Even though most of the evidence out there regarding lobbying and the health care debate centers around the influence of big corporations, it turns out there is a tremendous amount of money being spent on the other side as well. From a recent NY Times article written by Katharine Seelye…

“Those who favored an overhaul spent more on advertising than those who opposed it — $99.5 million compared with $85 million, Mr. Tracey said. (The rest was spent on peripheral issues in the health care debate without advocating for or against the overall effort.)”

Full Article

If you haven’t noticed, I enjoy finding the cheesiest pictures possible for my posts.

Resolved: Affirmative action to promote equal opportunity in the United States is justified.

Description of Affirmative Action
Origins of Affirmative Action

This is a pretty interesting choice considering affirmative actions hasn’t exactly been a hot topic in the news. Then again, neither are a lot of NFL Public Forum debate topics.

I imagine the idea surrounding the topic was to indirectly bring up the ‘race’ debate about whether or not we are a post-racial country since the election of Obama.

The film mentioned in the last post, Thank You For Smoking is a great way to understand lobbying as well as how to argue both sides of an issue effectively.  In this case, Nick Naylor played by Aaron Eckhardt is a lobbyist forced to defend the tobacco industry.  This clip shows you how to think critically when you may be defending something that appears indefensible.