Bubble DA
1NC
Online gambling destroys the economy
Dennis 9, Jan, Business and Law Editor at Illinois News Bureau, “Online gambling a threat to global economy, U. of I. expert
says,” December 3rd, http://news.illinois.edu/news/09/1203gambling.html
Legalized online gambling would fuel an epic surge of betting in the U.S., leaving
lives in tatters and the world’s economy in jeopardy, a University of Illinois professor and national
gambling critic warns. John W. Kindt says U.S. Rep. Barney Frank’s renewed push to overturn the decades-old ban on
online gambling would put the nation at risk of an economic collapse rivaling the
2007 sub-prime mortgage crisis that sparked a deep and lingering global recession.
“Barney Frank has been railing against the lack of regulation on Wall Street and now he’s trying to create an even more dangerous
threat by throwing the prohibition against Internet gambling into the toilet,” said Kindt, a professor of business and legal policy
who has studied gambling for more than two decades. Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the House
Financial Services Committee, resumed hearings Thursday on legislation he sponsored that would lift the longtime ban on Internet
gambling, allowing the Treasury Department to license and regulate online gaming companies that service American customers.
Legalizing online gambling and the firms that run it would create a potentially disastrous speculative
bubble in U.S. financial markets similar to the sub-prime mortgage crisis, spawning fast-growing
companies with exaggerated earnings expectations that far outstrip real value, Kindt said. “I actually
think a speculative bubble on Internet gambling would be worse because it’s based on nothing,”
Kindt said. “With the sub-prime crisis, there was at least some real property involved. With online
gambling, there’s nothing but people dumping money into their computers.” Global markets have already seen
the consequences, Kindt said. The London Stock Exchange, which permits trading of online gaming company shares, saw its value
plunge by $40 billion in one day after the U.S. strengthened its ban on Internet gambling in 2006. Online
gambling also
would “throw gasoline” on a recession that has already cut deeply into Americans’ savings
and put more than 7 million people out of work, Kindt said. “Money that should be spent on cars, refrigerators and other goods that
build the economy and create jobs would instead be wasted on Internet gambling in every living room, at every work desk and at
every school desk,” he said. Kindt says Frank’s bill flies in the face of research that supports maintaining a ban that traces to the 1961
Federal Wire Act, pushed through by then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to curb the flow of money for organized crime. “In
today’s world, that money-laundering threat also applies to terrorist organizations,” said Kindt, a contributing editor and author of
the United States International Gambling Report Series, a 3,000-page collection released this year that includes hundreds of pages
on the perils of online betting. He says online
gambling also would yield steep social costs, including gambling
addiction, bankruptcies and crime. The threat of addiction is especially high among younger people, who studies show
are already twice as prone to gambling problems as older Americans, Kindt said. Studies estimate that about 4 percent of young
people are addicted to gambling and 8 to 12 percent are problem gamblers. “It’s
getting worse and worse as gambling
spreads and would soar if online gambling is legalized,” he said. “Internet gambling is known as the
crack cocaine of creating new, addicted gamblers because it’s so accessible.” Kindt says bankruptcy
and crime rates also would balloon as people deplete family finances or raid their employers’
accounts to cover online gambling debts.
Decline goes nuclear- stats
Royal ‘10 (Director of CTR Jedediah, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction – U.S.
Department of Defense, “Economic Integration, Economic Signaling and the Problem of
Economic Crises”, Economics of War and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political Perspectives, Ed.
Goldsmith and Brauer, p. 213-215)
Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may increase the likelihood of external conflict. Political science literature has
contributed a moderate degree of attention to the impact of economic decline and the security and defence behaviour of
interdependent states. Research in this vein has been considered at systemic, dyadic and national levels. Several notable
contributions follow. First, on the systemic level, Pollins (2008) advances Modelski and Thompson's (1996) work on leadership cycle
theory, finding that rhythms
in the global economy are associated with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent
power and the often bloody transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next. As such, exogenous shocks such as
economic crises could usher in a redistribution of relative power (see also Gilpin. 1981) that leads to uncertainty
about power balances, increasing the risk of miscalculation (Feaver, 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain
redistribution of power could lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a rising power may seek to challenge a
declining power (Werner. 1999). Separately, Pollins (1996) also shows that global economic cycles combined with parallel
leadership cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and small powers, although he suggests that the causes and
connections between global economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown. Second, on a dyadic level, Copeland's
(1996, 2000) theory of trade expectations suggests that 'future expectation of trade' is a significant variable in understanding
economic conditions and security behaviour of states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific benefits from
trade so long as they have an optimistic view of future trade relations. However, if the expectations of future trade decline,
particularly for difficult to replace items such as energy resources, the likelihood for conflict increases, as states will be inclined to
use force to gain access to those resources. Crises could potentially be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on its own
or because it triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states.4 Third, others have considered the link between economic
decline and external armed conflict at a national level. Blomberg and Hess (2002) find
a strong correlation
between internal conflict and external conflict, particularly during periods of economic downturn. They
write: The linkages between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing. Economic conflict
tends to spawn internal conflict, which in turn returns the favour. Moreover, the presence of a recession tends to amplify the extent
to which international and external conflicts self-reinforce each other. (Blomberg & Hess, 2002. p. 89) Economic decline has also
been linked with an increase in the likelihood of terrorism (Blomberg, Hess, & Weerapana, 2004), which has the capacity to spill
across borders and lead to external tensions. Furthermore, crises generally reduce the popularity of a sitting government.
"Diversionary theory" suggests that, when facing unpopularity arising from economic decline, sitting governments have
increased incentives to fabricate external military conflicts to create a 'rally around the flag' effect.
Wang (1996), DeRouen (1995). and Blomberg, Hess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing that economic
decline and use of force are at least indirectly correlated. Gelpi (1997), Miller (1999), and Kisangani and Pickering
(2009) suggest that the tendency towards diversionary tactics are greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact
that democratic leaders are generally more susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic support. DeRouen
(2000) has provided evidence showing that periods of weak economic performance in the United States, and thus weak Presidential
popularity, are statistically linked to an increase in the use of force. In summary, recent economic scholarship positively correlates
economic integration with an increase in the frequency of economic crises, whereas political science scholarship links economic
decline with external conflict at systemic, dyadic and national levels.5 This implied connection between integration, crises and
armed conflict has not featured prominently in the economic-security debate and deserves more attention.
2NC
Banking regs are a drop in the bucket
Valladares ’14 (faculty member at Financial Markets World-3/5/14,
http://www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/lawmakers-global-competitiveness-argument-isa-red-herring-1066028-1.html)
The World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, which analyzes twelve pillars
contributing to a country’s competitiveness, unfortunately shows that the U.S. has been
declining every year in competitiveness since the global financial crisis. If the House of
Representatives is really worried about the U.S.’s international competitiveness, it should analyze
where we stand in eliminating "too big to fail" banks, the declining quality of our elementary and
secondary education, affordable access to healthcare, the number of incarcerated people,
improving our infrastructure and widening income inequality. Working on resolving these issues
would be a better use of our legislators’ time and would go a long way to enhancing our
international competitiveness.
Banks are strong
AP 14, http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/07/05/5-reasons-why-us-economy-is-recovering/, 5
reasons why US economy is recovering’, july 5th, 2014
STRONGER BANKS The
United States moved faster than Europe to restore its banks'
health after the financial crisis of 2008-2009. The U.S. government bailed out the financial
system and subjected big banks to stress tests in 2009 to reveal their financial strength. By
showing the banks to be surprisingly healthy, the stress tests helped restore confidence in
the U.S. financial system. Banks gradually started lending again. European banks are only now undergoing stress
tests, and the results won't be out until fall. In the meantime, Europe's banks lack confidence. They fear that other banks are holding
too many bad loans and that Europe is vulnerable to another crisis. So they aren't lending much. In the United States, overall
bank lending is up nearly 4 percent in the past year. Lending to business has jumped 10
percent. In the eurozone, lending has dropped 3.7 percent overall, according to figures from
the Institute of International Finance. Lending to business is off 2.5 percent. (The U.S. figures are for the year ending in mid-June;
the European figures are from May.)
Dodd Frank thumps
Committee on Financial Services ‘14 Dodd-Frank Harming Global Competitiveness of U.S.
Financial Institutions and Markets,
http://financialservices.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=371905, march
5th
The cumulative weight of financial regulation – much of it stemming from the 2,300-page
Dodd-Frank Act – will harm the global competitiveness of U.S. financial institutions and financial
markets, witnesses told the House Financial Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee at a hearing today. “We live in an
extremely competitive and dynamic global marketplace, and the United States faces a period of rising regulation. In the course of
implementing the Dodd-Frank
and Basel III rules, U.S. regulators have imposed and continue to impose
regulations that will undoubtedly constrain banking and financial services,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry (RNC), the subcommittee’s chairman. Despite its breadth and far-reaching consequences, Dodd-Frank fails to address the misguided
government policies that lead to the 2008 financial crisis or even hold accountable the Washington regulators who failed to
recognize and mitigate the risks in the run-up to the crisis. In a classic case of “failing upward,” Dodd-Frank rewards Washington
regulators, who so spectacularly failed to do their jobs, with even more power. “Because
U.S. financial institutions are
in the process of building the compliance structures necessary to comply with hundreds of new
rules, the aggregate cost of all these rules cannot be quantified. Because regulators have failed to undertake
cost-benefit analyses for these new rules, estimating their cost is difficult. Nonetheless, these regulatory burdens will impose costs in
the form of anemic economic growth and weak job creation,” McHenry added.
CP
1NC
Text: The state of Nevada should amend AB114 to authorize its citizens to engage in
online gambling anywhere in the United States. Nevada should file suit against
any state that prohibits Nevadans from engaging in online gambling or citizens
from other states engaging with businesses in Nevada on the grounds that it
violates the Dormant Commerce Clause and Commerce Clause.
This results in nation-wide Online gambling legalization – yet doesn’t link to
elections as courts don’t move that fast – recent court decisions mean that state
restrictions will be struck down
Walters 14 (Lawrence, WALTERS LAW GROUP, LLC, “Will the Commerce Clause Save Online
Gambling?”, http://www.firstamendment.com/site-articles/commerce-clause/)
In the context of online gambling, most discussion and analysis focuses on United States federal law. However, most commentators
have ignored the myriad of potentially applicable state laws. Thus far, at least seven
states have passed some form of
statutory prohibition of online gambling. [1] Given the deep prohibitionist streak that runs through the American
legal landscape, future state-level prohibitions are likely. For example, New Jersey is currently considering the adoption of
online gambling restrictions, [2] and more are sure to follow. Given the global nature of the Internet, an online gambling operator in
a jurisdiction where such activities are fully legal should not consider his geographic disconnection from a prohibitionist jurisdiction
to be of great protective value. For example, an online gaming operator in jurisdiction “A” may be legal and licensed in that
jurisdiction, yet still could be subjected to the jurisdiction of the courts in state “B,” where the operators activities are prohibited.
Some state attorneys general have begun asking questions about the legality of Internet gambling services, directed at their citizens
from offshore casinos, and others have raised the issue of gambling age restrictions unique to the particular state involved. [3] Any
attorney general with a lust for headlines, or perhaps in an effort to energize a sagging political campaign, could easily decide to
mount a prosecution under state law against a given Internet gambling site with customers residing in, or promotional efforts
directed to, their particular state. [4] While issues such as international treaties, extraterritorial statutory application, and comity [5]
may pose difficult (if not insurmountable) barriers to the application of state law to a licensed offshore gambling enterprise with no
other presence in the United States, another barrier may be lurking in the United States Constitution. The individual states may lack
the constitutional authority to regulate the offering of online gambling services to their residents under the somewhat esoteric
principal known as the “dormant” Commerce Clause.[6] Under the dormant Commerce Clause, in order to preserve some degree of
uniformity and consistency in such commercial transactions, the individual states may not inconsistently regulate commercial
activities that are national (or international), in nature. [7] The policy underlying this constitutional restriction is well-considered:
Merchants should not be expected to discern and attempt to comply with a hodgepodge of inconsistent, varying state-level
restrictions on the same commercial activity. [8] Instead, interstate commerce must be governed by uniform federal regulation.
Examples of commercial activity that must be subject to uniform national regulation include navigation, transportation, and the
purchase or sale of commodities. [9] Accordingly, any state statute that imposes discriminatory restrictions on interstate commerce
is per seinvalid. In addition, state laws that impose multiple, inconsistent burdens on interstate commerce may also be invalid. [10]
While states are free to regulate commercial transactions occurring within their own borders, they are not as free to export their
domestic policy into other states if such effort results in an undue burden on interstate commerce. [11] Federal
courts
consistently apply this well-settled principle of constitutional law to strike down attempted state regulation of
online services and commerce; particularly in the arena of commercial adult Websites. [12] The courts uniformly rule
that online services are, by their very nature, “interstate commerce” requiring a cohesive national scheme of
regulation, and are therefore subject to dormant Commerce Clause analysis. [13] In all cases where the issue was raised, the courts
accepted the argument that state restrictions on the commercial display of adult-oriented Websites unduly burden interstate
commerce and are thus unconstitutional. [14] Under this reasoning, a
state attorney general who attempted to
enforce a state statute restricting or prohibiting online gambling may be constitutionally
prohibited from doing so given the discriminatory treatment towards, or undue burden on, interstate
commerce that such prohibition would impose. There can be no legitimate dispute that online gambling meets the
definition of “interstate commerce.” International commerce is subject to Commerce Clause
restrictions just like interstate commerce. [15] Imposing a ban on Internet gambling would certainly discriminate against and
burden those commercial gaming transactions. The Commerce Clause argument becomes even stronger if
another state in the country decided to legalize some form of online gambling activity. Such
legalization by a single state could open the floodgates for legalization of online
gambling throughout the country under the recent United States Supreme Court decision in
Granholm v. Herald, et. al. [16]In that case, the High Court held that individual states cannot discriminate against out-ofstate wineries by prohibiting Internet sale of wine from outside the state, while allowing in-state wineries to sell their products so
long as they did not ship them across state borders. A narrowly-divided Court determined that if a state allows in-state wineries to
ship directly to residents, the Commerce Clause requires out-of-state vintners to be treated equally. [17] The
full impact of
this decision is not yet known – particularly its applicability to international transactions – but following the
Court’s reasoning, one state would not likely be permitted to prohibit the provision of online
gambling activities to its citizens by out-of-state (or potentially offshore) entities, if some form of
online gambling was permitted within the state. As is evident, the dormant Commerce Clause has
the potential for opening a “Pandora’s Box” of legal difficulties for regulators, and a “Genie’s
Bottle” full of creative arguments for online gambling attorneys. As individual states start enforcing online
gambling restrictions against players and gambling enterprises, Commerce Clause issues are certain to be raised as a defense. Legal
experts and the courts will likely debate these issues for years to come, but one thing is certain: The dormant Commerce Clause
creates significant uncertainty regarding the ability of state governments to constitutionally regulate Internet gambling activities.
Nevada has the most advanced regulatory system, the political will to lead and
would simply need to amend the current bill as an emergency measure
CBS News 13 (February 22, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/nevada-legalizes-onlinegambling/, “Nevada Legalizes Online Gambling”)
Gov. Brian Sandoval
signed legislation Thursday legalizing online gambling in Nevada, capping a dizzying
day at the Legislature as lawmakers passed the bill through the Assembly and Senate as an emergency measure. Nevada
wanted to beat New Jersey, its East Coast casino rival, to the online gambling punch. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie previously
vetoed an online wagering bill but has indicated he may sign an amended version next week. The measure makes
Nevada the first state in the country to approve interstate online gaming, notes CBS Las Vegas affiliate KLAS-TV, adding that it was
put on the fast track Thursday. Senate and Assembly judiciary committees approved it, sending it to the Assembly where it passed
unanimously. The Senate passed it at midday and sent it to the governor's desk for signature. Sandoval
and Nevada
legislative leaders said it was important for Nevada to remain at the forefront of gambling
regulation. "This is an historic day for the great state of Nevada," Sandoval said, flanked by dozens of state lawmakers. "Today I
sign into law the framework that will usher in the next frontier of gaming in Nevada." Sandoval, a former chairman of the Nevada
Gaming Commission added, "This bill is critical to our state's economy and ensures that we
will continue to be the gold
standard for gaming regulation." He praised legislators for their swift action and commended Assembly Majority Leader
William Horne, a Democrat from Las Vegas, for shepherding the bill. Horne, in turn, had equal accolades for the Republican
governor. "This was a lot of work and it couldn't have been done without the governor's leadership and vision," he said. Horne
couldn't resist at jab at Nevada's gambling rivals. "As to our competitor, New Jersey, they should be accustomed to following
Nevada," he said. AG Burnett, chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, said the state already has about 20 applications from
various operators, equipment and software vendors to be licensed for online gambling. AB114
authorizes Nevada to
enter into compacts with other states to offer Internet poker. It sailed through both the Assembly and Senate
on Thursday after a joint hearing before the two judiciary committees. Gambling regulators will now come up with
regulations dictating compact parameters. Lawmakers in 2011 passed a bill that put Nevada in position to legalize
Internet gambling if the federal government sanctioned it. But when those efforts failed in Congress, Sandoval said Nevada would
work toward agreements with other states. Several other states began looking into online gambling after the Department of Justice
issued a letter in 2011 stating that the federal Wire Act of 1961, often used to crack down on gambling over the Internet, only applies
to sports betting. Partnering with other states gives Nevada an expanded customer market and provides other states with Nevada's
expertise in gambling regulation. Pete Ernaut, a lobbyist representing the Nevada Resort Association, said expanding the customer
base was key. "It's imperative for the success of this that we compact with other states because we don't have a universe of players,"
Ernaut said. The benefit for other states, he said, is Nevada's "most mature regulatory infrastructure." "We have the most mature
financial, auditing and collection capabilities, much greater than some of those states, and they have the players," he said. The bill
approved Thursday resolved a disagreement between Horne and the governor's office over licensing fees. Sandoval had pushed for
companies that want to offer online gambling to pay a $500,000 fee, while Horne, in the original bill draft, proposed $1 million.
Under a compromise, the fee was set at $500,000, though it gives the Nevada Gaming Commission authority to change the amount.
A renewal fee was set at $250,000.
A2: Perm do the CP
The United States is the United States Federal Government
Washington State Legislature (http://apps.leg.wa.gov/wac/default.aspx?cite=458-20-190)
WAC 458-20-190 Agency filings affecting this section Sales to and by the United States—Doing business on federal reservations—
Sales to foreign governments. (1) Introduction. Federal law prohibits Washington from directly imposing taxes upon the United
States. Persons doing business with the United States are nonetheless subject to the taxes imposed by the state of Washington,
unless specifically exempt. This rule explains the tax reporting responsibilities of persons making sales to the United States and to
foreign governments. The rule also explains the tax reporting responsibilities of persons engaging in business activities within
federal reservations and cleaning up radioactive waste and other by-products of weapons production for the United States. Persons
engaged in construction, installation, or improvement to real property of or for the United States should also refer to WAC 458-2017001 (Government contracting, etc.). Persons building, repairing, or improving streets, roads, and other transportation facilities,
which are owned by the United States should also refer to WAC 458-20-171 (Building, repairing or improving streets, roads, etc.).
Persons selling cigarettes to the United States or any other federal entity should also refer to WAC 458-20-186 (Tax on cigarettes).
(2) "United States" defined. (a) For
the purposes of this rule, the term "United States" means
the federal government, including the executive, legislative, and judicial branches,
its departments, and federal entities exempt from state or local taxation by reason
of specific federal statutory exemption.
Midterms
1NC
GOP is winning now but it’s close
Raju 10/24 -- Manu Raju is a senior congressional reporter at POLITICO. Prior to joining POLITICO, Raju covered the Senate leadership for
The Hill newspaper, and before that, he reported for Congressional Quarterly, writing about energy and environmental issues for its weekly magazine
and daily issue. Obama moves key Senate races toward GOP “http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/obama-senate-races-republicans-112155.html”
Their bitter 55-minute debate had just ended. Greg Orman walked across the stage, looked Republican Sen. Pat Roberts in the eye, shook his hand and
smiled. “You said, ‘Harry Reid’ 38 freaking times,” Orman, running as an independent, told Roberts, according to a person with direct knowledge of the
exchange. It probably didn’t come as much of a surprise. Since falling back in the polls last month, Roberts has taken every chance to portray Orman as
a foot soldier for President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. A similar dynamic is underway in South Dakota: After former Gov.
Mike Rounds found himself in a surprisingly tight three-way race earlier this month, Republicans have spent the past 10 days tying his two opponents
to national Democrats. (POLITICO's 2014 race ratings) The GOP efforts appear to be working in both races, which have moved back in the party’s
direction in recent days after a flurry of speculation that they might be prime pickup opportunities for Democrats. While Orman could still win in
Kansas and South Dakota is still unpredictable, the shifting
dynamics underscore how Obama’s deep unpopularity
remains the biggest advantage for Senate Republicans — not just in conservative battlegrounds
but in swing states as well. Even though Republicans lack an agenda this year or a defining issue
to bring voters to the polls, 2014 is at risk of becoming all about Obama — and that could be
devastating for Senate Democrats. “I think Obama being so unpopular is the biggest factor in this election,” said Tom Jensen, a
Democratic pollster with the firm Public Policy Polling. “And I think at the end of the day, it may be too much for a lot of the Democratic Senate
candidates to overcome.” Despite his own unpopularity in Kansas, polls show Roberts back in a dead heat with Orman, after trailing the independent in
some surveys earlier this month. The senator and his GOP allies have blanketed the airwaves with nearly $3 million in the past two weeks alone,
roughly $1 million more than the amount the independent and his allies have shelled out in that time frame. (Full 2014 election results) Meanwhile, a
Republican poll on Thursday found Rounds up double digits against Democrat Rick Weiland and independent Larry Pressler, and several top
Democrats privately agreed that the race still appears to be a long shot. The shift came after a $1.3 million GOP ad campaign over the past 10 days.
Democrats’ concern about the Obama effect isn’t confined to those two states. Each day seems to offer fresh polling bound to make Democrats nervous,
showing that their candidates need to win a significant amount of support from voters who now disapprove of the president. A CNN-ORC poll out
Thursday found Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire up 2 percent against her GOP challenger, Scott Brown, with just 39 percent of voters
approving of the president in a state he carried twice. In Colorado, another must-win for Democrats, Sen. Mark Udall has trailed in a series of recent
polls, including a USA Today-Suffolk University survey this week that showed him down 7 points against GOP Rep. Cory Gardner, with Obama’s
disapproval rating at 57 percent. And in Iowa, a Quinnipiac poll released Thursday showed state GOP Sen. Joni Ernst maintaining a small lead over
Rep. Bruce Braley, up 2 points in a state where a clear majority voters continue to hold an unfavorable view of the president. Though Ernst’s lead was
within the margin of error, that has been the case in a series of recent polls. (See more from POLITICO's Polling Center) Still, even as the map looks
ripe for a GOP Senate takeover, at least 11 battleground states remain within or right at the margin of error, according to an average of public polling.
That means if
Democrats succeed in driving up turnout as they’ve vowed to do all year — particularly
in states like Colorado, Iowa and North Carolina — they could tilt the electorate by one or two points in
their direction and win enough races to hold the Senate. What could also shift the electorate one way or the other is the huge influx of spending in the
final weeks. Since August, there have been 108 new super PACs formed, according to the Federal Election Commission. The six national party
committees on both sides have spent 88 percent of the $820 million they have raised so far, out of the $4 billion that the Center for Responsive Politics
predicts will be spent overall by all groups and candidates this election cycle. Democrats eager to drive up turnout have issues aimed at intensifying
their base. Minimum wage increases are on the ballot in three key states — Alaska, Arkansas and South Dakota. Gay marriage in Colorado is once again
in the news after the Justice Department announced last week that federal benefits for same-sex couples would be extended in the state. Also in
Colorado, a “personhood” anti-abortion amendment is on the ballot, prompting a nearly $4 million campaign by abortion rights groups to advertise
and turn out the kind of voters who would likely support Udall. And libertarian and third-party candidates are on the ballot in virtually every
battleground state, something conservative groups seem to be taking seriously since they could siphon votes from the right. An online ad from the
Koch-linked American Future Fund is clearly aimed at doing the opposite — hurting Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) from the left — in an online ad showing
several college-aged students promoting Libertarian Sean Haugh in North Carolina, with the message of “more weed, less war.” “Get Haugh, get high,”
one woman says, holding a green tie-dye sign with a marijuana plant. With early voting underway, 2014 still can go either way, turning into a GOP
wave, a narrow Republican victory or Democrats clinging to their majority — even if the GOP is heavily favored thanks in large part to Obama’s sagging
approval ratings. “If
the election was today, Republicans would take it,” Jensen said. “But it’s also a
situation where it wouldn’t take a huge shift to turn a lot of races where Republicans are only up by one or two
points to races where Democrats end up winning by one or two points. I think Republicans are in good shape today, and they
kind of just need to not blow it.” And that’s what worries Republicans the most. With a net of six
seats needed to take the majority, one of the Republicans’ biggest fear remains losing any of the
three seats they currently hold — namely Kansas, Georgia and Kentucky — as well as South Dakota, a seat
being vacated by retiring Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson which had been seen as a GOP lock until the past two weeks. “That’s what keeps me up at
night,” said one senior GOP official. In
Kentucky, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee announced Wednesday an additional
GOP leader has
maintained a steady lead in most polls in large part due to Obama’s deep unpopularity in the state, but it remains a
$650,000 in spending to boost Alison Lundergan Grimes against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. The
close race. Georgia and Kansas appear to be more problematic for Republicans, with Michelle Nunn in the Peach State maintaining a small lead over
businessman David Perdue, who has struggled with questions over his history with outsourcing. Still, even though Nunn
is leading in
several recent polls, she continues to fall just short of the 50 percent threshold to avoid a runoff,
partially because of the Libertarian candidate Amanda Swafford. So both sides would have two
additional months to duke it out in a January runoff. That could make for an unpredictable contest, especially if the outcome would
determine whether Obama has a Senate majority in his final two years in office. With polls showing the race tightening in
Kansas, Roberts is betting that Obama’s unpopularity in the state — his disapproval rating is
north of 60 percent — and conservative voters’ hopes for a GOP Senate will be just enough to clinch
a victory. So it’s no surprise why Orman is just as quick to distance himself from Democrats as he is from Republicans. “To tell you the truth, I really
don’t care that much about the future of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, much less their leaders,” Orman said at a speech in Lenexa,
Kansas, Wednesday evening. “This is about America. This is about Kansas.”
Dems need new controversies to drive turnout
Rucker, 14 (Philip, 8/10/2014, The Washington Post, “As midterms near, voters have a lot on
their minds,” Lexis, JMP)
This is an election about nothing - and everything. Unlike in previous midterm election years, no
dominant national theme has emerged for the 2014 campaign, according to public opinion
surveys as well as interviews last week with scores of voters in five key states and with dozens of
politicians and party strategists. Even without a single salient issue, a heavy cloud of economic anxiety and general
unease is hanging over the fiercely partisan debate. Listening to voters, you hear a downbeat tone to everything political - the
nation's economy, infrastructure and schools; the crises flaring around the world; the evolving culture wars at home; immigration
laws; President Obama and other elected leaders in Washington. "I probably feel the way everyone else feels," said Lindsay Perry, a
32-year-old Democrat, as she tried to keep her 9-month-old son from tipping over her salad last week at a Durham, N.C., bakery.
"Clearly, it's really dysfunctional and it's essentially driven by monied interests at this point. It's really just discouraging. It just
seems clear the people's interests aren't being represented." Over the past 20 years, every midterm election has had a driving theme.
In 1994, Newt Gingrich led Republicans to power in a backlash against President Clinton's domestic agenda. In 1998, it was a rebuke
to Republicans for their drive to impeach Clinton. Terrorism motivated voters in 2002, while anger over the Iraq war propelled
Democratic gains in 2006. And 2010 turned into an indictment of Obama's economic stewardship and, for many, his health-care
plan. As long as it has been polling, Gallup has asked voters to state their "most important problem." For
the first midterm
cycle since 1998, no single issue registers with more than 20 percent of voters. Immigration was the top
concern for 17 percent of those Gallup surveyed in July, while 16 percent said government dissatisfaction and 15 percent the
economy. The
result could be an especially unpredictable final 12 weeks of the campaign.
everywhere are searching for
pressure points - by taking advantage of news events or colorful and, at times, highly
parochial issues - to motivate their base voters to go to the polls. In Iowa, a neighborhood
With voter turnout expected to be low and several big races virtually tied, campaigns
dispute over chickens wandering into the yard of Rep. Bruce Braley, a Democratic Senate candidate, has become a flap much
discussed by Republicans. Democrats in Colorado have zeroed in on Senate candidate and GOP Rep. Cory Gardner's past support for
the personhood movement, which gives fertilized eggs individual rights. Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), an Iraq veteran locked in a tight
race with Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), has used the recent airstrikes in Iraq as an opportunity to criticize Obama's "lack of overall
Middle East strategy." Democrats, who are eager to drive African Americans to the polls, have been sounding the alarm over threats
to impeach Obama, even though Republican House leaders insist that is not a real possibility. "The African American turnout in
2014 will have to be at the level of a presidential year turnout for us to do well," said Rep. James E. Clyburn (S.C.), the assistant
House Democratic leader. "We've got to carry a strong message and organize, not agonize, and be ready to take advantage of any
opportunities Republicans give us." In talks with voters, there was some evidence that the impeachment issue was resonating with
African Americans, though it barely registered more broadly. The
lack of a dominant issue also means that
campaigns could be more susceptible than in other years to events this fall. Republicans believe, for
instance, that if Obama signs an executive order granting legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants, as White House
officials have indicated he might, it will create a huge backlash against Democrats. And after a summer dominated by problems
around the globe - a downed plane in Ukraine, war in the Middle East and the return of U.S. bombs in Iraq - continued trouble
abroad could further dampen support for the president and his party. There is hope in the uncertainty for both parties.
Democrats believe they have an opening to use wedge issues, such as same-sex marriage, access to birth
control and abortion, to rally opposition against Republicans . Republicans, meanwhile, see the potential to expand
their opportunities and turn what they expect to be a good year into a great one. "It's like a close basketball game and
then something happens, there is a breakaway, and it goes from a three- to four-point game to a
10-point win," Republican strategist Ed Rollins said. Senate battle is fierce The hardest-fought
battleground this year is for control of the U.S. Senate. Republicans
need to pick up six seats to win back the
majority for the first time in eight years. Republicans are heavily favored to win three elections - in Montana, South
Dakota and West Virginia - while another dozen or so races are in play, many in states where Obama is unpopular. Democrats
believe they have a shot to pick up seats in Georgia and Kentucky, but red-state victories will be difficult in a
year that generally favors Republicans.
Plan saves the Dems
US Gaming Services 12 [11-5-2012 http://www.usgamingsurvey.com/Presidential-ElectionOutcome-could-hinge-on-Poker-Player-Votes-in-Key-States.html]
Presidential Election
Outcome could hinge on Poker Player Votes in Key States Recently an online
gaming research company (USGamingSurvey.com), conducted a study to see how determined American
poker players are to see legal and regulated poker in the United States. American poker players were queried about their likely votes
in the Presidential and Congressional elections and whether they would alter those votes if another candidate came out in support of legal and
regulated online poker in a recent study by USGamingSurvey.com. The 2012 U.S. Online Poker Survey queried Poker Players Alliance (PPA)
members asking them
about their current political affiliation and whether they would consider
changing to an opposing party if the other candidate came out in favor of legal and regulated online
poker while their usual candidate didn’t. Over 3,500 people over the age of 18 completed the survey and almost 70% said they
would be willing to change their vote. Respondents to the survey represented all age
groups, income levels, education levels and religious backgrounds including 11% female
respondents.. Results indicated an almost even 50-50 split between those who listed their
affiliation as Democrat or Republican. The results of the survey were mind boggling and even caught
USGamingSurvey.com CEO Jim Quigley by surprise. “We knew that poker players were passionate about the game,” Quigley
said, “but we didn’t think so many would switch their votes just for the ability to play legalized,
regulated poker in the United States. It clearly reflects how badly Americans want the ability to play poker in an environment where they don’t have
to constantly be looking over their shoulders.” Along with those who were affiliated with either the Democrats or Republicans, almost 80% of
undeclared poker players stated they would vote for the candidate that supported online poker regulation and legalization. Results
were
similar across all states including the two main swing states of Ohio and Florida. Florida has one of the highest percentages of poker
players in the U.S. therefore a declaration by either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney in support of online poker could indeed put them over the top in
that state. Along with the question relating to the vote for President,
USGamingSurvey.com asked participants whether
support for online poker would influence them to vote for that candidate in their local elections
including Congressional seats for example. Again, almost three quarters of respondents
indicated that support for online poker would greatly influence their decision on who to vote for
in Congress. Given the large number of states in the Congressional elections that are
too close to call, that support could be significant in swinging the election. The 2012 US
Online Poker Survey highlighted 10 states that are too close to call in Congress right now and the results, if proven correct would
catapult one candidate over another should they come out in favor of legal and regulated online
poker. The results are abundantly clear. Poker players are indeed very passionate about their activity and are
willing to cast significant votes for candidates prepared to fight for their freedom to play in a well
regulated, legal and taxed U.S. environment. Worth noting, in 2006 poker players in Iowa helped defeat incumbent Congressman Jim Leach. Will the
same thing occur on Tuesday?
GOP win key to successful Asia pivot
Keck ’14 Zachary is the Managing Editor of the Diplomat, “The Midterm Elections and the Asia Pivot,”
http://thediplomat.com/2014/04/the-midterm-elections-and-the-asia-pivot/
There is a growing sense in the United States that when voters go to the polls this November, the Republican Party will win enough
Senate seats to control both houses of Congress. This would potentially introduce more gridlock into an already dysfunctional
American political system.¶ But it needn’t be all doom and gloom for U.S. foreign policy, including in the Asia-Pacific. In fact, the
Republicans wrestling control of the Senate from the Democrats this November could be a
boon for the U.S. Asia pivot. This is true for at least three reasons.¶ First, with little prospect of getting any of his
domestic agenda through Congress, President Barack Obama will naturally focus his attention on foreign affairs. Presidents in
general have a tendency to focus more attention on foreign policy during their second term, and this effect is magnified if the other
party controls the legislature. And for good reason: U.S. presidents have far more latitude to take unilateral action in the realm of
foreign affairs than in domestic policy. Additionally, the 2016 presidential election will consume much of the country’s media’s
attention on domestic matters. It’s only when acting on the world stage that the president will still be able to stand taller in the
media’s eyes than the candidates running to for legislative office.¶ Second, should
the Democrats get pummeled in
the midterm elections this year, President Obama is likely to make some personnel changes in the
White House and cabinet. For instance, after the Republican Party incurred losses in the 2006 midterms, thenPresident George W. Bush quickly moved to replace Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with the less partisan (at least
in that era) Robert Gates. Obama followed suit by making key personnel changes after the Democrats
“shellacking” in the 2010 midterm elections.¶ Should the Democrats face a similar fate in the 2014 midterm elections, Obama
is also likely to make notable personnel changes. Other aides, particular former Clinton aides, are likely to leave the administration
early in order to start vying for spots on Hillary Clinton’s presumed presidential campaign. Many of these changes are likely to be
with domestic advisors given that domestic issues are certain to decide this year’s elections. Even so, many nominally domestic
positions—such as Treasury and Commerce Secretary—have important implications for U.S. policy in Asia. Moreover, some
of
the post-election changes are likely be foreign policy and defense positions, which bodes well for
Asia given the appalling lack of Asia expertise among Obama’s current senior advisors.¶ But the
most important way a Republican victory in November will help the Asia Pivot is that the GOP in Congress are
actually more favorable to the pivot than are members of Obama’s own party. For
example, Congressional opposition to granting President Trade Promotional Authority — which is key to getting the Trans-Pacific
Partnership ratified — is largely from Democratic legislators. Similarly, it is
the Democrats who are largely in favor
of the defense budget cuts that threaten to undermine America’s military posture in Asia.¶ If
Republicans do prevail in November, President Obama will naturally want to find ways to bridge the
very wide partisan gap between them. Asia offers the perfect issue area to begin reaching across
the aisle.¶ The Republicans would have every incentive to reciprocate the President’s outreach .
After all, by giving them control of the entire Legislative Branch, American voters will be expecting some results from the GOP
before they would be ostensibly be ready to elect them to the White House in 2016.
A Republican failure to achieve
anything between 2014 and 2016 would risk putting the GOP in the same dilemma they faced in
the 1996 and 2012 presidential elections. Working with the president to pass the TPP and strengthen America’s military’s
posture in Asia would be ideal ways for the GOP to deliver results without violating their principles.¶ Thus, while the president will
work tirelessly between now and November to help the Democrats retain the Senate, he should also prepare for failure by having a
major outreach initiative to Congressional Republicans ready on day one. This initiative should be Asia-centric.
Solves Asian stability – successful military strategy
Colby ’11
[Elbridge Colby, research analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses, served as policy advisor to the Secretary of Defense’s Representative to the New START talks, expert advisor
to the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, August 10, 2011, “Why the U.S. Needs its Liberal Empire,” The Diplomat, online: http://thediplomat.com/2011/08/10/why-us-needs-its-liberal-empire/2/?print=yes]
But the pendulum shouldn’t be allowed to swing too far toward an incautious retrenchment. For our problem hasn’t been
overseas commitments and interventions as such, but the kinds of interventions. The
US alliance and partnership structure,
empire’ that includes a substantial military
presence and a willingness to use it in the defence of US and allied interests, remains a vital component
of US security and global stability and prosperity. This system of voluntary and consensual cooperation under US
leadership, particularly in the security realm, constitutes a formidable bloc defending the liberal
international order.¶ But, in part due to poor decision-making in Washington, this system is under strain, particularly in
what the late William Odom called the United States’ ‘liberal
East Asia, where the security situation has become tenser even as the region continues to become the centre of the global
economy.¶ A nuclear North Korea’s violent behaviour threatens South Korea and Japan, as well as US forces on the peninsula;
Pyongyang’s development of a road mobile Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, moreover, brings into sight the day when North
Korea could threaten the United States itself with nuclear attack, a prospect that will further imperil stability
in the region.¶ More broadly, the rise of China – and especially its rapid and opaque military build-up – combined with its
increasing assertiveness in regional disputes is troubling to the United States and its allies and partners across the
region. Particularly relevant to the US military presence in the western Pacific is the development of Beijing’s anti-access and
area denial capabilities, including the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile, more capable anti-ship cruise missiles, attack
submarines, attack aircraft, smart mines, torpedoes, and other assets.¶ While Beijing remains a constructive contributor on a
range of matters, these capabilities will give China the growing power to deny the United States the ability to operate effectively
in the western Pacific, and thus the potential to undermine the US-guaranteed security substructure that has
defined littoral East Asia since World War II. Even if China says today it won’t exploit this growing capability, who can tell what
tomorrow or the next day will bring?¶ Naturally, US efforts to build up forces in the western Pacific in response to future Chinese
force improvements must be coupled with efforts to engage Beijing as a responsible stakeholder; indeed, a strengthened but
appropriately restrained military posture will enable rather than detract from such engagement. ¶ In short, the
United States
must increase its involvement in East Asia rather than decrease it. Simply maintaining the military
balance in the western Pacific will, however, involve substantial investments to improve US capabilities. It will also require
augmented contributions to the common defence by US allies that have long enjoyed low defence budgets under the US security
umbrella. This won’t be cheap, for these requirements can’t be met simply by incremental additions to the existing
posture, but will have to include advances in air, naval, space, cyber, and other expensive high-tech capabilities.¶ Yet such efforts
are vital, for East
Asia represents the economic future, and its strategic developments
willdetermine which country or countries set the international rulesthat shape that economic
future. Conversely, US interventionsin the Middle East and, to a lesser degree, in south-eastern Europe have
been driven by far more ambitious and aspirational conceptions of the national interest, encompassing
the proposition that failing or illiberally governed peripheral statescan contribute to an
instability that nurtures terrorism and impedes economic growth. Regardless of whether this proposition is true, the
effort is rightly seen by the new political tide not to be worth the benefits gained. Moreover, the United States can
scale (and has scaled) back nation-building plans in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkans without undermining its vital interests in
ensuring the free flow of oil and in preventing terrorism.¶ The lesson to be drawn from recent years is not, then, that the United
States should scale back or shun overseas commitments as such, but rather that we must be more discriminating in making and
acting upon them. A total US unwillingness to intervene would pull the rug out from under the US-led structure, leaving the
international system prey to disorder at the least, and at worst to chaos or dominance by others who could not be counted on to
look out for US interests.¶
We need to focus onmaking the right interventions, not forswearing them
means amore substantial focus on East Asia and the serious security challenges
there, andless emphasis on the Middle East. ¶ This isn’t to say that the United States should be unwilling to
completely. In practice, this
intervene in the Middle East. Rather, it is to say that our interventions there should be more tightly connected to concrete
objectives such as protecting the free flow of oil from the region, preventing
terrorist attacks against the United
States and its allies, and forestalling or, if necessary, containing nuclear proliferation as opposed to the more
idealistic aspirations to transform the region’s societies. ¶ These more concrete objectives can bebetter met by the more
judicious and economical use of our military power. More broadly, however, itmeans a shift in US
emphasis away from the greater Middle East toward the Asia-Pacific region, whichdwarfsthe
former ineconomic and military potential and in the dynamism of its societies. The Asia-Pacific region,
with its hard-charging economies and growing presence on the global stage, is where the future of the
international security and economic system will be set, and it is there that Washington needs to focus its
attention, especially in light of rising regional security challenges. ¶In light of US budgetary pressures,
including the hundreds of billions in ‘security’ related money to be cut as part of the debt ceiling deal, it’s doubly important
that US security dollars be allocated to themost pressing tasks – shoring up the US position in
the most important region of the world, the Asia-Pacific. It will also require restraint in expenditure on
those challenges and regions that don’t touch so directly on the future of US security and
prosperity. ¶ As Americans debate the proper US global role in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and Iraq and
Afghanistan, they would do well to direct their ire not at overseas commitments and intervention as such, but rather at those not
tied to core US interests and the sustainment and adaptation of the ‘liberal empire’ that we have constructed and maintained
since World War II.¶ Defenders of our important overseas links and activities should clearly distinguish their cause from the
hyperactive and barely restrained approach represented by those who, unsatisfied with seeing the United States tied down in
three Middle Eastern countries, seek intervention in yet more, such as Syria. Indeed, those
whorefuse to scale back
US interventions in the Middle Eastor call for still more aredirectly contributing to the
weakening of US commitments in East Asia, given strategic developments in the region and
asharply constrained budgetary environment in Washington.¶We can no longer afford, either
strategically or financially, tosquander our power in unnecessary and ill-advised interventions and nation-building
efforts. The ability and will to intervene is too important to be so wasted.
Extinction
Wittner 11 (Lawrence- Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany, huffingtonpost writer,
“Is a Nuclear War With China Possible?”, 11/30, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrencewittner/nuclear-war-china_b_1116556.html)
Of course, the
bottom line for those Americans convinced that nuclear weapons safeguard them
from a Chinese nuclear attack might be that the U.S. nuclear arsenal is far greater than its
Chinese counterpart. Today, it is estimated that the U.S. government possesses over 5,000 nuclear
warheads, while the Chinese government has a total inventory of roughly 300. Moreover, only about 40 of these Chinese nuclear
weapons can reach the United States. Surely the United States would "win" any nuclear war with China. But
what would that "victory" entail? An attack with these Chinese nuclear weapons would
immediately slaughter at least 10 million Americans in a great storm of blast and fire, while
leaving many more dying horribly of sickness and radiation poisoning. The Chinese death toll in
a nuclear war would be far higher. Both nations would be reduced to smoldering, radioactive
wastelands. Also, radioactive debris sent aloft by the nuclear explosions would blot out the sun
and bring on a "nuclear winter" around the globe -- destroying agriculture, creating worldwide
famine, and generating chaos and destruction.
1NR
Successful Asia pivot streamlines the defense budget which allows for effective
cyber-defense
Lind ’11 [Michael Lind 11, Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation, February 1, 2011,
“Let's end America's "Middle East First" policy,” online:
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/02/01/lind_middle_east_first]
Among other things, an
Asia First strategy would allow the U.S. to preserve its security while
reducing the Pentagon budget in the interest of long-term solvency. Having renounced further
labor-intensive wars of counterinsurgency and nation-building in the Greater Middle East, the U.S. could
downsize the Army, in favor of a military based chiefly on elite special forces, naval and air forces and unmanned drones.
Some of the savings could be channeled into homeland security defenses -- for example, protecting
infrastructure and telecommunications against the mysterious cyber attacks that have been directed at the
U.S. and Europe from China. Other savings could be devoted to rebuilding America’s dual militarycivilian manufacturing base, which has been ravaged by offshoring and the collaboration of U.S.based multinationals with Chinese, Japanese and German industrial policies. Any future great-power conflict is
likely to take the form of a cold war, in which the ultimate victors will be those whose
domestic industrial economies are the strongest and whose banking systems are subordinate to their
national interests.
GOP-senate passes immigration reform
Bolton 14, Alexander, staff writer at The Hill, “GOP: We'll move immigration reform if we take back Senate,” 5/15,
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/206177-gop-well-move-immigration-reform-if-we-take-back-senate#ixzz39BDKJTqw
Senate Republicans say they'll try to pass immigration reform legislation in the next two years if they take
back the Senate in November. The Republicans say winning back the Senate will allow them to pass a series
of bills on their own terms that have a better chance of winning approval in the House. Sen. Marco Rubio (RFla.), a central member of the coalition that passed a comprehensive reform bill in the Senate last year, said he would craft a
better legislative approach if Republicans control the upper chamber in 2015. That would give
his party a chance to pass immigration legislation before the presidential election, when Hispanic
voters will be crucial to winning the White House. But Democrats are threatening that if the House does not pass a comprehensive
immigration reform bill this year the issue will be dead in 2015 and 2016, sinking the GOP brand among Hispanics ahead of the
2016 election. “I certainly think we can make progress on immigration particularly on topics like modernizing our legal immigration
system, improving our mechanisms for enforcing the law and I think if you did those things you could actually make some progress
on addressing those who are illegally,” Rubio said Wednesday evening of the prospects of passing immigration reform in 2015. He
said the
Senate next year should pass immigration reform through a series of sequential bills that
build upon each other to enact comprehensive reform. This approach would be more palatable in
the House, he said. Rubio said he was not fully satisfied with the comprehensive bill that passed the Senate last year, adding
Republicans would “absolutely” pass better legislation if they pick up six or more seats in the
midterm election. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who is poised to take over as chairman of the Judiciary
Committee, said he will vote to pass immigration legislation in the next Congress if Republicans ascend to
the majority. “We’d start over again next year,” Grassley said, when asked about the next steps if Congress does not pass
immigration reform by September. “I’d make a decision about whether you could get more done by separate bills or a comprehensive
bill,” he said. Grassley said he may have supported the 2013 Senate immigration bill if it had tougher border security and interior
enforcement provisions. “For that reason, not for the legal immigration stuff that’s in it,” he said, explaining why he voted against it.
Some Republicans, such as Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), strongly oppose increasing legal immigration. “Washington can’t rewrite the
law of supply and demand: we can’t rebuild our middle class if we continue to bring in record numbers of new workers for
companies to hire at the lowest available wage,” he said. Only 14 Republicans voted for the Senate bill, which conservative critics
panned for giving too much discretion to the Obama administration in deciding how its border security requirements would be met.
Senate Republicans believe that House
Republicans would be more likely to pass immigration reform if
the midterm election shifts control of the upper chamber because it would be easier to
negotiate a Senate-House compromise. House conservatives have opposed bringing
immigration legislation to the House floor because they fear even a narrow bill could be used as a vehicle
to jam the sprawling Senate bill through the House. That threat would be less dire if the Senate
passed a series of smaller immigration reform bills. “It could pass if we break it down into
smaller pieces,” said Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (Texas). “[The House] has always been amenable to
passing smaller bills on a step-by-step basis.” Once Congress passes legislation to tighten border
security and interior enforcement, it could pave the way for a deal legalizing an estimated 11 million
illegal immigrants, expanding work visas and enlarging the flow of legal immigration, Senate
Republicans argue.
Immigration reform is key to food security
ACIR ‘7 (December 4, 2007 THE AGRICULTURE COALITION FOR IMMIGRATION
REFORM
Dear Member of Congress: The Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform (ACIR) is deeply concerned with pending immigration
enforcement legislation known as the ‘Secure America Through Verification and Enforcement Act of 2007' or ‘SAVE Act’ (H.R.4088
and S.2368). While these bills seek to address the worthy goal of stricter immigration law enforcement, they
fail to take a
comprehensive approach to solving the immigration problem. History shows that a one dimensional
approach to the nation’s immigration problem is doomed to fail. Enforcement alone, without
providing a viable means to obtain a legal workforce to sustain economic growth is a formula for
disaster. Agriculture best illustrates this point. Agricultural industries that need considerable
labor in order to function include the fruit and vegetable, dairy and livestock, nursery,
greenhouse, and Christmas tree sectors. Localized labor shortages have resulted in actual crop
loss in various parts of the country. More broadly, producers are making decisions to scale back
production, limit expansion, and leave many critical tasks unfulfilled. Continued labor shortages
could force more producers to shift production out of the U.S., thus stressing already taxed food
and import safety systems. Farm lenders are becoming increasingly concerned about the stability of affected industries.
This problem is aggravated by the nearly universal acknowledgement that the current H-2A agricultural guest worker program does
not work. Based on government statistics and other evidence, roughly 80 percent of the farm labor force in the United States is
foreign born, and a significant majority of that labor force is believed to be improperly authorized. The bills’ imposition of
mandatory electronic employment eligibility verification will screen out the farm labor force without providing access to legal
workers. Careful study of farm labor force demographics and trends indicates that there is not a replacement domestic workforce
available to fill these jobs. This feature alone will result in chaos unless combined with labor-stabilizing reforms. Continued
failure by Congress to act to address this situation in a comprehensive fashion is placing in
jeopardy U.S. food security and global competitiveness. Furthermore, congressional inaction
threatens the livelihoods of millions of Americans whose jobs exist because laborintensive
agricultural production is occurring in America. If production is forced to move, most of the upstream and
downstream jobs will disappear as well. The Coalition cannot defend of the broken status quo. We support well-managed borders
and a rational legal system. We have worked for years to develop popular bipartisan legislation that would stabilize the existing
experienced farm workforce and provide an orderly transition to wider reliance on a legal agricultural worker program that provides
a fair balance of employer and employee rights and protections. We respectfully urge you to oppose S.2368, H.R.4088, or any other
bills that would impose employment-based immigration enforcement in isolation from equally important reforms that would
provide for a stable and legal farm labor force.
Extinction
CRIBB 2010 (Julian, Julian Cribb is a science communicator, journalist and editor of several newspapers and books. His published work
includes over 7,000 newspaper articles, 1,000 broadcasts, and three books and has received 32 awards for science, medical, agricultural and business
journalism. He was Director, National Awareness, for Australia's science agency, CSIRO, foundation president of the Australian Science
Communicators, and originated the CGIAR's Future Harvest strategy. He has worked as a newspaper editor, science editor for "The Australian "and
head of public affairs for CSIRO. He runs his own science communication consultancy, “The coming famine: the global food crisis and what we can do
to avoid it,” p. 26)
This is the most likely means by which the
coming famine will affect all citizens of Earth, both through the direct
consequences of refugee floods for receiving countries and through the effect on global food
prices and the cost to public revenues of redressing the problem. Coupled with this is the risk of wars
breaking out over local disputes about food, land, and water and the dangers that the major military powers
may be sucked into these vortices, that smaller nations newly nuclear-armed may become embroiled,
and that shock waves propagated by these conflicts will jar the global economy and disrupt
trade, sending food prices into a fresh spiral. Indeed, an increasingly credible scenario for World
War III is not so much a confrontation of superpowers and their allies as a festering, self-perpetuating chain of resource
conflicts driven by the widening gap between food and energy supplies and peoples' need to secure
them.
Plan’s popular with the public and Democrats get the credit
Walters, 6 – lawyer (Lawrence, “ON SECOND THOUGHT… --WHAT DOES THE UIGEA
REALLY MEAN FOR INTERNET GAMBLING?” http://www.firstamendment.com/sitearticles/UIEGA/)
Despite this thoroughly-considered and focus-group-tested rhetoric, the American public was
not buying it. Two well-respected polls conducted in 2006 confirmed that the vast
majority of Americans believed that the government should not prohibit Internet gambling.[8]
However, Republicans stuck with their strategy, and continued to pander to the religious
right/family values voters, by pushing their morality agenda in the hopes that voter turnout
would save them from a feared drubbing at the polls in November 2006. As it turned out, the
American public turned over control of both the House and the Senate to the Democrats.
Nevertheless, Republican lawmakers were able to score a last minute victory against the online
gambling industry by pushing through the UIGEA as an add-on to a completely unrelated
Homeland Security bill destined to sail through the Senate without any real opposition.
And we’ll control uniqueness for the link – no one is touching it because of the
election fear.
CHOKSHI 14 reports for GovBeat, The Post's state and local policy blog [Niraj
Chokshi , At least 10 states expected to consider allowing online gambling this year,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/02/05/at-least-10-states-expectedto-consider-allowing-online-gambling-this-year/]
Expect at least 10 states this year to consider bills that would legalize online gambling, according to a new
study.
All that action will come amid federal inaction, according to the report from GamblingCompliance, a gambling
industry research provider. Lobbying federally fell off a cliff at the start of 2013 (see chart at right). And the climate isn’t right this
year, either.
“It is an election year, which means that virtually all politically controversial subjects,
including Internet gambling, will be seen through the risk-averse lens of re-election,”
GamblingCompliance notes.
Instead, it
expects to see movement to consider legislation that would authorize or expand Internet
gambling in at least 10 states: California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey
and Pennsylvania. In six of those states — California, Hawaii, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Pennsylvania — such legislation
has either already been introduced or carried over from last year.
Plan is a social and economic victory – helps turnout
MINTON 10 director of insurance studies with the Competitive Enterprise
Institute [Michelle Minton, “Legalizing Online Gambling Is A No-Brainer”, 12-9-10, Forbes,
http://www.forbes.com/2010/12/07/online-gambling-harry-reid-ban-opinions-contributorsmichelle-minton.html]
Sometimes things do change in Washington, often unexpectedly. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, once
an opponent of online gambling, is now circulating draft legislation to legalize Internet poker. Reid, like
an increasing number of lawmakers, seems to have realized not only that banning online betting, an activity that millions of
Americans engage in each year, is impossible, but also that legalizing it could result in increased tax revenue, job creation
and economic growth.
Reid’s turnaround is welcome–and long overdue. The proposed policy change makes fiscal sense. Moreover, it is not government’s
proper role to dictate what activities private individuals may or may not engage in. And from a practical perspective, Reid’s
proposal provides a good opportunity for Congress members from both parties to turn their stated
commitment to bipartisanship into substantive change.
If passed, Reid’s legislation would overturn the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), which attempted to
ban online gambling by making it illegal for credit processing companies to handle funds related to Internet gambling activities. The
result was simply that companies moved offshore. American players continued to gamble online for money, but through riskier
venues with fewer protections.
Since UIGEA came into effect, several lawmakers have tried to overturn it. One such effort, the Internet Gambling, Regulation,
Consumer Protection and Enforcement Act (H.R. 2267), sponsored by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Rep. Barney
Frank, D-Mass., was approved by the Financial Services Committee just prior to the 2010 midterm elections, with a bipartisan
majority.
Many observers fear that unless a bill is passed in the lame-duck session, Internet gambling will remain banned, as the new
Republican-controlled House is unlikely to take up the issue, under the assumption that Republicans will not support legalizing
Internet gambling. Yet, there are numerous reasons why both Democrats and Republicans ought to support the decriminalization of
online gambling.
During the midterm elections, Republicans stumped for reducing the size and scope of government,
lowering taxes, and freeing individuals and businesses from overregulation. If lawmakers truly believe in those ideals
then they ought to support legislation overturning a ban on Internet gambling. Enforcement of such a ban will
require an increase in the size of government, more taxpayer dollars and greater incursions into individual privacy.
In addition, online gambling, if legalized, could be taxed like any other economic activity. This could provide millions of dollars in
tax revenue, invigorate businesses and create thousands of jobs. While some Republicans might personally find online wagering
distasteful, it is not their job to babysit adult Americans, especially when almost every state has some form of legalized land-based
gambling such as casinos and state lotteries.
For Democrats who oppose legislating morality, overturning UIGEA, a law that seeks to stop adults from engaging in
voluntary and private behavior, would signify a victory for civil liberties and for the freedom to make lifestyle choices.
Overturning UIGEA will also help avoid unnecessary legal complications. As the federal government dithers over UIGEA, several
states have taken steps to legalize online gambling within their borders for their citizens and foreign nationals. If Congress
perpetuates the nationwide ban while states legalize, it will likely reignite the World Trade Organizations concerns that surfaced
when UIGEA originally passed. After years of profiting from American gamblers, UIGEA blocked foreign gaming sites from the
profitable American market. Some filed complaints, claiming that the regulation was protectionist and in violation of WTO
agreements.
Overturning the ban on Internet gambling is the right thing to do and beneficial for all political parties. For
Democrats, legalization increases personal freedom of choice and improves international relations. For
Republicans, overturning a ban on voluntary online wagering will limit government bloat, allow individuals to
exercise personal responsibility and could result in a massive influx of revenue that could be leveraged into tax reductions. Now
that’s change we can believe in.
It’s key to the youth vote
LiveFreeBlog, 14 - citing the Reason-Rupe poll (“Millennials Think Government Is
Inefficient, Abuses Its Power, and Supports Cronyism”
http://www.livefreeblog.com/millennials_think_government_is_inefficient_abuses_its_power
_and_supports_cronyism)
Sixty-two percent of millennials describe themselves as socially liberal, while 27 percent say they
are socially conservative. The gap is much narrower on economic issues, with 49 percent of
millennials identifying themselves as economic liberals and 36 percent labeling themselves as
economic conservatives.
Millennials’ social liberalism is mixed with strong opposition to many nanny state regulations:
72 percent of millennials say large sugary sodas and drinks should be allowed to be sold
67 percent of millennials favor legalizing same-sex marriage
61 percent say abortion should be legal in all or most cases
61 percent say people should be able to buy foods containing trans fats
60 percent want to allow e-cigarette use in public places
59 percent say the government should allow online gambling
Youth turnout key to Dem victory
Mcdermott 14
Kevin Mcdermott, 5/16/14, St. Louis Today, Millennials could hold the key for Democrats in
congressional midterms, http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/politicalfix/millennials-could-hold-the-key-for-democrats-in-congressionalmidterms/article_a1e79d10-43a7-5bc9-94cb-269c41f2fb61.html)
The Millennial Generation could salvage Democrats' hopes going into an ominous midterm
congressional election season this year. But only if those young people actually make it to the
polls. And recent history says that's a big “if.” That's what one Democratic polling firm calls “the
challenge and the opportunity” facing the party this year regarding 18-to-31-year-olds. The firm,
Harstad Strategic Research, released a new national poll Thursday that largely reiterates what the nation's political class has
understood for a while now: Today's
young voters are overwhelmingly progressive, and are far more
likely to side with Democrats than Republicans on an array of issues. But they also have this way
of not showing up. “I think the Democrats have a real challenge in 2014. The (electoral)
dropouts are a very real factor. There's real potential here to change the electorate, but it's not easy,” pollster Paul
Harstad said on a national conference call with reporters Thursday outlining the results of the poll. A long-time pollster for
President Barack Obama, Harstad's current poll was conducted at the behest of the Youth Engagement Fund and Project New
America, which advocate progressive politics, to take the temperature of our youngest voting bloc. The results aren't particularly
surprising. We
already knew that Millennials put Obama over the top in 2008, then sat on their
hands in 2010 and allowed the GOP take over of the House. Indeed, the poll indicates that
history may repeat itself in the next two elections: It found that, while 55 percent of Millennials plan to vote for
president in 2016 — generally good news for whoever is the Democratic nominee that year — just 28 percent are willing to make the
same vow to vote in this year's midterms, as Democrats struggle to hold the Senate. The question isn't how Millennials will vote. Poll
after poll, including this one, shows the 20-somethings, while less likely than their older counterparts to identify specifically with
any one party, are overwhelmingly in favor of progressive policies on the economy, guns, gay rights, abortion and other issues,
aligning them strongly with Democrats. The question, Harstad said, is “if these young adults can be persuaded to vote.” In 2010, only
one in six eligible Millennials went to the polls, and their absence was widely viewed as a significant factor in the Republican
takeover of the House that year. Those young voters came out in relative force in 2012, however, and were again a deciding factor,
helping give Obama a second term by backing him about 67 percent to 30 percent. The national online survey of 2,004 Americans
ages 18-31 was conducted March 30 through April 3, and has a margin for error of plus or minus 2.2 percent. Here is a breakdown of
the poll. (Kevin McDermott) HE SAID IT: “It’s a no-brainer to me. One way or the other, we are going to pay for our roads.” —
Missouri state Rep. Don Phillips, R-Kimberling City, regarding a proposed sales tax hike for transportation projects that the
Legislature has put on the Nov. 4 ballot. HE SAID IT: “Last week we heard that tax cuts create jobs. This week apparently tax
increases create jobs. Hard to keep up.” —A tweet by Rep. Jeremy LaFaver, D-Kansas City, an opponent of the proposed sales tax
hike, referring to the Legislature's passage last week of a $620 million state income tax cut.
It will be perceived as an economic victory for Democrats
Minton, 10 (Michelle, Forbes, “Legalizing Online Gambling Is A No-Brainer” 12/9,
http://www.forbes.com/2010/12/07/online-gambling-harry-reid-ban-opinions-contributorsmichelle-minton.html)
In addition, online
gambling, if legalized, could be taxed like any other economic activity. This could
provide millions of dollars in tax revenue, invigorate businesses and create thousands of jobs.
While some Republicans might personally find online wagering distasteful, it is not their job to babysit adult Americans, especially when almost every
state has some form of legalized land-based gambling such as casinos and state lotteries. For
Democrats who oppose legislating
morality, overturning UIGEA, a law that seeks to stop adults from engaging in voluntary and
private behavior, would signify a victory for civil liberties and for the freedom to make lifestyle
choices. Overturning UIGEA will also help avoid unnecessary legal complications. As the federal government dithers over UIGEA, several states
have taken steps to legalize online gambling within their borders for their citizens and foreign nationals. If Congress perpetuates the
nationwide ban while states legalize, it will likely reignite the World Trade Organizations
concerns that surfaced when UIGEA originally passed. After years of profiting from American gamblers, UIGEA blocked
foreign gaming sites from the profitable American market. Some filed complaints, claiming that the regulation was protectionist and in violation of
WTO agreements. Overturning the ban on Internet gambling is the right thing to do and beneficial for all political parties. For
Democrats,
legalization increases personal freedom of choice and improves international relations. For
Republicans, overturning a ban on voluntary online wagering will limit government bloat, allow individuals to exercise personal responsibility and
could result in a massive influx of revenue that could be leveraged into tax reductions. Now
that’s change we can believe
in.
Economic victories draws massive votes for Democrats.
Steinhauser 5/2/14 [Paul, CNN Political Editor, "6 factors that will influence the midterms", May 2 2014,
www.cnn.com/2014/05/02/politics/six-factors-midterms/]
Say what you want about other issues, but the
economy remains the top concern of Americans when it comes
to their vote. "The economy is stronger than it's been in a very long time," Obama said at a news conference at
the end of last year. By many metrics, he's right. The stock market has been in record territory again, unemployment's at a five-year low, auto sales are
But many people just
don't feel that good about things. National polling indicates most people don't feel nearly as
optimistic about the economy and their personal plight. And a key economic indicator out
earlier this week is helping. Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity, grew at a 0.1%
annual pace in the first quarter of this year. While the numbers are probably just the winter weather effect, they add to the perception
that the recovery is tepid. And a sluggish economy prevents Democrats from highlighting the issue in the
midterms. "Because the recovery has been relatively modest, moderate in its strength, there's this
psychology among people that it's just not getting better out in America," said CNN Chief Washington
Correspondent John King. The economy remains the top issue on the minds of voters. Economic
realities, as well as perceptions, will influence voters in 2014.
at a seven-year high and the housing sector, which dragged the country into recession five years ago, is rebounding.
A political move to energize the democratic base will the October Surprise that
swings the election
Col. Shaver, 10/1/14 --- retired U.S. Army officer and former tenured faculty member of the
U.S. Army War College (Col. Dave Shaver, “What Is the 'October Surprise?'”
http://www.mywebtimes.com/opinion/columnists/what-is-the-octobersurprise/article_f6af524c-d54e-59d0-af32-8e513f74c045.html)
On a rather lightfooted or lightheaded political show on Fox News called “The Five,“ definitely the only Democrat, Bob
Beckel, said that he
knows that there will be an "October Surprise" before the November elections , but wouldn’t say what it is.
What is an “October Surprise?”
According to Wikipedia, “In American political jargon, an
October Surprise is a news deliberately created to
influence the outcome of an election.” John Feehery of the Christian Science Monitor cites several pre-election surprises in October
throughout modern history and asks the question in his piece ‘What can voters expect this October?”
The term October Surprise may have started during President Nixon’s re-election campaign in 1972, when his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, held
a press conference and announced that “peace is at hand,” indicating that the long, painful Vietnam War was ending. That cinched the election for
Nixon.
Throughout our modern political history we have had several October Surprises, perhaps the latest coming during the 2012 Obama vs. Romney
campaign. That surprise was not actually Hurricane Sandy, but Republican Governor Chis Christie’s praise for the effort provided by President Obama.
That helped cinch the deal.
Hurricane Sandy was, by itself a natural October Surprise, but what unnatural surprise is Beckel really suggesting? We know that whatever it is, it will
be political, but one can only guess what would make a midterm election, favoring a Republican takeover of the Senate, change course. It would have to
be big indeed.
Although Feehery gave us a short historical list of previous surprises, Republicans
need to think about what the Obama
administration could create to change the outcome of the election. One such option is finding a
stimulator for his lethargic, midterm, political base.
That might be to change strategies and use executive orders to provide amnesty to our illegal aliens now, rather than after, the elections, with
immediate voting rights for these “criminals.” Maybe he will use the old political adage of “a chicken in every pot” and declare all Americans must
receive compensation for its gross national output, similar to Alaska’s annual checks to residents from oil profits.
Maybe he will use executive orders to federalize convicted felon voting rights across the country, even in states that prohibit felon voting. Another
stretch might be to take advantage of more (Ferguson, Mo.) riots across the country. This might cause the administration to declare a national
emergency, and postpone the midterm elections until order is restored, if ever. The potential list of October surprises is certainly plentiful, yet I don’t
see any effort on the Republican side to find out what they might be and develop “political antidotes.”
Whatever the Democratic Party settles on, there certainly will be a major attempt to change the political landscape before the midterms. All Republican
operatives can do is use their overactive imaginations to figure the worst case scenarios and somehow develop tactics to negate them.
I don’t know whether that’s happening or not, with my vote for “not.” I don’t think they think Beckel is serious. That gives the upper hand to the party
in power. The
Dems know what the surprise is and how to spin it to their advantage. The poor
Republicans can only react, not preempt, the surprise.
If it’s a powerful surprise, the Dems will keep the Senate. If it turns out as badly as
other poorly conceived administration plots like blaming Benghazi on a bad movie, or using
government offices to damage political opponents, then advantage remains with the
Republicans.
Republicans are marginally favored – Arkansas, Louisiana, and Georgia are wild
cards
Sargent 10/20, Greg, writes The Plum Line blog, “Morning Plum: It’s not over yet, but Democrats have their backs to the
wall,” 10/20, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/10/20/morning-plum-its-not-over-yet-but-democratshave-their-backs-to-the-wall/
I’ve been saying for months that Republicans
are marginally favored to take the Senate. With the major
forecasts shifting a bit more towards the GOP, Republicans have improved their position and are
probably more-than-marginally favored to take control. Democrats do still have paths to
retaining control. But they are increasingly narrow. Look at the map this way. If Democrats can hold on
in just one of the four following toss-up states in which they are currently trailing — Colorado, Iowa,
Arkansas, or Alaska — their hopes of holding the Senate remain alive. That is plausible. But a lot has to go
their way after that. Let’s give Republicans West Virgina, Montana, and South Dakota up front, while
giving Democrats North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Michigan — outcomes that are consistent with the polling
averages. If Dems can limit Republicans to wins in three of these four (CO, IA, AR, AK), that
puts the GOP at 51 seats. That would probably send us into overtime, with Louisiana and
Georgia likely to head to run-offs due to election rules. To keep the Senate at a 50-50 split, Democrats would
then have to win one of those run-offs (so they cancel one-another out) and Greg Orman would have to win in Kansas and he would
have to caucus with Dems. Without Kansas, Democrats would have to win both those runoffs. This is not entirely impossible. As
Harry Enten has explained, recent history doesn’t tell us much about how these runoffs will go, and high African American turnout
could scramble them. But it’s a very tall order, partly because the outcome of these red state run-offs would decide which party
controls the Senate. Alternatively: Democrats
would have to win two out of the following four core tossups: CO, IA, AR, AK. This, too, is not an impossible outcome. Democrats trail by 2.1 points in Iowa and 1.5 in
Colorado. As Nate Silver has detailed, the polls only have to be a little off for Dems to win in such
states. What’s more, there’s a great deal of uncertainty remaining: No one knows what sort of electorate will result from Colorado’s
first experiment in all-mail balloting. Democrats insist mobilization efforts will enable Bruce Braley to close his small deficit in Iowa,
a possibility that can’t be dismissed. Arkansas, which hasn’t been contested in recent presidential elections, has never seen this level
of organization. (For these reasons, Dems winning one of these is plausible, too.) So surprises
remain possible. And
surprise Dem win in Kentucky or Georgia would scramble things, too. But the fact that
all the four core toss-up races are in doubt for Democrats has to be the main focus here. And
even if Dems did win two of them, they’d still have to prevail either in one of the run-offs or in
Kansas.
obviously a
Fundraising totals
Silver 10/16, Nate, yes, that one, “Senate Fundraising Totals Are A Bad Sign For Democrats,” 10/16,
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/senate-fundraising-totals-are-a-bad-sign-for-democrats/
Among the most hopeful signs for Democrats this year have been the strong fundraising totals for their
Senate candidates. Through June 30, the Democratic incumbent Mark Udall of Colorado had raised $7.9 million in individual
contributions to $3.2 million for his Republican opponent, Cory Gardner. In Iowa through the same date, Democrat Bruce Braley
had raised almost three times as much ($5.6 million) as his opponent, Republican Joni Ernst ($2.1 million). But the
latest
numbers show Republican fundraising catching up with, and sometimes surpassing, Democratic
totals in Iowa, Colorado and other key states. The Federal Election Commission’s deadline to report third-quarter fundraising
totals passed on Wednesday, covering money raised from July 1 through Sept. 30. Comprehensive fundraising totals are not yet
available on the FEC’s website, but I was able to find data on most Senate races through local media accounts. In
Iowa, for
raised $4.5 million in the third quarter, according to the Des Moines Register, considerably
surpassing Braley’s total of $2.8 million. The third-quarter numbers were more even in Colorado — Gardner $4.3
example, Ernst
million, Udall $4.0 million, according to the Denver Post — but a big improvement for Gardner over the lopsided numbers we’d seen
previously. (Gardner began his campaign only in March of this year, which accounts for his slow start.) In
Arkansas, Republican
Tom Cotton outraised Democratic incumbent Sen. Mark Pryor $3.9 million to $2.2 million in the third quarter.
Republican David Perdue slightly outraised Michelle Nunn in Georgia, offsetting what had been an advantage for Nunn.
In New Hampshire, the Republican candidate, Scott Brown, has been closing in the polls of late, and he also raised a pinch more
($3.6 millon) than Democratic incumbent Sen. Jeanne Shaheen ($3.5 million) in the third quarter. Fundraising totals for all states
in which I was able to find credible figures for both major-party candidates are included in the table below. As a word of caution,
media accounts do not always differentiate between money raised from individual contributions and money brought in from other
sources (like candidates contributing to their own campaigns). Nonetheless, the GOP’s gains in fundraising are fairly clear. In the 17
states for which I was able to find data, Republican candidates brought in an average of $2.7 million in the third quarter; Democrats
averaged $2.6 million, taking away what had been a two-to-one advantage for Democrats through June 30. There are a few
comparative bright spots for Democrats. Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu slightly out-raised her Republican challenger, Bill Cassidy.
Sen. Kay Hagan, in North Carolina, retained her fundraising edge over Republican Thom Tillis. In Michigan, the Democrat, Gary
Peters, has moved well ahead of Republican Terri Lynn Land in polls, and Land’s campaign has declined to report her third-quarter
fundraising to the media, probably indicating an underwhelming figure. In Kansas, the Republican incumbent, Pat Roberts, whose
fundraising totals had been anemic, brought in $1.7 million in the third quarter, roughly matching the amount he’d raised in
individual contributions during all previous quarters combined. But the center-left independent, Greg Orman, who could caucus
with the Democrats if he wins, nearly matched Roberts, raising $1.5 million. With heavy spending also expected from outside
groups, Orman should be able keep pace with Roberts in advertising down the stretch. Perhaps the Democrats’ biggest fundraising
success story has been in Kentucky. Through June 30, their candidate, Alison Lundergan Grimes, had brought in slightly more in
individual contributions than Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Grimes also raised more in the third quarter,
$4.9 million to $3.2 million. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has ceased its advertising spending in Kentucky; the
move was interpreted as a signal that Democrats were conceding the race. But Grimes and McConnell both have so much money —
in a state with relatively cheap media markets — that the DSCC’s spending might have provided little marginal benefit to Grimes.
Still, this
is a very good set of figures for Republicans. FiveThirtyEight’s Senate forecast model
uses fundraising totals as one of the “fundamentals” factors it analyzes along with the polls. The
fundamentals receive little weight in the model at this stage of the race, but they nevertheless help to explain some of
the polling movement we’ve seen in certain states. In Colorado, for example, the FiveThirtyEight fundamentals
calculation had previously made Udall a 2-point favorite over Gardner — contradicting a string of polls that had shown Gardner
pulling ahead — but with the new fundraising numbers included, it now has the race even. The fundamentals calculation in
Arkansas, meanwhile, now has Pryor as a slight underdog rather than a slight favorite, also matching the polling there.
No chance it affects the election
Mark Strauss (senior editor at io9.com, covering politics and science. Previously, he was a
senior editor at Smithsonian Magazine and the editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
winner of the 2007 National Magazine Award for General Excellence) October 21, 2014 “No,
ebola wont decide the outcome of the elections” http://io9.com/no-ebola-wont-decide-theoutcome-of-the-elections-1649997448
Ebola is at the top of the headlines. The elections are eleven days away. Therefore, the Law of
Punditry dictates that political commentators must link these two stories together, forecasting
that fears of the deadly virus will determine who controls Congress. Here's why they're
completely wrong. For a moment, let's flashback to 2012, when polling expert Nate Silver
incurred the wrath of pundits by making predictions based upon statistical analysis as opposed
to the finely tuned hunches of the Beltway intelligentsias. "I'm not very pro-pundit," Silver said
in an interview with Stephen Colbert. "If pundits were on the ballot against, like, I don't know,
Ebola, I might vote Ebola." Little did he know that, two years later, Ebola and the pundits would
become running mates. In the last few weeks, the worst non-pandemic in U.S. history has
spawned such news stories as: "Ebola is Spreading as a Midterm Campaign Issue" (Real Clear
Politics) "Ebola is the 2014 Election's October Surprise" (Washington Post) "Ebola Is Officially
the October Surprise of the 2014 Election" (ABC News) "Ebola Is a Midterm Issue, and It's Not
Helping Democrats" (NBC News) "Ebola Becoming Issue In Key Senate Races" (USA Today)
"Ebola Issue Poses Campaign Opportunities and Risks" (Roll Call) "Ebola Spreads to the
Campaign Trail" (The Hill) And that list doesn't even include television. Fear Factor Among the
pundits, two closely related themes have emerged. The first is that Ebola is ratcheting-up
existing feelings of anxiety among the U.S. public. Eric Boehlert, a senior fellow at Media
Matters for America, writes at the Huffington Post: As Republicans seek to gain a partisan
advantage by ginning up fear about the Ebola virus in preparation for the midterm election
cycle, they're getting a major assist from the news media, which seem to be equally anxious to
spread anxiety about the virus, and to implicate President Obama for the health scare. At times,
Republicans, journalists, and commentators appear to be in complete sync as they market fear
and kindle confusion. And Chris Cillizza, the editor of "The Fix" at the Washington Post says:
Ebola is the October surprise of the 2014 midterms. That is, an unexpected event that has the
potential to roil the electorate in all sorts of unpredictable ways. More than four in ten people
(43 percent) were worried about the possibility that they or someone in their immediate family
might catch Ebola— including 20 percent who called themselves "very" worried in the
Washington Post-ABC News poll….Those numbers will only go up ….Fear— and the anxiety that
underlies it — are deeply personal and powerful emotions that, when parsed through the
political process, can produce uncertain outcomes. What the nearly-certainly raised fears mean
for the coming election is difficult to predict. But here's my best sense: The country is as anxious
and uncertain as it's been in a very long time. Much of that anxiety had been laid at the feet of a
deeply uncertain economic situation (the broad indicators improving without much to show for
it closer to the ground) and the turbulence abroad (the Islamic State, Russia, the Middle East,
etc.)….Ebola— with its sky-high mortality rate and lack of a vaccine— dovetails perfectly with
those existing fears and anxieties. Within 24 hours of the publication of this column, I counted
at least four media outlets that had picked up the phrase that Ebola is the "October Surprise of
2014"—which means that Cillizza's writing has a higher rate of transmission in the U.S. than
Ebola itself. But, more specifically, this column is an archetype of pundit prophesizing: A poll
shows Americans worried about Ebola, the country is suddenly "as anxious and uncertain as it's
been in a very long time," and while it's "difficult to predict" what effect this will have, his "best
sense" is that the electorate is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. As anxious and uncertain as
it's been in a very long time. Has there ever been a time when the U.S. electorate wasn't anxious
and uncertain? Here's a sampling of quotes gathered from news articles covering elections
during the last two decades: "Many voters, particularly women, are anxious about what the
future may hold." (1988) "Polls show that Americans are anxious about the future." (1992)
"White male voters feel anxious about the future and see their incomes as stagnant." (1994)
"Across America, workers and families feel anxious about their futures." (1996) "Voters are
anxious about the future and more inclined to change the party in charge of the White House."
(2000) "The nation is girding for tomorrow's presidential election….anxious about the future no
matter who wins the contest" (2004) "The current period is not unusual in generating anxiety,"
Darrel M. West, the Director of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, tells me by
email. And, regarding Ebola, "The sense of panic is localized to geographic areas and workers
who have been exposed. If people are not living in Dallas or one of the other areas where there
has been potential exposure, there isn't that much panic." Indeed, some other data to
consider: In mid-October, consumer sentiment rose to its highest level since 2007. Not exactly
an indicator of mass panic, especially since the survey data was collected between September 25
and October 15—a period in which Americans had been barraged with news about Ebola in West
Africa and its appearance in the United States. And, as The Atlantic helpfully reminds us: One in
six people thinking they're about to die from Ebola is a serious matter. But you can get about
approximately 20 percent of Americans to say all sorts of crazy things in anonymous polls.
According to last year's Harris Interactive survey on spirituality, more than 40 percent of
Americans believe in ghosts, 36 percent believe in UFOs, and 26 percent believe in witches. It
seems safe to say that the United States does don't suffer from an epidemic of magical evildoers, but until last week, Americans were far more likely to believe in witches than to worry
about contracting Ebola. Just as both Gallup and the Pew Research Center were reporting that
Americans weren't too afraid of Ebola, the Washington Post reported that its own poll revealed a
super-majority of the country is "concerned" about the "possibility" of the virus becoming
widespread. Good news organizations are telling Americans the truth about Ebola while also
inviting them to see panic as normal and mainstream. Crisis of Confidence The second theme we
hear among the pundits is that Ebola is Obama's version of Hurricane Katrina—a reference to
the public backlash against how George W. Bush handled that crisis, which began a precipitous
decline in poll numbers from which he never recovered. This version of events tells us that the
public has lost all confidence in Obama and the Democratic Party. Appearing on Face the
Nation, USA Today's Susan Page said: I think both these stories, the Ebola virus and the threat
from ISIS are feeding into a sense that a lot of Americans have that the world is not only a
dangerous place but that the government is not competent to handle them. Even the Secret
Service controversy I think contributes to that sense. I think that's a very dangerous thing for
President Obama, the sense that his administration is not competent to protect the American
people that is the most fundamental job of a U.S. President. Meanwhile, a column by Justin
Sink, the White House correspondent for The Hill, was borderline apocalyptic: The Ebola crisis
in the United States has become an anchor threatening to sink the Obama presidency.
Democrats are expected to lose significant ground, in no small part due to public dissatisfaction
with Obama and resilient questions about the president's competency. And concessions from
the White House and CDC that there were multiple "shortcomings" in the administration's
response are only likely to deepen those fears. The precipice on which the president now rests is
eerily similar to the one that confronted former President George W. Bush at the same point in
his term. The former president, doomed by a series of political and policy missteps, became
quickly viewed as incompetent, limiting his ability to govern effectively….the cumulative effect
of careening through an unrelenting two years of crises, from the Department of Veterans
Affairs to the Secret Service, has had a similar effect on perceptions of the president. The CDC,
in particular, has been singled out as the likely agent of the Democrats' downfall. The
Washington Post reports that, in just one year, the public's view of the CDC has fallen from
being one of the most competent federal agencies to being ranked below the Secret Service and
just slightly more popular than the IRS. And New York Times columnist Frank Brunl writes: The
CDC's missteps have much different implications from the errors made by the Secret Service and
by Veterans Affairs. Individual Americans don't fear that the Secret Service's lapses will
endanger them personally, and many of them aren't directly affected by the wrongdoing of
hospitals for veterans. But they can imagine themselves on one of those flights or in some other
closed space with an infected person. They feel vulnerable. Because the Ebola response deepens
doubt about the current government, it almost certainly hurts incumbents in the midterm
elections and favors change. That's unhappy news for Democrats as they fight to retain control
of the Senate Again, some history is helpful here. Katrina wasn't the sole cause of Bush's
downward spiral. He might well have recovered his popularity in the polls had the hurricane not
been followed by three years of unrelenting bad news: the increasingly violent situation in postwar Iraq, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the administration's failure to build support for the
partial privatization of Social Security and the small matter of the U.S. economy collapsing. As
for the CDC, Brookings' Darrell West tells me: The CDC has not been particularly adept at public
communications over Ebola. But that is different from a general sense of crisis within the
administration as a whole. Unemployment continues to drop and the government deficit has
been cut in half. There are a number of things the government has done well even amidst
concern over Ebola and ISIS. Declining trust in the CDC is not the same as mistrust of
government itself. The latter has been high for 50 years and transcends particular presidents or
administrations. The Elections and Afterwards To be sure, both Democrats and Republicans
have tried to score some cheap points by evoking Ebola on the campaign trail. Some Democrats
are blaming Republicans for the crisis, citing their "extreme, Tea Party" budget cuts to the
National Institutes of Health. Republicans are attacking Obama's decision not to institute a
travel ban on the African countries afflicted by Ebola. But, by and large, Ebola has been a
campaign talking point, not a defining campaign issue. "When the exit polls income in,
voters most likely will have cast their ballots based on things such as the economy and war and
peace issues," says West. "Those are the big issues that move voters and decide elections. Ebola
is getting a lot of media attention, but it will not be decisive in many Senate elections."
K
1NC
Linear predictions fail and cause serial policy failure
Sa, 04 – Deug Whan, Dong-U College, South Korea, (“CHAOS, UNCERTA I N T Y, AND POLICY CHOICE: UTILIZING THE ADAPTIVE
MODEL,” International Review of Public Administration, vol. 8, no. 2, 2004, scholar)
In many cases, a
small choice might lead to overwhelming results that generate either a virtuous cycle or a vicious
cycle. If future results can be clearly predicted by stability and linearity, this will eliminate difficulties in making choice. Policy
choice has been an embarrassment in uncertain or chaotic situations that do not meet desirable
conditions. As a result, most major policies revert back to the uncertainty and chaos. Though the
presence of uncertainty in policy procedures is widely known, it has not been determined what influence it wields on policy choice
(Morgan and Henruion 1990: Lein 1997: 20). Generally, uncertainty refers to ‘difficulties in predicting the future.’ Naturally, the
uncertainty here includes not simply difficulties in predicting the results of various factors and interactions, but also difficulties in
predicting different configurations of interactions caused by the effect of such interactions (Saperstein 1997: 103-107). Uncertainty is
classified into 3 categories according to source and phase of policy procedures; i) uncertainty from contingency, ii) uncertainty from
inter-dependency of constituents, and iii) general uncertainty (Tompson 1967). The uncertainty from contingency arises
when it is impossible to predict how the policy environment will change. What results is uncertainty
from the interdependency of constituents makes it impossible to predict changes in the relationship
between policy matters and constituents. Finally, general uncertainty comes from lack of
knowledge about the cause and effect relationship in policy making. The Emergence of Chaos Theory and
Characteristics Chaos theory offers theoretical explanations about the world of uncertainty. Chaos theory refers to the study of
complex and dynamic systems with orders and patterns emerging from externally chaotic forms (Prigogine and Strengers 1984). The
reason chaos theory draws a lot of interest is the highlight of; disorder, instability, diversity, flexibility and disequilibrium. This
explains characteristics of rapid social changes in modern times referred to as the age of uncertainty. The focus of the chaos theory
as a study is on complex, indeterminate, non-linear and dynamic systems. The main study object chaotic systems are chaotic which
are complicated and dynamic. The characteristics of the chaos theory are as follows: The first is its self-organization principle.
Selforganization means that the organization is determined by internal factors without any outer interference. That is to say, selforganization is a network of production processes of constituents interrelated with each other, and a system that produces the same
network (Varela Maturana and Urife 1974; Jantsch 1980). The chaos theory assumes that order and organization can make an
autogenesis out of disorder and chaos through the process of ‘self-organization.’ This also means that setting up conditions for selforganization to naturally take place can result in a reduction of policy failures. The second characteristic is co-evolution, referring to
a process in which individual entities constituting a system continually adapt to each other and change. The essential concept of coevolution, is ‘mutual causality,’ which puts emphasis on mutual evolution where an individual entity evolves entire group and vice
versa, not the evolution of the survival of the fittest. It means interdependent species in continual inter-relationships evolve
together. For example, if a mutant frog appears with a longer tongue or a frog whose hunting speed is twice as fast, it will have a
competitive advantage to the environment and subsequent off-spring will flourish with the superior gene. On the other hand, flies
will decrease in number, until a mutant fly appears that has any combination of advantages such as; faster, bad smells frogs avoid, or
becomes poisonous, subsequent off-spring will survive and flourish. This is the way frogs and flies coevolve with each other.
Therefore, chaos theory regards a variety of paradoxes as an important principle instead of ignoring it or taking it as an exception.
Third, the characteristic is the existing Newtonian
determinism theory which presumes linear relations
that
predictions of the future are on the extended line of present knowledge and future knowledge is
not as unclear as the present one (Saperstein 1997: 103107), and that as similar inputs generate similar
outcomes, there will be no big differences despite small changes in initial conditions. However, chaos theory assumes
that the outcome is larger than the input and that prediction of the future is
fundamentally impossible.3 Hence, due to extreme sensitivity to initial fluctuations and nonlinear feedback loops, small differences in initial conditions are subject to amplifications and
eventual different outcomes, known as ‘chaos.’4 Chaos is sometimes divided into strong chaos and weak chaos (Eve,
where things proceed from the starting point toward the future on the thread of a single orbit. Thus, it also assumes
Horsfall and Lee 1997: 106); and goes through a series of orbit processes of close intersections and divisions. In particular, weak
chaos is found in the limits that account for the small proportion inside a system, while strong chaos features divisions at some
points inside a system, which lead to occupation of the entire system in little time. CHAOS, UNCERTAINTY AND POLICY CHOICE
1. Review of Existing Policy Models Social
scientists have tried to explain and predict policy matters, but never have
generated satisfactory outcomes in terms of accuracy of predictions. There could be a variety of reasons for
this inaccuracy in prediction, but one certain reason is that policies themselves are intrinsically governed by
uncertainty, complexity and chaos in policies that produce many different outcomes though they are faced with the
same initial internal states, the same environments, and governed by the same causal relationships.
It’s try or die—only complexity can solve inevitable extinction
Ahmed 12 – Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development (IPRD),
an independent think tank focused on the study of violent conflict, he has taught at the Department of International Relations,
University of Sussex. ("The international relations of crisis and the crisis of international relations: from the securitisation of scarcity
to the militarisation of society" Global Change, Peace %26 Security Volume 23, Issue 3, 2011 Taylor Francis)
Complicity This
analysis thus calls for a broader approach to environmental security based on
retrieving the manner in which political actors construct discourses of ‘scarcity’ in response to
ecological, energy and economic crises (critical security studies) in the context of the
historically-specific socio-political and geopolitical relations of domination by which their power
is constituted, and which are often implicated in the acceleration of these very crises (historical
sociology and historical materialism). Instead, both realist and liberal orthodox IR approaches focus on
different aspects of interstate behaviour, conflictual and cooperative respectively, but each lacks
the capacity to grasp that the unsustainable trajectory of state and inter-state
behaviour is only explicable in the context of a wider global system concurrently
over-exploiting the biophysical environment in which it is embedded. They are, in other
words, unable to address the relationship of the inter-state system itself to the biophysical environment as a key analytical category
for understanding the acceleration of global crises. They simultaneously therefore cannot
recognise the
embeddedness of the economy in society and the concomitant politically-constituted nature of
economics. 84 Hence, they neglect the profound irrationality of collective state behaviour,
which systematically erodes this relationship, globalising insecurity on a massive scale – in the very
process of seeking security. 85 In Cox’s words, because positivist IR theory ‘does not question the present order [it instead] has the
effect of legitimising and reifying it’. 86 Orthodox
IR sanitises globally-destructive collective inter-state
behaviour as a normal function of instrumental reason – thus rationalising what are clearly
deeply irrational collective human actions that threaten to permanently erode state power and
security by destroying the very conditions of human existence. Indeed, the prevalence of orthodox IR as a
body of disciplinary beliefs, norms and prescriptions organically conjoined with actual policy-making in the international system
highlights the extent to which both realism and liberalism are ideologically implicated in the acceleration of global systemic crises.
87 By the same token,
the incapacity to recognise and critically interrogate how prevailing social,
political and economic structures are driving global crisis acceleration has led to the
proliferation of symptom-led solutions focused on the expansion of state/regime military–
political power rather than any attempt to transform root structural causes. 88 It is in this context
that, as the prospects for meaningful reform through inter-state cooperation appear increasingly nullified under the pressure of
actors with a vested interest in sustaining prevailing geopolitical and economic structures, states have
resorted
progressively more to militarised responses designed to protect the concurrent structure of the
international system from dangerous new threats. In effect, the failure of orthodox approaches to accurately
diagnose global crises, directly accentuates a tendency to ‘securitise’ them – and this, ironically, fuels the proliferation of violent
conflict and militarisation responsible for magnified global insecurity. ‘Securitisation’ refers to a ‘speech act’ – an act of labelling –
whereby political authorities identify particular issues or incidents as an existential threat which, because of their extreme nature,
justify going beyond the normal security measures that are within the rule of law. It thus legitimises resort to special extra-legal
powers. By labelling issues a matter of ‘security’, therefore, states are able to move them outside the remit of democratic decisionmaking and into the realm of emergency powers, all in the name of survival itself. Far from representing a mere aberration from
democratic state practice, this discloses a deeper ‘dual’ structure of the state in its institutionalisation of the capacity to mobilise
extraordinary extra-legal military– police measures in purported response to an existential danger. 89 The problem in the context of
global ecological, economic and energy crises is that such levels of emergency
mobilisation and militarisation have
no positive impact on the very global crises generating ‘new security challenges’, and are thus
entirely disproportionate. 90 All that remains to examine is on the ‘surface’ of the international
system (geopolitical competition, the balance of power, international regimes, globalisation and so on), phenomena which
are dislocated from their structural causes by way of being unable to recognise the biophysicallyembedded and politically-constituted social relations of which they are comprised. The consequence
is that orthodox IR has no means of responding to global systemic crises other than to reduce
them to their symptoms. Indeed, orthodox IR theory has largely responded to global systemic
crises not with new theory, but with the expanded application of existing theory to ‘new security
challenges’ such as ‘low-intensity’ intra-state conflicts; inequality and poverty; environmental degradation;
international criminal activities including drugs and arms trafficking; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and
international terrorism. 91 Although the majority of such ‘new security challenges’ are non-military in origin – whether their
referents are states or individuals – the inadequacy
of systemic theoretical frameworks to diagnose them
means they are primarily examined through the lenses of military-political power. 92 In other words,
the escalation of global ecological, energy and economic crises is recognised not as evidence that the current organisation of the
global political economy is fundamentally unsustainable, requiring urgent transformation, but as vindicating the necessity for states
to radicalise the exertion of their military–political capacities to maintain existing power structures, to keep the lid on. 93 Global
crises are thus viewed as amplifying factors that could mobilise the popular will in ways that challenge existing political and
economic structures, which it is presumed (given that state power itself is constituted by these structures) deserve protection. This
justifies the state’s adoption of extra-legal measures outside the normal sphere of democratic politics. In the context of global crisis
impacts, this counter-democratic trend-line can result in a growing propensity to problematise potentially recalcitrant populations –
rationalising violence toward them as a control mechanism. 3.2 From theory to policy Consequently, for the most part, the policy
implications of orthodox IR approaches involve a redundant conceptualisation of global systemic crises purely as potential ‘threatmultipliers’ of traditional security issues such as ‘political instability around the world, the collapse of governments and the creation
of terrorist safe havens’. Climate change will serve to amplify the threat of international terrorism, particularly in regions with large
populations and scarce resources. 94 The US Army, for instance, depicts climate change as a ‘stress-multiplier’ that will ‘exacerbate
tensions’ and ‘complicate American foreign policy’; while the EU perceives it as a ‘threat-multiplier which exacerbates existing
trends, tensions and instability’. In practice, this generates an excessive preoccupation not with the causes of global crisis
acceleration and how to ameliorate them through structural transformation, but with their purportedly inevitable impacts, and how
to prepare for them by controlling problematic populations. Paradoxically, this
‘securitisation’ of global crises does
not render us safer. Instead, by necessitating more violence, while inhibiting preventive action, it guarantees greater
insecurity. Thus, a recent US Department of Defense report explores the future of international conflict up to 2050. It warns of
‘resource competition induced by growing populations and expanding economies’, particularly due to a projected ‘youth bulge’ in the
South, which ‘will consume ever increasing amounts of food, water and energy’. This will prompt a ‘return to traditional security
threats posed by emerging near-peers as we compete globally for depleting natural resources and overseas markets’. Finally, climate
change will ‘compound’ these stressors by generating humanitarian crises, population migrations and other complex emergencies.
96 A similar study by the US Joint Forces Command draws attention to the danger of global energy depletion through to 2030.
Warning of ‘the dangerous vulnerabilities the growing energy crisis presents’, the report concludes that ‘The implications for future
conflict are ominous.’ 97 Once again, the subject turns to demographics: ‘In total, the world will add approximately 60 million
people each year and reach a total of 8 billion by the 2030s’, 95 per cent accruing to developing countries, while populations in
developed countries slow or decline. ‘Regions such as the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, where the youth bulge will reach over
50% of the population, will possess fewer inhibitions about engaging in conflict.’ 98 The assumption is that regions which happen to
be both energy-rich and Muslim-majority will also be sites of violent conflict due to their rapidly growing populations. A British
Ministry of Defence report concurs with this assessment, highlighting an inevitable ‘youth bulge’ by 2035, with some 87 per cent of
all people under the age of 25 inhabiting developing countries. In particular, the Middle East population will increase by 132 per cent
and sub-Saharan Africa by 81 per cent. Growing resentment due to ‘endemic unemployment’ will be channelled through ‘political
militancy, including radical political Islam whose concept of Umma, the global Islamic community, and resistance to capitalism may
lie uneasily in an international system based on nation-states and global market forces’. More strangely, predicting an intensifying
global divide between a super-rich elite, the middle classes and an urban under-class, the report warns: ‘The world’s middle classes
might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest.’ 99 3.3
Exclusionary logics of global crisis securitisation? Thus, the
securitisation of global crisis leads not only to the
problematisation of particular religious and ethnic groups in foreign regions of geopolitical
interest, but potentially extends this problematisation to any social group which might challenge
prevailing global political economic structures across racial, national and class lines. The previous
examples illustrate how securitisation paradoxically generates insecurity by reifying a process of militarisation against social groups
that are constructed as external to the prevailing geopolitical and economic order. In other words, the
internal
reductionism, fragmentation and compartmentalisation that plagues orthodox theory
and policy reproduces precisely these characteristics by externalising global crises from one
another, externalising states from one another, externalising the inter-state system from its
biophysical environment, and externalising new social groups as dangerous ‘outsiders’. Hence, a
simple discursive analysis of state militarisation and the construction of new ‘outsider’ identities is insufficient to understand the
causal dynamics driving the process of ‘Otherisation’. As Doug Stokes points out, the Western state preoccupation with the ongoing
military struggle against international terrorism reveals an underlying ‘discursive complex’, where representations about terrorism
and non-Western populations are premised on ‘the construction of stark boundaries’ that ‘operate to exclude and include’. Yet these
exclusionary discourses are ‘intimately bound up with political and economic processes’, such as strategic interests in proliferating
military bases in the Middle East, economic interests in control of oil, and the wider political goal of ‘maintaining American
hegemony’ by dominating a resource-rich region critical for global capitalism. 100 But even this does not go far enough, for arguably
the construction of certain hegemonic discourses is mutually constituted by these geopolitical,
strategic and economic interests – exclusionary discourses are politically constituted. New
conceptual developments in genocide studies throw further light on this in terms of the concrete socio-political dynamics of
securitisation processes. It is now widely recognised, for instance, that the distinguishing criterion of genocide is not the preexistence of primordial groups, one of which destroys the other on the basis of a preeminence in bureaucratic military–political
power. Rather, genocide is the intentional attempt to destroy a particular social group that has been socially constructed as different.
101 As Hinton observes, genocides precisely constitute a process of ‘othering’ in which an imagined community becomes reshaped so
that previously ‘included’ groups become ‘ideologically recast’ and dehumanised as threatening and dangerous outsiders, be it along
ethnic, religious, political or economic lines – eventually legitimising their annihilation. 102 In other words, genocidal violence is
inherently rooted in a prior and ongoing ideological process, whereby exclusionary group categories are innovated, constructed and
‘Otherised’ in accordance with a specific socio-political programme. The
very process of identifying and classifying
particular groups as outside the boundaries of an imagined community of ‘inclusion’, justifying
exculpatory violence toward them, is itself a political act without which genocide would be
impossible. 103 This recalls Lemkin’s recognition that the intention to destroy a group is integrally connected with a wider
socio-political project – or colonial project – designed to perpetuate the political, economic, cultural and ideological relations of the
perpetrators in the place of that of the victims, by interrupting or eradicating their means of social reproduction. Only by
interrogating the dynamic and origins of this programme to uncover the social relations from which that programme derives can the
emergence of genocidal intent become explicable. 104 Building on this insight, Semelin demonstrates that the
process of
exclusionary social group construction invariably derives from political processes emerging from
deep-seated sociopolitical crises that undermine the prevailing framework of civil order and
social norms; and which can, for one social group, be seemingly resolved by projecting anxieties
onto a new ‘outsider’ group deemed to be somehow responsible for crisis conditions . It is in this
context that various forms of mass violence, which may or may not eventually culminate in actual genocide, can become legitimised
as contributing to the resolution of crises. 105 This does not imply that the securitisation of global crises by Western defence
agencies is genocidal. Rather, the same essential dynamics of social polarisation and exclusionary group identity formation evident
in genocides are highly relevant in understanding the radicalisation processes behind mass violence. This
highlights the
fundamental connection between social crisis, the breakdown of prevailing norms, the
formation of new exclusionary group identities, and the projection of blame for crisis onto a
newly constructed ‘outsider’ group vindicating various forms of violence. Conclusions While
recommendations to shift our frame of orientation away from conventional state-centrism toward a ‘human security’ approach are
valid, this cannot be achieved without confronting the deeper theoretical assumptions underlying conventional approaches to ‘nontraditional’ security issues. 106 By occluding the structural origin and systemic dynamic of global ecological, energy and economic
crises, orthodox approaches are incapable of transforming them. Coupled with their excessive state-centrism, this means they
operate largely at the level of ‘surface’ impacts of global crises in terms of how they will affect quite traditional security issues relative
to sustaining state integrity, such as international terrorism, violent conflict and population movements. Global crises end up
fuelling the projection of risk onto social networks, groups and countries that cross the geopolitical fault-lines of these ‘surface’
impacts – which happen to intersect largely with Muslim communities. Hence, regions particularly vulnerable to climate change
impacts, containing large repositories of hydrocarbon energy resources, or subject to demographic transformations in the context of
rising population pressures, have become the focus of state security planning in the context of counter-terrorism operations abroad.
The intensifying problematisation and externalisation of Muslim-majority regions and populations by Western security agencies –
as a discourse – is therefore not only interwoven with growing state perceptions of global crisis acceleration, but driven ultimately by
an epistemological failure to interrogate the systemic causes of this acceleration in collective state policies (which themselves occur
in the context of particular social, political and economic structures). This expansion of militarisation is thus coeval with the
subliminal normative presumption that the social relations of the perpetrators, in this case Western states, must be protected and
perpetuated at any cost – precisely because the efficacy of the prevailing geopolitical and economic order is ideologically beyond
question. As much as this analysis highlights a direct link between global systemic crises, social polarisation and state militarisation,
it fundamentally undermines the idea of a symbiotic link between natural resources and conflict per se. Neither ‘resource shortages’
nor ‘resource abundance’ (in ecological, energy, food and monetary terms) necessitate conflict by themselves. There are two key
operative factors that determine whether either condition could lead to con- flict. The first is the extent to which either condition can
generate socio-political crises that challenge or undermine the prevailing order. The second is the way in which stakeholder actors
choose to actually respond to the latter crises. To
understand these factors accurately requires close attention
to the political, economic and ideological strictures of resource exploitation, consumption and
distribution between different social groups and classes. Overlooking the systematic causes of
social crisis leads to a heightened tendency to problematise its symptoms, in the forms of
challenges from particular social groups. This can lead to externalisation of those groups, and
the legitimisation of violence towards them. Ultimately, this systems approach to global crises
strongly suggests that conventional policy ‘reform’ is woefully inadequate. Global warming
and energy depletion are manifestations of a civilisation which is in overshoot. The current scale and organisation of human
activities is breaching the limits of the wider environmental and natural resource systems in which industrial civilisation is
embedded. This breach is now increasingly visible in the form of two interlinked crises in global food production and the global
financial system. In short, industrial civilisation in its current form is unsustainable. This calls for a process of wholesale
civilisational transition to adapt to the inevitable arrival of the post-carbon era through social, political and economic
transformation. Yet conventional theoretical and policy approaches fail to (1) fully engage with the gravity of research in the natural
sciences and (2) translate the social science implications of this research in terms of the embeddedness of human social systems in
natural systems. Hence, lacking
capacity for epistemological self-reflection and inhibiting the
transformative responses urgently required, they reify and normalise mass violence against
diverse ‘Others’, newly constructed as traditional security threats enormously amplified by
global crises – a process that guarantees the intensification and globalisation of insecurity on the
road to ecological, energy and economic catastrophe. Such an outcome, of course, is not inevitable, but
extensive new transdisciplinary research in IR and the wider social sciences – drawing on and
integrating human and critical security studies, political ecology, historical sociology and historical materialism, while engaging
directly with developments in the natural sciences – is
urgently required to develop coherent conceptual
frameworks which could inform more sober, effective, and joined-up policy-making on these
issues.
The alternative to engage in policy analysis of complexity- key to have preferable
political results in a chaotic world
Rosenau, 97 – professor emeritus of international affairs at George Washington (James,
“Many Damn Things Simultaneously: Complexity Theory and World Affairs”, Complexity,
Global Politics, and National Security,
http://www.dodccrp.org/html4/bibliography/comch04.html)
In short, there are strict limits within which theorizing based on the premises of complexity theory
must be confined. It cannot presently—and is unlikely ever to—provide a method for predicting
particular events and specifying the exact shape and nature of developments in the future. As one
observer notes, it is a theory "meant for thought experiments rather than for emulation of real systems."18 Consequently, it is when
our panacean impulses turn us toward complexity theory for guidance in the framing of exact predictions that the policy payoffs are
least likely to occur and our disillusionment is most likely to intensify. For the strides that complexity theorists have made with their
mathematical models and computer simulations are still a long way from amounting to a science that can be relied upon for
precision in charting the course of human affairs that lies ahead. Although their work has demonstrated the existence of an
underlying order, it has also called attention to a variety of ways in which the complexity of that order can collapse into pervasive
disorder. Put differently, while human affairs have both linear and nonlinear dimensions, and while there is a range of conditions in
which the latter dimensions are inoperative or "well behaved,"19 it is not known when or where the nonlinear dimensions will
appear and trigger inexplicable feedback mechanisms. Such
unknowns lead complexity theorists to be as
interested in patterns of disorder as those of order, an orientation that is quite contrary to the
concerns of policy makers. Theorizing Within the Limits To acknowledge the limits of complexity theory,
however, is not to assert that it is of no value for policy makers and academics charged with
comprehending world affairs. Far from it: if the search for panaceas is abandoned and replaced with a nuanced approach,
it quickly becomes clear that the underlying premises of complexity theory have a great deal to offer as a perspective or world view
with which to assess and anticipate the course of events. Perhaps most notably, they
challenge prevailing assumptions
in both the academic and policy-making communities that political, economic, and social
relationships adhere to patterns traced by linear regressions. Complexity theory asserts that it is not the case,
as all too many officials and analysts presume, that "we can get a value for the whole by adding up the values of its parts."20 In the
words of one analyst, Look out the nearest window. Is there any straight line out there that wasn’t man-made? I’ve been asking the
same question of student and professional groups for several years now, and the most common answer is a grin. Occasionally a
philosophical person will comment that even the lines that look like straight lines are not straight lines if we look at them through a
microscope. But even if we ignore that level of analysis, we are still stuck with the inevitable observation that
natural
structures are, at their core, nonlinear. If [this] is true, why do social scientists insist on describing
human events as if all the rules that make those events occur are based on straight lines?21 A
complexity perspective acknowledges the nonlinearity of both natural and human systems. It
posits human systems as constantly learning, reacting, adapting, and changing even as they
persist, as sustaining continuity and change simultaneously. It is a perspective that embraces non-
equilibrium existence. Stated more generally, it is a mental set, a cast of mind that does
not specify particular
outcomes or solutions but that offers guidelines and lever points that analysts and policy makers alike
can employ to more clearly assess the specific problems they seek to comprehend or resolve. Furthermore, the complexity
perspective does not neglect the role of history even though it rejects the notion that a single cause has a single effect. Rather,
focusing as it does on initial conditions and the paths that they chart for systems, complexity treats the historical context of
situations as crucial to comprehension. The first obstacle to adopting a complexity perspective is to recognize that inevitably we
operate with some kind of theory. It is sheer myth to believe that we need merely observe the circumstances of a situation in order to
understand them. Facts do not speak for themselves; observers give them voice by sorting out those that are relevant from those that
are irrelevant and, in so doing, they bring a theoretical perspective to bear. Whether it be realism, liberalism, or pragmatism,
analysts and policy makers alike must have some theoretical orientation if they are to know anything. Theory provides guidelines; it
sensitizes observers to alternative possibilities; it highlights where levers might be pulled and influence wielded; it links ends to
means and strategies to resources; and perhaps most of all,
it infuses context and pattern into a welter of
seemingly disarrayed and unrelated phenomena. It follows that the inability of complexity theory to
make specific predictions is not a serious drawback. Understanding and not prediction is the
task of theory. It provides a basis for grasping and anticipating the general patterns within which
specific events occur. The weather offers a good example. It cannot be precisely predicted at any moment in time, but there
are building blocks—fronts, highs and lows, jet streams, and so on—and our overall understanding of changes in weather has been
much advanced by theory based on these building blocks....We
understand the larger patterns and (many of) their
causes, though the detailed trajectory through the space of weather possibilities is perpetually novel. As a result, we can do far
better than the old standby: predict that "tomorrow’s weather will be like today’s" and you stand a 60 percent probability of being
correct. A relevant theory for [complex adaptive systems] should do at least as well.22 Given
the necessity of proceeding
from a theoretical standpoint, it ought not be difficult to adopt a complexity perspective. Indeed,
most of us have in subtle ways already done so. Even if political analysts are not—as I am not—
tooled up in computer science and mathematics, the premises of complexity theory and the
strides in comprehension they have facilitated are not difficult to grasp. Despite our conceptual
insufficiencies, we are not helpless in the face of mounting complexity. Indeed, as the consequences of turbulent
change have become more pervasive, so have observers of the global scene become increasingly wiser about the ways of the world
and, to a large degree, we
have become, each of us in our own way, complexity theorists. Not only are we
getting accustomed to a fragmegrative world view that accepts contradictions, anomalies, and
dialectic processes, but we have also learned that situations are multiply caused, that unintended
consequences can accompany those that are intended, that seemingly stable situations can
topple under the weight of cumulated grievances, that some situations are ripe for accidents
waiting to happen, that expectations can be self-fulfilling, that organizational decisions are
driven as much by informal as formal rules, that feedback loops can redirect the course of
events, and so on through an extensive list of understandings that appear so commonplace as to
obscure their origins in the social sciences only a few decades ago.23 Indeed, we now take for granted that learning
occurs in social systems, that systems in crisis are vulnerable to sharp turns of directions precipitated by seemingly trivial incidents,
that the difference between times one and two in any situation can often be ascribed to adaptive processes, that the surface
appearance of societal tranquillity can mask underlying problems, and that "other things being equal" can be a treacherous phrase if
it encourages us to ignore glaring exceptions. In short, we now
know that history is not one damn thing after
another so much as it is many damn things simultaneously. And if we ever slip in our
understanding of these subtle lessons, if we ever unknowingly revert to simplistic formulations,
complexity theory serves to remind us there are no panaceas. It tells us that there are limits to how much we
can comprehend of the complexity that pervades world affairs, that we have to learn to become comfortable living and acting under
conditions of uncertainty. The relevance of this accumulated wisdom—this implicit complexity perspective—can be readily
illustrated. It enables us to grasp how an accidental drowning in Hong Kong intensified demonstrations against China, how the
opening of a tunnel in Jerusalem could give rise to a major conflagration, how the death of four young girls can foster a "dark and
brooding" mood in Brussels, how an "October surprise" might impact strongly on an American presidential election, or how social
security funds will be exhausted early in the next century unless corrective policies are adopted—to cite three recent events and two
long-standing maxims.24 We know, too that while the social security example is different from the others—in that it is founded on a
linear projection of demographic change while the other examples involve nonlinear feedback loops—the world is comprised of
linear as well as nonlinear dynamics and that this distinction is central to the kind of analysis we undertake. In other words, while
it is understandable that we are vulnerable to the appeal of panaceas, this need not be the case.
Our analytic capacities and concepts are not so far removed from complexity theorists that we
need be in awe of their accomplishments or be ready to emulate their methods. Few of us have the
skills or resources to undertake sophisticated computer simulations—and that may even be an advantage, as greater technical skills
complexity theory is not
out of our reach. None of its premises and concepts are alien to our analytic habits. They sum to a perspective that
is consistent with our own and with the transformations that appear to be taking the world into
unfamiliar realms. Hence, through its explication, the complexity perspective can serve as a guide
both to comprehending a fragmegrated world and theorizing within its limits.
might lead us to dismiss complexity theory as inapplicable—but as a philosophical perspective
WTO
1NC
Collapse of GATT/WTO credibility results in new regionalism which solves
protectionism and conflict better than the aff
Brkic 13, [Snježana, Economics Professor at U of Sarajevo “ Regional Trading Arrangements – Stumbling Blocks or Building Blocks in the
Process of Global Trade Liberalization?, papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2239275]
Besides those advocating the optimistic or pessimistic view on regionalism effect on global trade liberalization, some economists, such as Frankel and Wei, hold a neutral
regionalism can
be – depending on circumstances – linked to greater or smaller global trade liberalization. In the years-long period of regional
integration development, four periods have been identified during which the integration processes were becoming particularly intensive and which have
therefore been named "waves of regionalism". The first wave was taking place during the capitalism development in the second half of the 19th century,
position, in a way. Frankel and Wei believe that forms and achievements of international economic integrations can vary and that, for this reason,
in the course of British sovereign domination over the world market. Economic integrations of the time primarily had the form of bilateral customs unions; however, owing to
the comparative openness of international trading system based on the golden standard automatism, this period is called the "era of progressive bilateralism". The next two
waves of regionalism occurred in the years following the world wars. Since the disintegration processes caused by the wars usually spawned economic nationalisms and
autarchic tendencies, it is not surprising that post-war regionalisms were marked by discriminatory international economic integrations, primarily at the level of so-called
negative integration, with expressedly “beggar-thy-neighbor” policies that resulted in considerable trade deviations. This particularly refers to the regionalism momentum after
the First World War, which was additionally burdened by the consequences of Big Economic Crisis. The current wave of regionalism started in late 1980s and spread around the
world to a far greater extent than any previous one did: it has covered almost all the continents and almost all the countries, even those which have mis to join all earlier regional
Up till now, over 200 RTAs
have been registered with GATT/WTO, more than 150 of them being still in force, and most of these
valid arrangement have been made in the past ten years. Specific in many ways, this wave was dubbed
"new regionalism". The most specific characteristics of new regionalism include: geographic spread of RTAs in terms of
encompassing entire continents; greater speed; integration forms success; deepening of integration processes;
and, the most important for this theoretical discussion, generally non-negative impact on outsiders, world economy as a
whole, and the multilateral liberalization process. Some theorists (Gilpin) actually distinguish between the "benign" and "malign"
regionalism. On the one hand, regionalism can advance the international economic stability, multilateral
liberalization and world peace. On the other, it can have mercantilist features leading to economic well-being degradation and increasing international
tensions and conflicts. Analyses of trends within the contemporary integration processes show that they
mainly have features of "benign" regionalism. Reasons for this are numerous. Forces driving the contemporary regionalism development
differ from those that used to drive earlier regionalism periods in the 20th century. The present regionalism emerged in the period
characterized by the increasing economic inter-dependence between different world economy
subjects, countries attempts to resolve trade disputes and multilateral framework of trade relations. As opposed to the 1930s episode, contemporary regional initiatives
initiatives, such as the USA, Canada, Japan and China. Integration processes, however, do not show any signs of flagging.
represent attempts to make the members' participation in the world economy easier, rather than make them more distant from it. As opposed to 1950s and 1960s episode,
new initiatives are less frequently motivated exclusively by political interests, and are less frequently being
used for mercantilist purposes. After the Second World War, more powerful countries kept using the economic integration as a means to strengthen
their political influence on their weaker partners and outsiders. The examples include CMEA and European Community arrangements with its members' former colonies. As
new regionalism, mostly driven by common economic interests, yielded less trade diversion than previous one, and has also
contributed to the prevention of military conflicts of greater proportions. Various analyses have shown that many
opposed to this practice, the
regional integrations in earlier periods resulted in trade deviations, particularly those formed between less developed countries and between socialist countries. In recent years,
the newly formed or revised regional integrations primarily seem to lead to trade creation. Contrary to the “beggar
thy- neighbor” model of former international economic integrations, the integrations now offer certain advantages to outsiders as well, by
stimulating growth and spurring the role of market forces. The analyses of contemporary trends in world economy also speak in favor of the "optimistic"
proposition. The structural analysis shows that the world trade is growing and that this growth results both from the
increase in intra-regional and from the increase in extra-regional trade value (Anderson i Snape 1994.)28.
however,
Actually, the intraregional trade has been growing faster, both by total value and by its share in world GDP. The extra-regional trade share in GDP was increasing in some
regions – in North America, Asia-Pacific and Asian developing countries. However, the question arises as to whether the extra-regional trade would be greater without regional
integrations or not? The answer would primarily depend both on the estimate of degree of some countries' trade policy restrictedness in such circumstances, and on factors such
as geographic distance, transport communications, political relations among states. One should also take into account certain contemporary integration features – the primarily
economic, rather than strategic motivation, and continuous expansion, which mostly includes countries that are significant economic partners. With respect to NAFTA, many
believe that the negative effects on outsiders will be negligible, since the USA and Canada have actually been highly integrated economies for a long time already, while the
Mexican economy is relatively small. The same view was pointed out by the EU, with respect to its expansion. It particularly refers to the inclusion of the remaining EFTA
countries, because this will actually only complete, in institutional terms, the EU strong economic ties with these countries. Most EFTA countries have been part of the European
economic area (EEA), i.e. the original EC-EFTA agreement, for a few years already, and conduct some 70% of their total international exchange with the Union countries. EU
countries are also the most significant foreign-trade partners of Central and East Europe countries, and the recent joining the Union of several of them is not expected to cause a
significant trade diversion. Besides, according to some earlier studies, during the previous wave of regionalism, in the 1967-70 period, the creation of trade in EEC was far
greater than trade diversion: trade creation ranged from 13 to 23% of total imports, while trade diversion ranged from 1 to 6%. In Latin America, the new regionalism resulted in
the faster growth of intra-regional trade, while the extra-regional exports and imports also continued to grow. Since early 1990s, the value of intra-regional imports registered
the average annual growth of 18%. In the same time, the extra-regional exports were also growing, although at a lower rate of 9% average a year; its share in the total Latin
America exports at the end of decade amounted to 18% as compared to 12% in 1990. In the 1990-1996 period, the intraregional imports grew by some 18% a year. The extraregional imports were also growing very fast, reaching the 14% rate. These data reflect a great unbalance in the trade with extra-regional markets, since the imports from
countries outside the region grew much faster the exports.30 Since the described trends point to the continued growth of extra-regional imports and exports, they also show that
regional integration in Latin America has had the open regionalism character. Besides, the pending establishment of FTAA – Free Trade Area of Americas will gather, in the
same group, the so-called "natural" trade partners – countries that have had an extremely extensive mutual exchange for years already, and the outsiders are therefore unlikely
to be affected by strengthening of regionalism in this part of the world. Contemporary research shows that intra-regional trade is growing, however, same as interdependence
between North America and East Asia and between the EU and East Asia. It can also be seen that the biggest and the most powerful countries, i.e. blocs, are extremely
dependent on the rest of the world in terms of trade. For the EU, besides the intra-European trade, which is ranked first, foreign trade has the vital importance since it accounts
for 10% of European GDP. In early 1990s, EU exchanged 40% of its foreign trade with non-members, 16% out of which with North America and East Asia together. EU therefore
must keep in mind the rest of the world as well. The growing EU interest in outsiders is confirmed by establishing "The Euro-Med Partnership", which proclaimed a new form of
cooperation between the EU and the countries at its South periphery32. Besides, the past few years witnessed a series of inter-regional agreements between the EU on the one
hand, and certain groups from other regions on the other (MERCOSUR, CARICOM, ASEAN and GCC). In case of North America the ratio between intra-regional and interregional trade is 40:60, and in East Asia, it is 45:55. Any attempt to move towards significantly closed blocs ("fortresses") would require overcoming the significant inter-
other research was conducted
that was supposed to point to the reasons why the new regionalism has mainly a non-negative
impact on outsiders and global liberalization. The distinctive features of new regionalism were
also affected to characteristics of international economic and political environment it sprouted
in. In the 1980s, economic nationalisms were not so expressed as in the interventionism years following the Second World War; however, the neo-liberalism
represented by GATT activities did not find the "fertile ground” in all parts of the world.
Regionalism growth in the circumstances of multilateral system existence is, among other things, the
consequence of distrust in multilateralism. „The revival of the forces of regionalism stemmed
from frustration with the slow pace of multilateral trade liberalization... If the world trade regime could not be moved
dependence between major trading blocs. Besides the analysis of contemporary trends in extra- and intra-regional trade,
ahead, then perhaps it was time for deeper liberalization within more limited groups of like-minded nations... Such efforts would at least liberalize some trade... and might even
prod the other nations to go along with multilateral liberalization.“33 Kennedy's round and Tokyo round of trade negotiations under GATT auspices brought a certain progress
in the global trade liberalization. However, the 1980s witnessed significant changes in the world economy that the GATT trade system was not up to. Besides. GATT had not yet
managed to cover the entire trade in goods, since there were still exceptions in the trade in agricultural and textile products that particularly affected the USA and developing
GATT system of conflict resolutions, and its organizational and administrative mechanism
in general also required revision. In this vacuum that was created in promoting trade and
investment multilateralism from the point when GATT inadequacy became obvious until the start of the Uruguay round
and the establishment of World Trade Organization, the wave of regionalism started spreading across the world again.
countries.
Prodded by the Single European Act and the success of European integration, many countries turned to an alternative solution – establishment of new or expansion and
deepening of the existing economic integrations. Even the USA, the multilateralism bastion until then, made a radical turn in their foreign-trade policy and started working on
designing a North American integration.
Regional trading blocs solves every global problem – multilateralism is ineffective
without it
Behr and Jokela 11 - Timo Behr Timo Behr is a Research Fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA)
¶
¶
¶
in Helsinki, where he heads FIIA’s ¶ research project on “The Middle East ¶ in Transition.” He is also an Associate ¶ Fellow with Notre
Europe’s “Europe and ¶ World Governance” programme. Timo ¶ holds a PhD and MA in International ¶ Relations from the School of
Advances ¶ International Studies of the Johns ¶ Hopkins University in Washington DC ¶ and has previously held positions with ¶ Notre
Europe, the World Bank Group ¶ and the Global Public Policy Institute ¶ (GPPi) in Berlin. His recent publications ¶ include an edited
volume on “The EU’s ¶ Options in a Changing Middle East” ¶ (FIIA, 2011), as well as a number of ¶ academic articles, policy briefs and ¶
commentaries on Euro-Mediterranean ¶ relations. Juha Jokela¶ Juha Jokela is the Programme Director ¶ of the European Union
research ¶ programme at the Finnish Institute of ¶ International Affairs (FIIA). He was a ¶ Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the ¶
European Union Institute for Security ¶ Studies from September 2009 to March ¶ 2010. Prior to this he was advisor at the ¶ Ministry
for Foreign Affairs of Finland ¶ (2009), and Director of the University ¶ of Helsinki Network for European ¶ Studies (2008). At the
FIIA, his research ¶ focuses on the role of the G20 in global ¶ governance, regionalism and the ¶ EU’s relations with Asia. His
previous ¶ publications include “The Role of the ¶ European Union in Asia: China and India ¶ as Strategic Partners” (Ashgate, 2009),
¶ “Europeanization and Foreign Policy: ¶ State Identity in Finland and Britain” ¶ (Routledge, 2010) and “The G-20: A ¶ pathway to
effective multilateralism?” ¶ (EUISS, 2011). [“Regionalism & Global Governance: ¶ The Emerging Agenda” http://www.notreeurope.eu/media/regionalism_globalgovernance_t.behr-j.jokela_ne_july2011_01.pdf?pdf=ok]
Although regionalism has often been portrayed as a force that is opposed to the ¶ development to globalization, both processes are
intrinsically linked with global ¶ developments. Moreover, during the “third phase” of regionalism (as explicated in ¶ third part of
this paper) globalization itself can
be seen as one of the main driver of ¶ regionalism and regionalization. In
¶ cooperation and integration are likely to continue to play a
the emerging interpolar world order, regional
major role. Within the ¶ context of the current transformation of the world order, however, regional develop- ments have
attained rather limited public and scholarly attention. This is peculiar ¶ as regional cooperation continues to be high
on the agenda of states and other ¶ actors. Dissatisfaction with the performance of global governance
institutions has ¶ led to a joint response at the regional level after the end of the Cold War and is ¶ likely
to do so again. Current trends, such as the emergence of G20, have also ¶ made regional cooperation
increasingly meaningful for the G20 members as well ¶ as all non-members.¶ This section suggests that one key
question for the future of regionalism is therefore ¶ not its continuing significance, but the type of regional cooperation states and ¶
other stakeholders will favor during the coming decades. In addition, the section ¶ envisages the growing importance of region-toregion (or interregional) relationships in the future. In an interpolar world these could take the shape of (i) an open ¶ and
interconnected set of relations among different regions or (ii) formation of ¶ closed and competing regional poles (fortresses).¶
While the financial and economic crisis has highlighted global challenges and ¶ developments –
embodied in the G20 – regionalism seems to have escaped the ¶ headlines, despite its potential role in
addressing these issues in the future. Almost ¶ unnoticed, regionalism has in fact been gaining speed in several
places. One case ¶ in point is Asia. Although bottom-up processes of regionalization have been
symptomatic for Asian cooperation, regional organizations are gradually developing and ¶ gaining
importance. The role of ASEAN has strengthened, and it now incorporates ¶ Asian economic giants China, India and Japan
through the so-called ASEAN+3-¶ arrangement. In addition, while some have seen an East Asian Community (EAC) ¶ emerging out
of the ASEAN+3 or the East Asian Summit (EAS) process, others have ¶ envisaged a broader Asian Union by 2014 (Rifkin 2010).
While the relevance of the ¶ SAARC has been questioned, the 2010 summit found common ground in the fields ¶ of democratic
development and climate change. Similarly, in the context of the current financial and economic crisis, the emerging ¶ markets have
been highly active in exploring regional alternatives for global ¶ arrangements. Last year Russia called for concerted action to break
the stronghold of the US dollar and create a new global structure of regional powers (Desai ¶ & Vreeland 2010). In East Asia, the
Chiang Mai Initiative of the ASEAN+3 has been seen as a precursor to an (East) Asian Monetary Union. In
South America,
the ¶ envisaged merger of Mercosur and the Andean Community into the Union of South ¶ American Nations
(UNASUR) as well as Venezuelan proposals to create a Banco ¶ del Sur and the Latin American Reserve Fund (FLAR)
have found support across ¶ the region in an attempt to balance the Bretton Woods institutions.
In Africa, the ¶ African Union has become a major forum and a recognized actor. Recently it has ¶
proposed the creation of an African Monetary Fund.¶ Many forms of inter- and sub-regional cooperation have
also emerged or are being ¶ re-discovered. Major Asian powers and regional organization are increasingly ¶ engaged
with other regions and powers. This development is highlighted by the ¶ US and other Pacific players’ commitment in APEC and the
EU’s engagement with ¶ these countries within the framework of ASEM. The EU has also aimed to promote ¶ regionalism in the
region through its strategic partnerships with China, India and ¶ Japan. Interregional relations have also developed between the
African Union and ¶ Mercosur. Interregionalism is not however tied to the EU. The Arctic Council, for ¶ instance, brings together
arctic states to address the arctic’s political, economic ¶ and social development in the face of global challenges related to climate
change ¶ and prospects related to the arctic’s underexplored energy resources. Different ¶ forms of regional cooperation have also
been established around the Baltic Sea ¶ and the EU has been promoting a Union for the Mediterranean.¶ These
forums
address a wide set of challenges related, amongst others, to the ¶ environment and development.
Some also include a broad set of stakeholders. ¶ In addition to states, regional organizations, private businesses and NGOs are ¶
actively participating. At the sub-regional level, the long tradition of Nordic cooperation is also re-gaining importance on the
agendas of the Nordic countries. ¶ While some scholars have proposed a Nordic federation in order to enhance these ¶ countries
positions in an interpolar world, policy-makers have been mainly discussing closer security and defense cooperation. ere are many
interconnected reasons for these developments. As the first part ¶ of this report suggests, regional cooperation has a long history in
addressing ¶ common regional and global issues. The
simultaneous expansion of multipolarity ¶ and
interdependency have further underlined the importance of regional cooperation and regionalism.
Regional governance is closer to the source of the problems ¶ to be tackled, be they security
threats, energy security, economic instability and ¶ crises or environmental
challenges such as climate change (NIC 2010). Moreover, ¶ regional cooperation provides one
global public good that is in high demand
CUT HERE
in the ¶ evolving international environment and especially for the always jittery financial ¶ markets – certainty.
Regionalism serves as an insurance policy against instability ¶ and – in case of a monetary union –
reduced transaction costs, thereby increasing ¶ certainty and allowing smoother interactions and
exchanges.¶ In addition, the recent failure to address transnational issues within a global
governance framework has shifted the attention of stakeholder towards potential ¶ regional
solutions. Thus, the global financial crisis and stagnating UNFCC negotiations have amplified the need to address interdependent
challenges also ¶ at a regional level. Finally, these developments are also linked to multipolarity ¶ in that preeminent powers such as Brazil, China, India, Japan and South Africa ¶ have chosen to invest in regional
arrangements to confirm their leadership and to ¶ manage economic development and political
differences.¶ Against this background, regional governance is both necessary and complementary to
global governance structures, whether formal or informal. Due to legitimacy and implementation considerations, the
G20 has reached out to other states ¶ as well as global and regional institutions. The presidency of the
G20 is increasingly engaging with broad consultations though traditional shuttle diplomacy with ¶ regional and international
organizations. Countries excluded
from the G20 have ¶ also turned towards various forms of
cooperation to make their voices heard, often ¶ with a clear regional dimension. In this context, the
European Union constitutes an ¶ interesting case. On the one hand, the EU’s seat in the G20 is necessary in terms ¶ of the
implementation of the G20 decisions, as part of the G20 governance falls ¶ under EU competences. On the other hand, the EU
members, which are not the G20 ¶ members, are indirectly represented in the forum. allowed for a greater representation of
emerging economies in the G20. ¶ While single European representation is improbable in the near future, EU and ¶ European
Central Bank seats reduced pressures for the incorporation of Spain and ¶ Netherlands in the G20 (Jokela 2011). Due to the size of
their economies, both states could have made justified claims to be part of the club in 1997 when the ¶ G20 was created at ministerial
level and also 2008 when it was upgraded to the ¶ leaders’ level. With the implementation of the Lisbon treaty, EU representation is
¶ widely discussed in a variety of multilateral institutions. Given the considerable ¶ challenges – opposition to increased European
representation on the one hand ¶ and reluctance of the EU member states to give up their individual seats on the ¶ other –
regional representation could constitute a way to streamlining multilateral institutions.¶
Given the continuing salience of regional cooperation in an interpolar world, the ¶ nature of
regionalism becomes a highly topical question that should be put under ¶ closer analytical scrutiny. Our initial
observations suggest a turn towards à la carte¶ regionalism and increasing intergovermentalism. Both can turn out to be detrimental
for the recognized need for strong regional and global governance institutions through which common problems are indentified,
joint interests realized and ¶ effective action facilitated.¶ The
move towards looser and informal global
governance and ‘multilateralism ¶ light’ can be reflected in regional cooperation. There will be
likely a continuing ¶ tension between regional and global levels of governance and a temptation
for the ¶ great powers to impose their preferences on the former. Similarly, in the context ¶ of loose
and informal governance structures they are able to choose the level and ¶ forum of their
engagement. The interpolar world also seems to encourage a certain kind of regionalism, namely ¶
intergovernmental cooperation, rather than supranational regionalism. Indeed, ¶ the EU’s supranational model has been challenged
in interregional arrangements ¶ such as ASEM (Tiilikainen 2008). There is very little evidence suggesting a set up ¶ of strong
regional bodies with supranational authority vested into EU institutions, ¶ the WTO or the International Criminal Court. Indeed,
these institutions supranational powers might be increasingly challenged in an interpolar world. A
degree ¶ of supranationality in the sense of settling disputes in the formulation of common ¶ positions is however needed if regional
cooperation is to maintain its legitimacy. ¶ Without this, new forms of regionalism build around the new emerging powers risk ¶
turning into a form of condominium rule. In the light of the above, a
central question for the future development of
regionalism relates to the various regional integration and cooperation processes and ¶ relationship(s)
with (i) global developments and institutions as well as (ii) other ¶ regional processes. In terms of the former axis of relations
significant differences can be identified. While the EU has sought an increasingly autonomous role ¶ and recognition in global
governance institutions, other regional processes tend to ¶ rely heavily on the role of their member states at the global level. Indeed,
many of ¶ the regional organization and forums tend to speak through the emerging regional ¶
powers in global governance. In case of the EU, we can observe an opposite development. The European states have been
prone to speak through and for the EU, ¶ and they have been keen to develop institutions and instruments in this respect. ¶ To some
extent a similar tendency can be observed in ASEAN, although on a lower ¶ scale. The latter set of relations touches upon the
emergence of interregionalism. ¶ As the next section suggests, the EU’s role as hub of region-to-region relations has ¶ been a
significant factor in the development of interregional relations. The emerging ¶ multipolar order has however geared the EU’s
attention towards the major regional ¶ powers. In so doing, it has nevertheless aimed to promote regionalism elsewhere ¶ through its
strategic partnerships. Moreover, ongoing developments also suggest ¶ that development of the interregional relations might
increasingly bypass Europe, ¶ as alternative
models and forms of regional cooperation are growing
stronger.
Their evidence is just a snapshot – the overarching trends prove the plan is not a
necessary condition for Chinese growth
Strother 4-22 [Stuart, PhD and Prof Economics at AZUSA Pacific University. “China's
Explosive Economy: Help or Harm?” 4/22/13 http://www.apu.edu/articles/20177/ //GBS-JV]
Part of the
impressive growth stems from the simple math of starting near zero. The implementation of
communism in the 1950s and 1960s nationalized productive industries, collectivized agriculture,
closed foreign firms, and ostracized China’s most educated citizens, especially the entrepreneur class. Many
fled the country. My friend Leah’s family ran a bakery in Zhejiang at the time. Mao’s Red Guards closed the business and forced the
family to work on farm collectives. Mao Zedong did well to establish what many call “New China,” but his economic policies,
especially the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, resulted in deindustrialization,
famine, and the ruin of the economy. Apparently, the tasty cakes at Leah’s bakery were too great a threat to communist
rule.¶ “Poverty is not socialism; to be rich is glorious,” explained China’s new leader as he broke from Mao’s policies and enacted
widespread reforms that transformed China’s economy from a dysfunctional totalitarian state to what is today mostly a market
economy. Premier Deng Xiaoping’s Open Door policies attracted the return of foreign investment, and the Deep Reforms
modernized and deregulated much of the economy. Today, with the exception of security, defense, and media, nearly
every
sector of the economy is market-based.¶ In the 1980s, foreign firms such as General Electric, General Motors
(GM), and Volkswagen renewed their China operations, opening factories in the new Special Economic Zones that offered tax breaks
and other incentives. Foreign firms engaged the Chinese economy for two key reasons: sourcing or selling. In the 1980s, Chinese
labor was very cheap, so foreign firms opened factories in China to cut manufacturing costs. The consumer market, albeit large, was
poor in the 1980s, but in recent years, consumer
spending is on the rise. Many foreign firms from Pringles to
Panerai, from McDonald’s to Maserati, derive a significant amount of their income from their China
operations.¶ Most foreign firms entered into mutually beneficial joint ventures with local
companies, and while the foreign firms were able to expand their businesses, the local firms
acquired foreign technology, allowing the Chinese economy to advance up the value chain.
Factories specializing in laptops and Cadillacs are replacing those that once made paper clips and underwear.¶ Workers’ wages
and consumer purchasing power have significantly grown since the beginning of reforms. Today,
China’s 1.3 billion consumers make up one-seventh of the world’s population. About half are in cities
and the rest in the countryside. Aggregate national statistics, such as average per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of just
$5,434, make China appear as a poor, developing nation, but the
wealthiest 300 million urban consumers
comprise a consumer market equal in size to the entire U.S. population with similar
discretionary income.
2NC
Regionalism is a prerequisite to multilat
Wu 12 - Jennifer Pédussel Wu Berlin School of Economics and Law (HWR-Berlin) [“New Kid on the Block: The China, Japan, and South Korea FTA
¶
(An Analysis of Regional Economic Integration in Asia” http://www.etsg.org/ETSG2012/Programme/Papers/142.pdf]
In May 2012, it was once again announced that China, Japan and South Korea ¶ were to meet in a summit to launch negotiations for
a three-way free trade pact.1¶ These ¶ three northeastern Asian countries make up nearly 20% of global GDP and accounted for ¶
close to 19% of total exports in 2010 – almost as much as NAFTA. They have spoken ¶ repeatedly over the years about an FTA, but it
has never entered into a serious phase of ¶ negotiations. ¶ This time may be different. Chinese premier Wen JiaBiao indicated in May
that ¶ the
slow economic recovery coupled with increasing global trade protectionism has lead ¶
many countries to seek to strengthen regional economic integration in order to contribute ¶ to
expanded market share and increased competitiveness¶ 2¶ . In Wu (2005), I argued that ¶ one main reason for
countries to seek to join a regional integration agreement centered on ¶ self-protection. The argument by Premier Wen fits that
theory and therefore, these ¶ indications of an FTA between China, Japan and S. Korea may be very different than in ¶ the past. A
Baldwin domino effect for Asian regionalism would then emerge. But how ¶ might be such an FTA affect regional and world trade? ¶
The literature on Regional Trade Agreements (RTA) generally asks if these ¶ agreements make multilateral liberalization more or
less likely? If RTAs successfully ¶ interact in the multilateral regime of trade negotiation, do they serve as building blocks, ¶ i.e.,
stepping stones or stumbling blocks to free trade? This essential question, whose¶ terminology was first introduced by Bhagwati
(1991), has continued to be a spectra over ¶ research concerning regional trade liberalization. Bhagwati first coined the term in an ¶
article examining whether membership expansion of RTAs should be as a test of whether ¶ they serve as "building blocks" for the
freeing of worldwide trade. If joining a RTA ¶ triggers multilateral negotiations then RTAs may indeed be seen as "building blocks".
As ¶ such, they would be encouraged as a medium to reach multilateral free trade. However, ¶ he argued, it is more likely that RTA
formation hinders the advancement of multilateral ¶ free trade due to the adverse affect of RTA formation on countries' incentives to
continue ¶ multilateral negotiations. ¶ Several theoretical models expand on the questions raised by Bhagwati. Ethier ¶ (1998) argued
that regionalism
promotes the successful entry of 'reforming' countries into ¶ the multilateral
system in a way that multilateralism cannot do alone. Thus, in effect, ¶ RTAs are "stepping stones" to
multilateral trade liberalization. Ethier's argument applied ¶ to the 'new regionalism' where developing countries form
RTAs with developed countries. ¶ It does not, however, apply to the previous waves of regionalism in the 1960s and 1970s. ¶
Lawrence (1995) suggests that increased regional
integration does not necessarily ¶ undermine the World Trade
Organization (WTO) and extra-regional linkages are of great ¶ importance. If RTAs can be constructed
in such a way as to provide credibility and ¶ reinforcement of market forces, then a more
integrated economy can result. ¶ There are also informal arguments presented to support the
“stepping stones” ¶ hypothesis – the idea that multilateralism results from regional
agreements. Summers ¶ (1991) has suggested that multilateral negotiations will move more quickly when the ¶ number of
negotiators is reduced to three via trade block formation. Bergsten (1994)¶ argues that the threat of block formation aids multilateral
negotiations. Panagariya ¶ (1998) suggests that RTAs can unify protectionist lobbies and turn them into more ¶ effective obstacles to
trade liberalization. This is because many RTAs are between ¶ developed and developing countries and are associated with a
perceived loss of wages in ¶ developed countries. Multilateral negotiations draw less attention from protectionist ¶ lobbies and are
thus easier to achieve in democratic countries.
¶
Regionalism is a stepping stone – neo-realism and neoliberalism are wrong
Guraziu 08 - Rudi Guraziu Middlesex University School of Health and Social Sciences Globalisation: International Political Economy
¶
¶
¶
¶
Political & International Studies MA International Relations [“Is regionalism a stumbling block or a stepping stone in the process of globalisation?”
http://archive.atlantic-community.org/app/webroot/files/articlepdf/Regionalism%20%20a%20stepping%20stone%20or%20a%20stumbling%20block%20in%20the%20process%20of%20globalisation.pdf May]
¶
While the 'old' regionalism was state-centric, internally focused and imposed from above; the
'new' regionalism involves
non-state actors and is more open and more comprehensive. Optimally, 'open regionalism' ought to
be seen as a stepping stone towards the process of globalisation, still it remains a highly ambiguous
and contested concept. ¶ Neo-realist assumptions, based on power politics, argue that the reasons
behind 'regionalist arrangements' are mainly security related. International organizations for them are
nothing more than interstate institutions; therefore, it is irrelevant whether they were regional or global. Yet, successful EU
integration where member states of the union have voluntarily given up parts of their
sovereignty to supernational bodies poses a direct challenge to the neo-realist view on
regionalism. Neo-liberals, with strongly Eurocentric views, seem to emphasise cooperation among states
and focus on the promotion of free trade and open regionalism. For neo-liberals, regionalism
need be neither a steeping stone nor a stumbling block. Neo-marxists, in contrast, argue that the
new regionalism promoted by neo-liberals intends to divide the developing countries so that
capitalist centres can exploit their economies. They could confront this 'continuously deepening polarisation
generated by the capitalist globalisation process' with regionalisation. In the end, it must be acknowledged
that in regions like Africa where the European model appears to have failed some other form of collective cooperation might work
against the waves of globalisation. However, the
empirical evidence indicates that international trade is
mainly happening in an intra-regional and inter-regional level, more precisely between and
within the EU, NAFTA, and APEC. Consequently, the new regionalism is increasing political,
economic, security, and community cooperation within and between regions. The cooperation between
EU, NAFTA, MERCUR, and APEC supports the assertion. In this sense, 'open regionalism' may well serve as a
stepping stone in the process of globalisation.
Regionalism creates a bottom up approach to establishing a new framework for
trade
Hughes 13 (Kent, Director, Program on America and the Global Economy, Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars, September 2013, “Have Regional and Bilateral Trade
Agreements Usurped the WTO?”,
http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/freetrade.pdf#page=17///TS)
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is under attack, not for what is has done but for its
failure to deal with new challenges to international trade. Regional trade and
bilateral trade agreements have surged as a result. Beyond specific rules, large
trade imbalances, currency manipulation and significant investment incentives all
demand action. There is a risk of a weakened WTO or one that becomes increasingly
irrelevant to global trade. There is promise, however, in the ability of bilateral and regional freetrade agreements to develop new governing rules for international trade that can, in turn, create
a new structure for the WTO. The current structure of trade rules is based off the assumption of competitive free markets
with limited intervention by national governments. With the rise of Japan, an alternate approach to growth
has arisen, often referred to as the East Asian Miracle. China is now practicing its own variant of
this approach. State-owned and state-influenced enterprises now play a significant and growing
role in international trade. Currencies are kept undervalued acting as a subsidy to exports and a
barrier to imports. Generous tax and other subsidies are used to attract high-technology
factories and research facilities from the United States and other advanced industrial countries.
Rampant intellectual property theft, the impact of trade on the environment, labor and the
distribution of the fruits of global growth all raise concerns. Instead of attempting to
fashion new rules at the 159-member WTO, small clusters of countries can work
on developing rules that will eventually command global respect. The ongoing
Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations are exploring rules for state-owned
enterprises, intellectual property and digital data and may explore the reality of undervalued
currencies. The recently launched Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership holds out
the potential for harmonizing a host of regulatory rules that could become a
global, WTO sanctioned standard. Regional trade negotiations can be a laboratory
for trade rules that will revitalize the WTO. Jagdish Bhagwati, the eminent trade economist from
Columbia University has decried the proliferation of free-trade agreements as a spaghetti
bowl of international trade. Adding the experimental sauce of regional trade
agreements can make that spaghetti bowl a tasty meal for a 21st-century WTO.
No retaliatory protectionism – it’s a chicken game
Boffa and Olarreaga 12 - Mauro Boffa, yDepartment of Economics, University of Geneva Marcelo Olarreaga, zCorresponding author: Department of
¶
Economics, University of Geneva [“Protectionism during the crisis: Tic-for-tac or chicken-games?” http://www.unige.ch/ses/dsec/repec/files/12034.pdf]
¶
The results of the estimation of model (2) with and without importer and exporter¶ fixed-effects are reported in Table 1. The first
two columns report linear probability estimates¶ as robustness for logit estimates. All four models describe the data relatively well
and¶ control variables have signs that are robust across specifications. Countries
tend to impose¶ protectionist
measures on countries that are similar in terms of size, with whom they share¶ a border, which
represents a large share of imports, and which did not introduce liberalizing¶ measures vis-a-vis
home exports.¶ More importantly, across the four models there is no evidence of retaliation, but rather¶ the
opposite. If a protectionist measure is imposed by a trading partner on home exports,¶ this reduces
the probability of observing a measure imposed by home on the partner's export ¶ bundle by 40 to
70 percent. This result is hard to explain in a non-cooperative trade policy¶ setting, which would predict tic-for-tac strategies (i.e., a
positive coefficient on the variable¶ of interest). It cannot be explained either in a cooperative setup, where we should observe no¶
systematic correlation between measures imposed by and on a trading partner (see Bagwell¶ and Staiger, 1999).¶ A
potential
explanation for our empirical result is Rapoport's (1966) \Chicken-game".¶ This type of game differs from
the classic prisoner's dilemma setup in that the worst possible¶ outcome for a player does not
arise when the other player deviates from the cooperative¶ strategy, but rather when both
deviate. Figure (1) illustrates this payoff matrix. The¶ are two players moving simultaneously with two pure strategies:2 \status
quo" and \trade¶ barrier". The payoff matrix is assumed to be symmetrical. The key assumption is that the¶ outcome of a
trade war (both adopting a \trade barrier" strategy) is worse for each of the¶ players than the outcome of
maintaining the status quo or having the partner only impose¶ a trade barrier.¶ One potential explanation for this payoff
matrix would involve a combination of both¶ existing rationales for trade agreements: terms-of-trade and the value of commitment¶
vis-a-vis domestic lobbies as in Maggi and Rodrguez-Clare (2007). In such a world a¶ 2We abstract from mixed strategies because
any mixed equilibrium will not be evolutionary stable.¶ 4 move
from playing the \status-quo" strategy to playing
the \trade barrier" strategy brings a terms-of-trade gain that can be dominated by the loss
associated with not having a credible commitment mechanism any longer. This loss can be
significantly larger when the trading partner is also playing the \trade barrier" strategy. It is clear
that there are two pure-strategy Nash equilibria which involve one country imposing a trade barrier
and the other chickening-out. Note that these two pure-strategy Nash equilibria are inefficient and there is a role for trade
agreements to support cooperation.3 We found no evidence of trade retaliation during the recent
economic crisis, but rather¶ the opposite. The probability of observing a protectionist measure
imposed on a trading¶ partner significantly declines when the trading partner imposes a
protectionist measure on¶ home exports. Chicken-games rather than prisoner's dilemma seem to have
been played¶ among trade policy makers during the crisis, providing indirect support for theories of trade¶ agreements that
combine both terms-of-trade and commitment motives.
WTO collapse will cause a shift to bilateral trade and passage of the TTIP now.
Elliot, 2014 Larry, The Guardian, “World Trade Organisation has reached its make or break moment”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/economics-blog/2014/aug/01/world-trade-organisation-make-or-break
Make no mistake, the
failure of WTO members to ratify a deal designed to streamline customs
procedures by preventing needless delays and corruption at borders is a huge setback to the
multilateral trading system. It paves the way for countries to cut their own bilateral or
regional deals. For the WTO, it threatens to be fatal. Here's the situation. It is more than 20
years since the last global trade deal was done and dusted. A new round of talks began with an ambitious
agenda in Doha in 2001 but went nowhere fast. The issues – including services, manufacturing and agriculture – were too
complex and contentious; big developing countries were no longer prepared to be pushed around by Brussels and
Washington. Eventually, under a new director general, a deal was finally agreed in Bali last December. Rather than see
the talks collapse completely, the WTO's 160 members put the hard bits of the Doha agenda to one side and decided to pick the low
hanging fruit instead. This was the seemingly uncontroversial commitment to reform customs rules, with a pledge of money to help
poor countries. There was one other part of the Bali agreement. India secured an agreement allowing it to stockpile more food than
is allowed under WTO rules. This was due to come into force in 2017, after the trade facilitation deal. All that was needed to clinch
the first multilateral trade deal since 1994 was for the Bali accord to be ratified by WTO members before a 31 July 2014 deadline.
Wrongly, it was assumed this would be a rubber-stamping exercise. India's
new nationalist government said it
would not ratify the agreement unless action on the food deal, seen as important in feeding the country's rural poor, was
speeded up and was backed by three other countries – Cuba, Bolivia and Venezuela. Trade diplomats in Geneva have now gone on
their annual summer holiday. That will give them time to work out what to do next. It is possible that India will soften its line given
that New Delhi has been one of the most vociferous opponents of bilateral and regional deals, on the grounds that they make it
easier for rich countries to call the shots. An alternative would be for the remaining WTO members to go ahead without India. This,
though, would
harden the belief in some capitals that multilateral deals are simply too hard to
negotiate and not worth all the trouble. It would make Brussels and Washington even keener
on their transatlantic trade and investment partnership (TTIP). So, this really is
make or break time. The WTO's members have to decide whether there is a future in global
trade talks. If they decide there isn't, the WTO is in effect finished.
TTIP spills-over and solves security cooperation
Brattberg, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies visiting fellow, 1-23-14
(Erik, “How Free Trade Can Revitalize Transatlantic Relations”,
http://www.fletcherforum.org/2014/01/23/brattberg/, ldg)
Transatlantic ties have taken a hit over the past few years. The
unfolding NSA scandal, the U.S. “pivot” to Asia, and
the Eurocrisis have all frayed political, economic, and security relations between the United
States and the European Union (EU). They have also highlighted the need for a re-invented and
re-invigorated partnership between the two regions. One particularly promising avenue to
achieve this partnership is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) currently being pursued by U.S. and EU
officials. The idea of a free trade agreement between two of the world’s biggest economies has existed since at least the mid-1990s, but it recently
received renewed focus after President Obama announced a new push for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) in his February
2013 State of the Union speech. The main goal of TTIP is to promote freer and more open EU-U.S. trade and investment flows. The United States and
the EU are the world’s largest trading and investment partners and although trade barriers between the two parties are relatively low, reducing them
further could generate huge savings given the size of the U.S. and EU economies. According to European Commission estimates, TTIP could add as
much as $130 billion a year to the U.S. economy and 119 billion euros to the EU economy. Creating a single market for trade and investment extending
from Hawaii to the Black Sea could also create hundreds of thousands of new jobs as more American and European companies expand to the other side
of the Atlantic. Finally, by aligning rules and regulations to the benefit of investors and entrepreneurs alike, TTIP could also pave the way for smoother
capital flows across the Atlantic. In
addition to these economic benefits, TTIP could positively affect U.S.-EU
ties in other arenas in three main ways. First, TTIP would help reinforce the EU’s role as an
economic superpower and create a strategic imperative for the United States to continue
nurturing its relationship with the region. Additionally, the EU’s inability to put an end to the Eurocrisis once and for all has
reinforced the dominant view in Washington of a weak EU. Establishing a strong economic partnership
between the United States and the EU via TTIP could help change U.S. perceptions
of the EU’s strategic importance. Second, TTIP could promote greater political and
security cooperation between the United States and the EU. In particular, it could counter
the narrative of “U.S. abandonment” currently circulating in many EU capitals after the recent crises in
Libya and Mali by creating what former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has termed a “second anchor”—in addition to NATO—that reinforces ties
between the two parties. As the
United States increasingly pivots towards the Asia-Pacific
region, and its interest (and ability) to patrol Europe’s neighborhood wanes, TTIP
could rebuild trust in the United States’ enduring commitment to the EU. In the long
run, as European GDP grows as a result of TTIP, so too would defense budgets, as long as per-capita
spending on defense remains constant. This would help address a major source of U.S. criticism against Europe and may even increase European
willingness to assume more responsibility for security, particularly in its own neighborhood. Third, TTIP could help reaffirm Western values such as
free trade in an increasingly multipolar world. If
properly implemented, TTIP could serve as a model for the rest
of the world by setting global standards for production and trade. Given the size of the combined U.S. and EU
economies, TTIP would make it difficult for China and other emerging economies to adopt their own,
lower standards and diminish food, health, and consumer safety. TTIP could help bring the
United States and the EU together to promote a multilateral world order that seeks to set the
terms of China’s integration rather than attempting to contain it.
Security cooperation with Europe solves nuclear war and multiple transnational
threats
Stivachtis 10 – Director of International Studies Program @ Virginia Polytechnic Institute &
State University [Dr. Yannis. A. Stivachtis (Professor of Poli Sci & Ph.D. in Politics &
International Relations from Lancaster University), THE IMPERATIVE FOR TRANSATLANTIC
COOPERATION,” The Research Institute for European and American Studies, 2010, pg.
http://www.rieas.gr/research-areas/global-issues/transatlantic-studies/78.html
There is no doubt that US-European relations are in a period of transition , and that the stresses and strains
of globalization are increasing both the number and the seriousness of the challenges that confront transatlantic relations. The
events of 9/11 and the Iraq War have added significantly to these stresses and strains. At the same time, international terrorism,
the nuclearization
of North Korea and especially Iran, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction
(WMD), the transformation of Russia into a stable and cooperative member of the international community, the growing
power of China, the
political and economic transformation and integration of the Caucasian and Central
Asian states, the integration and stabilization of the Balkan countries, the promotion of peace and stability in
the Middle East, poverty, climate change, AIDS and other emergent problems and situations require
further cooperation among countries at the regional, global and institutional levels. Therefore, cooperation between
the U.S. and Europe is more imperative than ever to deal effectively with these problems. It is fair to
say that the challenges of crafting a new relationship between the U.S. and the EU as well as between the
U.S. and NATO are more regional than global, but the implications of success or failure will be
global. The transatlantic relationship is still in crisis, despite efforts to improve it since the Iraq War. This is not to say that
differences between the two sides of the Atlantic did not exist before the war. Actually, post-1945 relations between Europe and the
U.S. were fraught with disagreements and never free of crisis since the Suez crisis of 1956. Moreover, despite trans-Atlantic
proclamations of solidarity in the aftermath of 9/11, the U.S. and Europe parted ways on issues from global warming and
biotechnology to peacekeeping and national missile defense. Questions such as, the future role of NATO and its relationship to the
common European Security and Defense policy (ESDP), or what constitutes terrorism and what the rights of captured suspected
terrorists are, have been added to the list of US-European disagreements. There are two reasons for concern regarding the
transatlantic rift. First, if
European leaders conclude that Europe must become counterweight to the
U.S., rather than a partner, it will be difficult to engage in the kind of open search for a common
ground than an elective partnership requires. Second, there is a risk that public opinion in both the U.S. and Europe
will make it difficult even for leaders who want to forge a new relationship to make the necessary accommodations. If both sides
would actively work to heal the breach, a new opportunity could be created. A
vibrant transatlantic partnership
remains a real possibility, but only if both sides make the necessary political commitment. There
are strong reasons to believe that the security challenges facing the U.S. and Europe are more shared than divergent. The most
dramatic case is terrorism. Closely related is the common interest in halting the spread of weapons of mass destruction and the
nuclearization of Iran and North Korea. This commonality of threats is clearly perceived by publics on both sides of the Atlantic.
Actually, Americans and Europeans see eye to eye on more issues than one would expect from reading newspapers and magazines.
But while elites on both sides of the Atlantic bemoan a largely illusory gap over the use of military force, biotechnology, and global
warming, surveys of American and European public opinion highlight sharp differences over global leadership, defense spending,
and the Middle East that threaten the future of the last century’s most successful alliance. There
are other important,
shared interests as well. The transformation of Russia into a stable cooperative member of the
international community is a priority both for the U.S. and Europe. They also have an interest in promoting a
stable regime in Ukraine. It is necessary for the U.S. and EU to form a united front to meet these
challenges because first, there is a risk that dangerous materials related to WMD will fall into the wrong
hands; and second, the spread of conflict along those countries’ periphery could destabilize neighboring
countries and provide safe havens for terrorists and other international criminal organizations. Likewise, in
the Caucasus and Central Asia both sides share a stake in promoting political and economic
transformation and integrating these states into larger communities such as the OSCE. This would also minimize
the risk of instability spreading and prevent those countries of becoming havens for international terrorists and criminals. Similarly,
there is a common interest in integrating the Balkans politically and economically. Dealing
with Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as other political issues in the Middle East are also of a great concern
for both sides although the U.S. plays a dominant role in the region. Finally, US-European cooperation will be
more effective in dealing with the rising power of China through engagement but also containment. The
post Iraq War realities have shown that it is no longer simply a question of adapting transatlantic institutions to new realities. The
changing structure of relations between the U.S. and Europe implies that a new basis for the relationship must be found if
transatlantic cooperation and partnership is to continue. The
future course of relations will be determined
above all by U.S. policy towards Europe and the Atlantic Alliance. Wise policy can help forge a new,
more enduring strategic partnership, through which the two sides of the Atlantic cooperate in meeting the many major challenges
and opportunities of the evolving world together. But a
policy that takes Europe for granted and routinely
ignores or even belittles Europe an concerns, may force Europe to conclude that the costs of
continued alliance outweigh its benefits.
Regulations
1NC
Money laundering is an international issue – solving just the US isn’t sufficient
UNODC no date – United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “Money-Laundering and Globalization”
https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/money-laundering/globalization.html
Rapid developments in financial information, technology and communication allow money to
move anywhere in the world with speed and ease. This makes the task of combating moneylaundering more urgent than ever. The deeper "dirty money" gets into the international banking
system, the more difficult it is to identify its origin. Because of the clandestine nature of moneylaundering, it is difficult to estimate the total amount of money that goes through the laundry
cycle. The estimated amount of money laundered globally in one year is 2 - 5% of global GDP, or
$800 billion - $2 trillion in current US dollars. Though the margin between those figures is
huge, even the lower estimate underlines the seriousness of the problem governments have
pledged to address. There have been a number of developments in the international financial
system during recent decades that have made the three F's-finding, freezing and forfeiting of
criminally derived income and assets-all the more difficult. These are the "dollarization" (i.e. the
use of the United States dollar in transactions) of black markets, the general trend towards
financial deregulation, the progress of the Euromarket and the proliferation of financial secrecy
havens. Fuelled by advances in technology and communications, the financial infrastructure has
developed into a perpetually operating global system in which "megabyte money" (i.e. money in
the form of symbols on computer screens) can move anywhere in the world with speed and ease.
For more information about other organizations involved in anti-money-laundering and
countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) activities, please see related links.
No risk of nuclear terrorism–too many obstacles
Mearsheimer 14, John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service
Professor of Political Science and the co-director of the Program on International Security Policy
at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1982. He graduated from West Point in
1970 and then served five years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force(John, "America Unhinged,"
National Interest, 1/2/14, http://www.nationalinterest.org/article /america-unhinged9639?page=show)
Am I overlooking the obvious threat that strikes fear into the hearts of so many Americans, which is terrorism? Not at all.
Sure, the United States has a terrorism problem . But it is a minor threat . There is no question we fell victim
to a spectacular attack on September 11, but it did not cripple the United States in any meaningful way and
another attack of that magnitude is highly unlikely in the foreseeable future. Indeed, there has not been a
single instance over the past twelve years of a terrorist organization exploding a primitive bomb on
American soil, much less striking a major blow. Terrorism—most of it arising from domestic groups—was a much bigger
problem in the United States during the 1970s than it has been since the Twin Towers were toppled.¶ What about the
possibility that a terrorist group might obtain a nuclear weapon? Such an occurrence would be a game changer,
but the chances of that happening are virtually nil . No nuclear-armed state is going to
supply terrorists with a nuclear weapon because it would have no control over how the recipients might
use that weapon. Political turmoil in a nuclear-armed state could in theory allow terrorists to grab a loose
nuclear weapon,
but the United States already has detailed plans to deal with that highly unlikely
contingency.¶ Terrorists might also try to acquire fissile material and build their own bomb. But that
scenario is extremely unlikely as well : there are significant obstacles to getting enough
material and even bigger obstacles to building a bomb and then delivering it. More
generally, virtually every country has a profound interest in making sure no terrorist group acquires a
nuclear weapon, because they cannot be sure they will not be the target of a nuclear attack, either by the terrorists
or another country the terrorists strike. Nuclear terrorism, in short, is not a serious threat . And to the extent
that we should worry about it, the main remedy is to encourage and help other states to place nuclear materials in highly secure custody.
Bioweapons are too hard – 3 Warrants – lack of expertise, dispersion, resources
NFL 4/3/14 - Nuclear Futures Lab, Princeton University. “Is Bioterrorism a Likely Threat?” http://nuclearfutures.princeton.edu/wws3532014-blog-week08-1/
As we have read, with an appropriate bioagent and appropriate dispersal mechanism biological weapons have the potential to be
very dangerous. We have also learned that the technology involved isn’t that complicated. Due to the dual use nature, these
technologies are already within our reach. Yet, there
have been very few examples of biological weapons use
throughout history.¶ The 1993 Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo subway system was
technically a chemical attack, but this case offers insight into the biological weapons question.
This group spent a lot of effort and energy trying to produce a viable biological weapon, but they
failed. This experience suggests many of the important challenges non-state actors face when
they produce biological weapons.¶ First, there is a difference between explicit and tacit
knowledge. The biological weapons “recipe” might look easy on a page, but it requires extensive
expertise and know-how. Second, once you have an appropriate agent, you have to figure out
how to effectively disseminate it. Third, resources must be efficiently allocated. This is especially
challenging for a non-state actor with limited resources. These are just a few of the challenges bioweapons
pose.¶ However, this example also shows the determination of some terrorist organizations. Aum Shinrikyo spent years on this
project. And while they weren’t able to create a viable bioagent, they did manage to create a chemical weapon. This isn’t something
that should be ignored. Plus they did have a whole biological weapons program in place. They just didn’t manage to create a viable
pathogen. Chyba cites the fact that biological synthesis capabilities are increasing at least as fast if not faster than Moore’s Law. As
biotechnologies become cheaper and more accessible there’s no saying that they will remain out of the hands of terrorists.¶ In a
previous blog post we discussed the probability and the danger of a nuclear terrorist threat. How does the biological weapons case
compare? Does the fast pace of scientific advancement make this something we should worry about? Or are
bioweapons too
difficult to produce and therefore terrorists will fail like Aum Shinrikyo/won’t even attempt
them?
2NC
a). central america
Feinstein 13 (Feinstein 13, senior United States Senator, “The Buck Stop Here: Improving U.S.
Anti-Money Laundering Practices”, US Caucus on International Narcotics Control, April 2013,
http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/files/serve/?File_id=311e974a-feb6-48e6b302-0769f16185ee)
Central America Just as stronger enforcement efforts in Mexico have resulted in greater levels of
drug trafficking and drug-related violence in Central America, so too has money laundering
shifted into the region. Evidence of this can be seen in bulk cash movements alone. As just one
example, in August 2012, a sophisticated cash smuggling operation involving Mexicans posing
as journalists was caught attempting to smuggle $9.2 million into Nicaragua. 65 Central
America is also a major money laundering concern because two countries in the region, Panama
and El Salvador, use the U.S. dollar as their currency. Using the U.S. dollar means that drug
proceeds transported the United States into those countries can be integrated into the financial
system without arousing suspicion or the need for conversion into local currency. Panama is also
of significant concern due to its large free trade zone. While the free trade zone certainly serves a
legitimate economic purpose, it is also vulnerable to money laundering, particularly trade based
money laundering. Experts have also spoken of pre-paid cards, loaded with thousands of dollars
in other countries and redeemed in Panama.66 Central America is increasingly popular with
transnational criminal organizations and the professionals who launder their proceeds. Drug
traffickers have been known to say that they are “washing their money in Guatemala and El
Salvador and drying it in Panama.”67 U.S. policies and assistance to the region should
emphasize anti-money laundering measures and training in recognition of their ability to
disrupt and displace these criminal groups.
b). china
Feinstein 13 (Feinstein 13, senior United States Senator, “The Buck Stop Here: Improving U.S.
Anti-Money Laundering Practices”, US Caucus on International Narcotics Control, April 2013,
http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/files/serve/?File_id=311e974a-feb6-48e6b302-0769f16185ee)
China Due to its expanding economic prowess, China is becoming increasingly important to
money launderers around the world. Numerous law enforcement officials have expressed
concern at suspicious wire transfers headed to China.71 Experts have also pointed to the
importance of small Chinese banks processing enormous numbers of payments from Mexico for
trade that may or may not actually exist to launder drug proceeds72The enormous volume of
legitimate trade also make it attractive to money launderers engaged in trade based laundering
schemes, because the sheer number of financial transactions and containerships give launderers
the cover they need to operate. China also attracts launderers because of its role in the
production of counterfeit and pirated goods. These goods offer significantly larger profit
margins upon resale in other countries.73 Finally, as the source country for many of the
precursor chemicals used in drug production, China has proven to be a natural partner for
trafficking networks looking to reinvest their financial resources.
No cyber-war—flawed data and high resiliency
Lawson 2013 (Sean, Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Utah, "Beyond
Cyber-Doom: Assessing the limits of hypothetical scenarios in the framing of cyber-threats"
www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/19331681.2012.759059)
Contemporary planning for disasters and future military conflicts, including those in/through
cyberspace, often relies on hypothetical scenarios that begin with the same assumptions
about infrastructural and societal fragility found in early airpower theory. Some have criticized what they
see as over-reliance on hypothetical scenarios instead of empirical data (Dynes, 2006;
Glenn, 2005; Graham & Thrift, 2007, pp. 9–10; Ranum, 2009; Stiennon, 2009). But there exists a body of historical
and sociological data that casts serious doubt on the assumptions underlying cyberdoom scenarios by demonstrating that both infrastructures and societies are more resilient
than often assumed.
Zero-probability of high-level attack in the next 2 years—experts
Segal 2013 (Adam, Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and National Security Studies at the
Council on Foreign Relations, "Is the threat of a cyber pearl harbor as potent as some have
suggested?" www.cfr.org/cybersecurity/threat-cyber-pearl-harbor-potent-some-havesuggested/p30863)
The phrase "cyber Pearl Harbor" received attention when it by former defense secretary Leon E. Panetta in a
speech about U.S. vulnerability to cyberwarfare threats. It is best understood as an effort to shape the domestic
political debate and as a description of a potential future scenario, rather than as an accurate description of
the cybersecurity threat. The most pressing cyber threat is not likely to be a single, sudden
attack that cripples the United States. Such attacks are probably limited to sophisticated state
actors; they involve elaborate intelligence preparation, great uncertainty for the attacker, and are subject to some
deterrence. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. testified that there was only a "remote
chance" of "a major cyberattack against U.S. critical infrastructure systems during the next two
years that would result in long-term, wide-scale disruption of services."