Round 1—Neg vs Emory RS
1NC
1NC BROWN DA
Brown is pushing high speed rail
Marinucci, 14 --- senior political writer for The San Francisco Chronicle (5/17/2014, Carla,
“Brown doubles down on high-speed rail amid calls for restraint,”
http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Brown-doubles-down-on-high-speed-rail-amid-calls5484808.php, JMP)
Preparing for looming budget battles with the Democratic-controlled Legislature, Gov. Jerry
Brown warned Friday that lawmakers must balance "desire and need" for expensive social
programs - even as he defiantly doubled down on support for the increasingly unpopular
high-speed rail system, saying it remains emblematic of his passion to "build great things" in his
final term as governor.
In a wide-ranging editorial board meeting with The Chronicle's editors and reporters, Brown
presented a lively case - characteristically peppered with Latin phrases and literary references for a fourth term in office, arguing he has helped create an "unprecedented" 1.3 million jobs,
reduced unemployment, and put the state back on a track for an economic comeback that is the
"biggest in the country."
"Tell me how you're going to beat that?" he said, laughing. He then added: "I'd just like to keep
that going and not screw it up."
Brown was most passionate in his defense of a high-speed rail plan connecting Los Angeles and
San Francisco, a 520-mile project expected to eventually cost $68 billion. The projected outlay
has drawn scathing criticism from Republican gubernatorial candidates Assemblyman Tim
Donnelly and former Treasury official Neel Kashkari, who has dubbed it the "Crazy Train."
Calling the bullet train a crucial test of "our capacity as a state," Brown asked: "Can we be bold or are we all just going to shrink back into our Lilliputian faintness of heart?
"I get very concerned in America (that) we're losing the capacity to make decisions, to be unified
as a nation and have a vision, and move forward to make it happen," he said. "I'm going to build
great things, I'm going to do big things, and I'm not going to be intimidated by these fears of
things that are part of life."
'We can build it'
Brown also dismissed concerns about the cost, difficulty and scope of the project, saying that
this is the state that helped construct the transcontinental railroad and such huge infrastructure
projects as BART.
"We can build it. We can link the north to the south. We can reshape the land use in the Central
Valley, where land prices are cheaper," he said. "We can do it in an elegant way.
"It's cheaper than more highways ... and it's better for greenhouse gases. We can do it with
renewable energy ... and it will be a model for the country.
"And if 17 other countries can do it, California can," he said.
Legalization kills PC – Republican backlash.
Nagourney, 14 (4/5/2014, Adam, “Despite Support in Party, Democratic Governors Resist
Legalizing Marijuana,” http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/us/politics/despite-support-inparty-democratic-governors-resist-legalizing-marijuana.html?_r=0, JMP)
LOS ANGELES — California voters strongly favor legalizing marijuana. The state Democratic
Party adopted a platform last month urging California to follow Colorado and Washington in
ending marijuana prohibition. The state’s lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom, has called for
legalizing the drug.
But not Gov. Jerry Brown. “I think we ought to kind of watch and see how things go in
Colorado,” Mr. Brown, a Democrat, said curtly when asked the question as he was presenting his
state budget this year.
At a time of rapidly evolving attitudes toward marijuana legalization — a slight majority of
Americans now support legalizing the drug — Democratic governors across the country, Mr.
Brown among them, find themselves uncomfortably at odds with their own base.
Even with Democrats and younger voters leading the wave of the pro-legalization shift, these
governors are standing back, supporting much more limited medical-marijuana proposals
or invoking the kind of law-and-order and public-health arguments more commonly heard from
Republicans. While 17 more states — most of them leaning Democratic — have seen bills
introduced this year to follow Colorado and Washington in approving recreational marijuana,
no sitting governor or member of the Senate has offered a full-out endorsement of legalization.
Only Gov. Peter Shumlin, a Democrat in Vermont, which is struggling with a heroin problem,
said he was open to the idea.
“Quite frankly, I don’t think we are ready, or want to go down that road,” Dannel P. Malloy, the
Democratic governor of Connecticut, which has legalized medical marijuana and decriminalized
possession of small amounts of marijuana, said in an interview. “Perhaps the best way to handle
this is to watch those experiments that are underway. I don’t think it’s necessary, and I don’t
think it’s appropriate.”
The hesitance expressed by these governors reflects not only governing concerns but also,
several analysts said, a historically rooted political wariness of being portrayed as
soft on crime by Republicans. In particular, Mr. Brown, who is 75, lived through the culture
wars of the 1960s, when Democrats suffered from being seen as permissive on issues like this.
“Either they don’t care about it as passionately or they feel embarrassed or vulnerable. They fear
the judgment,” said Ethan Nadelmann, the founder of the Drug Policy Alliance, an organization
that favors decriminalization of marijuana. “The fear of being soft on drugs, soft on
marijuana, soft on crime is woven into the DNA of American politicians, especially
Democrats.”
He described that sentiment as, “Do not let yourself be outflanked by Republicans
when it comes to being tough on crime and tough on drugs. You will lose.”
In Washington and Colorado, the Democratic governors had opposed legalization from the start,
though each made clear that he would follow voters’ wishes in setting up the first legal
recreational-marijuana marketplaces in the nation. “If it was up to me, being in the middle of it,
and having read all this research and having some concern, I’d tell people just to exercise
caution,” Gov. John W. Hickenlooper of Colorado said in a recent interview.
Brown’s pc is key to high speed rail
Wood, 14 (1/7/2014, Daniel B, “California bullet train? How Jerry Brown is at war with
himself,” http://www.minnpost.com/christian-science-monitor/2014/01/california-bullettrain-how-jerry-brown-war-himself, JMP)
California Gov. Jerry Brown's own political spokesman, Dan Newman, has called his boss, "the
cheapskate who also thinks big," and nowhere is this more apparent today than in his avowed
dream to build a bullet train for the Golden State.
This week. with the state’s unemployment rate down (8.7 percent) and tax revenues up, at least
temporarily, Governor Brown is moving ahead with a project that will either place California
in the vanguard of a transportation revolution for the 21st century – or push it off a
cliff into the financial abyss. Analysts are watching to see if Brown can meld his two personas
successfully in an election year, or if he self-destructs in the attempt.
Supporters say Brown’s new twist at funding the bullet train is Brown at his visionary,
politician-of-experience best. Detractors say this is just the dangerous kind of sleight-of-hand
that Brown, appealing to voters in 2010, promised he wouldn’t pull.
The good news for the governor is that administration officials now expect a $4.2-billion state
budgetary surplus by the end of June – as opposed to the $26.6-billion deficit Brown
encountered when he took office in 2011. Brown last week admonished state voters and
legislators that it is time to be frugal with the slight increase, rather than spend it profligately as
in the past. But at the same time, he has proposed a new way to temporarily fund the state’s
bullet train, which has been losing public support ever since voters approved a bond measure
(Prop. 1A) for the idea in 2008.
“Jerry Brown is at war with himself on public finance. On the one hand he has said that the good
budgetary news could be fleeting,” says Jack Pitney, professor of government at Claremont
McKenna College. “On the other hand, he is committing to a project that assumes that the
money will keep rolling in.”
The proposed $68-billion high-speed rail system's finances have become increasingly uncertain
in recent weeks.
In a December legal ruling, the California High Speed Rail Authority lost the ability to tap $9
billion in state bond funds. Brown then proposed collecting millions in fees from businesses that
exceed greenhouse gas emissions, known as cap-and-trade funds. Republicans and
environmentalists oppose that plan, saying it may be illegal, in that the cap-and-trade exchange
grew out of the state’s landmark global warming law in 2006 and should be dedicated solely to
reducing the state’s emissions 20 percent by 2020.
Brown responded last week in a budget meeting with comments he has made several times
before, comparing the train project to building the Golden Gate Bridge, the transcontinental
railroad and the Panama Canal, all of which he said faced "criticisms, skepticism, and attack."
Such a project is needed, he said, to unite a wildly diverse state.
"It reduces greenhouse gases, it ties our California together. We are divided in many
respects: north and south, the coast and the center of the state. We have to pull together to form
a greater community, and the high-speed rail serves all of those functions," Brown told
reporters.
But several detractors have come forward.
Republican Sen. Andy Vidak (R) of Hanford, says that since the passage of Prop. 1A in 2008,
voters have learned the project will not be able to meet its original goals, and points out that a
recent LA Times poll found that 52 percent of Californians are now opposed to the project and
70 percent want a re-vote.
The source of the objections outlined by Senator Vidak range from a ballooning price tag (from
$33 billion in 2008 to $100 billion and beyond) and slower travel, to revised routes that move
the bullet train from existing travel corridors and put farms and businesses in its path.
Other prominent Republicans have joined with Vidak.
The actual cost of the bullet train will exceed $100 billion “and maybe even $200 billion by the
time it is eventually built,” asserts Gary Aminoff, founder of the San Fernando Valley
Republican Club, calling the project “a huge ‘boondoggle’ that the state can ill afford” and that
“very few people will use.”
While Brown’s Democratic Party controls both houses of the Legislature, analysts say Brown has
an uphill fight.
“To pay for this bullet train, Brown is going to have to trot out yards of political
capital,” says David McCuan, professor of political science at Sonoma State University.
“He'll have to ask legislators to suspend their beliefs about re-investing in their own projects and
their own priorities that were cut extensively since 2007. This train is really about two things –
building that visionary project and getting California's fiscal house in order,” says McCuan. “Can
he push the naysayers and nitpickers in the Legislature far enough along to deliver this project
to California remains an open question. Things like reelection, a drought, and a burgeoning
prison population might stand in the path of that high-speed train.”
HSR solves the economy
Todorovich et al. 11 — Petra Todorovich, Director of America 2050—a national urban
planning initiative to develop an infrastructure and growth strategy for the United States,
Assistant Visiting Professor at the Pratt Institute Graduate Center for Planning and the
Environment, Member of the Board of Advisors of the Eno Transportation Foundation, holds an
M.A. in City and Regional Planning from the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at
Rutgers University, et al., with Daniel Schned, Associate Planner for America 2050, Lecturer at
the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, holds an
M.A. in City and Regional Planning and a Certificate in Geographic Information Systems from
Rutgers University, and Robert Lane, Senior Fellow for Urban Design at Regional Plan
Association, Founding Principal of Plan & Process LLP, former Loeb Fellow at the Harvard
Graduate School of Design, holds an M.A. in Architecture from Columbia University, 2011
(“Chapter 2: Potential Benefits of High-Speed Rail,” High-Speed Rail: International Lessons for
U.S. Policy Makers, Policy Focus Report of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, ISBN
9781558442221, Available Online at https://www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/dl/1948_1268_HighSpeed%20Rail%20PFR_Webster.pdf, Accessed 06-08-2012, p. 16-18)
High-speed rail’s ability to promote economic growth is grounded in its capacity to increase
access to markets and exert positive effects on the spatial distribution of economic activity
(Redding and Sturm 2008). Transportation networks increase market access, and economic
development is more likely to occur in places with more and better transportation
infrastructure. In theory, by improving access to urban markets, high-speed rail increases
employment, wages, and productivity; encourages agglomeration; and boosts regional and local
economies. Empirical evidence of high-speed rail’s impact around the world tends to support the following
theoretical arguments for high-speed rail’s economic benefits.
Higher wages and productivity : The time savings and increased mobility offered by high-speed rail
enables workers in the service sector and in information-exchange industries to move about the
megaregion more freely and reduces the costs of face-to-face communication. This enhanced
connectivity boosts worker productivity and business competitiveness, [end page 16] leading to
higher wages (Greengauge 21 2010).
Deeper labor and employment markets : By connecting more communities to other
population and job centers, high-speed rail expands the overall commuter shed of the
megaregion. The deepened labor markets give employers access to larger pools of skilled
workers, employees access to more employment options, and workers access to more and
cheaper housing options outside of expensive city centers (Stolarick, Swain, and Adleraim 2010).
Expanded tourism and visitor spending : Just as airports bring visitors and their spending power into the
local economy, high-speed rail stations attract new tourists and business travelers who might not
have made the trip otherwise. A study by the U.S. Conference of Mayors (2010) concluded that building high-speed rail
would increase visitor spending annually by roughly $225 million in the Orlando region, $360 million in metropolitan Los Angeles,
$50 million in the Chicago area, and $100 million in Greater Albany, New York.
Direct job creation : High-speed rail creates thousands of construction-related jobs in design,
engineering, planning, and construction, as well as jobs in ongoing maintenance and operations.
In Spain, the expansion of the high-speed AVE system from Malaga to Seville is predicted to create 30,000 construction jobs (Euro
Weekly 2010). In China, over 100,000 construction workers were involved in building the high-speed rail line that connects Beijing
and Shanghai (Bradsher 2010). Sustained investment could foster the development of new
manufacturing industries for rail cars and other equipment, and generate large amounts of
related employment.
Urban regeneration and station area development : High-speed rail can generate growth
in real estate markets and anchor investment in commercial and residential developments
around train stations, especially when they are built in coordination with a broader set of public interventions and urban
design strategies (see chapter 3). These interventions ensure that high-speed rail is integrated into the urban and regional fabric,
which in turn ensures the highest level of ridership and economic activity. For example, the city of Lille, France, experienced greater
than average growth and substantial office and hotel development after its high-speed rail station was built at the crossroads of lines
linking London, Paris, and Brussels (Nuworsoo and Deakin 2009).
Spatial agglomeration : High-speed rail enhances agglomeration economies by creating
greater proximity between business locations through shrinking time distances, especially when the
locations are within the rail-friendly 100 to 600 mile range. Agglomeration economies occur when firms benefit
from locating close to other complementary firms and make use of the accessibility to varied
activities and pools of skilled labor. [end page 17] High-speed rail has also been described as altering the economic
geography of megaregions. By effectively bringing economic agents closer together, high-speed rail can
create new linkages among firms, suppliers, employees, and consumers that, over time, foster
spatial concentration within regions (Ahlfeldt and Feddersen 2010). This interactive process creates net
economic gains in addition to the other economic benefits described here.
1NC GOV STORES CP
The United States federal government should amend the Controlled Substances
Act to establish waivers for, or otherwise exempt from federal penalties on the use,
possession, and sale of marihuana, those who act in compliance with states who
pass laws restricting the use, possession and sale of marihuana to state-run retail
stores and overseen by a board of professionals housed in state health
departments. These stores should abide by federal regulations and a federallymandated minimum retail price and buy their supply from non-advertising
marihuana growers.
The counterplan solves
Kleiman 14—professor of public policy at UCLA
(Mark, “How Not to Make a Hash Out of Cannabis Legalization”,
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/march_april_may_2014/features/how_not_to_make_a_hash_out_of049291.php
?page=all#, dml)
What’s needed is federal legislation requiring states that legalize cannabis to structure their pot
markets such that they won’t get captured by commercial interests. There are any number of ways to
do that, so the legislation wouldn’t have to be overly prescriptive. States could, for instance, allow marijuana to be sold only through
nonprofit outlets, or distributed via small consumer-owned co-ops (see Jonathan P. Caulkins, “Nonprofit Motive”). The
most
effective way , however, would be through a system of state-run retail stores.
There’s plenty of precedent for this: states from Utah to Pennsylvania to Alabama restrict hard liquor sales
to stateoperated or state-controlled outlets. Such “ABC” (“alcoholic beverage control”) stores date back to the end of
Prohibition, and operationally they work fine. Similar “pot control” stores could work fine for marijuana, too. A
“state store” system would also allow the states to control the pot supply chain. By contracting
with many small growers, rather than a few giant ones, states could check the industry’s
political power (concentrated industries are almost always more effective at lobbying than those
comprised of many small companies) and maintain consumer choice by avoiding a beer-like oligopoly offering virtually
interchangeable products.
States could also insist that the private growers sign contracts forbidding them from marketing to
the public. Imposing that rule as part of a vendor agreement rather than as a regulation might
avoid the “commercial free speech” issue, thus eliminating the specter of manipulative marijuana
advertising filling the airwaves and covering highway billboards. To prevent interstate smuggling, the federal
government should do what it has failed to do with cigarettes: mandate a minimum retail price.
Of course, there’s a danger that states themselves, hungry for tax dollars, could abuse their monopoly power
over pot, just as they have with state lotteries. To avert that outcome, states should avoid the mistake they made with
lotteries: housing them in state revenue departments, which focus on maximizing state income. Instead, the new marijuana
control programs should reside in state health departments and be overseen by boards with a
majority of health care and substance-abuse professionals. Politicians eager for revenue might still press for
higher pot sales than would be good for public health, but they’d at least have to fight a resistant
bureaucracy.
How could the federal government get the states to structure their pot markets in ways like
these? By giving a new twist to a tried-and-true tool that the Obama administration has wielded particularly effectively: the
policy waiver. The federal government would recognize the legal status of cannabis under a
state system—making the activities permitted under that system actually legal, not merely tolerated,
under federal law—only if the state system contained adequate controls to protect public health
and safety, as determined by the attorney general and the secretary of the department of health and human services. That
would change the politics of legalization at the state level, with legalization advocates and
the cannabis industry supporting tight controls in order to get, and keep, the all-important
waiver. Then we would see the laboratories of democracy doing some serious experimentation.
The aff results in conflicting regulatory and tax regimes and causes corporate
domination—counterplan’s key
Kleiman 14—professor of public policy at UCLA
(Mark, “How Not to Make a Hash Out of Cannabis Legalization”,
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/march_april_may_2014/features/how_not_to_make_a_hash_out_of049291.php
?page=all#, dml)
But letting
legalization unfold state by state, with the federal government a mostly helpless bystander,
risks creating a monstrosity ; Dr. Frankenstein also had a laboratory. Right now, officials in Washington
and Colorado are busy issuing state licenses to cannabis growers and retailers to do things that remain
drug-dealing felonies under federal law. The Justice Department could have shut down the process
by going after all the license applicants. But doing so would have run the risk of having the two states drop
their own enforcement efforts and challenge the feds to do the job alone, something the DEA
simply doesn’t have the bodies to handle: Washington and Colorado alone have about four times as many state and local
police as there are DEA agents worldwide. Faced with that risk, and with its statutory obligation to
cooperate with the states on drug enforcement, Justice chose accommodation.
In August, the deputy U.S. attorney general issued a formal—though nonbinding—assurance that the
feds would take a mostly hands-off approach. The memo says that as long as state governments
pursue “strong and effective” regulation to prevent activities such as distribution to minors, dealing by gangs and
cartels, dealing other drugs, selling across state lines, possession of weapons and use of violence, and drugged driving, and as
long as marijuana growing and selling doesn’t take place on public lands or federal property,
enforcement against state-licensed cannabis activity will rank low on the federal priority list. Justice has even
announced that it is working with the Treasury Department to reinterpret the banking laws to allow state-licensed cannabis
businesses to have checking accounts and take credit cards, avoiding the robbery risks incident to all-cash businesses.
That leaves the brand-new cannabis businesses in Colorado and Washington in statutory limbo.
They’re quasi-pseudo-hemi-demi-legal: permitted under state law, but forbidden under a
federal law that might not be enforced—until, say, the inauguration of President Huckabee, at
which point growers and vendors, as well as their lawyers, accountants, and bankers, could go to prison for the
things they’re doing openly today.
But even if the federal-state legal issues get resolved, the state-level tax and regulation systems
likely to emerge will be far from ideal . While they will probably do a good job of eliminating the illicit cannabis
markets in those states, they’ll be mediocre to lousy at preventing an upsurge of drug abuse as cheap,
quality-tested, easily available legal pot replaces the more expensive, unreliable, and harder-to-find
material the black market offers.
The systems being put into place in Washington and Colorado roughly resemble those imposed
on alcohol after Prohibition ended in 1933. A set of competitive commercial enterprises produce the pot, and a set of competitive
commercial enterprises sell it, under modest regulations: a limited number of licenses, no direct sales to minors, no marketing
obviously directed at minors, purity/potency testing and labeling, security rules. The post-Prohibition restrictions on
alcohol worked reasonably well for a while, but have been substantially undermined over the years as
the beer and liquor industries consolidated and used their economies of scale to lower production
costs and their lobbying muscle to loosen regulations and keep taxes low (see Tim Heffernan,
“Last Call”).
The same will likely happen with cannabis . As more and more states begin
to legalize marijuana over the next few years, the cannabis industry will begin to get richer—and that
means it will start to wield considerably more political power, not only over the states but over
national policy, too.
That’s how we could get locked into a bad system in which the primary downside of legalizing
pot—increased drug abuse, especially by minors—will be greater than it needs to be, and the benefits,
including tax revenues, smaller than they could be . It’s easy to imagine the cannabis
equivalent of an Anheuser-Busch InBev peddling low-cost, high-octane cannabis in Super Bowl
commercials. We can do better than that, but only if Congress takes action—and soon.
Corporatization creates unmanageable price fluctuations
Vlahos 14—DC-based journalist
(Kelley, “Cannabis Goes Corporate”, http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/fear-the-rise-of-big-pot/, dml)
The market has been helped along, for sure, by the federal government signaling that it’s safe for
banks to work with marijuana businesses in the states where marijuana is legal. This means Colorado
and Washington, where it is fully legal, and 21 states, including the District of Columbia, with medical marijuana laws. Just recently,
both Maryland and D.C. voted to decriminalize pot possession. Though Capitol Hill still seems reticent to take pot off Schedule I,
Attorney General Eric Holder said last week that, “our administration would be glad to work with Congress if such a proposal were
made.”
In fact, this easing by the administration—and the president’s own words about marijuana—has seemingly
accelerated the country’s 21st-century gold rush.
So how to handle it? Very carefully, says Kleiman and others who prefer a model with greater
government control—a monopoly even. They say that managing accessibility is the only way to keep
prices from going too high or too low , as well as ensuring that weed stays out of the hands of children and the
public health risks are emphasized over the glorification of the drug.
“What’s needed is federal legislation requiring states
that legalize cannabis to structure their pot
markets such that they won’t get captured by commercial interests.” Instead, only allow the sale of
marijuana through nonprofit outlets like co-ops, or state-run stores, much like the way hard alcohol is sold in Virginia
and New Hampshire today, Kleiman wrote in March.
While libertarians may chafe at the notion, the
alternative isn’t necessarily attractive either. One can imagine a WalMart of pot driving out the mom-and-pop operations with big professional farms, supplying
companies “that use marketing savvy to develop and exploit brand equity…driven by profit and shareholders’ interests, not concern for public health or
countercultural values,” writes Carnegie Mellon’s Jonathan Caulkins for Washington Monthly. Soon, pot, like in the ubiquitous aforementioned
advertisements, will
become a staple in American social identity, ready or not. One needs only to look how
alcohol advertising (an estimated $6 billion a year industry) is used to target teens today to see how crude the
transformation might get.
That causes retailer shutdown—turns the aff
McVay 14—attorney for Harris and Moure
(Robert, “Marijuana Sales Contracts: Dealing With Price Fluctuations”, http://www.cannalawblog.com/marijuana-sales-contractsdealing-with-price-fluctuations/, dml)
But retailers who enter into such arrangements without sufficient protections will regret it if marijuana prices
decline and supply catches up with or even exceeds demand. Retailers with long-term contracts
at higher than market prices might find themselves priced out of the market or, at best,
competing with other retailers that can pay significantly less for the same supply of product. On
the other hand, if prices rise or supply dwindles, marijuana producers that have locked themselves
into contracts with long-term (low) pricing will face similar problems.
These issues are only exacerbated when state-legal businesses are just beginning to
operate. There will be too few licensed producers when retail shops first open their doors.
Demand will be at an apex if only for the novelty of legal marijuana, but supply will be low. Producers will
want to require long term contracts at existing prices and retailers will feel pressure to oblige.
Other agricultural products face similar situations when growing or harvesting first starts , or when
weather impacts crop yields. But unlike marijuana, the markets for these products are more national (in
many cases international), more liquid, more sophisticated, and more efficient. Buyers and sellers of other agricultural
products are also usually able to at least somewhat hedge their price risks by buying or selling options on futures markets.
Ending subsidies solves industrial ag crowd-out
O'Connor 2012 (Anna [JD, University of Kansas]; ARTICLE: FENCE ROW TO FENCE
ROW: AN EXAMINATION OF FEDERAL COMMODITY SUBSIDIES; 21 Kan. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y
432; kdf)
Commodity subsidies create a toxic environment where small family farmers are driven out of
business and larger, more mechanized farm corporations grow bigger and bigger, collecting more and more subsidies along the
way. Commodity subsidies contribute to the use of agricultural practices that pollute U.S.
waterways and degrade the environment. Commodity subsidies encourage farmers to grow as much as they can of
crops that inevitably become unhealthy food that is shortening the lives of Americans, particularly children, and driving up
healthcare costs for the entire country. In the 2012 Farm Bill, Congress should drastically reengineer commodity
subsidies, shifting the subsidies to other foods, if not eliminate them entirely. Eliminating subsidies is not without precedent. In
1985, the New Zealand government eliminated nearly all agricultural support - nearly thirty different kinds of subsidy programs and
export incentives altogether. n154 Experts estimated that huge numbers of farmers would leave their land, unable to make a livable
income without the government support that had previously made up 40% of the gross income of New Zealand farmers. n155
Instead, only 800 farms, or 1% of the total number of New Zealand farms, faced forced sales, and the agricultural economy in New
Zealand bounced back stronger than ever. n156 How? Farmers began farming better. n157 Rather than chase subsidies by pursuing
maximum production at any cost, farmers began to maintain cost structures that reflected the real earning capacity of their farms.
n158 Water quality also improved as wasteful practices that had been fueled by subsidies [*447] stopped. n159 Farmers adopted a
more efficient, targeted use of farm inputs and farming of marginal and unstable or infertile land decreased. n160 Commodity
subsidies create an artificial market that would not exist if they were eliminated. Once Congress takes
the money out of commodities like corn, there will likely be less corn planted. Farmers will continue to farm, but their focus will
necessarily have to shift to other crops and animals. The cost of corn is likely to increase, potentially making HFCS too expensive to
sweeten junk foods. Without a flood of cheap corn coming in, CAFOs would be less economically
feasible. Rural land values artificially inflated by subsidies should return to a much more realistic number, and more people could
go into farming - which would be a great boon in the current job market. The organization that sponsors the sign on I-70 would have
to recalculate their numbers, because more farmers means less than 128 people fed per farmer. Perhaps Congress does not even
need to eliminate commodity subsidies, but simply divert them to other foods. Currently American farmers grow more corn for cars
and cows than for humans. n161 The federal government could shift commodity subsidies to subsidize farmers that grow actual food
for direct consumption without processing. Subsidizing real foods would make the price of healthier foods like fruits and vegetables
more competitive with processed foods, especially because those processed foods will no longer have corn subsidies making them
cheap. n162 On a larger scale, shifting commodity subsidies to real food should go far in helping the obesity epidemic, which would
in turn drastically lower healthcare costs. Or, Congress could subsidize organic foods rather than commodities. Subsidizing organics
would decrease the amount of heavy pesticides and fertilizers used on America's farms. Less dangerous chemicals would end up in
our waterways and oceans, improving water quality and reducing or eliminating the "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as
decreasing the health risks associated with pesticides and fertilizers. Subsidizing organic food would also go far in leveling the price
playing field with non-organic foods. Unfortunately, any changes to the Farm Bill must go through Congress. No President - whether
Democrat or Republican - has been able to make changes to our commodity subsidy system. For example, former President George
W. Bush vetoed the 2008 Farm Bill, but Congress was able to override his veto and pass the legislation. n163 President Obama asked
Congress to cut commodity subsidies and other farm programs, a proposal that "would save an estimated $ 860 million over the
next five years and $ 2.26 billion over" the [*448] next ten. n164 The proposal met stiff resistance from farm-state members of
Congress. n165 With the current focus on cutting government spending and reducing the budget, the time would seem to be right for
a reduction or elimination of commodity subsidies. Rand Paul, now Senator of Kentucky, campaigned against subsidies as "giving
welfare to business." However, once elected, he changed course, and now claims to be moderate on farm subsidies. n166 Newly
elected Representative Vicky Hartzler of Missouri defends subsidies, claiming that crop payments are needed to protect national
security by guaranteeing the U.S. food supply. n167 Hartzler Farms, owned by Rep. Hartzler's family, received nearly $ 775,000 in
farm subsidies between 1995 and 2000. n168 With the new Congress after the 2010 election, veteran Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas
is the Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. n169 In a press release on his website,
Roberts says, "our nation is blessed with the safest, highest-quality and most affordable food and fiber in the world." n170 He then
goes on to spell out his priorities for agricultural policy, including "maintaining the production agriculture safety net, [and]
expanding trade opportunities for farmers and ranchers ... ." n171 Congress is in the midst of considering proposals for the next
Farm Bill to replace the current one, which expires in September. So far, it appears that direct payments, which are paid
automatically regardless of the price of corn or whether corn is actually grown, are on the chopping block. n172 The proposals do not
address making changes to either of the other types of commodity subsidies. [*449] CONCLUSION The American
agricultural system is broken. American taxpayers are funding a system that is contributing to obesity and chronic
disease, as well as the use of environmentally hazardous practices that are polluting American waterways and degrading the
environment. This system is destroying what we know as the family farm and instead encouraging large,
mechanized corporate behemoths to take over growing our food. The time is right for radical agricultural policy reform. Congress
and the President should make a concerted effort to overhaul the next Farm Bill, and create a system
that actually creates an abundant, affordable, and safe food supply for the American people.
1NC MIDTERMS
GOP has a slight edge but race is essentially toss-up
Silver, 9/15/15 (Nate, “Senate Update: Democrats Draw Almost Even. Is It The Money?”
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/senate-update-democrats-draw-almost-even-is-it-themoney/, JMP)
When we officially launched our forecast model two weeks ago, it had Republicans with a 64
percent chance of taking over the Senate after this fall’s elections. Now Republican chances are
about 55 percent instead. We’ve never quite settled on the semantics of when to call an election
a “tossup.” A sports bettor or poker player would grimace and probably take a 55-45 edge. But
this Senate race is pretty darned close.
What’s happened? The chart below lists the change in our forecast in each state between Sept. 3
(when our model launched) and our current (Sept. 15) update.
[chart omitted]
As you can see, there hasn’t been an across-the-board shift. Republicans’ odds have improved in
several important races since the launch of our model. Democrats’ odds have improved in
several others. But the two states with the largest shifts have been Colorado and North Carolina
— in both cases, the movement has been in Democrats’ direction. That accounts for most of the
difference in the forecast.
Marijuana measures empirically boost young voter turnout --- Florida proves
Gibson, 8/11 (William E., 8/11/2014, “Medical marijuana ballot issue may draw new voters;
Amendments, governor's race spur interest in midterm elections,” http://articles.sunsentinel.com/2014-08-11/news/fl-voter-turnout-boost-20140808_1_women-voters-newvoters-medical-marijuana-amendment, JMP)
Getting young people engaged in politics is never easy, but voter-registration volunteers say the
medical-marijuana amendment on November's ballot is attracting new voters who otherwise
might not bother with a midterm election.
Both political parties for more than a year have been knocking on doors to energize supporters
who might be lured to the polls by a heated governor's race. Democrats are especially eager to
avoid the usual big drop-off of turnout in nonpresidential elections, which tends to hurt their
party's candidates.
But the wild card this year — the factor most likely to motivate new voters — appears to be the
marijuana measure, along with another constitutional amendment that would provide special
state funding to conserve environmentally sensitive land.
"Young people are very unfamiliar with other elections going on but have heard about the
medical-marijuana amendment and are excited to have an opportunity to vote for that," said
Anna Eskamani, 23, a volunteer with the League of Women Voters who recruited passers-by at a
farmers' market in Orlando last week.
"It's definitely going to be a hot topic that will get young people out and, of course, encourage
them to vote on other things as well."
The proposed amendment would legalize marijuana for patients diagnosed with debilitating
health problems. Although it would directly affect a relatively small number of people, it has
drawn widespread interest because many voters see it leading to a broader
decriminalization of marijuana. A recent statewide poll by Quinnipiac University found
that 88 percent of voters supported it.
The environmental amendment would devote a portion of state excise taxes to conserving land
and wildlife.
"It has to do with drinking water and protecting our rivers and lakes and the Everglades. That's
an issue a lot people do feel strongly about," said Lynne Joshi, president of the League of
Women Voters in Broward County. "With the amendments, we have a chance, especially with
the younger people, for more people to turn out."
A League forum in West Palm Beach last month to discuss the environmental amendment drew
enough voters to fill a school auditorium.
"There are always those voters who would not come out and do such a thing until they feel
there's a direct effect on them," said Geanine Wester, the League president in Palm Beach
County.
If the parties and registration groups succeed, the 2014 election will buck a seesaw trend in
Florida marked by wild swings in turnout rates among registered voters. Turnout soared from
47 percent in the 2006 midterm election to 75 percent in the 2008 presidential election. The
rate plunged to 49 percent in the 2010 midterms, then rose to 72 percent in the 2012
presidential election.
Most registration campaigns target young adults and Hispanics because they are the most
inclined to vote in presidential-election years but skip midterms.
"In parts of Orlando, Osceola County and South Florida, you don't see a drop-off, you see a
plunge," said Christian Ulvert, political director of the Florida Democratic Party. "You see
turnout in areas with high Hispanic voters go from 88 percent in a presidential year down to 25
or 26 percent in a gubernatorial year."
The party is trying to counter the trend by emphasizing the importance of midterm elections.
The Democratic National Committee, chaired by U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of
Weston, also has hired Zach Learner, a Fort Lauderdale attorney, to head a Voter Expansion
Project designed to help overcome voter confusion and perceived barriers. He will lead a small
army of volunteer lawyers to educate people about voting methods — such as early voting, mailin voting and provisional ballots — and to safeguard their rights at polling places.
Many volunteers were inspired by the tumultuous 2000 presidential election, decided in Florida
after five weeks of recounts and disputes.
"I saw what happened in 2000, and I became concerned that citizens were either not going to be
able to vote or might not understand what they needed to do to allow them to vote," said Jason
B. Blank, of Fort Lauderdale, a volunteer attorney ready to advise voters who run into problems.
Republicans, meanwhile, are culling through vast amounts of data on Floridians to spot
potential like-minded voters who might be inclined to support Scott. They call it "the largest
micro-targeting project in Florida history."
"It's millions of data points on voters that have been assembled, and it can help predict which
voters are likely to support the governor," said Susan Hepworth, communications director for
the state Republicans.
Even a slight increase in registration and turnout could tip the results of a close
election.
"On the margins, the marijuana amendment may bring people to the polls who normally wait till
there's a presidential candidate on the ballot," said Daniel Smith, political science professor at
the University of Florida. "It may only be a couple of percentage points, but that could make all
the difference."
GOP Senate key to Asia Pivot
Keck, 14 --- Managing Editor of The Diplomat and interned at the U.S. Congress
where he worked on defense issues(4/22/2014, Zachary, “The Midterm Elections and the
Asia Pivot; The Republican Party taking the Senate in the 2014 elections could be a boon
for the Asia Pivot,” http://thediplomat.com/2014/04/the-midterm-elections-and-theasia-pivot/, JMP)
There is a growing sense in the United States that when voters go to the polls this
November, the Republican Party will win enough Senate seats to control both houses of
Congress. This would potentially introduce more gridlock into an already dysfunctional
American political system.
But it needn’t be all doom and gloom for U.S. foreign policy, including in the AsiaPacific. In fact, the Republicans wrestling control of the Senate from the Democrats this
November could be a boon for the U.S. Asia pivot. This is true for at least three
reasons.
First, with little prospect of getting any of his domestic agenda through Congress,
President Barack Obama will naturally focus his attention on foreign affairs. Presidents
in general have a tendency to focus more attention on foreign policy during their second
term, and this effect is magnified if the other party controls the legislature. And for good
reason: U.S. presidents have far more latitude to take unilateral action in the realm of
foreign affairs than in domestic policy. Additionally, the 2016 presidential election will
consume much of the country’s media’s attention on domestic matters. It’s only when
acting on the world stage that the president will still be able to stand taller in the media’s
eyes than the candidates running to for legislative office.
Second, should the Democrats get pummeled in the midterm elections this year,
President Obama is likely to make some personnel changes in the White House and
cabinet. For instance, after the Republican Party incurred losses in the 2006 midterms,
then-President George W. Bush quickly moved to replace Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld with the less partisan (at least in that era) Robert Gates. Obama followed suit
by making key personnel changes after the Democrats “shellacking” in the 2010 midterm
elections.
Should the Democrats face a similar fate in the 2014 midterm elections, Obama is also
likely to make notable personnel changes. Other aides, particular former Clinton aides,
are likely to leave the administration early in order to start vying for spots on Hillary
Clinton’s presumed presidential campaign. Many of these changes are likely to be with
domestic advisors given that domestic issues are certain to decide this year’s elections.
Even so, many nominally domestic positions—such as Treasury and Commerce
Secretary—have important implications for U.S. policy in Asia. Moreover, some of the
post-election changes are likely be foreign policy and defense positions, which bodes well
for Asia given the appalling lack of Asia expertise among Obama’s current senior
advisors.
But the most important way a Republican victory in November will help the Asia Pivot is
that the GOP in Congress are actually more favorable to the pivot than are members of
Obama’s own party. For example, Congressional opposition to granting President Trade
Promotional Authority — which is key to getting the Trans-Pacific Partnership ratified
— is largely from Democratic legislators. Similarly, it is the Democrats who are largely in
favor of the defense budget cuts that threaten to undermine America’s military posture
in Asia.
If Republicans do prevail in November, President Obama will naturally want to find ways
to bridge the very wide partisan gap between them. Asia offers the perfect issue area to
begin reaching across the aisle.
The Republicans would have every incentive to reciprocate the President’s outreach.
After all, by giving them control of the entire Legislative Branch, American voters will be
expecting some results from the GOP before they would be ostensibly be ready to elect
them to the White House in 2016. A Republican failure to achieve anything between
2014 and 2016 would risk putting the GOP in the same dilemma they faced in the 1996
and 2012 presidential elections. Working with the president to pass the TPP and
strengthen America’s military’s posture in Asia would be ideal ways for the GOP to
deliver results without violating their principles.
Thus, while the president will work tirelessly between now and November to help the
Democrats retain the Senate, he should also prepare for failure by having a major
outreach initiative to Congressional Republicans ready on day one. This initiative should
be Asia-centric.
Pivot is to key to prevent Asia wars
Lohman 13 – MA in Foreign Affairs @ UVA (Walter, “Honoring America’s
Superpower Responsibilities,”
http://www.heritage.org/research/lecture/2013/06/honoring-americas-superpowerresponsibilities)
When you withdraw from the world, either by imposing trade barriers or drawing down military
commitments, you lose your ability to influence events.¶ Those considering an Asia with
less American presence have to ask themselves whether freedom would do as well
without us. In fact, proponents of American withdrawal have to ask themselves a more important question:
Whether they have responsibility for anyone’s well-being but their own!¶ Times are, indeed, changing in
Asia. Power is shifting. I have traveled to Asia quite a bit—easily 50 times over the course of my career. I’ve
seen the change first-hand. One thing that is not changing is that the U.S. is the one
“indispensable” ingredient for continued peace, prosperity, and freedom around the
world. Everyone I talk to in Asia tells me that. They must be talking to President Obama, too, because he’s also used
the word “indispensable” to describe America’s role in the world.¶ Of course, these countries want access to our
markets and our capital. But on
the diplomatic side, it is also the case that the U.S. is the
closest thing in Asia to an honest broker. And because if anything, nationalist tensions
in Asia are only growing, this is not going to change anytime soon. Sure, there are South
Koreans who would rather not have American troops in their country. But they are not the majority. And they like us a
whole heck of a lot more than they like the prospect of another invasion. They like us a lot better than they like the
Japanese. Imagine how the Koreans feel about the prospect of Japan acquiring nuclear weapons to defend itself.
That’s what they would have to do without the benefit of the American nuclear deterrent.
Causes extinction—outweighs other scenarios
Mead 10 (Mead, senior fellow @ the Council on Foreign Relations, 2010 Walter,
American Interest, “Obama in Asia”, http://blogs.the-americaninterest.com/wrm/2010/11/09/obama-in-asia/)
The decision to go to Asia is one that all thinking Americans can and should support regardless of either party or
ideological affiliation. East and South Asia are the places where the 21st century, for better
or for worse, will most likely be shaped; economic growth, environmental progress,
the destiny of democracy and success against terror are all at stake here. American
objectives in this region are clear. While convincing China that its best interests are not served by a rash, Kaiser
Wilhelm-like dash for supremacy in the region, the US does not want either to isolate or contain China. We want a
strong, rich, open and free China in an Asia that is also strong, rich, open and free. Our destiny is
inextricably linked with Asia’s; Asian success will make America stronger, richer
and more secure. Asia’s failures will reverberate over here, threatening our
prosperity, our security and perhaps even our survival. The world’s two most
mutually hostile nuclear states, India and Pakistan, are in Asia. The two states
most likely to threaten others with nukes, North Korea and aspiring rogue
nuclear power Iran, are there. The two superpowers with a billion plus people are
in Asia as well. This is where the world’s fastest growing economies are. It is where
the worst environmental problems exist. It is the home of the world’s largest
democracy, the world’s most populous Islamic country (Indonesia — which is also among the most democratic
and pluralistic of Islamic countries), and the world’s most rapidly rising non-democratic power as well. Asia holds
more oil resources than any other continent; the world’s most important and most threatened trade routes lie off its
shores. East Asia, South Asia, Central Asia (where American and NATO forces are fighting the Taliban) and West Asia
(home among others to Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey and Iraq) are the theaters in the world today that most directly
engage America’s vital interests and where our armed forces are most directly involved.
The world’s most
explosive territorial disputes are in Asia as well, with islands (and the surrounding mineral and
fishery resources) bitterly disputed between countries like Russia, the two Koreas, Japan, China (both from Beijing
and Taipei), and Vietnam. From the streets of Jerusalem to the beaches of Taiwan the world’s most
intractable political problems are found on the Asian landmass and its surrounding
seas. Whether you view the world in terms of geopolitical security, environmental
sustainability, economic growth or the march of democracy, Asia is at the center of
your concerns. That is the overwhelming reality of world politics today, and that reality is what President
Obama’s trip is intended to address.
1NC ADVANTAGE CP
The Drug Enforcement Agency should devote all of its current marijuana
enforcement resources toward fighting Los Zetas and The United States federal
government should amend the Controlled Substances Act to establish an
exemption for state-level marijuana laws for states that establish cannabis
exchanges. The United States federal government should eliminate agricultural
subsidies in the next Farm Bill.
Solves industrial ag crowd-out
O'Connor 2012 (Anna [JD, University of Kansas]; ARTICLE: FENCE ROW TO FENCE
ROW: AN EXAMINATION OF FEDERAL COMMODITY SUBSIDIES; 21 Kan. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y
432; kdf)
Commodity subsidies create a toxic environment where small family farmers are driven out of
business and larger, more mechanized farm corporations grow bigger and bigger, collecting more and more subsidies along the
way. Commodity subsidies contribute to the use of agricultural practices that pollute U.S.
waterways and degrade the environment. Commodity subsidies encourage farmers to grow as much as they can of
crops that inevitably become unhealthy food that is shortening the lives of Americans, particularly children, and driving up
healthcare costs for the entire country. In the 2012 Farm Bill, Congress should drastically reengineer commodity
subsidies, shifting the subsidies to other foods, if not eliminate them entirely. Eliminating subsidies is not without precedent. In
1985, the New Zealand government eliminated nearly all agricultural support - nearly thirty different kinds of subsidy programs and
export incentives altogether. n154 Experts estimated that huge numbers of farmers would leave their land, unable to make a livable
income without the government support that had previously made up 40% of the gross income of New Zealand farmers. n155
Instead, only 800 farms, or 1% of the total number of New Zealand farms, faced forced sales, and the agricultural economy in New
Zealand bounced back stronger than ever. n156 How? Farmers began farming better. n157 Rather than chase subsidies by pursuing
maximum production at any cost, farmers began to maintain cost structures that reflected the real earning capacity of their farms.
n158 Water quality also improved as wasteful practices that had been fueled by subsidies [*447] stopped. n159 Farmers adopted a
more efficient, targeted use of farm inputs and farming of marginal and unstable or infertile land decreased. n160 Commodity
subsidies create an artificial market that would not exist if they were eliminated. Once Congress takes
the money out of commodities like corn, there will likely be less corn planted. Farmers will continue to farm, but their focus will
necessarily have to shift to other crops and animals. The cost of corn is likely to increase, potentially making HFCS too expensive to
sweeten junk foods. Without a flood of cheap corn coming in, CAFOs would be less economically
feasible. Rural land values artificially inflated by subsidies should return to a much more realistic number, and more people could
go into farming - which would be a great boon in the current job market. The organization that sponsors the sign on I-70 would have
to recalculate their numbers, because more farmers means less than 128 people fed per farmer. Perhaps Congress does not even
need to eliminate commodity subsidies, but simply divert them to other foods. Currently American farmers grow more corn for cars
and cows than for humans. n161 The federal government could shift commodity subsidies to subsidize farmers that grow actual food
for direct consumption without processing. Subsidizing real foods would make the price of healthier foods like fruits and vegetables
more competitive with processed foods, especially because those processed foods will no longer have corn subsidies making them
cheap. n162 On a larger scale, shifting commodity subsidies to real food should go far in helping the obesity epidemic, which would
in turn drastically lower healthcare costs. Or, Congress could subsidize organic foods rather than commodities. Subsidizing organics
would decrease the amount of heavy pesticides and fertilizers used on America's farms. Less dangerous chemicals would end up in
our waterways and oceans, improving water quality and reducing or eliminating the "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as
decreasing the health risks associated with pesticides and fertilizers. Subsidizing organic food would also go far in leveling the price
playing field with non-organic foods. Unfortunately, any changes to the Farm Bill must go through Congress. No President - whether
Democrat or Republican - has been able to make changes to our commodity subsidy system. For example, former President George
W. Bush vetoed the 2008 Farm Bill, but Congress was able to override his veto and pass the legislation. n163 President Obama asked
Congress to cut commodity subsidies and other farm programs, a proposal that "would save an estimated $ 860 million over the
next five years and $ 2.26 billion over" the [*448] next ten. n164 The proposal met stiff resistance from farm-state members of
Congress. n165 With the current focus on cutting government spending and reducing the budget, the time would seem to be right for
a reduction or elimination of commodity subsidies. Rand Paul, now Senator of Kentucky, campaigned against subsidies as "giving
welfare to business." However, once elected, he changed course, and now claims to be moderate on farm subsidies. n166 Newly
elected Representative Vicky Hartzler of Missouri defends subsidies, claiming that crop payments are needed to protect national
security by guaranteeing the U.S. food supply. n167 Hartzler Farms, owned by Rep. Hartzler's family, received nearly $ 775,000 in
farm subsidies between 1995 and 2000. n168 With the new Congress after the 2010 election, veteran Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas
is the Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. n169 In a press release on his website,
Roberts says, "our nation is blessed with the safest, highest-quality and most affordable food and fiber in the world." n170 He then
goes on to spell out his priorities for agricultural policy, including "maintaining the production agriculture safety net, [and]
expanding trade opportunities for farmers and ranchers ... ." n171 Congress is in the midst of considering proposals for the next
Farm Bill to replace the current one, which expires in September. So far, it appears that direct payments, which are paid
automatically regardless of the price of corn or whether corn is actually grown, are on the chopping block. n172 The proposals do not
address making changes to either of the other types of commodity subsidies. [*449] CONCLUSION The American
agricultural system is broken. American taxpayers are funding a system that is contributing to obesity and chronic
disease, as well as the use of environmentally hazardous practices that are polluting American waterways and degrading the
environment. This system is destroying what we know as the family farm and instead encouraging large,
mechanized corporate behemoths to take over growing our food. The time is right for radical agricultural policy reform. Congress
and the President should make a concerted effort to overhaul the next Farm Bill, and create a system
that actually creates an abundant, affordable, and safe food supply for the American people.
counterplan PICs out of parts of plan that fiat the states
1ac ev says state legalization inevitable—means they eventually model the federal
government
1NC LOS ZETAS
Can’t solve failed states – the plan has no effect on overall regional failure
Magen, 12 – head of political development at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) and a lecturer at the Lauder School of
Government, Diplomacy and Strategy, The Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzliya (Amichai, “On Political Order and the “Arab
Spring”” Israel Journal of foreign Affairs VI : 1 (2012)
Things Fall Apart: A Regional Cascade of State Failure The third interpretive prism is in many respects the most historically
intriguing, but also the most unsettling. According to this reading, what we are witnessing across North Africa and the Middle East is
not the late onset of democratization, or the replacement of capable old forms of authoritarianism with new ones, but a regional
cascade of state failure. Lacking in security, legitimacy, and capacity, fragile modern Arab states are disintegrating.
They leave behind them under-governed or ungoverned spaces that are being filled by a pre-modern, neo-medieval patchwork of
non-state rulers (tribes, warlords, criminal gangs), as well as by ultramodern transnational terrorist networks such as al-Qa’ida, and
new forms of hybrid terrorist/governance-providing organizations, such as Hizbullah and Hamas. What we mean by “state failure” is
perhaps best captured by recalling what we have come to expect from the modern, functioning state. The state is a political entity
that successfully exercises a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory and over a given population. A
“normal” state also commands the loyalty of its citizens and provides core public goods—above all, security and the rule of law, but
also markets, transport infrastructure, health, and education. Failed states are those that fall short of these minimal criteria, in that
their performance is lacking in terms of security, legitimacy, and/or the capacity to deliver basic welfare-enhancing public goods.
State failure is thus a gradational concept, where under-performing states range on a continuum from fragility, to failing and, in
extremis, to fully collapsed states. 19 Viewed through this prism, conditions across much of North Africa and the Middle East appear
ominous. In terms of security, state failure is predominantly caused, and accompanied, by ethnic, religious, tribal, or other forms of
civil conflict. Countries experiencing serious security gaps include principally both those that are in the midst of armed conflict and
those just emerging from warfare. 20 We observe all four elements of the State Failure Taskforce characterization of the four major
causes of state failure—revolutionary wars, ethnic wars, adverse regime change, and genocides/ politicides—occurring in the Middle
East today. 21 Revolutionary wars—episodes of sustained violent conflict between governments (or external occupying
powers) and
politically organized challengers that seek to overthrow the central government, replace its leaders, or
currently unfolding, with varying degrees of intensity, in
Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. Bedouin and Jihadi groups are
undermining Egyptian control of the Sinai Peninsula. Kurdish national aspirations hold the
potential for major, protracted conflict involving Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. The military ousting of
seize power in one or more regions—are
the Qadhafi regime by a coalition of NATO-backed tribal opposition militias represents a “successful” revolutionary war. There are
no fewer than 140 tribes and clans in Libya, of which thirty are influential power brokers. It remains to be seen whether the National
Transitional Council of Libya is able to hold the country together in the aftermath of the 2011 civil war, or whether conflicting
interests and tribal differences will plunge post-Qadhafi Libya into further civil conflict. After pledging that they would disarm and
submit to a single, central army after Qadhafi’s ouster, many militia leaders in Libya now reportedly insist that they will retain their
weapons and political autonomy as the new guardians of the revolution.” 22 So-called ethnic wars—episodes of sustained violent
conflict in which national, ethnic, religious, or other communal groups challenge governments to seek major changes in status or
forms of political order—are simmering in Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, Syria,
Yemen, and among Palestinian factions. In Egypt, dozens of Coptic Christians have been killed in clashes with state
security forces since October 2011. Among Palestinians, Fatah–Hamas rivalry has already led to the successful 2007 violent Hamas
coup in Gaza, with Hamas seeking a further major Islamist revision in the form of politics not only in the West Bank, but in Jordan
as well. And in Lebanon, Hizbullah effectively controls parts of the country and is widely acknowledged to be militarily stronger than
Lebanese state forces thus exercising a permanent, hair-trigger threat to the fragile, ethnic-based constitutional order in the country.
Adverse regime change—major, abrupt shifts in patterns of governance, including periods of severe elite or regime
instability—recently occurred, or
is currently experienced, in Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, Syria,
Tunisia, and Yemen. Lastly, genocide and politicide sustained activities by states or, in civil wars, by either of the contending
sides that result in the deaths of a substantial portion of a communal or political group have taken place over the last decade in
Algeria and Sudan. Genocide and politicide are also grim possible scenarios in Afghanistan and Iraq (once American troops leave),
in Libya (should major reprisals be exacted against the Qadhafi tribe), and in Syria (should the ruling Alawite minority lose its grip
on power). Furthermore, according to the state failure interpretation of the Arab Spring, the security gap across much of North
Africa and the Middle East is both facilitated and exacerbated by deep underlying deficits in the legitimacy and capacity of Arab
states. A legitimacy gap exists within a state when a significant portion of its political elites and society either rejects the rules
regulating the exercise of power and the accumulation and distribution of wealth in the country or resorts to alternative, competing
sources of authority tribal, ethnic, religious, or national. 23 Legitimate states are ones in which a strong sense of national identity
has been successfully formed; where the concept of citizenship holds genuine meaning for elites and society; and where state
institutions function transparently and are accountable to the people.
Failed states are not a terrorist threat – empirically proven.
Logan and Preble 2008 Cato Institute foreign policy studies associate director, , Cato Institute foreign policy studies
director, [Justin and Logan, 3-15-08, “Fixing Failed States A Cure Worse than the Disease?” http://hir.harvard.edu/failedstates/fixing-failed-states, p.2, accessed 3-19-11, TP]
Anti-sovereignty academics and pro-empire Beltway pundits frequently defend their arguments by making assertions along the lines that “ weak
and failed states pose an acute risk to US and global security,” as Carlos Pascual, the US State Department’s first Coordinator for
Reconstruction and Stabilization, and Stephen Krasner wrote in Foreign Affairs in 2005. This is a rather dubious claim. The Fund for
Peace/Foreign Policy magazine Failed States Index, for example, includes on its top 10 “most failed” states list Zimbabwe, Chad, Ivory
Coast, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, and the Central African Republic. It is difficult to imagine what threats are
emerging from these countries that merit significant attention from US security strategists. To
be sure, Afghanistan in the late 1990s was both a failed state by any definition and a threat to
the United States. It should serve as a pointed reminder that we cannot ignore failed states.
Traditional realist definitions of power reliant on conventional military capability, size of economy, and population, must now be supplemented with a
recognition that small
bands of terrorists could emerge from a backward corner of the globe and strike at the heart of the United
But even here the interventionists’ logic is weak. Attacking the threat that resided in
failed Afghanistan in the 1990s would have had basically no effect on the health of the Afghan
state. Killing Osama bin Laden and his comrades would have more substantially reduced the threat that bloomed on 9/11 than sending in US or
States as well.
international development personnel would have done. Attacking a threat rarely involves paving roads or establishing new judicial standards. It is this
categorical error that is at the heart of the trouble with obsessing over state failure. To the extent that a
threat has ever emanated
from a failed state—and Afghanistan is essentially the only example of this—addressing the failure is different
from attacking the threat. At best, the attempt to correlate state failure with terrorism relies on a dubious
interpretation of terrorism: that terrorism is, at its root, a result of poverty that can be eradicated by an
aggressive development effort. As Alan B. Krueger and others have demonstrated, however, terrorism is a response to political
grievances, not a consequence of poverty. Accordingly, using the threat of terrorism to justify
nation building in failed states is inappropriate.
Escalation empirically denied
Hartzell 2000 (Caroline A., 4/1/2000, Middle Atlantic Council of Latin American Studies
Latin American Essays, “Latin America's civil wars: conflict resolution and institutional change.”
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-28765765_ITM)
Latin America has been the site of fourteen civil wars during the post-World War II era, thirteen of
which now have ended. Although not as civil war-prone as some other areas of the world, Latin America has endured
some extremely violent and destabilizing intrastate conflicts. (2) The region's experiences with civil wars and
their resolution thus may prove instructive for other parts of the world in which such conflicts continue
to rage. By examining Latin America's civil wars in some depth not only might we better understand the circumstances under
which such conflicts are ended but also the institutional outcomes to which they give rise. More specifically, this paper focuses on the
following central questions regarding Latin America's civil wars: Has the resolution of these conflicts produced significant
institutional change in the countries in which they were fought? What is the nature of the institutional change that has taken place in
the wake of these civil wars? What are the factors that are responsible for shaping post-war institutional change?
Instability inevitable—demographics and economics
Blanco 9 (Long Live Democracy: The Determinants of Political Instability in Latin America,
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.ou.edu/cas/econ/wppdf/instabilityinla%2520
rg.pdf&embedded=true&chrome=true)
political instability has been a pervasive problem in Latin
America. 1 In our sample of 18 Latin American countries from 1971-2000, there were 20 coups
d’etat, 451 political assassinations, 217 riots, and 113 crises that threatened to bring down the
sitting government. 2 Only three Latin American countries were consistently democratic over the thirty year period: Costa Rica, Colombia, and Venezuela. 3 All of the rest of the countries
Ranked as the third most unstable region in the world in the post-war era,
switched from a democracy to an autocracy (or vice versa) at least once. In sum, political instability is a persistent and pernicious problem in the region. 4 Given the many studies that document the negative
relationship between instability and capital accumulation (Alesina & Perotti (1996); Alesina et.al. (1996)), it is likely that this instability has hampered economic development in the region. In this paper, we seek to
uncover the factors behind this instability. In a In this paper we analyze the determinants of political instability in a panel of 18 Latin American countries from 1971 to 2000. Not only is Latin America an
interesting region to study because of it’s unusually persistent problems with instability, but focusing on a small sample helps us to avoid potential problems with pooling data from a large set of very different
regime type is a significant determinant of instability in the area.
Countries with higher democracy scores also have lower average political instability, which indicates that recent
countries. 5 We find three main interesting results: First,
moves to increased democracy in the region may bring about less instability in the future. This result is tempered though by our finding that long lived democracies have a greater chance of experiencing instability
income inequality and ethnic fractionalization are both important
factors behind instability. Countries with low (or high) levels of inequality have less average
instability than countries with average levels of inequality, and ethnic fractionalization has a non
than equally long lived autocracies. Second, we find that
linear effect on political instability. Increases in ethnic fractionalization lower instability until a
certain level of diversity, at which point any increases in diversity are associated with higher
political instability. Third, we find that many of the macroeconomic variables included in our estimation (including the level and standard deviation of inflation and government budget
deficit) are only weakly significant at best. Only lagged values of trade openness and investment are helpful in explaining current political instability.
No longer a threat—conflicts will stay limited
Tickner 2007 (Arlene B., International Peace Institute, 2/28, Latin America and the
Caribbean: Domestic and transnational insecurity, ReliefWeb,
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/KHII-6ZR5DG?OpenDocument, WEA)
In Latin America and the Caribbean, the end of the Cold War coincided with transitions to
democracy in Brazil and the Southern Cone, and the peaceful resolution of armed conflict in Central America. These
developments, along with the intensification of globalization processes worldwide, inaugurated a hopeful
era of “democratic peace” or “no war” suggesting a decreasing importance for traditional security matters. Although a series of
bilateral border disputes continue to simmer in the region, the most intransient ones have
been resolved. Indeed, since the 1995 war between Peru and Ecuador, interstate conflict has been all but
erased, and military competition has been reduced dramatically. With the exception of Colombia’s entrenched
civil war and Haiti’s faltering state, internal conflicts characterized by significant episodes of political
violence have also become a distant memory.
Mediation solves
Mars 95 (Perry, Journal of Peace Research, V32 No4, pp.437-451, "Foreign Influence, Political
Conflicts and Conflict Resolution in the Caribbean" November 1995, JSTOR, WEA)
At the national level conflict resolution institutions should similarly replicate the establishment of complementary 'good offices'
desks to facilitate mediations and negotiations of domestic political conflicts, particularly in governmental ministries such as
Labour, Home Affairs, and Foreign Affairs, which deal specifically with consti- tuencies that are more prone to various types of
political and related conflicts. At the international level a variety of relevant mediatory institutions
exists, such as the Carter Center in Atlanta, and the Common- wealth Secretariat in London,
which have already successfully intervened to help pre- vent the escalation of structural
political conflicts in the region, as in the case of the 1992 national elections in Guyana.
Failed states are not a terrorist threat – empirically proven.
Logan and Preble 2008 Cato Institute foreign policy studies associate director, , Cato Institute foreign policy studies
director, [Justin and Logan, 3-15-08, “Fixing Failed States A Cure Worse than the Disease?” http://hir.harvard.edu/failedstates/fixing-failed-states, p.2, accessed 3-19-11, TP]
Anti-sovereignty academics and pro-empire Beltway pundits frequently defend their arguments by making assertions along the lines that “ weak
and failed states pose an acute risk to US and global security,” as Carlos Pascual, the US State Department’s first Coordinator for
Reconstruction and Stabilization, and Stephen Krasner wrote in Foreign Affairs in 2005. This is a rather dubious claim. The Fund for
Peace/Foreign Policy magazine Failed States Index, for example, includes on its top 10 “most failed” states list Zimbabwe, Chad, Ivory
Coast, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, and the Central African Republic. It is difficult to imagine what threats are
emerging from these countries that merit significant attention from US security strategists. To
be sure, Afghanistan in the late 1990s was both a failed state by any definition and a threat to
the United States. It should serve as a pointed reminder that we cannot ignore failed states.
Traditional realist definitions of power reliant on conventional military capability, size of economy, and population, must now be supplemented with a
recognition that small
bands of terrorists could emerge from a backward corner of the globe and strike at the heart of the United
But even here the interventionists’ logic is weak. Attacking the threat that resided in
failed Afghanistan in the 1990s would have had basically no effect on the health of the Afghan
state. Killing Osama bin Laden and his comrades would have more substantially reduced the threat that bloomed on 9/11 than sending in US or
States as well.
international development personnel would have done. Attacking a threat rarely involves paving roads or establishing new judicial standards. It is this
categorical error that is at the heart of the trouble with obsessing over state failure. To the extent that a
threat has ever emanated
from a failed state—and Afghanistan is essentially the only example of this—addressing the failure is different
from attacking the threat. At best, the attempt to correlate state failure with terrorism relies on a dubious
interpretation of terrorism: that terrorism is, at its root, a result of poverty that can be eradicated by an
aggressive development effort. As Alan B. Krueger and others have demonstrated, however, terrorism is a response to political
grievances, not a consequence of poverty. Accordingly, using the threat of terrorism to justify
nation building in failed states is inappropriate.
legalization destroys Mexico immediately
Murray et al 11—Elliott School of International Affairs/Inter-American Drug Abuse Control
Commission
(Chad, with Ashlee Jackson, Amanda Miralrio and Nicolas Eiden, “Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations and Marijuana: The
Potential Effects of U.S. Legalization”, https://elliott.gwu.edu/sites/elliott.gwu.edu/files/downloads/acad/lahs/mexico-marijuana071111.pdf, dml)
Mexican DTOs
would likely branch into other avenues of crime. Perhaps the most obvious shortterm effect of marijuana legalization is that this would rob the Sinaloa and Tijuana cartels
of up to half of their total revenue.117 The economic strain placed on the Sinaloa cartel and Tijuana cartel may
not necessarily help Mexico in the short term. The short-term effects of
legalization could very well create chaos for Mexico . “The cartels compensate
for their loss of drug revenue by branching out into other criminal activities--kidnapping,
murder-for-hire, contraband, illegal immigrant smuggling, extortion, theft of oil and other items, loan-sharking, prostitution, selling
protection, etc.”118 This means that if the social and economic environment remains the same then “they
are not going to return to the licit world.”119 If the Sinaloa cartel and the Tijuana cartel turn
towards activities like kidnapping, human trafficking and extortion, it could lead to a spike in
violence that would prove to be destabilizing in those organizations’ areas of
operation.
The Sinaloa cartel and Tijuana cartel might splinter into smaller groups. In addition, the loss of more
than 40% of revenue would probably force them to downsize their operations. Like any large
business going through downsizing, employees will likely be shed first in order to maintain profitability.120
These former DTO operatives will likely not return to earning a legitimate income, but
rather will independently find new revenue sources in a manner similar to their employers.
Therefore it is possible that the legalization of marijuana in the United States could cause territories
currently under the control of the Sinaloa cartel and Tijuana cartel to become more violent than
they are today . This is troubling, as Sinaloa, Baja California, Sonora, and Chihuahua states are already among the most
violent areas of Mexico.121
1NC AG
no transition from industrial ag
no global modeling—their evidence is about ag in places like Africa and asia
Ag is sustainable—new methods check
Avery 3 (Alex Avery, National Agricultural Aviators Association, Center for Global Food Issues,
12/11/2003)
21st Century Human Society is the Most Sustainable Ever
Roman citizens worried about soil erosion and declining farm yields nearly two thousand years
ago. They had good reason to worry. Soil erosion has always been the most vulnerable aspect of
human society. Fortunately, modern farmers have invented conservation tillage, which cuts
erosion by up to 90 percent and encourages far more earthworms and subsoil bacteria. Organic
farmers refuse to use conservation tillage, because it relies on herbicides to control weeds; thus
the organic farmers are forced to used bare-earth, erosion-inviting weed control techniques like
plowing and hoeing. Plowing also destroys the feeding tubes of the mychorrizal fungi which
produce the most important element of soil health: a recently-discovered gooey glycoprotein
called glomalin. (Again, organic farmers fail to support their claims of better soil health.) Thanks
to the combination of industrial fertilizer and conservation tillage, a highly erodable farming
area in Wisconsin is today suffering only 6 percent as much erosion as it did during the Dust
Bowl days of the 1930s. The author of that study says those who claim high rates of U.S. soil
erosion today “owe us the physical evidence.” We are creating topsoil faster than we are losing
Small farms fail
McWilliams 09 (James, historian at Texas State University, 10/7,
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/let-the-farmers-market-debatecontinue/?apage=2)
Some academic critics are starting to wonder. Writing in the Journal of Rural Studies,
sociologist C. Clare Hinrichs warns that “[m]aking ‘local’ a proxy for the ‘good’ and ‘global’ a
proxy for the bad may overstate the value in proximity.” Building on this suspicion, she
acknowledges that many small farms are indeed more sustainable than larger ones, but then
reminds us that “Small scale, ‘local’ farmers are not inherently better environmental stewards.”
Personal experience certainly confirms my own inability to make such a distinction. Most of us
must admit that in many cases we really haven’t a clue if the local farmers we support run
sustainable systems. The possibility that, as Hinrichs writes, they “may lack the awareness or
means to follow more sustainable production practices” suggests that the mythical sense of
community (which depends on the expectation of sound agricultural practices) is being eroded.
After all, if the unifying glue of sustainability turns out to have cracks, so then does the
communal cohesiveness that’s supposed to evolve from it. And this is not a big “If.” “[W]hile
affect, trust, and regard can flourish under conditions of spatial proximity,” concludes Hinrichs,
“this is not automatically or necessarily the case.” At the least, those of us who value our local
food systems should probably take the time to tone down the Quixotic rhetoric and ask
questions that make our farmer friends a little uncomfortable.
Tech solves agriculture
Simon 96 (Julian, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, The Ultimate
Resource II: People, Materials, and Environment,
http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/faculty/jsimon/Ultimate_Resource/)
The possibilities already shown to be feasible are astounding. For example, one might insert into a potato
genes from a moth that affect the potato's coloring. Other genes might make proteins in a potato with the full
complement of amino acids that humans need - giving the benefits of meat and potatoes by
eating the potatoes alone. Please keep in mind that this technology has been developed after only a few decades of work on
the topic, and only a little more than a century after the first scientific knowledge of genetics. Potential progress in the
future - even within the next few decades and centuries - is awesome. Doomsaying forecasts
about population growth outstripping the food supply that take no account of these possibilities
surely are seriously inadequate.
Status quo solves – the number of small farms is increasing now.
Wanjek 09 (Christopher, LiveScience's Bad Medicine Columnist, author of the books "Bad
Medicine" and "Food At Work," 2/10, http://www.livescience.com/culture/090210-bad-smallfarms.html)
When the economy gets tough, it seems that the tough get farming. Tens of thousands of small
farms were created since 2002, according to new data from the Census of Agriculture. The
farming forecast isn't entirely sunny. But packed with a cornucopia of surprise findings — such
as large increases in the number and percentage of Asian, Hispanic, Black and female farmers,
and a coup staged by the frigid state of Wisconsin to become the second-leading vegetable
producer, behind California — the census brings promising news to those interested in reducing
obesity and improving the environment. What's the connection? More small farms brings
greater diversity of crops, more fresh and local foods, less dependency on chemical fertilizers,
less concentration of manure, and less emphasis on cheap corn to make unhealthy, industrially
produced beef, pork and chicken. And if Wisconsin can grow vegetables with its yearly average
temperature of 43 degrees, nearly every state can become self-sufficient vegetable producers;
only seven states are colder. Back to basics "I find it hopeful that the number of farms in this
country has increased," said newly appointed Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack at the Feb. 4
debut of agricultural census data, held in Washington. "I don't think it is a statistical anomaly
that small farms have increased in number... a result of farm programs we have instituted at the
USDA to encourage organic farming" and other environmentally benign practices, he said.
Small farms are the core of industrial agriculture – profit motive inevitably causes
unsustainable practices.
Hurst 09 (Blake, farmer in Missouri. The American, Journal of the American Enterprise
Institute, 7/30, http://www.american.com/archive/2009/july/the-omnivore2019s-delusionagainst-the-agri-intellectuals)
The most delicious irony is this: the parts of farming that are the most “industrial” are the most
likely to be owned by the kind of family farmers that elicit such a positive response from the
consumer. Corn farms are almost all owned and managed by small family farmers. But corn
farmers salivate at the thought of one more biotech breakthrough, use vast amounts of energy to
increase production, and raise large quantities of an indistinguishable commodity to sell to huge
corporations that turn that corn into thousands of industrial products. Most livestock is
produced by family farms, and even the poultry industry, with its contracts and vertical
integration, relies on family farms to contract for the production of the birds. Despite the
obvious change in scale over time, family farms, like ours, still meet around the kitchen table,
send their kids to the same small schools, sit in the same church pew, and belong to the same
civic organizations our parents and grandparents did. We may be industrial by some definition,
but not our own. Reality is messier than it appears in the book my tormentor was reading, and
farming more complicated than a simple morality play.
Legalizing brings in huge money for agribusiness
Paulas 13—writer for KCET
(Rick, “Monsanto Poised To Take Over the Weed Industry”, http://www.kcet.org/living/food/food-rant/monsanto-to-take-over-theweed-industry.html, dml)
As this report from CNBC makes clear, there's
tons of money in pot. It's the so-called "largest cash crop in California" for a
cultivation of marijuana plants in Mendocino County alone is theorized to reach roughly $1.5
billion a year. Seeing as no one has a perfect understanding of just how many plants are being grown up there, that estimate
may actually be low. And with that much money hanging around, corporate interests are sure to follow.
What the CNBC report surmises, then, is that what has happened with the coffee/beer/wine industry is going
to happen to the marijuana one: Small artisan growers get a jump-start and make big profits for a few
years before large corporations buy them out, create partial monopolies, and dominate the
industry from that point forward.
Legal commercial production in the U.S. is currently handled by a patchwork of small farmers.
While there have been rumors for years of big agricultural firms buying up land ahead of legalization, it would still take time
to develop a mass production product, and even more time to build a Maxwell House-like brand that would come to
dominate that market.
Dominate they will, unless something drastic changes with the state of the country's fundamental
economic philosophy. That's just the current way of our world. But there's actually a distinct possibility that
those artisan developers aren't even going to get their handful of glory days before big business
takes over. And the swift market domination may come from one of our favorite genetic-engineering
corporate supergiants: Monsanto.
The move certainly makes sense on a logical level. At its core, marijuana is an agricultural product. It's a crop.
And that's a system that Monsanto, as detailed time and time again in these parts, specializes in gaming. As far
reason: the
as the "technological advancements" they're working on in order to put themselves ahead of the game:
The company is investing millions of dollars into this new technology dubbed
"RNAi." With RNAi, it
is possible to manipulate everything from the color of the plant to making the plant indigestible
to insects. With medical marijuana, RNAi could be used to create larger, more potent plants effectively
cornering the market and exceeding the legal demand for the plant.
2NC
CARTELS
Statistics prove spillover violence is a joke
Del Bosque 8 [Melissa del Bosque is a reporter for The Texas Observer, where a version of
this article originally appeared. She lives in Austin, Hyping the New Media Buzzword: ‘Spillover’
on the Border, https://nacla.org/article/hyping-new-media-buzzword%E2%80%98spillover%E2%80%99-border]
By God, they’re coming to your neighborhood! Looking at another live feed from El Paso, listening
to the breathless reports of violence and “ expert” analysis about “spillover,” viewers could only
assume that the city was under imminent assault.¶ The truth differs wildly from the perception. In
2008, according to the FBI, more than 1,600 people were killed by cartel violence in Juárez. El
Paso, a city of 755,000, recorded just 18 murders in the same year. Laredo had 11; Brownsville
and McAllen had three and nine, respectively. By comparison, Washington, D.C., with a population
smaller than El Paso’s, had 186 homicides in 2008.¶ Certainly, El Paso’s symbiotic relationship with Ciudad
Juárez across the border has been disrupted by the explosion of drug violence south of the border, which began to
escalate in January 2008. But it’s not the kind of disruption brought to you by CNN, Fox, The
New York Times, and the rest of the media pack.
They’re not just wrong but also racist
Del Bosque 8 [Melissa del Bosque is a reporter for The Texas Observer, where a version of
this article originally appeared. She lives in Austin, Hyping the New Media Buzzword: ‘Spillover’
on the Border, https://nacla.org/article/hyping-new-media-buzzword%E2%80%98spillover%E2%80%99-border]
Get this straight. The violence is not “spilling over the border” into the U.S. No, every time you
say that, whether you mean to or not, you’re conjuring up images of crazed Mexicans
crossing the border to burn Columbus , and you have it backwards. It spilled over from the U.S. into Mexico
and Latin America long ago. . . . [F]or the past 20 years, we’ve been slowly turning the border into a militarized zone, so let’s not say
there isn’t violence associated with both sides of the drug trade and the Drug War. We could say that we’re now sharing the violence
to a higher degree, an important distinction from the simple-minded terminology of “spilling over.”¶ “I’m happy that the border is an
important place,” Negron said a few days after writing the piece. “But I’m not happy about the context in which they place it. I’m
generally a little more mainstream, but I got a bit loose with the editorial because I was ticked off.Ӧ Also in March, El Paso mayor
John Cook was interviewed by BBC anchor Katty Kay. The BBC, Kay said, had information that drug violence had spilled into El
Paso. Cook was eager to set the record straight. He’s had plenty of practice lately, with national and international media frequently
asking him about the situation in Juárez and in his own city.¶ “I’ll speak with them and tell them there hasn’t been any
spillover of violence into El Paso,” he said, “and then they will turn around and report that there is. Mostly I feel like I’ve
wasted my time.”
Even massive Mexican instability doesn’t get close to state collapse or spilling over
to affect the U.S.
Jenkins, 2009 (Brian Michael, Senior Advisor to the President of the RAND Corporation, 3/23/9, “Mexico: Failing
State?,” http://security.nationaljournal.com/2009/03/mexico-failing-state.php)
A recent Pentagon study concluded that Mexico, like Pakistan, could
suffer a “wholesale collapse of civil
government,” which would cause a major national security problem for the United States. The report
understandably has attracted attention here and has caused alarm in Mexico, where any U.S. concerns about border security
summon bitter memories. In 1848, half of what was then Mexico was lost to the United States as the result of a war, which both sides
eagerly sought. And during the Mexican Revolution, the last time the United States deployed large numbers of troops on the border,
General Pershing invaded Mexico in pursuit of Pancho Villa, bringing the two countries to the brink of war. Nothing on the
political horizon even vaguely indicates that Mexico is on the brink of collapse. Mexico is a vigorous if
tumultuous democracy. Unlike Pakistan, there are no significant insurgent challenges, and no history of
coups since the Mexican Revolution nearly a century ago. Until the current global financial crisis, Mexico’s economic situation has
much improved. Instead, the threat comes from the proliferation of criminal gangs profiting from the traffic in
illegal drugs headed for the United States. Law enforcement efforts are hampered by corruption that extends high into Mexico’s
political apparatus. Local police in the border towns simply have been out-gunned. President Calderon has ordered the army to
restore order, and it has had a measure of success in killing or capturing some of the most notorious gang leaders. But Mexico’s
gangs have not been reluctant to fight back, taking on the state through assassination of high-ranking officials and local terror
campaigns. The violence could escalate . Mexico’s gangs could turn to large-scale terrorist bombings,
as the narco traffickers did in Colombia, as a warning to authorities to back off. They could also create and finance local terrorist
groups to distract authorities. And they can finance public protests and, as we have seen in Colombia, back political candidates to
oppose the government’s crackdown and protect their interests. While collapse is highly unlikely, the near- and long-term trends are
worrisome. With 85 percent of its exports going to the United States, Mexico is being hit hard by the sharp decline in the U.S.
economy. Remittances from Mexican workers in the United States—Mexico’ second largest source of foreign exchange—are also
down. Mexico wisely hedged its 2009 oil revenues, but unless oil prices again rapidly ascend, the country’s oil revenues will fall in
2010. The deteriorating security situation also directly impacts the economy. Growing violence discourages foreign investment and
tourism, thereby increasing unemployment. Meanwhile, domestic drug consumption continues to increase. The Mexican Army may
retake the border towns, but that will not alter the fundamental equation. The continuing demand in the United States for illegal
drugs enriches and empowers the criminal cartels that provide them. The United States has also become the principal source of
weapons for Mexico’s gangs. As a consequences of drugs going north, and billions of dollars and thousands of guns going south, the
growing wealth and firepower of Mexico’s crime lords raises a long-term threat to the security of both countries. The
deterioration of northern Mexico from crime-ridden to crime-ruled is likely to be gradual and
insidious. Nominal state authority would still exist . Police would continue to deal with petty crime. Commerce
would continue . Superficially, northern Mexico might appear normal—a failed state does not necessarily have to look like
Somalia. But no-go areas and untouchable crime bosses protected by heavily armed private armies would point to the real locus of
power. Although this situation would hardly be good news, the United States could
the violence were to spread across the border into the United States.
live with it . Concerns would increase if
No Mexican state failure
Couch 12—Brigadier, British Army
(Neil, “‘Mexico in Danger of Rapid Collapse’. Reality or Exaggeration?”, Royal College of Defence Studies Seaford House Paper,
2012, dml)
A ‘collapsed’ state, however, as postulated in the Pentagon JOE paper, suggests ‘a total vacuum of
authority’, the state having become a ‘mere geographical expression’.16 Such an extreme hypothesis of Mexico
disappearing like those earlier European states seems implausible for a country that currently has
the world’s 14th largest economy and higher predicted growth than either the UK,
Germany or the USA; that has no external threat from aggressive neighbours, which was
the ‘one constant’ in the European experience according to Tilly; and does not suffer the ‘disharmony
between communities’ that Rotberg says is a feature common amongst failed states.17,18
A review of the literature does not reveal why the JOE paper might have suggested criminal gangs and drug
cartels as direct causes leading to state collapse . Crime and corruption tend to be described not
as causes but as symptoms demonstrating failure. For example, a study for Defense Research
and Development Canada attempting to build a predictive model for proximates of state failure barely
mentions either.19 One of the principal scholars on the subject, Rotberg, says that in failed
states, ‘corruption flourishes’ and ‘gangs and criminal syndicates assume control of the streets’,
but again as effect rather than trigger.20 The Fund for Peace Failed States Index, does not use
either of them as a ‘headline’ indicator, though both are used as contributory factors.
This absence may reflect an assessment that numerous states suffer high levels of organised crime
and corruption and nevertheless do not fail. Mandel describes the corruption and
extreme violence of the Chinese Triads, Italian Mafia, Japanese Yakuza and the Russian Mob
that, in some cases, has continued for centuries .21 Yet none of these countries were
singled out as potential collapsed or failed states in the Pentagon’s paper. Indeed, thousands of
Americans were killed in gang warfare during Prohibition and many people ‘knew or at least suspected that politicians,
judges, lawyers, bankers and business concerns collected many millions of dollars from frauds, bribes and various forms of
extortion’.22 Organised crime and corruption were the norm in the political, business, and judicial systems and
police forces ran their own ‘rackets’ rather than enforcing the law.23 Neither
led to state failure.
the violence nor the corruption
Drug coop’s a success now
FNL 14—Fox News Latino
(“Drug legalization debated at congressional hearing on U.S.-Mexico ties”,
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2014/05/20/drug-legalization-debated-at-congressional-hearing-on-us-mexico-ties/,
dml)
During the nearly three-hour-long hearing, the State Department officials praised the
cooperation with Mexico in the fight against drug traffickers and in promoting greater trade and
economic integration.
Brownfield called Mexico's arrest this year of Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman
one of the biggest blows against organized crime since the killing in 1993 of Colombian drug lord
Pablo Escobar.
"Despite our strong cultural ties, our relationship with neighboring Mexico has never received
the sustained attention from official Washington that it deserves," the committee chair,
California Republican Ed Royce, said at the start of the hearing.
"Of course," he said, "the biggest threat to Mexico's success is the ongoing threat of violence
from drug cartels and criminal organizations. U.S. efforts with Mexico to tackle these
transnational criminal organizations must be monitored and improved."
Legalization’s worse for drug violence—three warrants—
a) Diversification, gray markets, and legal integration
Felbab-Brown 10—senior fellow with the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence in
the Foreign Policy program at Brookings
(Vanda, “Why Legalization in Mexico is Not a Panacea for Reducing Violence and Suppressing Organized Crime”,
http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2010/09/23-mexico-marijuana-legalization-felbabbrown#recent/, dml)
But, even
if legalization did displace the DTOs from the marijuana production and distribution
market in Mexico, they can hardly be expected to take such a change lying down. Rather,
they may intensify the violent power struggle over remaining hard-drug smuggling
and distribution. (Notably, the shrinkage of the U.S. cocaine market is one of the factors that
precipitated the current DTO wars.) Worse yet, the DTOs could intensify their effort to take
over other illegal economies in Mexico, such as the smuggling of migrants and other
illegal commodities, prostitution, extortion, and kidnapping, and also over Mexico’s informal
economy – trying to franchise who sells tortillas, jewelry, clothes on the zócalo -- to mitigate their financial losses.
They are already doing so. If they succeed in franchising the informal economy and organizing public spaces and
street life in the informal sector (40% of Mexico’s economy), their political power over society will be greater
than ever.
Nor would law enforcement necessarily become liberated to focus on other issues or turn less
corrupt: The state would have to devote some resources to regulating the legal economy and
enforcing the regulatory system. Corruption could well persist in a legal or decriminalized economy. In Brazil, after drug
possession for personal use was decriminalized, the deeply corrupt police did not clean up. Instead, they often continue to extort
users and franchise pushers by threatening to book users for greater amounts than personal limits unless they pay a bribe or buy
from their pushers.
Additionally, a
gray marijuana market would likely emerge. If marijuana became legal, the
state would want to tax it – to generate revenues and to discourage greater use. The higher
the tax, the greater the opportunity for the DTOs to undercut the state by charging
less. The narcos could set up their own fields with smaller taxation, snatch the market and the
profits, and the state would be back to combating them and eradicating their fields. Such gray
markets exist alongside a host of legal economies, from cigarettes, to stolen cars, to logging. Often, as in
the case of illegal logging alongside legal concessions, such gray markets are highly violent, dominated
by organized crime, generating corruption, and exploitative of society.
Moreover, if the state does not physically control the territory where marijuana is cultivated – which
in Mexico it often does not – the DTOs could continue to dominate the newly legal marijuana
fields, still charge taxes, still structure the life of the growers, and even find it easier to
integrate into the formal political system. Many oil and rubber barons started with shady
practices and eventually became influential (and sometimes responsible) members of the legal political
space. But there are good reasons not to want the very bloody Mexican capos to become
legitimized.
Err neg—legalization would only create tangible benefits in over a decade—the
impact’s minimal at best and turns the aff at worst
Kleiman 11—Professor of Public Policy at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University
of California, Los Angeles
(Mark, “Surgical Strikes in the Drug Wars”, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/68131/mark-kleiman/surgical-strikes-in-thedrug-wars, dml)
Full commercial legalization of cannabis, or some alternative short of full commercialization,
such as lawful production for personal use or by user cooperatives, would shrink the revenue of
the Mexican trafficking organizations by approximately one-fifth, according to Beau Kilmer and
his colleagues at the RAND Corporation: not a dramatic gain but certainly not trivial. Whether
trafficking violence would be reduced by a comparable amount is a question for speculation,
with no real evidence either way. Mexican drug traffickers would be left with plenty to fight over
and more than enough money to finance their combat.
Cannabis legalization would probably lead to a smaller increase in consumption than would be
the case for hard drugs, simply because the current cannabis prohibition is less successfully
enforced than the prohibitions against cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines. The benefits of
eliminating $10 billion or more in annual illicit revenue and perhaps ten percent of the drugrelated incarcerations in the United States might well outweigh the damage from increased
abuse.
National cannabis legalization is still a relatively distant prospect in U.S. political terms; the
legalization bill introduced last spring in the House of Representatives found only six sponsors.
But public opinion has been changing rapidly. In 2010, more than 46 percent of voters in
California cast their ballots for full legalization in the state; 45 percent of those responding to a
2011 nationwide Pew survey, meanwhile, supported the legalization of marijuana use, up from
16 percent in Pew's 1990 survey. Still, any relief Mexico might get from such a move is likely to
be a decade or more in the future. And cannabis legalization would leave four-fifths of Mexico's
current revenue from illicit drug exports untouched.
CP
Perm links to corporatization—
---sequencing—corporate influence preempts the counterplan
Caulkins 14—Stever Professor of Operations Research and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon
University’s Heinz College
(Jonathan, “Nonprofit Motive”,
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/march_april_may_2014/features/nonprofit_motive049293.php?page=all, dml)
And there
may be wisdom in moving incrementally. States that jump all the way to the
commercial version of legalization will have a hard time stepping back to a nonprofit or co-op model.
Once a legal industry becomes entrenched, and has lobbying clout,
it will be
very hard to uproot . Likewise, a state monopoly model, favored by many experts, will only
become an option after national legalization if there is not already an established
commercial interest that would fight it. Unless voters are certain that they want for-profit
businesses to control the marijuana trade, it would make sense to legalize the industry with one of
these intermediate models, at least at first.
---marketing—plan and perm overwhelm anti-marketing checks
Kleiman 14—professor of public policy at UCLA
(Mark, “How Not to Make a Hash Out of Cannabis Legalization”,
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/march_april_may_2014/features/how_not_to_make_a_hash_out_of049291.php
?page=all#, dml)
All of these attempts by government to use information to limit abuse, however, could be overwhelmed by
the determined marketing efforts of a deep-pocketed marijuana industry. And the courts’
creation of a legal category called “commercial free speech” radically limits attempts to rein in
those marketing efforts (see Haley Sweetland Edwards, “The Corporate ‘Free Speech’ Racket”). The “commercial free
speech” doctrine creates an absurd situation: both state governments and the federal government can constitutionally
put people in prison for growing and selling cannabis, but they’re constitutionally barred from legalizing
cannabis with any sort of marketing restriction designed to prevent problem use.
And, links to Jerry Brown—
---acklash—forcing compliance generates more and stronger dissent against
Brown
Gerken and Bulman-Pozen 9—J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law, Yale Law School AND
Associate Professor, Columbia Law School
(Heather and Jessica, “Uncooperative Federalism”, YALE LAW JOURNAL 118:1256 2009, dml)
This brings us to a third, related point—one that we explain in greater detail in Part III. Forcing
state officials to
participate in a federal scheme they oppose may generate more allies for the citizens who oppose
the scheme. If states can simply opt out of a program with which they disagree, they may not
have much incentive to devote the resources needed to mount an effective challenge to federal
policy.121 When state officials fear that they will suffer the political consequences of carrying out
a policy that runs contrary to their constituents’ interests, they have a greater incentive to play
the contrarian’s role. Those who favor the autonomy model of state dissent are absolutely correct that “sometimes it takes a
government to check a government.”122 But it may be that federal-state integration, rather than autonomy, creates
more incentives for state governments to check the federal government. When a state finds itself
entangled with unpopular federal policies, citizens demanding federal accountability may
suddenly find themselves with a rather powerful ally.
Perm do the CP severs—
---United States—it collectively refers to the federal government and all states
Oakley, 9 - American Civil Procedure: A Guide to Civil Adjudication in US Courts, Edited by
John Bilyeu Oakley, Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis, and Vikram D.
Amar, Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs of the School of Law of the
University of California at Davis, Kluwer Law International, 2009, page 19
Although it is commonplace today to refer to “the United States” as a single entity and as the subject
of statements that grammatically employ singular verbs, it is important to remember that “the United States” remains in many
important ways a collective term . The enduring legal significance of the fifty states that together constitute the United
States, and their essential dominion over most legal matters affecting day-to-day life within the United States, vastly complicates any
attempt to summarize the civil procedures within the United States. Within the community of nations, the United
States is a geopolitical superpower that acts through a federal government granted constitutionally
specified and limited powers. The organizing principle of the federal Constitution,1 however, is one of
popular sovereignty, with governmental powers distributed in the first instance to republican institutions of
government organized autonomously and uniquely in each of the fifty states. Although there are substantial similarities in
the organization of state governments, idiosyncrasies abound.
---And, in—means throughout
Words and Phrases 8
(Permanent Edition, vol. 20a, p. 207)
Colo. 1887. In the Act of 1861 providing that justices of the peace shall have jurisdiction “in”
their respective counties to hear and determine all complaints, the word “in” should be
construed to mean “throughout” such counties. Reynolds v. Larkin, 14, p. 114, 117, 10 Colo. 126.
---It doesn’t legalize
Supreme Court of Colorado 92 [IN THE MATTER OF THE TITLE, BALLOT TITLE
AND SUBMISSION CLAUSE APPROVED SEPTEMBER 4, 1991, WITH REGARD TO THE
PROPOSED INITIATED CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT CONCERNING LIMITED
GAMING IN MANITOU SPRINGS, FAIRPLAY AND IN AIRPORTS. KATHY VERLO, Petitioner,
and GEORGE L. JAMES, RAYMOND DELLACROCE, and CHARLES SARNER, Respondents,
and GALE NORTON, BILL HOBBS and NATALIE MEYER, Title Setting Board., NO. 91SA359,
826 P.2d 1241; 1992 Colo. LEXIS 53; 16 BTR 133]
Contrary to Verlo's argument, we
do not construe the word "legalize" as somehow suggesting that the cities
the discretion either to legalize or to prohibit limited
of Manitou Springs and Fairplay [**11] will retain
gaming as they see fit. The Board's decision to add a sentence to the summary stating that under the proposed constitutional
amendment the cities of Manitou Springs and Fairplay would be "required to enact certain ordinances to implement limited gaming"
merely expands upon what is conveyed in the title and in the ballot title and submission clause by the phrase "to legalize limited
gaming in the cities of Manitou Springs and Fairplay." Nothing in the record persuades us that the Board's choice of
language in the title and in the ballot title and submission clause is in any way misrepresentative of the true
intent and meaning of the proposed constitutional amendment.
We accordingly affirm the ruling of the Board.
---it’s depenalization, that’s distinct
Hughes and Stevens 10—Drug Policy Modelling Program, National Drug and Alcohol
Research Centre, UNSW
(Caitlin and Alex, “What Can We Learn From The Portuguese Decriminalization of Illicit Drugs?”, Br J Criminol (2010) 50 (6): 9991022, dml)
Efforts to improve criminal justice policy responses to drug use and distribution have led to frequent and often heated discussions
around the necessity of applying criminal penalties and the merits of a number of alternate legislative approaches (see, e.g.
discussions in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States), including legalization, decriminalization and depenalization.
These terms are often used erroneously and interchangeably. For the purposes of the current article, we define each as the following:
legalization is defined as the complete removal of sanctions, making a certain behaviour legal
and applying no criminal or administrative penalty; decriminalization is defined as the removal
of sanctions under the criminal law, with optional use of administrative sanctions (e.g. provision
of civil fines or court-ordered therapeutic responses); and depenalization is the decision in
practice not to criminally penalize offenders, such as non-prosecution or non-arrest. These forms of regulation of
currently illicit substances are often discussed, but are rarely tested in practice.
NET BENEFIT
Industry failure causes preemption
Konczal 13—writer for the Washington Post
(Mike, “Legalizing marijuana is hard. Regulating a pot industry is even harder.”,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/29/legalizing-marijuana-is-hard-regulating-a-pot-industry-iseven-harder/, dml)
A third constraint is the
federal government, which enforces laws that still make pot illegal. If legalization
is seen as a disaster, it is possible that the federal government will move to shut down the process by
preempting state law. But even if it doesn't, background laws will probably hurt the scale and efficiency of
pot retailers.
More evidence—majority of consumers want quantity over quality
Caulkins 14—Stever Professor of Operations Research and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon
University’s Heinz College
(Jonathan, “Nonprofit Motive”,
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/march_april_may_2014/features/nonprofit_motive049293.php?page=all, dml)
Cannabis is just a plant. If
cannabis production ends up looking anything like modern agriculture,
these small, independent operations will be shunted aside by bigger, professional farms. And if
cannabis distribution looks anything like distribution of other consumer goods, those farms will supply companies
that use marketing savvy to develop and exploit brand equity. These more organized enterprises
will be driven by profit and shareholders’ interests, not concern for public health or countercultural values. And
as these companies grow, they’ll begin to wield considerable political power. (Note that even the current legal
cannabis industry, in its infancy, already has trade associations, lobbies, and holds annual conventions.)
While a few small firms may adroitly adapt to a low-volume, high-touch niche market serving primo brands to college-educated
connoisseurs—akin to microbreweries—a larger, corporate reality looms. With 60 percent of marijuana being used by
people with a high school education or less, we
should expect the majority of consumers to shop for value:
they’ll seek Walmart-style everyday low prices, not boutique ambience at boutique prices.
Cannabis corporatization destroys small farms—causes monocultures and
environmental destruction
Rieman and Balogh 14—California Policy Manager, Drug Policy Alliance AND Co-founder,
Emerald Grower's Association
(Amanda and Tomas, “Shop Local, Buy Local: Why Small Farming Is the Future of American Cannabis Policy”,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amanda-reiman/cannabis-farming_b_5481378.html, dml)
Sustainability and Public Health. The corporatization of the cannabis industry ignores the
decades of wisdom and expertise that small farmers have accumulated and follows the
"monoculture" model of farming, that is, the practice of growing a single crop or plant species in
the same space year after year and using large amounts of unhealthy pesticides and fertilizers.
This is the basis of large-scale farm corporations that have been trying to control our food
sources for decades. We are currently moving forward into an era where people are beginning to
care more about how products they consume are produced and where environmental
stewardship is becoming paramount due to things like global climate change. Due to this fact
monoculture is being foregone in favor of the healthier and more environmentally supportive
system of polyculture (a farming practice that imitates the diversity of natural ecosystems, thus,
minimizing the need for pesticide and fertilizer use). Elwyn Grainger Jones, director of the
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a specialized agency of the United
Nations, recently stated, "Small farmers hold a massive collective store of experience and local
knowledge that can provide the practical solutions needed to put agriculture on a more
sustainable and equitable footing". Far from being an aberration or temporary fad, polyculture
has been practiced for the majority of human history with great success and America's smallscale farmers are the people best equipped to carry on this tradition.
1NR
JERRY BROWN
HSR is vital to the continued vitality of America’s mega-regions—they’re the
backbone of economic growth.
Tierney 12 — Sean Tierney, Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of North
Texas, holds a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Denver, 2012 (“High-speed rail, the
knowledge economy and the next growth wave,” Journal of Transport Geography, Volume 22,
May, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via ScienceDirect, p. 284-285)
On April 14, 2011, Cambridge, MA based Zipcar, soared on its first day as a publically traded company. Zipcar owns a fleet of cars in
nearly 100 cities and charges a monthly fee to its members who reserve and use it only when needed. A critical underlying aspect of
Zipcar’s vision is reliant on population density, as people must walk to and from cars that are strategically parked around town.
What does Zipcar have to do with high-speed rail? High-speed rail (HSR) will form the corridors of housing,
employment and recreation that will transform our regional geographies; a landscape
where suburbs and detached single family housing are still the norm, but people and businesses
are more densely aligned around stations making car-ownership less necessary.
More than simply links and nodes, transportation is deeply embedded in the texture of the
American experience,and HSR is the next logical iteration in the nexus between
infrastructure and an expanding economic geography. History has shown that new
transportation technologies improve exchange while accommodating growing urban
populations . Street and trolley cars enabled the first bedroom communities along rail lines after which the early automobile
expanded the perimeter a bit further. The Eisenhower highway system created the suburbs, while beltways brought us edge cities
and exurbs. Urban boundaries have now pushed out so far that they often overlap with neighboring cities. People living in the
boomburb of Castle Rock, CO are within an hour of both Denver and Colorado Springs, while Princeton, NJ splits the difference
between New York and Philadelphia.
It is axiomatic that agglomerations spur innovation and growth (Audretsch, 1998), but creativity
has been pushing outward for decades as evidenced by Redmond, WA (Microsoft), Stamford, CT (UBS
Bank) or Round Rock, TX (Dell). The landscape is extending yet again and where we used to
associate economic vibrancy with cities, and then metropolitan areas, we now think of megaregions . Charlotte is not part of the research triangle (Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill) but is home to the country’s largest
bank (Bank of America) and is only 250 miles from Atlanta. Los Angeles and San Diego are part of a web extending across southern
California. Southwest Airlines got its start serving traveler demand in the triangle between Dallas, Houston and San Antonio; with
triple digit oil prices, rail could serve these three fast-growing cities (a triangle that also contains Austin and Ft. Worth), none of
which are more than 275 miles apart.
Florida (2009) identifies 40 global mega-regions, of which nine are located in the US (seven are purely US and two included
parts of Canada). These places are
not just driving global economic growth, they are doing it with a
fraction of the people; home to less than 20% of the world’s population, these mega-regions
produce 2/3 of the economic output. It is naïve to believe the populations of these regions will
remain static, which is why it would be irresponsible not to start constructing HSR.
Intelligent transportation systems or alternate fuel vehicles may obviate an oil crisis, but we
would still have a highway and congestion crisis. There is a reason that highway construction
has its own ‘black hole theory’ (Plane, 1995). And it is not just congestion that is costing us money,
but also lost economic output. By equipping trains with Wi-Fi, as competitor countries have
already done, HSR enhances productivity.
In addition to being congested, cities like Boston, Seattle and Chicago are also expensive. HSR
enables these cities to extend the benefits of urbanization economies, by making them
available further into the hinterland where housing and commercial space is more
affordable. Regional agglomeration benefits will be necessary as rising rents and labor costs
choke off access, collaboration and opportunities for would-be entrepreneurs .
There are continual obstacles --- Brown’s political leadership is necessary to
ensure public, legislative and judicial support
Dayen, 14 (2/8/2014, David, “Jerry Brown is trying to will California's high-speed rail into
existence,” http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/02/jerry-brown-california-highspeed-train-103266.html#.VBZ-LRYgtXQ, JMP)
Right now, though, the critics seem to have the whip hand. Opponents of high-speed rail have
carried out a relentless, years-long effort to undermine it. Well-funded studies attacked the
ridership estimates (though independent peer reviews reached different conclusions). NIMBYs
wanting to avoid impositions on their land prolonged disputes over routes, creating increased
costs that they then criticized. Most critically, officials at CHSRA never provided a definitive
blueprint for the full $68 billion in financing. “This would be nice to have, but $55 billion is still
needed, which is more than we spend on infrastructure across the entire nation,” says Rep. Jeff
Denham, a Central Valley Republican who chairs a rail subcommittee in the House. Recent
polling shows a majority of Californians would rather scrap the project.
A bevy of obstacles are now threatening to stop the train in its tracks, just as the first section,
between the Central Valley towns of Fresno and Chowchilla, is to begin construction. The
Republican takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives, hostile to any Obama-backed
initiative, blocked new federal dollars for the project, which CHSRA had been counting on in its
business plan. Opponents filed suit, arguing that the business plan was now insufficient and
illegal under the statute. After five years of mostly unsuccessful legal battles, this argument won
in Sacramento Superior Court in late November. Judge Michael Kenny ruled that the state could
not sell future bonds to finance the first leg of construction until they redid the business plan to
specify sources of funding “that were more than merely theoretically possible.” Brown appealed
the ruling, charging that “the trial court’s approach cripples government’s ability to function.”
The case has been sent to a state District Court of Appeal for an expedited review.
Judge Kenny’s decision also put the federal stimulus funds in jeopardy. Agreements with the
Federal Rail Administration require a state match for the funding, with the first $180 million
due in April. Without the bond issue, the state would not have the federal match, and spending
on the project would essentially freeze. Washington could even try to claw back $397 million in
federal funding already spent.
Needing to find funding, Brown laid out a plan in his most recent budget. He would take $250
million from the sale of carbon allowances in the state’s cap-and-trade emission reduction
program, about 19 percent of the total, and devote them to high-speed rail. This would lead to an
annual appropriation from cap-and-trade, a long-term commitment that Brown hopes will
unleash the private sector, which has thus far been reticent to provide funding. “By
demonstrating the state commitment, we can show private investors that this is actually going to
happen,” says Mary Nichols, head of the California Air Resources Board, which administers the
cap-and-trade program.
***
Brown’s desperate maneuvering, though, created a new and unlikely group of opponents:
environmentalists. The Sierra Club of California, despite supporting high-speed rail, announced
formal opposition to the funding through executive director Kathryn Phillips. “The problem with
putting money into high-speed rail is that according to their own analysis, we won’t get
emissions benefits until 2022,” says Phillips. “When given the choice between whether or not
this money should be spent on high-speed rail or trying to protect the planet from devastating
climate change, my members are in favor of protecting the planet.” Phillips thinks the money
should go to improving the auto fleet, adding to state infrastructure for electric vehicles and
reducing diesel emissions that create particulate matter in the air.
Nichols counters that the first scoping plan for AB32, the law that created the cap-and-trade
system, included high-speed rail. Though some believe the law stipulates that all funds must go
toward the reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, Nichols disputes this. “Is 2020 a magic
number? No. We have goals out to 2050.”
But the environmental split adds to the impression of a project imperiled on all sides.
California’s congressional delegation is, predictably, split on partisan lines. And State
Representative Denham, who has emerged as high-speed rail’s most dangerous foe, has
submitted legislation to suspend all federal funding already appropriated. The state legislature
will have to approve the shift of cap-and-trade funds into high-speed rail as part of the budget,
and so far, lawmakers have been noncommittal, seeking clarity about the long-term funding
plan. The state’s nonpartisan legislative analyst called Brown’s scheme “legally risky.” Even if
the legislature approves it, the budget would not be completed by the April 1 deadline for the
state match to federal funding.
Meanwhile, California’s tech moguls have emerged as another locus of opposition. Three Silicon
Valley towns, Atherton, Menlo Park and Palo Alto, have sought to block the train’s proposed
route. And while previous initiatives to repeal the bond measure have failed to qualify for the
ballot, there are multiple efforts this year, including one from a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who
wants to replace high-speed rail with Elon Musk’s fanciful “hyperloop” proposal, which
promises even faster speeds. Though the hyperloop carries all the same challenges as high-speed
rail—securing routes, beating back NIMBYs, acquiring funding—many tech types prefer it,
promoting a replacement that would put the overall goal of cross-state transit options back at
the starting gate. This would make high-speed rail a victim of the very entrepreneurial spirit
Brown has heralded; the state that innovates wants to innovate high-speed rail out of the picture
before it’s even built.
But Brown has yet to waver in his commitment. His leadership helped get the legislature
to advance the project in 2012, and his maneuver with cap-and-trade money could finally
secure a long-term stable funding source. Brown even slipped a loan to CHSRA into the budget
the past two years, to keep them funded through the uncertainty, and he’s called for $25.6
billion for the program in a recent five-year infrastructure plan. “California is still the generator
of dreams and great initiatives,” he told reporters recently. “And I think high-speed rail is
worthy of this state.”
If Brown can get the legislature to sign off on the transfer of funds from cap and trade, and if he
can convince judges to allow the project to move forward, the project can break ground and
regain momentum. That’s a lot of ifs. Plus, it’s an election year, and Brown’s opponents are
already using high-speed rail in their long-shot bids to deny him re-election; Republican Neel
Kashkari, a former Treasury Department official, calls it “the crazy train” in his first campaign
ad, arguing that “it is a symbol of Sacramento having the wrong priorities.” So Brown will not
only have to navigate the legislature and the courts, but also tricky politics in a state that has lost
enthusiasm for the project.
Several private sector and state government projects solve freight rail
infrastructure issues now
Trunick 11 - Associate Editor, Inbound Logistics Magazine OSM Adjunct Faculty (Perry, A., “Improving Rail
Infrastructure: On the Right Track”, Inbound logistics, October 2011, http://www.inboundlogistics.com/cms/article/improvingrail-infrastructure-on-the-right-track/) AW
All that capital investment translates to a more technologically advanced, environmentally friendly, efficient, and competitive
transportation system. Here are
a few examples of ongoing rail infrastructure projects: The
to address issues
in the nation's busiest rail gateway, this partnership between Illinois; Chicago; Metra,
the northeast Illinois commuter rail system; Amtrak; the U.S. Department of Transportation
(DOT); and six railroads includes construction of 31 new overpasses and underpasses; enhanced
Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency Program (CREATE). Developed
grade crossing safety; and extensive upgrades to tracks, switches, and signal systems. With an
estimated cost of $3 billion and target completion date in 2030, the project is expected to create
2,700 jobs, and deliver $1.1 billion in air quality improvements and $595 million in safety benefits. The Crescent
Corridor. This partnership between Norfolk Southern (NS) and 13 states spans 2,500
miles of rail infrastructure. NS expects improvements from the $2.5-billion project
will allow it to handle increased traffic more efficiently and remove an estimated one million trucks from
congested roads. Canadian Pacific's (CP) North Dakota project. To support North Dakota's growing ethanol industry, CP
will invest $100 million in infrastructure improvements and grow its workforce in the state by
18 percent. The Transcon Corridor. BNSF has invested $1.8 billion in the corridor, which
spans 4,647 miles and 13 states, connecting the ports and markets in California and the
Southwest to the Midwest, Texas, and the Southeast. The National Gateway. This CSX
project spanning six states and the District of Columbia will improve efficiency and routing in the
corridor connecting the mid-Atlantic ports and the Midwest. The price tag is $842
million, and completion is slated for 2015. UNION PACIFIC'S BIG PLANS In partnership with New
Mexico, UP began a $400-million project to construct a state-of-the-art rail facility in southern New
Mexico to establish Santa Teresa as a key inland port. The project broke ground in August 2011, in part to provide needed
expansion for UP's El Paso, Texas, facility. El Paso will continue to operate, says Tom Lange, UP's director of corporate
UP's commitment to intermodal runs deep. Its other recent projects include a
$370-million expansion at Joliet, Ill., in 2010. The railroad has added 65,000 domestic containers and has
communications.
expanded services aimed at competing with single-driver truckload moves from the West to the Midwest. UP estimates there are
opportunities to convert 11 million truckloads to rail intermodal, and believes it can compete on time, service, and cost with
single-driver truckloads between Los Angeles and Chicago; Chicago and Dallas; northern California and Chicago; and Los
Angeles and Dallas.
Freight rail causes bottlenecks and exacerbates congestion – this hamstrings
economic growth and nullifies any reason why freight would help the economy
DOT 09 (US Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, “Freight and
Congestion,” October 28, 2009,
http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/freight/freight_analysis/freight_story/congestion.htm)
Congestion affects economic productivity in several ways. American businesses require more
operators and equipment to deliver goods when shipping takes longer, more inventory when deliveries are
unreliable, and more distribution centers to reach markets quickly when traffic is slow. Likewise,
both businesses and households are affected by sluggish traffic on the ground and in the air, reducing the number of workers and job
sites within easy reach of any location. The growth
and on intercity routes, and congestion
in freight is a major contributor to congestion in urban areas
affects the timeliness and reliability of freight
transportation. Long-distance freight movements are often a significant contributor to local congestion, and local
congestion typically impedes freight to the detriment of local and distant economic activity. Growing freight demand increases
recurring congestion at freight bottlenecks, places where freight and passenger service conflict with one another, and where there is
not enough room for local pickup and delivery. Congested freight hubs include international gateways such as ports, airports, and
Bottlenecks between
freight hubs are caused by converging traffic at highway intersections and railroad
junctions, steep grades on highways and rail lines, lane reductions on highways and single-track portions of railroads,
border crossings, and major domestic terminals and transfer points such as Chicago's rail yards.
and locks and constrained channels on waterways. A preliminary study for the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) identified
intersections in large cities, where both personal vehicles and trucks clog the road, as the largest highway freight bottlenecks
(USDOT FHWA2005a). As passenger cars and trucks compete for space on the highway system, commuter trains and freight
trains compete for space on the railroad network in metropolitan areas. The growth in rail freight is occurring at
the same time rising fuel prices and environmental concerns are encouraging greater use of transit.
HSR is key to the environment — reduces pollution.
Zaidi 7 — Kamaal R. Zaidi, holds a J.D. from the University of Tulsa and a B.S. from the
University of Calgary, 2007 ("High Speed Rail Transit: Developing the Case for Alternative
Transportation Schemes in the Context of Innovative and Sustainable Global Transportation
Law and Policy," Temple Journal of Science, Technology & Environmental Law (26 Temp. J.
Sci. Tech. & Envtl. L. 301), Fall, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Lexis-Nexis)
In the transportation sector, with every new technology comes the question of how that technology
will impact the environment. Given that conventional modes of transportation, which use fossilfuels, contribute to rising levels of air, noise, and land pollution, alternative forms of energy such as
wind energy and solar energy are gaining popularity. This rising popularity of "greener" technologies such as high-speed rail
transit includes some form of environmental impact assessment to determine whether or not such technology is applicable.
Currently, there are several environmental impacts by railway transport, including air pollution (e.g. idling of stationary vehicles
during traffic), noise pollution, and water pollution. n49 Modern efforts to combat noise pollution have focused on noise abatement.
High-speed rail transit has the distinct advantage of being more environmentally friendly in
terms of requiring less fuel than conventional forms of travel like air or road travel. n50 For example,
while idling cars contribute to higher levels of air pollution during traffic congestion, high-speed
rail transit operate mainly on electrification and signaling systems that produce very little
emissions. Moreover, traveling vehicles produce excessive noise for surrounding communities, while high-speed trains run on
tracks specially manufactured for noise abatement. For these reasons, several nations are actively promoting high-speed transit to
protect the environment, including wildlife and rural communities.
Perhaps the most significant environmental benefits associated with high- [*311] speed rail transit
can be summarized as follows:
- Decreased energy consumption;
- Reduced air pollution;
- Using less land to expand highways and airports; and
- Fewer impacts on sensitive habits and water resources such as floodplains, streams, and
wetlands n51
Biodiversity claims are exaggerated – there is no risk of extinction from
deforestation
Rothbard and Rucker, 97 (David Rothbard and Craig Rucker, Committee for a Constructive
Tomorrow, “The rainforest issue: Myths and facts” CFACT Briefing Paper #102.
http://www.cfact.org/site/view_article.asp?idCategory=5&idarticle=214)
Another important fact, according to Sedjo and Clawson, relates to a study done by the Food and Agriculture Organization and U.N. Environmental
Programme by J.P. Lanly. Lanly is Forest Coordinator for the UNEP/FAO Tropical Resources Assessment Project and his study "indicates that [of
the roughly 7 million acres worldwide per year] the undisturbed or "virgin" broadleaved closed
forests have a far lower rate of deforestation than the total, being only 0.27 percent annually as
compared with 2.06 percent annually for logged over secondary forest. This figure indicates that deforestation pressure on
the more pristine and generally more genetically diverse tropical forests is quite low." Further, "these findings
are in sharp contrast to the conventional view that the tropical forests are `disappearing at an
alarming rate' and suggest that concerns over the imminent loss of some of the most important
residences of the world's diverse genetic base, based on rates of tropical deforestation, are
probably grossly exaggerated." (Simon, Rational Readings, p.746) Sedjo and Clawson also said "While the local effects of rapid
deforestation may be severe, the evidence does not support the view that either the world or the tropics are experiencing rapid aggregate deforestation.
Furthermore, the evidence shows that current rates of deforestation are quite modest in much of
the world's virgin tropical forests, for example those of the Amazon; and therefore they are
probably in little danger of wholesale destruction in the foreseeable future." (Eco-Sanity, p.90) Sandra
Brown, professor of forestry at U. of Illinois and Ariel Lugo, project leader at the U.S. Forest Service's Institute of Tropical Forestry in Puerto Rico also
studied available data and "concluded the `dangerous' misinterpretation and exaggeration of the rate of deforestation has become common." As for the
amount of deforestation in relation to total forest area, Thomas Lovejoy, then of the World Wildlife Fund, offered a low projection of 50% deforestation
between 1980 and 2000 in Latin America and a high of 67%. The source for this was a set of satellite photos taken in 1978 and reported in the
Washington Post to show that "as much as one-tenth of the Brazilian Amazon has been razed." But according
to Fulbright scholar
and ecologist Robert Buschbacher working in Brazil, the Landsat photos "concluded that 1.55 percent of the
Brazilian portion of the Amazon has been deforested." "On the basis of this and other evidence,
Buschbacher says, `Because of a relatively low percentage of forest clearing and the remarkable
capacity of the forest to recover its structure...the threat of turning the Amazon into a wasteland
is exaggerated.'
Squo solves
Schwartz 03 – Adjunct Scholar, CEI (Joel, “Particulate Air Pollution: Weighing the Risks,”
April, http://cei.org/pdf/3452.pdf)
America’s air quality has vastly improved in recent decades due to progressive emission
reductions from industrial facilities and motor vehicles. The country achieved this success
despite substantial increases in population, automobile travel, and energy production. Air
pollution will continue to decline, both because more recent vehicle models start out cleaner and
stay cleaner as they age than earlier ones, and also because already-adopted standards for new
vehicles and existing power plants and industrial facilities come into effect in the next few years.
No risk of meltdowns
Beller, 4 - Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Nevada, Las Vegas (Dr. Denis
E, “Atomic Time Machines: Back to the Nuclear Future,” 24 J. Land Resources & Envtl. L. 41,
2004)
No caveats, no explanation, not from this engineer/scientist. It's just plain safe! All sources of
electricity production result in health and safety impacts. However, at the National Press Club
meeting, Energy Secretary Richardson indicated that nuclear power is safe by stating, "I'm
convinced it is." 45 Every nuclear scientist and engineer should agree with that statement. Even
mining, transportation, and waste from nuclear power have lower impacts because of the
difference in magnitude of materials. In addition, emissions from nuclear plants are kept to near
zero. 46 If you ask a theoretical scientist, nuclear energy does have a potential tremendous
adverse impact. However, it has had that same potential for forty years, which is why we
designed and operate nuclear plants with multiple levels of containment and safety and multiple
backup systems. Even the country's most catastrophic accident, the partial meltdown at Three
Mile Island in 1979, did not injure anyone. 47 The fact is, Western-developed and Westernoperated nuclear power is the safest major source of electricity production. Haven't we heard
enough cries of "nuclear wolf" from scared old men and "the sky is radioactive"
from [*50] nuclear Chicken Littles? We have a world of data to prove the fallacy of these claims
about the unsafe nature of nuclear installations.
[SEE FIGURE IN ORIGINAL]
Figure 2. Deaths resulting from electricity generation. 48
Figure 2 shows the results of an ongoing analysis of the safety impacts of energy production
from several sources of energy. Of all major sources of electricity, nuclear power has produced
the least impact from real accidents that have killed real people during the past 30 years, while
hydroelectric has had the most severe accident impact. 49 The same is true for environmental
and health impacts. 50 Of all major sources of energy, nuclear energy has the least impacts on
environment and health while coal has the greatest. 51 The low death [*51] rate from nuclear
power accidents in the figure includes the Chernobyl accident in the Former Soviet Union. 52