1nc
1
The United States should:

adopt Hawaii’s HOPE standards in nearly all cases of probation and parole
for marijuana
HOPE decreases use and solves DTOs
By Mark Kleiman 11 Professor of Public Policy at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los
Angeles. “Surgical Strikes in the Drug Wars” Smarter Policies for Both Sides of the Border” Foreign Affairs,
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2011 ISSUE, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/68131/mark-kleiman/surgical-strikes-in-the-drug-wars
ac 6-24
Coerced treatment for drug abusers is not very successful, both because drug treatment itself is
not very successful and because the coercion is generally more nominal than real. But the idea of
focusing on criminally active, chronic high-dose users of expensive illicit drugs makes good
sense. Although they constitute a small minority of all users, they account for the bulk of the market in terms of volume and
revenue, and they frequently find themselves under the supervision of the criminal justice system. Also, felony probationers and
parolees with illicit drug abuse problems make up roughly half the population of active hard-drug abusers in the United States. Once
these users come under supervision, there is no need to allow them to continue their drug use.
Those on probation or parole are already forbidden to use illicit drugs. But that mandate is not
effectively enforced. The threat of probation or parole revocation is too severe (and expensive) to
be carried out often and not swift or certain enough to change behavior dramatically. As a result,
most violations go unpunished. By reducing the severity of the punishment for breaking the rules,
it is possible to dramatically increase its swiftness and certainty -- and swiftness and certainty
matter more than severity in changing behavior.
Frequent or random drug testing, with a guaranteed short jail stay (as little as two days) for each
incident of detected use, can have remarkable efficacy in reducing offenders' drug use: Hawaii's
now-famous HOPE project manages to get 80 percent of its long-term methamphetamine users
clean and out of confinement after one year. The program more than pays for itself by reducing
the incarceration rate in that group to less than half that of a randomly selected control group
under probation as usual. HOPE participants are not forced to receive drug treatment; instead,
they are required to stop using . About 15 percent fail repeatedly, and that small group is ordered
into treatment, but most succeed without it. Fewer than ten percent wind up back in prison.
These impressive results have led to similar efforts in Alaska, Arizona, California, and Washington
State; where the HOPE model is faithfully followed, the outcomes are as consistent and positive
as those in Hawaii. The U.S. federal government is set to sponsor four new attempts to reproduce
those results. If HOPE were to be successfully implemented as part of routine probation and
parole supervision, the resulting reduction in drug use could shrink the market -- and thus the
revenue of Mexico's d rug- t rafficking o rganization s -- by as much as 40 percent . The potential
gains on both sides of the border justify the attempt, despite the daunting managerial challenges.
2
Democrats will keep the Senate now—best statistical models
Wang 9-9-14 (Sam, professor, Princeton University, "Democrats Now Have a Seventy-Per-Cent Chance of Retaining Control of
the Senate" New Yorker) www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/democrats-seventy-per-cent-chance-retaining-control-senate
In addition to polling data, these analysts are taking into account “fundamentals”—factors that
supposedly capture the state of the political playing field—like incumbency, campaign funding,
prior experience, and President Obama’s job-approval rating. Fundamentals can be useful when
there are no polls to reference. But polls, when they are available, capture public opinion much
better than a model does. In 2012, on Election Eve, for example, the P rinceton E lection C onsortium
relied on polls alone to predict every single Senate race correctly , while Silver, who used a pollsplus-fundamentals approach, called two races incorrectly, missing Heidi Heitkamp’s victory, in North Dakota,
and Jon Tester’s, in Montana. The Princeton Election Consortium generates a poll-based snapshot in
which the win/lose probabilities in all races are combined to generate a distribution of all possible
outcomes. The average of all outcomes, based on today’s polls, is 50.5 Democratic and
Independent seats (two Independents, Bernie Sanders and Angus King, currently caucus with the Democrats). Simplicity,
Simplicity, Simplicity! I did not always appreciate the importance of sticking closely to polling data. I first started analyzing polls
during the 2004 Presidential campaign, in which John Kerry and George W. Bush traded the Electoral College lead three times
between June and November. An October calculation based purely on polls suggested that Bush would win. However, I added an
extra assumption: that undecided voters would break by two percentage points toward Kerry. On Election Day, the president of my
university e-mailed me asking for my final prediction. I told her, with confidence, that it would be Kerry. It was a humbling mistake.
Because polls
have better predictive value than fundamentals do, it would seem prudent to ask what an
unadulterated poll-based snapshot of the Senate race looks like. Today, it looks like this: wang_02 Based on this calculation, if the
elections were held today, Democrats and Independents would control the chamber with an eighty-per-cent probability. (The green
section accounts for Greg Orman, the Independent candidate in Kansas, who would provide the fiftieth vote. Orman has said that he
would caucus with the majority, that he would caucus with the other Independents, and that he wants to break the Senate gridlock.
For this histogram, I have graphed him as caucusing with the Democrats.) But can a snapshot of today’s polls really
tell us that much about an election held eight weeks from now? As it turns out, it might. A poll-based
snapshot moves up and down, like the price of a stock. That movement can show us the range of
the most likely outcomes for Election Day. The chart below displays those ups and downs. On the
right is a zone of highest probability, drawn out in much in the same style as a hurricane strike zone on a weather map. This area
indicates where the campaign is most likely to land. wang_03 At the point marked November, the smaller bracket
indicates the “two-sigma range,” where I estimate about eighty-five per cent of outcomes should
fall. Near the center of this range is the most probable outcome—an equal split of seats, fifty
Democratic and Independent, and fifty Republican, a situation in which the Democrats would retain control. The
entire range includes the additional possibilities of a fifty-one-to-forty-nine split in either direction, as well as a fifty-two-to-forty-eight
split favoring the Democrats and Independents. By adding up the parts of the strike zone that encompass fifty
or more Democratic and Independent votes, it is possible to estimate the probability of sustained
Democratic control after the election: seventy per cent. A more accurate way to interpret the current state of the
race is this: At the start of 2014, conditions slightly favored the G.O.P., when measured by
fundamentals. Based on opinion polls, Democrats are currently outperforming those
expectations. The shape of next year’s Senate is based on whether that level of performance will continue.
Pot ballot initiatives cause youth turnout – which is key to Democratic victory
Dunkelberger ‘14
Lloyd Dunkelberger, staffwriter for The Ledger Tallahassee Bureau, 1/28/14, “Florida's Marijuana Vote Could Affect Other Races”
http://www.theledger.com/article/20140128/NEWS/140129089?p=1&tc=pg
But the
key variable is this: Voting in nonpresidential election years typically skews older, while
polls show support for the marijuana initiative is strongest among the youngest voters.
larger turnout among younger voters — who don't typically show up in big
numbers in nonpresidential years — could help Democrats, as demonstrated by President Barack Obama in his
So on the surface, a
last two successful elections in Florida.
"Very few people are single-issue
voters. But that issue could be a mobilizing issue for younger
voters," said Susan MacManus, a political scientist at the University of South Florida.
A GOP senate destroys the Iran deal
Julian Pecquet, journalist, “GOP Senate Takeover Could Kill Iran Deal,” THE HILL, 1—23—14,
http://thehill.com/policy/international/196170-gop-senate-takeover-could-kill-iran-nuclear, accessed 5-31-14.
A Republican takeover of the Senate this fall could scuttle one of President Obama’s biggest
second term goals — a nuclear deal with Iran. Republicans have lambasted the interim agreement
with Iran, calling for the Senate to move an Iran sanctions bill. The House last year passed a measure in an
overwhelming and bipartisan 400-20 vote. Both the Obama administration and Iran have warned moving
such a measure could kill a final deal. A number of Democrats have also criticized the interim accord, which lifted $6
billion in sanctions on Iran in exchange for a commitment to restrictions on enriching uranium. Critics in both parties say the deal
gave away too much to Iran. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has given Obama cover by refusing to
bring sanctions legislation to the floor. If Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) becomes
majority leader, sanctions legislation could move quickly to the floor and could attract a vetoproof majority. “If Republicans held the majority, we would have voted already; with Democrats in charge,
Harry Reid denies the American people the bipartisan diplomatic insurance policy they deserve, ” a
senior Republican Senate aide complained. The aide suggested Republicans would use the issue of Iran to show
how a GOP-run Senate would differ with the status quo. “So the question really is, what kind of Senate would
people rather have — one that puts politics over good policy, or one that holds Iran accountable and works overtime to prevent a
world with Iranian nuclear weapons?” the aide asked. A total of 59 senators — 16 Democrats and every
Republican save two — have co-sponsored the sanctions bill from Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Mark
Kirk (R-Ill.). Republicans need to gain six seats to win back the majority, something within their grasp this year.
The party is a solid favorite to pick up seats in West Virginia, South Dakota and Montana, and believes it could also secure wins in
Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina.
Causes Israel strikes
Perr 13 – B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University; technology marketing consultant based in Portland,
Oregon. Jon has long been active in Democratic politics and public policy as an organizer and advisor in California
and Massachusetts. His past roles include field staffer for Gary Hart for President (1984), organizer of Silicon Valley
tech executives backing President Clinton's call for national education standards (1997), recruiter of tech executives
for Al Gore's and John Kerry's presidential campaigns, and co-coordinator of MassTech for Robert Reich (2002).
12/24 (Jon, “Senate sanctions bill could let Israel take U.S. to war against Iran” Daily Kos,
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/24/1265184/-Senate-sanctions-bill-could-let-Israel-take-U-S-to-war-againstIran#
As 2013 draws to close, the negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program have entered a delicate stage. But in 2014, the tensions will escalate
dramatically as a bipartisan group of Senators brings a new Iran sanctions bill to the floor for a vote. As many others have warned, that
promise of new measures against Tehran will almost certainly blow up the interim deal reached by the Obama administration and its UN/EU partners in
Geneva. But Congress' highly unusual intervention into the President's domain of foreign policy doesn't just make the prospect of an American conflict
empowers Israel to decide whether the United
States will go to war against Tehran. On their own, the tough new sanctions imposed automatically if a final deal isn't completed in six
months pose a daunting enough challenge for President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry. But it is the legislation's commitment
to support an Israeli preventive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities that almost ensures the U.S. and Iran will
come to blows. As Section 2b, part 5 of the draft mandates: If the Government of Israel is compelled to take military action in legitimate selfwith Iran more likely. As it turns out, the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act essentially
defense against Iran's nuclear weapon program, the United States Government should stand with Israel and provide, in accordance with the law of the
United States and the constitutional responsibility of Congress to authorize the use of military force, diplomatic, military, and economic support to the
Government of Israel in its defense of its territory, people, and existence. Now, the legislation being pushed by Senators Mark Kirk (R-IL), Chuck
Schumer (D-NY) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ) does not automatically give the President an authorization to use force should Israel attack the
Iranians. (The draft language above explicitly states that the U.S. government must act "in accordance with the law of the United States and the
constitutional responsibility of Congress to authorize the use of military force.") But there should be little doubt that an AUMF would be forthcoming
from Congressmen on both sides of the aisle. As Lindsey Graham, who with Menendez co-sponsored a similar, non-binding "stand with Israel"
resolution in March told a Christians United for Israel (CUFI) conference in July: "If nothing changes in Iran, come September, October, I will present a
resolution that will authorize the use of military force to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb." Graham would have plenty of company from the
hardest of hard liners in his party. In August 2012, Romney national security adviser and pardoned Iran-Contra architect Elliott Abrams called for a war
authorization in the pages of the Weekly Standard. And just two weeks ago, Norman Podhoretz used his Wall Street Journal op-ed to urge the Obama
the lack of an explicit AUMF in the
Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act doesn't mean its supporters aren't giving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu de facto
carte blanche to hit Iranian nuclear facilities. The ensuing Iranian retaliation against to Israeli and American
interests would almost certainly trigger the commitment of U.S. forces anyway. Even if the Israelis alone launched a strike
administration to "strike Iran now" to avoid "the nuclear war sure to come." But at the end of the day,
against Iran's atomic sites, Tehran will almost certainly hit back against U.S. targets in the Straits of Hormuz, in the region, possibly in Europe and even
potentially in the American homeland. Israel would face certain retaliation from Hezbollah rockets launched from Lebanon and Hamas missiles raining
down from Gaza. That's why former Bush Defense Secretary Bob Gates and CIA head Michael Hayden raising the alarms about the "disastrous"
impact of the supposedly surgical strikes against the Ayatollah's nuclear infrastructure. As the New York Times reported in March 2012, "A classified
war simulation held this month to assess the repercussions of an
Israeli attack on Iran forecasts that the strike would lead to a
wider regional war , which could draw in the United States and leave hundreds of Americans dead, according to American officials." And that
September, a bipartisan group of U.S. foreign policy leaders including Brent Scowcroft, retired Admiral William Fallon, former Republican Senator (now
Obama Pentagon chief) Chuck Hagel, retired General Anthony Zinni and former Ambassador Thomas Pickering concluded that American attacks with
the objective of "ensuring that Iran never acquires a nuclear bomb" would "need to conduct a significantly expanded air and sea war over a prolonged
period of time, likely several years." (Accomplishing regime change, the authors noted, would mean an occupation of Iran requiring a "commitment of
resources and personnel greater than what the U.S. has expended over the past 10 years in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.") The
anticipated blowback? Serious costs to U.S. interests would also be felt over the longer term, we believe, with problematic consequences for global
A dynamic of escalation , action, and counteraction could
produce serious unintended consequences that would significantly increase all of these costs and lead, potentially, to
all-out regional war.
and regional stability, including economic stability.
Escalates to major power war
Trabanco 9 – Independent researcher of geopoltical and military affairs (1/13/09, José Miguel Alonso Trabanco, “The Middle
Eastern Powder Keg Can Explode at anytime,” **http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11762**)
In case of an Israeli and/or American attack against Iran, Ahmadinejad's government will certainly respond. A
possible countermeasure would be to fire Persian ballistic missiles against Israel and maybe even against American military bases
in the regions. Teheran will unquestionably resort to its proxies like Hamas or Hezbollah (or even some of its Shiite allies it has
in Lebanon or Saudi Arabia) to carry out attacks against Israel, America and their allies, effectively setting in flames a large
portion of the Middle East. The ultimate weapon at Iranian disposal is to block the Strait of Hormuz. If such chokepoint is indeed
asphyxiated, that would dramatically increase the price of oil, this a very threatening retaliation because it will bring intense financial
and economic havoc upon the West, which is already facing significant trouble in those respects. In short, the necessary
conditions for a major war in the Middle East are given . Such conflict could rapidly spiral out of control
quickly and dangerously escalate by engulfing the whole region and perhaps
even beyond. There are many key players: the Israelis, the Palestinians, the Arabs, the Persians and their respective allies
and some great powers could become involved in one way or another (America, Russia, Europe, China).
and thus a relatively minor clash could
Therefore, any miscalculation by any of the main protagonists can trigger something no one can stop. Taking into consideration that
the stakes are too high, perhaps it is not wise to be playing with fire right in the middle of a powder keg.
Comp
Prohibition works- keeps use down
Kevin Sabet PhD, Director of the Drug Policy Institute at the University of Florida and an Assistant Professor in the College of
Medicine, Department of Psychiatry. Former Senior Policy Advisor to President Obama's Drug Czar / April 27, 2014 “Marijuana Is
Harmful: Debunking 7 Myths Arguing It’s Fine” Daily Signal, http://dailysignal.com/2014/04/27/time-reefer-sanity/ AC 6-18
Myth No. 7: “Prevention, intervention, and treatment are doomed to fail—So why try?”
Less than 8 percent of Americans smoke marijuana versus 52 percent who drink and 27 percent
of people that smoke tobacco cigarettes. Coupled with its legal status, efforts to reduce demand
for marijuana can work. Communities that implement local strategies implemented by area-wide
coalitions of parents, schools, faith communities, businesses, and, yes, law enforcement, can
significantly reduce marijuana use. Brief interventions and treatment for marijuana addiction (which
affects about 1 in 6 kids who start using, according to the National Institutes of Health) can also work.
Legalization crushes the competiteveness and ruins lives—IQ, health effects,
workplace productivity, drugged driving
David G. Evans Special Adviser to the Drug Free America Foundation “Marijuana Legalization's Costs Outweigh Its Benefits”
Oct. 30, 2012 http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/should-marijuana-use-be-legalized/marijuana-legalizations-costs-outweigh-itsbenefits
Legalization will cause a tremendous increase in marijuana use. Based on the experience elsewhere, the
number of users will double or triple . This means an additional 17 to 34 million young and adult
users in the United States. Legalization will mean that marijuana businesses can promote their
products and package them in attractive ways to increase their market share.¶ Increased marijuana
use will mean millions more damaged young people. Marijuana use can permanently impair brain
development. Problem solving , concentration , motivation , and memory are negatively affected.
Teens who use marijuana are more likely to engage in delinquent and dangerous behavior, and
experience increased risk of schizophrenia and depression, including being three times more
likely to have suicidal thoughts. Marijuana-using teens are more likely to have multiple sexual partners
and engage in unsafe sex.¶ [Read the U.S. News Debate: Should Welfare Recipients Be Tested for Drugs?]¶ Marijuana
use accounts for tens of thousands of marijuana related complaints at emergency rooms throughout
the United States each year. Over 99,000 are young people.¶ Despite arguments by the drug culture to the contrary,
marijuana is addictive.
The levels of THC (marijuana's psychoactive ingredient) have never been higher . This is a
major factor why marijuana is the number one drug causing young people to enter treatment and why there has been a substantial
increase in the people in treatment for marijuana dependence.¶ Marijuana
legalization means more drugged
driving . Already, 13 percent of high school seniors said they drove after using marijuana while only
10 percent drove after having several drinks. Why run the risk of increasing marijuana use among
young drivers?¶ [See a collection of political cartoons on healthcare.]¶ Employees who test positive for
marijuana had 55 percent more industrial accidents and 85 percent more injuries and they had
absenteeism rates 75 percent higher than those that tested negative. This damages our economy .
No impact to US competitiveness- it’s all hype
Krugman ’11 [Paul, Nobel Prize-winning economist, professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University,
received his B.A. from Yale University in 1974 and his Ph.D. from MIT in 1977. He has taught at Yale, MIT and Stanford. At MIT he
became the Ford International Professor of Economics, “The Competition Myth,” 1-24-11,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/24/opinion/24krugman.html?_r=0]
Meet the new buzzword, same as the old buzzword. In advance of the State of the Union, President Obama has telegraphed his
main theme: competitiveness. The President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board has been renamed the President’s Council on
Jobs and Competitiveness. And in his Saturday radio address, the president declared that “We can out-compete any other nation on
Earth.” This may be smart politics. Arguably, Mr. Obama has enlisted an old cliché on behalf of a good cause, as a way to sell a
much-needed increase in public investment to a public thoroughly indoctrinated in the view that government spending is a bad
thing.¶ But let’s not kid ourselves: talking about “competitiveness” as a goal is fundamentally misleading. At best, it’s a misdiagnosis
of our problems. At worst, it could lead to policies based on the false idea that what’s good for corporations is good for America.¶
About that misdiagnosis: What sense does it make to view our current woes as stemming from lack of competitiveness?¶ It’s true
that we’d have more jobs if we exported more and imported less. But the same is true of Europe and Japan, which also have
depressed economies. And we can’t all export more while importing less, unless we can find another planet to sell to. Yes, we could
demand that China shrink its trade surplus — but if confronting China is what Mr. Obama is proposing, he should say that plainly.¶
Furthermore, while America is running a trade deficit, this deficit is smaller than it was before the Great Recession began. It would
help if we could make it smaller still. But ultimately, we’re in a mess because we had a financial crisis, not because American
companies have lost their ability to compete with foreign rivals.¶ But isn’t it at least somewhat useful to think of our nation as if it
were America Inc., competing in the global marketplace? No.¶ Consider: A corporate leader who increases profits by slashing his
work force is thought to be successful. Well, that’s more or less what has happened in America recently: employment is way down,
but profits are hitting new records. Who, exactly, considers this economic success?¶ Still, you might say that talk of competitiveness
helps Mr. Obama quiet claims that he’s anti-business. That’s fine, as long as he realizes that the interests of nominally “American”
corporations and the interests of the nation, which were never the same, are now less aligned than ever before.¶ Take the case of
General Electric, whose chief executive, Jeffrey Immelt, has just been appointed to head that renamed advisory board. I have
nothing against either G.E. or Mr. Immelt. But with fewer than half its workers based in the United States and less than half its
revenues coming from U.S. operations, G.E.’s fortunes have very little to do with U.S. prosperity.¶ By the way, some have praised
Mr. Immelt’s appointment on the grounds that at least he represents a company that actually makes things, rather than being yet
another financial wheeler-dealer. Sorry to burst this bubble, but these days G.E. derives more revenue from its financial operations
than it does from manufacturing — indeed, GE Capital, which received a government guarantee for its debt, was a major beneficiary
of the Wall Street bailout.¶ So what does the administration’s embrace of the rhetoric of competitiveness mean for economic
policy?¶ The favorable interpretation, as I said, is that it’s just packaging for an economic strategy centered on public investment,
investment that’s actually about creating jobs now while promoting longer-term growth. The unfavorable interpretation is that Mr.
Obama and his advisers really believe that the economy is ailing because they’ve been too tough on business, and that what
America needs now is corporate tax cuts and across-the-board deregulation.¶ My guess is that we’re mainly talking about
packaging here. And if the president does propose a serious increase in spending on infrastructure and education, I’ll be pleased.¶
But even if he proposes good policies, the fact that Mr. Obama feels the need to wrap these policies in bad metaphors is a sad
commentary on the state of our discourse.¶ The financial crisis of 2008 was a teachable moment, an object lesson in what can go
wrong if you trust a market economy to regulate itself. Nor should we forget that highly regulated economies, like Germany, did a
much better job than we did at sustaining employment after the crisis hit. For whatever reason, however, the teachable moment
came and went with nothing learned.¶ Mr. Obama himself may do all right: his approval rating is up, the economy is showing signs
of life, and his chances of re-election look pretty good. But the ideology that brought economic disaster in 2008 is back on top —
and seems likely to stay there until it brings disaster again.
Competitiveness not key to heg
Brooks and Wohlforth ‘8 - Brooks is Assistant Professor AND*** William C. Wohlforth is Professor in the Department of
Government at Dartmouth College [Stephen G., “World out of Balance, International Relations and the Challenge of American
Primacy,” p. 32-35]
American primacy is also rooted in the county's position as the world's leading technological power. The United States remains
dominant globally in overall R&D investments, high-technology production, commercial first decade of this century. As we noted in
chapter 1, this was partly the result of an Iraq-induced doubt about the utility of material predominance, a doubt redolent of the postVietnam mood. In retrospect, many assessments of U.S. economic and technological prowess from the 1990s were overly
optimistic; by the next decade important potential vulnerabilities were evident. In particular, chronically imbalanced domestic
finances and accelerating public debt convinced some analysts that the United States once again confronted a competitiveness
crisis.23 If concerns continue to mount, this will count as the fourth such crisis since 1945; the first three occurred during the
1950s (Sputnik), the 1970s (Vietnam and stagflation), and the 1980s (the Soviet threat and Japan's challenge). None of these
crises , however, shifted the international system's structure: multipolarity did not return in the 1960s, 1970s, or early 1990s, and
each scare over competitiveness ended with the American position of primacy retained or strengthened.24 Our review of the
evidence of U.S. predominance is not meant to suggest that the United States lacks vulnerabilities or causes for concern. In fact, it
confronts a number of significant vulnerabilities; of course, this is also true of the other major powers.25 The point is that adverse
trends for the United States will not cause a polarity shift in the near future. If we take a long view of U.S. competitiveness and the
prospects for relative declines in economic and technological dominance, one takeaway stands out: relative power shifts slowly .
The United States has accounted for a quarter to a third of global output for over a century. No other economy will match its
combination of wealth, size, technological capacity, and productivity in the foreseeable future (tables 2.2 and 2.3). The depth, scale,
and projected longevity of the U.S. lead in each critical dimension of power are noteworthy. But what truly distinguishes the current
distribution of capabilities is American dominance in all of them simultaneously. The chief lesson of Kennedy's 500-year survey of
leading powers is that nothing remotely similar ever occurred in the historical experience innovation, and higher education (table
2.3). Despite the weight of this evidence, elite perceptions of U.S. power had shifted toward pessimism by the middle of the that
informs modern international relations theory. The implication is both simple and underappreciated: the counterbalancing constraint
is inoperative and will remain so until the distribution of capabilities changes fundamentally. The next section explains why.
We’re lightyears ahead in key sectors
Zakaria 8 (Fareed, Newsweek Editor, International Relations Expert, Host of Fareed Zakaria: GPS (on CNN), “The Future of
American Power,” Foreign Affairs, May/June)
This difference between the United States and Britain is reflected in the burden of their military budgets. Britannia ruled the seas
but never the land. The British army was sufficiently small that Otto von Bismarck once quipped that were the British ever to
invade Germany, he would simply have the local police force arrest them. Meanwhile, London's advantage over the seas -- it
had more tonnage than the next two navies put together -- came at ruinous cost. The U.S. military, in contrast, dominates at
every level -- land, sea, air, space -- and spends more than the next 14 countries combined, accounting for almost 50 percent of
global defense spending. The United States also spends more on defense research and development than the rest of the world
put together. And crucially, it does all this without breaking the bank. U.S. defense expenditure as a percent of GDP is now 4.1
percent, lower than it was for most of the Cold War (under Dwight Eisenhower, it rose to ten percent). As U.S. GDP has grown
larger and larger, expenditures that would have been backbreaking have become affordable. The Iraq war may be a tragedy or
a noble endeavor, but either way, it will not bankrupt the United States. The price tag for Iraq and Afghanistan together -- $125
billion a year -- represents less than one percent of GDP. The war in Vietnam, by comparison, cost the equivalent of 1.6 percent
of U.S. GDP in 1970, a large difference. (Neither of these percentages includes second- or third-order costs of war, which allows
for a fair comparison even if one disputes the exact figures.) U.S. military power is not the cause of its strength but the
consequence. The fuel is the United States' economic and technological base, which remains extremely strong. The United
States does face larger, deeper, and broader challenges than it has ever faced in its history, and it will undoubtedly lose some
share of global GDP. But the process will look nothing like Britain's slide in the twentieth century, when the country lost the lead
in innovation, energy, and entrepreneurship. The United States will remain a vital, vibrant economy, at the forefront of the next
revolutions in science, technology, and industry. In trying to understand how the United States will fare in the new world, the
first thing to do is simply look around: the future is already here. Over the last 20 years, globalization has been gaining breadth
and depth. More countries are making goods, communications technology has been leveling the playing field, capital has been
free to move across the world -- and the United States has benefited massively from these trends. Its economy has received
hundreds of billions of dollars in investment, and its companies have entered new countries and industries with great success.
Despite two decades of a very expensive dollar, U.S. exports have held ground, and the World Economic Forum currently ranks
the United States as the world's most competitive economy. GDP growth, the bottom line, has averaged just over three percent
in the United States for 25 years, significantly higher than in Europe or Japan. Productivity growth, the elixir of modern
economics, has been over 2.5 percent for a decade now, a full percentage point higher than the European average. This
superior growth trajectory might be petering out, and perhaps U.S. growth will be more typical for an advanced industrialized
country for the next few years. But the general point -- that the United States is a highly dynamic economy at the cutting edge,
despite its enormous size -- holds. Consider the industries of the future. Nanotechnology (applied science dealing with the
control of matter at the atomic or molecular scale) is likely to lead to fundamental breakthroughs over the next 50 years, and the
United States dominates the field. It has more dedicated "nanocenters" than the next three nations (Germany, Britain, and
China) combined and has issued more patents for nanotechnology than the rest of the world combined, highlighting its unusual
strength in turning abstract theory into practical products. Biotechnology (a broad category that describes the use of biological
systems to create medical, agricultural, and industrial products) is also dominated by the United States.
Competitiveness isn’t zero sum
Galama and Hosek 8 (Titus, PhD and Physical Scientist at the RAND Institute, James PhD and Director of Forces and Resources
Policy Center at the Rand National Security Research Division, “U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology,” Feb 8th,
www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG674.pdf)
A future in which a significant share of new technologies is invented elsewhere will benefit the United States as long as it
maintains the capability to acquire and implement technologies invented abroad. Technology is an essential factor of
productivity, and the use of new technology (whether it was invented in the United States or elsewhere) can result in greater
efficiency, [and] economic growth, and higher living standards. The impact of globalization on U.S. innovative activity is less
clear. On the one hand, significant innovation and R&D elsewhere may increase foreign and domestic demand for U.S. research
and innovation if the United States keeps its comparative advantage in R&D. On the other hand, the rise of populous, lowincome countries may threaten this comparative advantage in R&D in certain areas if such countries develop the capacity and
institutions necessary to apply new technologies and have a well-educated, low-wage S&T labor force.
Tech competitiveness is key to Chinese growth, but not the US- no impact
Swagel ’12 [Phillip Swagel, an economist and academic, was assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department
from 2006 to 2009, where he was responsible for analysis on a wide range of economic issues, including policies relating to the
financial crisis and the Troubled Asset Relief Program. He has also served as chief of staff and senior economist at the White House
Council of Economic Advisers and as an economist at the Federal Reserve Board and the International Monetary Fund. He is
concurrently a professor of international economics at the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy, “International
Competitiveness,” 1-18-12, http://www.aei.org/files/2012/01/17/-international-competitiveness_114810229628.pdf]
The danger, then, of an inappropriate focus on international competitiveness is perhaps one of ¶ confusion—that the policy
development process will be guided by inappropriate considerations. This is ¶ the case especially for competitiveness indicators that
are well-connected to international trade but that ¶ do not relate straightforwardly to well-being. The danger in this case is that
policies will be favored ¶ because they improve measures of competitiveness such as by promoting exports or narrowing the ¶ trade
deficit, but without reference to whether the costs of the policies are worth the benefits.¶ It remains useful to consider so-called
international competitiveness indicators that really amount to ¶ diagnostics of the domestic economy as representing benchmarks
against other countries. For example, ¶ policymakers might use indicators from the WEF to consider the potential outcomes if the
United States ¶ were to adopt economic and regulatory policies that were more like those in Europe.¶ Similarly, a comparison with
measures of competitiveness in China could be useful as an indicator of ¶ what might be possible in terms of growth, even if the
comparison does not have immediate policy implication for the United States. China’s remarkable growth performance has reflected
in various parts ¶ the catch up of that country to the market frontier, including in terms of technology, capital, and labor. ¶ These
changes include the massive movement of workers from low-productivity activities in the interior ¶ to the market-oriented economy
of the coast; the equally massive increase in capital stock driven by ¶ investment; and the imitation (or theft) and deployment of
more advanced technologies and production ¶ techniques.
Competitiveness isn’t key to heg or the economy
Krugman 94 (Paul, Professor of Economics – Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “Competitiveness: A Dangerous Obession”,
Foreign Affairs, March / April, Lexis)
Unfortunately, his diagnosis was deeply misleading as a guide to what ails Europe, and similar diagnoses in the United States
are equally misleading. The idea that a country's economic fortunes are largely determined by its success on world markets is a
hypothesis, not a necessary truth; and as a practical, empirical matter, that hypothesis is flatly wrong. That is, it is simply not the
case that the world's leading nations are to any important degree in economic competition with each other, or that any of their
major economic problems can be attributed to failures to compete on world markets. The growing obsession in most advanced
nations with international competitiveness should be seen, not as a well-founded concern, but as a view held in the face of
overwhelming contrary evidence. And yet it is clearly a view that people very much want to hold -- a desire to believe that is
reflected in a remarkable tendency of those who preach the doctrine of competitiveness to support their case with careless,
flawed arithmetic. This article makes three points. First, it argues that concerns about competitiveness are, as an empirical
matter, almost completely unfounded. Second, it tries to explain why defining the economic problem as one of international
competition is nonetheless so attractive to so many people. Finally, it argues that the obsession with competitiveness is not only
wrong but dangerous, skewing domestic policies and threatening the international economic system. This last issue is, of
course, the most consequential from the standpoint of public policy. Thinking in terms of competitiveness leads, directly and
indirectly, to bad economic policies on a wide range of issues, domestic and foreign, whether it be in health care or trade.
Alt causes –
STEM shortage means US competitiveness is unsustainable
Waldron ‘12 [Travis, reporter for ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, “REPORT: How America’s
Falling Share Of Global College Graduates Threatens Future Economic Competitiveness,”
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/08/21/722571/report-us-share-of-college-graduates-dropped-over-last-decade-compared-tochina-india/]
The United States’ share of global college graduates fell substantially in the first decade of the 21st century and stands to drop even
more by 2020 as developing economies in China and India have graduated more college students, presenting challenges for
American workers’ ability to remain competitive in a global economy in the future. The U.S. share of college graduates fell from
nearly one-in-four to just more than one-in-five from 2000 to 2010, according to “The Competition That Really Matters,” a report from
the Center for American Progress and The Center for the Next Generation: From 2000 to 2010, the U.S. share of college graduates
fell to 21% of the world’s total from 24%, while China’s share climbed to 11% from 9%. India’s rose more than half a percentage
point to 7%. Based on current demographic and college enrollment trends, we can project where each country will be by 2020: the
U.S. share of the world’s college graduates will fall below 18% while China’s and India’s will rise to more than 13% and nearly 8%
respectively.
B) Outsourcing
Sneider 5 (Daniel, Foreign Affairs Writer – Mercury News, “Hand-Wringing Over China Misses True Economic Problem”, Mercury
News, 4-24, http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/11476832.htm)
“In this global market, the U.S. is a leader, but we are not dominant in the market and we are not able to control the market,''
said former Defense Secretary William Perry, also a longtime Stanford engineering professor and venture capitalist. Rather, he
and others emphasized, the United States needs to maintain its leadership as an innovator. Key to that is protecting intellectual
property such as computer software codes, equipment designs and basic research. The growing trend to outsource researchand-development facilities to China makes this even more difficult.
Afghan
Can’t solve Afghanistan
Walt ‘3-15
(Stephen, Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international affairs at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, where
he served as academic dean from 2002-2006. “The REAL reason the U.S. failed in Afghanistan.” Foreign Policy.)
Both Nasr and Chayes make useful points about the dysfunction that undermined the AfPak effort, and I'm not going to try to
adjudicate between them. Rather, I think both of them miss the more fundamental contradiction that bedeviled the entire U.S./NATO
effort, especially after the diversion to Iraq allowed the Taliban to re-emerge. The key problem was essentially structural : US.
objectives in Afghanistan could not be achieved without a much larger commitment of resources, but the stakes there simply
weren't worth that level of commitment. In other words, winning wasn't worth the effort it would have taken, and the real failure
was not to recognize that fact much earlier and to draw the appropriate policy conclusions. First, achieving a meaningful victory in
Afghanistan -- defined as defeating the Taliban and creating an effective, Western-style government in Kabul -- would have required
sending far more troops (i.e., even more than the Army requested during the "surge"). Troop levels in Afghanistan never
approached the ratio of troops/population observed in more successful instances of nation-building, and that deficiency was
compounded by Afghanistan's ethnic divisions, mountainous terrain, geographic isolation, poor infrastructure, and porous borders.
Second, victory was elusive because Pakistan continued to support the Taliban, and its territory provided them with effective
sanctuaries. When pressed, they could always slip across the border and live to fight another day. But Washington was never willing
to go the mattresses and force Pakistan to halt its support, and it is not even clear that we could have done that without going to war
with Pakistan itself. Washington backed off for very good reasons: We wanted tacit Pakistani cooperation in our not-so-secret drone
and special forces campaign against al Qaeda, and we also worried about regime stability given Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
Unfortunately, these factors made victory even harder to achieve. Third, we couldn't get Karzai to reform because he was the only
game in town, and he knew it. Unless the U.S. and NATO were willing to take over the whole country and try to govern it ourselves - a task that would have made occupying Iraq seem easy -- we were forced to work with him despite his many flaws. Successful
counterinsurgencies require effective and legitimate local partners, however, and we never had one . In short, the U.S. was
destined to lose because it didn't go all-out to win, and it shouldn't have. Indeed, an all-out effort would have been a huge mistake,
because the stakes were in fact rather modest. Once the Taliban had been ousted and al Qaeda had been scattered, America's
main interest was continuing to degrade al Qaeda (as we have done). That mission was distinct from the attempt to nation-build in
Afghanistan, and in the end Afghanistan's importance did not justify a substantially larger effort. By the way, I am not suggesting that
individual commanders and soldiers did not make enormous personal sacrifices or try hard to win, or that the civilians assigned to
the Afghan campaign did not do their best in difficult conditions. My point is that if this war had been a real strategic priority, we
would have fought it very differently. We would not have rotated commanders, soldiers, and civilian personnel in and out of the
theatre as often as we did, in effect destroying institutional memory on an annual basis and forcing everyone to learn on the job. In a
war where vital interests were at stake, we certainly wouldn't have let some of our NATO partners exempt the troops they sent from
combat. And if the war had been seen aa a major priority, both parties would have been willing to raise taxes to pay for it. Thus, the
real failure in Afghanistan was much broader than the internal squabbles that Nasr and Chayes have addressed. The entire national
security establishment failed to recognize or acknowledge the fundamental mismatch between 1) U.S. interests (which were limited),
2) our stated goals (which were quite ambitious), and 3) the vast resources and patience it would have required to achieve those
goals. Winning would have required us to spend much more than winning was worth, and to undertake exceedingly risky and
uncertain actions towards countries like Pakistan. U.S. leaders wisely chose not to do these things, but they failed to realize what
this meant for the war effort itself. Given this mismatch between interests, goals, and resources, it was stupid to keep trying to win at
a level of effort that was never going to succeed. Yet no one on the inside seems to have pointed this out, or if they did, their advice
was not heeded. And that is the real reason why the war limped on for so long and to such an unsatisfying end.
No Afghan impact
Silverman ‘9 - PhD in international relations-government and, as a Ford Foundation Project Specialist (11/19/09, Jerry Mark, The
National Interest, “Sturdy Dominoes,” http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=22512)
Many advocates of continuing or racheting up our presence in Afghanistan are cut from the same domino-theory cloth as those of
the Vietnam era. They posit that losing in Afghanistan would almost certainly lead to the further "loss" of the entire South and central
Asian region. Although avoiding explicit reference to "falling dominos," recent examples include S. Frederick Starr [3] (School of
Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University); Sir David Richards [4] (the UK's relatively new Chief of the General
Staff); and, in The National Interest, Ahmed Rashid [5]. The fear that Pakistan and central Asian governments are too weak to
withstand the Taliban leads logically to the proposition-just as it did forty years ago-that only the United States can defend the region
from its own extremist groups and, therefore, that any loss of faith in America will result in a net gain for pan-Islamist movements in
a zero-sum global competition for power. Unfortunately, the resurrection of "falling dominos" as a metaphor for predicted
consequences of an American military withdrawal reflects a profound inability to re-envision the nature of today's global political
environment and America's place in it. The current worry is that Pakistan will revive support for the Taliban [6] and return to its
historically rooted policy of noninterference in local governance or security arrangements along the frontier. This fear is compounded
by a vision of radical Islamists gaining access to Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. Those concerns are fueled by the judgment that
Pakistan's new democratically elected civilian government is too weak to withstand pressures by its most senior military officers to
keep its pro-Afghan Taliban option open. From that perspective, any sign of American "dithering" would reinforce that historically-
rooted preference, even as the imperative would remain to separate the Pakistani-Taliban from the Afghan insurgents. Further, any
significant increase in terrorist violence, especially within major Pakistani urban centers, would likely lead to the imposition of martial
law and return to an authoritarian military regime, weakening American influence even further. At its most extreme, that scenario
ends with the most frightening outcome of all-the overthrow of relatively secular senior Pakistani generals by a pro-Islamist and antiWestern group of second-tier officers with access to that country's nuclear weapons. Beyond Pakistan, advocates of today's domino
theory point to the Taliban's links to both the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the Islamic Jihad Union, and conclude that a
Taliban victory in Afghanistan would encourage similar radical Islamist movements in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and
Uzbekistan. In the face of a scenario of increasing radicalization along Russia's relatively new, southern borders, domino theorists
argue that a NATO retreat from Afghanistan would spur the projection of its own military and political power into the resulting
"vacuum" there. The primary problem with the worst-case scenarios predicted by the domino theorists is that no analyst is really
prescient enough to accurately predict how decisions made by the United States today will affect future outcomes in the South and
central Asian region. Their forecasts might occur whether or not the United States withdraws or, alternatively, increases its forces in
Afghanistan. Worse, it is entirely possible that the most dreaded consequences will occur only as the result of a decision to stay.
With the benefit of hindsight, we know that the earlier domino theory falsely represented interstate and domestic political realities
throughout most of Southeast Asia in 1975. Although it is true that American influence throughout much of Southeast Asia suffered
for a few years following Communist victories in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, we now know that while we viewed the Vietnam War
as part of a larger conflict, our opponent's focus was limited to the unification of their own country. Although border disputes erupted
between Vietnam and Cambodia, China and the Philippines, actual military conflicts occurred only between the supposedly fraternal
Communist governments of Vietnam, China and Cambodia. Neither of the two competing Communist regimes in Cambodia
survived. Further, no serious threats to install Communist regimes were initiated outside of Indochina, and, most importantly, the
current political situation in Southeast Asia now conforms closely to what Washington had hoped to achieve in the first place [7]. It
is, of course, unfortunate that the transition from military conflict in Vietnam to the welcome situation in Southeast Asia today was
initially violent, messy, bloody, and fraught with revenge and violations of human rights. But as the perpetrators, magnitude, and
victims of violence changed, the level of violence eventually declined. This time around, there are at least two questionable
assumptions underlying the resurrection of the domino theory. First, the Taliban is no longer the unified group that emerged during
1994. Instead, the term "Taliban" is applied to several groups engaged in the current insurgency against the Karzai government and
NATO forces. Those groups collaborate through a complex set of shifting alliances that extend across the disputed
Afghanistan/Pakistan border. Second, given that local Taliban have demonstrated their capacity to effectively engage NATO forces
without the equivalent of NATO military and civilian trainers or logistical support, other indigenous groups opposed to the Taliban
and/or al-Qaeda are also likely to be stronger than domino theorists assume and are likely to proactively defend themselves
against radical Islamists once we are no longer there to do it for them. A retrospective view of America's involvement in Vietnam and
its ultimate consequences for U.S. interests reinforces the aphorism that all politics are local. That truism seems lost on American
foreign-policy decision makers who tend to see international threats in global rather than local terms. Further, the danger
remains that the metaphor of falling dominos might resonate with governments in the region that face their own increasingly radical
domestic opposition. Our fears of regional collapse might also speak to Russian and Chinese policy makers fearful of potentially
greater instability along their borders. But such regional threats, even if they do arise, do not threaten the core national interests
of the United States-the substantially exaggerated fears of terrorist "safe-havens" notwithstanding. Those worries simply do not
justify the overwhelmingly disproportionate and financially ruinous military response that has characterized our involvement there.
The "fall of dominos" is no more inevitable in South and central Asia now than it was in Southeast Asia more than a half century
ago. True, the earlier circumstances in Vietnam and Southeast Asia are not, in most respects, similar to the current situation in
Afghanistan, Pakistan, or the remainder of South and central Asia. Nonetheless, the emphasis in both cases on external interstate
threats-rather than on autonomous non-state actors-has been a mistake because it does not reflect the actual source of most violent
conflicts since the 1960s. In an exponentially complex world characterized by multiple actors, the domino theory does not help
predict the future course of political relations in the region-nor would any other simplistic metaphor. Despite the view that the
alliance between various Taliban and al-Qaeda factions is both strategic and long-term, a consensus is forming that most Taliban
groups are either nationalists who want to seize formal authority within recognized sovereign-states, or more localized groups that
merely want to be left alone by any pretenders to centralized state-authority. Perversely, the desire of nationalist Taliban to seize
sovereign-state power represents an acceptance of a largely secular European system of interstate relations. In that conversion will
likely be found the seeds of their eventual undoing-as local community-based groups continue to oppose any attempts, whether
sponsored by Americans or Islamic radicals, to establish centralized state authority there.
Afghan stability is impossible
NYT ‘12 ["Peace talks with the taliban" -- www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/opinion/peace-talks-with-the-taliban.html?_r=0]
American military commanders long ago concluded that the Afghan war could only end in a negotiated settlement with the Taliban,
not a military victory. But now the generals and civilian officials say even this hope is unrealistic before 2015 — after American
and coalition troops are withdrawn. They are, instead, trying to set the stage for eventual peace talks between the Afghan
government and the insurgency sometime after their departure.¶ President Obama’s failure to make headway in talks with the
Taliban is a serious setback. Of course, persuading militants to negotiate a peace deal was always a daunting challenge. But the
Obama administration has not been persistent enough in figuring out how to initiate talks with a resilient, brutal insurgency that
continues to carry out deadly attacks against American and NATO forces.¶ During the 2010 surge, when the United States
added 33,000 troops to the 68,000 in Afghanistan and put maximum military pressure on the Taliban, the administration was
conflicted and too cautious about pressing for talks. Top generals resisted negotiations, saying the focus should be on military gains.
Even after the administration decided in February 2011 to pursue talks, it took officials months to agree on the details of their
approach.¶ The talks between the United States and the Taliban began early this year but soon collapsed when the
administration, faced with bipartisan opposition in Congress, could not complete a proposed prisoner swap. The Taliban
wanted five of their leaders released from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in exchange for the sole American held by the insurgents, Sgt.
Bowe Bergdahl. The risky deal was supposed to be a confidence-building mechanism to encourage more serious talks. But its
collapse has made talks even harder.¶ The Taliban are internally divided and unwilling to meet Washington’s demands to
sever all ties to Al Qaeda, renounce violence and accept the commitments to political and human rights in Afghanistan’s
Constitution. Pakistan has long played a destructive role, enabling Taliban groups and refusing to support negotiations.
Even a more basic outreach to the Taliban — the so-called reintegration program that seeks to get lower-level fighters to lay down
their arms — has enticed only 5,000 of an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 insurgents off the battlefield.
Fsm
Advantage is non unique – doesn’t account for august 2013 memo that created
fed-state co-op
Nicole Flatow 8-29-13 Journalist, “BREAKING: Justice Department Won’t Challenge State Marijuana Laws, Announces Major
Shift In Law Enforcement Policy”, http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/08/29/2551851/breaking-justice-department-wont-challengestate-marijuana-laws-announces-major-shift-law-enforcement-policy/ Accessed 8-30-14
More than six months after Washington and Colorado passed ballot initiatives to legalize and regulate recreational marijuana, U.S.
Attorney General Eric Holder said today he would not sue to block the implementation of the laws — at least not until he sees how
the laws operate in effect. This announcement came as little surprise, after reports from earlier communication between DOJ and
the governor. More significantly,
the Department of Justice also issued new guidance to prosecutors
today calling for scaled back prosecution not just of users of marijuana, but also of distributors
and growers complying with state law: [T]he previous guidance drew a distinction between the serious ill and their
caregivers, on the one hand, and large-scale, for-profit commercial enterprises, on the other, and advised that the latter continued to
be appropriate targets for federal enforcement and prosecution. In drawing this distinction, the Department relied on the commonsense judgment that the size of a marijuana operation was a reasonable proxy for assessing whether marijuana trafficking
implicates the federal enforcement priorities set forth above. As explained above, however, both the existence of a strong and
effective state regulatory system and an operation’s compliance with such a system, may allay the threat that an operations’s size
poses to federal enforcement interests. Accordingly, in exercising prosecutorial discretion, prosecutors should not consider the size
or commercial nature of a marijuana operation alone as a proxy for assessing whether marijuana trafficking implicates the
Department’s enforcement priorities listed above. Rather,
prosecutors should continue to review marijuana
cases and on a case-by-case basis and weigh all available information and evidence, including,
but not limited to, whether the operation is demonstrably in compliance with a strong and
effective regulatory system. As the memo points out, this is a change from DOJ’s previous position.
When asked just last week about the administration’s position on marijuana,
Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest
said, “While the prosecution of drug traffickers remains an important priority, the president and
the administration believe that targeting individual marijuana users, especially those with serious
illnesses and their caregivers, is not the best allocation of federal law enforcement resources.”
Now, we can add state-compliant growers and distributors to that list who are not otherwise
violating the federal government’s rules. This would ostensibly mean that prosecutors would no longer go after large
medical marijuana dispensaries that have been viewed as models for state compliance, as they have on several previous
occasions.
Pot is irrelevant- tons of alt causes
Natelson 14 (Rob, Independence Institute's Senior Fellow in Constitutional Jurisprudence, 1-4-14, "Lessons for Federalism
from Colorado's Pot Legalization" The American Thinker)
www.americanthinker.com/2014/01/lessons_for_federalism_from_colorados_pot_legalization.html
From Colorado's marijuana "legalization" some federalism advocates draw a conclusion that is both
(1) obvious and (2) wrong. The conclusion is that the only way to restore constitutional limits is for
constitutionalists to form alliances with hard core "progressives" in areas of common concern.
After all, wasn't it a right-and-left-wing coalition that successfully repealed Colorado's marijuana ban?
There are, however, at least two problems with this approach. First, the few areas of common
concern are mostly very small and of limited importance. "Progressives" very rarely take a
genuine pro-federalism position, and when they do, the issue is usually narrow. By any objective
measure, marijuana legalization is small POT-atoes compared to massive programs like Obamacare.
Cooperative federalism is resilient
Greve 2K (Michael, John G. Searle Scholar, American Enterprise Institute; Ph.D. (Government) Cornell University, 1987,
“Against Cooperative Federalism” Mississippi Law Journal, 70 Miss. L.J. 557, Lexis)
Cooperative federalism is enormously resilient and, moreover, self-stabilizing. The range of conflict
within the system is defined by the participant-beneficiaries' fight over the terms of cooperation.
State and local governments will complain about unfunded mandates and federal imposition; national
interest groups and their congressional patrons will complain about state shirking and noncompliance. Furor over unfunded mandates produces more money and less onerous federal
conditions; interest group complaints over the states' failure to use federal block grants for their intended purposes
leads to the re-categorization of federal programs. n150 Either way, the system returns to its
bargaining equilibrium, typically at a higher level of aggregate spending.
Under ordinary political conditions, cooperative arrangements are virtually immune to political reform. In
Germany and in the United States, cooperative federalism came under challenge during periods of
serious economic malaise and manifest civic alienation, coupled with exogenous shocks (re-unification and
European integration in Germany's case, and the ascent of a determined, ideological administration in the United States). The
record strongly suggests that cooperative federalism is impregnable even under those
disadvantageous conditions.
Cooperative federalism kills civic engagement
Greve 2K (Michael, John G. Searle Scholar, American Enterprise Institute; Ph.D. (Government) Cornell University, 1987,
“Against Cooperative Federalism” Mississippi Law Journal, 70 Miss. L.J. 557, Lexis)
American federalism has become an administrative, "cooperative federalism":
state and local governments administer and implement federal programs. n4 Many stateadministered
In practice, however,
programs are funded by the federal government, in whole or, more often, in part. Others take the form of conditional preemption,
meaning that the states may choose to administer the federal program or else, cede the regulatory field to the federal government.
Cooperative federalism covers an enormous array of regulatory fields, from the environment to education to welfare and, lately,
crime control. In its horizontal dimension, cooperative federalism replaces dual federalism's competition with state policy cartels and
uniform regulatory baselines. n5 [*559]
cooperative federalism is a rotten idea , its political popularity notwithstanding. Cooperative
federalism undermines political transparency and accountability, thereby heightening civic
disaffection and cynicism; diminishes policy competition among the states; and erodes selfgovernment and liberty. The sooner we can think of viable means to curtail cooperative programs
and to disentangle government functions, the better off we shall be.
This article argues that
A loss of civic engagement causes extinction – eliminates the ability to solve
every global challenge
Boggs 97 – Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Los Angeles (Carl, The Great Retreat, Theory and Society 26.6,
jstor, /)
The false sense of empowerment that comes with such mesmerizing impulses is accompanied by
a loss of public engagement, an erosion of citizenship and a depleted capacity of individuals in large groups to work for
social change. As this ideological quagmire worsens, urgent problems that are destroying the fabric of
American society will go unsolved perhaps even unrecognized only to fester more ominously into the future. And such
problems (ecological crisis, poverty, urban decay, spread of infectious diseases, technological displacement of workers)
cannot be understood outside the larger social and global context of internationalized markets,
finance, and communications. Paradoxically, the widespread retreat from politics, often inspired by localist
sentiment, comes at a time when agendas that ignore or sidestep these global realities will, more
than ever, be reduced to impotence. In his commentary on the state of citizenship today, Wolin refers to the increasing
sublimation and dilution of politics, as larger numbers of people turn away from public concerns toward private ones. By diluting the
life of common involvements, we negate the very idea of politics as a source of public ideals and visions.74 In the meantime,
the
fate of the world hangs in the balance . The unyielding truth is that, even as the ethos of anti-politics becomes more
compelling and even fashionable in the United States, it is the vagaries of political power that will continue to decide the fate of
human societies. This last point demands further elaboration. The shrinkage of politics hardly means that
corporate colonization will be less of a reality, that social hierarchies will somehow disappear, or
that gigantic state and military structures will lose their hold over people's lives. Far from it: the
space abdicated by a broad citizenry, well-informed and ready to participate at many levels, can in
fact be filled by authoritarian and reactionary elites an already familiar dynamic in many lesserdeveloped
countries. The fragmentation and chaos of a Hobbesian world, not very far removed from the rampant individualism, social
Darwinism, and civic violence that have been so much a part of the American landscape, could be the prelude to a powerful
Leviathan designed to impose order in the face of disunity and atomized retreat. In this way the eclipse of politics might
set the stage for a reassertion of politics in more virulent guise or it might help further rationalize the existing
power structure. In either case, the state would likely become what Hobbes anticipated: the embodiment of those universal,
collective interests that had vanished from civil society.75
Alt cause to env. - A. Canal plans
Howard, 14 – National Geographic environmental journalist
[Brian, "Nicaraguan Canal Could Wreck Environment, Scientists Say," National Geographic, 2-20-14,
news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/02/140220-nicaraguan-canal-environment-conservation/, accessed 9-13-14]
Nicaraguan Canal Could
Wreck Environment , Scientists Say A planned rival to the Panama Canal carries environmental
consequences. A Nicaraguan canal? A China-backed plan to cut a new canal across Central America threatens vital wildlife and
wetlands, warn experts. Nicaraguan officials in June granted 50-year rights to build and oversee the $40 billion canal to a Hong
Kong-based firm, bypassing environmental reviews in the process. The 186-mile-long (300-kilometer-long) canal would connect the
Pacific to the Caribbean, creating a rival to the Panama Canal. (See: "Panama Canal: Intro.") In the current edition of the journal
Nature, two prominent environmental scientists warn that the project threatens "environmental disaster" for Nicaragua. At risk are
"some of the most fragile, pristine and scientifically important" regions of Central America, they warn. National Geographic spoke
with comment co-author Jorge A. Huete-Pérez, director of the Centro de Biología Molecular at the Universidad Centroamericana in
Managua, Nicaragua. Huete-Pérez is also the president of the Nicaraguan Academy of Sciences. Huete-Pérez wrote the piece with
Axel Meyer, a professor of zoology and evolutionary biology at the University of Konstanz, Germany. Is it unusual that Nicaragua will
not conduct its own environmental impact statement for the proposed canal, instead relying on the building company itself to do
that? What limitations might that pose? It would be prudent for any government to conduct its own feasibility studies and
environmental impact assessment (EIA) on the local, national, and regional impact of constructing an interoceanic megacanal well in
advance of opening up the bidding on such a project to national and international bidders, and prior to granting a concession to any
firm, foreign or national. Nicaragua's national assembly has, however, granted a concession to [Hong Kong-based company] HKND
to build and operate the canal and its many subprojects, without a bidding process and without any current EIA studies. It is unusual
that any government that has the best interests of the nation and its citizens as its top priorities would not unilaterally undertake the
necessary groundwork for such a massive project to ensure that the results of such studies would be thorough and transparent on
all levels. Your paper mentions the canal could destroy 400,000 hectares of rain forest and wetlands. What specifically would
be lost, and what is the value of that? Although the concession has already been granted to HKND, and the Nicaraguan Constitution
and Law 800 have been amended to accommodate this agreement, the final route and dimensions of HKND's interoceanic canal
have yet to be determined. Government sources have revealed several possible routes, one of which appears to be the most likely
[from Bluefields Lagoon on the east coast to the town of Brito on the west coast]. Based on this route, scientists and
environmentalists have estimated the amount of hectares that will be incorporated into HKND's canal zone and its subprojects.
These hectares extend through forests, reserves, wetlands, and land designated as autonomous and belonging to the traditional
indigenous populations of Nicaragua's Caribbean coast. The effects of construction, major roadways, a coast-to-coast railway
system and oil pipeline, neighboring industrial free-trade zones, and two international airports will transform wetlands into dry zones,
remove hardwood forests, and destroy the habitats of animals including those of the coastal, air, land, and freshwater zones. If the
canal is built, how serious a threat could it pose to the nearby Bosawas Biosphere Reserve and Indio Maíz Biological Reserve, as
well as the Cerro Silva Nature Reserve that it would cut through? Whether the canal is completed in the anticipated 10-year time
frame or not, the construction and industrialization process of HKND's canal and all of the subprojects
pose a very serious
threat not only to Lake Nicaragua and the Atlantic Autonomous Regions, but also to the rivers to be used for transit or to be
dammed to raise and maintain the level of the lake; to the Island of Ometepe, declared a World Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO;
and of course,
to the M esoAmerican B iological C orridor, which incorporates the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve, the Indio Maíz
Biological Reserve, and the Cerro Silva Nature Reserve. Migration routes for animals through this corridor would be truncated.
Forests would be cut to make way for the rail line, the canal, the oil pipeline. Wetlands would most likely be drained or filled for
the international airports and the planned industrial zones.
B. Cocaine
Watsa, 14 -- Ph.D. in biological anthropology, Mognabay reporter
[Mrinalini, "Cocaine: the new face of deforestation in Central America," Monga Bay, 3-11-14, news.mongabay.com/2014/0311watsa-drugs-deforestation.html, accessed 9-13-14]
In 2006, Mexico intensified its security strategy, forming an inhospitable environment for drug trafficking organizations (also known
as DTOs) within the nation. The drug cartels responded by creating new trade routes along the border of Guatemala and Honduras.
Soon shipments of cocaine from South America began to flow through the Mesoamerican
Biological Corridor ( MBC ). This
multi-national swathe of forest, encompassing several national parks and protected areas, was originally created to protect
endangered species, such as Baird's Tapir (Tapirus bairdii) and jaguar (Panthera onca), as well as the world's second largest coral
reef. Today, its future hinges on the world's drug producers and consumers. Recently, a report in the journal Science by seven
researchers working in Central American forests examined the effects of Mexican drug policies on the MBC, urging policy makers to
target ecological devastation as an unintended consequence of a skewed emphasis on supply-side drug reduction policies. They
highlight this unfortunate side effect of Mexico's successful law enforcement: the deforestation of pristine areas within smaller
countries like Honduras and Guatemala, ill-prepared for an influx of drugs. Cocaine and Deforestation There is growing
evidence for a correlation between drug trafficking and deforestation in Central America today. After 2006, DTOs chose their new
trade routes with care. They preyed on the remote forest frontiers of Guatemela's Petén region and eastern Honduras, which were
thinly populated with only minimal state presence, where local stakeholders did not have a loud voice. Here, the Science report
suggests that drug trafficking has compounded existing problems such as weak governance, conflicting property regimes, high
poverty, illegal logging, and agribusiness expansion. The study used data from the Organization of American States' 2013 report
titled Drug Trafficking in the Americas to
correlate forest loss with the number of primary cocaine movements in three
affected departments in eastern Honduras - Gracias a Díos, Colón, and Olancho. Combined, this area covers almost 50,000 square
kilometers or approximately 44 percent of the entire country of Honduras. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)
reports a total of 52 clandestine airstrips detected by the Honduran Armed Forces in the months of February and March of 2012 in
these three departments alone. Exact data, however, are hard to collect when it comes to the drug trade, mediated by the inherent
risk to observers in narco-zones, as well as the high levels of illegal activities and violence associated with the narcotics trade. But
the UNODC report found that primary movements of cocaine occurred both by air and sea, and included events detected by radar,
transfers intercepted by authorities, and reports by reliable intelligence that were unconfirmed by arrests. Forest loss in eastern
Honduras was discovered to have increased nearly seven times from 2007 to 2011, with a corresponding five-fold increase in
primary cocaine movements.
U.S can’t solve warming
Grose ‘3-15
(Thomas K., National Geographic News Writer, “As U.S. Cleans Its Energy Mix, It Ships Coal Problems Abroad”
Ready for some good news about the environment? Emissions of carbon dioxide in the United States are declining. But don't
celebrate just yet. A major side effect of that cleaner air in the U.S. has been the further darkening of skies over Europe and Asia.
The United States essentially is exporting a share of its greenhouse gas emissions in the form of coal, data show. If the trend
continues, the dramatic changes in energy use in the United States—in particular, the switch from coal to newly abundant natural
gas for generating electricity—will have only a modest impact on global warming, observers warn. The Earth's atmosphere will
continue to absorb heat-trapping CO2, with a similar contribution from U.S. coal. It will simply be burned overseas instead of at
home. "Switching from coal to gas only saves carbon if the coal stays in the ground," said John Broderick, lead author of a study on
the issue by the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research at England's Manchester University. The U.S. Energy Information
Administration (EIA) released data this week showing that United States coal exports hit a record 126 million short tons in 2012, a
17 percent increase over the previous year. Overseas shipments surpassed the previous high mark set in 1981 by 12 percent. The
United States clearly is using less coal: Domestic consumption fell by about 114 million tons, or 11 percent, largely due to a decline
in the use of coal for electricity. But U.S. coal production fell just 7 percent. The United States, with the world's largest coal reserves,
continued to churn out the most carbon-intensive fuel, producing 1 billion tons of coal from its mines in 2012. Emissions Sink The
EIA estimates that due largely to the drop in coal-fired electricity, U.S. carbon emissions from burning fossil fuel declined 3.4 percent
in 2012. If the numbers hold up, it will extend the downward trend that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) outlined last
month in its annual greenhouse gas inventory, which found greenhouse gas emissions in 2011 had fallen 8 percent from their 2007
peak to 6,703 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent (a number that includes sources other than energy, like methane emissions from
agriculture). In fact, if you don't count the recession year of 2009, U.S. emissions in 2011 dropped to their lowest level since 1995.
President Barack Obama counted the trend among his environmental accomplishments in his State of the Union address last
month: "Over the last four years, our emissions of the dangerous carbon pollution that threatens our planet have actually fallen." The
reason is clear: Coal, which in 2005 generated 50 percent of U.S. electricity, saw its share erode to 37.4 percent in 2012, according
to EIA's new short-term energy outlook. An increase in U.S. renewable energy certainly played a role; renewables climbed in those
seven years from 8.7 percent to 13 percent of the energy mix, about half of it hydropower. But the big gain came from natural gas,
which climbed from 19 percent to 30.4 percent of U.S. electricity during that time frame, primarily because of abundant supply and
low prices made possible by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The trend appears on track to continue, with U.S. coal-fired plants
being retired at a record pace. But U.S. coal producers haven't been standing still as their domestic market has evaporated. They've
been shipping their fuel to energy-hungry markets overseas, from the ports of Norfolk, Baltimore, and New Orleans. Although
demand is growing rapidly in Asia —U.S. coal exports to China were on track to double last year—Europe was the biggest
customer, importing more U.S. coal last year than all other countries combined. The Netherlands, with Europe's largest port,
Rotterdam, accepted the most shipments, on pace for a 24 jump in U.S. coal imports in 2012. The United Kingdom, the second
largest customer, saw its U.S. coal imports jump more than 70 percent . The hike in European coal consumption would appear to
run counter to big government initiatives across the Continent to cut CO2 emissions. But in the European Union, where fracking has
made only its initial forays and natural gas is still expensive, American coal is , well, dirt cheap . European utilities are now finding
that generating power from coal is a profitable gambit. In the power industry, the profit margin for generating electricity from coal is
called the "clean dark spread"; at the end of December in Great Britain, it was going for about $39 per megawatt-hour, according to
Argus. By contrast, the profit margin for gas-fired plants—the "clean spark spread"—was about $3. Tomas Wyns, director of the
Center for Clean Air Policy-Europe, a nonprofit organization in Brussels, Belgium, said those kinds of spreads are typical across
Europe right now. The EU has a cap-and-trade carbon market, the $148 billion, eight-year-old Emissions Trading System (ETS).
But it's in the doldrums because of a huge oversupply of permits . That's caused the price of carbon to fall to about 4 euros
($5.23). A plan called "backloading" that would temporarily extract allowances from the market to shore up the price has faltered so
far in the European Parliament. "A better carbon price could make a difference" and even out the coal and gas spreads, Wyns said.
He estimates a price of between 20 and 40 euros would do the trick. "But a structural change to the Emissions Trading System is
not something that will happen very quickly. A solution is years off." The Tyndall Center study estimates that the burning of all that
exported coal could erase fully half the gains the U nited S tates has made in reducing carbon emissions. For huge reserves of
shale gas to help cut CO2 emissions, "displaced fuels must be reduced globally and remain suppressed indefinitely," the report said.
Future Emissions It is not clear that the surge in U.S. coal exports will continue. One reason for the uptick in coal-fired generation in
Europe has been the looming deadline for the EU's Large Combustion Plant Directive, which will require older coal plants to meet
lower emission levels by the end of 2015 or be mothballed. Before that phaseout begins, Wyns says, " there is a bit of a binge
going on." Also, economic factors are at work. Tyndall's Broderick said American coal companies have been essentially selling
surplus fuel overseas at low profit margins, so there is a likelihood that U.S. coal production will decrease further. The U.S.
government forecasters at EIA expect that U.S. coal exports will fall back to about 110 million tons per year over the next two years,
due to economic weakness in Europe, falling international prices, and competition from other coal-exporting countries. The Parisbased International Energy Agency (IEA) calls Europe's "coal renaissance" a temporary phenomenon; it forecasts an increasing use
of renewables, shuttering of coal plants, and a better balance between gas and coal prices in the coming years. But IEA does not
expect that the global appetite for coal will slacken appreciably. The agency projects that, by 2017, coal will rival oil as the world's
primary energy source, mainly because of skyrocketing demand in Asia. U.S. coal producers have made clear that they aim to tap
into that growing market.
They have no effect on CO2
Carnegie Institute 12
Carnegie Institute of Science, February 16, 2012, "Only the lowest CO2 emitting technologies can avoid a hot end-of-century",
http://carnegiescience.edu/news/only_lowest_co2_emitting_technologies_can_avoid_hot_endofcentury
Washington, D.C.— Could replacing coal-fired electricity plants with generators fueled by natural gas bring global warming to a halt
in this century? What about rapid construction of massive numbers of solar or wind farms, hydroelectric dams, or nuclear reactors—
or the invention of new technology for capturing the carbon dioxide produced by fossil-fueled power plants and storing it
permanently underground? Nathan Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures teamed up with Carnegie Institution’s Ken Caldeira to calculate
the expected climate effects of replacing the world’s supply of electricity from coal plants with any of eight cleaner options. The work
was published online by Environmental Research Letters on February 16. When published, it will be available at
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/1/014019. In each case, Myhrvold and Caldeira found that to achieve substantial benefit this
century, we would need to engage in a rapid transition to the lowest emitting energy technologies such as solar, wind, or nuclear
power – as well as conserve energy where possible. The researchers found that it takes much longer to curtail the warming of the
Earth than one might expect. And in the case of natural gas—increasingly the power industry’s fuel of choice, because gas reserves
have been growing and prices have been falling—the study finds that warming would continue even if over the next 40 years every
coal-fired power plant in the world were replaced with a gas-fueled plant. “There is no quick fix to global warming,” Caldeira said.
“Shifting from one energy system to another is hard work and a slow process. Plus, it takes several decades for the climate system
to fully respond to reductions in emissions. If we expect to see substantial benefits in the second half of this century, we had better
get started now.” Researchers have previously conducted studies projecting the long-term climate effects of rolling out a single new
energy technology. But this work from Myhrvold and Caldeira is the first to examine all the major candidate technologies for
replacing coal power—including conservation—and to examine wide ranges of possible assumptions about both the emissions each
technology generates and also the scope and duration of the build-out. “It takes a lot of energy to make new power plants—and it
generally takes more energy to make those that use cleaner technology--like nuclear, solar, and wind--than it does to make dirty
ones that burn coal and gas,” Myhrvold added. “You have to use the energy system of today to build the new-and-improved energy
system of tomorrow, and unfortunately that means creating more emission in the near-term than we would otherwise. So we incur a
kind of ‘emissions debt’ in making the transition to a better system, and it can take decades to pay that off. Meanwhile, the
temperature keeps rising.” The study used widely accepted models relating emissions to temperature. The two researchers also
drew on a rich literature of studies, called life-cycle analyses, that total up all the greenhouse gases produced during the
construction and operation of, say, a natural gas plant or a hydroelectric dam or a solar photovoltaic farm. It also examined the
potential that technological improvements, such as advances in carbon capture and storage or in solar panel efficiency, could have
on outcomes. “It was surprising to us just how long it takes for the benefit of a switch from coal to something better to show up in the
climate in the form of a slowdown in global warming,” Caldeira said. “If countries were to start right away and build really fast, so that
they installed a trillion watts of gas-fired electricity generation steadily over the next 40 years,” Myhrvold said, “that would still add
about half a degree Fahrenheit to the average surface temperature of the Earth in 2112—that’s within a tenth of a degree of the
warming that coal-fired plants would produce by that year.”
Can’t solve warming
AP 9 (Associated Press, Six Degree Temperature Rise by 2100 is Inevitable: UNEP, September 24, http://www.speedyfit.co.uk/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=168)
Earth's temperature is likely to jump six degrees between now and the end of the century even if every country cuts
greenhouse gas emissions as proposed, according to a United Nations update. Scientists looked at emission plans from 192
nations and calculated what would happen to global warming. The projections take into account 80 percent emission cuts from
the U.S. and Europe by 2050, which are not sure things. The U.S. figure is based on a bill that passed the House of Representatives
but is running into resistance in the Senate, where debate has been delayed by health care reform efforts. Carbon dioxide, mostly
from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil, is the main cause of global warming, trapping the sun's energy in the
atmosphere. The world's average temperature has already risen 1.4 degrees since the 19th century. Much of projected rise in
temperature is because of developing nations, which aren't talking much about cutting their emissions, scientists said at a
United Nations press conference Thursday. China alone adds nearly 2 degrees to the projections. "We are headed toward very
serious changes in our planet," said Achim Steiner, head of the U.N.'s environment program, which issued the update on Thursday.
The review looked at some 400 peer-reviewed papers on climate over the last three years. Even if the developed world cuts its
emissions by 80 percent and the developing world cuts theirs in half by 2050, as some experts propose, the world is still
facing a 3-degree increase by the end of the century, said Robert Corell, a prominent U.S. climate scientist who helped oversee
the update. Corell said the most likely agreement out of the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December still
translates into a nearly 5-degree increase in world temperature by the end of the century. European leaders and the Obama White
House have set a goal to limit warming to just a couple degrees. The U.N.'s environment program unveiled the update on peerreviewed climate change science to tell diplomats how hot the planet is getting. The last big report from the Nobel Prize-winning
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change came out more than two years ago and is based on science that is at least three to
four years old, Steiner said. Global warming is speeding up, especially in the Arctic, and that means that some top-level science
projections from 2007 are already out of date and overly optimistic. Corell, who headed an assessment of warming in the Arctic, said
global warming "is accelerating in ways that we are not anticipating." Because Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets are melting
far faster than thought, it looks like the seas will rise twice as fast as projected just three years ago, Corell said. He said seas should
rise about a foot every 20 to 25 years.
Warming won’t cause extinction
Barrett ‘7 professor of natural resource economics – Columbia University, (Scott, Why Cooperate? The Incentive to Supply
Global Public Goods, introduction)
First, climate change does not threaten the survival of the human species.5 If unchecked, it will cause other species to become
extinction (though biodiversity is being depleted now due to other reasons). It will alter critical ecosystems (though this is also
happening now, and for reasons unrelated to climate change). It will reduce land area as the seas rise, and in the process displace
human populations. “Catastrophic” climate change is possible, but not certain. Moreover, and unlike an asteroid collision, large
changes (such as sea level rise of, say, ten meters) will likely take centuries to unfold, giving societies time to adjust. “Abrupt”
climate change is also possible, and will occur more rapidly, perhaps over a decade or two. However, abrupt climate change (such
as a weakening in the North Atlantic circulation), though potentially very serious, is unlikely to be ruinous. Human-induced climate
change is an experiment of planetary proportions, and we cannot be sur of its consequences. Even in a worse case scenario,
however, global climate change is not the equivalent of the Earth being hit by mega-asteroid. Indeed, if it were as damaging as this,
and if we were sure that it would be this harmful, then our incentive to address this threat would be overwhelming. The challenge
would still be more difficult than asteroid defense, but we would have done much more about it by now.
CO2 isn’t key
Watts ’12 25-year climate reporter, works with weather technology, weather stations, and weather data processing systems in
the private sector, 7/25/
(Anthony, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/25/lindzen-at-sandia-national-labs-climate-models-are-flawed/)
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Richard Lindzen, a global warming skeptic, told about
70 Sandia researchers in June that too much is being made of climate change by researchers seeking government funding. He said
their data and their methods did not support their claims. “Despite concerns over the last decades with the greenhouse process,
they oversimplify the effect,” he said. “Simply cranking up CO2 [carbon dioxide] (as the culprit) is not the answer” to what causes
climate change. Lindzen, the ninth speaker in Sandia’s Climate Change and National Security Speaker Series, is Alfred P. Sloan
professor of meteorology in MIT’s department of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences. He has published more than 200
scientific papers and is the lead author of Chapter 7 (“Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks”) of the International Panel on
Climate Change’s (IPCC) Third Assessment Report. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the
American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society. For 30 years, climate scientists have been “locked into a
simple-minded identification of climate with greenhouse-gas level. … That climate should be the function of a single parameter
(like CO2) has always seemed implausible. Yet an obsessive focus on such an obvious oversimplification has likely set back
progress by decades,” Lindzen said. For major climates of the past, other factors were more important than carbon dioxide.
Orbital variations have been shown to quantitatively account for the cycles of glaciations of the past 700,000 years, he said, and the
elimination of the arctic inversion, when the polar caps were ice-free, “is likely to have been more important than CO2 for the warm
episode during the Eocene 50 million years ago.” There is little evidence that changes in climate are producing extreme weather
events, he said. “Even the IPCC says there is little if any evidence of this. In fact, there are important physical reasons for doubting
such anticipations.” Lindzen’s views run counter to those of almost all major professional societies. For example, the American
Physical Society statement of Nov. 18, 2007, read, “The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.” But he doesn’t
feel they are necessarily right. “Why did the American Physical Society take a position?” he asked his audience. “Why did they find it
compelling? They never answered.” Speaking methodically with flashes of humor — “I always feel that when the conversation turns
to weather, people are bored.” — he said a basic problem with current computer climate models that show disastrous increases in
temperature is that relatively small increases in atmospheric gases lead to large changes in temperatures in the models. But, he
said, “predictions based on high (climate) sensitivity ran well ahead of observations.” Real-world observations do not support IPCC
models, he said: “We’ve already seen almost the equivalent of a doubling of CO2 (in radiative forcing) and that has produced
very little warming.” He disparaged proving the worth of models by applying their criteria to the prediction of past climatic events,
saying, “The models are no more valuable than answering a test when you have the questions in advance.” Modelers, he said,
merely have used aerosols as a kind of fudge factor to make their models come out right. (Aerosols are tiny particles that reflect
sunlight. They are put in the air by industrial or volcanic processes and are considered a possible cause of temperature change at
Earth’s surface.) Then there is the practical question of what can be done about temperature increases even if they are occurring,
he said. “China, India, Korea are not going to go along with IPCC recommendations, so … the only countries punished will be those
who go along with the recommendations.” He discounted mainstream opinion that climate change could hurt national security,
saying that “historically there is little evidence of natural disasters leading to war, but economic conditions have proven much more
serious. Almost all proposed mitigation policies lead to reduced energy availability and higher energy costs. All studies of human
benefit and national security perspectives show that increased energy is important.” He showed a graph that demonstrated that
more energy consumption leads to higher literacy rate, lower infant mortality and a lower number of children per woman. Given that
proposed policies are unlikely to significantly influence climate and that lower energy availability could be considered a significant
threat to national security, to continue with a mitigation policy that reduces available energy “would, at the least, appear to be
irresponsible,” he argued. Responding to audience questions about rising temperatures, he said a 0.8 of a degree C change in
temperature in 150 years is a small change. Questioned about five-, seven-, and 17-year averages that seem to show that
Earth’s surface temperature is rising, he said temperatures are always fluctuating by tenths of a degree.
We’ll adapt
Kenny 12 [April 9, 2012, Charles, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a Schwartz fellow at the New America
Foundation, and author, most recently, of Getting Better: Why Global Development Is Succeeding and How We Can Improve the
World Even More., “Not Too Hot to Handle,”
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/09/not_too_hot_to_handle?print=yes&hidecomments=yes&page=full]
But for all international diplomats appear desperate to affirm the self-worth of pessimists and doomsayers worldwide, it is important
to put climate change in a broader context. It is a vital global issue -- one that threatens to slow the worldwide march toward
improved quality of life. Climate change is already responsible for more extreme weather and an accelerating rate of species
extinction -- and may ultimately kill off as many as 40 percent of all living species. But it is also a problem that we know how to
tackle, and one to which we have some time to respond before it is likely to completely derail progress. And that's good news,
because the fact that it's manageable is the best reason to try to tackle it rather than abandon all hope like a steerage class
passenger in the bowels of the Titanic.
Start with the economy. The Stern Review, led by the distinguished British economist Nicholas Stern, is the most comprehensive
look to date at the economics of climate change. It suggests that, in terms of income, greenhouse gasses are a threat to global
growth, but hardly an immediate or catastrophic one. Take the impact of climate change on the developing world. The most
depressing forecast in terms of developing country growth in Stern's paper is the "A2 scenario" -- one of a series of economic and
greenhouse gas emissions forecasts created for the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It's a model that
predicts slow global growth and income convergence (poor countries catching up to rich countries). But even under this model,
Afghanistan's GDP per capita climbs sixfold over the next 90 years, India and China ninefold, and Ethiopia's income increases by a
factor of 10. Knock off a third for the most pessimistic simulation of the economic impact of climate change suggested by the Stern
report, and people in those countries are still markedly better off -- four times as rich for Afghanistan, a little more than six times as
rich for Ethiopia.
It's worth emphasizing that the Stern report suggests that the costs of dramatically reducing greenhouse-gas emissions is closer to 1
(or maybe 2) percent of world GDP -- in the region of $600 billion to $1.2 trillion today. The economic case for responding to climate
change by pricing carbon and investing in alternate energy sources is a slam dunk. But for all the likelihood that the world will be a
poorer, denuded place than it would be if we responded rapidly to reduce greenhouse gases, the global economy is probably not
going to collapse over the next century even if we are idiotic enough to delay our response to climate change by a few years. For all
the flooding, the drought, and the skyrocketing bills for air conditioning, the economy would keep on expanding, according to the
data that Stern uses.
And what about the impact on global health? Suggestions that malaria has already spread as a result of climate change and that
malaria deaths will expand dramatically as a result of warming in the future don't fit the evidence of declining deaths and reduced
malarial spread over the last century. The authors of a recent study published in the journal Nature conclude that the forecasted
future effects of rising temperatures on malaria "are at least one order of magnitude smaller than the changes observed since about
1900 and about two orders of magnitude smaller than those that can be achieved by the effective scale-up of key control
measures." In other words, climate change is and will likely remain a small factor in the toll of malaria deaths into the foreseeable
future.
What about other diseases? Christian Zimmermann at the University of Connecticut and Douglas Gollin at Williams evaluate the
likely impact of a 3-degree rise in temperatures on tropical diseases like dengue fever, which causes half a million cases of
hemorrhagic fever and 22,000 deaths each year. Most of the vectors for such diseases -- mosquitoes, biting flies, and so on -- do
poorly in frost. So if the weather stays warmer, these diseases are likely to spread. At the same time, there are existing tools to
prevent or treat most tropical diseases, and Zimmerman and Gollin suggest "rather modest improvements in protection efficacy
could compensate for the consequences of climate change." We can deal with this one.
It's the same with agriculture. Global warming will have many negative (and a few positive) impacts on food supply, but it is likely
that other impacts -- both positive, including technological change, and negative, like the exhaustion of aquifers-- will have far bigger
effects. The 2001 IPCC report suggested that climate change over the long term could reduce agricultural yields by as much as 30
percent. Compare that with the 90 percent increase in rice yields in Indonesia between 1970 and 2006, for example.
Again, while climate change will make extreme weather events and natural disasters like flooding and hurricanes more common, the
negative effect on global quality of life will be reduced if economies continue to grow. That's because, as Matthew Kahn from Tufts
University has shown, the safest place to suffer a natural disaster is in a rich country. The more money that people and
governments have, the more they can both afford and enforce building codes, land use regulations, and public infrastructure like
flood defenses that lower death tolls.
Let's also not forget how human psychology works. Too many environmentalists suggest that dealing with climate change will take
immediate and radical retooling of the global economy. It won't. It is affordable, practical, and wouldn't take a revolution. Giving out
the message that the only path to sustainability will require medieval standards of living only puts everyone else off. And once
you've convinced yourself the world is on an inevitable course to disaster if some corner of the U.S. Midwest is fracked once more or
India builds another three coal-fueled power plants, the only logical thing to do when the fracking or the building occurs is to sit back,
put your Toms shoes on the couch, and drink micro-brewed herbal tea until civilization collapses. Climate change isn't like that -- or
at the very least, isn't like that yet.
So, if you're really just looking for a reason to strap on the "end of the world is nigh" placards and go for a walk, you can find better
excuses -- like, say, the threat of global thermonuclear war or a rogue asteroid. The fight to curb greenhouse gas emissions is one
for the hard-nosed optimist.
U.S. decline is inevitable—multiple reasons
-china #1 manufacturer
-us debt
-multilat
Christopher Layne, University Distinguished Professor, National Security, Texas A&M University, "American Grand Strategy:
Strives to Maintain World Hegemony," interviewed by Feng Damaie, CHINESE SOCIAL SCIENCES TODAY, 10--25--12,
www.csstoday.net/ywpd/Interview/28824.html, accessed 6-4-13.
Yes, the U.S. is in relative decline. Of course one would never know it from the statements of the American political class.
In his 2012 State of the Union address, President Obama said that “anyone who tells you America is in decline doesn’t know what
he’s talking about.” Republican nominee Mitt Romney has declared that the 21st century will be the next American century and
stated that he is opposed to decline in all its manifestations. And Jon Huntsman, who served as U.S. ambassador to China until
returning home to run unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination said that, “Decline is un-American.”
We need to be careful when we use the word “decline” and to avoid sensationalism . It is also important
to use the correct metrics to define what decline is. But fundamentally, Paul Kennedy was correct in his important 1987 book
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. In that book, he did not predict a sudden, catastrophic collapse of American power. Rather,
he argued that decline would be a gradual, multi-decade process.
To argue that the
U.S. is not in decline is a perverse form of denialism. China has surpassed the U.S.
as the world’s leading manufacturer. Since the 1970s, the U.S. has shifted from being a creditor
nation to being the world’s largest debtor nation, and has run persistent balance of payments deficits. For most
years since the early 1960s, the U.S. has run federal budget deficits with the consequence that today its
national debt is skyrocketing. Moreover, today few serious thinkers about American strategy deny
that China is on the cusp of being a “peer competitor” of the U.S. geopolitically. This, in itself, is
confirmation of U.S. decline. After all, in 1990, the American political class was: proclaiming the advent of an enduring
unipolar world in which the U.S. would be without rivals; comparing U.S. power to that of the Roman Empire at its zenith; and
simultaneously declaring the “end of history.” We are a long way past those days now. Still, we should not exaggerate. While
the U.S. soon will no longer be the “sole superpower” and its ability to shape international
outcomes is diminishing markedly, “decline” does not mean the end of American power and
influence in international politics. The U.S. will remain one of several great powers - and possibly
the leading one. It still will have power and influence - just a lot less than it did in 1945 or 1990.
No one can foresee exactly what the future world order will look like. But it’s a safe bet that over the next several
decades the world order that emerges will look quite different from the world order that the U.S.
built in the aftermath of World War II. Although waning, the Pax Americana endures. But is doubtful that the
U.S. will be able to sustain in much longer. The new powers in international politics - especially China - will have a
big voice in determining what the next world order will looks like and we should expect that it will be an order that reflects the
interests, norms and values of the rising powers more than it does those of a U.S. in decline
China
A. Holding on ensures a war--multiple scenarios
Christopher Layne, Professor, National Security, Texas A&M University, “The Global Power Shift from West to East,” THE
NATIONAL INTERST, May/June 2012, p. 28.
Beyond the U.S. financial challenge, the world is percolating with emerging nations bent on exploiting the power shift away from the
West and toward states that long have been confined to subordinate status in the global power game. (Parag Khanna explores this
phenomenon at length further in this issue.) By far the biggest test for the United States will be its relationship with China, which
views itself as effecting a restoration of its former glory, before the First Opium War of 1839–1842 and its subsequent “century of
humiliation.” After all, China and India were the world’s two largest economies in 1700, and as late as 1820 China’s economy was
larger than the combined economies of all of Europe. The question of why the West emerged as the world’s most powerful
civilization beginning in the sixteenth century, and thus was able to impose its will on China and India, has been widely debated.
Essentially, the answer is firepower. As the late Samuel P. Huntington put it, “The West won the world not by the superiority of its
ideas or values or religion . . . but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; nonWesterners never do.” Certainly, the Chinese have not forgotten. Now Beijing aims to dominate its own East and
Southeast Asian backyard, just as a rising America sought to dominate the Western Hemisphere a century and a half ago. The
United States and China now are competing for supremacy in East and Southeast Asia. Washington has been the incumbent
hegemon there since World War II, and many in the American foreignpolicy establishment view China’s quest for regional
hegemony as a threat that must be resisted. This contest for regional dominance is fueling escalating tensions and
possibly could lead to war. In geopolitics, two great cannot powers simultaneously be hegemonic in the
same region. Unless one of them abandons its aspirations, there is a high probability of hostilities.
Flashpoints that could spark a Sino-American conflict include the unstable Korean Peninsula; the disputed status
of Taiwan; competition for control of oil and other natural resources; and the burgeoning naval rivalry between
the two powers.
B. Global nuclear war
Johnson ’01 [Chalmers, “Time to Bring the Troops Home”, The Nation, May 14, LN]]
China is another matter. No sane figure in the Pentagon wants a war with China, and all serious US militarists know that
China's minuscule nuclear capacity is not offensive but a deterrent against the overwhelming US power arrayed against it (twenty
archaic Chinese warheads versus more than 7,000 US warheads). Taiwan, whose status constitutes the still incomplete last act of
the Chinese civil war, remains the most dangerous place on earth. Much as the 1914 assassination of the Austrian crown prince in
Sarajevo led to a war that no one wanted, a misstep in Taiwan by any side could bring the United States and China
into a conflict that neither wants. Such a war would bankrupt the United States, deeply divide Japan and probably end in a
Chinese victory, given that China is the world's most populous country and would be defending itself against a foreign aggressor.
More seriously, it could easily escalate into a nuclear holocaust. However, given the nationalistic challenge to China's
sovereignty of any Taiwanese attempt to declare its independence formally, forward-deployed US forces on China's borders
have virtually no deterrent effect.
Transition now is key
A. Vital to stability
Christopher Layne, Professor, National Security, Texas A&M University, “The Global Power Shift from West to East,” THE
NATIONAL INTERST, May/June 2012, p. 31.
During the next two decades, the U nited S tates will face some difficult choices between bad outcomes and worse ones. But
such decisions could determine whether America will manage a graceful decline that conserves as
much power and global stability as possible. A more ominous possibility is a precipitous power
collapse that reduces U.S. global influence dramatically. In any event, Americans will have to adjust to the new
order, accepting the loss of some elements of national life they had taken for granted. In an age of austerity, national
resources will be limited, and competition for them will be intense. If the country wants to do more at home, it will
have to do less abroad. It may have to choose between attempting to preserve American hegemony or
repairing the U.S. economy and maintaining the country’s social safety net. The constellation of world power is
changing, and U.S. grand strategy will have to change with it. American elites must come to grips with the fact that
the West does not enjoy a predestined supremacy in international politics that is locked into the future for an indeterminate period of
time. The Euro-Atlantic world had a long run of global dominance, but it is coming to an end. The future is more likely to be shaped
by the East. At the same time, Pax Americana also is winding down. The U nited S tates can manage this relative decline
effectively over the next couple of decades only if it first acknowledges the fundamental reality of
decline. The problem is that many Americans, particularly among the elites, have embraced the notion of American
exceptionalism with such fervor that they can’t discern the world transformation occurring before their eyes.
2nc
fism
**Pot is worse than alcohol- laundry list
Charles D. “Cully” Stimson 10 is a Senior Legal Fellow in the Center for Legal & Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
Before joining The Heritage Foundation, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense; as a local, state, federal, and military
prosecutor; and as a defense attorney and law professor. “Legalizing Marijuana: Why Citizens Should Just Say No” Legal
Memorandum #56 on Legal Issues September 13, 2010. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/09/legalizing-marijuanawhy-citizens-should-just-say-no ac 6-18
Unsafe in Any Amount: How Marijuana Is Not Like Alcohol
Marijuana advocates have had some success peddling the notion that marijuana is a “soft” drug, similar to alcohol, and
fundamentally different from “hard” drugs like cocaine or heroin. It is true that marijuana is not the most dangerous of the commonly
abused drugs, but that is not to say that it is safe. Indeed,
marijuana shares more in common with the “hard”
drugs than it does with alcohol.
A common argument for legalization is that smoking marijuana is no more dangerous than drinking alcohol and that prohibiting the
use of marijuana is therefore no more justified than the prohibition of alcohol. As Jacob Sullum, author of Saying Yes: In Defense of
Drug Use, writes:
Americans understood the problems associated with alcohol abuse, but they also understood the problems associated with
Prohibition, which included violence, organized crime, official corruption, the erosion of civil liberties, disrespect for the law, and
injuries and deaths caused by tainted black-market booze. They decided that these unintended side effects far outweighed whatever
harms Prohibition prevented by discouraging drinking. The same sort of analysis today would show that the harm caused by drug
prohibition far outweighs the harm it prevents, even without taking into account the value to each individual of being sovereign over
his own body and mind.[7]
At first blush, this argument is appealing, especially to those wary of over-regulation by government. But it overlooks the enormous
difference between alcohol and marijuana.
Legalization advocates claim that marijuana and alcohol are mild intoxicants and so should be
regulated similarly; but as the experience of nearly every culture, over the thousands of years of
human history, demonstrates, alcohol is different. Nearly every culture has its own alcoholic
preparations, and nearly all have successfully regulated alcohol consumption through cultural
norms. The same cannot be said of marijuana. There are several possible explanations for alcohol’s unique status:
For most people, it is not addictive; it is rarely consumed to the point of intoxication; low-level consumption is consistent with most
manual and intellectual tasks; it has several positive health benefits; and it is formed by the fermentation of many common
substances and easily metabolized by the body.
To be sure, there are costs associated with alcohol abuse, such as drunk driving and disease associated with excessive
consumption. A few cultures—and this nation for a short while during Prohibition—have concluded that the benefits of alcohol
consumption are not worth the costs. But they are the exception; most cultures have concluded that it is acceptable in moderation.
No other intoxicant shares that status.
Alcohol differs from marijuana in several crucial respects. First , marijuana is far more likely to
cause addiction. Second , it is usually consumed to the point of intoxication. Third , it has no
known general healthful properties, though it may have some palliative effects. Fourth , it is toxic and
deleterious to health . Thus, while it is true that both alcohol and marijuana are less intoxicating than other mood-altering
drugs, that is not to say that marijuana is especially similar to alcohol or that its use is healthy or even safe.
In fact,
compared to alcohol, marijuana is not safe . Long-term, moderate consumption of alcohol carries few health
risks and even offers some significant benefits. For example, a glass of wine (or other alcoholic drink) with dinner actually improves
health.[8] Dozens of peer-reviewed medical studies suggest that drinking moderate amounts of alcohol reduces the risk of heart
disease, strokes, gallstones, diabetes, and death from a heart attack.[9] According to the Mayo Clinic, among many others,
moderate use of alcohol (defined as two drinks a day) “seems to offer some health benefits, particularly for the heart.”[10] Countless
articles in medical journals and other scientific literature confirm the positive health effects of moderate alcohol consumption.
The effects of regular marijuana consumption are quite different. For example, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (a division of
the National Institutes of Health) has released studies showing that use of marijuana has wide-ranging
negative health effects. Long-term marijuana consumption “impairs the ability of T-cells in the lungs’
immune system to fight off some infections.”[11] These studies have also found that marijuana consumption
impairs short-term memory, making it difficult to learn and retain information or perform complex
tasks; slows reaction time and impairs motor coordination; increases heart rate by 20 percent to 100
percent, thus elevating the risk of heart attack; and alters moods, resulting in artificial euphoria, calmness, or (in high doses)
anxiety or paranoia.[12] And it gets worse: Marijuana
has toxic properties that can result in birth defects ,
pain, respiratory system damage, brain damage , and stroke .[13]
Further, prolonged use of marijuana may cause cognitive degradation and is “associated with lower test scores and
lower educational attainment because during periods of intoxication the drug affects the ability to learn
and process information, thus influencing attention, concentration, and short-term memory.”[14]
Unlike alcohol, marijuana has been shown to have a residual effect on cognitive ability that
persists beyond the period of intoxication.[15] According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, whereas
alcohol is broken down relatively quickly in the human body, THC (tetrahydrocannabinol, the main active
chemical in marijuana) is stored in organs and fatty tissues, allowing it to remain in a user’s body for
days or even weeks after consumption.[16] Research has shown that marijuana consumption may also cause
“psychotic symptoms.”[17]
Marijuana’s effects on the body are profound.
According to the British Lung Foundation, “ smoking three or
four marijuana joints is as bad for your lungs as smoking twenty tobacco cigarettes .”[18] Researchers
in Canada found that marijuana smoke contains significantly higher levels of numerous toxic compounds, like
ammonia and hydrogen cyanide, than regular tobacco smoke.[19] In fact, the study determined that ammonia was found
in marijuana smoke at levels of up to 20 times the levels found in tobacco.[20] Similarly, hydrogen cyanide was found in marijuana
smoke at concentrations three to five times greater than those found in tobacco smoke.[21]
Marijuana, like tobacco, is addictive. One study found that more than 30 percent of adults who used
marijuana in the course of a year were dependent on the drug.[22] These individuals often show signs of
withdrawal and compulsive behavior.[23] Marijuana dependence is also responsible for a large proportion of calls to drug abuse help
lines and treatment centers.
To equate marijuana use with alcohol consumption is, at best, uninformed and, at worst, actively misleading. Only in the most
superficial ways are the two substances alike, and they differ in every way that counts: addictiveness, toxicity, health effects, and
risk of intoxication.
Unintended Consequences
Legal pot crushes education
By Ed Gogek, M.D., addiction psychiatrist who lives in Prescott, Ariz “Why Democrats should steer clear of the marijuana lobby”
Posted on July 6, 2013 http://thecaseagainstmarijuana.com/ ac 7-23
Marijuana legalization also runs
counter to the Democratic commitment to education as the best way to
keep our economy strong . States with medical marijuana laws have always had much higher rates of teenage marijuana
use, but now the effect is nationwide. Since 2008, teen use in America has increased 40 percent, and heavy teen use (at least 20
times per month) is up 80 percent. The drive to legalize pot is mostly to blame. It sends the message that weed is
harmless, even though research clearly shows that marijuana interferes with learning. Teens who
smoke pot regularly do worse in school, are twice as likely to drop out, and earn less as adults.
Research even shows that teenage marijuana use lowers IQ and the effect appears to be permanent . No
other drug, not even alcohol, affects academic performance like marijuana. How can we call
education crucial for a competitive America , and then support laws that will blunt the next
generation’s ability to compete ?
Education k2 competitiveness and growth
Norman R. Augustine et al, National Academies Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the
21st Century Chair, ‘06
[Augustine is also the retired Lockheed Martin Chairman and CEO, report written by the National Academies (The
National Academy of Sciences, The National Academy of Engineering, The Institute of Medicine, and The National
Research Council) Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21 st Century, “Rising Above The
Gathering Storm”]
Enlarge the pipeline of students who are prepared to enter college and graduate with a degree in science,
engineering, or mathematics by increasing the number of students who pass AP and IB science and
mathematics courses. The competitiveness of US knowledge industries will be purchased largely in
the K–12 classroom: We must invest in our students’ mathematics and science education. A new
generation of bright, well-trained scientists and engineers will transform our future only if we begin in
the 6th grade to significantly enlarge the pipeline and prepare students to engage in advanced
coursework in mathematics and science.
Legalization threatens national defense and the economy
Charles "Cully" Stimson 8 (April 21, Charles was a local, state and federal prosecutor, a military prosecutor and defense
attorney, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense. Currently, he is a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation. “America on
drugs” http://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-op-sullum-stimson21apr21-story.html#page=1
there is no difference between decriminalization and legalization . Second, whichever term
you want to use, it's a bad idea.¶ Heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana are illegal because they
are dangerous, addictive , destructive drugs that ruin lives . You cannot seriously argue that there is no
Two points: First,
difference between a person who has a glass of wine with dinner and a person who uses heroin, coke, meth or marijuana everyday.
The wine drinker is, arguably, improving his health -- if you believe the current medical literature -- but the drug addict is destroying
his mind. That affects all of us.¶ Certain laws are necessary for the public good. Keeping dangerous narcotics illegal is one of them.
It is no secret that most criminals test positive for illegal drugs when they are arrested. These drugs alter the mind and carry longterm negative consequences. Defense attorneys, prosecutors, police officers and judges are not surprised to see the child abuser or
domestic violence defendant test positive for coke or meth. Why? Because these drugs contribute to and cause erratic, volatile
behavior; the scientific literature is clear on that. So while you say these people are simply exercising their "sovereignty," their
criminal behavior, often caused by drug abuse, hurts everyone.¶ An example: I have defended Navy sailors who were charged with
criminal drug offenses. These men didn't just hurt themselves; they put their fellow sailors' lives in danger, even when they were
"sober," because of the long-term effects of these drugs on their minds and their performance. ¶ And there is more to the story:
When addicts are on a naval vessel, it weakens our national defense and makes all of us less
safe. Imagine that across our economy: school bus drivers, police officers, machinery operators
and so on. Drug legalization would only increase the risk that drug users , even during the times
when they are sober , will act erratically or inattentively because their drug use has warped their minds
and dulled their abilities. Implementing your philosophical theory of radical autonomy, Jacob, would have disastrous
unintended consequences.¶ From 1982 to 1992, illegal drug use by young adults dropped more than 50%.
Why? In 1982, President Reagan rolled out his national drug strategy. It consisted of five components: international
cooperation, research, strengthened law enforcement, treatment and rehabilitation, and prevention and education. Difficult problems
like the scourge of illegal drugs require a comprehensive approach, not a hands-off one that's simplistic. Why try a dangerous
alternative when we know what works?
Kills ambition
Sabet, 13 -- University of Florida Drug Policy Institute director
[Kevin, PhD, served in the Office of National Drug Control Policy in the Clinton Administration, former senior drug policy adviser in
the Obama administration, "7 big myths about marijuana and legalization," Christian Science Monitor, 9-5-13,
www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2013/0905/7-big-myths-about-marijuana-and-legalization/Myth-Marijuana-is-harmlessand-non-addictive, accessed 6-5-14]
Admittedly, marijuana is not as dangerous as cocaine or heroin, but to
say it is harmless or nonaddictive is to deny
science. The N ational I nstitutes of H ealth reports that 1 out of every 6 adolescents who try the
drug will develop an addiction . This may not amount to the experience of the Woodstock generation, but scientists
now know that the average strength of today’s marijuana is some five to six times what it was in the
1960s and 1970s (and some strains are upward of 10 times stronger than in the past). This translated to almost 400,000
marijuana-related emergency room visits in 2008 due to things like acute psychotic episodes and car crashes. In fact, according to
the British Medical Journal, marijuana intoxication doubles your risk of a car crash. Mental health researchers are also noting a
significant marijuana connection with schizophrenia. And educators are seeing how persistent
academic
marijuana use can blunt
motivation and significantly reduce IQ – by up to eight points according to a very large
recent study in New Zealand. Regular marijuana use hurts America’s ability to learn and compete in a
global marketplace.
Colorado proves- increases pot at work, children get weed candy, tax revenues
didn’t hold up, workplace drug use, kills competitiveness
Kevin Sabet PhD, Director of the Drug Policy Institute at the University of Florida and an Assistant Professor in the College of
Medicine, Department of Psychiatry. Former Senior Policy Advisor to President Obama's Drug Czar / April 27, 2014 “Marijuana Is
Harmful: Debunking 7 Myths Arguing It’s Fine” Daily Signal, http://dailysignal.com/2014/04/27/time-reefer-sanity/ AC 6-18
Experience from Colorado’s recent legalization of recreational marijuana is not promising. Since January,
THC-positive test results in the workplace have risen, two recent deaths in Denver have been
linked to recreational marijuana use, and the number of parents calling the poison control hotline
because their kids consumed marijuana products has significantly risen. Additionally, tax revenues
fall short of original projections and the black market for marijuana continues to thrive in
Colorado. Though Washington State has not yet implemented its marijuana laws, the percentage of cases involving THCpositive drivers has significantly risen.¶ Marijuana policy is not straightforward. Any public policy has costs and benefits. It is true that
a policy of saddling users with criminal records and imprisonment does not serve the nation’s best interests. But neither does
legalization, which would create the 21st century version of Big Tobacco and reduce our ability to
compete and learn . There is a better way to address the marijuana question—one that
emphasizes brief interventions, prevention, and treatment, and would prove a far less costly
alternative to either the status quo or legalization. That is the path America should be pursuing—call it “Reefer
Sanity.”
Kills competitiveness- academic achievement
Charles D. “Cully” Stimson 10 is a Senior Legal Fellow in the Center for Legal & Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
Before joining The Heritage Foundation, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense; as a local, state, federal, and military
prosecutor; and as a defense attorney and law professor. “Legalizing Marijuana: Why Citizens Should Just Say No” Legal
Memorandum #56 on Legal Issues September 13, 2010. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/09/legalizing-marijuanawhy-citizens-should-just-say-no ac 6-18
Educators know that students using marijuana underperform when compared to their non-using
peers. Teachers, coaches, guidance counselors, and school principals have seen the negative effect of marijuana on their
students. The Rev. Dr. D. Stuart Dunnan, Headmaster of Saint James School in St. James, Maryland, says of marijuana use by
students:
The chemical effect of marijuana is to take away ambition. The social effect is to provide an escape from challenges and
responsibilities with a like-minded group of teenagers who are doing the same thing. Using marijuana creates losers. At a time
when we’re concerned about our lack of academic achievement relative to other countries,
legalizing marijuana will be disastrous .[52]
**Outweighs revenues
David G. Evans Special Adviser to the Drug Free America Foundation “Marijuana Legalization's Costs Outweigh Its Benefits”
Oct. 30, 2012 http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/should-marijuana-use-be-legalized/marijuana-legalizations-costs-outweigh-itsbenefits
The argument that we can tax and regulate marijuana and derive income from it is false . The increased
use will increase the multitude of costs that come with marijuana use. The costs from health and
mental wellness problems, accidents, and damage to our economic productivity will far out strip
any tax obtained. Our economy is suffering . The last thing we need is the burden that
legalization will put on us.
Econ collapse causes extinction
Auslin 09 (Michael, Resident Scholar – American Enterprise Institute, and Desmond Lachman – Resident Fellow – American
Enterprise Institute, “The Global Economy Unravels”, Forbes, 3-6, http://www.aei.org/article/100187)
What do these trends mean in the short and medium term? The Great Depression showed how social and global
chaos
followed hard on economic collapse. The mere fact that parliaments across the globe, from America to Japan, are unable
to make responsible, economically sound recovery plans suggests that they do not know what to do and are simply hoping for the
least disruption. Equally worrisome is the adoption of more statist economic programs around the globe, and the concurrent decline
of trust in free-market systems. The threat of instability is a pressing concern. China, until last year the world's fastest growing
economy, just reported that 20 million migrant laborers lost their jobs. Even in the flush times of recent years, China faced upward of
70,000 labor uprisings a year. A sustained downturn poses grave and possibly immediate threats to Chinese
internal stability. The regime in Beijing may be faced with a choice of repressing its own people or diverting their energies
outward, leading to conflict with China's neighbors. Russia, an oil state completely dependent on energy sales, has had to put down
riots in its Far East as well as in downtown Moscow. Vladimir Putin's rule has been predicated on squeezing civil liberties while
providing economic largesse. If that devil's bargain falls apart, then wide-scale repression inside Russia, along with
a continuing threatening posture toward Russia's neighbors, is likely. Even apparently stable societies face
increasing risk and the threat of internal or possibly external conflict. As Japan's exports have plummeted by nearly 50%, one-third
of the country's prefectures have passed emergency economic stabilization plans. Hundreds of thousands of temporary employees
hired during the first part of this decade are being laid off. Spain's unemployment rate is expected to climb to nearly 20% by the end
of 2010; Spanish unions are already protesting the lack of jobs, and the specter of violence, as occurred in the 1980s, is haunting
the country. Meanwhile, in Greece, workers have already taken to the streets. Europe as a whole will face dangerously
increasing tensions between native citizens and immigrants, largely from poorer Muslim nations, who have increased the labor
pool in the past several decades. Spain has absorbed five million immigrants since 1999, while nearly 9% of Germany's residents
have foreign citizenship, including almost 2 million Turks. The xenophobic labor strikes in the U.K. do not bode well for the rest of
Europe. A prolonged global downturn, let alone a collapse, would dramatically raise tensions inside these
countries. Couple
that with possible protectionist legislation in the United States, unresolved ethnic and territorial disputes
in all regions of the globe and a loss of confidence that world leaders actually know what they are doing. The result
may be a series of small explosions that coalesce into a big bang.
Pot kills growth-kills productivity and increases health care costs
Charles D. “Cully” Stimson 10 is a Senior Legal Fellow in the Center for Legal & Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
Before joining The Heritage Foundation, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense; as a local, state, federal, and military
prosecutor; and as a defense attorney and law professor. “Legalizing Marijuana: Why Citizens Should Just Say No” Legal
Memorandum #56 on Legal Issues September 13, 2010. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/09/legalizing-marijuanawhy-citizens-should-just-say-no ac 6-18
In addition to its direct effects on individual health, even
moderate marijuana use imposes significant long-term
costs through the ways that it affects individual users. Marijuana use is associated with
cognitive difficulties and influences attention , concentration , and short-term memory . This
damage affects drug users’ ability to work and can put others at risk. Even if critical workers—
for example, police officers, airline pilots, and machine operators—used marijuana recreationally
but remained sober on the job, the long-term cognitive deficiency that remained from regular
drug use would sap productivity and place countless people in danger . Increased use would also
send health care costs skyrocketing —costs borne not just by individual users, but also by the
entire society.
Health costs devastate growth
Carpenter 08 (Elizabeth Carpenter is a Senior Program Associate with the Health Policy Program at the New America
Foundation. HEALTH POLICY PROGRAM ISSUE BRIEF – March -http://www.newamerica.net/files/What_Hill_Staff_should_Know_about_Health_Care.pdf)
Why do we need to control health care cost growth? No health reform proposal will be sustainable over time without serious efforts
to control health care cost growth. Rising health care costs are the most pressing economic challenge
facing our nation and have left many Americans simply unable to afford health insurance. In addition, the cost of health
care threatens the competitiveness of U.S. businesses and the solvency of the Medicare program. Americans
Can No Longer Afford Health Care In 1987, the average health insurance premium accounted for 7.3% of the median family income
in the U.S. In 2006, that had risen to 17%. The Business Case Health care costs threaten the competitiveness
and profitability of many U.S. businesses. In 2005, employers spent $440 billion on health care, which represents
24% of all national health expenditures. The average U.S. employer spends 9.9% of payroll on health care compared to 4.9% for
major competitors. Employer health costs put U.S. firms at a competitive disadvantage compared to
foreign firms and result in more and more “good jobs” being lost overseas
Productivity key to sustainable growth
Authors: Kristina Dervojeda et al 13 Diederik Verzijl, Fabian Nagtegaal, Mark Lengton & Elco Rouwmaat, PwC Netherlands,
and Erica Monfardini & Laurent Frideres, PwC Luxembourg. “Workplace Innovation¶ Solutions for enhancing workplace
productivity”¶ Business Innovation Observatory, European Commission, ¶ Contract No 190/PP/ENT/CIP/12/C/N03C01 p. 2
The socio-economic effect of solutions for enhancing workplace productivity is significant and is
essential for future economic growth in Europe. At the level of the employee, workplace innovation
solutions that result in more mobility might lead to greater flexibility and better work-life balance.
However, the case of the latter is constantly under discussion amongst researchers that find mixed results, indicating that blurring
boundaries between work and private life might also harm this balance. At the level of organisations, workplace innovation
enhances productivity, enables organisations to recruit and retain talent better, and lowers real
estate cost whilst offering possibilities to reduce the environmental footprint of these
organisations. From a macro perspective the benefits of enhancing workplace productivity can be linked
to sustainable economic growth at the country-level.
Pot causes cancer- consensus of research
By Ed Gogek, M.D., addiction psychiatrist who lives in Prescott, Ariz “Medical marijuana should never be smoked” Posted on
August 20, 2013 http://thecaseagainstmarijuana.com/ ac 7-23
This is not a complete list of studies, and there aren’t many. So it is not enough to draw definitive conclusions on marijuana and
cancer. However,
the evidence that marijuana smoking is linked to cancer is far more substantial than
the research supporting marijuana as treatment for many of the disorders listed in Arizona’s new
medical marijuana law . Also, remember, it took decades of heavy tobacco use by large swaths of
the population before we had a definitive link between tobacco smoking and cancer. Meanwhile,
cigarette smoking killed Franklin Roosevelt, Humphrey Bogart, Edward R. Murrow, and tens of thousands more. The rule in
the field of medicine is when in doubt, err on the side of caution. Caution says if preliminary
evidence shows that marijuana smoking probably causes cancer, treat it as if it definitely does. ¶
On several pro-marijuana websites I found the claim that there is no direct evidencelinking
marijuana smoking to lung cancer in humans. That is exactly what the tobacco industry said for
decades after the first studies came out linking cigarette smoking with lung cancer . What they said was
technically true; until recently we did not know for certain the exact mechanism by which smoking caused cancer. However, the
statistical evidence was overwhelming, so the tobacco industry was being completely disingenuous and so are the pro-marijuana
groups who say marijuana doesn’t cause cancer. Anyone who claims that marijuana does not cause cancer is
ignoring the research. ¶ Also, in November 2010 an article printed in the European Journal of
Immunologydescribed a possible mechanism by which smoking marijuana causes cancer and the
research supporting this possible mechanism. If further studies support these findings, then we will have direct
evidence linking marijuana smoking to cancer in humans.¶ Anyone who goes on the internet will find the promarijuana groups misrepresenting research. What they almost always do is take one study or one
bit of information and run with it as if that were the whole story. That’s how Arizona ended up with a law that
says marijuana is good for glaucoma even though the Glaucoma Foundation warns patientsnot to use marijuana because it could
make their symptoms worse.
**Cancer kills millions
CDC Page last reviewed: September 2, 2014 Page last updated: September 2, 2014 “Cancer Prevention and Control”
http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/data/types.htm ac 9-11
Every year, cancer claims the lives of more than half a million Americans . Cancer is the second
leading cause of death in the United States, exceeded only by heart disease. One of every four deaths in
the United States is due to cancer. According to the United States Cancer Statistics: 1999–2011 Incidence and Mortality
Web-based Report, 576,685 people—about 1,580 people a day —died of cancer in the U nited S tates in 2011.
Cancer costs kill healthcare
Dubner 13, Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist, his journalism has been published in The New York
Times, The New Yorker, Time, and elsewhere, “The Unsustainable Economics of Cancer Drugs”, 10/22/2013, acc: 8/28/2014,
http://freakonomics.com/2013/10/22/the-unsustainable-economics-of-cancer-drugs/
Most people want to fend off death no matter the cost. More
than $40 billion is spent worldwide each year on
cancer drugs. In the United States, they constitute the second- largest category of pharmaceutical sales, after heart drugs, and
are growing twice as fast as the rest of the market. The bulk of this spending goes to chemotherapy, which is used in a variety of
ways and has proven effective on some cancers, including leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease, and testicular cancer,
especially if these cancers are detected early. But in most other cases, chemotherapy is remarkably ineffective. An exhaustive
analysis of cancer treatment in the United States and Australia showed that the five-year survival rate for all patients was about 63
percent but that chemotherapy contributed barely 2 percent to this result. There is a long list of cancers for which chemotherapy had
zero discernible effect, including multiple myeloma, soft-tissue sarcoma, melanoma of the skin, and cancers of the pancreas, uterus,
prostate, bladder, and kidney. Consider lung cancer, by far the most prevalent fatal cancer, killing more than 150,000 people a year
in the United States. A typical chemotherapy regime for non-small-cell lung cancer costs more than $40,000 but helps extend a
patient’s life by an average of just two months. Thomas J. Smith, a highly regarded oncology researcher and
clinician at Virginia Commonwealth University, examined a promising new chemotherapy
treatment for metastasized breast cancer and found that each additional year of healthy life
gained from it costs $360,000 — if such a gain could actually be had. Unfortunately, it couldn’t: the new
treatment typically extended a patient’s life by less than two months. Costs like these put a tremendous strain on
the entire healthcare system . Smith points out that cancer patients make up 20 percent of
Medicare cases but consume 40 percent of the Medicare drug budget. Some oncologists argue that the
benefits of chemotherapy aren’t necessarily captured in the mortality data, and that while chemotherapy may not help nine out of ten
patients, it may do wonders for the tenth. Still, considering its expense, its frequent lack of efficacy, and its toxicity — nearly 30
percent of the lung-cancer patients on one protocol stopped treatment rather than live with its brutal side effects — why is
chemotherapy so widely administered?
They increase dependence and reduce productivity
Beau Kilmer et al 10, Jonathan P. Caulkins, Rosalie Liccardo Pacula, Robert J. MacCoun, Peter H. Reuter ((Kilmer-Codirector, RAND Drug Policy Research Center; Senior Policy Researcher, RAND; Professor, Pardee RAND Graduate School,
Ph.D. in public policy, Harvard University; M.P.P., University of California, Berkeley; B.A. in international relations, Michigan State
University, PACULA is Senior Economist and co-Director, Drug Policy Research Center, RAND Corporation, MacCoun is a
professor in the Goldman School of Public Policy and Boalt Hall Law School at the University of California, Berkeley. Caulkins-Stever Professor of Operations Research and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, Reuter--Professor in the School of Public
Policy and the Department of Criminology at the University of Maryland. “Altered State? Assessing How Marijuana Legalization in
California Could Influence Marijuana Consumption and Public Budgets” Rand,
http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/occasional_papers/2010/RAND_OP315.pdf
Indirect Effects This
section focuses on some nonbudgetary effects of legalization: dependence and
abuse, drugged driving, and the use of other substances. While each can have important implications for the
budget (some of which are included in the previous section), here we stress some non- budget effects that may be of interest. It is
important to note that we do not provide a compre- hensive assessment of all potential health outcomes associated with marijuana
use (e.g., chronic respiratory effects, psychological effects). For reviews of these literatures, please see Hall and Pacula (2003) and
Hall and Degenhardt (2009). Dependence and Abuse How would the number of marijuana users meeting clinical criteria for abuse
or dependence change with a change in the policy? Over this decade, the number of users meeting these cri- teria in the previous
year as a fraction of people reporting use of marijuana in the past year in nationally representative samples has been fairly stable
(~16 percent). One way to project what could happen to dependent users post-legalization is to assume that this relationship
between the number dependent and past-year users remains the same. We start by making an assumption about
legalization’s effect on consumption. For this example, we consider a 58-percent increase in annual consumption and
refer interested read- ers to Pacula (2010a) for more information about this starting value. With 525,000 users estimated
to meet Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , 4th ed. (DSM-IV) criteria for marijuana abuse or
dependence in California in 2009 (Pacula, 2010a), a 58-percent increase would suggest a rise of
305,000, bringing the total number of users meeting clinical criteria for abuse or dependence to
830,000 . Of course, there is tremendous uncertainty sur- rounding this number because of uncertainty about the baseline
assumptions that generated the predicted change in annual prevalence. If we adopt alternative plausible
assumptions, we generate a range of 144,000 to 380,000, implying that the total number of users
meeting clini- cal criteria for abuse or dependence would be in the range of 669,000 to 905,000.
There are currently no estimates in the literature of the social cost of a user meeting clini- cal criteria for abuse or dependence; thus,
it is not possible to quantify this increase’s budgetary impact on California taxpayers. But, to the extent that dependence
and abuse impose costs in the form of reduced productivity , higher health-care costs, or lost
time with the family, a rise in dependence represents a real loss to the citizens of California.
Social costs outweigh budget gains
Charles "Cully" Stimson is now a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, “How Pot Advocates are Manipulating the
Truth” December 1, 2012 “How Pot Advocates are Manipulating the Truth”
http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2012/12/how-pot-advocates-are-manipulating-the-truth ac 6-18
Moreover, the
scientific literature is clear that marijuana is addictive, its use significantly impairs
bodily and mental functions and is associated with cancer, strokes, heart disease, birth defects,
and a host of other serious medical conditions. The attendant added costs associated with these
conditions would likely swamp any revenues derived from the sale of "legal" marijuana. And a
recent study conducted by researchers at Duke University's Center for Child and Family Policy shows that
teens who frequently smoke marijuana are more likely to suffer a long-term drop in IQ.¶ In addition to
marijuana's harmful effects on the body, the expected increase in health costs associated with its use, and
its relationship to criminal conduct, marijuana is a gateway drug that can, and often does, lead
users to more dangerous drugs. Prosecutors, judges, police officers, detectives, parole or probation officers and even
defense attorneys know that the vast majority of defendants arrested for violent crimes test positive for illegal drugs, including
marijuana. They also know that marijuana is the starter drug of choice for most criminals.¶ Legalizing marijuana is a bad
deal all around and will serve little purpose other than leading to increased addiction, crime,
societal disorder and adverse health consequences and costs.
Costs outweigh revenues, no arrests
Gitlow 14 (Stuart, MD, MPH, MBA is the Executive Director of the Annenberg Physician Training Program in Addictive Disease,
7-20-14, "Marijuana legalization is a risk not worth taking" CNN) www.cnn.com/2014/07/30/opinion/gitlow-marijuanause/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
As a society, we will not make money -- we will likely lose money, just as we do with tobacco and
alcohol. Taxpayers will need to pay more in order to make up for the productivity and illnessrelated losses that marijuana taxes won't come close to covering. And since only a small
percentage of state prisoners are there for marijuana offenses, how much would we be saving in
criminal justice costs? Especially since there are more alcohol-related arrests (e.g. drunkenness, driving
under the influence, violation of liquor laws) than all illegal drug arrests combined.
1nr
Pot on the ballot could save the dems
Michael Mishak, staff, “Florida Democrats Hope Medical Pot Measure Will Boost Voter Turnout,” PBS NEWSHOUR, 4—14—14,
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/florida-democrats-hope/, accessed 9-5-14.
Democrats in the nation’s largest swing-state see the question of whether to legalize medical marijuana as a rare
source of hope and high voter turnout in this year’s midterm elections. Party operatives are pushing a constitutional amendment that
would make Florida the first state in the South to legalize some pot use. Polls show the measure has widespread public support,
and it’s particularly popular among young voters – a critical part of the Democratic coalition with
historically weak turnout in non-presidential election years. “I wish that it didn’t take medical marijuana on the ballot to motivate our
young voters to go and vote because there’s far too much at stake for them and their children,” said Ana Cruz, former executive
director of the Florida Democratic Party. “But listen, we’ll take it any way we can get it.” At stake is the Florida governor’s office, as
well as a handful of competitive House seats. But the nation’s political world will be watching Florida’s turnout in November for clues
to whether pot on the ballot could draw young people to the polls. In 2012, both Washington and Colorado saw
spikes in youth turnout when marijuana initiatives were on the ballot. This year, Florida could be a critical
test case for whether those increases were an anomaly or the start of a trend in advance of the presidential election in 2016, when
activists plan to launch legalization campaigns in at least six states, including battleground Nevada. “ It’s a smart move on
the Democrats’ part,” said David Flaherty, a Colorado-based GOP pollster. “It’s going to help them, no doubt about
it.” The marijuana initiative may be one bright spot for Democrats in an election year that could be
grim for the party. President Barack Obama remains unpopular, and Republicans are trying to make the elections a
referendum on his health care law. Gov. Rick Scott is making the health care overhaul a central issue in the governor’s race and
outside conservative groups, such as Americans for Prosperity, are funding a barrage of negative ads against Democrats in a
handful of swing-voting House districts. “I would rather have it on the ballot than not,” said Steve Schale, a Democratic consultant
who managed Obama’s Florida campaign in 2008. “It could have a marginal impact, and a marginal impact in
Florida could be the difference between winning and losing.” A Republican victory in a special House election
last month in Florida underscored the Democrats’ turnout problem. The St. Petersburg-area district has 2.4 percent more registered
Republicans than Democrats, but GOP voters outnumbered Democrats by 8 percentage points among those who cast ballots. While
far from a cure-all, Democrats say the medical pot measure could help counter Republican energy by
motivating young and independent voters. According to a national survey sponsored by George Washington
University last month, nearly 40 percent of likely voters said they would be “much more likely” to vote if a legalization measure was
on the ballot, with another 30 percent saying they would be “somewhat” more likely to vote.
Pot measures increase turnout
CNN, 5/8/14, “Could pot push voters to the polls this fall?” http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/08/politics/marijuana-midterms/
Pot measures are more likely to draw voters to the polls, said Chris Arterton, a political management professor at
George Washington University who helped conduct a national poll in late March examining the issue.
According to the poll "39% of surveyed voters reported that they would be much more
likely to turn out
to the polls if there was a proposal to legalize the use of marijuana on the ticket. An additional
30% said that they would be somewhat more likely to vote in the election under that
circumstance."
Turnout is key for Dems
Linda Feldman, staff, “Are 2014 Midters Really a Referendum on President Obama?” CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, 5—5—
14, /www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/2014/0505/Are-2014-midterms-really-a-referendum-on-President-Obama, accessed 97-14.
And in the end, Americans don’t vote on a generic ballot, they vote
for or against specific candidates. The real
issue for Democrats is whether they can motivate their voters to show up at the polls. Party leaders say
they will use the same turnout techniques that worked for Obama in 2012 to get their voters to the polls in
2014. But they face a daunting task. Some of the Democrats’ most reliable supporters in presidential
years – single women, minorities, and young voters – vote in much lower numbers when the midterms roll
around. A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll showed some stark data about the so-called “dropoff voters”: 61 percent are
female and 35 percent are between the ages of 18 and 34. In partisan terms, 51 percent of “dropoffs” are Democrats, 17 percent are
independents, and 25 percent are Republicans. The name of the game, therefore, is GOTV – “get out the vote.” That
means recruiting volunteers and raising enough money to pay for the staff and infrastructure needed to get dropoff voters to turn
out.
Turnout is the determining factor
Jackie Gingrich, author, “Turnout Is Key in Midterm Elections,” NEWSMAX, 5—15—14,
www.newsmax.com/JackieGingrich/Turnout-Midterm-Elections-Senate/2014/05/15/id/571463/, accessed 6-13-14.
Of course, elections
are determined not by polls or opinions, but by counting the votes of those who
bothered to go to the polls. Turnout is key, especially in an off-year election. "Typically, the party
whose supporters have an advantage in enthusiasm has done better in midterm elections," noted
Gallup. "Republicans had decided advantages in enthusiasm in 1994, 2002, and especially 2010 — years in which they won control
of the House of Representatives or expanded on their existing majority. Democrats had the advantage in 2006, the year they won
control of the House. Neither party had a decided advantage in 1998, a year Democrats posted minimal gains in House seats." In
hotly contested primaries such as Georgia, negative ads often have a way of making their way to the forefront, especially in the final
days of the primary when candidates and their staffs may become desperate to make it into the run-off. The challenge with negative
ads is that they might lead some prospective voters to decide not to vote at all. While this might be a plan to win — voter
suppression never works for a democracy in the long run. Elections should be won by candidates who offer a better path and vision
to a brighter future, who engage and energize voters rather than repel them. This year, the midterm elections will be
about turnout. Let's drive turnout based on voter enthusiasm.
Alaska determines control
CNN, “Game on in Alaska Senate Battle,” 8—20—14, http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/08/20/game-on-in-alaska-senatebattle/, accessed 9-6-14.
The stage is set in one of the most important Senate races this year's midterm elections, a contest
that could decide whether the Democrats or Republicans control the chamber next year. Former
Alaska Attorney General Dan Sullivan held off two other major candidates to win Tuesday's Republican
Senate primary, and will now face off in the general election against first term Democratic Sen. Mark Begich. If the GOP can
flip the seat in Alaska, and five others without losing any ground, they will win control of the Senate. Sullivan
topped 2010 GOP Senate nominee Joe Miller, with Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell coming in third place. Miller, who was backed by
former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, surged in recent weeks, but wasn't able to close the gap with Sullivan, who enjoyed a fundraising
advantage over his opponents, and who had the support of many mainstream pro-Republican organizations. Groups such as
American Crossroads and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which tend to back establishment GOP candidates, supported Sullivan,
as they saw him as the strongest Republican candidate to take on Begich. Sullivan also had the backing of the Club for Growth,
which often endorses more conservative Republican candidates.
GOP Senate ensures sanctions
Eric Pianin, journalist, “Get Ready for One-Party Rule if GOP Wins the Senate,” FISCAL TIMES, 1—16—14,
www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/01/16/Get-Ready-One-Party-Rule-If-GOP-Wins-Senate
There would be other important consequences as well to a return to one-party rule in Congress, with
Republicans in
charge of both the Senate and the House. If the likes of McConnell and Tea Party favorites Rand Paul of Kentucky
and Ted Cruz of Texas are suddenly calling the shots in the Senate , the Democrats’ main bulwark
against House Republican legislation and assaults will be gone – leaving President Obama and his veto pen as
his party’s last line of defense. That would mean Obama would likely spend his last two years in office trying to fend off Republicanpassed legislation to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, strip out sections of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation, kill off
Environmental Protection Agency regulations reducing greenhouse gas emissions , further toughening sanctions
against Iran and scores of other measures that strike at the heart of Obama’s legislative accomplishments. Jim Manley, Reid’s
former press secretary, said Washington would be treated to “government by veto.”
GOP will undermine the Iran deal
Albert R. Hunt, “Republian Senate Could Bypass Obama’s Vetoes,” NEWS JOURNAL, 4—1—14,
www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/contributors/2014/04/01/republican-senate-bypass-obamas-vetoes/7165339/], accessed 714-14.
• Foreign policy: The
biggest issue might be a nuclear deal with Iran. Odds are the current negotiations will be
For now, only the strong hand of Senate Majority Leader Harry
Reid prevents legislation that might scuttle the negotiations from coming to the floor. If a deal is reached, a
extended until the end of this year or next year.
Republican Congress would probably refuse to repeal the sanctions imposed on Iran. The president can waive some of these
measures by executive order. But Congress would still have latitude to complicate any arrangement. As to investigations of alleged
administration misconduct, take the current number and double it. Democrats, when not in a state of panic, predict that such a
scenario would lead to Republican overreach, paving the way for a Democratic president – and Senate – two years later. If so, the
agenda of that new president would be to undo much of what had been done the previous two years.
And that causes uncontrollable escalation – draws-in every superpower,
specifically US, Russia, and China – only scenario that rises to the level of
extinction
Reuveny, 10 – professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University (Rafael, “Unilateral strike could
trigger World War III, global depression” Gazette Xtra, 8/7, - See more at: http://gazettextra.com/news/2010/aug/07/con-unilateralstrike-could-trigger-world-war-iii-/#sthash.ec4zqu8o.dpuf)
A unilateral Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would likely have dire consequences,
including a regional war, global economic collapse and a major power clash. For an Israeli campaign to
succeed, it must be quick and decisive. This requires an attack that would be so overwhelming that Iran would not dare to respond
in full force. Such an outcome is extremely unlikely since the locations of some of Iran’s nuclear facilities are not
fully known and known facilities are buried deep underground . All of these widely spread facilities are
shielded by elaborate air defense systems constructed not only by the Iranians but also the Chinese and, likely, the Russians as
well. By now, Iran has also built redundant command and control systems and nuclear facilities ,
developed early warning systems, acquired ballistic and cruise missiles and upgraded and enlarged its armed forces. Because Iran
is well-prepared, a single, conventional Israeli strike—or even numerous strikes—could not destroy all of its
capabilities, giving Iran time to respond. Unlike Iraq, whose nuclear program Israel destroyed in 1981, Iran has a secondstrike capability comprised of a coalition of Iranian, Syrian, Lebanese, Hezbollah, Hamas, and, perhaps, Turkish forces.
Internal pressure might compel Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority to join the assault, turning a bad situation into a regional
war. During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, at the apex of its power, Israel was saved from defeat by President Nixon’s shipment of
weapons and planes. Today, Israel’s numerical inferiority is greater, and it faces more determined and better-equipped opponents.
After years of futilely fighting Palestinian irregular armies, Israel has lost some of its perceived superiority—bolstering its enemies’
resolve. Despite Israel’s touted defense systems, Iranian coalition missiles, armed forces, and terrorist attacks would likely wreak
havoc on its enemy, leading to a prolonged tit-for-tat. In the absence of massive U.S. assistance, Israel’s military
resources may quickly dwindle, forcing it to use its alleged nuclear weapons, as it had reportedly almost
done in 1973. An Israeli nuclear attack would likely destroy most of Iran’s capabilities, but a crippled Iran and its coalition could still
attack neighboring oil facilities, unleash global terrorism, plant mines in the Persian Gulf and impair maritime trade in the
Mediterranean, Red Sea and Indian Ocean. Middle Eastern oil shipments would likely slow to a trickle as production
declines due to the war and insurance companies decide to drop their risky Middle Eastern clients. Iran and Venezuela would likely
stop selling oil to the United States and Europe. From there, things could deteriorate as they did in the 1930s. The world
economy would head into a tailspin; international acrimony would rise; and Iraqi and Afghani citizens might
fully turn on the United States, immediately requiring the deployment of more American troops. Russia, China, Venezuela,
and maybe Brazil and Turkey—all of which essentially support Iran—could be tempted to form an alliance and
openly challenge the U.S. hegemony. Russia and China might rearm their injured Iranian protege overnight, just as
Nixon rearmed Israel, and threaten to intervene, just as the U.S.S.R. threatened to join Egypt and Syria in 1973. President
Obama’s response would likely put U.S. forces on nuclear alert , replaying Nixon’s nightmarish scenario. Iran
may well feel duty-bound to respond to a unilateral attack by its Israeli archenemy, but it knows that it could not take on the United
States head-to-head. In contrast, if the United States leads the attack, Iran’s response would likely be muted. If Iran chooses to
absorb an American-led strike, its allies would likely protest and send weapons but would probably not risk using force. While no
one has a crystal ball, leaders should be risk-averse when choosing war as a foreign policy tool. If attacking Iran is deemed
necessary, Israel must wait for an American green light.
III .
A unilateral Israeli strike could ultimately spark World War
Iran war escalates
Jeffrey White, defense fellow, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, “What Would War with Iran Look Like,” AMERICAN
INTEREST, July/August 2011, http://www.the-american-interest.com/article-bd.cfm?piece=982
A U.S.-Iranian war would probably not be fought by the U nited S tates and Iran alone. Each would have
partners or allies, both willing and not-so-willing. Pre-conflict commitments, longstanding relationships, the
course of operations and other factors would place the U nited S tates and Iran at of more or less structured
coalitions of the marginally willing. A Western coalition could consist of the United States and most of its traditional allies (but very
likely not Turkey, based on the evolution of Turkish politics) in addition to some Persian Gulf states, Jordan and perhaps Egypt,
depending on where its revolution takes it. Much would depend on whether U.S. leaders could persuade others to go along, which
would mean convincing them that U.S. forces could shield them from Iranian and Iranian-proxy retaliation, or at least substantially
weaken its effects. Coalition warfare would present a number of challenges to the U.S. government. Overall, it would lend legitimacy
to the action, but it would also constrict U.S. freedom of action, perhaps by limiting the scope and intensity of military operations.
There would thus be tension between the desire for a small coalition of the capable for operational and security purposes and a
broader coalition that would include marginally useful allies to maximize legitimacy. The U.S. administration would probably not
welcome Israeli participation. But if Israel were directly attacked by Iran or its allies, Washington would find it difficult to keep Israel
out—as it did during the 1991 Gulf War. That would complicate the U.S. ability to manage its coalition, although it would not
necessarily break it apart. Iranian diplomacy and information operations would seek to exploit Israeli participation to the fullest. Iran
would have its own coalition. Hizballah in particular could act at Iran’s behest both by attacking Israel directly
and by using its asymmetric and irregular warfare capabilities to expand the conflict and complicate the maintenance of
the U.S. coalition. The escalation of the Hizballah-Israel conflict could draw in Syria and Hamas; Hamas in particular could
feel compelled to respond to an Iranian request for assistance. Some or all of these satellite actors might choose to leave
Iran to its fate, especially if initial U.S. strikes seemed devastating to the point of decisive. But their involvement would
spread the conflictto the entire eastern Mediterranean and perhaps beyond, complicating both U.S. military
operations and coalition diplomacy.
Escalates, extinction
Mahdi Nazemroaya, Research Associate, Centre for Research on Globalization,” The Next World War: The ‘Great Game’ and
The Threat of Nuclear War,” Global Research, 1—10—11, http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-next-world-war-the-great-game-andthe-threat-of-nuclear-war/22169?print=1
Any attack
on Iran will be a joint operation between Israel, the U.S., and NATO. Such an attack will escalate into a
major war. The U.S. could attack Iran, but can not win a conventional war. General Yuri Baluyevsky, the former chief of the
Russian Armed Forces General Staff and Russian deputy defence minister, even publicly came forward in 2007 to warn that an
attack on Iran would be a global disaster and unwinnable for the Pentagon. [97] Such a war against Iran and its allies in the Middle
East would lead to the use of nuclear weapons against Iran as the only means to defeat it. Even Saddam Hussein, who
during his day once commanded the most powerful Arab state and military force, was aware of this. In July 25, 1990, in a meeting
with April C. Glaspie, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, Saddam Hussein stated: “But you know you [meaning the U.S.] are not the
ones who protected your friends during the war with Iran. I assure you, had the Iranians overrun the region, the American troops
would not have stopped them, except by the use of nuclear weapons.” [98] The diabolically unthinkable is no longer a taboo: the
use of nuclear weapons once again against another country by the U.S. military. This will be a violation of the NPT and international
law. Any nuclear attack on Iran will have major, long-term environmental impacts. A nuclear attack on Iran will also contaminate farreaching areas that will go far beyond Iran to places such as Europe, Turkey, the Arabian Peninsula, Central Asia, Pakistan, and
India. Within the NATO alliance and amongst U.S. allies a consensus has been underway to legitimize and
normalize the idea of using nuclear weapons. This consenus aims at paving the way for a nuclear strike against Iran
and/or other countries in the future.This groundwork also includes the normalization of Israeli nukes. Towards the end of 2006,
Robert Gates stated that Israel has nuclear weapons, which was soon followed by a conveniently-timed slip of the tongue by Ehud
Olmert stating that Tel Aviv possessed nuclear weapons. [99] Within this framework, Fumio Kyuma, a former Japanese defence
minister, during a speech at Reitaku University in 2007 that followed the statements of Gates and Olmert, tried to publicly legitimize
the dropping of atom bombs by the U.S. on Japanese civilians. [100] Because of the massive public outrage in Japanese society,
Kyuma was forced to resign his post as defence minister. [101] The Uncertain Road Ahead: Armageddon at Our Doorstep? The
March into the Unknown Horizon... According to theChristian Science Monitor, Beijing is a barometre on whether Iran will be
attacked and it seems unlikely by the acceleration in trade between China and Iran. [102] Still a major war in the Middle
East and an even more dangerous global war with the use of nuclear weapons should not be ruled out. The globe is facing
a state of worldwide military escalation. What is looming in front of humanity is the possibility of an all-out nuclear war
and the extinction of most life on this planet as we know it.
Sanctions destroy Iran negotiations kills US cred and alliances – leads to US-Iran
war and prolif
Alirez Nader, “Pause on Additional Iran Sanctions Crucial to Negotiations,” THE HILL, 11—15—13,
http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/189371-pause-on-additional-iran-sanctions-crucial-to-negotiations
Iran has demonstrated a different tone and approach to nuclear negotiations since the June 14 election of
Hassan Rouhani as president. Nothing concrete has emerged yet, but the U.S. negotiating team, headed by
Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, has described the last round of negotiations as positive and different from
previous sessions with the Iranian team under former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. ADVERTISEMENT Rouhani’s
election and, more importantly, Iran’s dire economic condition are the reasons for Tehran’s new
approach. Some have taken this to mean that more sanctions are needed. However, just because Tehran is seeking
to ease the pressure brought on by the sanctions that exist today does not mean that it will yield
to new sanctions tomorrow. Rouhani has a limited mandate to solve the nuclear crisis and lift
sanctions. However, more radical elements of the Iranian political system, marginalized for now, are waiting
for him to fail. They believe that the American government is either duplicitous or will be unable to deliver a deal.
New sanctions would confirm their view and further their goals of ending negotiations and
sidelining Rouhani. New sanctions passed before a true test of Iran’s intentions could result in a
bleak future: a risky and costly war with Iran with no guarantee of success, or the acceptance of
an increasingly embittered, isolated, repressive and nuclear capable Islamic Republic. The Iranian
people have borne the brunt of sanctions, but it would be hard to argue that the Iranian regime has not felt the pressure as well.
And it is this crucial portfolio that could determine his fate . He has the support of Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guard, without which he would not be able to negotiate or even run his
government. But Khamenei and the Guard are under no illusion that negotiations are sure to succeed ; nor
are they willing to continue negotiations under humiliating conditions . Sanctions are a danger to
their rule, but weakness in the face of pressure might be no less a threat. They must give Rouhani a chance
because the Iranian people and key political constituents support negotiations. The viability of
Rouhani’s platform of moderation and engagement with the West hangs in balance. Khamenei and
hard-line Guard are willing to “test” America as much as the Obama administration is willing to
“test” Tehran. New sanctions under consideration by Congress could lead to a weakening of the
overall U.S. position. First, Rouhani could lose his mandate to continue negotiations. Second, Iran
could begin to undermine the international coalition that has created the harshest peacetime sanctions
in history. Rouhani, weakened at home but still respected abroad, could persuade major Iranian oil buyers
such as China, India, Japan and even European that Iran attempted to negotiate in good faith but
was rebuffed by the United States. Third, Iran could successfully cause a split between the group.
China and Russia might believe that Congress wants regime change in Iran instead of a
diplomatic solution. Germany, which has close business ties with Iran, could become unhappy about its
economic sacrifices. And even the U.K. and France could begin to doubt U.S. intentions . Congress
deserves credit for pressuring the Iranian regime, but it should pause the march toward new
sanctions to give the negotiations a chance. Current sanctions against Iran are effective, and new sanctions can
always be imposed if Iran does not budge. A smart approach toward Iran does not only entail creating
pressure but using it correctly, and for the right goals.
Prolif alone triggers nuclear war
Eric Edelman, Distinguished Fellow, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, “The Dangers of a Nuclear Iran,”
FOREIGN AFFAIRS, January/February 2011, Ebsco.
The reports of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States and the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of
nuclear-armed Iran could
trigger additional nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, even if Israel does not declare its own nuclear arsenal. Notably, Algeria, Bahrain,
Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, as well as other analyses, have highlighted the risk that a
Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates- all signatories to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (npt)-have recently
announced or initiated nuclear energy programs. Although some of these states have legitimate economic rationales for pursuing nuclear power and
although the low-enriched fuel used for power reactors cannot be used in nuclear weapons, these moves have been widely interpreted as hedges
against a nuclear-armed Iran. The npt does not bar states from developing the sensitive technology required to produce nuclear fuel on their own, that
is, the capability to enrich natural uranium and separate plutonium from spent nuclear fuel.Yet enrichment and reprocessing can also be used to
accumulate weapons-grade enriched uranium and plutonium-the very loophole that Iran has apparently exploited in pursuing a nuclear weapons
capability. Developing nuclear weapons remains a slow, expensive, and difficult process, even for states with considerable economic resources, and
especially if other nations try to constrain aspiring nuclear states' access to critical materials and technology. Without external support, it is unlikely that
any of these aspirants could develop a nuclear weapons capability within a decade. There is, however, at least one state that could receive significant
outside support: Saudi Arabia. And if it did, proliferation could accelerate throughout the region. Iran and Saudi Arabia have long been geopolitical and
ideological rivals. Riyadh would face tremendous pressure to respond in some form to a nuclear-armed Iran, not only to deter Iranian coercion and
subversion but also to preserve its sense that Saudi Arabia is the leading nation in the Muslim world. The
Saudi government is already pursuing a
might be
nuclear power capability, which could be the first step along a slow road to nuclear weapons development. And concerns persist that it
able to accelerate its progress by exploiting its close ties to Pakistan. During the 1980s, in response to the use of missiles
during the Iran-Iraq War and their growing proliferation throughout the region, Saudi Arabia acquired several dozen css-2 intermediate-range ballistic
missiles from China. The Pakistani government reportedly brokered the deal, and it may have also offered to sell Saudi Arabia nuclear warheads for
the css-2s, which are not accurate enough to deliver conventional warheads effectively. There are still rumors that Riyadh and Islamabad have had
discussions involving nuclear weapons, nuclear technology, or security guarantees. This "Islamabad option" could develop in one of several different
ways. Pakistan could sell operational nuclear weapons and delivery systems to Saudi Arabia, or it could provide the Saudis with the infrastructure,
material, and technical support they need to produce nuclear weapons themselves within a matter of years, as opposed to a decade or longer.Not only
has Pakistan provided such support in the past, but it is currently building two more heavy-water reactors for plutonium production and a second
chemical reprocessing facility to extract plutonium from spent nuclear fuel. In other words, it might accumulate more fissile material than it needs to
maintain even a substantially expanded arsenal of its own. Alternatively, Pakistan might offer an extended deterrent guarantee to Saudi Arabia and
deploy nuclear weapons, delivery systems, and troops on Saudi territory, a practice that the United States has employed for decades with its allies.
This arrangement could be particularly appealing to both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. It would allow the Saudis to argue that they are not violating the
npt since they would not be acquiring their own nuclear weapons. And an extended deterrent from Pakistan might be preferable to one from the United
States because stationing foreign Muslim forces on Saudi territory would not trigger the kind of popular opposition that would accompany the
deployment of U.S. troops. Pakistan, for its part, would gain financial benefits and international clout by deploying nuclear weapons in Saudi Arabia, as
well as strategic depth against its chief rival, India. The Islamabad option raises a host of difficult issues, perhaps the most worrisome being how
India would respond. Would it target Pakistan's weapons in Saudi Arabia with its own conventional or nuclear weapons? How
would this expanded nuclear competition influence stability during a crisis in either the Middle East or South Asia? Regardless of India's reaction, any
would be highly destabilizing. It would increase the
incentives of other nations in the Middle East to pursue nuclear weapons of their own. And it could increase their ability to do so by eroding the
remaining barriers to nuclear proliferation: each additional state that acquires nuclear weapons weakens the nonproliferation regime, even if its
particular method of acquisition only circumvents, rather than violates, the npt. N-PLAYER COMPETITION Were Saudi Arabia to acquire nuclear
weapons, the Middle East would count three nuclear-armed states, and perhaps more before long. It is unclear how such an n-player competition
would unfold because most analyses of nuclear deterrence are based on the U.S.- Soviet rivalry during the Cold War. It seems likely, however, that the
decision by the Saudi government to seek out nuclear weapons, by whatever means,
interaction among three or more nuclear-armed powers would be more prone to miscalculation and escalation than a
bipolar competition. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union only needed to concern themselves with an attack from the other.
Multipolar systems are generally considered to be less stable than bipolar systems because
coalitions can shift quickly, upsetting the
balance of power and creating incentives for an attack. More important, emerging nuclear powers in the Middle East might not take
the costly steps necessary to preserve regional stability and avoid a nuclear exchange. For nuclear-armed states, the bedrock of deterrence is the
knowledge that each side has a secure second-strike capability, so that no state can launch an attack with the expectation that it can wipe out its
opponents' forces and avoid a devastating retaliation. However, emerging nuclear powers might not invest in expensive but survivable capabilities such
Given this likely vulnerability, the close proximity of states in the Middle East,
and the very short flight times of ballistic missiles in the region, any new nuclear powers might be compelled to "launch on
warning" of an attack or even, during a crisis, to use their nuclear forces preemptively. Their governments might also delegate
launch authority to lower-level commanders, heightening the possibility of miscalculation and escalation. Moreover, if early warning
as hardened missile silos or submarinebased nuclear forces.
systems were not integrated into robust command-and-control systems, the risk of an unauthorized or accidental launch would increase further still.
And without sophisticated early warning systems, a nuclear attack might be unattributable or attributed incorrectly. That is, assuming that the
leadership of a targeted state survived a first strike, it might not be able to accurately determine which nation was responsible. And this
uncertainty, when combined with the pressure to respond quickly, would create a significant risk that it would retaliate against the wrong
party, potentially triggering a regional nuclear war.
Global war – turns hegemony
Reuveny, 10 – professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University (Rafael, “Unilateral strike could
trigger World War III, global depression” Gazette Xtra, 8/7, - See more at: http://gazettextra.com/news/2010/aug/07/con-unilateralstrike-could-trigger-world-war-iii-/#sthash.ec4zqu8o.dpuf)
A unilateral Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would likely have dire consequences, including
a regional war, global economic collapse and a major power clash. For an Israeli campaign to succeed, it must be
quick and decisive. This requires an attack that would be so overwhelming that Iran would not dare to respond in full force. Such an outcome is
extremely unlikely since the
locations of some of Iran’s nuclear facilities are not fully known and known
facilities are buried deep underground. All of these widely spread facilities are shielded by elaborate air defense systems
constructed not only by the Iranians but also the Chinese and, likely, the Russians as well. By now, Iran has also built redundant
command and control systems and nuclear facilities, developed early warning systems, acquired ballistic and cruise
missiles and upgraded and enlarged its armed forces. Because Iran is well-prepared, a single, conventional Israeli strike—or even numerous
strikes—could not destroy all of its capabilities, giving Iran time to respond. Unlike Iraq, whose nuclear program Israel
destroyed in 1981, Iran has a second-strike capability comprised of a coalition of Iranian, Syrian, Lebanese, Hezbollah, Hamas, and,
perhaps, Turkish forces. Internal pressure might compel Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority to join the assault, turning a bad situation into a
regional war. During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, at the apex of its power, Israel was saved from defeat by President Nixon’s shipment of weapons and
planes. Today, Israel’s numerical inferiority is greater, and it faces more determined and better-equipped opponents. After years of futilely fighting
Palestinian irregular armies, Israel has lost some of its perceived superiority—bolstering its enemies’ resolve. Despite Israel’s touted defense systems,
Iranian coalition missiles, armed forces, and terrorist attacks would likely wreak havoc on its enemy, leading to a prolonged tit-for-tat. In the absence of
massive U.S. assistance, Israel’s
military resources may quickly dwindle, forcing it to use its alleged nuclear
weapons , as it had reportedly almost done in 1973.
An Israeli nuclear attack would likely destroy most of Iran’s capabilities,
but a crippled Iran and its coalition could still attack neighboring oil facilities, unleash global terrorism, plant mines in the Persian Gulf and impair
maritime trade in the Mediterranean, Red Sea and Indian Ocean. Middle Eastern oil shipments would likely slow to a trickle as
production declines due to the war and insurance companies decide to drop their risky Middle Eastern clients. Iran and Venezuela would likely stop
The world economy would
head into a tailspin; international acrimony would rise; and Iraqi and Afghani citizens might fully turn on the United
States, immediately requiring the deployment of more American troops. Russia, China, Venezuela, and maybe Brazil and
Turkey—all of which essentially support Iran—could be tempted to form an alliance and openly challenge the U.S.
hegemony. Russia and China might rearm their injured Iranian protege overnight, just as Nixon rearmed Israel, and threaten to intervene, just as
the U.S.S.R. threatened to join Egypt and Syria in 1973. President Obama’s response would likely put U.S. forces on
nuclear alert, replaying Nixon’s nightmarish scenario. Iran may well feel duty-bound to respond to a unilateral attack by its Israeli archenemy, but
selling oil to the United States and Europe. From there, things could deteriorate as they did in the 1930s.
it knows that it could not take on the United States head-to-head. In contrast, if the United States leads the attack, Iran’s response would likely be
muted. If Iran chooses to absorb an American-led strike, its allies would likely protest and send weapons but would probably not risk using force. While
no one has a crystal ball, leaders should be risk-averse when choosing war as a foreign policy tool. If attacking Iran is deemed necessary, Israel must
wait for an American green light.
A unilateral Israeli strike could ultimately spark World War III .
Turnout key to the Dems in the Senate
Michael Tomasky, journalist, “Democrats’ Best Weapon for Midterms: Fear of a Red Senate,” DAILY BEAST, 2—21—14,
www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/21/democrats-best-weapon-for-midterms-fear-of-a-red-senate.html
You’ll read a lot about Obamacare and the minimum wage and the War on Women and everything else, and all those things will
matter. But only one thing really, really, really matters: turnout . You know the lament: The most loyal
Democratic groups—young people, black people, single women, etc.—don’t come out to vote in midterms in big
numbers. You may dismiss this as lazy stereotyping, but sometimes lazy stereotyping is true, and this is one of those times. So
how to get these groups energized? Because if core Democratic voting groups turn out to vote in
decent numbers, the Democrats will hold the Senate. Two or three of the six will hold on, the
Democrats will prevail in the end in Michigan and Iowa, and either Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky or Michelle Nunn in
Georgia will eke out a win. Or maybe both—if Democratic voters vote. And if not? Republicans could net
seven, eight. The other side will be motivated: They’re older, white, angry that Obama continues to have
the temerity to stand up there and be president, as if somebody elected him. This will be their last chance to push the rage button
(well, the Obama-rage button; soon they’ll just start pushing the Hillary-rage button). But what will motivate the liberal side?
Can’t control limited war --- escalation is inevitable
White 11(Jeffrey – defense fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, What Would War With Iran Look Like,
National Interest, July/August 2011, http://www.the-american-interest.com/article-bd.cfm?piece=982)
In general, the more expansive a war’s goals as a plan escalates from strike to campaign to broad offensive, the greater the force
needed to achieve those goals, the greater the uncertainty in achieving them, and the greater the consequences of both success
and failure. Moreover, a war’s goals at the outset of conflict may not remain stable . Early sudden
successes or unanticipated failures can lead to the escalation of initially limited goals , particularly if
terminating hostilities proves difficult. Lateral expansion as well as escalation is also possible: Iranian leaders
might surrender or agree to a truce but be unable to enforce a similar decision on Hizballah leaders or terror agents
around the world. This leads to yet another layer of complexity and uncertainty: Whose war would this be?