Blog #4: Texas Blog Commentary

The blog Does Perry Get Any Credit? by Charles Kuffner was posted on Off the Kuff on July 18th, 2011 and you can access it here. The post essentially critiques the Statesman's point about evaluating Perry's involvement in having Texas be recognized as one of the only states to be in relatively good economic standing. He uses the issue from Statesman to suggest that although Perry may be a relatively good governor- he is not responsible for the betterment of the economy.

The intended audience of the post is obviously for liberals as he attempts to criticize the Republican politician. Kuffner sarcastically ends his post by saying "You want to give Perry credit for that, fine, but then he also deserves the “credit” for all of the austerity-induced job losses and all future educational setbacks resulting from cuts to public schools." Therefore, he is basically suggesting that Perry should not be credited for something like higher percentage of job growth than other states as "it will continue undoubtedly when he leaves."

The format of copy and pasting an entire article from the statesman is in my opinion a poor structure to an argument. Someone essentially made this argument for Kuffner- he just copied and pasted it and agreed with it, whats so special about that? Although the Statesman does make valid argumentative points by displaying both sides to Texan economy and job growth, Kuffner is not responsible for any of that work. Therefore in a sense, although the Statesman is a credible source, it makes me doubt Kuffner's credibility and argumentative edge. You can use the Statesman, but at least reiterate what they said with your own research and specific ideas rather than just copy and pasting half of the article as your form of evidence.

Therefore, although perhaps I agree with what Kuffner was trying to get across (Texas did not solely improve in jobs but also lost some and with no direct thanks to Perry), his manner of simply copy and pasting the statesman article as his argument was weak. Anybody can do that. I think his argument is logical based on the facts given by the Statesman- but I think Kuffner's ability to argument cohesively was absent.