Midterms 1NC
A. GOP will win the House now.
Nate Silver, NYT, “G.O.P. Now Projected to Gain 53 House Seats,” 10/27/2010, http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/choppyday-in-house-forecast-projected-g-o-p-gains-inch-forward-to-53-seats/#more-2783
Republicans strengthened their position in a couple of districts that received fresh polling from The Hill. In particular, John Spratt, the
longtime Democratic incumbent in South Carolina’s 5th congressional district, was shown 10 points behind the Republican, Mick Mulvaney. Because the
district had not received polling in some time, the poll has a lot of influence on Mr. Spratt’s forecast. The model now gives him just a 12 percent chance of
holding his seat, a sharp decline from 53 percent yesterday.
The chances for two other Democrats, John Salazar in the Colorado 3rd district, and Baron Hill in the Indiana 9th, also dropped on The
Hill’s polling.
But the same set of polls contained good news for other Democrats whom it tested, like Leonard Boswell in the Iowa 3rd district,
and the two Democratic incumbents in the Dakotas, Earl Pomeroy and Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin, although both Mr. Pomeroy and Ms. Herseth-Sandlin
are still rated as underdogs in the model.
Another Democrat to see her odds improve today was Colleen Hanabusa in the Hawaii 1st district, who was given a 5-point lead in a new poll that
ordinarily has a strong Republican lean. Ms. Hanabusa is one of two Democrats favored to knock off a Republican incumbent, along with Cedric
Richmond of the Lousiana 2nd district in New Orleans.
The Democrats’ position on the generic ballot also improved slightly, particularly with a Marist College poll showing them in an overall tie with
Republicans among likely voters, a better result than most other recent polls.
But this improvement was offset by a series of downgrades made by CQ Politics, which changed its ratings in a
couple dozen races, almost all of the changes favoring Republicans. The model gives a heavy emphasis to the race ratings issued
by CQ and the three other agencies that it tracks.
Overall, the model resolved these changes
in favor of Republicans, who added one more seat to their projected
total for the second evening in a row. The model’s best guess is that the new Congress will be composed of 203
Democrats and 232 Republicans: a net gain of 53 seats for the G.O.P.
B. Action on immigration is key to Dem victories.
Lawrence, 8/12/10 – Washington, DC-based immigration policy specialist (Stewart J. “Obama and Latinos.” Counterpunch.
http://www.counterpunch.org/lawrence08122010.html)
President Obama’s
decision to sue Arizona over its proposed immigration enforcement law may have reflected the administration’s
election-year politics, a
way of stigmatizing the GOP, and rallying the liberal faithful, especially Latinos. A Gallup poll in June found that
Latinos were increasingly disaffected from Obama and his policies, while the President’s favorability rating with Whites and
honest judgment that such laws are repugnant and violate federal authority. But the lawsuit was also calculated
Black was unchanged. From a high of 69% in January, Obama's rating with Latinos had fallen 12 points to 57%. Among Spanish-speaking Latinos, the
drop was even more precipitous: 25%. According to Gallup, the slide was largely due to Obama’s failure to pursue
comprehensive immigration
reform, a cause that is near and dear to the country’s fastest-growing ethnic
constituency, which some pollsters rightly refer to as the “sleeping giant” of American politics.
But thus far the Obama gambit isn’t working - and that spells trouble. According to the most recent polls, a
majority of Latinos - nearly 60%, in fact - are still disappointed with his handling of immigration. Unless that
perception is reversed, the Democrats face electoral disaster this November.
Without a strong Latino turnout in at least 30-35 congressional races where their votes could sway the outcome,
the GOP is almost certain to recapture the House, regaining control of the key committee and subcommittee
chairmanships that will shape the nation's policy agenda – including immigration - leading up to 2012. And Republicans could also
win a majority of the governorships and state legislatures which would allow them to dominate the upcoming federal redistricting process, influencing
the composition of the House for at least another decade – perhaps two.
C. GOP-controlled House gets SKFTA passed
Green, 9/13 – senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Matt, 9/13/10. “[Viewpoint] U.S. midterm elections and us.” http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2925891)
Americans came back from a three-day holiday the week of September 7 to see new public opinion poll numbers from
most of the news media confirming that the Democrats will take a major hit in mid-term Congressional elections in
November. The general favorability rating for Republicans and Democrats is now roughly even after several years in
which the Democrats had a significant lead, and polls in specific House and Senate races have influential political analysts
predicting the Republicans will take the House of Representatives and could take the Senate as well. Politics is always a
guessing game, but by some calculations these are the most dismal polls for an incumbent party before a mid-term
election in over fifty years. This is not an election about U.S.-Korea relations or even foreign policy, of course. The big
issues are a lack of new U.S. jobs and concern that the Federal Government has grown too large and fiscally irresponsible
under Barack Obama’s administration. (Many also blame the final Bush years for this as well, but he is not running this
time). That said, a change of leadership in the House and maybe the Senate could have some impact on U.S.-Korea
relations. One potentially positive impact could be on the U.S.-Korea FTA (Korus). When President Obama announced
that he wanted to pass Korus by the end of the year, over 100 Democratic members of Congress sent him a letter
expressing their opposition to the FTA. Republicans in the House are much more supportive of free trade than
Democrats, and Obama could have the numbers to pass Korus if he were willing to work with a new Republican majority.
(Under the U.S. Constitution, Congress has to approve all commercial treaties). There is a precedent for this. Bill Clinton
ran for president in 1992 under the slogan, “It’s the economy stupid,” and initially pushed more protectionist and
interventionist economic policies after he was elected. When the Republicans took the House in November 1994, they cut
spending for Clinton’s industrial policy initiatives and forced a rethink about economic strategy in the White House.
Clinton ended up advancing the North America Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), which had been negotiated by the
administration of George Herbert Walker Bush, and he did so by reaching across the aisle and working with Republicans
over some strong objections within his own caucus. There is some speculation that Obama may do the same thing this
time. He has already highlighted trade promotion as one way to create new jobs and his political advisors will be looking
for some area where they can make progress with an opposition-controlled Congress.
That’s key to US-ROK relations – failure to pass SKFTA after the midterm tanks them
Snyder et al, 10 – adjunct senior fellow for Korea studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, director of the Center for
U.S.-Korea Policy at the Asia Foundation and Pacific Forum at CSIS (Scott A, June. With Charles L. Pritchard, John H.
Tilelli, and the CFR Independent Task Force. “U.S. Policy Toward the Korean Peninsula.” Council on Foreign Relations
Independent Task Force Report No. 64.
http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/Korean_PeninsulaTFR64.pdf)
The KORUS FTA also helps bind the United States and South Korea more closely together strategically, economically, and
politically.52 The economic significance of the KORUS FTA is substantial, but the oppor- tunity to bring South Korea closer
to the United States as a partner— especially given that China is currently South Korea’s primary trade and investment
partner—is significant. Failure to approve the agree- ment would send a negative message: that despite South Korea’s role
and significance as one of the top twenty economies in the world, there are limits to U.S. economic and, by extension,
strategic cooperation with South Korea. Following U.S. midterm elections and in the context of steady U.S. economic
improvement, ratification of the KORUS FTA should be a top Obama administration priority for 2011.
US-ROK relations key to prevent a North Korean nuclear crisis
Pritchard et al, 09 – President of the Korea Economic Institute (Charles L, 6/16. With John H. Tilelli Jr., Chairman and
CEO, Cypress International, and Scott A. Snyder, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Korea Studies, CFR. “A New Chapter for U.S.South Korea Alliance.” Council on Foreign Relations.
http://www.cfr.org/publication/19635/new_chapter_for_ussouth_korea_alliance.html)
While all eyes have been trained on North Korea's belligerent and aggressive actions in recent weeks, it is important to
note that the U.S.-South Korea alliance has emerged as a linchpin in the Obama administration's efforts to successfully
manage an overcrowded global agenda, and a pivotal tool for safeguarding U.S. long-term interests in Asia. When South
Korea's President Lee Myung-bak meets with President Barack Obama at the White House Tuesday, the two leaders must
effectively address three main areas: policy coordination to address North Korea's nuclear threat, the development of a
global security agenda that extends beyond the peninsula, and collaboration to address the global financial crisis as South
Korea takes a lead on the G-20 process. By conducting a second nuclear test in May, followed by a number of missile
launches, North Korea has forced its way onto the Obama administration's agenda. First and foremost, effective U.S.South Korea alliance coordination is critical to managing both the global effects of North Korea's nuclear threat on the
nonproliferation regime and the regional security challenges posed by potential regime actions that lead to further crisis in
the region. North Korea's internal focus on its leadership succession, and the apparent naming of North Korean leader
Kim Jong-il's little-known and inexperienced youngest son as his successor, make the task of responding to North Korea's
aggressive and destabilizing actions all the more challenging. Both deterrence and negotiation must be pursued on the
basis of close consultations. Presidents Obama and Lee must also develop coordinated contingency plans in the event of
internal instability in North Korea. Through effective U.S.-South Korea alliance coordination, it should be possible to forge
a combined strategy capable of managing the nuclear, proliferation, and regional security dimensions of North Korea's
threat. A coordinated position would also strengthen the administration's hand in its efforts to persuade China to put
pressure on North Korea.
North Korean crisis causes nuclear war and triggers every impact
Hayes and Green, 10 - *Victoria University AND **Executive Director of the Nautilus Institute (Peter and Michael, ““The Path Not Taken, the Way Still Open: Denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia”, 1/5,
http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/10001HayesHamalGreen.pdf)
The consequences of failing to address the proliferation threat posed by the North Korea developments, and related
political and economic issues, are serious, not only for the Northeast Asian region but for the whole international
community. At worst, there is the possibility of nuclear attack1, whether by intention, miscalculation, or merely accident,
leading to the resumption of Korean War hostilities. On the Korean Peninsula itself, key population centres are well within
short or medium range missiles. The whole of Japan is likely to come within North Korean missile range. Pyongyang has a
population of over 2 million, Seoul (close to the North Korean border) 11 million, and Tokyo over 20 million. Even a
limited nuclear exchange would result in a holocaust of unprecedented proportions. But the catastrophe within the region
would not be the only outcome. New research indicates that even a limited nuclear war in the region would rearrange our
global climate far more quickly than global warming. Westberg draws attention to new studies modelling the effects of
even a limited nuclear exchange involving approximately 100 Hiroshima-sized 15 kt bombs2 (by comparison it should be
noted that the United States currently deploys warheads in the range 100 to 477 kt, that is, individual warheads equivalent
in yield to a range of 6 to 32 Hiroshimas).The studies indicate that the soot from the fires produced would lead to a
decrease in global temperature by 1.25 degrees Celsius for a period of 6-8 years.3 In Westberg’s view: That is not global
winter, but the nuclear darkness will cause a deeper drop in temperature than at any time during the last 1000 years. The
temperature over the continents would decrease substantially more than the global average. A decrease in rainfall over the
continents would also follow...The period of nuclear darkness will cause much greater decrease in grain production than
5% and it will continue for many years...hundreds of millions of people will die from hunger...To make matters even
worse, such amounts of smoke injected into the stratosphere would cause a huge reduction in the Earth’s protective
ozone.4 These, of course, are not the only consequences. Reactors might also be targeted, causing further mayhem and
downwind radiation effects, superimposed on a smoking, radiating ruin left by nuclear next-use. Millions of refugees
would flee the affected regions. The direct impacts, and the follow-on impacts on the global economy via ecological and
food insecurity, could make the present global financial crisis pale by comparison. How the great powers, especially the
nuclear weapons states respond to such a crisis, and in particular, whether nuclear weapons are used in response to
nuclear first-use, could make or break the global non proliferation and disarmament regimes. There could be many
unanticipated impacts on regional and global security relationships5, with subsequent nuclear breakout and geopolitical
turbulence, including possible loss-of-control over fissile material or warheads in the chaos of nuclear war, and aftermath
chain-reaction affects involving other potential proliferant states. The Korean nuclear proliferation issue is not just a
regional threat but a global one that warrants priority consideration from the international community.
1NC Other CP
Text:
The United States federal government should provide economic incentives for graduate
students in science, technology, engineering, and math subject fields using work experience
based training grants or stipends
The United States federal government should establish a policy stimulating regional economic
cluster growth and integration including, but not limited to, creating an information center to
track cluster activity and support effective cluster efforts and establish a grants fund to support
cluster initiative programs nationwide.
Solves growth and innovation.
Mark Muro and Bruce Katz, Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, “THE NEW ‘CLUSTER MOMENT’: HOW REGIONAL
INNOVATION CLUSTERS CAN FOSTER THE NEXT ECONOMY,” September 2010,
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2010/0921_clusters_muro_katz/0921_clusters_muro_katz.pdf
At a time of tepid growth, cluster strategies possess documented power to help power regional economic
growth by boosting innovation, entrepreneurship, wages, employment, and business
specialization.
At a time of shaken confidence in past growth models, cluster frameworks point to the centrality to national wellbeing of
practical economic systems in regions, and so offer a fresh paradigm for new thought about national
economic management.
And finally, as a policy framework clusters provide a practical tool for policy coordination and possibly increased
return on public investments. Just as clusters deliver significant productivity advantages to groups of firms,
suppliers, and related actors and institutions that draw mutual advantage from locating near each other , so too do
cluster-oriented initiatives allow for coordinated efforts, maximized impact through realized synergies, and the
tuning of interventions to the needs of the real economy in real places.
STEM grants solve shortages
Inside Higher Education, independent higher educational news source, 08 (“challenging conventional wisdom
on STEM supply”, http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/09/17/pcast)
Michael S. Teitelbaum, a demographer at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, looked at what he called five “mysteries” of the
STEM work force issue. For example, why do employers claim a shortage of qualified STEM graduates while prospects for
Ph.D.s remain “poor"? Why do retention and completion rates for STEM fields remain low compared with students’
aspirations? Why is there a “serious” funding crisis at the National Institutes of Health after its budget doubled from 1998
to 2003? Looking at whether there is a shortage of qualified STEM workers, Teitelbaum argued that such claims reappear
roughly every 10 years. In the late 1980s, he said, speculations of looming shortfalls were “wildly wrong,” while successful
lobbying in the late 1990s to triple the number of H-1B visas to fulfill a supposed shortage coincided with the IT bust —
and a resulting collapse in demand for workers — in 2001. More recently, he said, similar claims are arising with
testimony from heavy hitters in the technology sector such as Bill Gates — but still, he argued, the evidence doesn’t
support the view that there is a shortage of scientists or engineers. A shortage of workers would imply an increase in
wages, but remuneration remains flat; in general, he said, there is significant variation over time and by field, with a mix
of “hot” fields and “slack” markets. Teitelbaum also questioned why federal spending supports Ph.D. completion despite
the lack of demand for such degrees by non-academic employers, who mainly look for bachelor’s or master’s degrees. In
effect, he said, the “self-defeating” practice of funding science education via research grants creates a “mismatch” between
graduates and employers. Another mismatch — between the amount of available funding and the sheer size of research
facilities and their staffs — came to pass, he said, after NIH funding reached its goal of a 100-percent increase in 2003.
During that period, the success rate for research grants first increased, then decreased to below the pre-doubling level as
the number of applications went up. That trend is especially pronounced for younger and first-time investigators.
Institutions also ramped up their research facilities in anticipation of expected increases, leading to a “hard landing” when
funding started to flatten again. “I think the problems here are structural. We have positive feedbacks in this system,” he
said. “[T]hey magnify the booms and the busts, and it’s because I think Ph.D’.s and postdocs in biomedical sciences are
funded primarily by research grant funding, not training grant funding.” As a potential solution Teitelbaum recommends
an increase in basic research funding, but structured to address those distorted incentives. Funding should focus on
increasing the number of graduate postdoctoral fellowships and training grants, and finance fewer research assistants
through research grants, for example, and the NIH should boost its support of staff researchers. To address the
unpredictable changes in funding levels from year to year — and to avoid possible overreactions by research institutions
anticipating drastic increases or decreases — Teitelbaum suggested stabilization mechanisms and buffer funding to avoid
sharp accelerations or decelerations in federal dollars. And rather than pushing students toward Ph.D.’s — which are
geared toward those pursuing academic research careers — Teitelbaum touted the effectiveness of professional science
master’s (PSM) degrees for science professionals with business and innovation skills, which more closely match what
many employers are looking for from graduates in STEM fields. So far, he said there were 117 such programs in the United
States at over 60 universities in 25 states. “I would say the progress is real, but these are still new and fragile degrees, and
the Sloan Foundation’s goal is to make this degree a normal part of U.S. higher education,” he said.
Good and Bad – 1NC [1/2]
No one knows what is good and bad. Reject the aff’s judgments, even if we lose all life on earth—
Kirkland, professor of Asian religions and Taoism at the University of Georgia, 2001
(Russell, “'Responsible Non-Action' in a Natural World: Perspectives from the Neiye, Zhuangzi, and Daode
jing,” Daoism and Ecology: Ways within a Cosmic Landscape,
http://kirkland.myweb.uga.edu/rk/pdf/pubs/ECO.pdf)
In the Taoist classic Huai-nan-tzu, one finds a famous story of a man who suddenly finds himself the
unexpected owner of a new horse. His neighbors congratulate him on his good fortune, until his son falls from
the horse and breaks his leg. The man's neighbors then act to console him on his bad fortune, until army
conscriptors arrive and carry off all the able-bodied young men, leaving the injured young man behind as
worthless. The lesson of the story is that when an event occurs, we are quick to judge it as fortunate
or unfortunate, but our judgments are often mistaken, as later events often prove.6 And one of the
most heavily stressed lessons of the Chuang-tzu is that humans quickly judge events on the basis of what we
accept on the basis of simplistic assumptions — e.g., that life is inherently better than death — and that the wise
person learns to question and discard such assumptions, and forego such judgments regarding events. When
Chuang-tzu's wife died, Chuang-tzu does not argue that the world is a better place for her absence, or that his
life is improved by his sudden new freedom. In fact, there is no issue in the passage of whether the world is
better off with Chuang-tzu's wife alive or dead. The only issue in the passage is that people are born and that
people later die, and to ignore that basic fact would display culpable stupidity. The very same lesson is
impressed upon the reader of the previous passage, regarding the sudden transformation of a character's
elbow. What we are taught in that passage is that life is a process of ineluctable change and transformation, and
that humans would be profoundly wrong and clearly silly to object to such change. Another element of the
lesson is that the nature of human life is not separate from, or other than, the nature of nonhuman life. When
one says that "life is ineluctable change, and we must accept such change with serenity," one is speaking about
"life" in such a way that it clearly involves the lives of individual humans just as fully as it involves the events
that occur in the broader world, and vice versa. Imagine the story of the death of Chuang-tzu's wife involving,
instead, the death of the species we call whooping cranes: Chuang-tzu would, in that case, patiently point out to
his deeply caring but deeply shallow friend that he had indeed felt grief to see such beautiful birds come to their
end, but had gone on to engage in appropriate rational reflection upon the nature of life, and had come to
accept the transitory nature of all such creatures, just as in the present story Chuang-tzu had come to accept
the transitory nature of his own spouse. If one must learn to accept with serenity the death of someone we love,
someone without whose life our own life would have never been what it is, wouldn't the author urge us to
accept that the death of some birds, birds that have never played a role in our lives the way that one's deceased
spouse had done, is an event that we should accept with equanimity? If change catches up with us, even to
the extent that the planet that we live on should become permanently devoid of all forms of life,
the response of the author of these passages would logically be that such is the nature of things, and
that crying over such a sudden turn of events would be very silly indeed, like a child crying over a spilt glass of
milk, or the death of some easily replaceable goldfish. The only reason that a child cries over the death of a
goldfish is that he or she has become irrationally attached to that creature as it exists in its present form, and
has formed an immature sentimental bond to it. As adults, we appreciate the color and motion of fish in our
aquaria, but seldom cry over the death of one of its inmates: we know very well that to cry over the death of
such a fish would be silly and a sign of juvenile behavior. As our children grow, we teach them, likewise, never
to follow their raw emotional responses, but rather to govern their emotions, and to learn to behave in a
responsible manner, according to principles that are morally correct, whether or not they are emotionally
satisfying. If, for instance, one were to see a driver accidentally run run over one's child or beloved, one's first
instinct might be to attack the driver with a righteous fury, falsely equating emotional intensity and violent
action with the responsible exercise of moral judgment. In general, we work to teach ourselves and each other
not to respond in that way, to take a course of self-restraint, curbing emotion, lest it propel us into actions that
will later, upon calm reflection, be revealed to have been emotionally satisfying but morally wrong. If I saw my
child run down by a car, it might give me great emotional satisfaction to drag the driver from her car and beat
her to death. But it might well turn out that she had in fact done nothing wrong, and had been driving legally
and quite responsibly when a careless child suddenly ran into her path, giving her no time to stop or to evade
the child. Because we have all learned that the truth of events is often not apparent to the parties that are
experiencing them, we generally work to learn some degree of self-control, so that our immediate emotional
reaction to events does not mislead us into a foolish course of action. Now if we take these facts and transfer
them into our consideration of Chuang-tzu and Mencius on the riverbank, that episode should, logically, be
read as follows. If Mencius feels an emotional urge to jump into the river to save the baby, his emotional
response to the baby's presence there must be seen as immature and irresponsible. After all, one might muse,
one never knows, any more than the man with the horse, when an event that seems fortunate is actually
unfortunate, or vice versa. What if the baby in the water had been the ancient Chinese equivalent of Adolf
Hitler, and the
saving of young Adolf — though occasioned by the deepest feelings of compassion, and a deep-felt veneration
for "life" — led to the systematic extermination of millions of innocent men, women, and children? If
one knew, in retrospect, that Hitler's
atrocities could have been totally prevented by the simple moral act of refraining from leaping to save an
endangered child, would one not conclude, by sound moral reasoning, that letting that particular baby drown
would have represented a supremely moral act? How, Chuang-tzu constantly challenges us, how can we
possibly know what course of action is truly justfied? What if, just for the sake of argument, a dreadful plague
soon wipes out millions of innocent people, and the pathogen involved is soon traced back to an organism that
had once dwelt harmlessly in the system of a certain species of bird, such as, for instance, the whooping crane?
In retrospect, one can imagine, the afflicted people of the next century — bereft of their wives or husbands,
parents or children — might curse the day when simple-minded do-gooders of the twentieth-century had
brazenly intervened with the natural course of events and preserved the cursed specied of crane, thereby
damning millions of innocents to suffering and death. We assume that such could never happen, that all living
things are somehow inherently good to have on the planet, that saving the earthly existence of any life-form is
somehow inherently a virtuous action. But our motivations in such cases are clearly, from a Taoist point of
view, so shallow and foolish as to warrant no respect. If Mencius, or a sentimental modern lover of "life," were
to leap into the river and save a floating baby, he or she would doubtless exult in his or her selfless act of moral
heroism, deriving a sense of satisfaction from having done a good deed, and having prevented a terrible
tragedy. But who can really know when a given event is truly a tragedy, or perhaps, like the horse that breaks a
boy's leg, really a blessing in disguise. Since human wisdom, Chuang-tzu suggests, is inherently incapable of
successfully comprehending the true meaning of events as they are happening, when can we ever truly know
that our emotional urge to save babies, pretty birds, and entertaining sea-mammals is really an urge that is
morally sound. The Taoist answer seems to be that we can never be sure, and even if the extinction of
Chuangtzu's wife or of the whooping crane really brought no actual blessing to the world, such events are
natural and proper in the way of life itself, and to bemoan such events is to show that one is no more insightful
about life than a child who sentimentally cries over the loss of a toy, a glass of milk, a beloved pet, or even her
mommy, run over by a drunken driver. The Taoist lesson seems, in this regard, to be the same in each case:
things happen, and some things cause us distress because we attach ourselves sentimentally to certain
people, objects, and patterns of life; when those people, objects, or patterns of life take a sudden or drastic turn
into a very different direction, a mature and responsible person calms his or her irrational emotions, and
takes the morally responsible course of simply accepting the new state of things.’
Take no action to create desired ends—
Kirkland, professor of Asian religions and Taoism at the University of Georgia, 1996
(Russell, “The Book of the Way,” Great Literature of the Eastern World,
http://kirkland.myweb.uga.edu/rk/pdf/pubs/DAODE.pdf)
Specifically, the Tao is humble, yielding, and non-assertive. Like a mother, it benefits others selflessly: it gives
us all life and guides us safely through it, asking nothing in return. This altruistic emphasis of the Daode jing
has seldom been noticed, but it is one of the most important lessons that it draws from the observation of the
natural world. Water, for instance, is the gentlest and most yielding of all things, yet it can overcome the
strongest substances, and cannot itself be destroyed. More importantly, however, water lives for others: it
provides the basis of life for all things, and asks nothing in return. If we learn to live like water does, we will be
living in accord with the Tao, and its Power (De) will carry us safely through life. Such a way of life is called
wuwei, usually translated as "non-action." Wuwei means foregoing all activity intended to effect desired
ends. Instead, one should follow one's natural course and allow all other things to do likewise, lest our willful
interference disrupt things' proper flow. Few modern readers have ever grasped the full radicality of the ideal
of wuwei. Many of us today (like the ancient Chinese Confucians and Mohists) look at the world and see
things that we think need correcting. The Daode jing would actually have us do nothing whatsoever
about them. The repeated phrase "do nothing, and nothing will be undone" admonishes us to trust the Tao -the natural working of things -- and never to do anything about anything. Actually, such is the most that
anyone can do, because the Tao -- as imperceptible as it is -- is the most powerful force in existence, and
nothing can thwart its unceasing operation.
1NC CP #1
Text: The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services should permit the filing of
adjustment of status applications before the priority date becomes current and allow applicants
with approved I-130 or I-140 petitions to receive Employment Authorization Documents and
advanced parole benefits for all employment-based visa applicants that graduate from
institutions of higher education in the United States.
The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services should exclude derivative family
members from the caps on employment-based visas.
CP solves case
Gary Endelman, immigration law at BP America Inc, Editorial Advisory Board of Immigration Daily and
Cyrus D. Mehta, founder and managing attorney of Cyrus D. Mehta & Associates, PLLC, a New York law firm
which concentrates in the area of US immigration law, 4-25-10, comprehensive immigration reform through
executive fiat, insightful immigration blog, http://cyrusmehta.blogspot.com/2010/04/comprehensiveimmigration-reform.html
For instance, there is nothing that would bar the USCIS from allowing the beneficiary of an approved
employment based I-140 or family based I-130 petition, and derivative family members, to obtain an
employment authorization document (EAD) and parole. The Executive, under INA § 212(d)(5), has the
authority to grant parole for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefits. The crisis in the
priority dates where beneficiaries of petitions may need to wait for green cards in excess of 30 years may
qualify for invoking § 212(d)(5) under “urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefits.” Similarly,
the authors credit David Isaacson who pointed out that the Executive has the authority to grant EAD under
INA §274A(h)(3), which defines the term “unauthorized alien” as one who is not “(A) an alien lawfully admitted
for permanent residence, or (B) authorized to be so employed by this Act or by the Attorney General”
(emphasis added). Under sub paragraph (B), the USCIS may grant an EAD to people who are adversely
impacted by the tyranny of priority dates. Likewise, the beneficiary of an I-130 or I-140 petition who is outside
the U.S. can also be paroled into the U.S. before the priority date becomes current. The principal and the
applicable derivatives would enjoy permission to work and travel regardless of whether they remained in
nonimmigrant visa status. Even those who are undocumented or out of status, but are beneficiaries of
approved I-130 and I-140 petitions, can be granted employment authorization and parole. The retroactive
grant of parole may also alleviate those who are subject to the three or ten year bars since INA §
212(a)(9)(B)(ii) defines “unlawful presence” as someone who is here “without being admitted or paroled.”
Parole, therefore, eliminates the accrual of unlawful presence. While parole does not constitute an admission,
one conceptual difficulty is whether parole can be granted to an individual who is already admitted on a
nonimmigrant visa but has overstayed. Since parole is not considered admission, it can be granted more readily
to one who entered without inspection. On the other hand, it is possible for the Executive to rescind the grant
of admission under INA §212(d)(5), and instead, replace it with the grant parole. As an example, an individual
who was admitted in B-2 status and is the beneficiary of an I-130 petition but whose B-2 status has expired can
be required to report to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). who can retroactively rescind the grant
of admission in B-2 status and instead be granted parole retroactively. Historic Role Of Executive In Granting
Immigration Benefits While the authors have proposed the use of parole and EAD benefits to those who are
beneficiaries of approved immigrant petitions and are on the path to permanent residency, but for the crushing
backlogs in the employment and family quotas, parole and EAD can also be potentially granted to other noncitizens such as DREAM children or those who have paid taxes and are otherwise admissible. The Executive’s
use of parole, sua sponte, in such an expansive and aggressive fashion is hardly unique in post-World War II
American history. The rescue of Hungarian refugees after the abortive 1956 uprising or the Vietnamese
refugees at various points of that conflict comes readily to mind. While these were dramatic examples of
international crises, the immigration situation in America today, though more mundane, is no less of a
humanitarian emergency with human costs that are every bit as high and damage to the national interest no
less long lasting. Even those who are in removal proceedings or have already been ordered removed, and are
beneficiaries of approved petitions, will need not wait an eternity for Congress to come to the rescue
And, CP sends key signal but voids midterms
Lawrence ‘10 (Stewart J, is a Washington, DC-based public policy analyst and writes frequently on immigration
and Latino affairs, He is also founder and managing director of Puentes & Associates, Inc., a
bilingual survey research and communications firm, September 2, Immigration: the case for
executive orders, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/sep/02/usimmigration-obama-executive)
Executive action is risky. But it's far less risky, politically, than convening a "lame-duck" session of congress, as
some Democrats like senate majority leader Harry Reid (Democrat, Nevada) now propose, to try to ram through the
Dream Act or other broader immigration measures, much as they did with healthcare reform. Most outgoing
Democrats aren't going to play ball, especially if they have to vote to expand enforcement. And even those
who survive the mid-terms still have to face the voters in 2012. Supporting legalisation in a GOP-controlled congress could
well cost them their seats. As president, Obama is uniquely placed to step in and exercise Solomon-like leadership
on behalf of Democrats and Republicans alike. Recent polls show that a majority of voters – including a
majority of GOP voters – support expanded enforcement coupled with some kind of legalisation. At a time
when the public discourse on immigration is degenerating into near-hysteria, and congress remains paralysed,
even-handed executive action can point the country forward. It sends a powerful signal to voters that the
president still has the courage to stick his neck out, even when a nervous and recalcitrant congress,
including members of his own party, won't. The entire country – Democrats, Republicans and
independents alike – would stand up and cheer.
Solvency 1NC
1. Turn- The plan causes backlash against F1 visas and labor certification guts solvency
Tiger, 08 (Joseph Tiger, The Author Is A J.D. Candidate At The Georgetown University Law Center. He
Graduated From Georgetown University In 2006 With A Degree In Economics. While In High School, He
Earned An Associate Degree In Mathematics From The Santa Rosa Junior College, California, In 2003, ReBending The Paperclip: An Examination Of America's Policy Regarding Skilled Workers And Student Visas,
Spring 2008, 22 Geo. Immigr. L.J. 507)
Offering all students green cards but not H-1B visas would be even more problematic. If all students were made
automatically eligible for EB status upon graduation, acceptance at an American university would, in essence,
constitute a near guarantee of future citizenship. Thus, to maintain its power to control citizenship, the
government would have to exercise even stricter control over the granting of student visas. These procedural
hurdles could act as a disincentive if not an actual barrier to foreign students interested in studying at
American universities. n197 Additionally, working under a green card has procedural hurdles of its own, not
associated with the H-1B visa program (notably, labor certification). As such, foreign students who do not wish
to stay in the United States beyond a temporary period of work would face the choice of accepting the green
card and becoming a permanent resident, or leaving immediately upon the termination of F-1 status.
2. Green cards are not key to retention- they’ll return anyways and remittance takes out
their impact
Matloff, 06 (Norm Matloff for The Center For Immigration Studies, Best? Brightest? A Green Card
Giveaway For Foreign Grads Would Be Unwarranted, http://www.ilw.com/articles/2006,0531-matloff.shtm)
One Argument Involving Entrepreneurship. One common argument made by industry lobbyists is that
unless we have a liberal green card program, the foreign students in U.S. universities will take the training we
give them back home, where they will start businesses to compete with us. This argument has never made
sense, for two reasons.
First, if this is a realistic fear, why do those who make this argument advocate bringing in so many foreign
students in the first place? It would seem counter to the national interest to train so many foreign students.
Thus it is clear that the industry’s argument is just a pretext for bringing in cheap labor, which the NSF
advocated explicitly.
Second, Professor Annalee Saxenian of UC Berkeley has shown that many foreign graduates who get green
cards eventually go back home and start businesses there to compete with us anyway. In fact, Saxenian found
that even those who do not return home actively help the development of industry in their native countries. 35
After surveying members of Silicon Valley networking groups such as the Asian American Manufacturers
Association and the Indus Entrepreneurs, Saxenian found that half of those who run startup companies here
have set up subsidiaries, joint ventures, or other business operations in their home countries. Most
respondents are from India, China, and Taiwan.
Whether they run their own business or not, half of foreign-born professionals travel to their homelands on
business every year, the study found. More than 80 percent said they share information about technology with
people back home.
"The most interesting findings are the extent of the ties that these immigrants are building between Silicon
Valley and their home countries, not only transferring information but advising companies, arranging
contracts, investing in startups, working with governments, and even starting companies in their home
countries," Saxenian said.
So again, if the lobbyists were truly concerned with foreign business competition in the tech industry, they
would be advocating a large reduction in the number of foreign students, not incentives to increase that
number.
The industry lobbyists also are fond of pointing to prominent businesses founded by immigrants, with Intel
and Google being two commonly cited examples. The lobbyists claim that this shows the importance of having
so many foreign students. Let’s look more closely at that claim.
First, neither Intel nor Google’s founders came here as foreign students. Google cofounder Sergey Brin
immigrated to the U.S. with his family when he was five years old. Andy Grove, frequently described as a
cofounder of Intel,36also immigrated with his parents, as a refugee.
Much more importantly, no firm in the computer industry has been pivotal to the development of the field.
Intel and Google have certainly not been indispensable. Back in 1981 when IBM needed to select a CPU chip for
its new PCs, IBM had many alternatives to its choice of Intel as a CPU supplier. Actually, the IBM engineers
who designed the original PC favored a competing chip by Motorola.37 And though Google arguably is more fun
to use than other search engines, they are all about equally effective in their search capabilities.38
3. No delays- EB1 EB2 solves, wage deflation turns the aff, and immigrants share tech
anyways
Matloff, 08 (Norman, Computer Science Professor at UC Davis, “badly misinformed George Will column”
June 26, 2008, http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/GeorgeWill.txt)
To be fair, it must be mentioned that spouses and minor children are included in the cap. On the other hand,
Will doesn't explain why we need all these PhDs anyway. His main example, the late American inventor Jack
Kilby, didn't have a doctorate, nor do Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs or the vast majority of others who've
made big impacts on the tech industry. Andone has to wonder why Will thinks we need to bestow green cards
on, for instance, all those doctorates with dissertations on color change in chamaeleons.
It gets worse. Though Will may be correct in his statement that "1 million educated professionals are waiting
[for green cards] -- often five or more years," had he done his due diligence he would have found that these
people don't have PhDs, nor do they even have Master's degrees. These are Bachelor's-level people, in the EB-3
category, the lowest of the three employment-based green card categories. Those PhDs Will wants so much are
in the EB-1 and EB-2 categories, and the wait in those categories is quite short. Indeed, as of Sept. 2007, the
wait was ZERO for EB-1, and it has been zero or short for a long time. See the details at
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/WadhwaIII.txt.
Will speaks of these foreign workers in the same breadth as Jack Kilby, inventor of the computer chip. Yet he
offers no evidence for this implicit comparison of brilliance or creativity. On the contrary, the vast majority of
the foreign tech workers being sponsored for green cards are ordinary people, doing ordinary work, for
ordinary wages. (See http://www.cis.org/articles/2008/back508.html)
Will offers the argument that at worst, it doesn't hurt to have these people around. Well, it DOES hurt. If Kilby
were to come of age and enter the field today, he likely would never get a chance to innovate. Upon graduation,
he would probably be shunted into one of the "talking" jobs, such as customer support or production control,
while the foreign workers are hired to do the real engineering work. If he did manage to get engineering work
at first, he would find it more and more difficult to get such work once he reached age 35 or so, as young
foreign workers are paid much less than older Americans. Even the pro-industry NRC report, commissioned by
Congress, documented extensively that engineers have trouble getting work in the field 10 or 15 years after
graduation. All this is even more interesting in light of the fact that Kilby filed his patent for the computer chip
when he was 36.
In fact, Will's point that large numbers of the PhDs that U.S. universities produce are foreign students itself
shows why it DOES hurt to have these people around. Back in 1989, our National Science Foundation called for
an increase in the number of foreign students in order to keep PhD salaries down--yes, this was their explicit
rationale--and moreover, the NSF pointed out that the resulting low salaries would drive domestic students
away from pursuing doctorates, which of course is exactly what happened. (See
http://nber.nber.org/~peat/PapersFolder/Papers/SG/NSF.html)
The proposals now in Congress to give automatic green cards to new foreign graduates in science and
engineering would make things even worse than what the NSF wanted. As mentioned above, young workers
have lower wages than older ones, and almost all the new grads are young. So the proposals would swell the
labor pool at the young end, making it even harder for our Jack Kilbys to make a viable career out of
engineering. No wonder our brightest young people with top math talent are finding it far more lucrative to
pursue careers in finance than in engineering.
Does that matter? You bet it does. America's only advantage over the rest of the world is its innovativeness.
Most of the foreign workers come from cultures which do not foster innovativeness and in fact tend to suppress
it. In other words, the muddled thinking Will exhibits here is ruining the only good thing we have going for us.
So YES, it matters.
Lastly, Will brings up that constant industry lobbyist refrain that "We'll lose these people to our competitors" if
we don't give them green cards. Again, the putative good ones, the ones in EB-1 (for "foreign nationals of
"extraordinary ability" and for "outstanding professors") and EB-2 (for those who are either of "exceptional
ability" or possess an "advanced degree"), are getting their green cards quickly, so we're NOT "losing" them.
However: Even with green cards, the fact is that they often don't keep their technology in the U.S. anyway. The
study by UCB Prof. Annalee Saxenian found that many eventually return to their home countries even after
attaining U.S. citizenship, that many who do stay here start businesses back home, and that more than 80%
share technology with people in the home country. This may not be all bad, but it certainly shows that the shrill
"We've got to give them green cards to prevent them from helping our competitors" argument is nonsense.
4. Plan kills education and global diplomacy
Miano 09 [John Miano has been with the Center for Immigration Studies since 2008 and his area of expertise is in guest worker programs,
particularly in how they affect the technology work force. Mr. Miano has a BA in Mathematics from The College of Wooster and a JD from Seton Hall
University. Mr. Miano is also the founder of the Programmers’ Guild, an organization committed to advancing the interests of technical and professional
workers; “No Green Cards for Grads”, July 20, http://www.cis.org/miano/grads]
What Mr. Frank advocates is tantamount to granting universities the ability to sell U.S. immigration benefits.
How much is a green card worth on the open market? If Mr. Frank had his way, we would soon find out.
The U.S. would have quickie graduate programs spring up all over. Fourth tier and for-profit universities would
set up programs tailored to foreign students. The ability of universities to sell immigration benefits could
justify high tuition prices for such programs.
Consider the simplest case. U.S. universities could market graduate programs to people who already have a PhD or MS from foreign institutions. Take one or two
courses at the U.S. school and get an MS degree in the exact same field. The university could even include it as
part of the package employment.
What Mr. Frank has completely lost in his call for foreign student to remain in the U.S. is the benefit gained
from such students returning home. Foreign students create a pool of people who have learned about American and
Americans in general. When they return home they serve as American ambassadors to the world. If foreign
students remain in the U.S., our national investment in them (financial investment that could have been used
to fund education for Americans) is squandered.
That turns the case
Hanushek and Wößmann 07 [Eric, policy researcher at the Hoover institution and Stanford University; Ludger, professor at
University of Munich and Ifo Institute for Economic Research and CESifo, “Education Quality and Economic Growth,
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EDUCATION/Resources/278200-1099079877269/547664-1099079934475/Edu_Quality_Economic_Growth.pdf]
For an economy, education can increase the human capital in the labor force, which increases labor productivity and thus leads to a
higher equilibrium level of output.10 It can also increase the innovative capacity of the economy—knowledge of new technologies,
products, and processes promotes growth.11 And it can facilitate the diffusion and transmission of knowledge needed to understand and process
new information and to implement new technologies devised by others, again promoting growth.12 Just as in the literature on microeconomic returns to education, the majority of the
macroeconomic literature on economic returns to education employs the quantitative measure of years of schooling, now averaged across the labor force. Using average years of schooling as
an education measure implicitly assumes that a year of schooling delivers the same increase in knowledge and skills regardless of the education system. This measure also assumes that formal
schooling is the primary source of education and that variations in the quality of nonschool factors affecting learning have a negligible effect on education outcomes. This neglect of crosscountry differences in the quality of education is the major drawback of such a quantitative measure. The standard method of estimating the effect of education on economic growth is to
estimate cross-country growth regressions where average annual growth in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita over several decades is expressed as a function of measures of schooling
and a set of other variables deemed important for economic growth. A vast early literature of cross-country growth regressions tended to fi nd a signifi cant positive association between
quantitative measures of schooling and economic growth.13 The
research reported here suggests that each year of schooling boosts long-run growth by
0.58 percentage points (fi gure 2). There is a clear association between growth rates and school attainment.
5. Plans not key to innovation
Matloff, 06 (Norm Matloff for The Center For Immigration Studies, Best? Brightest? A Green Card
Giveaway For Foreign Grads Would Be Unwarranted, http://www.ilw.com/articles/2006,0531-matloff.shtm)
Most F-4s Would Not Be "the Best and the Brightest." Industry lobbyists have often made the argument that the H-1B
program is working well for those who have graduate degrees, as they are the top talents from around the world. The lobbyists’ claim is that these H1Bs are being hired for their superior abilities, not for cheap labor. We saw above that the H-1B program in fact is used as a
source of cheap labor even at the graduate level, so the lobbyists’ argument already fails. But let’s set that aside for a moment and address the quality
issue itself.
Some foreign PhD students are indeed the world’s "best and brightest." I fully support the immigration of such individuals, and have played an active
role in the hiring of outstanding foreign nationals from China, India, and other countries to my department’s faculty at the University of California,
Davis. However, only a small percentage of all foreign PhDs are of this caliber, as will be seen below.
Remarkably, even some analysts who have been critical of industry’s usage of imported engineers for cheap labor are nevertheless susceptible to the
industry lobbyists’ "best and brightest" argument. They extrapolate from a few success stories to a romantic, starry-eyed view that all the foreign students
are Einsteins.
Harvard economics professor Richard Freeman is a prime example. [27] On the one hand, he agrees that
...the huge influx of foreign students and workers keeps wages and employment opportunities below what they would otherwise be. This discourages
U.S. citizens from investing in science and engineering careers...
Yet he then says
[the U.S.] has attracted large numbers of the best and brightest students, researchers, and science and engineering workers from foreign countries .
According to the 2000 Census of Population, 38 percent of Ph.D.s working in science and engineering
occupations were foreign-born—a massive rise over the 24 percent foreign-born figure for 1990.
Apparently Freeman considers all or most of those 38 percent to be "the best and the brightest." But the reality
is quite the opposite.
Posssesion of a graduate degree does not imply that one has outstanding talent—far from it. The fact is that
virtually anyone with a Bachelor’s degree can be accepted into some graduate program. Thus one should not
assume that workers with graduate degrees are "smarter."
In fact, foreign PhD students are disproportionately enrolled in the academically weaker universities:[28]
Universities Frontline
1. US universities are still the best – including scientific research.
John Gill, Times Higher Education, “US universities still the best, Chinese league table suggests,” 8/13/2010,
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=412993
The US has retained its dominance in the annual world university ranking compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
The list published today is topped by Harvard University for the eighth year in a row, with the University of California, Berkeley
second and Stanford University third.
The UK’s highest-ranked institution is the University of Cambridge in fifth place, followed by the University of Oxford (10th), University College London
(21st) and Imperial College London (26th).
Unlike the forthcoming Times Higher Education World University Rankings, the Shanghai Jiao Tong list is based almost entirely on
scientific research strength.
THE has radically overhauled its rankings methodology for 2010 in response to concerns that the old approach relied too heavily on subjective opinion.
The new methodology is being developed in conjunction with data partner Thomson Reuters and promises to be more
sophisticated, transparent and rigorous. Among the changes is the introduction of a 30 per cent weighting for a new “teaching and
learning environment” measure, including the first teaching reputation score in the global rankings field.
2. Foreign enrollment is increasing despite visa restrictions.
Lee Lawrence, Christian Science Monitor, “US college degrees: Still the best among world's top universities?” 6/2/2010,
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/0602/US-college-degrees-Still-the-best-among-world-s-top-universities
"The quality of the US's higher education system has historically been a powerful magnet ," says Irwin Feller, who
headed the Institute for Policy Research and Evaluation at Pennsylvania State University for 24 years and has served on a number of national
committees on education policy. "We have been that sucking sound that has attracted the best and the brightest from
around the world."
Growing foreign enrollment would seem to indicate that the US remains the destination of
choice. The country has a rich infrastructure of 4,500 public and private postsecondary institutions with a
high regard for academic freedom. They range from research universities offering postgraduate degrees to a network of two-year community
colleges. Add to this technical and vocational colleges, four-year teaching schools committed to liberal arts, as well as new for-profit institutions, and
the US offers the world's most variegated tapestry of higher education.
This variety is a chief attraction for foreign students. Even when their numbers fell in the four years
following 9/11 – due to visa restrictions and global uncertainty – the largest year-to-year dip was only
2.4 percent. And foreign enrollment since has risen steadily to more than 670,000 in 2008-09 – more than 20
percent higher than 2000-01.
Even though the economic downturn is expected to affect foreign enrollment in September, international
applications to graduate programs are up by 7 percent, says Peggy Blumenthal, vice president for educational services at the Institute
of International Education (IIE) in New York.
Chemical industry cant recover
Hodges, “Financial Crisis destroying value in chem. Industry – Lazard”, ICIS, 3/25/09
The global financial crisis is destroying value throughout the chemical industry through bankruptcies and by
plummeting bond values, a managing director of advisory investment bank Lazard said on Wednesday. “There
is a massive loss of debt in the chemical industry at the moment,” said Alasdair Nisbet, managing director and
global head of chemicals for Lazard UK. Nisbet spoke at the 2009 World Petrochemical Conference, held in
Houston by Chemical Market Associates Inc (CMAI). Many bonds are trading below par, leading to a
destruction of wealth, Nisbet said. For the chemical industry as a whole, that loss could be as large as $45bn
(€33bn). About $30bn of that total is made up of LyondellBasell, INEOS, Hexion Specialty Chemicals,
Huntsman and Momentive Performance Materials, he said. Bankruptcies could destroy more wealth, as the
value of old equity and bonds is destroyed, he said. Meanwhile, a bankruptcy filing substantially reduces the
value of senior debt. “The destruction is absolutely catastrophic,” he said.
1 No extinction impact to disease
Posner 5 – Court of Appeals Judge; Professor, Chicago School of Law (Richard, Catastrophe, http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-4150331/Catastrophe-the-dozen-most-significant.html,
AG)
Homo sapiens has managed to survive every disease to assail it in the 200,000 years or so of its existence is a source of genuine
comfort, at least if the focus is on extinction events. There have been enormously destructive plagues, such as the Black Death, smallpox, and now AIDS, but none has come close to
destroying the entire human race. There is a biological reason. Natural selection favors germs of limited lethality; they are fitter in an
evolutionary sense because their genes are more likely to be spread if the germs do not kill their hosts too quickly. The AIDS virus is an example of
Yet the fact that
a lethal virus, wholly natural, that by lying dormant yet infectious in its host for years maximizes its spread. Yet
cause
extinction
there is no danger that AIDS will destroy the entire human race.
The likelihood of a natural pandemic that would
the
of the human race is probably even less today than in the past (except in prehistoric times, when people lived in small,
scattered bands, which would have limited the spread of disease), despite wider human contacts that make it more difficult to localize an infectious disease.
Bio-D massively decreasing right now – massive consensus and studies prove
Knight ‘10
(Matthew, Cites the GBO and CBD: The GBO-3 is a landmark study in what is the U.N.'s International Year of Biodiversity and
will play a key role in guiding the negotiations between world governments at the U.N. Biodiversity Summit in Nagoya, Japan
in October 2010. The CBD -- an international treaty designed to sustain diversity of life on Earth -- was set up at the Earth
Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, May 10, “U.N. report: Eco-systems at 'tipping point'”,
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/05/10/biodiversity.loss.report/index.html?eref=igoogle_cnn)
The world's eco-systems are at risk of "rapid degradation and collapse" according to a new United Nations report.
The third Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO-3) published by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) warns that unless
"swift, radical and creative action" is taken "massive further loss is increasingly likely." Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive
secretary of the CBD said in a statement: "The news is not good. We continue to lose biodiversity at a rate never before seen in
history." The U.N. warns several eco-systems including the Amazon rainforest, freshwater lakes and rivers and coral
reefs are approaching a "tipping point" which, if reached, may see them never recover. The report says that no
government has completely met biodiversity targets that were first set out in 2002 -- the year of the first
GBO report. Executive Director of the U.N. Environmental Program Achim Steiner said there were key economic reasons why
governments had failed in this task. "Many economies remain blind to the huge value of the diversity of
animals, plants and other life-forms and their role in healthy and functioning eco-systems," Steiner said in a statement.
Although many countries are beginning to factor in "natural capital," Steiner said that this needs "rapid and sustained scaling-up." Despite
increases in the size of protected land and coastal areas, biodiversity trends reported in the GBO-3 are
almost entirely negative. Vertebrate species fell by nearly one third between 1970 and 2006, natural
habitats are in decline, genetic diversity of crops is falling and sixty breeds of livestock have become extinct
since 2000. Nick Nuttall, a U.N. Environmental Program spokesman, said the cost of eco-systems degradation is huge. "In terms of land-use
change, it's thought that the annual financial loss of services eco-systems provide -- water, storing carbon and
soil stabilization -- is about &euro50 billion ($64 billion) a year," Nuttall told CNN. "If this continues we may well see by 2050
a cumulative loss of what you might call land-based natural capital of around &euro95 trillion ($121 trillion)," he said.
Impacts of Pesticides are over rated
Boeke, 03 (Robyn c. The Importance of Pesticides to the Preservation of Public Health,
http://www.mimosq.org/PDF/ScholarshipWinner2003.pdf)
On a hot August night a finger can slice the air. Its heaviness envelopes anyone brave enough to walk in this
hour of dusk. Life moves languidly, affected and panting from the heat. When the sun sinks in the sky and the
blanket of warmth falls over the neighborhood, mosquitoes begin their winged adventure: collecting red blood
cells from humans and animals alike to feed as a meal to their larvae. Although mosquitoes are an essential part
of nature’s fragile balance, their bite can be more than just an annoyance. Illnesses with consequences including
fatality can be carried by these night flyers, and control of this insect colony is vital for the preservation of
human life. Pesticides are an effective method of pest containment. These chemicals are safe for use in the
environment and protect human life from disease, illness and annoyance. Pesticides have received much
misguided criticism over the years because some feel that the chemicals used hurt the environment. In fact, this
is far from the truth. Routine contact with small dosages of pesticides is not harmful to the environment or the
people residing in it. The synthetic chemicals used to spray for mosquitoes (usually malathion, sumithrin, or a
combination of similar compounds) are no more dangerous than the natural chemicals we are exposed to and
ingest on a daily basis. Plants produce these natural protective toxins as a method of self-preservation, and we
consume around 1.5 grams of these daily in food (Most Pesticides Are Natural, 1). Although pesticides used for
crops and food has come under fire for being pollutants, they have no more of a presence than the natural
chemicals produced non-synthetically in our food. To blame synthetic pesticides for being an environmental
contaminant is ignoring the fact that there are many chemicals in nature, and that the man-made variety aren’t
necessarily the most dangerous. It’s much easier to assume that something “natural” doesn’t contain anything
harmful to humans, but this isn’t always true. Humans put themselves in far greater danger (as far as chemical
exposure) in the food that they eat daily. A dose of Phenobarbital (a common sleep aid) is 150 times more
potent a cancer-causing agent than Captan, a pesticide. Beer offers many adverse side effects, one of its
downfalls being the ethyl alcohol it contains. Ethyl alcohol is 1.8 million times stronger as a cancer-causing
compound than Lindane, another pesticide (Green 1). Most write off beer and sleeping aids among the
thousands of common household medicines and chemicals that do not present danger. The act of drinking a
beverage or taking a sleeping pill to fall asleep does not appear to be as “dirty” as a truck spraying the
environment with a chemical; therefore, many assume that the latter is much more destructive, when in
actuality, spraying for mosquitoes does more good to the environment and its inhabitants than bad. As far as
pesticides consumption goes, the amount of synthetic chemical in nature is so small that pesticide residue
cannot even be traced inside a human body. In fact, a common method of spraying for mosquitoes (spraying at
dusk to catch the adult mosquitoes mid-flight) uses ultra low volume equipment. This method only sprays up to
1-5 fluid ounces of a chemical within an entire acre (Walker, 4). Such a small amount is far less potent than
what is contained in some natural chemicals and toxins found in food, making it less likely to be a dangerous
presence in the environment. It is a common misconception that mosquito sprayings involve heavy application
of pesticide, but if consumers were informed of the actual amount sprayed, many concerns would be alleviated.
Despite the small amount that humans are actually exposed to, levels of pesticides are still lower than what is
sanctioned by the government, and the compounds used don’t present a great risk to humans when used in the
correct amount. In fact, a panel from the National Cancer Institute found that pesticides did not have any link
to cancer (Green,1). This fact makes pesticide bans seem highly unnecessary. The danger the chemicals sprayed
place on human health is far less dangerous than the cancerous effects of cigarettes that thousands of
Americans smoke. Of course, not all types of pesticides come without a price on human health, but those used
on the environment have been researched, tested, and regulated by the government and independent
organizations alike to verify their safety. Consumers have no reason to fear for their health from pesticides.
Much more concern should be put towards preventing disease from mosquito bites
2 Diseases do not kill all humans, it isn’t in their interest.
Marx 98 – AIDS Research Facility at Tulane University (Preson and Ross MacPhee, How did Hyperdisease cause extinctions?,
http://www.amnh.org/science/biodiversity/extinction/Day1/disease/Bit2.html, M.I.G.)
It is well known that lethal diseases can have a profound effect on species' population size and structure. However, it is
generally accepted that the principal populational effects of disease are acute--that is, short-term. In other words, although a species many suffer substantial loss from the effects of a given highly infectious
disease as a primary cause of extinction
seems implausible. However, this is the normal case, where the disease-provoking pathogen and its host have had a long relationship. Ordinarily, it is not in the
pathogens interest to rapidly kill off large numbers of individuals in its host species, because that might imperil
its own survival. Disease theorists long ago expressed the idea that pathogens tend to evolve toward a "benign" state of affairs with their hosts, which means in practice that they
continue to infect, but tend not to kill (or at least not rapidly). A very good reason for suspecting this to be an accurate view of pathogen-host
relationships is that individuals with few or no genetic defenses against a particular pathogen will be
maintained within the host population, thus ensuring the pathogen's ultimate survival.
disease at a given time, the facts indicate that natural populations tend to bounce back after the period of high losses. Thus,
Economic Leadership 1NC
1. Uncertainty – financial ambiguity has deterred potential entrepreneurs from taking risks
FT, 10/6 (Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, “fear undermines US recovery”,
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4524339a-d17a-11df-96d1-00144feabdc0.html)
Although rising moderately this year, US fixed capital investment has fallen far short of the level that history suggests
should have occurred given the recent dramatic surge in corporate profitability. Combined with a collapse of long-term
illiquid investments by households, they have frustrated economic recovery. These shortfalls, the result of widespread
private-sector anxiety over America’s future, have defused much, if not most, of the impact of the administration’s fiscal
stimulus. Moreover, the activism embodied in such programmes has itself stoked the degree of anxietyThe instinctive
reaction of businessmen and householders to uncertainty is to disengage from those activities that require confident
predictions of how the future will unfold. For non-financial corporations (half of gross domestic product), the
disengagement is best measured by the share of liquid cash flow allocated to illiquid long-term fixed asset investment. In
the first half of 2010, that share fell to 79 per cent, its lowest reading in the 58 years for which data are available. The
corresponding surge in the proportion of liquid assets following the Lehman bankruptcy was the most rapid in postwar history, amounting to a rise of nearly $400bn. By mid2010 total liquid assets had risen to $1,800bn, the highest share of total assets in nearly a half century. Without this unprecedented cash flow diversion, the rate of increase in
capital expenditures of non-financial corporations would have been double the modest increase that emerged during the first half of this year. In such an environment, the
equity premium (the excess return that equity produces over the risk-free rate) has become exceptionally elevated. As estimated by JPMorgan, it is currently “at a 50-year
high”. American households have shifted their cash flows from illiquid real estate and consumer durables to paying down mortgages and consumer debt. Commercial banks
are exhibiting a similar reduced tolerance towards risk on partially illiquid lending. A trillion dollars of excess reserves remains parked, largely immobile, at Federal Reserve
banks yielding only 25 basis points with little evidence of banks seeking higher returns through increased lending. It is this rapid rise in aversion to illiquid risk that explains a
large part of the anaemic recovery in the US. Construction outlays, almost all long-term, are down 43 per cent in real terms since their peak in 2006 and reflect the heaviest
price discounting of any major fixed asset class. The pronounced lack of tolerance for illiquid investment risk is quite at variance with current relatively narrow corporate bond
spreads. Since a portfolio of liquid privately issued 10-year bonds can be sold virtually at will, the portfolio is the equivalent of a very short-term asset that happens to exhibit
high price and interest rate volatility. The difference between liquid and illiquid assets is the reason non-financial corporations, whose assets are largely illiquid, maintained
net worth amounting to 45 per cent of assets at the end of 2006 (just prior to the onset of the crisis) compared with 10 per cent for commercial banks. In these extraordinarily
turbulent times, it is not surprising that important disagreements have emerged among policymakers and economists. Almost all agree activist government was necessary in
the immediate aftermath of the Lehman bankruptcy. The US Treasury’s support of banks through the troubled asset relief programme (Tarp), and the Federal Reserve’s
support of the commercial paper market and money market mutual funds, were critical in stemming the freefall. But the value of fiscal stimulus has been the subject of wide
debate. Fiscal stimulus – the amount of tax cutting and federal spending increases – from the programme’s inception in early 2009 was approximately $480bn. During
the same period, the cumulative shortfall in private fixed capital investment measured against the long-term average
shares of cash flow appears to have been about $325bn. Most in the business community attribute the massive rise in their
uncertainty to the collapse of economic activity, but its continuance since the recovery took hold is attributed to the
widespread major restructuring of our financial system and the burgeoning federal deficit, which creates critical future tax
uncertainty. Only the deficit lends itself to being quantified. Fixed capital investment as a share of cash flow over the past
four decades has been significantly (negatively) correlated with the ratio of the federal deficit to GDP, with the deficit ratio
leading the fixed investment share by nine months.* This would imply that the federal deficit as a percentage of GDP since
September 2008 (cyclically adjusted to remove the effect of a weaker economy), accounted for as much as a third of the
$325bn shortfall in business capital investment since early 2009. But an indeterminate amount of the remaining shortfall
reflects both a direct and indirect hobbling of vital financial intermediation. It is going to take years to address the
unprecedented complexity of final rulemaking required in the massive Dodd-Frank bill. The inevitable uncertainty
engendered will inhibit financial innovation and intermediation, and render the rules that will govern a future financial
marketplace disturbingly conjectural. This is bound to have a significant impact on economic growth. Business planners
must now confront a much wider set of scenarios that could affect the profitability of contemplated long-term
commitments. This wider set, of necessity, increases risk premiums on illiquid assets.
We can’t win the competition for entrepreneurs – other countries will just up the ante.
Wadhwa 10
[Vivek Wadhwa, visiting scholar at the School of Information at UC Berkeley, Immigration reform won’t be enough to stop the brain drain, The Berkeley
Blog, http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2010/07/07/immigration-reform-won%E2%80%99t-be-enough-to-stop-the-brain-drain/7/7/10]
In a recent speech at the American University, President Obama
highlighted the incredible economic rewards that America has
gained from its immigrants. He spoke of new waves of immigrants — from places like Ireland, Italy, Poland, and China — challenging the
generations before them, and consequently being subjected to “rank discrimination and ugly stereotypes”. Yet the immigrants kept coming to
America. That’s because it was the only land of opportunity. The President wants lawmakers to fix the immigration system so that
America can remain globally competitive. But I don’t think it’s that simple. America is no longer the only magnet for the world’s best and brightest.
Fixing immigration policy is an important start, but it won’t be enough to stop the brain drain of highly educated and skilled workers that the U.S. is
presently experiencing. In June, there were two notable visitors to Silicon Valley — Russian President, Dimitry Medvedev, and Chile’s minister of
Economy, Juan Andres Fontaine. President Medvedev wanted the brilliant Russian-born and -educated programmers who
write some of the Valley’s most sophisticated software to know that they are welcome back home and that he is
setting up a science park for them. Minister Fontaine wants to turn Chile into a tech hub and is following my advice on how to
make this happen: by attracting immigrants; building a diverse culture that encourages risk-taking and
openness; and creating networks of mentors. Over drinks (some excellent Chilean wine), the minister told me of a new program that
Chile is piloting to lure bootstrappers. Chile will grant $40,000 and provide some really cheap office space and accommodation to budding
entrepreneurs from anywhere in the world. All they have to do is to build their products in one of the most beautiful locations on the planet. Chile
is
betting that once these entrepreneurs get there, they will never want to leave. China is also doing all it can to
get its scientists and engineers to come back home. It is spending billions of dollars to establish research institutes and build technical
capacity. Returnees to China are now powering its most significant scientific breakthroughs. For example, according to the Washington Post, at the
National Institute for Biological Sciences, which is responsible for half of the peer-reviewed publications in China, all of the key scientists are returnees
from the United States. I witnessed on my recent trip to India how much things had changed there, as well. At Startup Saturday, which has become a
regular hangout for tech entrepreneurs in Delhi, I gave a talk to a group of about 100 company founders. I was surprised at how similar they were to the
techies I know in Silicon Valley: they are building the same types of products; have the same interests; ask the same questions; and, like their Valley
brethren, complain that venture capitalists won’t give them the time of day. I learned that more than one-third of these entrepreneurs were returnees
from the U.S. They went back for the same reasons that my research had highlighted: they missed their family and friends and saw greater opportunities
in India than in the U.S. Now they are invigorating the entrepreneurial ecosystem back home. The returning techies aren’t only building tech companies.
After completing his MBA at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Ritesh Bawri built a very promising product that could capture a customer’s realtime purchase intent. He had VCs lined up to provide funding but decided not to pursue this because he saw an even greater opportunity back home, in
India. Among his father’s business interests was a cement business that produced $10 million a year in revenue. Ritesh knew that, with India’s need for
infrastructure, there was almost unlimited potential for growth. But this would require rethinking production and distribution methods, importing new
technologies from the west, and building the logistics infrastructure to consolidate the materials supply chain. Ritesh returned home in 2003 and raised
about $110 million in financing from financial institutions and private equity funds to purchase assets and build plants, and revamped the cement
business’s operations and strategy. His bet paid off. His company, Calcom Cement, has become a hugely profitable $250 million business and expects to
hit $2 billion in revenue in 2016. Some of India’s best and brightest won’t even consider moving to the U.S. Ashish Sinha started his career in 1999 at one
of the first successful tech companies in India, called Aztec software. Later, he worked for Ketera, IBM, and Yahoo, in India. He was offered several
opportunities in the U.S., but believed his career would progress better in India. In 2007, Ashish started India’s TechCrunch — a site called PluGGd.in,
which now draws 1.1 million visitors a month. Ashish takes a lot of pride in his decision not come to the U.S. as an H-1B worker. He says “I have seen a
whole lot of my friends go to the U.S. for IT services/outsourcing jobs, and repent later as it hardly brings satisfaction to one’s soul”. Arvind Nigam and
Praveen Kumar Sinha are in the process of moving their ideas-crowdsourcing software company, called BubbleIdeas, to Singapore because the Indian
government places restrictions on Paypal types of transactions, and they want to be closer to western markets. When I told Arvind about Chile, he
thought it would be an even better place to move to, because of its physical and cultural proximity to the U.S. and Europe. I asked Arvind whether he had
considered the U.S. His response: “too expensive… and who needs to put up with the visa nightmares?”. The U.S. immigration debate will
no doubt going be contentious and get bogged down in the issue of providing amnesty to people who entered
the country illegally. The reality is that, no matter how long the debate takes or how it concludes, the poor and
unskilled will still be here. But the educated and skilled professionals — who could be creating new jobs and
making the U.S. more competitive — won’t be here. They will, instead, be boosting the economies of other
countries. The U.S. will need not only to change its immigration policies to welcome skilled immigrants, but also to keep those who are already in the
U.S. And it will have to do what countries like China, Singapore, and Chile are doing: send its scouts out to find and recruit the best talent in other
countries.
Economic leadership is inevitable
Norrlof 10
(Carla Norrlof, political science professor at Toronto, America’s Global Advantage: US Hegemony and
International Cooperation, pg 247)
After sixty years of securing superpower status, and forty years of power sharing with the Soviet Union, the
United States is the dominant power in the world today. Common sense tells us that it is good to be the
unrivalled Great Power of the international system, kind among states. But an important body of theory argues
that being a small state is better than being the largest economic and military power. This book as an attempt
to demonstrate what most people believe is intuitively is right after all. The single largest state benefits
disproportionally from international cooperation. There have, of course, been moments in the postwar era
when other states have come out ahead, times when the United States has failed to influence other states, and
when the economic and political foundations of America power have seemed shaky. For example, the United
States did relatively poorly when the two smaller Great Powers (the European Community and Japan were
equally sized and together combined as much economic power as the United States did alone. Interestingly,
this goes some way in explaining American support for accelerating European integration on other than
ideological or cultural grounds. Since a strong Europe is more conducive to American interests than the
diffusion of power between Europe and Japan, consistent with the international context from the mid 1970s
until the early 2990s, American encouragement of European collaboration can be said to have a rational basis.
Variations in the distribution of power such as these, and their effect on states’ relative impact, suggest that the
United States does not fare better than other states in every conceivable situation, but is better off in a
sufficient number of cases to support the claim about disproportional gains accruing to the strongest as
opposed to weaker states. What exlans the United States’ ability to benefit disproportionally ,when
collaborating with other states, is a number of structural advantages, and the positive synergies between these,
across different domains.
Canada is now the global economic model, not the US.
Rob Giles, Seattle Times, “Canada's economy envy of world,” 6/20/2010,
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2012168540_canecon21.html
Canada
believes it can teach the world a thing or two about dodging financial meltdowns . The 20 world leaders at an
economic summit in Toronto next weekend will find themselves in a country that has avoided a banking crisis, and where the economy grew at a 6.1
percent annual rate in the first three months of this year. The housing market is hot, and three-quarters of the 400,000 jobs lost in the recession have
Obama says the United States should take note of Canada's banking
system, and Britain's Treasury chief is looking to emulate the Ottawa way on cutting deficits . The land of a thousand
been recovered. World leaders have noticed: President
stereotypes — from Mounties and hockey to language wars and lousy weather — is feeling entitled to do a bit of crowing as it hosts the G-20 summit of
wealthy and developing nations. "We should be proud of the performance of our financial system during the crisis ,"
the Canadian banks were perhaps
boring and too risk-adverse. And when I was there two weeks ago some of my same counterparts were saying to
me, 'You have a very solid, stable banking system in Canada,' and emphasizing that. There wasn't anything about being sufficiently
risk-oriented." The banks are stable because, in part, they're more regulated. As the United States and Europe
loosened financial regulations over the past 15 years, Canada refused to do so. The banks also aren't as
leveraged as their U.S. or European peers. There was no mortgage meltdown or subprime crisis in Canada. Banks don't package
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said. He recalled visiting China in 2007 and hearing suggestions "that
mortgages and sell them to the private market, so they need to be sure their borrowers can pay back the loans. In Canada's concentrated banking system,
five major banks dominate the market and regulators know top bank executives personally. "Our banks were just better managed, and we had better
regulation," said former Prime Minister Paul Martin, credited with killing off a massive government deficit in the 1990s when he was finance minister,
leading to 12 consecutive years of budget surpluses. "I was absolutely amazed at senior bankers in the United States and Europe who didn't know the
extent of the problem or they didn't know that people in some far-flung division were doing these kinds of things," Martin said. "It's just beyond belief."
The Conservative Party government of Stephen Harper that took over from Martin's Liberals in 2006 broadly stuck to his predecessor's approach,
although Harper cut taxes and, when recession struck, pumped stimulus money into the economy, with the result that Canada again has a large deficit.
But the nation is recovering from the recession faster than others, and the International Monetary Fund expects
Canada to be the only one of the seven major industrialized democracies to return to a budget surplus by 2015 .
Canada this month became the first among those democracies to raise interest rates since the global financial
crisis began. George Osborne, Britain's Treasury chief, has vowed to follow Canada's example on deficit reduction. "They brought together the best
brains both inside and outside government to carry out a fundamental reassessment of the role of the state," he said in a speech. It's a remarkable
turnaround from 1993, when the Liberals took office amid a $30 billion deficit. Moody's downgraded Canada's credit rating twice. About 36 percent of
government revenue went toward servicing debt. "Our situation was dire. Canada was in a lot of trouble at that point," Martin said. "If we were going to
preserve our health care and our education system we had to do it." As finance minister, he slashed spending. A weak currency and a booming U.S.
economy also helped balance the books. In the 1998 budget, the government estimated about 55 percent of the deficit gains came from economic growth
and 35 percent from spending cuts. "The rest of the world certainly thinks we're the model to follow ," said Martin,
who was prime minister from 2003 to 2006. "I've been asked by a lot of countries as to how to go about it." Don Drummond, Martin's budget chief at the
time, says the United States and Europe won't have it that easy, because the economic climate was better in the late 1990s than it is now, with large trade
gains and falling interest rates. "There's a lot to learn from Canada, but their starting conditions are worse ," Drummond said.
"Even
though we were on the precipice of a crisis we weren't in as bad a shape as many of them are."