June 2007 LSAT Question Explanations June 2007 - Sec 2 - LR...

June 2007 - Sec 2 - LR - Q22

Video Transcript:

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Questions 22, Editorialist: News media rarely cover local politics thoroughly, and local
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political business is usually conducted secretively.
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These factors each tend to isolate local politicians from their electorates.
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This has the affect of reducing the chance that any particular act of resident participation
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will elicit a positive official response, which in turn, discourages resident participation
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in local politics.
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First-step argument or facts?
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Clearly, we have a set of facts here.
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If you notice, the passage is structured as follows: first we have these two factors,
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the news media's poor coverage, and second, the fact that local political business is
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conducted secretively.
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These two factors lead to isolating local politicians from their electorates.
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This has the effect of reducing the chance that any particular act of resident participation
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will elicit a positive official response, which in turn discourages resident participation
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in local politics.
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All right, so now that we have that clear, we move to the question stem: Which of the
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following most strongly supported by the editorialist's statements?
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Most strongly supported, we're looking for what must be true, based on the information
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that we just encountered in the passage.
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Looking at answer choice (A), Particular acts of resident participation would be likely
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to elicit a positive response from local politicians if those politicians were less isolated from
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their electorate.
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Does that have to be true?
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You notice, it does not.
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It doesn't tell us that it would be likely to elicit a positive response if they were
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less isolated.
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All we know is that because politicians are isolated, this reduces the change that participation
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will elicit a positive response, and this discourages resident participation.
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Nothing about whether it would be likely to elicit a positive response if they were less
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isolated, so (A) is not supported and (A) would be eliminated.
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(B), Local political business should be conducted less secretively, because this would avoid
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discouraging resident participation in local politics.
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Again, this does not follow.
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We know that there's two factors, local political business being secretive, but also the news
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media that tends to isolate politicians, which in turn, lowers the chance that a particular
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act of resident participation will elicit a positive response, and this results in discouraging
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resident participation.
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But just having local political business conducted less secretively would not avoid discouraging
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resident participation in local politics, because we still have this problem of the
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news media's poor coverage, so (B) does not follow, and (B) would be eliminated.
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(C), The most important factor influencing a resident's decision as to whether to participate
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in local politics is the chance that the participation will elicit a positive official response.
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Well, we know it's clearly a factor, because when it reduces the chance that it will have
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a positive response, this discourages their participation, but for us to say it's the
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most important factor, that is not supported by the information in the passage, so (C)
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would be eliminated.
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Moving to (D), More frequent, thorough coverage of local politics would reduce at least one
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source of discouragement from resident participation in local politics.
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You notice that must be true.
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If we had better coverage of the news media?up here at the top, one of our two factors ultimately
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leading to the discouragement of resident participation?well then it would be true
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that it would reduce at least one source of discouragement.
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(D) must be true and (D) would be the correct answer.
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Again, at least one source.
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You notice that was the problem with (B).
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(B) ignored that we had two factors.
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Then just making sure, (E), If resident participation in local politics were not discouraged, this
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would cause local politicians to be less isolated from their electorate.
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You notice, (E), just like (A), same type of problem.
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We have no information that says that.
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Just because we had resident participation not be discouraged, this does not mean that
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local politicians will be less isolated from their electorate.
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The problem that's causing politicians to be isolated is the poor news media coverage
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and local political business being secretive, not this idea of local politics being discouraged.
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That's another effect from these two factors, so (E) is out.