bioweap
Mass surveillance decimates effective counter-terrorism — data mining is the
wrong tool.
Schneier 15 — Bruce Schneier, Chief Technology Officer for Counterpane Internet Security, Fellow at the
Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, Program Fellow at the New America
Foundation's Open Technology Institute, Board Member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Advisory
Board Member of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, 2015 (“Why Mass Surveillance Can't, Won't,
And Never Has Stopped A Terrorist,” Digg — excerpt from Data and Goliath, March 24th, Available Online at
https://digg.com/2015/why-mass-surveillance-cant-wont-and-never-has-stopped-a-terrorist, Accessed 0712-2015)
The NSA repeatedly uses a connect-the-dots metaphor to justify its surveillance activities. Again and
again — after 9/11, after the Underwear Bomber, after the Boston Marathon bombings — government is
criticized for not connecting the dots.
However, this is a terribly misleading metaphor . Connecting the dots in a coloring book is easy,
because they’re all numbered and visible. In real life, the dots can only be recognized after the fact .
That doesn’t stop us from demanding to know why the authorities couldn’t connect the dots. The warning
signs left by the Fort Hood shooter, the Boston Marathon bombers, and the Isla Vista shooter look obvious
in hindsight. Nassim Taleb, an expert on risk engineering, calls this tendency the “narrative fallacy.”
Humans are natural storytellers, and the world of stories is much more tidy, predictable, and
coherent than reality. Millions of people behave strangely enough to attract the FBI’s notice, and
almost all of them are harmless. The TSA’s no-fly list has over 20,000 people on it. The Terrorist Identities
Datamart Environment, also known as the watch list, has 680,000, 40% of whom have “no recognized
terrorist group affiliation.”
Data mining is offered as the technique that will enable us to connect those dots. But while
corporations are successfully mining our personal data in order to target advertising, detect financial fraud,
and perform other tasks, three critical issues make data mining an inappropriate tool for finding
terrorists.
The first, and most important, issue is error rates . For advertising, data mining can be successful even
with a large error rate, but finding terrorists requires a much higher degree of accuracy than datamining systems can possibly provide.
Data mining works best when you’re searching for a well-defined profile, when there are a reasonable number
of events per year, and when the cost of false alarms is low. Detecting credit card fraud is one of data
mining’s security success stories: all credit card companies mine their transaction databases for spending
patterns that indicate a stolen card. There are over a billion active credit cards in circulation in the United
States, and nearly 8% of those are fraudulently used each year. Many credit card thefts share a pattern —
purchases in locations not normally frequented by the cardholder, and purchases of travel, luxury goods, and
easily fenced items — and in many cases data-mining systems can minimize the losses by preventing
fraudulent transactions. The only cost of a false alarm is a phone call to the cardholder asking her to verify a
couple of her purchases.
Similarly, the IRS uses data mining to identify tax evaders, the police use it to predict crime hot spots, and
banks use it to predict loan defaults. These applications have had mixed success, based on the data and the
application, but they’re all within the scope of what data mining can accomplish.
Terrorist plots are different, mostly because whereas fraud is common, terrorist attacks are very rare.
This means that even highly accurate terrorism prediction systems will be so flooded with false
alarms that they will be useless .
The reason lies in the mathematics of detection . All detection systems have errors, and system
designers can tune them to minimize either false positives or false negatives. In a terrorist-detection
system, a false positive occurs when the system mistakenly identifies something harmless as a
threat. A false negative occurs when the system misses an actual attack. Depending on how you
“tune” your detection system, you can increase the number of false positives to assure you are less
likely to miss an attack, or you can reduce the number of false positives at the expense of missing
attacks.
Because terrorist attacks are so rare, false positives completely overwhelm the system , no matter
how well you tune. And I mean completely: millions of people will be falsely accused for every real
terrorist plot the system finds, if it ever finds any .
We might be able to deal with all of the innocents being flagged by the system if the cost of false
positives were minor. Think about the full-body scanners at airports. Those alert all the time when scanning
people. But a TSA officer can easily check for a false alarm with a simple pat-down. This doesn’t work for a
more general data-based terrorism-detection system. Each alert requires a lengthy investigation to
determine whether it’s real or not. That takes time and money, and prevents intelligence officers
from doing other productive work . Or, more pithily, when you’re watching everything, you’re not
seeing anything.
The US intelligence community also likens finding a terrorist plot to looking for a needle in a
haystack. And, as former NSA director General Keith Alexander said, “you need the haystack to find the
needle.” That statement perfectly illustrates the problem with mass surveillance and bulk collection. When
you’re looking for the needle, the last thing you want to do is pile lots more hay on it. More
specifically, there is no scientific rationale for believing that adding irrelevant data about innocent
people makes it easier to find a terrorist attack, and lots of evidence that it does not. You might be
adding slightly more signal, but you’re also adding much more noise . And despite the NSA’s
“collect it all” mentality, its own documents bear this out. The military intelligence community even
talks about the problem of “ drinking from a fire hose ”: having so much irrelevant data that it’s
impossible to find the important bits.
We saw this problem with the NSA’s eavesdropping program: the false positives overwhelmed the
system . In the years after 9/11, the NSA passed to the FBI thousands of tips per month; every one of
them turned out to be a false alarm . The cost was enormous , and ended up frustrating the FBI
agents who were obligated to investigate all the tips. We also saw this with the Suspicious Activity
Reports —or SAR — database: tens of thousands of reports, and no actual results . And all the
telephone metadata the NSA collected led to just one success: the conviction of a taxi driver who
sent $8,500 to a Somali group that posed no direct threat to the US — and that was probably trumped
up so the NSA would have better talking points in front of Congress.
The second problem with using data-mining techniques to try to uncover terrorist plots is that each attack
is unique . Who would have guessed that two pressure-cooker bombs would be delivered to the Boston
Marathon finish line in backpacks by a Boston college kid and his older brother? Each rare individual who
carries out a terrorist attack will have a disproportionate impact on the criteria used to decide who’s
a likely terrorist, leading to ineffective detection strategies .
The third problem is that the people the NSA is trying to find are wily, and they’re trying to avoid
detection . In the world of personalized marketing, the typical surveillance subject isn’t trying to hide his
activities. That is not true in a police or national security context. An adversarial relationship makes the
problem much harder , and means that most commercial big data analysis tools just don’t work . A
commercial tool can simply ignore people trying to hide and assume benign behavior on the part of
everyone else. Government data-mining techniques can’t do that, because those are the very people
they’re looking for.
Adversaries vary in the sophistication of their ability to avoid surveillance. Most criminals and
terrorists — and political dissidents, sad to say — are pretty unsavvy and make lots of mistakes. But
that’s no justification for data mining; targeted surveillance could potentially identify them just as
well. The question is whether mass surveillance performs sufficiently better than targeted
surveillance to justify its extremely high costs. Several analyses of all the NSA’s efforts indicate that
it does not .
The three problems listed above cannot be fixed . Data mining is simply the wrong tool for this job,
which means that all the mass surveillance required to feed it cannot be justified . When he was NSA
director, General Keith Alexander argued that ubiquitous surveillance would have enabled the NSA to
prevent 9/11. That seems unlikely . He wasn’t able to prevent the Boston Marathon bombings in
2013, even though one of the bombers was on the terrorist watch list and both had sloppy social
media trails — and this was after a dozen post-9/11 years of honing techniques. The NSA collected
data on the Tsarnaevs before the bombing, but hadn’t realized that it was more important than the
data they collected on millions of other people.
This point was made in the 9/11 Commission Report. That report described a failure to “connect the
dots,” which proponents of mass surveillance claim requires collection of more data. But what the report
actually said was that the intelligence community had all the information about the plot without
mass surveillance , and that the failures were the result of inadequate analysis .
Mass surveillance didn’t catch underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in 2006, even though
his father had repeatedly warned the U.S. government that he was dangerous. And the liquid
bombers (they’re the reason governments prohibit passengers from bringing large bottles of liquids, creams,
and gels on airplanes in their carry-on luggage) were captured in 2006 in their London apartment not due to
mass surveillance but through traditional investigative police work. Whenever we learn about an
NSA success, it invariably comes from targeted surveillance rather than from mass surveillance.
One analysis showed that the FBI identifies potential terrorist plots from reports of suspicious
activity, reports of plots, and investigations of other, unrelated, crimes.
This is a critical point. Ubiquitous surveillance and data mining are not suitable tools for finding
dedicated criminals or terrorists. We taxpayers are wasting billions on mass-surveillance programs,
and not getting the security we’ve been promised. More importantly, the money we’re wasting on
these ineffective surveillance programs is not being spent on investigation , intelligence , and
emergency response : tactics that have been proven to work . The NSA's surveillance efforts have
actually made us less secure .
Epistemology = meh
Timm 15 — Trevor Timm, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation,
Columnist for the Guardian on privacy, free speech, and national security, former Activist and Writer with the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, holds a J.D. from New York Law School and a B.A. in Political Science from
Northeastern University, 2015 (“Here’s how not to report on the US government’s terror warnings,” Columbia
Journalism Review, July 10th, Available Online at
http://www.cjr.org/analysis/heres_how_not_to_report_on_the_us_governments_terror_warnings.php,
Accessed 07-12-2015)
If you turned on the television or checked your phone in the lead up to July 4th, it was almost
impossible to miss the wall-to-wall coverage blaring ominous warnings from the US government: ISIS
terrorists could strike Americans at any minute over the holiday weekend.
As it often is in such instances, the media’s reporting was breathless, hyperbolic, and barely contained
a hint of skepticism. When nothing happened—as has been the case literally every time the
government has issued these warnings in the past —there was no apparent self-reflection by these
media outlets about how they could have tempered their coverage.
Instead, many doubled down by re-writing government press releases, claiming that arrests that
happened well before July 4th, and in which the alleged criminals never mentioned the American holiday,
are proof of “just how close” the US came to a terror attack over the holiday weekend.
During the Bush administration, terror alerts were issued with such frequency that they were widely derided
and criticized—even by seasoned counter-terrorism experts. Now that ISIS has emerged, the Bush
administration’s derided “color code system” is gone, but the willingness of the media to immediately buy
into the idea that the public should be freaking out is still alive and well. The last two years have seen the
media become much more skeptical of government surveillance powers. Yet when the terror alert flashes,
they revert right back to their old ways.
Last weekend’s coverage was a case study in rash judgment. All the caveats issued with the warning’s release
were hardly noticeable, downplayed and buried in the middle of the articles, sandwiched in-between urgent
calls for caution from various government agencies.
There will soon be a next time; the government will issue a warning, and the media will inevitably
jump. When it does, the first rule of reporting should be to determine whether the alerts are based on
anything at all and to put that information in the lede. Authorities flatly acknowledged two weeks ago
that they have no “credible” or “specific” information that any attacks will occur, but that barely
registered in the media’s coverage.
CBS News waited until the sixth paragraph in one of their main articles on the subject to tell its readers of the
mitigating information. USA Today also stuck the phrase in the middle of its sixth paragraph and never
returned to it. CNN, with a finely honed talent for siren headlines, didn’t disclose this information until their
10th paragraph.
NBC News, though, was the most brazen. They told readers that authorities “are unaware of any specific or
credible threat inside the country” in the 7th paragraph, quickly followed by a qualifier that could not contain
more hyperbole if they tried: “But the dangers are more complex and unpredictable than ever.” Really?
Apparently the dangers are more complex and unpredictable than ever if you ignore the fact that terrorism
attacks in the US are close to all-time lows, and that Americans have generally never been safer.
[Graphic Omitted]
None of these major news stories mentioned that the US government had issued similar terrorism
warnings that generated alarming headlines at least forty times since 9/11. As FAIR’s Adam Johnson
detailed, all forty times nothing happened . If news organizations are going to list all the reasons
readers should be scared, they should at least attempt to note the reasons that they probably
shouldn’t be.
Even if the info’s useful – it doesn’t have to be collected in bulk. Targeted and
narrow alternatives solve their link.
Wyden ‘14
(et al; This amicus brief issued by three US Senators - Ron Wyden, Mark Udall and Martin Heinrich. Wyden
and Udall sat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and had access to the meta-data program.
“BRIEF FOR AMICI CURIAE SENATOR RON WYDEN, SENATOR MARK UDALL, AND
SENATOR MARTIN HEINRICH IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFF-APPELLANT, URGING REVERSAL
OF THE DISTRICT COURT” – Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama – before the United States Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals - Appeal from the United States District Court District of Idaho The Honorable B. Lynn
Winmill, Chief District Judge, Presiding Case No. 2:13-cv-00257-BLW – Sept 9th, 2014 – This Amicus Brief
was prepared by CHARLES S. SIMS from the law firm PROSKAUER ROSE LLP. Continues to Footnote
#6 – no text omitted. Amici” means “friend of the court” and – in this context - is legal reference to Wyden,
Udall, etc. This pdf can be obtained at: https://www.eff.org/document/wyden-udall-heinrich-smith-amicus)
The government possesses a number of legal authorities with which it may obtain the call records of
suspected terrorists and those in contact with suspected terrorists. Amici have consistently argued that the bulk phone-records program needlessly tramples on Americans’ privacy
rights, particularly in light of the authorities available to the government that can also be used to acquire call records of suspected terrorists and those in contact with suspected terrorists in a targeted
manner. See Press Release, Sen. Martin Heinrich, Udall, Heinrich Back Effort To End Dragnet Collection of Phone Data & Add Meaningful Oversight of Surveillance Programs (Oct. 29, 2013),
http://1.usa.gov/182XcHE; Press Release, Sen. Mark Udall, Surveillance Reform Package Ends Bulk Collection of Phone Records, Creates Constitutional Advocate for Secret Court (Sept. 25, 2013),
Even the valid claims by intelligence officials about certain useful
information obtained through the bulk phone-records program fail to explain why the government could not
have simply obtained this information directly from phone companies using more calibrated legal instruments. A number
of legal authorities would have allowed the government to do so. For example, the Stored Communications Act permits the government to obtain
precisely the same call records that are now acquired through bulk collection under section 215 when they are
“relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation.” 18 U.S.C. § 2703 (d). Individualized orders for phone records, as opposed to
http://1.usa.gov/1bBGLku (“Udall Reform Release”).
orders authorizing bulk collection , can also be obtained under section 215. 50 U.S.C. § 1861. National security letters, which do not require a court
The government can also acquire telephony
metadata on a real-time basis by obtaining orders from either regular federal courts or the FISC for the installation of pen registers or trap-and-trace devices.
order, can also be used by the government to obtain call records for intelligence purposes. See 18 U.S.C. § 2709.
See 18 U.S.C. §§ 3122, 3125; 50 U.S.C. § 1842. And the government may also seek call records using standard criminal warrants based on probable cause. See 18 U.S.C. § 2703 (c)(A); Fed. R. Crim. P.
). The government can use many of these authorities without any more evidence than what is
currently required to use the bulk phone-records database, with less impact on the privacy interests
of innocent Americans.
17(c
Asia war
No escalation – regionalism and institutions
Acharya 13, Amitav, UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance and Chair of the
ASEAN Studies Center, Professor of Global Governance at the University of Bristol, Professor at York
University, Fellow of the Harvard University Asia Center, 2/1/13, (“Preventive Diplomacy:
Issues and Institutions in the Asia Pacific Region”,
http://www.amitavacharya.com/sites/default/files/Preventive%20Diplomacy.pdf, AW)
The regionalisation of preventive diplomacy has important implications for the Asia Pacific region. In
recent years, this region has seen an intensified search for new security concepts and efforts to
establish regional security dialogues and institutions. (Evans, 1994) Can preventive diplomacy provide a
useful conceptual tool for organising this search? This very question has been the basis of a landmark series
of workshops organised by the Thai Foreign Ministry (in collaboration with the Institute of Policy Studies in
Singapore). These workshops on "ASEAN-UN Cooperation in Peace and Preventive Diplomacy" have
provided valuable insights into the nature and scope of preventive diplomacy and the role of Asia Pacific
regional institutions in promoting it. (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Thailand, 1993a, 1993b and 1994; Pfennig,
1994)i In the absence of a comparable grouping in Northeast Asia, ASEAN represents an original and
authentic regional vehicle for the exercise of preventive diplomacy in the Asia Pacific region. While
ASEAN's contribution to the management and resolution of the Cambodia conflict is well known, it is
first and foremost an instrument for conflict prevention, especially in so far as disputes 7mong its
members are concerned. (Weatherbee, 1984) Though a formally-constituted regional institution, much of
ASEAN's role in conflict prevention is informal in nature. Strict adherence to intra-ASEAN norms such
as non-interference (by one member in the internal affairs of another) and non-use of force in inter-state
relations, as well as the time-honoured practice of consultations and accommodation have enabled
ASEAN members to virtually eliminate the possibility of any serious military escalation of intra-mural
disputes. As Noordin Sopiee put it, these norms and practices have "created a sturdy structure of trust,
confidence and goodwill between the member states" and contributed to ASEAN's role in
"sublimating and defusing conflicts as in actually resolving them." (Sopiee, 1986:227, 228) Contrary to a
popular belief, ASEAN's role in regional security affairs predates the end of the Cold War. (Malik, 1975,
Ghazalie Shafie, 1975; Jorgensen-Dahl, 1982; Sopiee, 1986; Wiseman, 1992) Its response to the Sabah dispute
(1968-69), its initiative on a Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality (ZOPFAN) in Southeast Asia, (based on
the Kuala Lumpur Declaration of 1971) and its Treaty of Amity, Friendship and Cooperation in Southeast
Asia (1976) were milestones in ASEAN's role in preventive diplomacy during the Cold War period. Among
the grouping's more important post-Cold War initiatives that fit into this mould are the ASEAN Declaration
on the South China Sea (1992) and the ongoing workshops hosted by Indonesia on "Managing Potential
Conflicts in the South China Sea". The Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) is of particular
significance, since it has functioned well as a normative framework committing the ASEAN members
to self-inhibiting and peaceful conduct in inter-state relations. The Treaty established a "code of
conduct" governing relations among the Southeast Asian countries, which in turn contributed to a habit of
conflict-avoidance. The treaty also provides a legal basis for the pacific settlement of disputes
consistent with the UN charter provisions. (Ho, 1994) Although its provision regarding the establishment of
a "High Council" for intra-regional dispute-settlement has never been invoked, ASEAN policy-makers offer
no apologies, since it testifies to the effect of ASEAN in reducing intra-mural conflicts to such an
extent that formal 7measures are deemed unnecessary. In this sense, the treaty is more credible as an
instrument of preventive diplomacy than of conflict-resolution in the conventional sense.
1AR – TPP – Iran Thumper
Obama’s pushing it now – it’s at the top of the docket.
Reuters, 7-19-2015, "Obama Sends Congress the Iran Nuclear Deal," Newsweek,
http://www.newsweek.com/obama-sends-congress-iran-nuclear-deal-355293
Obama has promised to exercise his veto if Congress rejects the deal, which curbs Iran's nuclear
program while allowing an easing of economic sanctions.¶ Try Newsweek for only $1.25 per week ¶
Overriding it would require a two-thirds majority of both the House of Representatives and Senate,
so the administration is working to win over enough of Obama's fellow Democrats to offset strong
Republican opposition.
Republicans are against him – he’s working hard.
Chris Villani, 7-19-2015, "Dem, GOP reps: Murky forecast for Iran deal in Congress," Boston Herald,
http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2015/07/dem_gop_reps_murky_forecast_for
_iran_deal_in_congress
The future of the Iran nuclear deal in Congress is uncertain, congressmen from both sides of the aisle
said on Boston Herald Radio today.¶ “I think it’s going to be close, but it’s hard to tell ,” Massachusetts
Democrat Michael Capuano said. “It looks at the moment as though most of the Republicans will be
in lock-step against whatever the president supports and there are some Democrats who will have
some problems with this. I think there are enough votes to support a veto, but the president has his
work cut out for him.”¶ “On my side of the aisle, I think there will be strong agreement to override,
the question is ‘what to the Democrats do?’” Oklahoma Republican Jim Bridenstine said. “From what I
have been hearing from some Democrats, it seems they are very concerned about this.”
Even his party is going against him.
Stoil, 7/12, (Rebecca Shimoni Stoil, Washington Correspondent for the Times of Israel and PhD candidate
at Johns Hopkins University, 7-12-2015, "Lawmakers warn Iran deal won’t have easy time in Congress,"
Times of Israel, http://www.timesofisrael.com/lawmakers-warn-iran-deal-wont-have-easy-time-in-congress/,
accessed 7/14/15, SAM)
SHINGTON — As reports emerged from Vienna that a nuclear deal could be struck as early as Sunday night, Washington’s leading
congressional point people on nuclear talks with Iran warned that the Obama administration would
have a tough time selling the pact in Washington. Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top
stories FREE SIGN UP! Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Fox News Sunday that the deal “is going to be a
very hard sell for the administration,” amid reports that both sides are looking for ways to sell the deal at home once it is reached.
If an agreement is reached between Iran and the P5+1 member states, Congress will have 60 days to review the deal, and then can vote either on a
resolution of approval or disapproval of the agreement. During his interview, McConnell suggested that the Senate would consider a resolution of
disapproval, and said that he believed that a number of Democrats would join the Republican majority in the
Senate in voting against the deal. “I know there will be a strong pull not to go against the president on something as important as this
is to him, but I hope there will be enough Democrats willing to look at this objectively,” McConnell added. A resolution of disapproval that passes
could serve to prevent the president from lifting some of the congressionally imposed sanctions against Iran. Unlike a failed vote of approval, however,
a vote of disapproval is subject to a presidential veto. McConnell said that after a near-inevitable presidential veto, the deal’s opponents would have to
enlist 13 Democrats to override the veto.
Yes Obama push – statements and veto threat prove
David E. Sanger and Michael R. Gordon, 7/14/15, David E. Sanger is chief Washington
correspondent of The New York Times and Michael R. Gordon writes for the New York Times, “Iran
Nuclear Deal ‘Built on Verification,’ Obama Says,”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/15/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-deal-is-reached-after-longnegotiations.html
VIENNA — Iran and a group of six nations led by the United States said they had reached a historic accord on Tuesday to significantly limit Tehran’s
nuclear ability for more than a decade in return for lifting international oil and financial sanctions.¶ The deal culminates 20 months of
negotiations on an agreement that President Obama had long sought as the biggest diplomatic
achievement of his presidency. Whether it portends a new relationship between the United States and Iran — after decades of coups,
hostage-taking, terrorism and sanctions — remains a bigger question.¶ Mr. Obama, in an early morning appearance at the
White House that was broadcast live in Iran, began what promised to be an
arduous effort to
sell the deal to Congress and the American public , saying the agreement is “not built on trust —
it is built on verification.Ӧ President Obama said he would veto any legislation that would block the
nuclear agreement with Iran.Congress to Start Review of Iran Nuclear DealJULY 14, 2015¶ Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
of Israel said on Tuesday that the accord with Iran would allow Tehran to continue Netanyahu Denounces Iran Nuclear Deal
as a ‘Historic Mistake’JULY 14, 2015¶ An oil refinery in Tehran. Iran has the world’s fourth-largest proven reserves of oil, behind Saudi Arabia,
Venezuela and Canada.To Tap Iran’s Oil, Companies Face Many Hurdles but an Eventual BoonJULY 14, 2015¶ video I.A.E.A. Head Confirms Iran
Nuclear PlanJULY 14, 2015¶ Mr. Obama
made it abundantly clear that he would fight to preserve the deal
from critics in Congress who are beginning a 60-day review, declaring, “ I will veto any legislation
that prevents the successful implementation of this deal.Ӧ
dickerson
Allows him to strip tea party gop
Dickerson 1/18 (John, Slate, Go for the Throat!,
www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2013/01/barack_obama_s_second_inaugural_address_t
he_president_should_declare_war.single.html)
On Monday, President Obama will preside over the grand reopening of his administration. It would be altogether fitting if he stepped to the microphone, looked down the
mall, and let out a sigh: so many people expecting so much from a government that appears capable of so little. A second inaugural suggests new beginnings, but this one is
being bookended by dead-end debates. Gridlock over the fiscal cliff preceded it and gridlock over the debt limit, sequester, and budget will follow. After
the election, the
same people are in power in all the branches of government and they don't get along.
There's no indication that the president's clashes with House Republicans will end soon. Inaugural speeches are supposed to be huge
and stirring. Presidents haul our heroes onstage, from George Washington to Martin Luther King Jr. George W. Bush brought the Liberty Bell. They use history to make
greatness and achievements seem like something you can just take down from the shelf. Americans are not stuck in the rut of the day. But this might be too much for
Obama’s second inaugural address: After the last four years, how do you call the nation and its elected representatives to common action while standing on the steps of a
building where collective action goes to die? That bipartisan bag of tricks has been tried and it didn’t work. People don’t believe it. Congress' approval rating is 14 percent,
the lowest in history. In a December Gallup poll, 77 percent of those asked said the way Washington works is doing “serious harm” to the country. The
challenge
for President Obama’s speech is the challenge of his second term: how to be great when the environment stinks.
Enhancing the president’s legacy requires something more than simply the clever application of predictable
stratagems . Washington’s partisan rancor, the size of the problems facing government, and the limited amount of time
before Obama is a lame duck all point to a single conclusion: The president who came into office speaking in lofty
terms about bipartisanship and cooperation can only cement his legacy if he destroys the GOP . If he wants to transform American
politics,
he must go for the throat . President Obama could, of course, resign himself to tending to the achievements of his first term. He'd make sure
health care reform is implemented, nurse the economy back to health, and put the military on a new footing after two wars. But he's more ambitious than that. He ran for
president as a one-term senator with no executive experience. In his first term, he pushed for the biggest overhaul of health care possible because, as he told his aides, he
wanted to make history. He may already have made it. There's no question that he is already a president of consequence. But there's no sign he's content to ride out the
second half of the game in the Barcalounger. He is approaching gun control, climate change, and immigration with wide and excited eyes. He's not going for caretaker. How
should the president proceed then, if he wants to be bold? The Barack Obama of the first administration might
have approached the task by
finding some Republicans to deal with and then start agreeing to some of their demands in hope that he would win some of their
votes. It's the traditional approach. Perhaps he could add a good deal more schmoozing with lawmakers, too. That's the old way. He has
abandoned that. He doesn't think it will work and he doesn't have the time. As Obama explained in his last press
Republicans are dead set on opposing him . They cannot be unchained by
schmoozing. Even if Obama were wrong about Republican intransigence, other constraints will limit
the chance for cooperation. Republican lawmakers worried about primary challenges in 2014 are not
going to be willing partners. He probably has at most 18 months before people start dropping the lame-duck label in close proximity to his name.
Obama’s only remaining option is to pulverize. Whether he succeeds in passing legislation or not, given his ambitions, his goal should be to
delegitimize his opponents. Through a series of clarifying fights over controversial issues , he can force
conference, he thinks the
Republicans to either side with their coalition's most extreme elements or cause a rift in the party that will leave it, at least
temporarily, in
disarray .
Stuff
Fast Track authority ensures TPP will pass WITH EASE – structural factors,
last realistic barrier, and passage was a white flag for deal opponents in congress
Lopez, 6/24 – Laura Barron-Lopez, covers Congress for The Huffington Post. Previously, she reported
for The Hill and E&E Publishing's Greenwire, Huffington Post, 6/24/15,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/24/pelosi-backs-taa_n_7654954.html
Pelosi Stands Down On TAA, Clearing Way For Obama's Trade Agenda House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)
waved the white flag on Wednesday, telling her caucus she would support passage of a key measure
tethered to President Barack Obama's broader trade agenda . Her support all but guarantees that the
measure will succeed, thereby handing Obama a major victory on trade. Pelosi and House
Democrats were the last obstacle against Republican and pro-trade Democrats' efforts to grant
Obama so-called "fast-track" authority to clear major trade deals, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership ,
through Congress with ease . House Democrats succeeded in blocking fast-track nearly two weeks ago when they defeated Trade Adjustment
Assistance, which was tied to the fast-track legislation. TAA provides aid to workers who have lost their jobs as a result of trade deals. In response to the defeat of TAA,
Obama and Republican leaders crafted a new plan to pass fast-track, also known as Trade Promotion Authority, as a standalone bill without TAA. The clean fast-track bill,
already passed by the House, is expected to sail through the Senate later Wednesday and then on to Obama's desk. Next, the Senate will immediately move to pass TAA for
workers, which is now attached to an African trade preferences bill, after which it will be sent back to the House. And with Pelosi's support, TAA should have the votes for
passage. "I’m disappointed that the TAA bill isn’t nearly as robust as it should be in light of a trade agreement that encompasses 40 percent of the global economy," Pelosi
wrote in a Dear Colleague letter to House Democrats. "While we may not all vote in the same manner on TAA, I will support its passage because it can open the door to a
full debate on TPP." Obama is currently negotiating the TPP with 11 Pacific nations. The TPP and two other large trade deals that the administration is working on,
together encompass over half of the world's economy. The passage of the agreements
depends on Congress granting him fast-track
powers. Pelosi and a majority of House Democrats oppose fast-track, as well as the massive trade deals that the administration is pushing. They argue that such deals
fail to protect workers at home, lack sufficiently robust environmental standards and financial regulations, and do nothing to stop unfair currency manipulation. "My
standard for any trade agreement is that it must create good-paying 21st century jobs, increase the paychecks of American workers, and it must do so recognizing the
relationship between commerce and climate," Pelosi wrote. With
fast-track legislation expected to reach Obama's desk Wednesday evening and be
signed into law, the public will have only two months to read and understand deals such as the TPP after
they are negotiated and before the president signs them. Congress will have to approve the deals as
quickly as one month after that, with no changes allowed .
TPP Guaranteed - no filibuster, dems don’t want the fight, TPA passage make
political downsides a sunk cost – fights on other issues don’t spillover to trade
anyway
Weisman, 6/23 – Jonathan, Economic Policy Reporter @ NYT, 6/23/15,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/us/politics/senate-vote-on-trade-bill.html
The Senate on
to end debate on legislation granting Mr. Obama enhanced negotiating powers to
complete a major Pacific trade accord, virtually assuring final passage Wednesday of Mr. Obama’s top
legislative priority in his final years in office. The procedural vote of 60 to 37 just reached the minimum needed, but final Senate passage will require only 51
President Obama’s ambitious trade push is back on track, after several near-death moments, in large measure because top Republicans stood by him.
Tuesday narrowly voted
votes. The House approved trade promotion authority last week. Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House, criticized the Republicans’ approach,
saying it would hinder the ability to address climate change and its connection to commerce through the broader trade bill.House Sends Trade Bill Back to Senate in Bid to
Outflank FoesJUNE 18, 2015 People harvesting lychee in Vietnam, which is the only Communist member of the prospective Trans-Pacific Partnership.Failure of Obama’s
Trans-Pacific Trade Deal Could Hurt U.S. Influence in AsiaJUNE 16, 2015 House Republicans and White House Try to Revive Trade Bill Stalled by DemocratsJUNE 15,
2015 With
congressional support for “fast track” authority, the president can press for final agreement
on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a legacy-defining accord linking 40 percent of the world’s economy — from Canada and Chile to Japan and
Australia — in a web of rules governing Pacific commerce. His administration can also bear down on a second agreement with Europe — known as the Transatlantic Trade
and Investment Partnership — knowing
that lawmakers will be able to vote for or against those agreements but
will not be able to amend or filibuster them. The Atlantic agreement is not expected to be completed until the next administration is in
office, but the trade negotiating powers would stretch for six years — well into the next presidency. Together those two accords would put much of the globe under the
same trade rules, not only lowering tariffs and other import barriers but also creating new standards for Internet access, intellectual property and investor protections. “This
is a very important day for our country,” said Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, whose procedural maneuvering was largely
responsible for the outcome. “America is back in the trade business.” Most Democrats — along with labor unions, environmental groups and liberal activists — disagreed,
saying that such trade agreements had resulted in lost manufacturing jobs and lower wages for American workers. “It is a great day for the big money interests, not a great
day for working families,” said Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. But 13 Democrats sided with
Republicans to end the debate and get to a final vote on trade promotion authority. Tuesday’s vote was the second time the Senate had blocked a filibuster of fast-track
authority, but this time the bill was shorn of a separate measure to offer enhanced retraining and educational assistance to workers displaced by international trade accords.
That measure also faces a crucial vote on Wednesday. Passage of a stand-alone trade promotion bill will put pressure on House Democrats, who just over a week ago
brought down the worker aid provision, known as trade adjustment assistance, when it was linked to the fast-track legislation, in a strategic move they hoped would defeat
the entire trade package. But Republican leaders — with support from the White House — found a parliamentary way to corner the Democratic opponents, by separating
the two pieces of the bill. By Wednesday evening, legislation
will most likely be on the president’s desk, giving him the
power to complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He can sign it whether or not the House passes worker dislocation assistance when it is
scheduled to come to a vote late Thursday. Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said House Democrats should get on board. “The previous explanation that we
heard from some Democrats who voted against trade adjustment assistance — something that Democrats have steadfastly supported for decades — is that they were doing
that in an effort to slow down the advancement of trade promotion authority legislation,” he said. “That will no longer be a factor to consider.” The
tortuous
path of the trade legislation over the last six months created the unusual alliance between Mr. Obama and
Republican leaders, who otherwise have worked to thwart him on domestic and foreign policies.
“Occasionally, even the leader of the Democratic Party, the president of the United States, gets things right,” said Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Republican. In
the end, Mr. McConnell
all but secured the top remaining legislative priority of a president he once vowed to turn
out after one term. The Senate is set on Wednesday to give final approval to trade promotion authority, then vote to end debate on a separate bill that attaches worker
dislocation assistance to a broadly popular bill extending a trade agreement with several African countries. To attract more votes, Senate leaders added another provision
speeding up action against foreign competitors who are found to be “dumping” — selling steel and other products in the United States at artificially low prices in an effort
to put domestic manufacturers out of business. Senators would vote on that package on Thursday, and if it is approved, as expected, it would go to the House the same day.
This time, if Democrats vote down trade adjustment assistance, they will be effectively killing a worker education and retraining program created during the Kennedy
administration and that party members have nurtured ever since, but will still most likely watch Mr. Obama sign the fast-track bill into law. “I don’t think any Democrats
voted against T.A.A. last time because they opposed T.A.A.,” said Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the House’s No. 2 Democrat. “I will concede there will be a
different context” around the next vote. At the same time, House and Senate negotiators will begin hashing out differences over a separate bill enhancing measures to police
trade agreements. Opponents had hoped that trade promotion authority without worker assistance would run into trouble in the Senate. And some Democrats tried to stoke
fears that Congress could give the president the power to complete major trade deals without assistance to affected workers. “How shameful is that?” said Senator Sherrod
Brown, Democrat of Ohio, who led the opposition to trade promotion authority. “We’re making this decision knowing people will lose their jobs because of our actions.
Yet we are not going to pass this assistance.” In the end, though ,
Democratic senators who had already voted once for trade
promotion authority understood they were not going to escape the criticism , especially from the
unions. They wanted to be done with it . Senate Democrats had already taken a lot of hits in getting to
this point,” said Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee and a co-author of the trade promotion bill.