Texas
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“The” is used to denote a specific entity
American Heritage, 2k (Fourth Edition, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/the)
the1 P (th before a vowel; th before a consonant)
def.art.
Used before singular or plural nouns and noun phrases that denote particular, specified persons
or things: the baby; the dress I wore. Used before a noun, and generally stressed, to emphasize
one of a group or type as the most outstanding or prominent: considered Lake Shore Drive to be
the neighborhood to live in these days. Used to indicate uniqueness: the Prince of Wales; the
moon. Used before nouns that designate natural phenomena or points of the compass: the
weather; a wind from the south. Used as the equivalent of a possessive adjective before names of
some parts of the body: grab him by the neck; an infection of the hand. Used before a noun
specifying a field of endeavor: the law; the film industry; the stage. Used before a proper name,
as of a monument or ship: the Alamo; the Titanic. Used before the plural form of a numeral
denoting a specific decade of a century or of a life span: rural life in the Thirties.
United States means the federal government
Anderson, 55 - Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Minnesota (William, The
Nation and the States, Rivals Or Partners?, google books)
United States. Both the Articles and the Constitution utilize this term to designate the organized
nation or the group of states taken as a single entity. In fact "United States" became the standard
term at the time of the Declaration of Independence to designate the national unit of
government and has been used in that way ever since.
There is, however, a subtle difference between the Articles and the Constitution in the way in
which "United States" is used. Nearly every use of the term in the Articles is in the phrase "the
United States in Congress assembled," as if the United States did not exist except when the
delegates from the several state legislatures were assembled in a Congress. Usually the words
"United States in Congress assembled" are not even capitalized. Clearly the term "United States"
did not as yet mean a fully united nation or a political entity with an established name, a
government, and a being of its own.
On the other hand, the framers of the Constitution, just ten years after the Articles were drafted,
spoke of the United States and the people of the United States as if they already existed as one
nation. "The government of the United States" is recognized as a distinct government, in Article
I, section 8, paragraph 18, of the Constitution, and evidently as something separate from and
not dependent upon the state governments; while the Congress of the United States is spoken of
as such, and never as "the United States in Congress assembled." In contrast with the term "the
United States" the framers used the phrase "the several states" to refer to the separate states and
their local or particular governments.
Legalization authorizes and regulates conduct and provides immunity from all
penalties – decriminalization means to solely remove criminal penalties
Stell, 98 – professor of philosophy at Davidson College and Medical Ethicist at the Carolinas
Medical Center (Lance, Physician Assisted Suicide: Expanding the Debate, ed: Battin, p. 245246)
To Decriminalize or to Legalize?
Mine is an argument for full, formal decriminalization of physician-assisted suicide. It is
compatible with but does not make the argument for decriminalization of assisted suicide, per
se. 48 Similarly, it is compatible with but does not make the argument for legalization. The
distinction is this. Laws that criminalize conduct (whether at common law or by statute) define
acts that are wrongful, specify elements of the offense, and (in the case of statutory prohibitions)
prescribe punishment(s) which may be imposed for committing the offense.49
Decriminalization of conduct may occur by legislative removal from the criminal law of
statements which define the conduct as wrongful and punishable. For example, Section 14-17.1
in Article 6 of North Carolina's law concerning homicide says, "The common-law crime of
suicide is hereby abolished as an offense." (1973, c.1205). North Carolina's criminal code does
not include "promoting suicide" or "aiding suicide" or "assisting suicide," as offenses. Nor does
its homicide law specify any of these as a way of committing manslaughter. Obviously, when an
offense is abolished, one can no longer be indicted for it. (After Jack Kevorkian's first highly
publicized assisted suicide, it was discovered that, apparently, "assisted suicide" was not defined
as a specific offense in Michigan. So he was indicted for homicide instead, and acquitted).
Conduct can also be decriminalized by courts' striking down statutes (in whole in or in part, on
constitutional grounds) which define offenses and provide punishments for them. With
uncertain and arbitrary effect, conduct can be decriminalized by police discretion, prosecutorial
discretion and jury nullification—conveying more or less clearly that physicians' using their
medical privileges to assist patient suicide in certain circumstances will not be punished.
Decriminalization confers no special privileges or immunities—not on physicians, nor on anyone
else. Decriminalization provides no course to a "safe harbor" securing qualified persons from
criminal or civil penalties.
Legalization of conduct defines acts that are authorized by specifying what, how, when
and by whom they may be performed . Legalization may also confer criminal and civil
immunity upon eligible persons who follow the laws provisions in good faith. For example,
Oregon's Proposition 16, despite explicitly denying that it does so, legalizes physician-assisted
suicide. Its procedures, allow an informed and capable adult resident of Oregon, who is
terminally ill and within six months of death, to voluntarily request a prescription for
medication to take his or her life. The measure allows a physician to prescribe a lethal dose of
medication when conditions of the measure are met .
Violation – the aff decriminalizes PAS but doesn’t regulate how it’s to be carried
out and the aff doesn’t defend the United States
Voting issue to preserve negative ground. The legalize/decriminalize distinction is
the sole topic generic that exists on a massively aff-biased topic – being able to
access core literature controversies are vital to a reasonable expectation of
preparedness. An actor is prerequisite to all external offense – only the United
States is predictable based on the topic.
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Ryan and I affirm the strategic codification of physician-assisted death in the
United States.
Stigma, uncertainty, and unclarity surrounds the term “suicide” – the counterplan
is necessary in public forums like debate to shape general public discourse and
understanding
Tucker and Steele 7 [Kathryn L. Tucker J.D. & Fred B. Steele M.P.H. (2007) Patient Choice at
the End of Life: Getting the Language Right, Journal of Legal Medicine, 28:3, 305-325, DOI:
10.1080/01947640701554427, Kathryn Tucker is Director of Legal Affairs, Compassion &
Choices, Affiliate Professor of Law, Lewis and Clark]
As robust political discourse on this subject continues,
it is important that accurate language be employed so
informed debate can take place.120 Those opposed to the Oregon lawand passage of similar laws elsewhere will
continue to use inaccurate, incendiary language, referring to the act of a physician
aiding a mentally competent, terminally ill patient to achieve a peaceful and
dignified death as “assisted suicide” or “killing.” The minority opposed to empowering patients to make their
own informed end-of-life choices will oppose eliminating these terms, as they know inflammatory language frames the issue based
on fear and concerns of victimization and mental illness, and thus frightens voters and policy makers. However, it is time for
professionals in the fields of law, medicine, journalism, and health policy who seek to engage in
meaningful and informed debate on the subject to insist on the use of appropriate,
value-neutral language. This may not be an easy transition, as even those supportive of
expanding patient choice at the end of life will have to revisit their use of language.121 The term
“physician assisted suicide” cannot be considered equivalent or synonymous with
“physician assisted dying” or “aid in dying.” The following terms would be more accurate and
value-neutral and should be used in discussing this end of life option: aid in dying; patient directed dying; physician assisted
dying; and physician assisted death. Support for a change toward more accurate, value-neutral
terms continues to grow within professional ranks. For example, the American Counseling Association Code of
Ethics includes a section on “End-of-Life Care for Terminally Ill Clients.” It also provides confidentiality guidelines
for “counselors who provide services to terminally ill individuals who are considering hastening
their own deaths.”122 The American Public Health Association recently adopted a policy recognizing “[t]he term ‘suicide’ or
‘assisted suicide’ is inappropriate when discussing the choice of a mentally competent terminally ill patient to seek medications that
he or she could consume to bring about a peaceful and dignified death.”123 The APHA urges “health educators, policy makers,
journalists, [and] health care providers” to use “accurate, value-neutral terms such as ‘aid in dying’ or ‘patient directed, dying’ when
discussing this choice.”124 The American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine recently adopted a policy on Physician
Assisted Death. The policy rejects the term “physician assisted suicide” as inaccurate when applied to a physician prescribing
medications for a medically competent, terminally ill patient to enable the patient to control the time and manner of death.125 The
American College of Legal Medicine, a society consisting primarily of professionals with degrees in both medicine and
law, has long rejected use of the term “assisted suicide” when referring to the choice of a mentally
competent, terminally ill individual to hasten impending death: The term “physician-assisted suicide” is arguably a
misnomer that unfairly colors the issue, and for some, evokes feelings of repugnance and immorality . . . .
[I]t seems inappropriate to characterize requests for treatment that end life, made by suffering,
terminally-ill patients, as any form of destruction or ruination of their interests. Assuming a patient’s
mental competence, and recognizing [the Supreme] Court’s longheld commitment to the principles of personal autonomy and free
will, prescribing medication intended to end life in the subject context serves—not destroys or ruins— a patient’s interests . . . .
ACLM rejects the term “physician-assisted suicide,” and instead refers herein to the practice in question as “treatment intended to
end life.”126 The terminology used in the debate about hastening death contains important
distinctions that need to be recognized. Those who work in the endof- life care field, whether as
physicians, nurses, mental health professionals, hospice workers, health policy experts, lawmakers, journalists, or
laypeople, have an opportunity to advance understanding and enable informed discussion by
using terminology that is accurate and value-neutral. Lazy or passive use of the
intentionally framed term “physician assisted suicide” must be avoided. Those who oppose
empowering mentally competent, terminally ill patients to choose to hasten death will continue
to use the inaccurate and value-laden term; the rest of us need, and ought, not do so.
Framing is key, especially in the context of suicide – it avoids ceding the broader
political landscape to conservative wordsmiths and is necessary to sell the aff
Tucker and Steele 7 [Kathryn L. Tucker J.D. & Fred B. Steele M.P.H. (2007) Patient Choice at
the End of Life: Getting the Language Right, Journal of Legal Medicine, 28:3, 305-325, DOI:
10.1080/01947640701554427, Kathryn Tucker is Director of Legal Affairs, Compassion &
Choices, Affiliate Professor of Law, Lewis and Clark]
What should we call the choice of a mentally competent, terminally ill patient to seek
medications that he or she could consume to bring about a peaceful and dignified death? The
language used to discuss something often strongly influences how we feel about it. Examples
can be found in diverse arenas. Concerning reproductive rights, is abortion about the “right to life” or the “right to
choose”? Is a third trimester abortion “partial birth abortion” or “late term abortion”? In the environmental arena, is
removing trees from a forest a “timber harvest” or is it “destructive logging”? Is the military
action by the United States in Iraq a “war in Iraq” or is it “a war on terrorism”? Each of these connected
phrases, presented as opposing statements but focused on the same topic within their respective association, are examples of
competing political messages—phrases intended to portray specific pictures. This concept of messaging, referred to
as
“framing,” has its origins in thework of Erving Goffman, who defines “frame” as the “definitions of a situation .
. . which govern events—at least social ones—and our subjective involvement in them,” and “frame analysis”
as “the examination . . . of the organization of experience.”1 “In other words, frames are basic cognitive structures which guide the
perception and representation of reality.”2 Contemporary linguistic scientists approach this concept of framing from a categorical
perspective, in that the human mind will take any word, phrase, or concept and place it in a category
for processing and understanding.3 The importance of this categorization process is that the
human mind will accept a phrase intentionally created to enforce a bias toward a favored
interpretation while concurrently excluding disfavored interpretations.4 Framing can
be found in typical societal applications, such as with organizational leadership in business management,5 but it has also
become a significant tool in modern politics.6 Just as significant in our modern world, and as it pertains to the
political environment as well, is the use of framing in news stories, where the media utilizes “news frames,”
encapsulated in headlines and story introductions, in conjunction with “news facts,” the who, what,
and where of a story.7 Focusing on the political use of framing, cognitive linguist George Lakoff provides a foundation
from which much of our understanding of modern politics can be developed. Lakoff categorizes the
framing of issues in modern politics, with the two distinct parties primarily dominating the American governmental system, into two
models. Conservatives encompass a “Strict Father morality” approach to family and liberals embody a “Nurturant Parent morality”
approach.8 From these models, Lakoff establishes an encyclopedic view into the messaging that our political system generates in the
hope that his presentation “can allow us to comprehend our social and political lives better.”9 The intentional use of
framing by conservative politicians has been in the making for the last few decades,10 with
liberals just more recently organizing their framing messages.11 This modern political discourse
often turns into thought that accurately represents their thinking.19 Humans “categorize events, actions,
emotions, spatial relationships, social relationships, and abstract entities of an enormous range.”20 Distinguishing positive
from negative uses of framing provides a basis for the argument of this article. Numerous terms
have been applied to the choice of a terminally ill person to seek medications that could be
selfadministered to hasten death. Many of these terms have been intentionally selected to be
divisive and inflame passions. This tends to lead to neglect of the important issues.21 The use of
the word “suicide” is exactly that kind of term. This article urges that value-neutral terms
that accurately represent the individual’s end-of-life choice be used. Value-laden phrases,
intended to spark negative connotations, should be avoided. In this way, we afford respect to
mentally competent, terminally ill patients who seek to cut short a dying process they find
intolerable, and enable a healthy and robust policy debate to take place about whether this
choice should be made more widely available.
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The capitalist epistemology of the affirmative creates death panels—killing off the
socially disadvantaged
Golden and Zoanni 2010 (Marilyn [Policy Analyst, Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF), 1998present] and Tyler; Killing us softly: the dangers of legalizing assisted suicide; Disability and Health Journal 3 (2010) 16-30; kdf)
A deadly mix: managed health care and assisted suicide An ailing system made worse A
significant problem with
legalization is the deadly interaction between assisted suicide and profit-driven
managed health care. Health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and managed care bureaucracies
have often overruled physicians’ treatment decisions because of the cost of care,
sometimes hastening patients’ deaths.7 Financial considerations can have similar results in nonprofit health plans
and government-sponsored health programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, which are often underfunded. Cost-cutting
pressures also shape physicians’ choices. A 1998 study from Georgetown
University’s Center for Clinical Bioethics found a strong link between cost-cutting
pressure on physicians and their willingness to prescribe lethal drugs to patients,
were it legal to do so [13]. The cost of the lethal medication generally used for assisted suicide
is about $300, far cheaper than the cost of treatment for most long-term medical
conditions. The incentive to save money by denying treatment already poses a significant danger. This danger is far
greater where assisted suicide is legal. Direct coercion is not necessary. If patients are denied
necessary life-sustaining health care treatment, or even if the treatment they need
is delayed, many will, in effect, be steered toward assisted suicide. The deadly
impact of legalizing assisted suicide would fall hardest, whether directly or indirectly, on
socially and economically disadvantaged people who have less access to medical
resources and who already find themselves discriminated against by the health
care system. Particularly at risk are individuals in poverty, people of color, older
adults, people with progressive or chronic conditions, and terminally ill
individuals [8]. As the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law noted, assisted suicide, despite supposed safeguards: will be
practiced through the prism of social inequality and prejudice that characterizes the delivery of services in all segments of society, including
health care. Those . . . most vulnerable to abuse, error, or indifference are the poor, minorities, and those who are least educated and least
empowered [14].
Vote negative to alienate capital.
A capitalist society guarantees the dystopian impacts of the 1ac and worse—only a
refusal of capitalism can end it
Harvey 2014 (David [Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the Graduate
Center of the City University of New York]; Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism;
Oxford University Press; p. 264-7; kdf)
It is not entirely beyond the realms of possibility that capital could survive all the contradictions
hitherto examined at a certain cost. It could do so, for example, by a capitalist oligarchic elite supervising the
mass genocidal elimination of much of the world's surplus and disposable population while
enslaving the rest and building vast artificial gated environments to protect against the ravages
of an external nature run toxic, barren and ruinously wild. Dystopian tales abound depicting a grand variety of
such worlds and it would be wrong to rule them out as impossible blueprints for the future of a less-than-human humanity. Indeed,
there is something frighteningly close about some dystopian tales, such as the social order depicted in the teenage hit trilogy The
Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins or the futuristic anti-humanist sequences of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. Clearly, any such
social order could only exist on the basis of fascistic mind control and the continuous exercise of
daily police surveillance and violence accompanied by periodic militarised repressions. Anyone who
does not see elements of such a dystopian world already in place around us is deceiving herself or himself most cruelly. The issue
is not, therefore, that capital cannot survive its contradictions but that the cost of it so doing
becomes unacceptable to the mass of the population. The hope is that long before dystopian
trends turn from a trickle of drone strikes here and occasional uses of poison gas against their
own people by crazed rulers there, of murderous and incoherent policies towards all forms of
opposition in one place to environmental collapses and mass starvation elsewhere, into a
veritable flood of catastrophic unequally armed struggles everywhere that pit the rich against the
poor and the privileged capitalists and their craven acolytes against the rest ... the hope is that
social and political movements will arise and shout, 'fa! Basta!' or 'Enough is enough', and change
the way we live and love, survive and reproduce. That this means replacing the economic engine and its associated irrational
economic rationalities should by now be obvious. But how this should be done is by no means clear and what
kind of economic engine can replace that of capital is an even murkier proposition given the current
state of thought and the lamentable paucity of imaginative public debate devoted to the question. In the analysis of this, an
understanding of capital's contradictions is more than a little helpful, for, as the German playwright Bertolt Brecht once put it, 'hope
is latent in contradictions'. In excavating this zone of latent hope, there are some basic propositions that must first be accepted. In
The Enigma of Capital, I concluded: 'Capitalism will never fall on its own. It will have to be pushed. The
accumulation of capital will never cease. It will have to be stopped. The capitalist class will never
willingly surrender its power. It will have to be dispossessed:1 I still hold to this view and think it vital that others do too.
It will obviously need a strong political movement and a lot of individual commitment to undertake such a task. Such a
movement cannot function without a broad and compelling vision of an alternative around
which a collective political subjectivity can coalesce. What sort of vision can animate such a political movement?
We can seek to change the world gradually and piecemeal by favouring one side of a
contradiction (such as use value) rather than the other (such as exchange value) or by working to undermine
and eventually dissolve particular contradictions (such as that which allows the use of money for the private
appropriation of social wealth). We can seek to change the trajectories defined by the moving
contradictions (towards non-militaristic technologies and towards greater equality in a world of democratic freedoms).
Understanding capital's contradictions helps, as I have tried to indicate throughout this book, in developing a long-term vision of the
overall direction in which we should be moving. In much the same way that the rise of neoliberal capitalism from the 1970s onwards
changed the direction of capital's development towards increasing privatisation and commercialisation, the more emphatic
dominance of exchange value and an allconsuming fetishistic passion for money power, so an anti-neoliberal movement can point us
in an entirely different strategic direction for the coming decades. There are signs in the literature as well as in the
social movements of at least a willingness to try to redesign a capitalism based in more
ecologically sensitive relations and far higher levels of social justice and democratic governance.2
There are virtues in this piecemeal approach. It proposes a peaceful and non-violent move towards social change of
the sort initially witnessed in the early stages ofTahrir, Syntagma and Taksim Squares, although in all these instances the state and
police authorities soon responded with astonishing brutality and violence, presumably because these movements had the timerity to
go beyond the boundaries of repressive tolerance. It seeks to bring people together strategically around common but limited themes.
It can have, also, wide-ranging impacts if and when contagious effects cascade from one kind of contradiction to another. Imagine
what the world would be like if the domination of exchange value and the alienated behaviours that attach to the pursuit of money
power as Keynes described them were simultaneously reduced and the powers of private persons to profit from social wealth were
radically curbed. Imagine, further, if the alienations of the contemporary work experience, of a compensatory consumption that can
never satisfy, of untold levels of economic inequality and discordance in the relation to nature, were all diminished by a rising wave
of popular discontent with capital's current excesses. We would then be living in a more humane world with much-reduced levels of
social inequality and conflict and muchdiminished political corruption and oppression. This does not tell us how highly
fragmented though numerous oppositional movements might converge and coalesce into a more
unified solidarious movement against capital's dominance. The piecemeal approach fails to
register and confront how all the contradictions of capital relate to and through
each other to form an organic whole. There is a crying need for some more catalytic conception to ground and
animate political action. A collective political subjectivity has to coalesce around some foundational
concepts as to how to constitute an alternative economic engine if the powers of capital are to be
confronted and overcome. Without that, capital can neither be dispossessed nor displaced. The
concept I here find most appropriate is that of alienation.
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Brown is pushing high speed rail
Marinucci, 14 --- senior political writer for The San Francisco Chronicle (5/17/2014, Carla,
“Brown doubles down on high-speed rail amid calls for restraint,”
http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Brown-doubles-down-on-high-speed-rail-amid-calls5484808.php, JMP)
Preparing for looming budget battles with the Democratic-controlled Legislature, Gov. Jerry
Brown warned Friday that lawmakers must balance "desire and need" for expensive social
programs - even as he defiantly doubled down on support for the increasingly unpopular
high-speed rail system, saying it remains emblematic of his passion to "build great things" in his
final term as governor.
In a wide-ranging editorial board meeting with The Chronicle's editors and reporters, Brown
presented a lively case - characteristically peppered with Latin phrases and literary references for a fourth term in office, arguing he has helped create an "unprecedented" 1.3 million jobs,
reduced unemployment, and put the state back on a track for an economic comeback that is the
"biggest in the country."
"Tell me how you're going to beat that?" he said, laughing. He then added: "I'd just like to keep
that going and not screw it up."
Brown was most passionate in his defense of a high-speed rail plan connecting Los Angeles and
San Francisco, a 520-mile project expected to eventually cost $68 billion. The projected outlay
has drawn scathing criticism from Republican gubernatorial candidates Assemblyman Tim
Donnelly and former Treasury official Neel Kashkari, who has dubbed it the "Crazy Train."
Calling the bullet train a crucial test of "our capacity as a state," Brown asked: "Can we be bold or are we all just going to shrink back into our Lilliputian faintness of heart?
"I get very concerned in America (that) we're losing the capacity to make decisions, to be unified
as a nation and have a vision, and move forward to make it happen," he said. "I'm going to build
great things, I'm going to do big things, and I'm not going to be intimidated by these fears of
things that are part of life."
'We can build it'
Brown also dismissed concerns about the cost, difficulty and scope of the project, saying that
this is the state that helped construct the transcontinental railroad and such huge infrastructure
projects as BART.
"We can build it. We can link the north to the south. We can reshape the land use in the Central
Valley, where land prices are cheaper," he said. "We can do it in an elegant way.
"It's cheaper than more highways ... and it's better for greenhouse gases . We can do it with
renewable energy ... and it will be a model for the country .
"And if 17 other countries can do it, California can," he said.
The plan is contentious --- special interest groups put pressure on political officials
to not legalize
Duvivier, 7 --- Associate Professor, University of Denver Sturm College of Law (2007, K.K.,
Oregon Law Review, “Fast-Food Government and Physician-Assisted Death: The Role of Direct
Democracy in Federalism,” 86 Or. L. Rev. 895, JMP)
The PAD debate also illustrates the significant role that citizen initiatives play in this federalism
balance. Survey after survey has shown that a majority of Americans nationwide support patient
self-determination for removing life support and for some form of physician assistance in dying.
n244 Despite this popularity, not a single state has passed legislation explicitly
legalizing PAD in the thirty-plus years since Quinlan sensitized the American public to the
issue.
The influence of minority interest groups on key elected officials best explains why
the traditional legislative process has failed. The first section below illustrates how religious
groups, such as the Catholic Church, n245 have used pressure points not [*947] only to block
PAD legislation, but also to successfully push through legislation in two states that criminalize
PAD.
The second section below addresses how PAD has fared in the context of citizen initiatives.
Despite some failures, the citizen initiative process has been the only mechanism to successfully
enact legislation reflecting what polls suggest is the preference of the majority of Americans with
respect to PAD. In 1994, a majority of citizen voters adopted an initiative creating Oregon's PAD
statute. Three years later, an even larger majority of citizen voters reaffirmed their support for
PAD by refusing to repeal Oregon's act even though religious group contributions to the repeal
campaign exceeded those of PAD supporters more than six-to-one.
Finally, the last section will show how the U.S. Supreme Court's treatment of challenges to
Oregon's Act leaves open the opportunity for federalism to work: states may resolve the
controversial PAD issue by allowing Oregon to serve as a Brandeis laboratory for
experimentation.
1. Action by State Legislators
The traditional legislative process is often an ineffective forum for resolving some issues,
particularly controversial social issues. In experimental areas, legislative inertia may be driven
by controversy over a topic. Because their voting records are public information, legislators
often are unwilling to put controversial matters up for a vote, fearing repercussions from their
political party or, when seeking reelection, from influential contributors.
Because the issue is controversial , state legislatures have been unsuccessful in enacting
any legislation legalizing PAD. Instead, interest groups have been able to use the legislative
pressure points not only to block efforts to legalize PAD but also to assert their influence
through the legislative process to enact laws that penalize those who might act according to the
majority view. Religious groups are leading this legislative campaign, and one commentator
noted that "the Roman Catholic Church and its primary lobbying arm, the U.S. Conference
of Bishops, has [*948] proved to be an interest group without rival on the rightto-die issue." n246
Before Quinlan and Cruzan, states had no statutes on the books to address the new situation of a
physician assisting a patient with death. The issue only gained prominence when modern
medicine made the artificial prolonging of life a more common occurrence. n247 Although the
Catholic Church fought to oppose living wills that allow patients to refuse medical treatment, it
compromised on some legislation due to pressure that courts would invalidate any statute that
overly restricted this fundamental right recognized in Cruzan. n248
California passed the first living will statute in 1976. n249 The Quinlan case "created a window
of opportunity" for the California legislature to pass its Natural Death Act even though
proponents had introduced the bill before Quinlan was decided. n250 Following California's
Natural Death Act of 1976, sixty-one other living will bills were introduced in forty-two states.
n251 Although the 1976 version of California's Act did not address many of the issues doctors
faced with end of life care, subsequent efforts to amend it have been caught in the legislative
pressure-point web. For example, a proposed [*949] amendment passed through the California
legislature in 1988, but pro-life supporters were able to use the gubernatorial veto pressure
point to stop that legislation. n252
The Florida Catholic Conference ("FCC") took credit for lobbying to kill a living will bill that
passed through a Senate committee in Florida in 1973 by "persuading conservative Senate
leadership to block the bill" and to allow it to "die[] on the calendar a week before the end of the
legislative session." n253 In subsequent years, the FCC was bolstered with information from the
National Conference of Catholic Bishops and was able to ensure that similar bills died in
committee or on the floor. n254 More than ten years later, only after pressure from court
decisions that "promoted the right to die at a level well beyond that which state legislatures
probably would approve if state Catholic conferences lobbied for restrictive provisions and
participated actively in bill drafting," did the FCC reconsider its position. n255 Even when the
Florida legislature passed a living will bill more closely tracking the rights outlined in Florida
court holdings, the opponents were able to use the gubernatorial veto pressure point to prevent
that bill from becoming law. n256 Only a later compromise bill survived because it provided
more limitations than the court holdings recognized and the FCC did not oppose it. n257
The California and Florida examples represent a pattern of effort by religious groups to restrict
the right to refuse medical treatment. Even though the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized this
right as constitutionally protected, these minority view groups have employed the traditional
legislative process to enact [*950] laws to minimize exercise of that right. n258 Furthermore,
because the Supreme Court failed to recognize a constitutional right to die in Quill and
Glucksberg, these religious groups have been even more effective at blocking statutes attempting
to legalize PAD.
Several bills to enact statutes that specifically would authorize PAD have been proposed in state
legislatures, but none has been successful. n259 Many of these efforts started in the early 1990s
and continue today. State legislators in Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, New Hampshire, Virginia,
and Washington have all submitted bills supportive of PAD, but opponents prevented this
legislation from becoming law. n260 Two Wisconsin legislators have sponsored pro-PAD bills
for more than ten years, but they have never gotten one to a vote. n261 Similarly in 2007,
Arizona, Hawaii, and Vermont all considered bills to legalize PAD, but none of these were able to
advance to a full vote. n262
Although in some instances specific religious groups have been prominent in their opposition, in
other situations, their impact on the pressure points of the legislative process may be less
obvious as they have "lowered their public profiles and played down the moral arguments that
dominated their [earlier] efforts." n263 Still, recent attempts to pass a pro-PAD law in the
California legislature illustrate that the Catholic Church remains actively involved in blocking
such measures.
[*951] California legislators introduced AB 374, a bill that would legalize PAD, in January of
2007. n264 When AB 374 moved forward by a 7-3 vote in the California Assembly Judiciary
Committee in April of 2007, Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahoney "charged supporters of the bill
with participating in a "culture of death' and the legislation with being against "God's law and
God's plan.'" n265 The Assembly Speaker, Fabian Nunez, is a Catholic, and the Church asserted
pressure directly at him and other Catholics in the California Assembly, encouraging parish
priests to distribute "flyers calling Nunez a "killer,' and threatening to withhold the sacrament of
communion from any lawmaker voting for the Compassionate Choices Act." n266 Support for
AB 374 waned, and the bill was never brought to a vote. n267
Aside from blocking legislation that would support PAD, opponents have been able to influence
the legislative process to further discourage its use by doctors. Without majority support to pass
legislation specifically prohibiting PAD, individuals and [*952] interest groups who opposed
the practice turned to age-old assisted-suicide statutes.
Every state except Hawaii, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming has addressed assisted suicide in some
way, either through the common law or through statute. n268 Historically, these statutes [*953]
arose to address "suicide" situations, not PAD. n269 Some jurisdictions held that because
suicide was not a crime, aiding in it also was not criminal. n270 Other jurisdictions considered
motive and found liability only if the one assisting intended to selfishly benefit from the death of
another. n271 The Model Penal Code suggests that aiding in suicide will be criminal homicide
only if the party assisting caused the suicide "by force, duress or deception." n272 Commentaries
on this section of the Code explained that liability is limited to purposeful conduct because
merely creating the risk that another will commit suicide would cast the net of liability too wide.
n273 None of the Code sections specifically addressed involvement by a physician.
Despite the fact that these statutes were not enacted to address the distinct situations doctors
faced with patients whose deaths were now being prolonged by modern medicine, prosecutors in
some states began to use the assisted-suicide statutes on the books to deter PAD. Although
states have brought unsuccessful actions, n274 Michigan, California, and Kansas indicted
physicians for assisting in suicide in violation of state laws. n275 Furthermore, physicians and
patients who feared potential sanctions under the assisted-suicide statutes were the primary
instigators of litigation challenging these statutes in Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, New
York, and Washington. n276
[*954] In an effort to restrict PAD, a few states have modified their assisted-suicide laws to
specifically mention health care providers. Virginia has enacted a law that subjects licensed
health care providers who have engaged in assisting suicide or attempted suicide to the
possibility of license revocation or civil liability. n277 Ohio amended its assisted-suicide statute
in 2006 to permit injunctions against health care providers who may be attempting to assist
with a suicide. n278
In the opposite direction, several states responded after the Cruzan decision by modifying their
assisted-suicide statutes to include specific provisions to protect health care providers. After
Cruzan, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, and Louisiana all amended their laws. Originally, these laws
did not specifically address health care providers. After 1990, legislators in these states amended
their assisted-suicide statutes to exclude from prosecution health care providers acting under a
living will. n279
Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Tennessee all went a step
further by attempting to address the gray area between PAD and palliative care that may hasten
death. These states now provide exemptions from the assisted-suicide statutes for physicians or
other health care workers who may cause death while alleviating pain so long as their intent was
not to cause death knowingly. n280
[*955] Finally, not only have opponents been successful in blocking legislation legalizing PAD,
they also have pushed their cause to the other extreme, attempting to pass legislation specifically
targeting doctors who respond to patients' requests for PAD. Since 1996, Alabama, Arkansas,
North Carolina, North Dakota, and Vermont have had bills introduced that would specifically
criminalize PAD. None have passed. n281 However, in Rhode [*956] Island and Michigan,
legislators specifically made it a crime for a health care provider to "assist" in suicide. n282
Brown’s pc is key to high speed rail
Wood, 14 (1/7/2014, Daniel B, “California bullet train? How Jerry Brown is at war with
himself,” http://www.minnpost.com/christian-science-monitor/2014/01/california-bullettrain-how-jerry-brown-war-himself, JMP)
California Gov. Jerry Brown's own political spokesman, Dan Newman, has called his boss, "the
cheapskate who also thinks big," and nowhere is this more apparent today than in his avowed
dream to build a bullet train for the Golden State.
This week. with the state’s unemployment rate down (8.7 percent) and tax revenues up, at least
temporarily, Governor Brown is moving ahead with a project that will either place California
in the vanguard of a transportation revolution for the 21st century – or push it off a
cliff into the financial abyss. Analysts are watching to see if Brown can meld his two personas
successfully in an election year, or if he self-destructs in the attempt.
Supporters say Brown’s new twist at funding the bullet train is Brown at his visionary,
politician-of-experience best. Detractors say this is just the dangerous kind of sleight-of-hand
that Brown, appealing to voters in 2010, promised he wouldn’t pull.
The good news for the governor is that administration officials now expect a $4.2-billion state
budgetary surplus by the end of June – as opposed to the $26.6-billion deficit Brown
encountered when he took office in 2011. Brown last week admonished state voters and
legislators that it is time to be frugal with the slight increase, rather than spend it profligately as
in the past. But at the same time, he has proposed a new way to temporarily fund the state’s
bullet train, which has been losing public support ever since voters approved a bond measure
(Prop. 1A) for the idea in 2008.
“Jerry Brown is at war with himself on public finance. On the one hand he has said that the good
budgetary news could be fleeting,” says Jack Pitney, professor of government at Claremont
McKenna College. “On the other hand, he is committing to a project that assumes that the
money will keep rolling in.”
The proposed $68-billion high-speed rail system's finances have become increasingly uncertain
in recent weeks.
In a December legal ruling, the California High Speed Rail Authority lost the ability to tap $9
billion in state bond funds. Brown then proposed collecting millions in fees from businesses that
exceed greenhouse gas emissions, known as cap-and-trade funds. Republicans and
environmentalists oppose that plan, saying it may be illegal, in that the cap-and-trade exchange
grew out of the state’s landmark global warming law in 2006 and should be dedicated solely to
reducing the state’s emissions 20 percent by 2020.
Brown responded last week in a budget meeting with comments he has made several times
before, comparing the train project to building the Golden Gate Bridge, the transcontinental
railroad and the Panama Canal, all of which he said faced "criticisms, skepticism, and attack."
Such a project is needed, he said, to unite a wildly diverse state.
" It reduces greenhouse gases , it ties our California together. We are divided in many
respects: north and south, the coast and the center of the state. We have to pull together to form
a greater community, and the high-speed rail serves all of those functions," Brown told
reporters.
But several detractors have come forward.
Republican Sen. Andy Vidak (R) of Hanford, says that since the passage of Prop. 1A in 2008,
voters have learned the project will not be able to meet its original goals, and points out that a
recent LA Times poll found that 52 percent of Californians are now opposed to the project and
70 percent want a re-vote.
The source of the objections outlined by Senator Vidak range from a ballooning price tag (from
$33 billion in 2008 to $100 billion and beyond) and slower travel, to revised routes that move
the bullet train from existing travel corridors and put farms and businesses in its path.
Other prominent Republicans have joined with Vidak.
The actual cost of the bullet train will exceed $100 billion “and maybe even $200 billion by the
time it is eventually built,” asserts Gary Aminoff, founder of the San Fernando Valley
Republican Club, calling the project “a huge ‘boondoggle’ that the state can ill afford” and that
“very few people will use.”
While Brown’s Democratic Party controls both houses of the Legislature, analysts say Brown has
an uphill fight.
“To pay for this bullet train, Brown is going to have to trot out yards of political
capital ,” says David McCuan, professor of political science at Sonoma State University.
“He'll have to ask legislators to suspend their beliefs about re-investing in their own projects and
their own priorities that were cut extensively since 2007. This train is really about two things –
building that visionary project and getting California's fiscal house in order,” says McCuan. “Can
he push the naysayers and nitpickers in the Legislature far enough along to deliver this project
to California remains an open question. Things like reelection, a drought, and a burgeoning
prison population might stand in the path of that high-speed train.”
HSR solves the economy
Todorovich et al. 11 — Petra Todorovich, Director of America 2050—a national urban
planning initiative to develop an infrastructure and growth strategy for the United States,
Assistant Visiting Professor at the Pratt Institute Graduate Center for Planning and the
Environment, Member of the Board of Advisors of the Eno Transportation Foundation, holds an
M.A. in City and Regional Planning from the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at
Rutgers University, et al., with Daniel Schned, Associate Planner for America 2050, Lecturer at
the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, holds an
M.A. in City and Regional Planning and a Certificate in Geographic Information Systems from
Rutgers University, and Robert Lane, Senior Fellow for Urban Design at Regional Plan
Association, Founding Principal of Plan & Process LLP, former Loeb Fellow at the Harvard
Graduate School of Design, holds an M.A. in Architecture from Columbia University, 2011
(“Chapter 2: Potential Benefits of High-Speed Rail,” High-Speed Rail: International Lessons for
U.S. Policy Makers, Policy Focus Report of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, ISBN
9781558442221, Available Online at https://www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/dl/1948_1268_HighSpeed%20Rail%20PFR_Webster.pdf, Accessed 06-08-2012, p. 16-18)
High-speed rail’s ability to promote economic growth is grounded in its capacity to increase
access to markets and exert positive effects on the spatial distribution of economic activity
(Redding and Sturm 2008). Transportation networks increase market access, and economic
development is more likely to occur in places with more and better transportation
infrastructure. In theory, by improving access to urban markets, high-speed rail increases
employment, wages, and productivity; encourages agglomeration; and boosts regional and local
economies. Empirical evidence of high-speed rail’s impact around the world tends to support the following
theoretical arguments for high-speed rail’s economic benefits.
Higher wages and productivity : The time savings and increased mobility offered by high-speed rail
enables workers in the service sector and in information-exchange industries to move about the
megaregion more freely and reduces the costs of face-to-face communication. This enhanced
connectivity boosts worker productivity and business competitiveness, [end page 16] leading to
higher wages (Greengauge 21 2010).
Deeper labor and employment markets : By connecting more communities to other
population and job centers, high-speed rail expands the overall commuter shed of the
megaregion. The deepened labor markets give employers access to larger pools of skilled
workers, employees access to more employment options, and workers access to more and
cheaper housing options outside of expensive city centers (Stolarick, Swain, and Adleraim 2010).
Expanded tourism and visitor spending : Just as airports bring visitors and their spending power into the
local economy, high-speed rail stations attract new tourists and business travelers who might not
have made the trip otherwise. A study by the U.S. Conference of Mayors (2010) concluded that building high-speed rail
would increase visitor spending annually by roughly $225 million in the Orlando region, $360 million in metropolitan Los Angeles,
$50 million in the Chicago area, and $100 million in Greater Albany, New York.
Direct job creation : High-speed rail creates thousands of construction-related jobs in design,
engineering, planning, and construction, as well as jobs in ongoing maintenance and operations.
In Spain, the expansion of the high-speed AVE system from Malaga to Seville is predicted to create 30,000 construction jobs (Euro
Weekly 2010). In China, over 100,000 construction workers were involved in building the high-speed rail line that connects Beijing
and Shanghai (Bradsher 2010). Sustained investment could foster the development of new
manufacturing industries for rail cars and other equipment, and generate large amounts of
related employment.
Urban regeneration and station area development : High-speed rail can generate
growth in real estate markets and anchor investment in commercial and residential
developments around train stations, especially when they are built in coordination with a broader set of public
interventions and urban design strategies (see chapter 3). These interventions ensure that high-speed rail is integrated into the
urban and regional fabric, which in turn ensures the highest level of ridership and economic activity. For example, the city of Lille,
France, experienced greater than average growth and substantial office and hotel development after its high-speed rail station was
built at the crossroads of lines linking London, Paris, and Brussels (Nuworsoo and Deakin 2009).
Spatial agglomeration : High-speed rail enhances agglomeration economies by creating
greater proximity between business locations through shrinking time distances, especially when the
locations are within the rail-friendly 100 to 600 mile range. Agglomeration economies occur when firms benefit
from locating close to other complementary firms and make use of the accessibility to varied
activities and pools of skilled labor. [end page 17] High-speed rail has also been described as altering the economic
geography of megaregions. By effectively bringing economic agents closer together, high-speed rail can
create new linkages among firms, suppliers, employees, and consumers that, over time, foster
spatial concentration within regions (Ahlfeldt and Feddersen 2010). This interactive process creates net
economic gains in addition to the other economic benefits described here.
Solves global conflict
Royal 10 — Jedidiah Royal, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of
Defense, M.Phil. Candidate at the University of New South Wales, 2010 (“Economic Integration,
Economic Signalling and the Problem of Economic Crises,” Economics of War and Peace: Economic,
Legal and Political Perspectives, Edited by Ben Goldsmith and Jurgen Brauer, Published by Emerald
Group Publishing, ISBN 0857240048, p. 213-215)
Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may increase the likelihood of external
conflict . Political science literature has contributed a moderate degree of attention to the impact
of economic decline and the security and defence behaviour of interdependent states. Research in
this vein has been considered at systemic, dyadic and national levels. Several notable contributions
follow. First, on the systemic level, Pollins (2008) advances Modelski and Thompson's (1996) work
on leadership cycle theory, finding that rhythms in the global economy are associated with the rise
and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often bloody transition from one pre-eminent leader to
the next. As such, exogenous shocks such as economic crises could usher in a redistribution of
relative power (see also Gilpin. 1981) that leads to uncertainty about power balances,
increasing the risk of miscalculation (Feaver, 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain
redistribution of power could lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a rising power may
seek to challenge a declining power (Werner. 1999). Separately, Pollins (1996) also shows that
global economic cycles combined with parallel leadership cycles impact the likelihood of conflict
among major, medium and small powers, although he suggests that the causes and connections
between global economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown. Second, on a dyadic
level, Copeland's (1996, 2000) theory of trade expectations suggests that 'future expectation of
trade' is a significant variable in understanding economic conditions and security behaviour of
states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific benefits from trade so long as
they have an optimistic view of future trade relations. However, if the expectations of future trade
decline, particularly for difficult [end page 213] to replace items such as energy resources, the
likelihood for conflict increases , as states will be inclined to use force to gain access to those
resources. Crises could potentially be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on its own
or because it triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states.4 Third, others have considered
the link between economic decline and external armed conflict at a national level. Blomberg and
Hess (2002) find a strong correlation between internal conflict and external conflict, particularly
during periods of economic downturn. They write,The linkages between internal and external
conflict and prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing . Economic conflict tends to spawn
internal conflict, which in turn returns the favour . Moreover, the presence of a recession tends to
amplify the extent to which international and external conflicts self-reinforce each other.
(Blomberg & Hess, 2002. p. 89) Economic decline has also been linked with an increase in the
likelihood of terrorism (Blomberg, Hess, & Weerapana, 2004), which has the capacity to spill
across borders and lead to external tensions . Furthermore, crises generally reduce the
popularity of a sitting government. “Diversionary theory" suggests that, when facing unpopularity
arising from economic decline, sitting governments have increased incentives to fabricate
external military conflicts to create a 'rally around the flag' effect. Wang (1996), DeRouen (1995).
and Blomberg, Hess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing that economic decline
and use of force are at least indirectly correlated. Gelpi (1997), Miller (1999), and Kisangani and
Pickering (2009) suggest that the tendency towards diversionary tactics are greater for democratic
states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic leaders are generally more susceptible
to being removed from office due to lack of domestic support. DeRouen (2000) has provided
evidence showing that periods of weak economic performance in the United States, and thus weak
Presidential popularity, are statistically linked to an increase in the use of force. In summary,
recent economic scholarship positively correlates economic integration with an increase in the
frequency of economic crises, whereas political science scholarship links economic decline with
external conflict at systemic, dyadic and national levels .5 This implied connection between
integration, crises and armed conflict has not featured prominently in the economic-security debate
and deserves more attention. This observation is not contradictory to other perspectives that link
economic interdependence with a decrease in the likelihood of external conflict, such as those
mentioned in the first paragraph of this chapter. [end page 214] Those studies tend to focus on
dyadic interdependence instead of global interdependence and do not specifically consider the
occurrence of and conditions created by economic crises. As such, the view presented here should
be considered ancillary to those views.
Case
The plan medicalizes death – destroys the value to life and turns autonomy
Salem 99 (Tania, "Physician-Assisted Suicide: Promoting Autonomy—Or Medicalizing
Suicide?" Hastings Center Report, 29: 30–36.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2307/3528193/fullhttp://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2307/3528193/full)
As a legitimate domain of professional practice, then, physician-assisted suicide necessarily involves medicalizing
the moral questions surrounding suicide. Physician-assisted suicide presupposes, and ultimately is, a
medical judgment about death or suicide; it is a medical evaluation of the fairness and legitimacy of a
person's (not simply a patient's) desire or choice to end his or her life. With some few exceptions, even the most radical
advocates of physician-assisted suicide recognize the need to establish protocols and guidelines to prevent abuses, protect the
vulnerable, guarantee public accountability, and even to assure the autonomous character of the patient's choice. Surely these aims
are respectable and the setting up of criteria just and reasonable. Yet establishing medical guidelines also introduces tensions into
the value of autonomy in several ways. The requisites for physician-assisted suicide (must the patient be terminally ill? which
medical specialists are best qualified as consultants?) are still being debated. There is, however, agreement about the moral
attributes that the patient and his or her request must evince: the decision to die must be “informed,” “rational,” “stable,” and “fully
free” or “voluntary.”22 And there is broad agreement that to ensure that these conditions are fulfilled the patient
must submit to screening by a team of doctors (the treating physician, a consulting physician, and a psychiatrist)
who would evaluate the request for aid in dying. This requirement assumes that besides undue external
influences, some impulses or dispositions emanating from the patient herself or himself—such as depression or guilt—may
threaten “pure choice.” “Voluntariness” in this sense must be safeguarded from undue influence
stemming not only from outside, but also from within. Ultimately, this is to assume that the inner world may be obscure to
the individual, that she or he may be half blind to her or his own choice, desire, or personal truth. The presumption that the inner
world is or may be opaque to the individual suggests a second underlying presupposition: someone other than the person
requesting aid in dying has greater expertise in judging the appropriateness of that request. Medical
authority, that is, is assumed to have the proper ability to unveil the “real truth” behind the request to die.
The patient's treating physician, along with psychiatric and/or palliative care consultants, is charged to distinguish
authentic from distorted choices; that is, to discern whether the request is pertinent or pathological (and if so,
whether it is “curable” by medical means). Both these premises obviously collide with the principles of autonomy and selfdetermination. Both displace the final decision concerning suicide from the patient to the physician's
judgment that the request is appropriate and free from “undue influence.” The insult to autonomy is not exerted
through repression, as was the criminalization of suicide. Rather, it is exercised through what Foucault would call the
“normalization” of suicide, the subordination to medical scrutiny of this event and the person making the
request.23 The “patient” is subjected to observation, examination, and inquiry to confirm the “rationality” and
“voluntariness” of his or her request. Thus medicalizing (assisted) suicide jeopardizes autonomy not only when the
patient's request is denied for one reason or another. Requiring that the patient submit to medical surveillance is,
in itself, an outrage to autonomy as this value is classically defined.24 To illustrate how complex is the apparatus
through which suicide is normalized, consider guidelines suggested by Frank Miller, Howard Brody, and Timothy Quill, for example.
To ensure public accountability for physician-assisted suicide, to guarantee that the procedure is used only as a “last resort,” and to
assure that the patient's decision is genuinely voluntary, the authors suggest palliative care consultants and regional palliative care
committees as the core of a whole supervising system.25 Thus the primary physician would be prohibited from providing lethal
drugs without prior consultation with a palliative care expert who, based on “examination of medical records and interviews with the
treating physician, the patient and the interested members of the patient's family” (p. 121), would assess the authenticity of the
request to die. Patients and their physicians would have the right to appeal the consultant's denial of requests for assisted suicide to
regional palliative care committees. The bureaucratization of suicide built into such proposals entails serious
constraints on patients’ self-determination. Subjecting individuals who request aid in dying to this kind of scrutiny
further affronts their dignity in putting all such requests under suspicion. In the name of protecting individuals from irreversible
self-harm all are in principle treated as moral patients rather than moral agents and are presumed to be mentally incompetent. The
capacity to make autonomous decisions, which is presumed in all other cases unless demonstrated otherwise, is stood on its head in
physician-assisted suicide. Patients must prove their decisionmaking capacity from the outset. One of the most dramatic aspects of
medicine's extended power over contemporary sensibilities has been precisely medicine's ability to mold our conceptions about
dying. Subjecting the individual to medical norms in this way also introduces a tension for one of the central
questions of liberal philosophers. If, as the liberal argument claims, the morality or immorality of decisions at the end of life rests on
the competent patient's wishes rather than on a distinction between killing and allowing to die,26 protocols that may ultimately deny
a patient's request for assistance in dying assert, in effect, that moral authority resides outside the patient's
choice. And if medicine may, morally, reject patients’ autonomous requests for aid, in the context of physician-assisted suicide the
value of patient autonomy becomes more rhetorical than real. Admittedly, even liberal theorists emphasize
that there are limits to autonomy, and that like other important rights, the right to physician-assisted suicide is not absolute and can
properly be restricted under certain circumstances. Indeed, Ronald Dworkin and others argue precisely that because autonomy must
be protected and preserved physician-assisted suicide must be regulated. Under certain conditions the state has the power to
override individual rights to protect patients from undue pressures, even internal ones.The tension remains, however. In the context
of assisted suicide, how is it possible to reconcile the assertion that paternalistic influences are
unacceptable with the concept that in some situations the state (or the medical establishment) may deny
assistance in suicide in the name of “what it reasonably judges to be the best interest of the potential suicide”?27 Alexander
Capron has argued that decisions on behalf of others should rest on a best interest standard of what the “‘average reasonable person’
would do under the given circumstances.”28 Doesn't this permit the tyranny of the majority over the
individual? Doesn't this menace the right, so praised by liberal theorists, to exercise our singularities in a radical way? As Yale
Kamisar has asked, “[I]f self-determination and autonomy is the major force driving the right to assisted suicide, why should a
competent person's firm conclusion that life has become unendurable for her have to be ‘objectively reasonable’? Why should
not a competent person's own evaluation of her situation suffice?”29 To phrase this in terms of the argument
I make here, is it ever possible to reconcile medicalizing suicide with autonomy?
The plan causes thousands of unnecessary deaths and trades off with palliative
care and pain control measures
McGonnigal 97 [The John Marshall Law Review, Fall, 1997, 31 J. Marshall L. Rev. 95, THIS IS
WHO WILL DIE WHEN DOCTORS ARE ALLOWED TO KILL THEIR PATIENTS, Michael
McGonnigal, Staff attorney, Columbus Community Legal Services, Columbus School of Law,
Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. B.A., Northeastern University, J.D., Catholic
University of America]
Pain control experts believe that nearly every terminally ill [*110]
patient can receive adequate pain relief with existing treatments. n64 Doctors can manage over
ninety percent of the pain experienced by cancer patients through modern drug therapy. n65
Today's pain control measures do not shorten a patient's life and rarely affect a patient's
consciousness. n66 All of this has been accomplished despite the low priority given to pain
control by the medical establishment. Only about one-fifth of one percent of the billion dollar
budget of the National Cancer Institute is devoted to pain research. n67 Despite the state of medical
knowledge, many patients suffer from sub-standard pain management. In a recent survey, eighty-five
percent of the doctors participating admitted that a majority of cancer patients are undermedicated. n68 Most patients are treated by primary care physicians and nurses whose training
lacked programs emphasizing pain management or symptom control in terminally ill cancer
patients. n69 Control of pain is not considered a reason for admission to a hospital, and terminally ill patients cannot be admitted
for this purpose alone. n70 Cancer patients at centers where most of the patients are members of
minority groups are three times more likely to receive inadequate pain therapy treatment. n71
Hospice programs that specialize in pain control do not have enough beds to meet the demand .
A. Victims of Poor Pain Management
n72 In the Netherlands, where euthanasia has been legalized de facto for a generation, only forty-six percent of the requests for
euthanasia involve pain. n73 In only five percent of these cases is pain cited as the sole reason for requesting euthanasia. n74
Euthanasia requests were withdrawn, however, in eighty-five percent of the cases where pain was controlled. n75 In the words of
Richard Lamerton, a leader of the English hospice movement: [*111] Once a patient feels welcome, and not a
burden to others; once his pain is controlled and other symptoms have been at least reduced to
manageable proportions, then the cry for euthanasia disappears. It is not that the question of
euthanasia is right or wrong, desirable or repugnant, practical or unworkable. It is just that it is
irrelevant. n76 Of course, there are rare cases in which pain relief cannot be accomplished without
sinking the patient into a drug-induced coma. n77 There will be other cases in which the effect of
the medication would be less drastic, but the medication is refused by patients because they
wish to remain alert. n78 Far more typical is the patient whose pain could be more expertly
managed. n79 It would be pleasant to believe that none of these patients will be poisoned upon
request. Perhaps the patients' doctors, who did not grasp their need for more morphine, will now
engage in sensitive and perceptive patient counseling. Maybe some doctors will become more
perceptive, but most will not. It is highly likely that thousands of patients will take poison
who would have withdrawn their request if their pain had been properly
managed . Only the rash would gamble the lives of these patients on unforeseen improvements
in pain control practices.
Destroys the value to life and turns all of their fear of death impacts
McGonnigal 97 [The John Marshall Law Review, Fall, 1997, 31 J. Marshall L. Rev. 95, THIS IS
WHO WILL DIE WHEN DOCTORS ARE ALLOWED TO KILL THEIR PATIENTS, Michael
McGonnigal, Staff attorney, Columbus Community Legal Services, Columbus School of Law,
Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. B.A., Northeastern University, J.D., Catholic
University of America]
Many of those who will choose poison may not anticipate the
consequences of their actions, especially upon their family and friends. Those who choose
physician-assisted suicide rather than burdening their families, may well lay a burden of guilt on
their loved ones which they never will be able to shake. The consequence of this inability to read the minds of
I. Unintended Consequences
others is illustrated in Wallace Stegner's novel, Crossing to Safety. The central character, Charity Lang, is a charming and magnetic
New England grande dame who is dying of cancer. n136 Her outstanding vices are her obstinate faith to her own judgment and her
condescension toward her husband, Sid, whom she loves nevertheless. n137 As her disease reaches its final stages, she steals away
unannounced with her best friend to live out her final days. n138 In this way, she hoped to spare Sid the agony of her last moments
and to shield herself from his grief. n139 Sid is devastated by this maneuver. n140 He disappears and his best friend spends several
anxious hours searching for him, fearing that he may have committed suicide. n141 He had not, but it would not have been out-ofcharacter if he had. n142 The novel is set in 1972, which, in terms of euthanasia, was centuries ago. In 1997, a real-life Charity Lang
might choose poison, without appreciating the effect it would have on those she loved. [*120] J. Unwarranted Fear of the Dying
Process The popular press is filled with so many stories about the horrors of medicalized dying
that many people assume the worst scenario is also the most common. Doctors now encounter
many ill-informed patients who refuse resuscitation or ventilator use, even though the use of these
machines might restore life and meaningful function. n143 Patients with an unrealistically pessimistic outlook
on their final days are apt to choose physician-assisted suicide. A disturbing minority of deaths
are as bad as they are painted. "Natural" death, although bearable, is often horrible. What is
disturbing is that many people who would have chosen to bear the burden of a natural death will
be stampeded into taking poison because of exaggerated foreboding. K. The Loss of an Enriching
Experience Some people do their best living when they are dying. Edwin Shneidman writes, "We
can love a dying person, and permit a dying person to love us, in a meaningful way that is not
possible in any other psychotherapeutic encounter." n144 Things can be said that cannot be said
at any other time of life. In Shavelson's book, one of the dying patients enjoys an unexpected
reconciliation with her long estranged son on the day before her death . n145 Another of Shavelson's
subjects, an AIDS victim contemplating suicide, has shut himself off from the world, convinced it has nothing more to offer him but
suffering. n146 He frustrates all efforts of his hospice nurses to work with him . n147 However, when his
energetic young daughter comes to visit him, his attitude enjoys a complete reversal. n148 His
final months, though full of pain, are also full of joy. n149 He dies of natural causes. n150 The third
subject is a woman in the final stages of brain cancer. n151 Shavelson shoots a picture shortly before her suicide showing her
surrounded by four of her friends. n152 This is not a horrible death. For the four sitting by her, it is one
of
the richest and most authentic experiences of their lives. It is possible that other such
experiences awaited her had she chosen [*121] against suicide. If euthanasia becomes legal, if it becomes a
common and accepted part of our culture , it will completely distort the nature of our dying . For
those who are broodish by nature, the practice will destroy any hope for a final, unhurried
reconciliation. Once people understand that they are terminally ill, not an hour will pass for the remainder of their lives that
they will not ask themselves, " Why not do the right thing and take poison ?" Anna Quindlen's fictional
creation, Ellen Gulden, is highly ambitious, yet she quit the staff of a leading New York City magazine to care for her mother, Kate,
during the last six months of Kate's life. n153 Though the final weeks of Kate Gulden's life were hideous, the previous months were
the most important in both women's lives. n154 Had euthanasia been an accepted part of their culture, it would not have been out of
character for Kate. Gulden to seek physician-assisted suicide, rather than ruin her daughter's career prospects. In fact, given Kate
Gulden's combination of altruism and grit, she probably would have given her daughter an ultimatum - "go back to New York or I
will do it now." Ms. Quindlen may not appreciate the alternative ending, especially since it turns a fine novel into a drab short story.
But in real life, for every "Kate Gulden" who fights it out until the final stages, there will be another who will "do their duty" when
they realize that they are being a burden. L. The Incomprehension of Finality Even atheists tend to talk about death as a "journey,"
as though it would take people somewhere.
The bitter truth is that death exterminates one's
existence . All that remains is a corpse which, unless disposed of promptly, will become
offensive to the eyes and nose. The decision to help a patient commit suicide requires that both the doctor and the patient
conclude that the patient's life is not worth living . But if the doctor wants to be accurate, he should
say, "You are not worth living." However, it may be inherently impossible for human beings to truly imagine
their own non-existence. The religious imagery of "looking down from Heaven" is so ingrained that it remains universal even in this
secular age. Many atheists, such as Freud, believe that the visceral need to deny the finality of death gave rise to religion. According
to Avery D. Weisman, "Man accepts the reality of organic and objective death, but cannot imagine his own extinction. Consequently,
despite obvious depletion and deterioration, [*122] most patients still cling to an image of survival which promises to preserve their
unique, distinctive consciousness." n155 In the words of Miguel Unamuno, "It is impossible for us, in effect, to conceive of ourselves
as not existing, and no effort is capable of enabling consciousness to realize absolute unconsciousness, its own annihilation." n156
This echoes an earlier statement of Freud's: Our own death is indeed unimaginable, and whenever we make
the attempt to imagine it, we can perceive that we survive as spectators. Hence, the
psychoanalytical school could venture on the assertion that at bottom no one believes in his own
death, or to put the thing in another way, in the unconscious every one of us is convinced of our
own immortality. n157 Many who would choose physician-assisted suicide will bear within
themselves a powerful, unexamined, sub-conscious belief in their own survival following death.
These people do not make a fully informed decision, and this decision can never be considered
autonomous.
2nc
Case – o/v
Physician-assisted suicide reproduces the most virulent racism endemic to the
health care complex – the 1ac’s failure to include black opinions is not accidental –
widespread injustice and lack of black representation pervades health care
King and Wolf 98 [Minnesota Law Review, April, 1998, 82 Minn. L. Rev. 1015,
“SYMPOSIUM: PHYSICIAN-ASSISTED SUICIDE: FACING DEATH AFTER GLUCKSBERG
AND QUILL: ARTICLE: Empowering and Protecting Patients: Lessons for Physician-Assisted
Suicide from the African-American Experience,” Patricia A. King, Carmack Waterhouse
Professor of Law, Medicine, Ethics and Public Policy, Georgetown University Law Center; J.D.
1969, Harvard Law School; B.A. 1963, Wheaton College, and Leslie E. Wolf, Greenwall Fellow in
Bioethics and Health Policy, Georgetown University and Johns Hopkins University; A.B. 1988,
Stanford University; J.D. 1991, Harvard Law School; M.P.H. 1997, Johns Hopkins School of
Hygiene and Public Health]
An alternative approach permits competent persons to make choices. This approach ignores the conditions that make for
vulnerability and emphasizes the potential and undesirability of paternalism, leaving vulnerable persons to look after themselves
and to secure access to benefits they desire. The Ninth [*1020] Circuit opinion in Compassion in Dying v. Washington n12 is
instructive in this regard. The majority opinion reasoned: This rationale [prohibiting PAS in order to protect the poor and
minorities from exploitation] simply recycles one of the more disingenuous and fallacious arguments raised in opposition to the
legalization of abortion. It is equally meretricious here... [A]s with abortion, there is far more reason to raise the opposite concern:
the concern that the poor and the minorities, who have historically received the least adequate health care, will not be afforded a fair
opportunity to obtain the medical assistance to which they are entitled - the assistance that would allow them to end their lives with
a measure of dignity. The argument that disadvantaged persons will receive more medical services than the remainder of the
population... is ludicrous on its face. So, too, is the argument that the poor and the minorities will rush to volunteer for physicianassisted suicide because of their inability to secure adequate medical treatment. n13 The court ignores the fact that minorities
and the poor have historically been abused and had their preferences ignored, if indeed their
preferences were solicited at all. While it correctly points out that some minority group members may be denied a
benefit that they seek, the court overlooks the fact that minorities might prefer, rather than access to PAS, benefits that
promote health and well-being in view of existing inequities in health status, health care
coverage, and the delivery of health care services. Even if minority individuals desired access to
PAS, they would not necessarily be able to secure this or other benefits because they lack power
in the society. Thus, neither approach is optimal because each fails to guarantee access to benefits and avoidance of harm. It is
therefore important to assess carefully the conditions of inclusion or access to benefits. For example, an empowered patient
may need fewer protections from society because the ability to protect oneself may have
increased. The starting point, then, is to develop thick descriptions of patients in order to learn
why, if at all, they are vulnerable. We need to know patients not merely in terms of
abnormalities in the structure and function of their body organs and systems, but also as
persons situated in broader social, economic, historical and cultural contexts. n14 In actual encounters
with health care professionals, [*1021] the patient's understanding of illness and how the patient
communicates about his or her health problems is shaped by these factors. We also need to
understand who the physician is, the dynamics of the relationship between professional and
patient, and the impact of societal structures on that relationship. It is only by understanding
these matters that we will be able to identify and modify the structural inequities in medicine
that compromise the interests of competent persons when making end-of-life decisions. An
examination of the African-American patient will expand the array of portraits of patients who face death and worry about dying
with dignity. In expanding the images of patients faced with end-of-life decision making, we enhance our understanding
of patients' cultural, religious, and family values, and the complexity of decisionmaking with
respect to PAS. Some of these patients will prefer life-prolonging treatment or palliative care.
Other patients will not seek access to PAS and AVE because they mistrust health care
professionals and medical institutions. Yale Kamisar points out that "[m]any people, understandably, are greatly
affected by the heart-wrenching facts of individual cases." n15 There is no doubt that the suffering and anguish of some patients is
compelling. Many people identify with these patients and worry that they will find themselves in the same position. We are
understandably reluctant to deny interventions that would relieve suffering and bring about desired relief through death. There are
also moving stories that demonstrate the dangers of too quickly acceding to requests for PAS and euthanasia. Yet the portraits of
potential victims of PAS and euthanasia have attracted less public attention. John Arras, a philosopher and bioethicist writes: The
victims of the current policy are easy to identify: they are on the news, the talk shows, the documentaries, and often on Dr.
Kevorkian's roster of so-called "patients." The victims of legalization, by contrast, will be largely hidden from view: they will include
the clinically depressed 80-year-old man who could have lived for another year of good quality if only he had been treated; the 50year-old woman who asks for death because doctors in her financially [*1022] stretched HMO cannot/will not effectively treat her
unrelenting but mysterious pelvic pain; and perhaps eventually, if we slide far enough down the slope, the uncommunicative stroke
victim whose distant children deem an earlier death a better death. Unlike Dr. Kevorkian's "patients," these victims will not get their
pictures in the paper, but they will have faces and they will all be cheated of good months or perhaps even years. n16 Most
descriptions of potential victims of legalizing PAS, however, fail to include images
of members of stigmatized minority groups. n17 There is evidence that members of those
groups regarded as vulnerable have different attitudes about end-of-life treatment than do the
majority of Americans who support assisting the terminally ill to die. Disparities are greatest,
however, in attitudes, values, and beliefs about end-of-life decisionmaking with racial and ethnic
minorities. Studies show that blacks are substantially less likely than whites to support
legalization of PAS. n18 Although the support for legalization has increased over time in both groups, the gap in support
between blacks and whites persists. n19 There is also evidence that these differences [*1023] arise in attitudes
towards other end-of-life issues, such as use of life-prolonging treatment, advance directives,
and living wills. n20 Why these substantial gaps in attitudes about end-of-life decisionmaking exists is not clear and warrants
additional study. The available evidence indicates that these differences persist even when controlling for education, age, and
socioeconomic status. n21 Possible reasons for this difference in attitude include religious preferences, n22 blacks' distrust of
physicians, medical institutions, and the health care system generally, n23 and cultural characteristics like trusting families more
than physicians. n24 Specifically, these differences in attitude towards PAS may reflect differences in
black expression of health and illness as well as concerns about death. Not only have AfricanAmericans experienced disrespect for their autonomy, they have suffered injustice in medicine as well as in
the broader society. As a group, blacks have been abused, neglected, and exploited. They have
reason to believe that their lives are not valued in the same way as whites, and in their
encounters with the health care system they frequently perceive that they are treated differently
solely because of their race. n25 African-Americans have reason to be suspicious of physicians and
rightly worry about giving them too much authority. In the [*1024] medical context, physician
paternalism builds on and reenforces race differentials in power and authority that occur in the
broader society. In short, historical and current experiences with American medicine have made AfricanAmericans acutely aware of the difficulty of looking after their own interests. Ordinary practices,
norms, and habits of well-intentioned institutions and professions can result in unjust practices vis-a-vis some groups. n26 Those
with power in the society are able to impose their norms, values, and beliefs on those who lack power. The dominant group's ideas,
beliefs, and judgments serve to stigmatize and mark other groups as different and deficient. Behaviors and practices of the
stigmatized group are often considered unworthy of study or respect. The myth of white superiority persists and
has profoundly affected both whites and blacks. As Professor Charles Lawrence notes, "We do not
recognize the ways in which our [shared] cultural experience has influenced our beliefs about race
or the occasions on which those beliefs affect our actions." n27 Stereotypes that capture and
reflect negative attitudes towards African-Americans flourish and become embedded in the
culture to the point where they may not be consciously noticed. Thus, injury frequently is inflicted
on blacks without the actor being consciously aware of racial motivation. n28 It is not only the dominant
group, however, that is affected. The negative messages are also absorbed by blacks. Feelings of
inferiority and unworthiness are among the psychic injuries inflicted on blacks. As a result, in addition
to all the disadvantages that blacks suffer, they carry the additional burden of not always
appreciating their own worth as human beings. As Herbert Nickens points out, "such stigma is
never far from consciousness for minorities and is one of the lenses through which life is
perceived." n29 [*1025] Although other racial and ethnic groups have separate and distinct experiences with American
medicine, an additional reason for examining the African-American experience is that in some real sense African-Americans are the
paradigmatic minority group in this country. They constitute approximately twelve percent of the population. Although they were
not willing immigrants and endured slavery and its aftermath of rigid segregation, as people of color they have not been easily
assimilated and do not share the western European heritage and culture of some immigrants. Features of black health
experience such as persistent poverty, limited access to health care, different health status, and
low numbers of health care professionals are common to other minorities as well. An Inherent
Distrust of Medicine The relationship between blacks and medicine has, in the main, not
been beneficial for blacks. Medicine played a critical role in the development of racial
differences that stamped blacks as an inherently inferior people. n30 It provided much of the
theory and data that supported beliefs about biological differences observed in differences in
skin color, hair, appearance, [*1026] and behavior between blacks and whites and confirmed the
superiority of whites. n31 The assumption that blacks were biologically inferior to whites paved
the way for abuse and exploitation of blacks in medical research, education, and
experimentation. Racial ideology posed obstacles to the development of adequate health care for
blacks. Biological explanations were sometimes invoked to explain black-white differences in
health. Indeed, race is still used without appropriate explanation as a key variable in medical and
epidemiological research because the assumption is that race conveys important health
information. Medicine's interest in black health status historically was motivated by self-interest of whites rather than the needs
of African-Americans. Suspicion of medical professionals and institutions explains why AfricanAmericans are likely to approach PAS with caution.
PAS legalization reinforces and expands ableism – concepts of independence,
autonomy and dignity held within PAS precipitate ableist cultural tropes and
encourage people with disabilities to end their lives
Behuniak 10 [Susan M. Behuniak, “Drawing Lines: The Problem of Distinguishing Disability
from Dying in PAS Law,” https://www.interdisciplinarypress.net/online-store/ebooks/medicalhumanities/exploring-issues-of-care-dying-and-the-end-of-life]
Is it possible to legalize physician-assisted suicide (PAS) for competent, terminally ill adults without
putting other populations at risk? In the United States, only the states of Oregon and Washington
have such legislation.1 Passage of the two Death With Dignity Acts (DWDAs) attempt to draw lines that
divide the qualified from the unqualified—a key to their passage being the inclusion of safeguards to demarcate the qualified
resident adult population. To wit, successful requests to access PAS require two main attributes : first, a
terminal diagnosis
with death expected within six months,
and
second, the
competency to act
autonomously . Competent adults who are terminally ill are then recognized under these state
laws as having a right to a “dignified death,” and thus, a right to PAS. PAS laws are examples of when government authorities attempt
to manage life itself—a use of “biopower” that Michel Foucault predicts will be met with resistance (Tremain 2008). And indeed, such has been the case
regarding the legalization of PAS. This
paper will discuss such a “counterpolitics” by focusing on the
disability rights movement. This collection of interest groups represents a population that the
U.S. Supreme Court has deemed as “ vulnerable” to the risks posed by legalized PAS
(Glucksberg 1997), which in itself
perpetuates a stereotype of weakness (Silvers 1998: 133). Disability
activists object to the claims of Oregon and Washington that a firm line can be drawn between
the dying and those with disabilities.2 According to disability activists the threat posed by
legalized PAS is twofold: first, that the practice , although currently limited to the terminally ill, will be
broadened to include the physically and cognitively disabled; and second, that a focus on
“dignity ” in a society that erects barriers to full equality, creates a social context that
encourages those with disabilities to end their lives prematurely
(Siegel 1998: 261). The first
concern, then, is that the dividing line between the terminally ill and those with disabilities will not hold on the “slippery slope” of bioethics; and the
second concern is that the
line honoring individual choice is a false one when it takes place in a culture
in which disability is “represented as a tragedy” (Tremain 2008: 103). In this, activists argue that the
“safeguards” incorporate ableist ideology and therefore, are not to be trusted (Amundson and Taira 2005).
2. Six-Month Terminal Diagnosis: Proponents have argued that PAS is about dying, not disability (Girsh 1997; Tucker 2004). DWDAs require
that the patient be diagnosed as having six months or less to live. PAS, then, hastens death rather than initiates the
dying process. However, the clarity of this dividing line has been challenged on several accounts. In
the first place,
what does it mean to be diagnosed as having a “terminal” condition? Does it require that
death be imminent, life is no longer of value, a shorter than expected lifespan, or a condition for which there is no recovery regardless of treatments?
(Marker & Smith 1996). Should multiple sclerosis, ALS, and Alzheimer’s disease be viewed as chronic and debilitating or terminal conditions?
Different approaches adopted by state and national laws also lead to further confusion .
For example, in Arizona, “terminal condition” includes those in a persistent vegetative state (PVS), while the
U.S. Veterans Administration defines terminal as suffering from “chronic debilitating conditions from
which there is no reasonable hope of recovery” (Marker & Smith 1996). A second blurring of the line occurs
when “disability” is described in ways that render it indistinguishable from dying. For instance, as
defined under the Americans with Disabilities Act, “disability” is defined as having a physical or mental
condition that substantially limits a major life activity—a common condition among dying
patients since many terminal diseases are also disabling diseases wherein patients lose control
over bladder and bowels, mobility, eyesight, or coordination. Therefore, one who is dying can
frequently fit the definition of “disabled,” although the opposite is not usually true. This has led Lennard
Davis, a disability studies scholar who is noteworthy for supporting cautious legalization of PAS, to charge that those who have “equated disability with
dying” are disability activists, not the proponents of PAS (Johnson 2005). Yet, proposals
to include those with disabilities
among the PAS qualified can be found in early policy proposals such as the Harvard Model Act,
the Hemlock Society, Derek Humphrey’s book Final Exit, and the practices of Dr. Jack
Kevorkian (Gill 1999). In addition, some pro-PAS proponents have promised that the disabled are the next
population to be given this “right” (Amundson and Taira 2005); an effort that could find support in the Fourteenth Amendment’s
Equal Protection Clause jurisprudence (Behuniak 2010). A third way that the dividing line becomes indistinct is
when “terminal” and “disabled” are viewed as medical conditions rather than as socially
constructed terms.
In this medicalized view of sickness and impairment, physicians are the gatekeepers to PAS,
although studies suggest that physicians presume the worst about life with a disability (Gill 1999).
The overlapping of disability with dying is also due to a societal view that views disability as
sickness and as an inferior state of being that is both shameful and an indignity. Such social
ambivalence toward disability and illness in general threatens to dehumanize both populations,
as they are now indistinguishable (Siegel 1998). Several U.S. court cases are frequently offered as evidence of the slippage that
occurs in end-of-life law and practices between the dying and those with disabilities (see Miller 1993). These include: Elizabeth Bouvia who had
cerebral palsy, degenerative arthritis, quadriplegia, and personal problems, who successfully petitioned a court to refuse a feeding tube while being
given palliative care as she died (but who later changed her mind); David Rivlin who lived on a ventilator after a spinal cord injury and convinced a
court to have the ventilator turned off; Larry McAfee, also on a ventilator, who won the right to have it shut off (but later changed his mind); Terri
Schiavo who was in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) and whose husband fought in court to withdraw her feeding tubes (he won after a protracted
legal battle with her parents;) and the multiple charges brought against Dr. Jack Kevorkian who assisted in the suicides of, by his own count, 130
patients. Although all of these cases involve highly contentious questions involving the value of life, the right to die, respect for personal autonomy, and
the extent to which support systems were in place for these patients, they do not in themselves support the contention that the line dividing disability
from dying has been violated. First, the confusion in the first four cases is not at all about distinguishing dying from disability, but between the practice
of PAS and the right to refuse or withdraw life-sustaining treatment (a constitutional right recognized in Cruzan.) These cases involve the latter, not the
former. Under the DWD Acts, PAS specifically limits the role of physicians to prescribing (not administering) the fatal dose of pills. In contrast, Bouvia
concerned refusal of nutrition and hydration, Rivlin and McAfee withdrawing a ventilator, and Schiavo withdrawal of nutrition and hydration based on
a surrogate’s decision made on her behalf. Kevorkian’s activities are more complicated; he did indeed practice a form of PAS 130 times and 69% of
those who died from 1990 to 1997 were non-terminal (Canetto and Hollenshead 1999), however, his illegal activities helped to inspire bans on assisted
suicide as well as DWDAs that would bring the practice under state regulation and by definition exclude patients not terminally ill. Kevorkian’s
“assistance” to ALS patient Thomas Youk, his 131st patient, crossed beyond PAS to killing (for which he was convicted of second degree murder in
Michigan) because Youk did not self-administer the deadly drug—Kevorkian injected it. Another consideration is that if PAS is being practiced
surreptitiously in states that ban it, and there is much evidence that it is, and that if those with disabilities are being included in these illegal practices
(as in the Kevorkian cases), then the transparency afforded by legalization could serve as a protection. Until cases emerge, then, that show that patients
who died under the DWDAs were recognized as not terminally ill but still allowed to access PAS anyway because of a disability, my conclusion is that
the eligible/dying can be distinguished in practice from the ineligible/disabled in PAS processes. This is not to argue that the line drawn is 100%
exclusionary, but that as a “safeguard” and not a “guarantee,” (Gunderson & Mayo 2000), the terminal illness requirement of the DWDAs appears to be
working. 3. The Relationship Between Autonomy and Dignity Under
the DWDAs, it is not enough that a person be a
member of the eligible population to access PAS; also required is that that person makes an
individual decision choosing to employ this option. The law, then, appears to enable decisionmaking, not to coerce a specific choice. It screens who belongs to the eligible population (i.e., the
terminally ill), but then takes no action until the patient acts to set the PAS process in motion . To do this,
an initial request made in writing must be followed by a second request made no less than 15 days later. Once the terminal diagnosis is verified and the
voluntary nature of the requests affirmed by a second physician, the first physician may now write the lethal prescription to be filled at a pharmacy. At
that point, the question of whether to hasten death is literally in the hands of the patient— or is
it? Proponents of PAS argue that the law’s reliance on selfdetermination is the key to
protecting against abuses such as expanding PAS to members of unwilling populations such as
those with disabilities. Proponents fail to see how PAS will jeopardize the lives of those with
disabilities when control lies in the hands of the individual (Girsh 1997). They also point to studies that show
that although half of dying patients would like PAS as an option, 10% seriously consider it, 1%
request it , and only 1 in 10 of those receive and ingest the pills (Bascom and Tolle 2002). Data from WA and OR
indicate a strong relationship between this autonomy of choice and the goal of dignity. Of the 460 patients who died under Oregon’s DWDA from 19982008, 89% named their concern as loss of autonomy, 87% cited being less able to engage in enjoyable activities, 84% cited loss of dignity, while only
24% voiced a concern about pain control (“Characteristics and End of Life Care” 2010). Washington’s data for 2009 indicate a similar pattern (“End of
Life Concerns” 2010). Dignity,
then, has become the counterpoint to suffering (Campbell 1996), as proponents
seek an alternative to a medicalized, institutionalized, prolonged, and seemingly impersonal
dying process (Proulx and Jacelon 2004). The shorthand phrase for this vision of dying is “ death with
dignity .” And as Derse points out, “death with dignity” is “not of medical coinage;” it is
patients who use the term when speaking about themselves at the end of life (2000: 283) and also
what those with disabilities insist they are due during their lives. What seemingly divides
proponents of PAS from disability activists, then, is how “dignity” is inscribed with meaning
derived from personal experiences. For example, Pullman (2002) describes “basic dignity” as of the transcendental realm where
one’s dignity is dependent only on one’s humanity; it is a vision of dignity embraced by many disability activists as it focuses on universal attributes of
shared humanity and not particular conditions that marginalize people. “Personal dignity” is self-constituting and can be disrupted by pain, suffering,
or the actions of others (Pullman 2002); in
adopting this vision of dignity, proponents of PAS hold as an
individual right the option to hasten dying so as to die with dignity still intact . What is it ,
then, about dying that is undignified? Statements by proponents of PAS raise red flags for
disability activists when they speak in terms of the indignity of incontinence, dependence, and
immobility. In reaction, disability activists charge that the claim of a right to a “dignified”
death is in fact code for the stigmatizing belief that it is better to be dead than
disabled . It is this fear of disability, whether explicitly stated or not, that infuses much of the
debate over legalized PAS. As such, rather than reassuring those with disabilities that legalized PAS will have a negligible effect,
proponents instead ignite many of their concerns. For instance, there is an assumption that autonomy exists within the dyadic relationship between
doctor and patient (Ho 2008). But as Anita Ho argues, individual patients may make the ultimate decision in consultation with their physician, but
such a “choice” is already shaped by the patient’s experiences within a specific social environment. She explains: We are socially-embedded beings,
such that autonomy often incorporates intrinsically relational or social context, and it is thus impossible to assess patient autonomy without critically
evaluating how or whether the interconnected social, political, and health-care structural frameworks often foreclose certain opportunities or predetermine how individuals approach various health-care situations (2008: 195). In
American culture, disability is
represented as tragedy rather than as social oppression (Tremain 2008). This is not to argue
against autonomy or for paternalism, but to call for a closer investigation of the meaning of
“ choice ” as it is embedded in a culture that lacks national health care and adequate
systems of support, and that views disability and dependence as rare states of being
that so impair the quality of life that death is preferable . To define autonomy, then, as a patient with
lethal pills in hand deciding whether or not to ingest them, is to ignore the state interference that took place prior to that moment. Not Dead Yet activist
Carol Cleigh (2001) questions why competency is assumed only when those who are suicidal also have disabilities. She writes that “the
heart of
the problem” is viewing the desire to commit suicide as “natural” when the person is disabled.
To end this discrimination, Diane Coleman, president of Not Dead Yet suggests: “If the values of liberty
dictate that society legalize assisted suicide, then legalize it for everyone who asks for it, not just
the devalued old, ill and disabled. Otherwise, what looks like freedom is really only
discrimination” (2005; see also Ackerman 1998). Autonomy , then, appears as a safeguard in PAS policy
only when it is narrowly defined as the patient making the choice (in consultation with a physician). But
when this process is placed within the societal context of discrimination against
those with disabilities and fear of impairment and dependence, then legitimate
questions are raised whether this second requirement is indeed the safeguard it is
promised to be . 4. Conclusion To summarize then, although the first dividing line that separates the dying from those with disabilities can
that requires patient autonomy is more problematic. The first narrows the eligible
population for PAS while the second empowers individuals to end their lives. With the second safeguard in doubt, then, the
wisdom of legalized PAS is in question. So, what now? I suggest that the solution is not to erect a
higher test by which to prove patient autonomy but to approach the issue from the opposite side
of the equation—that of strengthening patient supports. PAS should not give society a free pass
on universal health care, stigma, discrimination, and an expectation of independence without
adequate social supports. Putting in place support systems that offer needed care would respond more directly to the politics of where
hold, the second safeguard
the dividing lines are placed. As Kathryn Tucker, counsel for the pro-legalization group, Compassion & Choices, has stated, PAS should serve as a
“catalyst” for improved end-of-life care (2004). Coming from the opposite side, Anita Ho agrees: “ To
truly promote autonomy, we
need to restructure the social framework to ensure that people’s preferences are
not foreclosed because of discriminatory attitudes and oppressive social
structures
(2008: 205).
Recognition that there is too much reliance on the American
script of independent, autonomous individuals with ultimate control
(Goldberg 2007
) is
a good place to start . Connected to this is the continuing development of a “theory of
disability” (Wendell 1989) that adopts the universalizing view that dependence and limitations are
states that each of us should expect to experience rather than the minoritizing view that
disability is a misfortune that undermines personhood (Sedgwick 1990). Next, we need to ask what compassionate care
means. Goldberg (2007) suggests that it is the opposite of pain, abandonment, isolation, and imposition of the doctor’s view. Cohen-Almagor (2000)
argues in favor of building stronger relationships by physicians spending more time with patients and their families, guided by an ethic of “honesty,
promise keeping, confidentiality, care, and empathy” (2000). Rather than reliance on lines that divide, then, PAS may be more justifiable as an option
embedded in connected care.
The plan is emblematic of ableist normalcy’s exclusionary praxis which makes
ongoing eugenics and extermination inevitable – its devaluation of disabled people
creates “treacherous terrain” for all who are ‘othered’ by Western society – only
rejection solves
Brown 11, Artist Initiative Grantee at Minnesota State Arts Board Senior Academic Adviser for the College of Education and Human Development at University of Minnesota Steering Committee at
Education Abroad Network at University of Minnesota Volunteer Coordinator for Social Inclusion and Bullying Prevention at Marcy Open School see less Past 2012-2013 Buckman Fellow at Buckman Fellowship
Travel and Study Grantee at Jerome Foundation Loft Mentor Series Award Winner for Poetry at The Loft Literary Center Institute on Community Integration Post-graduate Certificate Graduate Student at
University of Minnesota University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development/University Honors Program Liaison at University of Minnesota University Honors Program Academic Advisor at
University of Minnesota University of Minnesota Learning Abroad Center/University Honors Program Liaison at University of Minnesota Foreign Lecturer--English Studies, Cultural Awareness, Humanities at
Hokkaido University of Education Educational Technologies post-grad certificate program at University of British Columbia, Vancouver Adjunct Lecturer--Japanese Language at Wayne County Community
College Adjunct Lecturer--English Composition at Wayne State University Foriegn Lecturer--English Studies, Creative Writing, English Literature at Sophia University--Tokyo, Japan ‘Screw normal’: Resisting the
myth of normal by questioning media’s depiction of people with autism and their families, http://blog.lib.umn.edu/gara0030/iggds/Screw%20Normal_FINAL_Dosch%20Brown.pdf
The one societal need in our society that is often unacknowledged, silenced, and left
unexamined is that humans have, as Michalko quoted Cornel West, the ― deep, visceral need to
belong ‖ (Michalko, 2002, p. 81) — all of us struggle with full acceptance of ourselves and our desire to be seen as acceptable or
welcome in a society that loves to label people. The
media creates walls between its ideals and the
people it views as Others , such as when the media views people with autism as ‘abnormal
mysteries’. We are being taught that differences occurring from autism are wrong, and sadly too
many families depicted in the media perpetuate this negative view of their own children. When
thinking of ‗normal‘ henceforth, let‘s consider what Michalko wrote about society and his blindness. He explained that, although
society might have found ways technologically for him to participate (he is a professor), he is still seen as ‗strange‘ because he is
blind. He said the difference in his blindness must be grappled with inside his being in ―a space
between nature and culture‖ and ―normal and abnormal‖ (2002, p. 83), and it is within this
confusing, unmarked space where he has had to build his own identity. By moving through the
world with his ―body of blindness,‖ Michalko has projected himself into the ―social space,‖ just as
my son must project his own self, by moving through the social space with his ‗mind of difference‘; thus, society reacts to
people who have disabilities who cannot live up to the mythical norms with ―help, ―pity,
―ridicule, ―unease,‖ and ―curiosity‖ (2002, p. 88), and it results in an unequal power structure that
creates treacherous terrain for all of us who have been Othered. Michalko (2002) noted that
mainstream Western society views all disabilities as abnormal, and it thus approaches people
with disability as tragic people who live lives ―not worth living‖; they are seen as the Other, as objects of pity,
both ―vulnerable and fragile‖ (p.68). The complexity, diversity, and range of differences of all
human beings in this world are erased, denied, and ignored under a banner of
‗sameness‘ or ‗normalcy‘—and those who cannot or will not conform are
silenced and lumped into the category of Other, and dealt with suspicion for not
conforming to social construction of what is acceptable in appearance, behavior,
and experience. Eugenics, the academic Phil Smith (2008) has concluded, is still very much present in
societal attitudes toward disability. Eugenics formalized ―the Normal, a cultural
landscape outlined in order to support the hegemony of its inhabitants, a
liberalist bourgeois class of white, able-bodied men ‖ (P. Smith, p. 419). By silencing
those with perceived disabilities (or those with a particular perceived race,
ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation , etc.) and deeming them as lesser than
‘normal‘ humans —society is able to continue to deny that ‘being normal‘ is actually a socially
constructed myth (Michalko, 2002, p. 69). Phil Smith further pointed out that not so long ago those who
committed the war crimes by killing or sterilizing people they had deemed of
inferior intelligence in the Nazis T-4 project were consistently given less severe
convictions and higher acquittal rates
(P. Smith, 2008, p. 421)—revealing, indeed, that as
a society
we devalue the lost lives of those considered too different from the mythical norm,
which we will demonstrate later is a devaluation of human life very much alive in
media depiction of autism. Society rarely has ears for the voices or rooms reserved for those with
differences who think otherwise, and it rarely realizes that indeed people with differences also have value and critical
roles to play in society. The media maintains this gaping silence as well. Society, Michalko has argued,
either expects those deemed ―abnormal‖ will ―get through their differences by
adapting to the dominant rules, so as to be less noticed, or it expects them to ―get
out‖ by removing themselves from view, by being silent and isolated (Michalko, 2002, p.
75); and some experts, doctors, educators, and therapists make a sizable income from attempting to enforce these societal
expectations on families.
Medicalization
The medicalization of death is unethical to the core and destroys value to life.
Death becomes a regulated and impersonal part of the medical bureaucracy.
Whitney and Smith 10 ~Al: professor at University of Victoria and Andre: phd, University of
Victoria "Exploring Death and Dying through Discourse" The Arbutus Review, 2010, no. 1,
emb~
Foucault argues that modern medicine is born as an enterprise of hubris of mastery over death, or
“bringing together life and death under the same controlling gaze” (Bleakley & Bligh, 2009, p. 372). This gaze can be
abstractly applied to the institution of medicine in its entirety. Because of the prominence of medicine (and the “expertise” of
physicians) and its premise on the biomedical model (body as machine, etc.), the process of death has become
medicalized; the natural event of death comes to be defined as a condition which must be treated and
controlled by medicine, and this generally takes place within an institutional setting. As our faith in medicine and
technology increases, we have given way to the prominence of medicine and in many ways concede to its “curative
function and ability to extend the lives of the dying” (Ziegler, 2009, p. 318). Death can be resisted through entirely
artificial means, through life support machines and ventilators. The dead body can be brought back to life
through cardiopulmonary resuscitation. We are even “able to use organs from brain-dead donors whose heart is still beating to
replace malfunctioning organs in others” (Van Biesen, Lameire, Veys & Vanderhaegen, 2004, p. 539). Technological advancements
have created the means to intervene in ways that have never before existed. But what has not simultaneously occurred
is consensus on the ethical ways in which these mechanisms of control over death should be employed.
The individual circumstances surrounding death have become structured in an institutional space whereby
morality and ethics are implemented in the form of routinized legal and medical practices. As death emerges within a biomedical
paradigm (as failure) and we concede to hand over our bodies (even in death) to the institution of medicine, we renounce the
meaning of our lives through the resistance and ignorance of dying. Death is no longer understood as a
natural part of life but becomes something that must be resisted and intervened upon. Even upon acceptance of a lack of cure, it
continues to be regulated, controlled, and managed in an impersonal way because of the functions of
bureaucracy. Bleakly and Bligh (2009) remark that the medical profession shapes, guides, and controls death across the boundary of
the doctor-patient relationship. This boundary is inclusive of institutional spaces in which discourses of
medicine permeate in conjunction with specific rules and regulations. When one dies within an
institutional setting, the feature of bureaucracy is a dominant force. Efficiency is a key component to a successful bureaucracy, and
the efficacy of death management relies on mechanization and routinization. This space is theoretically incongruent, or rather, it
severely limits or restrains the acknowledgement of existential issues relating to death, thus limiting a conceptualization of death as
a positive experience or as a natural life event that could be celebrated. The institution of medicine, which includes the biomedical
model, expertise, and bureaucracy, can be used to explore the space of long-term care facilities, which also operate as totalizing
institutions and bureaucracies that function under administrative rule.
At: We Solve
Discourse is a result of material reality – the alt’s focus on it trades-off with real
change
Taft-Kaufman, 95 Jill Speech prof @ CMU, Southern Comm. Journal, Spring, v. 60, Iss. 3, “Other Ways”, p pq
The postmodern passwords of "polyvocality," "Otherness," and "difference," unsupported by
substantial analysis of the concrete contexts of subjects, creates a solipsistic quagmire. The political
sympathies of the new cultural critics, with their ostensible concern for the lack of power experienced by marginalized people, aligns them with the
political left. Yet, despite
their adversarial posture and talk of opposition, their discourses on
intertextuality and inter-referentiality isolate them from and ignore the conditions that have
produced leftist politics--conflict, racism, poverty, and injustice. In short, as Clarke (1991) asserts, postmodern
emphasis on new subjects conceals the old subjects, those who have limited access to good jobs, food, housing, health care, and transportation, as well
as to the media that depict them. Merod (1987) decries this situation as one which leaves
no vision, will, or commitment to
activism. He notes that academic lip service to the oppositional is underscored by the absence of focused collective or politically active intellectual
communities. Provoked by the academic manifestations of this problem Di Leonardo (1990) echoes Merod and laments: Has there ever
been a historical era characterized by as little radical analysis or activism and as much radicalchic writing as ours? Maundering on about Otherness: phallocentrism or Eurocentric tropes has
become a lazy academic substitute for actual engagement with the detailed histories and
contemporary realities of Western racial minorities, white women, or any Third World population. (p. 530) Clarke's assessment of the
postmodern elevation of language to the "sine qua non" of critical discussion is an even stronger
indictment against the trend. Clarke examines Lyotard's (1984) The Postmodern Condition in which Lyotard maintains that virtually
all social relations are linguistic, and, therefore, it is through the coercion that threatens speech that we enter the "realm of terror" and society falls
I can think of few more striking indicators of the political and
intellectual impoverishment of a view of society that can only recognize the discursive. If the
worst terror we can envisage is the threat not to be allowed to speak, we are appallingly ignorant
of terror in its elaborate contemporary forms. It may be the intellectual's conception of terror
(what else do we do but speak?), but its projection onto the rest of the world would be calamitous ....(pp. 2-27)
The realm of the discursive is derived from the requisites for human life, which are in the physical
world, rather than in a world of ideas or symbols.(4) Nutrition, shelter, and protection are basic human needs that require
collective activity for their fulfillment. Postmodern emphasis on the discursive without an accompanying
analysis of how the discursive emerges from material circumstances hides the complex task of
envisioning and working towards concrete social goals (Merod, 1987). Although the material conditions that create the
apart. To this assertion, Clarke replies:
situation of marginality escape the purview of the postmodernist, the situation and its consequences are not overlooked by scholars from marginalized
groups. Robinson (1990) for example, argues that "the
justice that working people deserve is economic, not just
textual" (p. 571). Lopez (1992) states that "the starting point for organizing the program content of education
or political action must be the present existential, concrete situation" (p. 299). West (1988) asserts that
borrowing French post-structuralist discourses about "Otherness" blinds us to realities of American difference going on in front of us (p. 170). Unlike
postmodern "textual radicals" who Rabinow (1986) acknowledges are "fuzzy about power and the realities of socioeconomic constraints" (p. 255), most
writers from marginalized groups are clear about how discourse interweaves with the concrete circumstances that create lived experience. People
whose lives form the material for postmodern counter-hegemonic discourse do not share the
optimism over the new recognition of their discursive subjectivities, because such an
acknowledgment does not address sufficiently their collective historical and current struggles
against racism, sexism, homophobia, and economic injustice. They do not appreciate being told
they are living in a world in which there are no more real subjects. Ideas have consequences.
Emphasizing the discursive self when a person is hungry and homeless represents both a
cultural and humane failure.
at: Studies
The privilege of the affirmative forces them to forgo evaluating who will be impact
by their policy
Gill 2010 (Carol [Ph.D. Department of Disability and Human Development, University of
Illinois at Chicago]; No, we don’t think our doctors are out to get us: Responding to the straw
man distortions of disability rights arguments against assisted suicide; Disability and Health
Journal 3 (2010) 31-38; kdf)
Support for assisted suicide has been driven not by subtle distinctions but by strong emotions
and large ideas. Fear of suffering, humiliation over needing care, and anger over threatened loss
of independence are powerful emotions. Freedom, autonomy, quality of life, and control over one’s body are huge
concepts. Occasionally, big drama also enters the mix. Tragic case studies are presented to underscore
the horror of particular lives lacking an assisted exit. Keeping the debate at this coarse
level fits well with sound-bite media coverage, where complexities and subtle implications have little place.
Unfortunately, gross analysis fails miserably to illuminate a phenomenon as complex as assisted
suicide. Many of the key spokespersons in favor of assisted suicide are comfortable dealing in big ideas on center stage. They are
familiar with ideals such as independence, control, and freedom because they are by and large from the dominant sector of society
that has had access to those experiences. Diane Coleman has characterized the leading proponents of legalized
assisted suicide as ‘‘white, well-off, worried, and well’’ [2]. They have enjoyed a good deal of
control, know exactly what they have to lose, and are determined to retain it until death.
Unfortunately, viewing the world from a position of privilege may limit one’s insight into the
consequences of a policy change whose greatest impact could fall on socially marginalized
groups.
Biopower
No impact
Dean 4 – Prof Sociology, Macquarie U (Mitchell, Four Theses on the Powers of Life and Death,
http://www.usyd.edu.au/contretemps/5december2004/dean.pdf, AG)
In a passage from the latter, Foucault
shows that the genocidal character of National Socialism did not
from its extension of bio-power (1979, 149-50). Nazism was concerned with the total
administration of the life, of the family, of marriage, procreation, education and with the intensification of disciplinary
micro-powers. But it articulated this with another set of features concerned with ‘the oneiric exaltation of a
superior blood’, of fatherland, and of the triumph of the race. In other words, if we are to understand how the most
simply arise
dramatic forces of life and death were unleashed in the twentieth century, we have to understand how bio-power was articulated
with elements of sovereignty and its symbolics. Pace Bauman, it is not simply the development of instrumental rationality in
the form of modern bio-power, or a bureaucratic power applied to life that makes the Holocaust possible. It is the
system of linkages, re-codings and re-inscriptions of sovereign notions of fatherland, territory, and blood within the new biopolitical discourses of eugenics and racial hygiene that makes the unthinkable thinkable. The fact that all modern states must
articulate elements of sovereignty with bio-politics also allows for a virtuous combination. The virtue of liberal and democratic
forms of government is that they deploy
two instruments to check the unfettered imperatives of biopower, one drawn from political economy and the other from sovereignty itself (cf. Foucault, 1997a, 73-9). Liberalism seeks to
review the imperative to govern too much by pointing to the quasi-natural processes of the market or of the
exchanges of commercial society that are external to government. To govern economically means to govern through
economic and other social processes external to government and also to govern in an efficient, cost-effective way. Liberalism
also invokes the freedom and rights of a new subject - the sovereign individual. By 'governing through
freedom' and in relation to freedom, advanced liberal democracies are able to differentiate their bio-politics
from that of modern totalitarian states and older police states.
Biopolitics not so bad
Dickinson 2004 – University of Cincinnati (Edward Ross, “Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy:
Some Reflections on Our Discourse About “Modernity,” Central European History, vol. 37, no. 1,
March)
In short, the continuities between early twentieth-century biopolitical discourse and the practices of
the welfare state in our own time are unmistakasble. Both are instances of the “disciplinary society” and of biopolitical, regulatory,
social-engineering modernity, and they share that genealogy with more authoritarian states, including the National Socialist state, but also fascist Italy, for example. And it is
analysis can easily become superficial and misleading,
because it obfuscates the profoundly different strategic and local dynamics of power in the two kinds of
regimes. Clearly the democratic welfare state is not only formally but also substantively quite
different from totalitarianism. Above all, again, it has nowhere developed the fateful, radicalizing
dynamic that characterized National Socialism (or for that matter Stalinism), the psychotic logic
that leads from economistic population management to mass murder. Again, there is always the
potential for such a discursive regime to generate coercive policies. In those cases in which the regime of rights does not successfully
produce “health,” such a system can —and historically does— create compulsory programs to enforce it. But again, there are political and policy
potentials and constraints in such a structuring of biopolitics that are very different from those
of National Socialist Germany.
certainly fruitful to view them from this very broad perspective. But that
Democratic biopolitical regimes require, enable, and incite a degree of self-direction and
participation that is functionally incompatible with authoritarian or totalitarian structures. And
this pursuit of biopolitical ends through a regime of democratic citizenship does appear,
historically, to have imposed increasingly narrow limits on coercive policies, and to have
generated a “logic” or imperative of increasing liberalization. Despite limitations imposed by political context and the slow
this is the unmistakable message of the really very impressive waves of
legislative and welfare reforms in the 1920s or the 1970s in Germany.90 Of course it is not yet clear
whether this is an irreversible dynamic of such systems. Nevertheless, such regimes are characterized by
sufficient degrees of autonomy (and of the potential for its expansion) for sufficient numbers of
people that I think it becomes useful to conceive of them as productive of a strategic
configuration of power relations that might fruitfully be analyzed as a condition of “liberty,” just as
much as they are productive of constraint, oppression, or manipulation. At the very least, totalitarianism cannot be the sole
orientation point for our understanding of biopolitics, the only end point of the logic of social
engineering. This notion is not at all at odds with the core of Foucauldian (and Peukertian) theory.
Democratic welfare states are regimes of power/knowledge no less than early twentieth-century
totalitarian states; these systems are not “opposites,” in the sense that they are two alternative ways of organizing the same thing.
But they are two very different ways of organizing it. The concept “power” should not be read as
a universal stifling night of oppression, manipulation, and entrapment, in which all political and
social orders are grey, are essentially or effectively “the same.” Power is a set of social relations,
in which individuals and groups have varying degrees of autonomy and effective subjectivity.
And discourse is, as Foucault argued, “tactically polyvalent.” Discursive elements (like the various
elements of biopolitics) can be combined in different ways to form parts of quite different
strategies (like totalitarianism or the democratic welfare state); they cannot be assigned to one
place in a structure, but rather circulate. The varying possible constellations of power in modern
societies create “multiple modernities,” modern societies with quite radically differing
potentials.
pace of discursive change, I think
1nr
Util Good – Isaacs
Consequentialism key---alt is complicit with evil
Isaac 2—Professor of Political Science at Indiana-Bloomington, Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy and Public Life, PhD from
Yale (Jeffery C., Dissent Magazine, Vol. 49, Iss. 2, “Ends, Means, and Politics,” p. Proquest)
As a result, the most important political questions are simply not asked. It
is assumed that U.S. military intervention is an
act of "aggression," but no consideration is given to the aggression to which intervention is a
response. The status quo ante in Afghanistan is not, as peace activists would have it, peace, but
rather terrorist violence abetted by a regime--the Taliban--that rose to power through brutality
and repression. This requires us to ask a question that most "peace" activists would prefer not to ask: What should be done to
respond to the violence of a Saddam Hussein, or a Milosevic, or a Taliban regime? What means are likely
to stop violence and bring criminals to justice? Calls for diplomacy and international law are well intended and
important; they implicate a decent and civilized ethic of global order. But they are also vague
and empty, because they are not accompanied by any account of how diplomacy or
international law can work effectively to address the problem at hand. The campus left offers
no such account. To do so would require it to contemplate tragic choices in which moral
goodness is of limited utility. Here what matters is not purity of intention but the intelligent exercise of power. Power is not a dirty
word or an unfortunate feature of the world. It is the core of politics. Power is the ability to effect outcomes in the world. Politics, in large
part, involves contests over the distribution and use of power. To accomplish anything in the
political world, one must attend to the means that are necessary to bring it about . And to develop such
means is to develop, and to exercise, power. To say this is not to say that power is beyond morality. It is to say
that power is not reducible to morality. As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah
Arendt have taught, an unyielding concern with moral goodness undercuts political responsibility.
The concern may be morally laudable, reflecting a kind of personal integrity, but it suffers from three fatal flaws: (1) It fails to see that the purity of
one's intention does not ensure the achievement of what one intends. Abjuring violence or
refusing to make common cause with morally compromised parties may seem like the right
thing; but if such tactics entail impotence, then it is hard to view them as serving any moral good
beyond the clean conscience of their supporters; (2) it fails to see that in a world of real
violence and injustice, moral purity is not simply a form of powerlessness; it is often a form of
complicity in injustice. This is why, from the standpoint of politics--as opposed to religion-pacifism is always a potentially immoral stand. In categorically repudiating violence, it refuses
in principle to oppose certain violent injustices with any effect; and (3) it fails to see that politics
is as much about unintended consequences as it is about intentions; it is the effects of
action, rather than the motives of action, that is most significant. Just as the alignment with "good" may engender
impotence, it is often the pursuit of "good" that generates evil. This is the lesson of communism in the twentieth century: it is not enough that one's
goals be sincere or idealistic;
it is equally important, always, to ask about the effects of pursuing these
goals and to judge these effects in pragmatic and historically contextualized ways. Moral
absolutism inhibits this judgment. It alienates those who are not true believers. It promotes
arrogance. And it undermines political effectiveness.
**Politics
Uniqueness
High speed railing progressing now --- votes are currently lacking to stop it
Marois, 9/8/14 (Michael B., “California’s Brown Turns Foes to Friends in No. 1 Economy,”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-08/california-s-brown-turns-foes-to-friends-in-no1-economy.html, JMP)
High-Speed Rail
While Brown has made frugality a centerpiece of his administration, gesturing during the
interview to rows of empty desks as evidence of his dodging bureaucracy, in June he signed the
largest budget in the state’s history, at a record $156.4 billion, a 19 percent increase since he
took office.
Brown champions a $68 billion high-speed rail line that’s also unpopular among Republicans.
Brown said in the debate that rail is cheaper and more environmentally friendly than building
more roads and airports. Work for the first phase of the line has already begun. Republicans lack
the votes to stop it.
Brown’s PC will resolve any uniqueness shortfall and his continued push is critical
--- that’s Wood.
More evidence Brown is investing PC to overcome opposition
Redmond, 8/4/14 (Tim, “We’re back — with housing battles, the mayor vs. Wiener, Airbnb …
it never ends,” http://48hillsonline.org/2014/08/04/back-housing-battles-mayor-vs-wienerairbnb-never-ends/, JMP)
Part of what Wiener is complaining about is the mayor’s failure to support an increase in the
local Vehicle License Fee. Lee says he’s backed off on that effort because the polls showed it’s not
popular.
Of course it’s not popular — now. Nobody wants to pay more taxes. But this is one of of those
moments where political leaders decide to use, or withhold, political capital.
Gov. Jerry Brown is using his political capital to continue the push for high-speed
rail, which is getting ridiculed by the mainstream media and is tanking in the polls. Brown has
high approval ratings and no credible opposition, so he’s telling the people of the state: If you
like me, follow me on this.
He’s right, of course — high-speed rail between SF and LA, even at $68 billion, is a great idea,
something that years from now we will all look back at and say: Why did it take this long?
Progress now for HSR but future funding battles will be key --- Brown is
prioritizing and opposition is intense
Cameron, 8/18/14 (Jim, “Dan Richard, bullet train conductor,”
http://capitolweekly.net/bullet-train-rail-california-project-richard/, JMP)
Dan Richard, the chair of the California High Speed Rail Authority, is a man in the middle. The
middle of court fights, the middle of political fights, the middle of a fight over California’s future.
“The rest of the developed world has moved energetically to adopt high-speed rail. We will too,”
Richard says.
He may be right.
After miscues, battles over the bullet train’s routes and funding, and fierce opposition in
California and Washington, there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel.
Late last month, an appeals court overturned a lower-court decision and ruled that the state had
met the requirements to develop its funding plan for the $68 billion project, a price tag that had
been dramatically scaled back from about $100 billion.
Meanwhile, Gov. Brown, who is pushing hard for the bullet train, signed a state budget
that provides hundreds of millions of dollars in cap-and-trade auction funds for the project – a
move that immediately drew interest from an array of private investors. And preliminary work is
starting on a 130-mile stretch in the Central Valley and planning is being expedited on a 40-mile
segment in L.A. County.
The appellate court noted that additional legal obstacles loom, but for now, at least, the
project appears on track.
Richard is no stranger to transportation battles – he spent more than two decades on the Bay
Area Rapid Transit (BART) board of directors. But this time, the public works and business
veteran may be in the most important fight of his career.
The crux of the opposition to the bullet train comes from Republicans, led by the House
Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield. Their discontent focuses on the cost.
That $68 billion is a heady number in a state struggling with the needs of education, health,
water, housing, unfunded public pension debt and deteriorating infrastructure, just to name a
few problems. The cost more than four times the most expensive single public works project in
the nation’s history, the $14.6 billion “big dig” in Boston, and 10 times the cost of the Bay Bridge
overhaul.
In a conversation with Capitol Weekly, Richard discussed the cost issue.
“Many of the criticisms about the cost of high-speed rail stem from a lack of understanding of
what’s involved in the numbers,” he said.
“They include the costs of an infrastructure of connecting rail lines and transportation hubs that
will provide the state with the kind of total transportation system needed for our future growth
as California’s population grows to an estimated 60 million by 2050. So they’re vastly more
than the cost of high-speed rail itself,” he added.
But what about the people who will be uprooted from their homes and farms as a result of the
effort? Despite the provisions for restitution, that can be a bitter pill for them to swallow — and
a memory not likely to fade in the near future.
Brown has been unequivocal in his support of high-speed rail, making it a keystone of
his administration’s plan for the future of a state with the world’s eighth-largest economy and a
gross state product of more than$2 trillion.
But opposition is intense. McCarthy has been active in an attempt to leverage federal resistance
to the project, calling the project’s business plan “deeply flawed”. And the Republicancontrolled House has voted against the projects continuation for four straight years. If the U.S.
Senate swings next year to a Republican majority – the opposition in Washington could
intensify.
Some Democrats also have been critical.
Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a likely contender for governor after Brown leaves office, added his
voice to the chorus of dissenters. Sen. Kevin De Leon, who is taking over the Senate leadership
from termed-out Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, labeled the project’s plan to start
in the Central Valley a “train to nowhere” (for which he later apologized), and Sen. Mark
DeSaulnier, D-Concord, a congressional candidate who chairs the Senate’s Transportation
Committee, has said he is “not comfortable” with the plan for high-speed rail. Other criticisms
have come from both sides of the aisle.
Controversy has followed high-speed rail from the moment it was first pushed in the early ‘80s,
as it became clear to some that California’s growing population was putting an ever-increasing
burden on its highways, airports and conventional passenger rail lines. But some argued that
Californians’ love for automobiles meant that a bullet train would be vastly under-utilized.
But the federal government identified it as one of five national corridors for high speed rail
planning and the California High-Speed Rail Commission was created by the State Legislature.
A business plan was subsequently issued and the Senate authorized a $9.95 billion bond
measure to finance the system. The bond measure was ultimately taken to the voters and
approved by them in 2008 and Governor Jerry Brown identified it as a priority for his
administration.
Brown scoring wins now for HSR but hurdles remain --- the next few months are
critical
Walters, 9/13/14 (Dan, “Jerry Brown’s legacy projects still face hurdles,”
http://www.desertsun.com/story/opinion/columnists/2014/09/13/dan-walters-sacramentobee/15604115/, JMP)
Jerry Brown’s two big legacy projects, a north-south bullet train and twin water tunnels beneath
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, are approaching points of no return.
They face legal, regulatory and financial hurdles that must be cleared for them to proceed. The
next few months — a year at the most — may determine their fates. Brown scored
two recent wins for the $68 billion bullet train, for which preliminary work in the San
Joaquin Valley has begun.
The Legislature appropriated $250 million from cap-and-trade fees on greenhouse gas
emissions to relieve a cash crunch for the project, and a state appellate court set aside two lower
court rulings that the project had not met its legal requirements.
The $250 million is the first installment on a guaranteed allotment of cap-and-trade funds for
the project — money that Brown’s bullet train managers believe can be leveraged, possibly
through federal loans, to form the backbone of a complete financial plan.
They may have bought some time to formulate that plan when the appellate court declared that
the High-Speed Rail Authority needn’t yet fully comply with what it called a “straitjacket” of
financial and environmental requirements in the 2008 bullet train bond issue approved by
voters.
The appellate court, in two rulings now being appealed to the state Supreme Court, said that the
challenge to a preliminary funding plan “was too late to have any practical effect, and it is too
early to challenge a yet-to-be approved final funding plan,” and also upheld the validity of a
bond sale.
In one appeal, attorneys for opponents counter that “The Court of Appeal’s decision essentially
allowed the Authority and the Legislature to rewrite Prop. 1A contrary to the intent of the
voters.”
Were the Supreme Court to overturn the Court of Appeal, it could at the very least delay
construction by months or years, and could doom the project completely.
Political Capital Key
There are continual obstacles --- Brown’s political leadership is necessary to
ensure public, legislative and judicial support
Dayen, 14 (2/8/2014, David, “Jerry Brown is trying to will California's high-speed rail into
existence,” http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/02/jerry-brown-california-highspeed-train-103266.html#.VBZ-LRYgtXQ, JMP)
Right now, though, the critics seem to have the whip hand. Opponents
of high-speed rail have carried out a
relentless, years-long effort to undermine it. Well-funded studies attacked the ridership estimates (though
independent peer reviews reached different conclusions). NIMBYs wanting to avoid impositions on their land prolonged disputes
over routes, creating increased costs that they then criticized. Most critically, officials at CHSRA never provided a definitive
blueprint for the full $68 billion in financing. “This would be nice to have, but $55 billion is still needed, which is more than we
spend on infrastructure across the entire nation,” says Rep. Jeff Denham, a Central Valley Republican who chairs a rail
subcommittee in the House. Recent polling shows a majority of Californians would rather scrap the project. A bevy of
obstacles are now threatening to stop the train in its tracks, just as the first section, between the Central Valley
towns of Fresno and Chowchilla, is to begin construction. The Republican takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives, hostile to
any Obama-backed initiative, blocked new federal dollars for the project, which CHSRA had been counting on in its business plan.
Opponents filed suit, arguing that the business plan was now insufficient and illegal under the statute. After five years of mostly
unsuccessful legal battles, this argument won in Sacramento Superior Court in late November. Judge Michael Kenny ruled that the
state could not sell future bonds to finance the first leg of construction until they redid the business plan to specify sources of
funding “that were more than merely theoretically possible.” Brown appealed the ruling, charging that “the trial court’s approach
cripples government’s ability to function.” The case has been sent to a state District Court of Appeal for an expedited review. Judge
Kenny’s decision also put the federal stimulus funds in jeopardy. Agreements with the Federal Rail Administration require a state
match for the funding, with the first $180 million due in April. Without the bond issue, the state would not have the federal match,
and spending on the project would essentially freeze. Washington could even try to claw back $397 million in federal funding already
spent. Needing to find funding, Brown laid out a plan in his most recent budget. He would take $250 million from the sale of carbon
allowances in the state’s cap-and-trade emission reduction program, about 19 percent of the total, and devote them to high-speed
rail. This would lead to an annual appropriation from cap-and-trade, a long-term commitment that Brown hopes will unleash the
private sector, which has thus far been reticent to provide funding. “By demonstrating the state commitment, we can show private
investors that this is actually going to happen,” says Mary Nichols, head of the California Air Resources Board, which administers
the cap-and-trade program. *** Brown’s desperate maneuvering, though, created a new and unlikely group of opponents:
environmentalists. The Sierra Club of California, despite supporting high-speed rail, announced formal opposition to the funding
through executive director Kathryn Phillips. “The problem with putting money into high-speed rail is that according to their own
analysis, we won’t get emissions benefits until 2022,” says Phillips. “When given the choice between whether or not this money
should be spent on high-speed rail or trying to protect the planet from devastating climate change, my members are in favor of
protecting the planet.” Phillips thinks the money should go to improving the auto fleet, adding to state infrastructure for electric
vehicles and reducing diesel emissions that create particulate matter in the air. Nichols counters that the first scoping plan for AB32,
the law that created the cap-and-trade system, included high-speed rail. Though some believe the law stipulates that all funds must
go toward the reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, Nichols disputes this. “Is 2020 a magic number? No. We have goals out to
2050.” But the environmental split adds to the impression of a project imperiled on all sides. California’s congressional delegation is,
predictably, split on partisan lines. And State Representative Denham, who has emerged as high-speed rail’s most dangerous foe,
has submitted legislation to suspend all federal funding already appropriated. The state legislature will have to approve the shift of
cap-and-trade funds into high-speed rail as part of the budget, and so far, lawmakers have been noncommittal, seeking clarity about
the long-term funding plan. The state’s nonpartisan legislative analyst called Brown’s scheme “legally risky.” Even if the legislature
approves it, the budget would not be completed by the April 1 deadline for the state match to federal funding. Meanwhile,
California’s tech moguls have emerged as another locus of opposition. Three Silicon Valley towns, Atherton, Menlo Park and Palo
Alto, have sought to block the train’s proposed route. And while previous initiatives to repeal the bond measure have failed to qualify
for the ballot, there are multiple efforts this year, including one from a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who wants to replace high-speed
rail with Elon Musk’s fanciful “hyperloop” proposal, which promises even faster speeds. Though the hyperloop carries all the same
challenges as high-speed rail—securing routes, beating back NIMBYs, acquiring funding—many tech types prefer it, promoting a
replacement that would put the overall goal of cross-state transit options back at the starting gate. This would make high-speed rail a
victim of the very entrepreneurial spirit Brown has heralded; the state that innovates wants to innovate high-speed rail out of the
picture before it’s even built. But Brown has yet to waver in his commitment. His leadership helped
get the legislature to advance the project in 2012, and his maneuver with cap-and-trade
money could finally secure a long-term stable funding source. Brown even slipped a loan to
CHSRA into the budget the past two years, to keep them funded through the uncertainty, and he’s
called for $25.6 billion for the program in a recent five-year infrastructure plan. “California is still the generator of dreams and great
initiatives,” he told reporters recently. “And I think high-speed rail is worthy of this state.” If Brown can get the
legislature to sign off on the transfer of funds from cap and trade, and if he can convince
judges to allow the project to move forward, the project can break ground and regain
momentum. That’s a lot of ifs. Plus, it’s an election year, and Brown’s opponents are already using
high-speed rail in their long-shot bids to deny him re-election; Republican Neel Kashkari, a former Treasury
Department official, calls it “the crazy train” in his first campaign ad, arguing that “it is a symbol of Sacramento having the wrong
priorities.” So Brown will not only have to navigate the legislature and the courts, but also tricky
politics in a state that has lost enthusiasm for the project.
Right now, though, the critics seem to have the whip hand. Opponents of high-speed rail have carried out a
relentless, years-long effort to undermine it. Well-funded studies attacked the ridership estimates (though
independent peer reviews reached different conclusions). NIMBYs wanting to avoid impositions on their land prolonged disputes
over routes, creating increased costs that they then criticized. Most critically, officials at CHSRA never provided a definitive
blueprint for the full $68 billion in financing. “This would be nice to have, but $55 billion is still needed, which is more than we
spend on infrastructure across the entire nation,” says Rep. Jeff Denham, a Central Valley Republican who chairs a rail
subcommittee in the House. Recent polling shows a majority of Californians would rather scrap the project. A bevy of
obstacles are now threatening to stop the train in its tracks, just as the first section, between the Central Valley
towns of Fresno and Chowchilla, is to begin construction. The Republican takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives, hostile to
any Obama-backed initiative, blocked new federal dollars for the project, which CHSRA had been counting on in its business plan.
Opponents filed suit, arguing that the business plan was now insufficient and illegal under the statute. After five years of mostly
unsuccessful legal battles, this argument won in Sacramento Superior Court in late November. Judge Michael Kenny ruled that the
state could not sell future bonds to finance the first leg of construction until they redid the business plan to specify sources of
funding “that were more than merely theoretically possible.” Brown appealed the ruling, charging that “the trial court’s approach
cripples government’s ability to function.” The case has been sent to a state District Court of Appeal for an expedited review. Judge
Kenny’s decision also put the federal stimulus funds in jeopardy. Agreements with the Federal Rail Administration require a state
match for the funding, with the first $180 million due in April. Without the bond issue, the state would not have the federal match,
and spending on the project would essentially freeze. Washington could even try to claw back $397 million in federal funding already
spent. Needing to find funding, Brown laid out a plan in his most recent budget. He would take $250 million from the sale of carbon
allowances in the state’s cap-and-trade emission reduction program, about 19 percent of the total, and devote them to high-speed
rail. This would lead to an annual appropriation from cap-and-trade, a long-term commitment that Brown hopes will unleash the
private sector, which has thus far been reticent to provide funding. “By demonstrating the state commitment, we can show private
investors that this is actually going to happen,” says Mary Nichols, head of the California Air Resources Board, which administers
the cap-and-trade program. *** Brown’s desperate maneuvering, though, created a new and unlikely group of opponents:
environmentalists. The Sierra Club of California, despite supporting high-speed rail, announced formal opposition to the funding
through executive director Kathryn Phillips. “The problem with putting money into high-speed rail is that according to their own
analysis, we won’t get emissions benefits until 2022,” says Phillips. “When given the choice between whether or not this money
should be spent on high-speed rail or trying to protect the planet from devastating climate change, my members are in favor of
protecting the planet.” Phillips thinks the money should go to improving the auto fleet, adding to state infrastructure for electric
vehicles and reducing diesel emissions that create particulate matter in the air. Nichols counters that the first scoping plan for AB32,
the law that created the cap-and-trade system, included high-speed rail. Though some believe the law stipulates that all funds must
go toward the reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, Nichols disputes this. “Is 2020 a magic number? No. We have goals out to
2050.” But the environmental split adds to the impression of a project imperiled on all sides. California’s congressional delegation is,
predictably, split on partisan lines. And State Representative Denham, who has emerged as high-speed rail’s most dangerous foe,
has submitted legislation to suspend all federal funding already appropriated. The state legislature will have to approve the shift of
cap-and-trade funds into high-speed rail as part of the budget, and so far, lawmakers have been noncommittal, seeking clarity about
the long-term funding plan. The state’s nonpartisan legislative analyst called Brown’s scheme “legally risky.” Even if the legislature
approves it, the budget would not be completed by the April 1 deadline for the state match to federal funding. Meanwhile,
California’s tech moguls have emerged as another locus of opposition. Three Silicon Valley towns, Atherton, Menlo Park and Palo
Alto, have sought to block the train’s proposed route. And while previous initiatives to repeal the bond measure have failed to qualify
for the ballot, there are multiple efforts this year, including one from a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who wants to replace high-speed
rail with Elon Musk’s fanciful “hyperloop” proposal, which promises even faster speeds. Though the hyperloop carries all the same
challenges as high-speed rail—securing routes, beating back NIMBYs, acquiring funding—many tech types prefer it, promoting a
replacement that would put the overall goal of cross-state transit options back at the starting gate. This would make high-speed rail a
victim of the very entrepreneurial spirit Brown has heralded; the state that innovates wants to innovate high-speed rail out of the
picture before it’s even built. But Brown has yet to waver in his commitment. His leadership helped
get the legislature to advance the project in 2012, and his maneuver with cap-and-trade
money could finally secure a long-term stable funding source. Brown even slipped a loan to
CHSRA into the budget the past two years, to keep them funded through the uncertainty, and he’s
called for $25.6 billion for the program in a recent five-year infrastructure plan. “California is still the generator of dreams and great
initiatives,” he told reporters recently. “And I think high-speed rail is worthy of this state.” If Brown can get the
legislature to sign off on the transfer of funds from cap and trade, and if he can convince
judges to allow the project to move forward, the project can break ground and regain
momentum. That’s a lot of ifs. Plus, it’s an election year, and Brown’s opponents are already using
high-speed rail in their long-shot bids to deny him re-election; Republican Neel Kashkari, a former Treasury
Department official, calls it “the crazy train” in his first campaign ad, arguing that “it is a symbol of Sacramento having the wrong
priorities.” So Brown will not only have to navigate the legislature and the courts, but also tricky
politics in a state that has lost enthusiasm for the project.
Brown’s PC key to high speed rail
Harmon, 12 (1/19/2012, Steven, “Brown lashes out at high-speed rail foes in State of the State
address,” http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_19769185, JMP)
SACRAMENTO -- The two sides of Gov. Jerry Brown's political persona have come into clear view this month. Two weeks ago, it was
the austere and pragmatic Brown, as he released his slash-away state budget. But on Wednesday, during his State of the State
address in the Assembly chamber, he gave
a glimpse of his idealistic, visionary side, providing a fullthroated defense of California's high-speed rail plan despite the pummeling it's taken in recent months. Brown
took on critics in his most forceful language to date, noting that naysayers have been wrong about some of the great infrastructure
projects of the past. "The Central Valley Water Project was called a 'fantastic dream' that 'will not work,' " he said. "The master plan
for the interstate highway system in 1939 was derided as 'New Deal jitterbug economics.' In 1966, then-Mayor (Wallace) Johnson of
Berkeley called BART a 'billion-dollar potential fiasco.' "Similarly, the Panama Canal was for years thought to be impractical, and
Benjamin Disraeli himself said of the Suez Canal: 'Totally impossible to be carried out.' The critics were wrong then, and they're
wrong now.'' Brown, in his second State of the State address since returning as governor after a 28-year hiatus, also urged the
Legislature to tackle other momentous changes such as pension reform and a new water-infrastructure project. And he made his
case for new taxes while insisting that additional budget cuts are necessary. A blend of the tough, the unpopular and the lofty are
what's needed to build "confidence in California as a place to invest and realize one's dreams," he said. Brown has now
put himself on the line by taking full possession of high-speed rail, said Larry Gerston,
a San Jose State political science professor, given the growing chorus of critics and public disaffection
over a project whose cost estimates tripled this year from the $33 billion price tag voters approved in 2008. "It intrigued me
that he put all his marbles behind high-speed rail and that he's willing to spend
political capital on it," Gerston said. "These big infrastructure projects do provide a whole bunch of jobs, but it would
also put California back on the map. It's almost a status thing as much as it is a transportation thing, a way that Californians can say:
Yes, California is back on top."
at: Complexity
Linear predictions good and complexity theory wrong
DURLAUf, 99 (Steven N.; Professor of Economics – University of Wisconsin-Madison “System
Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life,” Emergence: Complexity and Organization, 1.2,
April)
the
arguments made in support of nonlinearity are frequently incorrect. In other cases, Jervis, in
adopting systemswide metaphors, is really placing new labels on old bottles. Many of the
examples in System Effects are cases where government policies, because they ignore
interdependences between social, economic and political actors, have proven to be
counterproductive. To an economist, this is old hat. In a system of actors whose behaviors are
linearly connected, it is possible for the direct effect of the change in a variable on one actor's
behavior to have the opposite sign as the equilibrium effect of the change, due to indirect effects.
Similarly, the presence of positive feedback effects does not logically entail, as is claimed (p. 146), that there are nonlinearities in a system. This is not to say that the examples that Jervis gives of nonlinear systems are actually linear systems, but
In linear economic models, this is known as the difference between structural and reduced form equations, where only the latter, when derived from the former, allow one to compute the full effect of a change in an exogenous variable on the equilibrium of a system.
Indeed, the many cases of unintended consequences described by Jervis seem to result from a
failure to consider the full range of causes of individual and group behavior, not because
of interactions, emergence, nonlinearity, etc. In other cases, there is a lack of clarity in the
definitions of terms such as nonlinearity.
Statistics provides a simple example. A standard statistical problem is the modeling of the probability of a binary outcome (e.g., go to war or
remain at peace) as a function of a set of causal factors. Suppose that the probability of going to war depends on the linear combination of a set of factors. Since probabilities are bounded between zero and one, it is generally the case that the effect of this combination
on the probability must be nonlinear. So, is this a nonlinear model, in that the sum of the factors has a nonlinear effect on the probability of the outcome of interest, or is it linear, because the different factors can be traded off at fixed rates with no effect on the net
probability? (Models of this type are sometimes referred to as generalized linear models!) More broadly, the problem is that one can construct models that from one perspective are linear and from another are not. In such cases, how does one determine what it is
about nonlinearity that matters in explaining the phenomenon of interest? While this determination can be made through a careful consideration of the structure of a system (or a historical episode of interest), the analyses in System Effects are far too cursory to be
persuasive. My most serious concern is that it is unclear how complexity, nonlinearity, and related formal ideas enrich the sorts of analyses that Jervis conducts. Consider Jervis's discussion of Vietnam, where he argues that the success of the US in conventional
What makes such an example
persuasive is a deep examination of the history of the case in question. It is not made more
persuasive by the ex post determination that aspects of the example are similar to some features
of certain formal systems. Nor is it obvious that ex ante knowledge of such systems would have
led to any differences in the analysis or interpretation of the historical episode in question. In
general, I am strongly skeptical that the wisdom required to develop careful
historical arguments can be substantially augmented by a knowledge of the basic
ideas of complexity theory. Indeed, there is a certain sense in which the use of
mathematical tools conventionally associated with nonlinear systems can stymie
the understanding of social science phenomena. When utilizing these tools,
mathematical tractability can frequently require one to make assumptions about human
behavior that fail to reflect the cognitive power and purposeful nature of individuals
Without strong cognitive foundations, the
conclusions of complex interactive system models can be as misleading as nonsystem-based thinking is shown to be. This is, in my judgment, the main failure in the
current use of various complex or agent-based systems to study social phenomena, namely, the
failure of many implementations of such systems to reflect the cognitive strengths of human
actors. I do not mean that formal social science models need to assume the complete rationality
of some neoclassical economic models, but that irrationality is no substitute for a
properly modeled bounded rationality
Jervis
underestimates the extent to which the careful, albeit nonmathematical, reasoning
in which he engages can successfully explain patterns in social phenomena. In
fighting had the unintended consequence of causing the North Vietnamese to choose guerrilla tactics and thereby win the war, providing a clear example of unintended consequences.
(retard)
(who after all, behave differently
than the particles, atoms or species whose behavior nonlinear systems were generally designed to explain).
. Now, Jervis himself is certainly not guilty of this failing (except indirectly through his insouciant enthusiasm for these methods); much of the
value of the narrative in System Effects is that it avoids making the sorts of unrealistic assumptions often required when using the various formal methods to which Jervis frequently refers. In my view,
short, System
Effects is fascinating both for the imagination and erudition it presents, as well as for its demonstration of how formal systems methods have yet to contribute much beyond metaphors to certain aspects of social and historical science.
Paterson
Death outweighs –ontologically destroys the subject and prevents any alternative
way of knowing the world
Paterson, 03 – Department of Philosophy, Providence College, Rhode Island (Craig, “A Life
Not Worth Living?”, Studies in Christian Ethics, http://sce.sagepub.com)
Contrary to those accounts, I would argue that it is death per se that is really the objective evil for us, not because it deprives us of a prospective future
of overall good judged better than the alter- native of non-being. It cannot be about harm to a former person who has ceased to exist, for no person
actually suffers from the sub-sequent non-participation. Rather, death
in itself is an evil to us because it
ontologically destroys the current existent subject — it is the ultimate in metaphysical lightening strikes.80 The
evil of death is truly an ontological evil borne by the person who already exists, independently
of calculations about better or worse possible lives. Such an evil need not be consciously experienced in order to
be an evil for the kind of being a human person is. Death is an evil because of the change in kind it brings about, a
change that is destructive of the type of entity that we essentially are
. Anything, whether caused naturally or caused by human intervention (intentional or unintentional) that
drastically interferes in
the process of maintaining the person in existence is an objective evil for the person. What is crucially at
stake here, and is dialectically supportive of the self-evidency of the basic good of human life, is that death is a radical interference with the current life
process of the kind of being that we are. In consequence, death itself can be credibly thought of as a ‘primitive evil’ for all persons, regardless of the
extent to which they are currently or prospectively capable of participating in a full array of the goods of life.81 In conclusion, concerning willed human
actions, it
is justifiable to state that any intentional rejection of human life itself cannot therefore be
warranted since it is an expression of an ultimate disvalue for the subject, namely, the
destruction of the present person; a radical ontological good that we cannot begin to weigh
objectively against the travails of life in a rational manner. To deal with the sources of disvalue
(pain, suffering, etc.) we should not seek to irrationally destroy the person, the very source and
condition of all human possibility.82
1nc / 2nc Air Pollution Impact
HSR dramatically cuts emissions that cause air pollution.
Dutzik et al. 10 — Tony Dutzik, Senior Policy Analyst with Frontier Group specializing in
energy, transportation, and climate policy, holds an M.A. in print journalism from Boston
University and a B.S. in public service from Penn State University, et al., with Siena Kaplan,
Analyst with Frontier Group, and Phineas Baxandall, Federal Tax and Budget Policy Analyst
with U.S. PIRG, holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and a B.A. in Economics from the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University,
2010 (“Why Intercity Passenger Rail?,” The Right Track: Building a 21st Century High-Speed
Rail System for America, Published by the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, Available Online at
http://americanhsra.org/whitepapers/uspirg.pdf, Accessed 06-10-2012, p. 15-16)
Passenger rail is a cleaner form of transportation than car or air travel, emitting less global
warming pollution and less health-threatening air pollution. Building a high-speed rail network
in the United States would attract passengers who otherwise would have taken cars or planes,
reducing the country’s global warming emissions and cleaning up our air.
Modernizing our tracks would also benefit freight trains, taking large trucks off of highways and
adding to the environmental and health benefits of investment in rail.
Passenger rail already emits less global warming pollution than cars or planes, and these savings
will increase as the United States develops a high-speed rail network. The Center for Clean Air Policy (CCAP)/
Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) study showed that today, passenger rail travel emits 60 percent less
carbon dioxide per passenger mile then cars and 66 percent less than planes. The faster diesel trains
that would likely be used to upgrade current service would emit slightly more emissions, but would still emit much less than cars and
planes and would draw more passengers than current passenger rail.30 (See Figure 3, next page.)
Electric trains show the most potential for global warming emission reductions, even using today’s carbon-intensive electricity grid.
The CCAP/CNT study surveyed the technology used on three different popular electric train lines, in France, Germany and Japan,
and found that all would produce lower carbon dioxide emissions per passenger mile than a fast diesel train when powered by the
U.S. electric grid. One train, used on the German ICE line, would produce about half the emissions of America’s current passenger
rail system.31 Electric trains are not only more energy efficient, but they are faster, and could eventually
be powered at least partially with emission-free renewable energy.
By attracting travelers who otherwise would have taken cars or planes, building a high-speed rail
network would be much more effective at reducing global warming emissions than our current
passenger rail system. The CCAP/CNT study estimated that building the high-speed rail corridors [end page
15] planned by the federal government using fast diesel trains, with top speeds of 99 mph, would attract enough
passengers to reduce U.S. global warming emissions by 6.1 billion pounds, the equivalent of
taking almost 500,000 cars off the road.33
Passenger rail reduces harmful air pollution as well, especially when it is powered by electricity. For example,
a passenger on an electric train in Germany produces about 93 percent less air pollution than
someone traveling by car, and 91 percent less than someone making the same trip by plane.34
Although the electricity produced in the United States would create more emissions, electric trains would still be much
cleaner than diesel trains, cars or planes.
When tracks are upgraded for better passenger rail service, freight traffic needs are considered as well, allowing more freight trains
to travel faster and with fewer delays and adding to the environmental benefits. Rail transport is much more fuel
efficient than truck transport for freight—various studies estimate that train transport is three to
nine times as efficient as truck transport for the same amount of freight.35 The resulting fuel
savings add to the emissions reductions from improving passenger rail.
Air pollution kills 70,000 people in the U.S. every year—the impact is linear.
Roberts 2 — Bernie Fischlowitz-Roberts, Analyst at the Earth Policy Institute, 2002 (“Air
Pollution Fatalities Now Exceed Traffic Fatalities by 3 to 1,” Earth Policy Institute, September
17th, Available Online at http://www.earth-policy.org/plan_b_updates/2002/update17,
Accessed 06-10-2012)
The World Health Organization reports that 3 million people now die each year from the effects
of air pollution. This is three times the 1 million who die each year in automobile accidents. A study published in The Lancet in
2000 concluded that air pollution in France, Austria, and Switzerland is responsible for more than 40,000 deaths annually in those
three countries. About half of these deaths can be traced to air pollution from vehicle emissions.
In the United States, traffic fatalities total just over 40,000 per year, while air pollution claims 70,000 lives
annually. U.S. air pollution deaths are equal to deaths from breast cancer and prostate cancer
combined. This scourge of cities in industrial and developing countries alike threatens the health of billions of
people.
Governments go to great lengths to reduce traffic accidents by fining those who drive at dangerous speeds, arresting those who drive
under the influence of alcohol, and even sometimes revoking drivers' licenses. But they pay much less attention to the deaths people
cause by simply driving the cars. While deaths from heart disease and respiratory illness from breathing
polluted air may lack the drama of deaths from an automobile crash, with flashing lights and
sirens, they are no less real.
Air pollutants include carbon monoxide, ozone, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulates. These pollutants come
primarily from the combustion of fossil fuels, principally coal-fired power plants and gasoline-powered
automobiles. Nitrogen oxides can lead to the formation of ground-level ozone. Particulates are emitted from a variety of sources,
primarily diesel engines. "Smog"-a hybrid word used to describe the mixture of smoke and fog that blankets some cities-is primarily
composed of ozone and particulates.