James and Kobe Bryant, which as most of us know these are two of the top players in the NBA. The owners and players have to come together and meet a collective bargaining plan so the NBA will not go further into debt. Below is a video of commissioner David Stern speaking about the NBA lockout. 

                              This video is from David Sterns perspective on the
                               lockout, this video is from fox sports. 

Rookies vs. Lockout

            A huge controversy is between the rookies and how they’re being affected by the lockout. These rookies are the ones who are going to be hit the hardest and the fastest. Because they are coming in and they haven’t had any income or an egg to sit on while waiting to see what’s going to happen with the lockout. The highest sort of income that they will be receiving is loans set up by their agents. As one prominent agent tells SN, "It's a lot riskier than a lot of the players think. There are guys who you will want to get a spot on a team there because they're young and they need the money and they need to play and gain experience. But not the top guys" (Agent 55). They are talking about all the anxiety built up in the younger players and the other top players going overseas to play while all the rookies are hanging around to try to catch up and shoot while working out and staying in great shape. Also at the same time the rookies are kind of in shock thinking how this could happen to be me. As rookie player Derrick Williams says "It's not the way you would have envisioned coming into the league when you start playing it all through in your mind" (Willams 55). This backs my opinion up, the players are surprised and kind of in distraught that they have to wait to get there NBA nation started. This leads to why some top players are going overseas to play so they can at least be playing real games rather than practice and lifting. Rookies vs. the lockout aren’t the only controversies there are many more that lead to one another.

Players vs. Owners

            Basically the lockout is a controversy between the owners and players. The owners believe they’ll win the battle, and of course the players believe they’ll win. They need to eventually meet a new collective bargaining agreement because they can’t afford to pay the players $5.8 million a year to play basketball. The owners want a 10-year pact that will eventually cut the players pay to $4.2 million a year from $5.8 million a year, which sounds more reasonable. They will be moving the revenue from 57% to 48%. This is crazy, it means the players will get a $700 million pay cut. This sounds like bogus but if you go down and look at each step it isn’t. They can either get further in debt as a NBA nation or meet an agreement, and they’re still getting lots of money coming in. They say that the owners will eventually get what they want. One, because they can’t afford it and they’re having to sell it for depressing prices. And two, because almost half the players ask for advances on their pay checks, for bogus reasons. The top reason is because their having to pay child support on a child to which they aren’t married to the mother. Also NBA commissioner David Stern has the owners back. In my opinion the players are looking like they should buck up and take $4.2 million or they need to move on.

Star Player Dwayne Wade’s Point of View

            The players are having a hard time coping with the lockout, and some have hard feelings toward the owners. An example is when star player Dwayne Wade said “we haven't done a great job of complaining. That's what the NBA has done; they've done a great job of complaining. We haven't done a great job of that so no one sees our side” (Wade 1). This is a lot of emotion wrapped up because they aren’t getting their way and their true feelings are coming out. He’s making fun of how the NBA (owners) are complaining to get their way basically. Wade also chipped in that the NBA owners are hurting the fans because he feels like they’re letting them down. He said he and the other players are sick because of this lockout and they can’t believe the actions of the owners. But on the other side Wade said he was going to work his butt off to get better just to show the fans that do still support the NBA proud. Therefore he hasn’t gave up, and he hopes the fans realize this. It is kind of ridiculous this has to happen but at the same time the players need to understand that they are getting paid a lot of money and they need to not be so selfish when the NBA is going down hill. They should lower their pay a couple percent to help the NBA nation out.

NBA lockout vs. Economy

            While the lockout is going on and there are no crowds in the big cities, their losing profit as well and it’s affecting their business in a negative way. For example in Cleveland the restaurant Harry Buffalo counts solely on the NBA crowd, and they might have to find another path to go and some people may lose their jobs because they can’t afford losing the sales from the NBA lockout. This is where it really hits home because the managers have to think about their workers as well. Some may have families and depend on the money for that. It’s a touchy subject and if they don’t figure out what their going to do it may be ugly for a few families. Also in Charlotte they earn lots of money that help them make a living and this is going to kill their sales. Brixx Pizza across the street makes a living off their sales from the NBA games and they have to trim their workers because they can’t afford it. They make an extra $1,000 on game night compared to no game. Not only is it hurting these large cities it’s hurting the ticket sales as well. For each home game they bring in about $83 million in sales on tickets.

NBA lockout vs. Fans

            Fans are a huge role in the NBA nation, and their getting hurt pretty bad during this lockout. But the fans’ being hurt is affecting the NBA as a whole. Seeing this happen and the NBA being so stingy will make the fans not want to come out and support the players and owners. They won’t want to pour money into the organization. Because in the NBA “fans aren’t just customers their investors” (SB Nation). They say this because $1.75 of the $2 billion spent on renovating the arenas is public money. This is when the fans have a one up on the lockout. The fans can control the income of the NBA because they just don’t attend the games the NBA will be playing in the rinky dink arenas, like college arenas because they won’t be able to afford any nicer ones. Their afraid that that casual fan that shows up after football season will show up but the loyal ones might say heck with it because the NBA isn’t showing regard to them. This is definitely true by the NBA not being able to meet in the middle is hurting them worse. The fans will feel like they don’t care about them and it causes hate and they won’t come support them.

The author of this picture is David Astramsks
and was found at ballislife.com

NBA lockout vs. Players

Many players are fed up with the lockout and want to move to overseas and there are rumors about the NFL. Lebron James was known to be an all-state football player in high school, and his favorite video game is Madden (a NFL game). People may be assuming things but at the same time Lebron has also been contacting head people in the NFL. There has been a rumor that he was going to play for the Eagles. This also goes back on fans; thousands of people come to watch Lebron if he was to move you would have some angry people. Also many players are going overseas to play. Deron Williams, Dominique Watkins, Stephon Marbury and also Dirk Nowitzki which was named NBA’s MVP last season. Many people find this shocking but the players are fed up with not being on the court and will take the easy way and take less money. These top notch players leaving will hurt the NBA’s income. NBA players are also leaving to make a point to the owners. They’re kind of being even more selfish about the situation. On the other hand more it’s sparking a fire and making players like Wade and Bosh to want to work ten times harder.

In the end of all the controversy the owners have the top of the argument. The players need to realize that they are so lucky to be getting paid as much as they are. The NBA is struggling to pay them, so they should be willing to cut back on their pay. If the players really want to be out there they would do this, and make it easier on everyone else. They also need to realize the owners are in control and they will stay locked out until they meet a collective bargain plan. The owners have that power to do so.

BREE'S RD

http://bree-motley.blogspot.com/2011/10/american-justice-system-killed-innocent.html