1NC
OFF
Aff must say what “US” and what “legalize nearly all” means—vote neg
Fairness—legalize can include hundreds of regulations which radically alter the
case neg we need- makes the aff a moving target and spikes out of our disads
Topic education—it’s a prerequisite to having debates over pot
By Dana Larsen -Sensible BC Director Sunday, February 17 2013 “Decriminalize or legalize?”
http://www.cannabisculture.com/blogs/2013/02/17/Decriminalize-or-legalize ac 8-17
Although we can all agree that cannabis prohibition has failed, there is not full agreement on how
exactly to legalize and regulate it. We still have to answer some important questions. Should
people be allowed to grow their own cannabis? If so, how much? Should cannabis be sold in
stores? What kinds of taxes should there be? Should there be taxes on medical cannabis
products? What about extracts and foods? What is the best age limit? Before we can put a
legalized system in place, we need to have the answers to these kinds of questions .
OFF
GOP wins but Dems could come back with a rally point
Lightman 10-2 (David, “GOP chances of winning Senate growing, says new Sabato analysis,” 2014,
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/10/02/241838_gop-chances-of-winning-senate.html?rh=1, Groot)
Republicans’ chances of winning a Senate majority are improving, according to a new analysis Thursday from Sabato’s Crystal
Ball. “So many undecided contests are winnable for the GOP that the party would have to have a string of bad luck - combined
with a truly exceptional Democratic get-out-the-vote program -- to snatch defeat from the
wide-open jaws of victory,” said Larry Sabato and Kyle Kondik of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
Republicans need a net gain of six seats to win control. The party is expected to pick up three now held by Democrats, in
Montana, West Virginia and South Dakota. “About the best Democrats can hope for is a 50-50 split with Vice President Biden
breaking the tie,” the analysts wrote. “A small one-to-three seat GOP Senate majority (51-49, 52-48, or 53-47) appears to be the
likeliest outcome as of this writing and as the final month of the 2014 midterm campaign begins.”
Marijuana causes dems to win
Werleman 14, writes for alternet, award-winning news magazine and online community that creates original journalism and
amplifies the best of hundreds of other independent media sources, “Why marijuana opposition will hurt the GOP for years to come,”
Feb 19th, http://www.salon.com/2014/02/19/reefer_madness_why_marijuana_opposition_will_hurt_the_gop_for_years_partner/
As the movement to expand access to marijuana grows across the country, the Republican Party, with the exception of its
kooky libertarian wing, has a bad case of reefer madness. Gov. Rick Perry, who's no stranger to moments of mental
madness, equated marijuana use to murder, while Gov. Chris Christie has more or less said he’d prefer dead kids to stoned kids.
During the 2012 election, Mitt Romney promised to "fight tooth and nail" against pro-marijuana legalization. While national polling
shows more than 55% of Americans support pot legalization, Republicans remains strongly opposed, and in fact, more than twothirds of Republicans voted against legalization in Colorado and Washington. With Republicans likely to remain opposed,
marijuana could emerge as a big cultural wedge issue winner in both the 2014 and 2016 elections. The
GOP holds a majority in the House of Congress and is threatening in the Senate come November, but in state elections, marijuana
on the ballot has big potential to harm Republican candidates. In January, the Florida Supreme Court approved a proposed
constitutional amendment that would legalize medical marijuana, assuring that the initiative will appear on the state’s November
ballot. The referendum on pot may, in turn, determine the winner of the state’s gubernatorial race. According to the most recent
Quinnipiac University poll, 70 percent of Floridians favor medical marijuana, which augers well for Democratic challenger Charlie
Christ, given Gov. Rick Scott opposes the bill. There is considerable evidence that vote turnout rises when pot is on the ballot,
especially for young voters who would naturally favor a candidate who supports it. Nate Cohn, a columnist for theNew Republic,
writes that assuming Hillary Clinton would be the nominee, she “would be well-positioned to deploy the issue. Her strength among
older voters and women mitigates the risk that she would lose very much support, while legalization could help Clinton with the
young, independent, and male voters who could clinch her primary or general election victory.” Democrats are already
winning ideological clashes in this country’s cultural war. On issues from same-sex marriage to the death penalty; from
abortion to gun control; poll after poll shows a majority of Americans lean left. Pot legalization is shaping up to be another issue
Democrats could apply a blowtorch to Republicans in blue and purple states , for the GOP is
handcuffed when it comes to dealing intelligently on the war on drugs. .
GOP Senate means immigration reform—includes work visas
Alexander Bolton, journalist, “GOP: We’ll Move Immigration Reform if We Take Back Senate,” THE HILL, 5—15—14,
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/206177-gop-well-move-immigration-reform-if-we-take-back-senate, accessed 7-14-14.
Senate Republicans say they'll try to pass
immigration reform legislation in the next two years if they take back
the Senate in November. The Republicans say winning back the Senate will allow them to pass a series of
bills on their own terms that have a better chance of winning approval in the House . Sen. Marco
Rubio (R-Fla.), a central member of the coalition that passed a comprehensive reform bill in the Senate last year, said he would
craft a better legislative approach if Republicans control the upper chamber in 2015. That would give his party
a chance to pass immigration legislation before the presidential election, when Hispanic voters will
be crucial to winning the White House. But Democrats are threatening that if the House does not pass a
comprehensive immigration reform bill this year the issue will be dead in 2015 and 2016, sinking the GOP brand among Hispanics
ahead of the 2016 election. “I certainly think we can make progress on immigration particularly on topics like modernizing our legal
immigration system, improving our mechanisms for enforcing the law and I think if you did those things you could actually make
some progress on addressing those who are illegally,” Rubio said Wednesday evening of the prospects of passing immigration
reform in 2015. He said the Senate next year should pass immigration reform through a series of sequential bills that build upon
each other to enact comprehensive reform. This approach would be more palatable in the House, he said. Rubio said he was not
fully satisfied with the comprehensive bill that passed the Senate last year, adding Republicans would “absolutely” pass better
legislation if they pick up six or more seats in the midterm election. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who is poised to take
over as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said he will vote to pass immigration legislation in the next
Congress if Republicans ascend to the majority. “We’d start over again next year,” Grassley said, when asked about the next steps
if Congress does not pass immigration reform by September. “I’d make a decision about whether you could get more done by
separate bills or a comprehensive bill,” he said. Grassley said he may have supported the 2013 Senate immigration bill if it had
tougher border security and interior enforcement provisions. “For that reason, not for the legal immigration stuff that’s in it,” he said,
explaining why he voted against it. Some Republicans, such as Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), strongly oppose increasing legal
immigration. “Washington can’t rewrite the law of supply and demand: we can’t rebuild our middle class if we continue to bring in
record numbers of new workers for companies to hire at the lowest available wage,” he said. Only 14 Republicans voted for the
Senate bill, which conservative critics panned for giving too much discretion to the Obama administration in deciding how its border
security requirements would be met. Senate Republicans believe that House Republicans would be more likely to
pass immigration reform if the midterm election shifts control of the upper chamber because it
would be easier to negotiate a Senate-House compromise. House conservatives have opposed bringing
immigration legislation to the House floor because they fear even a narrow bill could be used as a vehicle to jam the sprawling
Senate bill through the House. That threat would be less dire if the Senate passed a series of smaller immigration reform bills. “It
could pass if we break it down into smaller pieces,” said Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (Texas). “[The
House] has always been amenable to passing smaller bills on a step-by-step basis.” Once Congress
passes legislation to tighten border security and interior enforcement, it could pave the way for a deal
legalizing an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants, expanding work visas and enlarging the flow
of legal immigration, Senate Republicans argue.
Immigration key to clean tech—solves warming and the environment
Herman 10 (Richard, founder of Richard T. Herman & Associates, an immigration and business law firm in Cleveland, Ohio
which serves a global clientele in over 10 languages, Robert L. Smith is a veteran journalist who covers international cultures and
immigration issues for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio’s largest newspaper, “Why Immigrants Can Drive The Green Economy,”
http://www.ilw.com/articles/2010,0630-herman.shtm, CMR)
It should come as no surprise that immigrants
will help drive the green revolution . America's young scientists and
engineers, especially the ones drawn to emerging industries like alternative energy, tend to speak with an accent. The 2000 Census
found that immigrants, while accounting for 12 percent of the population, made up nearly half of the all scientists and
engineers with doctorate degrees. Their importance will only grow . Nearly 70 percent of the men and women
who entered the fields of science and engineering from 1995 to 2006 were immigrants. Yet, the connection between immigration
and the development and commercialization of alternative energy technology is rarely discussed. Policymakers envision
millions of new jobs as the nation pursues renewable energy sources, like wind and solar power, and
builds a smart grid to tap it. But Dan Arvizu, the leading expert on solar power and the director of the National Renewable
Energy Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy in Golden, Colorado, warns that much of the clean-technology talent
lies overseas, in nations that began pursuing alternative energy sources decades ago. The 2000 Census found that
immigrants, while accounting for 12 percent of the population, made up nearly half of the all scientists and
engineers with doctorate degrees. Their importance will only grow. Expanding our own clean-tech industry will
require working closely with foreign nations and foreign-born scientists, he said. Immigration restrictions
are making collaboration difficult. His lab's efforts to work with a Chinese energy lab, for example, were stalled due to
U.S. immigration barriers. "We can't get researchers over here," Arvizu, the son of a once-undocumented immigrant from Mexico,
said in an interview in March 2009, his voice tinged with dismay. "It makes no sense to me. We need a much more enlightened
approach." Dr. Zhao Gang, the Vice Director of the Renewable Energy and New Energy International Cooperation Planning Office of
the Ministry of Science and Technology in China, says that America needs that enlightenment fast. "The Chinese government
continues to impress upon the Obama administration that
immigration restrictions are creating major
impediments to U.S.-China collaboration on clean energy development," he said during a recent speech in
Cleveland. So what's the problem? Some of it can be attributed to national security restrictions that impede international
collaboration on clean energy. But Arvizu places greater weight on immigration barriers, suggesting that national secrecy is less
important in the fast-paced world of green-tech development. "We are innovating so fast here, what we do today is often outdated
tomorrow. Finding solutions to alternative energy is a complex, global problem that requires global
teamwork," he said. We need an immigration system that prioritizes the attraction and retention of
scarce, high-end talent needed to invent and commercialize alternative energy technology and other
emerging technologies.
Warming is real, human caused, and causes extinction—acting now is key to
avoid catastrophic collapse
Dr. David McCoy et al., MD, Centre for International Health and Development, University College London, “Climate Change and
Human Survival,” BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL v. 348, 4—2—14, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g2510, accessed 8-31-14.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just published its report on the impacts of global warming. Building on
its recent update of the physical science of global warming [1], the
IPCC’s new report should leave the world in no
doubt about the scale and immediacy of the threat to human survival , health, and well-being. The IPCC
has already concluded that it
is “ virtually certain that human influence has warmed the global climate
system” and that it is “ extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average
surface temperature from 1951 to 2010” is anthropogenic [1]. Its new report outlines the future threats of
further global warming: increased scarcity of food and fresh water; extreme weather events; rise in sea
level; loss of biodiversity; areas becoming uninhabitable; and mass human migration, conflict and
violence. Leaked drafts talk of hundreds of millions displaced in a little over 80 years. This month, the American Association for
the Advancement of Science (AAAS) added its voice: “the well being of people of all nations [is] at risk.” [2] Such
comments reaffirm the conclusions of the Lancet/UCL Commission: that climate change is “the greatest threat to
human health of the 21st century.” [3] The changes seen so far—massive arctic ice loss and extreme weather events, for
example—have resulted from an estimated average temperature rise of 0.89°C since 1901. Further changes will depend
on how much we continue to heat the planet. The release of just another 275 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide would
probably commit us to a temperature rise of at least 2°C—an amount that could be emitted in less than eight years. [4]
“ Business
as usual ” will increase carbon dioxide concentrations from the current level of 400 parts per
million (ppm), which is a 40% increase from 280 ppm 150 years ago, to 936 ppm by 2100, with a 50:50 chance that this will deliver
global mean temperature rises of more than 4°C. It is now widely understood that such a rise is “incompatible with an organised
global community.” [5]. The
IPCC warns of “ tipping points ” in the Earth’s system, which, if crossed, could lead
to a catastrophic collapse of interlinked human and natural systems. The AAAS concludes that there is
now a “real chance of abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes with highly
damaging impacts on people around the globe.” [2] And this week a report from the World Meteorological Office (WMO)
confirmed that extreme weather events are accelerating. WMO secretary general Michel Jarraud said, “There is no standstill in
global warming . . . The laws of physics are non-negotiable.” [6]
GOP senate key to the pivot
Zachary Keck, associate editor, “The Midterm Elections and the Asia Pivot,” THE DIPLOMAT, 4—22—14,
http://thediplomat.com/2014/04/the-midterm-elections-and-the-asia-pivot/, accessed 5-31-14.
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 Asia-Pacific. 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
OFF
The United States should criminalize nearly all marihuana by:

Strictly enforcing existing federal laws criminalizing marihuana

adopting Hawaii’s HOPE standards in nearly all cases of probation and
parole for nearly all illicit narcotics
The United States should:

modify its domestic and foreign target-selection process to give high
priority to distributors supplied by Mexico’s most violent organizations and
organizations which attack Mexico’s energy sector.

adopt North Carolina’s Drug Market Intervention strategy of focused
deterrence against the most violent dealers
and publically announce all of the above policies

The United States should conduct a review of regulations and consider how well
they fit the banking industry. The United States should modify regulations to be
more favorable to smaller banks.
Increasing enforcement crushes the illegal industry
Reid, 14 -- Lincoln Memorial University law professor [Melanie, "The Quawmire that Nobody in the Federal Government Wants
to Talk About: Marijuana," New Mexico Law Review, Spring 2014, 44 N.M.L. Rev. 169, l/n, accessed 6-9-14] ableist edited
Strict enforcement by the DEA would significantly [ ruin ] cripple most dispensary owners via
administrative forfeiture . Organizations that profit from marijuana sales in states that have
legalized medical or recreational use would close when owners find out that the federal
government has placed marijuana trafficking back on its priority list. A nation-wide round up, to
include simultaneous searches and seizures by the DEA, would likely cause states to reconsider
their laws, because local assets and state taxes would be seized. With the ensuing publicity ,
the public would know that the federal government is firmly enforcing marijuana laws.
HOPE decreases use and solves DTOs
By Mark Kleiman 11 Professor of Public Policy at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los
Angeles. “Surgical Strikes in the Drug Wars” Smarter Policies for Both Sides of the Border” Foreign Affairs,
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2011 ISSUE, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/68131/mark-kleiman/surgical-strikes-in-the-drug-wars
ac 6-24
Coerced treatment for drug abusers is not very successful, both because drug treatment itself is
not very successful and because the coercion is generally more nominal than real. But the idea of
focusing on criminally active, chronic high-dose users of expensive illicit drugs makes good
sense. Although they constitute a small minority of all users, they account for the bulk of the market in terms of volume and
revenue, and they frequently find themselves under the supervision of the criminal justice system. Also, felony probationers and
parolees with illicit drug abuse problems make up roughly half the population of active hard-drug abusers in the United States. Once
these users come under supervision, there is no need to allow them to continue their drug use. ¶ Those on probation or
parole are already forbidden to use illicit drugs. But that mandate is not effectively enforced. The
threat of probation or parole revocation is too severe (and expensive) to be carried out often and
not swift or certain enough to change behavior dramatically. As a result, most violations go
unpunished. By reducing the severity of the punishment for breaking the rules, it is possible to
dramatically increase its swiftness and certainty -- and swiftness and certainty matter more than
severity in changing behavior.¶ Frequent or random drug testing, with a guaranteed short jail stay
(as little as two days) for each incident of detected use, can have remarkable efficacy in reducing
offenders' drug use: Hawaii's now-famous HOPE project manages to get 80 percent of its longterm methamphetamine users clean and out of confinement after one year. The program more
than pays for itself by reducing the incarceration rate in that group to less than half that of a
randomly selected control group under probation as usual. HOPE participants are not forced to
receive drug treatment; instead, they are required to stop using . About 15 percent fail repeatedly,
and that small group is ordered into treatment, but most succeed without it. Fewer than ten
percent wind up back in prison.¶ These impressive results have led to similar efforts in Alaska,
Arizona, California, and Washington State; where the HOPE model is faithfully followed, the
outcomes are as consistent and positive as those in Hawaii. The U.S. federal government is set to
sponsor four new attempts to reproduce those results. If HOPE were to be successfully
implemented as part of routine probation and parole supervision, the resulting reduction in drug
use could shrink the market -- and thus the revenue of Mexico's d rug- t rafficking o rganization s
-- by as much as 40 percent . The potential gains on both sides of the border justify the attempt,
despite the daunting managerial challenges.
**focused deterrence solves cartel violence
By Mark Kleiman 11 Professor of Public Policy at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los
Angeles, Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard, a nationally recognized expert in the field of crime and drug policy, editor of the
Journal of Drug Policy Analysis, adjunct scholar at the Center for American Progress, member of the Committee on Law and Justice
of the United States National Research Council, “Surgical Strikes in the Drug Wars” Smarter Policies for Both Sides of the Border”
Foreign Affairs, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2011 ISSUE, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/68131/mark-kleiman/surgical-strikesin-the-drug-wars ac 6-24
Mexico's different problem calls for a different strategy: creating disincentives for violence at the
level of the largest trafficking organizations. Those six organizations vary in their use of violence; total violence
would shrink if market shares changed in favor of the currently least violent groups or if any group
reduced its violence level. Announcing and carrying out a strategy of violence-targeted enforcement
could achieve both ends.¶ The Mexican government could craft and announce a set of violencerelated metrics to be applied to each organization over a period of weeks or months. Such a
scoring system could consider a group's total number of killings, the distribution of its targets
(among other dealers, enforcement agents, ordinary citizens, journalists, community leaders, and elected officials), its use or
threat of terrorism, and its nonfatal shootings and kidnappings. Mexican officials have no
difficulty attributing each killing to a specific trafficking organization, in part because the
organizations boast of their violence rather than trying to hide it. At the end of the scoring period,
or once it became clear that one organization ranked first, the police would designate the most
violent organization for destruction. That might not require the arrest of the kingpins, as long as the targeted
organization came under sufficiently heavy enforcement pressure to make it uncompetitive. ¶ The points of maximum
vulnerability for the Mexican trafficking organizations might not even be within Mexico. U.S. law
enforcement agencies believe that for every major domestic distribution organization in the
United States, they can identify one or more of the six dominant Mexican trafficking organizations
as the primary source or sources. If the U.S. D rug E nforcement A dministration were to
announce that its domestic target-selection process would give high priority to distributors
supplied by Mexico's designated "most violent organization," the result would likely be a scramble
to find new sources.¶ Removing an organization would not reduce total smuggling capacity;
someone would pick up the slack. But the leaders of the targeted trafficking group would, if the program
were successful, find themselves out of business . The result might be the replacement of more
violent trafficking activity by less violent trafficking activity. Less happily, it could lead to a
temporary upsurge in violence due to the disruption of existing processes and relationships. But
in either case, if the destruction of the first designated target was followed by an announcement
that a new target-selection process was under way using the same scoring system, there would
be great pressure for each of the remaining trafficking groups to reduce its violence level to
escape becoming the next target .¶ The process could continue until none of the remaining
groups was notably more violent than the rest. In effect, such a strategy would condition the
traffickers' ability to remain in business on their willingness to conduct their affairs in a relatively
nonviolent fashion . This does not mean any sort of explicit negotiation or "treaty" with Mexico's
trafficking organizations. Trafficking, even nonviolently, would remain subject to enforcement. But
highly violent trafficking would be the target of differential enforcement .
Small banks failing now --- that decks the economy
Wayne A. Abernathy 14, executive vice president for financial institutions policy and regulatory affairs at the American
Bankers Association and former assistant secretary of the Treasury for financial institutions and staff director of the Senate Banking
Committee, "A Diminished Banking System Is Bad for Americans," July 30, American Banker,
www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/a-diminished-banking-system-is-bad-for-americans-1069037-1.html
Is America getting the banking it needs? A look at current statistics suggests that the disturbing answer may
be no.¶ The number of banks in the U.S. fell to 6,730 at the end of March, with only one new charter since 2010. By
comparison, in 1892 there were 7,118 banks in America—723 more than the year before. The attrition is concentrated at the lower
end of the size range, as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s consolidation study reported earlier this year. If you prefer
community banks and what they offer, your options are dwindling. If you value a flourishing
industry, the lack of new entrants should cause alarm. ¶ Broadening the perspective, erosion of U.S. banking is
also happening on a global scale. A recent report from SNL Financial confirmed that four of the top 10 global banks are
headquartered in China. Only one is headquartered in the United States. In 1999, six of the largest banks in the world were
headquartered here, including the world’s two largest.¶ These
new signs suggest a lack of growth and vitality .
Either one, taken in isolation, would seem to be a whiff of a smoldering problem. Taken together, they suggest a fire that is
burning our national financial future at both ends. This is particularly worrisome because the U.S.
banking tradition has historically encouraged the development of banks of all sizes and business
models to accommodate a variety of banking customers. ¶ Banks are essential to the economic
success of any modern nation . They play a central role in the conduct of monetary policy, bring
savers and investors together efficiently and operate a reliable, fast and safe national payments
system. We cannot afford to be complacent about the industry’s future.¶ Some observers might argue that
a concentrated banking system could be a good thing, pointing to the Canadian banking model. That system has five very large
banks that dominate the industry, along with a handful of boutique banks that could all be listed on one side of a single sheet of
paper. Maybe that works in an economy the size of California’s, but I question its suitability for the largest and most diverse
economy in the world. ¶ Bank customers come in all sizes, shapes, and business models, and so do our
banks. Over the years our economy has naturally bred some very large, internationally active banks, as well as
thousands of community banks and hundreds of regional banks, working to meet the needs of
customers at home and abroad.¶ We need to promote this system , not just preserve it. To that end,
U.S. regulators must get back in the business of chartering new banks. As the economy recovers, we can expect to see more
customers with growing needs, often in new places. Existing banks are ready to meet many of those needs, but customers
are
also increasingly reaching for bank lookalikes—demonstrating the growing demand for bank
services.¶ Unfortunately, many of these substitutes are less safe, more exposed to fraud and have thin resources for weathering
economic and financial storms. New opportunities call for new bank entrants and a regulatory environment that supports industry
growth.¶ The most recent reports from the FDIC reveal an American banking industry that has recovered from the recession. Banks
are holding record amounts of capital at a higher quality. Troubled loans are at pre-recession levels. Deposits and liquidity are
robust. These measures apply to banks of all sizes, showing strength at all levels of an industry completing a turnaround.¶
Regulatory oversight has played a role in promoting the industry’s financial health. But regulators cannot run a
successful banking business. If government officials make the business decisions, the results will tend toward meeting
the needs of government. If customers drive the decisions, then results will tend toward meeting the
needs of customers. The latest comments by federal bank regulators evince a willingness to review recent regulations and
consider how well they fit the banking industry and meet the needs of our economy. That is timely and appropriate. ¶ Within the
context of suitable and effective supervision, let the bankers of an industry ready for growth get on with the
business of supporting an accelerating economic recovery. As we do, customers will be more likely to obtain all
the banking they need.
The United States should conduct a review of regulations and consider how well
they fit the banking industry. The United States should modify regulations to be
more favorable to smaller banks.
OFF
The United States Federal government should amend Federal Tax Rule 280E to
exclude marijuana businesses from its application.
Tax plank solves business concerns.
Roche, Associate Dean and Professor of Law, University of Denver Sturm College of Law and Graduate Tax Program, ’13
[Edward, “Federal Income Taxation of Medical Marijuana Businesses”, Tax Lawyer, Vol. 66, No. 2, 2013, RSR]
The solution to the tax issues with the best —but not great—possibility of being adopted would be for
Congress to amend section 280E to exclude medical marijuana businesses from its application.
Such legislation was introduced by Congressman Stark of California and others in 2011. H.R.
1985, the euphemistically named Small Business Tax Equity Act, would except from the
application of section 280E “amounts paid or incurred in connection with the portion of the trade
or business consisting of sales of marihuana (as defined by section 102(16) of the Controlled Substances Act)
intended for patients for medical purposes pursuant to the law of a State.”345 A simpler approach would be a one-word amendment
to the language in section 280E “which is prohibited by Federal law or the law of any State in which such trade or business is
conducted”346 by replacing the word “or” with “and”. This bill would be viewed, correctly, as a tax cut for
medical marijuana businesses, with a corresponding cost to the public fisc. In the present political and
fiscal climate, it seems unlikely to pass.
OFF
Pharmaceuticals industry is powerful now but legalizing marijuana destroys it by
trading off with its most dependable source of revenue
Jackson ‘12
Lee Jackson, staffwriter for Daily Finance News and 24/7 Wall St. News, 12/11/12, “Will National Legalized Marijuana Help or Hurt
Big Pharma, Tobacco and Alcohol?” http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/12/11/will-national-legalized-marijuana-help-or-hurt-bigpharma-tobacco-and-alcohol/
One other big and powerful industry might have something to lose: Big Pharma. It is estimated that the
global pharmaceutical market will be worth more than $1 trillion by 2014. Industry giants Merck & Co.
(NYSE: MRK), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) and Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT) have warded
off patent cliffs for years using their large cash reserves to acquire smaller companies with robust
product pipelines. The last thing these companies want see is current product lines that are
producing dependable revenue flow to be dented by legal marijuana. The big pharmaceutical firms have a lot
of money to spread around, so when it comes to lobbying efforts, very few have this group’s clout. One thing it wants is for
marijuana to remain illegal.
There are countless maladies where the ingestion of marijuana has been believed to help alleviate
or control the symptoms. These include glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, AIDS-related complications, Crohn’s disease,
fibromyalgia, chemotherapy complications and others. Big pharma has tried to come up with their own pot pill.
There are more than 400 chemicals in marijuana, 80 of which are called “cannabinoids.” Drug
companies have tried reducing it to one chemical and results have been poor. Researchers find that when you reduce cannabis to
just tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), you lose efficacy and gain side effects.
In a book critical of the pharmaceutical industry called “Our Daily Meds,” author Melody Petersen offers a statistic showing more
than 100,000 people die each year from prescription drugs. This includes death from abuse and overdose, side effects,
misdiagnosis and interaction error. Many physicians may currently be reluctant to prescribe legalized
marijuana. A national mandate would provide many physicians with the moral and ethical cover
they need to be more aggressive if they feel medical marijuana may help their patients . Then it is
very possible that medical marijuana prescriptions will put a dent in many currently prescribed
drugs. This is not an outcome that big pharma is likely to tolerate well, unless they get in on the action
themselves.
Plan takes away key money and flexibility that the pharmaceutical industry is
using now to combat Ebola
Keene 9/13
Stephanie Keene, lawyer with a JD from Yale where she was editor of the Yale Journal of International Law and then received a
Gruber fellowship at the International Justice Mission in Uganda and also spent eight months as a Princeton in Africa Fellow working
with the UN World Food Program in Senegal, 9/13/14, “Looking Towards the Future of Pharmaceuticals in Africa”
http://www.natlawreview.com/article/looking-towards-future-pharmaceuticals-africa
Over the past six months, the Ebola virus has killed approximately 2,100 people in West Africa,
creating an international health crisis and terrorizing communities in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra
Leone. The race to develop, produce and disseminate Ebola vaccines has proven to be
immensely challenging. Experimental but potentially life-saving drugs were produced in
insufficient quantities during the crucial initial phase of the epidemic, forcing physicians to determine who would
receive potentially life-saving medicine and who would not. The WHO recently announced that two possible vaccines
will be available as early as next month, reflecting a remarkably rapid pace of drug testing that
sharply contrasts with the often slow process of pharmaceutical research, development and patenting.
necessitated by the Ebola crisis point to the need for a
modernized pharmaceutical industry that is
better
The urgent actions
more efficient,
collaborative, and
equipped to devote additional resources to the
research and development of pharmaceuticals in Africa . In Sub-Saharan Africa–a region that
accounts for 12% of the world’s population but that shoulders 26% of the global disease burden—
such innovations are especially essential.
Unchecked Ebola pandemic causes instability which leads to war
AE Africa News 9/30
Alternative Energy Africa News, 9/30/14, “Ebola Outbreak Increases Instability in Fragile Nations”
A new report predicts outbreaks to reach 1.4 million by February 2015 if the Ebola outbreak is not
contained, a drastic increase from the current figure of 5,800 cases. With this information, stability hangs in the
balance for some African nations already faced with rising numbers of Ebola victims.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Ebola cases could increase to between 550,000 and 1.4 million in four months. The CDC also questions the current death toll as reported
by the World Health Organization, standing at 2,800 out of at least 5,800 cases. The group said that the fatalities more likely total 2.5 times as many cases, or about 20,000.
Liberia’s Information Minister Lewis Brown said that he was fearful the country would slip back into civil war –
shared concerns in Sierra Leone as well. Brown said that the outbreak had resulted in allowing a
breakdown of societies in the region. "The effect of Ebola is being seen not just as a public health
situation but it is also a political situation. Liberia is just 10 years out of our conflict," said Brown.
Neighboring Sierra Leone battled a 10-year civil war ending in 2002.
The spread of the Ebola virus has the potential for a massive domino effect . First is the
overcrowding of hospitals and decrease in medical supplies and staff. Following, businesses and
tourism suffers as investors and companies halt operations with the chance of removing staff.
This causes a drain on the local economy, including high inflation rates, unemployment, and a
massive increase in the cost of living, creating a very disgruntled population.
Guinea is also battling the outbreak, a place that is already plagued with civil unrest most recently
between President Alpha Conde supporters and opposition factions. Most recently, eight bodies were discovered in
the country after an attack was made on a team trying to educate locals on the risks of Ebola. The
UN Security Council said the outbreak was a “threat to international peace and security” while the US just
announced plans to send 3,000 members of its armed forces to the West African region in addition to training 500 healthcare
professionals each week.
Large-scale African conflict will draw in outside powers and escalate to nuclear
war
Deutsch 02 – Founder of Rabid Tiger Project (Political Risk Consulting and Research Firm focusing on Russia and
Eastern Europe)
[Jeffrey, “SETTING THE STAGE FOR WORLD WAR III,” Rabid Tiger Newsletter, Nov 18,
http://www.rabidtigers.com/rtn/newsletterv2n9.html]
The Rabid Tiger Project believes that a
nuclear war is most likely to start in Africa. Civil wars in the Congo (the country
formerly known as Zaire), Rwanda, Somalia and Sierra Leone, and domestic instability in Zimbabwe, Sudan and other countries, as
well as occasional brushfire and other wars (thanks in part to "national" borders that cut across tribal ones) turn into a
really nasty stew. We've got all too many rabid tigers and potential rabid tigers, who are willing to push the button rather than risk being seen
as wishy-washy in the face of a mortal threat and overthrown. Geopolitically speaking, Africa is open range. Very few
countries in Africa are beholden to any particular power. South Africa is a major exception in this respect - not to mention in that she also probably
already has the Bomb. Thus, outside powers can more easily find client states there than, say, in Europe where the political lines have long since been
drawn, or Asia where many of the countries (China, India, Japan) are powers unto themselves and don't need any "help," thank you. Thus,
an
African war can attract outside involvement very quickly. Of course, a proxy war alone may not induce the Great
Powers to fight each other. But an African nuclear strike can ignite a much broader conflagration, if the other
powers are interested in a fight. Certainly, such a strike would in the first place have been facilitated by
outside help - financial, scientific, engineering, etc. Africa is an ocean of troubled waters, and some people love
to go fishing.
Cartels
DTOs 1NC (2:00
Drug war violence declining
By Karla Zabludovsky covers Latin America for Newsweek. “Murders in Mexico Down From Height of the Drug War, But
Violence Persists” Filed: 7/23/14 at 6:42 PM http://www.newsweek.com/murders-mexico-down-height-drug-war-violence-persists260990
Some of the Mexican states where drug war–related violence has been most intense, like
Coahuila, Guerrero and Tamaulipas, showed a decreased homicide rate . In Durango, part of the
Mexican “golden triangle,” an area notorious for drug trafficking, homicides decreased by nearly
half in 2013 as compared to the previous year.¶ ADVERTISEMENT¶ It is unclear what percentage of recorded
homicides are related to organized crime since the government modified the classification in October, doing away with a separate
category for drug war–related deaths, instead lumping them all together.¶ Aware of the war weariness felt among
many in Mexico, Pena Nieto ran on the promise that, if elected, his government would shift the
focus from capturing drug kingpins, like Calderon had, to making daily life for ordinary Mexicans
safer.¶ "With this new strategy, I commit myself to significantly lowering the homicide rate, the number of kidnappings in the
country, the extortions and the human trafficking," wrote Pena Nieto in a newspaper editorial during his presidential campaign.¶
Since taking office in December 2012, Pena Nieto has largely eliminated talk of security from his
agenda except when large outbreaks of violence have forced him otherwise, focusing instead on
the economy and his legislative reforms , including sweeping overhauls to education and energy. And while the
country appears to be less violent now than during Calderon’s war on drugs, the climate of press freedom, according to the
Committee to Protect Journalists, remains “perilous.”
Legalization destabilizes mexico- causes cartel lashout and diversification
Chad Murray et al 11, Ashlee Jackson Amanda C. Miralrío, Nicolas Eiden Elliott School of International Affairs/InterAmerican Drug Abuse Control Commission: Capstone Report April 26, 2011 “Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations and
Marijuana: The Potential Effects of U.S. Legalization”
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 ¶ 29 ¶
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
Legalizing doesn’t solve violence
By Mark Kleiman 11 Professor of Public Policy at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los
Angeles. “Surgical Strikes in the Drug Wars” Smarter Policies for Both Sides of the Border” Foreign Affairs,
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2011 ISSUE, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/68131/mark-kleiman/surgical-strikes-in-the-drug-wars
ac 6-24
Full commercial legalization of cannabis, or some alternative short of full commercialization, such as lawful
would shrink the revenue of the Mexican trafficking
organizations by approximately one-fifth , according to Beau Kilmer and his colleagues at the RAND Corporation:
production for personal use or by user cooperatives,
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.
No Mexican failed state—reject media hype
by Martín Paredes ·El Paso News February 28, 2014 “George Friedman: Mexico is not a Failed State”
http://elpasonews.org/2014/02/george-friedman-mexico-failed-state/ ac 8-27
A failed state read the headlines. Doom
and gloom, Mexico was about to implode led the news cycles
starting around 2008. A revolution as about to start south of the US border, it was just a matter of days. Fast forward to
today and the notion that Mexico is on the verge of becoming a failed state is as idiotic today as it
was then . The news reporters happily interviewed the dubious characters predicting Mexico’s
failures because to lead with Mexico’s imminent demise was an easy sell for the US appetite for
sensational headlines .¶ I understand that the news media has to attract eyeballs in order to stay in
business. Eyeballs sell advertising and the more eyeballs the more financially stable the news
outlet is. Most of the time when I am discussing the state of the news media with a reporter and news outlet executive the topic
of tabloids leads to heated discussions about ethics in journalism. That discussion invariably leads to how blogging has
destroyed the profession of the professional news outlet . I always counter that the demise of the newspapers
and news outlets to Internet delivered news is a direct result of the failure of the traditional news outlets adhering to the basics of fair
and ethical news reporting.¶ The demise of the traditional news media came about when sensationalism
became the accepted practice rather than the exception. I don’t blame the so-called experts on
everything drug cartel related because they are nothing more than individuals looking to make a
quick buck by proclaiming themselves experts on the drug traffickers in Mexico.¶ The notion of
the imminent failure of Mexico was started by information peddler George Friedman in May of
2008 with his self-serving, make-another-dollar opinion that was nothing more than another
charlatan peddling his goods to those willing to buy. The problem with people like Friedman is
that the news media is too happy to label them “experts” in order to ply their sensational
headlines to their audience.¶ George Friedman’s company and raison d’ete is his company
Stratfor. Stratfor peddles “strategic analysis” about geopolitics. In essence, the company has selfproclaimed itself as an expert in global security in order to sell its publications to individuals and
governments. It peddles self-proclaimed expertise in security. The problem though is that their
security “expertise” apparently doesn’t include their own operations because in 2011, the hacker
group Anonymous broke into their systems. In February 2012, Wikileaks began publishing the stolen emails.¶
Friedman’s Stratfor has taken the position that you can’t trust the released emails because they will not confirm which ones are
authenticate and which ones may be doctored after they were stolen. To me, this position is nothing more than a desperate attempt
to discount the theft of their emails. Regardless, for a so-called expert on “security” the theft of their emails shows a distinct failure in
their ability to protect themselves and thus the security of their clients. ¶ For his part, George Friedman, born in Budapest Hungary is
a former professor and now an author and owner of Stratfor. He peddles information to those willing to buy it. I am sure you are all
aware of the famous phrase; “those who can’t, teach”. Most appropriate for Friedman. ¶ A Failed State is generally
defined as a country that has lost some or all control over its sovereignty. The fact is that Mexico,
even at the height of the Mexican Drug War never relinquished control over its sovereignty . I am
sure some of you will argue that there were and are pockets of criminality in Mexico that seem to surpass the government’s ability to
maintain control. However, all of that rhetoric ignores a fundamental reality; a failed state has a failed
economy and an ineffective government. So, let’s take a look at those two functions. ¶ Has the Mexican
economy faltered?¶ The World Bank ranks Mexico’s economy as the second largest economy south of
the Rio Bravo (Rio Grande), behind Brazil. This month Moody’s rated Mexico as A3, the first time the country has
received an “A” rating in its entire history. Keep in mind that the rating is derived from actions taken by two administrations under
two different political parties.¶ I wish George Friedman would explain to everyone how it is that a country
on the verge of collapse is able to attain an A rating for its econom y. Somehow, I don’t expect he will, as it
isn’t something he can sell to the news outlets and his subscribers looking for doom-and-gloom coming from Mexico.¶ Somehow,
a country on the verge of collapse, according to George Friedman is on the road to becoming the
United States’ number one automobile exporter t
his year. Again, how is it that a country on the verge of collapse continues to build enough
automobiles to outpace Canada and Japan?¶ Clearly, the Mexican economy is not on the verge of
collapse and therefore the country’s government is in full control. So, let’s a take a look at the
transition of power. ¶ On December 1, 2012, President Enrique Peña Nieto took office. Mexico had
effectively transitioned power from one government to another. Former President Felipe Calderon
Hinojosa, who initiated the Mexican Drug War, democratically relinquished power in a transition
from one party to another. Both US president Barack Obama and leftist president Hugo Chavez both agreed that the
transfer of power was properly completed.¶ In other words, two opposing political ideologies both agreed that
Mexico’s electoral process was completed properly under the law . In fact, Mexico has now
transitioned power from one party, to another and back to the original party making Mexico a twoparty country.¶ So much for the notion that Mexico was on the verge of collapse.¶ The problem of
the drug cartels is a significant problem for Mexico but it is a geopolitical problem with many
facets at work at the same time. For the most part Mexico has risen to the occasion and has
demonstrated that far from being a failed state, it is in fact an economically growing country in full
control of its sovereignty. As much as the naysayers want it to be, the facts are that Mexico is not
some backwards country on the border holding the US back. Rather it is a country that the US
should be proud to call a friend.¶ Unfortunately, for people like George Friedman and those who
subscribe to his voodoo research the facts are just inconvenient things that should be ignored .
Cartels irrelevant to energy—Iraq proves
Young 14 -- Texas Observer reporter
[Shannon, "American Media Misses the Story on Mexican Oil Reform," Texas Observer, www.texasobserver.org/american-mediamisses-story-mexican-oil-reform/, accessed 9-20-14]
oil and gas deposits are located in—or just offshore of—areas known
as zonas de silencio or silence zones. In silence zones, organized criminals operate with
little hindrance from local authorities; civilians face economic and physical violence; open criticism and adversarial journalism
Another issue is that some of the most significant
in Mexico
can be life-threatening; and impunity is systemic. Residents of silence zones often regard organized criminals and local government
authorities as different facets of the same power structure. This is particularly the case in the Gulf Coast border state of Tamaulipas,
where organized criminals control many secondary roads to gas fields; fuel theft from state-owned pipelines is rampant; and stolen
gas is sold openly out of the backs of vans in border cities like Matamoros, Rio Bravo and Reynosa. Just how foreign companies will
go about their business in oil and gas fields in territories with already entrenched armed actors is an open question. But
experiences in Iraq , which de-nationalized its oil reserves after the U.S.-led invasion, have shown
that some American energy companies are willing to do business in violence-plagued areas if the
reserves and the potential gains from them seem to justify the risks.
Production takes 10 years even with stability
Clifford Krauss, “Oil Reforms by Mexico May Upend Markets,” NEW YORK TIMES, 8—13—13, p. B1.
The Mexican president’s proposal is expected to be enacted by the Mexican Congress next year. But
oil experts caution
that it could take as long as 10 years — for Mexico to conduct seismic testing and an auction for
deep-water prospects, and for the foreign companies to do their own appraisal drilling — for
production to begin in earnest. Experts say, however, that shale drilling and enhanced oil recovery from older wells could
begin sooner.
Energy independence now—domestic production
Mark P. Mills, senior fellow, Manhattan Institute, “The Case for Exports: America’s Hydrocarbon Industry Can Revive the
Economy and Eliminate the Trade Deficit,” POWER & GROWTH INITIATIVE REPORT n. 3, Manhattan Institute, 5—3—13,
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/pgi_03.htm#.U2fkpfldXD4, accessed 4-8-14.
The
U.S. is on track to shortly overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's largest producer of oil. This
reversal of fortune caught policymakers by surprise, and they are struggling to reorient themselves to a world
entirely unlike the one envisioned just seven years ago. It's a world in which America, so accustomed to fretting
about the amount of oil and gas it consumes, can focus instead on the benefits of all the oil and
gas it produces. Even the experts are struggling to keep pace with the new reality. Last year, for example, the U.S. Energy
Information Administration (EIA) offered a forecast for total U.S. oil production in 2022. The United States will, in fact, reach
that total by the end of this year .[2] The best industry estimates now foresee domestic oil production jumping another 70
In 2006, the decline in natural gas production ended. Output began to grow rapidly and soon surpassed its 1973 peak.[1]
percent within the decade.[3] The long-sought goal of " energy
independence" is at hand.
No oil shocks-several factors check.
Whitehouse 10 (12-19, Mark, deputy bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal “Oil Prices Seen as a Threat Again”,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703395904576025762319723364.html
In the physical market, oil producers have ample capacity to keep prices in check. The International Energy
Agency estimates spare capacity among Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries at 6.4% of global demand, nearly double
the level of late 2007. As of the end of November, the world had enough oil in its inventories to cover
demand for 20 days without drying out pipelines and refineries, according to data provider Oil Market
Intelligence. That's up from 14 days in November 2007. Thanks to the added inventories, "the broader economy is now
more insulated from oil shocks" than it was back in 2008, says Philip Verleger, an energy economist at the
University of Calgary's Haskayne School of Business. While many see speculative investment as a source of
volatility, it might actually help prevent a spike, says Mr. Verleger. By pushing up the price of oil to be
delivered in future months, investors have made it more attractive for traders to buy oil now and
hold it for future sale. That, in turn, keeps inventories higher, providing a cushion that can limit price
swings in the event of sudden changes in supply and demand. If the price of oil does rise further,
it won't necessarily do economic damage. For one, the price spike of 2008 led many people and
companies to cut back on energy consumption, a shift that could make them more resilient to
price increases this time around. Beyond that, oil-price increases can have little to no impact if they
correspond to a decrease in the value of the dollar against other currencies. Because oil is bought
and sold in dollars, it doesn't become more expensive for most of the world's buyers unless the
price increase exceeds the drop in the dollar. And in the U.S., the export boost from a cheaper
dollar can create more jobs, offsetting the pain of higher prices at the gas pump .
Asia Pivot: 1NC
We won’t abandon the Middle East
Wolf 12 (Charles, Distinguished Corporate Chair in International Economics, RAND Corporation,
Professor, Pardee Rand Graduate School, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Summer
2012, “The Geopolitics of U.S. Energy Independence” The International Economy)
http://www.international-economy.com/TIE_Su12_GeopoliticsEnergySymp.pdf
U.S. foreign policy and military security concerns are not thereby likely to be diminished. Such
collateral events as the following would account for our continued concerns: Iran’s persistent
pursuit of deliverable nuclear weapons (if not by then having been already acquired); Saudi concerns with
countering this development; also the heightened concerns of other Sunni elements in the Middle East; Egypt’s
restiveness still further aggravated by these circumstances; and Israel’s concerns about what to do and
how to do it in the face of these developments. In sum, I doubt that the area will be more
quiescent as a result of the sharp change in relative oil and gas prices. That said, it’s as plausible that
U.S.-Israeli relations will become more harmonious in these circumstances as it is that they will become less so.
New adv
No impact to econ
Daniel Drezner 14, IR prof at Tufts, The System Worked: Global Economic Governance during the Great Recession, World
Politics, Volume 66. Number 1, January 2014, pp. 123-164
The final significant outcome addresses a dog that hasn't barked: the effect of the Great Recession on cross-border conflict
and violence. During
the initial stages of the crisis, multiple analysts asserted that the financial crisis
would lead states to increase their use of force as a tool for staying in power.42 They voiced genuine concern that
the global economic downturn would lead to an increase in conflict—whether through greater internal repression,
diversionary wars, arms races, or a ratcheting up of great power conflict. Violence in the Middle East,
border disputes in the South China Sea, and even the disruptions of the Occupy movement fueled impressions of a surge in global
The aggregate data suggest otherwise , however. The Institute for Economics and Peace has
average level of peacefulness in 2012 is approximately the same as it was in
2007."43 Interstate violence in particular has declined since the start of the financial crisis, as have
military expenditures in most sampled countries. Other studies confirm that the Great Recession has not
triggered any increase in violent conflict, as Lotta Themner and Peter Wallensteen conclude: "[T]he pattern is one of
relative stability when we consider the trend for the past five years."44 The secular decline in violence that started with
the end of the Cold War has not been reversed. Rogers Brubaker observes that "the crisis has not to date
generated the surge in protectionist nationalism or ethnic exclusion that might have been
expected."43
public disorder.
concluded that "the
[other impact D]
Banks Strong
Banks are strong
AP 7/5/14
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/07/05/5-reasons-why-us-economy-is-recovering/
5 reasons why US economy is recovering
STRONGER BANKS
The United States moved faster than Europe to restore its banks' health after the
financial crisis of 2008 -2009. The U.S. government bailed out the financial system and subjected
big banks to stress tests in 2009 to reveal their financial strength. By showing the banks to be
surprisingly healthy, the stress tests helped restore confidence in the U.S. financial system. Banks
gradually started lending again. European banks are only now undergoing stress tests, and the results won't be out until fall. In the
meantime, Europe's banks lack confidence. They fear that other banks are holding too many bad loans and that Europe is
vulnerable to another crisis. So they aren't lending much. In the United States,
overall bank lending is up nearly 4
percent in the past year. Lending to business has jumped 10 percent . In the eurozone, lending has
dropped 3.7 percent overall , according to figures from the Institute of International Finance. Lending to business is off 2.5
percent. (The U.S. figures are for the year ending in mid-June; the European figures are from May.)
Bank failure good 1NC
Failure now is good- it fragments the banks, staves off a larger collapse—
Gelinas 2009 (Nicole [a City Journal contributing editor and the Searle Freedom Trust Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is a Chartered
Financial Analyst]; “Too Big to Fail” Must Die; Summer; www.city-journal.org/2009/19_3_financial-institutions.html; kdf)
Reintroducing a predictable, credible way for lenders to financial firms to take losses when failure
strikes would go a long way toward protecting the economy from speculative excesses. Market
forces, coupled with overdue new rules for inadequately regulated financial instruments, would
have a better chance of reducing reckless risk-taking before it got out of control. As a first step, the
government should create an FDIC-style conservatorship for failed big or complex financial institutions. A new kind of bankruptcy
could come into play in such a process, says University of Texas business-law professor Jay Westbrook. It might keep some
lenders (and trading partners on derivatives) from seizing their collateral immediately and selling it. This would reduce the possibility
that instant sales of billions of dollars’ worth of securities would destabilize the financial system. In another elaboration of the
conservatorship idea, economists R. Glenn Hubbard, Hal Scott, and Luigi Zingales have proposed an elegant FDIC-managed
system that would begin by splitting failed financial firms in two. One new entity would take over the toxic assets that caused the
firm’s problems. This “bad bank” would also bring the failed firm’s lenders with it, and the lenders
would take losses based on the collapsed value of the assets . The other new entity, no longer weighed down
by the bad assets, could meet the original firm’s remaining obligations and raise new funds. It could then free itself from government
administration, as in any corporate exit from bankruptcy. Lenders to the original failed firm, now lenders to the bad bank, would
receive stock in the restructured firm, sharing in its future profits, just as lenders to an ordinary bankrupt firm can. However the
arcane details take shape, the key factor in imposing market discipline on the financial world is
credibility . Lenders to big banks and other financial firms must be made to worry that their
money really is potentially at risk —that the feds won’t keep stepping in to save them . If credibility isn’t soon
established, Washington’s actions will have created a monster, stoking more reckless debt
creation at a time when debt has already reached a staggering and record 350 percent of GDP .
Witness how quickly banks were able to borrow money earlier this year from private lenders—sometimes without the FDIC’s new
emergency guarantee. The government heralded the loans as evidence that lenders were regaining
confidence in the financial sector. They weren’t. Lenders merely had confidence that Washington would stick to its policy
of bailouts for tottering financial companies. Too big to fail” imperils the economy’s long-term health in other
ways. If big or complex financial firms keep their state subsidy, they’ll continue to divert lenders’
money away from other, perhaps more deserving, industries. Why lend money to Cisco when you can
lend it to Citigroup risk-free ? Further, failure is necessary in a free market , since it improves
economic efficiency. When a company fails, a more successful firm can buy its good assets, releasing them from
incompetent management. Failed firms’ workers can likewise find more useful outlets for their labor. Even people who made the
mistakes that led to a firm’s failure can start anew. Vitally for the economy, failure helps ensure that bad ideas
die, so that government and private resources aren’t wasted on a business model that doesn’t
work. If real reform doesn’t happen, get ready for a fearsome certainty: that markets will eventually correct our unsustainable
financial system. They have tried to do so several times over the decades by punishing firms like Continental, Long-Term, and, most
recently, Citigroup, as well as the lenders who financed them. The government thwarted these necessary
corrections at every turn, bailing out the reckless and their enablers. But the price of maintaining
our untenable system keeps growing, and eventually the government won’t be able to pay the bill.
The multitrillion-dollar price tag attached to the government’s current endeavors already
endangers the nation’s fiscal health. A decade from now, failing financial firms could take the credit of the U.S.
government right down with them.
Small banks strong now
By Hester Peirce senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, served as Senior Counsel to
Senator Shelby's staff on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, summarizing recent FDIC
report on
community banks, April 10, 2014 4:53 PM “Community Banks, Consolidation, and Regulatory Burdens” Point of Law
http://www.pointoflaw.com/archives/2014/04/community-banks-consolidation-and-regulatory-burdens.php
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has produced valuable research on community banks, but more research is needed to
address an issue of great concern for small banks--growing regulatory burdens. At the end of 2012, the FDIC released a helpful
community banking study that explored the characteristics and practices of community banks. And yesterday, the agency issued a
report on community bank charter attrition, which offers valuable insights into the nature and drivers of bank consolidation. The
message of the most recent report is clear--despite years of consolidation activity, community banks are
here to stay . That is good news, because the diversity of the U.S. financial system--including its large number of community
banks--is critical to its ability to serve the nation's diverse financial needs. The study's optimistic assessment of the future, however,
largely ignores one key issue--the effects of regulatory burdens on small banks.¶ According to the report, the number of bank and
thrift charters was 6,812 at the end of 2013, compared to approximately 20,000 in 1980. The report acknowledges that small bank
consolidation has been paired with big bank asset accumulation, a marked trend that a recent set of Mercatus Center charts
illustrates.The FDIC report explains that most of the consolidation activity is concentrated in banks below $100 million. Some of the
decline is attributable to mergers within a single banking organization with multiple charters. Another portion of the decline is due to
"voluntary inter-company mergers," which often involve one community bank acquiring another. Past consolidation was driven in
significant part by the relaxation of branching restrictions. Bank failures have also contributed to consolidation.
Looking forward, the authors expect fewer failures and more new bank charters.¶ Based on their
findings, the report's authors conclude that " the projected decline of the community banking sector has been
significantly overstated. " They correctly point out that community banks are important to small businesses and rural
communities. They further point to the relative stability of community banks between $100 million and $10 billion, and argue that
economies of scale "do not appear to be working against the majority of community banks." The report mentions regulations as a
positive factor; they can prevent bank failures. It does not look at the degree to which regulatory costs drive consolidation, a factor
that should temper their optimistic projections. In a recent Mercatus Center survey, small banks told us that compliance costs have
gone up in the wake of Dodd-Frank, the median number of compliance personnel has increased from one to two, and new
regulations have affected the way community banks interact with their customers. Moreover, almost all of the surveyed banks
anticipate continued consolidation in the next five years, and a quarter of them expect to be part of it. To the extent that regulatory
cost considerations are driving purportedly voluntary bank consolidation, regulators owe it to small banks and their customers to
think carefully about ways to reduce regulatory burdens.
Small banks don’t cause stability
Gandel 12
Stephen Gandel, senior writer for TIME, covering real estate, economics and Wall Street, Forbes, November 9, 2012, “Thousands of
banks may disappear”, http://fortune.com/2012/11/09/thousands-of-banks-may-disappear/
Still, it’s probably true that all
the rules we have lumped on the banking industry in a good faith effort to
make our financial system safer will most likely make it harder for small banks to stick around. The
real question is how much we should care.¶ Canada, afterall, has less than two dozen banks, and by most
accounts it’s banking system did pretty well in the financial crisis. What’s more, the vast majority of
lending, something like 90%, in this country is done by the nation’s 50 largest banks. So losing nearly
7,000 banks would only cut off credit to 10% of borrowers at most.
Alt cause- dodd frank
Daily Herald Media Editorial Board 8:17 a.m. CDT August 29, 2014 “Banking regulations a burden to small fish: Our View”
Wausau Daily Herald, http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/story/opinion/2014/08/14/banking-regulations-burden-small-fishview/14080975/
many of the new regulations ushered in under the Dodd-Frank financial
reforms of 2010 end up creating new burdens that are felt most acutely by the community banks , not
And yet, they have argued,
the Wall Street banks that are accustomed to devoting hundreds of millions to complying with — or wriggling out of — regulations.
2NC
HOPE solves drug demand- empirics and basic psychology
Kornell, 13 -- Slate writer-- citing Angela Hawken, PhD criminal justice researcher; and Mark Kleiman, a drug policy expert at
UCLA
[Sam, "Probation that Works," Slate, 6-5-13,
www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/06/hawaii_hope_probation_program_reduces_crime_drug_use_and_time
_in_prison.html, accessed 6-21-14]
Angela Hawken is a criminal justice researcher, and the subject of her daily toil is one of America’s most intractable
problems: its bloated prison population. In the spring of 2006, she flew to Hawaii to investigate the latest in a long line of miracle
cures; it would, she had no doubt, fail to live up to expectations, like the others. Five years after receiving her doctorate
in policy analysis, Hawken felt uncertain that the American penal system could be reformed—much less that it ever would be.
The United States, with 5 percent of the world’s population, accounts for 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. Extraordinarily long
sentences and a high recidivism rate have put more than 2 million people behind bars in the United States, with 4.5 million on
probation or parole. Over the years, one innovative reform program after another has materialized and then quickly receded from
memory. So Hawken was skeptical when she heard that participants in a yearlong pilot program in
Hawaii were
50 percent less likely to be arrested for a new crime and 70 percent less likely to use
drugs. “In this line of work, when you hear something that sounds too good be true,” she said, “it’s because it is too good to be
true.” Hawken’s first inkling that she might be wrong came when an official from the judiciary picked her up at the Honolulu airport
and drove her directly to the local jail. Customarily, she said, such visits are brief and carefully orchestrated. Her second inkling
came when, upon arrival, she was told she had unlimited access to the prisoners. “That never happens.” But it wasn’t until she
began speaking with the prisoners themselves that the moment of revelation came. “When I interviewed the inmates, that’s when I
really knew: This is different.” The program, called Hawaii’s Opportunity Probation with Enforcement, or HOPE, is based on simple
precepts that the judge who created it likened to “Parenting 101.” It
immediately jails, for no more than three or four
days, offenders who miss a probation appointment or fail a drug test . Operating under the theory that
judicial punishment should be “swift, certain, and proportionate,” it seeks to turn around behavior that the system ordinarily, though
inadvertently, seems to perpetuate. A proffered meth pipe attains a new significance, the thinking goes, when it
comes attached to the prospect of an immediate three-day tour behind bars. Moreover, such brief,
predictably enforced jail stays are congenial to prisoners used to a more unpredictable and , to their
minds, arbitrary system. “Ordinarily, when you ask an inmate why he’s behind bars, it’s always someone else’s fault,” Hawken
said. “ ‘I’m in jail because the judge is an SOB’; ‘I’m in jail because my probation officer had a bad day.’ ” But in Honolulu she
encountered men and women who, unbidden and unpressured, praised the system that put them away,
and told her they were locked up because they had “messed up” —something so unusual, she said, that it
made her skin tingle. “That language of personal responsibility is unimaginable if you’re a criminal
justice researcher.” HOPE’s creator is an unrelentingly sunny and vigorous man named Steven Alm. He became a judge in
2001 after serving as Hawaii’s U.S. attorney. During his first week in office, he encountered rampant recidivism and a probation
system that struck him as “crazy”: Probation officers would let slide up to 10 or 15 probation violations before they recommended to
a judge that offenders be sent to prison. This practice is common in the rest of the United States, and because there are so many
Americans on probation, its ramifications are enormous. After his first, frustrating week on the job, Judge Alm began thinking about
how he disciplined his kids. Children punished under a system that is consistent, predictable, and prompt, he knew, are less likely to
misbehave than children who face delayed, arbitrary, and unpredictable punishment, and it was his insight to see that these
parenting truisms could be applied to the incarceration system he oversaw. “I thought about how I was raised and how I raise my
kids. Tell ’em what the rules are and then if there’s misbehavior you give them a consequence immediately. That’s what good
parenting is all about.” A skeptical probation officer suggested they keep statistics when the program was launched. A year later
members of the Hawaiian judiciary surveyed the results with amazement:
Participants in HOPE were 55 percent less
likely than members of a control group to be arrested for a new crime, 72 percent less likely to
use drugs , and 53 percent less likely to have their probation revoked. As a result, they served 48
percent fewer days of incarceration. After Hawken visited Hawaii, she conducted a separate N ational
I nstitute of J ustice study, a randomized control trial on a group of new HOPE participants. Her data
replicated the original HOPE numbers. “I was optimistic it would work,” says Alm, “but I had no idea it would work as
well as it did.” More than a dozen states are now experimenting with pilot programs based on HOPE. Last June, legislators in
Washington decided to enshrine “swift and certain” as law, immediately applying it to 70 percent
of the state’s 15,000 offenders. The move distressed Hawken, who felt they were moving too fast—“I
thought Washington would be the state that killed HOPE.” She was wrong: One year in, jail stays are down by
two-thirds statewide. A researcher at John Jay College has estimated that HOPE could halve America’s prison
population. “There’s no reason HOPE should work only in Hawaii,” Alm said, “because it appeals to basic human
psychology.” You don’t need to recall jargon-filled lessons about B.F. Skinner’s reinforcement theory from Psych 101 to see
why swift and certain sanctions should work so well. There’s something thrillingly common-sensical about the concept.
And research in cognitive psychology suggests that such a straightforward approach may apply
with particular acuity to people who have become addicted to drugs or have fallen into lives of
crime. As Alm put it, “The future is a nebulous enough concept for most of us, but for the guys we’re dealing with, you might go fly
to the moon next year, or win the lottery. HOPE gives them something to think about when they’re
considering whether to smoke ice tonight.” HOPE’s two most important results are that it reduces
crime, and it reduces the number of people in prison, Hawken said. “But to me the most exciting
thing about it is its power to alleviate drug addiction .” Mark Kleiman, a drug policy expert at the
University of California, Los Angeles, agrees. He said that HOPE is the best single solution to drug addiction
he’s ever seen. “ HOPE actually gets people to change their behavior by setting up a circumstance
where their natural behavior moves in the right direction,” he said. “ They don’t want to
go to jail, so they stop using. That’s a profoundly rehabilitative thing to do.”
be arrested and
Demand Key – DTOs
Lowering demand solves- virtuous cycle
Schaan, 10 -- Baker Institute homeland security and terrorism fellow
[Joan Neuhaus, Texas Security Forum coordinator, Transborder International Police Association Advisory Board member, "How we
can help Mexico fight the drug cartels," Houston Chronicle, 3-23-10, blog.chron.com/bakerblog/2010/03/how-we-can-help-mexicofight-the-drug-cartels/]
A key root of the problem is drug usage
within our borders, and the enormous revenue generated from the trade. Drug users in New York, Los Angeles
Finally, the United States must also recognize its role in cartel violence.
and across the nation do not take ownership of the violence they are creating, the lives they are ruining, and the price they and their
children will pay. Most are recreational users, and think their habits are harmless and “cool.” Their “recreational” dollars are fueling a
nightmare.¶ If
the revenues from drug sales dry up, the weapons trafficking from the United States to Mexico
will decline , money laundering will dip , and a lower crime level will result. With a drop in drug
demand, what has been a downward spiral of violence can become an upward spiral of recovery .
A2 Too Fast Fails
Washington disproves
Kornell, 13 -- Slate writer-- citing Angela Hawken, PhD criminal justice researcher; and Mark Kleiman, a drug policy expert at
UCLA
[Sam, "Probation that Works," Slate, 6-5-13,
www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/06/hawaii_hope_probation_program_reduces_crime_drug_use_and_time
_in_prison.html, accessed 6-21-14]
After Hawken visited Hawaii, she conducted a separate National Institute of Justice study, a randomized control trial on a group of
new HOPE participants. Her data replicated the original HOPE numbers. “I was optimistic it would work,” says Alm, “but I had no
idea it would work as well as it did.” ¶ More than a dozen states are now experimenting with pilot programs based on HOPE. Last
June, legislators in Washington decided to enshrine “swift and certain” as law, immediately
applying it to 70 percent of the state’s 15,000 offenders. The move distressed Hawken, who felt they were
moving too fast—“I thought Washington would be the state that killed HOPE.” She was wrong :
One year in, jail stays are down by two-thirds statewide. A researcher at John Jay College has estimated that HOPE
could halve America’s prison population.¶ “There’s no reason HOPE should work only in Hawaii,” Alm said, “because it appeals
to basic human psychology.” You don’t need to recall jargon-filled lessons about B.F. Skinner’s reinforcement theory from
Psych 101 to see why swift and certain sanctions should work so well. There’s something thrillingly common-sensical about the
concept. And research in cognitive psychology suggests that such a straightforward approach may apply with particular acuity to
people who have become addicted to drugs or have fallen into lives of crime. As Alm put it, “The future is a nebulous enough
concept for most of us, but for the guys we’re dealing with, you might go fly to the moon next year, or win the lottery. HOPE gives
them something to think about when they’re considering whether to smoke ice tonight.”
Implementation is easy
Schoofs, 8 -- WSJ staff
[Mark, "Scared Straight... by Probation," Wall Street Journal, 7-24-8,
online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB121685255149978873?mod=2_1563_leftbox, accessed 6-24-14]
Others wonder whether the program, which requires efficient coordination among multiple agencies, can be
replicated in larger bureaucracies. Prof. David Kennedy of New York's John Jay College of Criminal
Justice counters, " This is not rocket science, this is training-a-puppy stuff ."¶ Nationally, more than half
of men arrested test positive for drugs when they are apprehended, according to Justice Department research. But one of HOPE's
standout successes, reducing drug use, embroils it in a debate: whether jail, however brief, is appropriate for addicts who relapse
into drug use. Some drug-policy reformers argue that incarceration perpetuates the paradigm of addiction as a crime rather than a
disease. HOPE proponents counter that flash incarceration spares offenders longer prison terms by helping them get off drugs,
obey probation and refrain from committing new crimes.¶ Prof. Kennedy said the research conducted so far on HOPE shows that
even tough, drug-using felons "can be very effectively reached by a very common-sense structure of clear expectations, clear,
predictable consequences, and real help and support."
A2 Large-Scale Fails/Hawaii Different
Basic psychology- works everywhere
Kornell, 13 -- Slate writer-- citing Angela Hawken, PhD criminal justice researcher; and Mark Kleiman, a drug policy expert at
UCLA
[Sam, "Probation that Works," Slate, 6-5-13,
www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/06/hawaii_hope_probation_program_reduces_crime_drug_use_and_time
_in_prison.html, accessed 6-21-14]
After Hawken visited Hawaii, she conducted a separate National Institute of Justice study, a randomized control trial on a group of
new HOPE participants. Her data replicated the original HOPE numbers. “I was optimistic it would work,” says Alm, “but I had no
idea it would work as well as it did.” ¶ More than a dozen states are now experimenting with pilot programs based
on HOPE. Last June, legislators in Washington
decided to enshrine “swift and certain” as law, immediately
applying it to 70 percent of the state’s 15,000 offenders. The move distressed Hawken, who felt they were moving too
fast—“I thought Washington would be the state that killed HOPE.” She was wrong: One year in, jail stays are down by twothirds statewide. A researcher at John Jay College has estimated that HOPE could halve America’s prison population.¶
“ There’s no reason HOPE should work only in Hawaii ,” Alm said, “because it appeals to basic human
psychology.” You don’t need to recall jargon-filled lessons about B.F. Skinner’s reinforcement theory from Psych 101
to see why swift and certain sanctions should work so well. There’s something thrillingly common-sensical
about the concept. And research in cognitive psychology suggests that such a straightforward approach may apply with particular
acuity to people who have become addicted to drugs or have fallen into lives of crime. As Alm put it, “The future is a nebulous
enough concept for most of us, but for the guys we’re dealing with, you might go fly to the moon next year, or win the lottery.
HOPE gives them something to think about when they’re considering whether to smoke ice
tonight.”
Implementation is easy
Schoofs, 8 -- WSJ staff
[Mark, "Scared Straight... by Probation," Wall Street Journal, 7-24-8,
online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB121685255149978873?mod=2_1563_leftbox, accessed 6-24-14]
Others wonder whether the program, which requires efficient coordination among multiple agencies, can be
replicated in larger bureaucracies. Prof. David Kennedy of New York's John Jay College of Criminal
Justice counters, " This is not rocket science, this is training-a-puppy stuff ."¶ Nationally, more than half
of men arrested test positive for drugs when they are apprehended, according to Justice Department research. But one of HOPE's
standout successes, reducing drug use, embroils it in a debate: whether jail, however brief, is appropriate for addicts who relapse
into drug use. Some drug-policy reformers argue that incarceration perpetuates the paradigm of addiction as a crime rather than a
disease. HOPE proponents counter that flash incarceration spares offenders longer prison terms by helping them get off drugs,
obey probation and refrain from committing new crimes.¶ Prof. Kennedy said the research conducted so far on HOPE shows that
even tough, drug-using felons "can be very effectively reached by a very common-sense structure of clear expectations, clear,
predictable consequences, and real help and support."
Solves: 2NC
Selective targeting solves violence
Vanda Felbab-Brown Vanda Felbab-Brown is a senior fellow with the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence in
the Foreign Policy program at Brookings, expert on international and internal conflicts and nontraditional security threats, including
insurgency, organized crime, urban violence and illicit economies Felbab-Brown regularly provides congressional testimony on
these issues. She received her Ph.D. in political science from MIT and her B.A. from Harvard University. February 2013
Modernising Drug Law Enforcement¶ Report 2 “Focused deterrence, selective targeting, drug trafficking and organised crime:
Concepts and practicalities” Brookings,
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2013/03/drug%20law%20enforcement%20felbabbrown/drug%20law%20en
forcement%20felbabbrown.pdf ac 8-22
Introduction Extensive criminality and illicit economies generate multiple, at times intense, threats to states and
societies – to their basic security and safety, and to their economic, justice, and environmental interests. High levels
of criminality, particularly criminal violence, tend to eviscerate law enforcement capacities as well as the social capital
and organisational capacity of civil society and its ability to resist organised crime. Especially in the context of acute
state weakness where underdeveloped and weak state institutions are the norm, goals such as a complete
suppression of organised crime may be unachievable. But even in countries with strong law enforcement
institutions, law enforcement efforts to suppress the incidence of criminality, particularly of transactional crimes, such
as drug trafficking (as opposed to predatory crimes, such as homicides) have at times not succeeded and have
generated negative side effects and externalities, such as human rights and civil liberties violations and overcrowded
prisons. Zero-tolerance approaches to crime, popular around the world since the late 1980s, have often
proven problematic. They have produced highly unequal outcomes and often greater police abusiveness.
Particularly, in the context of weak law enforcement institutions and high criminality, zero-tolerance approaches have
mostly failed to reduce crime, while generating new problems. Allocating resources to essentially repressive
programmes frequently takes place at the expense of investigative capacity. Critically, the lack of
prioritisation of crimes and criminal groups often diverts police focus from the most violent and
serious offenses and most dangerous criminal groups. Focused-deterrence strategies, selective
targeting, and sequential interdiction efforts are being increasingly embraced as more promising
law enforcement alternatives. They seek to minimise the most pernicious behaviour of criminal
groups, such as engaging in violence, or to maximise certain kinds of desirable behaviour
sometimes exhibited by criminals, such as eschewing engagement with terrorist groups . The
focused-deterrence, selective targeting strategies also enable overwhelmed law enforcement
institutions to overcome certain under resourcing problems . Especially , in the United States,
such approaches have produced impressive results in reducing violence and other harms
generated by organised crime groups and youth gangs. Such approaches have, however, encountered
implementation difficulties elsewhere in the world. This report first outlines the logic and problems of zero-tolerance
and undifferentiated targeting in law enforcement policies. Second, it lays out the key theoretical concepts of lawenforcement strategies of focused-deterrence and selective targeting and reviews some of their applications, as in
Operation Ceasefire in Boston in the 1990s and urban-policing operations in Rio de Janeiro during the 2000s decade
(See Box 1). Third, the report analyses the implementation challenges selective targeting and focused-deterrence
strategies have encountered, particularly outside of the United States. And finally, it discusses some key dilemmas in
designing selective targeting and focused-deterrence strategies to fight crime.
Focused deterrence is best
Vanda Felbab-Brown Vanda Felbab-Brown is a senior fellow with the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence in
the Foreign Policy program at Brookings, expert on international and internal conflicts and nontraditional security threats, including
insurgency, organized crime, urban violence and illicit economies Felbab-Brown regularly provides congressional testimony on
these issues. She received her Ph.D. in political science from MIT and her B.A. from Harvard University. February 2013
Modernising Drug Law Enforcement¶ Report 2 “Focused deterrence, selective targeting, drug trafficking and organised crime:
Concepts and practicalities” Brookings,
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2013/03/drug%20law%20enforcement%20felbabbrown/drug%20law%20en
forcement%20felbabbrown.pdf ac 8-22
Conclusion and recommendations All too often, zero-tolerance approaches adopted by countries with
weak law enforcement institutions have failed to produce desired outcomes, including reducing
violent crime. Even in countries with strong law enforcement institutions, such as the United
States, zero- tolerance approaches can lead to greater violations of human rights and civil
liberties and by flooding prisons with low-level offenders, impose great costs on societies. In
countries suffering from high levels of criminal violence, such as in Latin America, blanket, zero- tolerance
approaches often encourage defining the problem in absolute terms – dismantling organised
crime or stopping illegal drug flows. Such goals are mostly unattainable and guarantee costly
failure . More attainable, yet crucial objectives such as reducing the harms associated with the drug trade and other
organised crime – the violence, corruption, and erosion of the nation’s social fabric and bonds between citizens and
the state – are largely ignored. Reducing the violence around drug trafficking and other illicit economies is particularly
critical. Societies experiencing chronic and uncontrolled violence tend to have little faith in government and can
transfer their loyalties to criminal groups that provide a modicum of safety, albeit perverse safety. Governments that
effectively reduce violence often do not rid the country of organised crime but lessen its grip on society, thereby
giving citizens greater confidence in government, encouraging citizen cooperation with law enforcement, and aiding
the transformation of a national security threat into a public safety problem. Particularly with respect to transactional
crimes associated with illicit economies in renewable resources, such as the drug trade, reducing the incidence of the
crimes per se should be secondary to minimising the harms stemming from the illicit economy. Instead of trying to
suppress the volume of illegal drug flows, governments should seek to minimise the violence and corruption
surrounding the drug trade and societal dependence on the drug trade for access to public and socioeconomic
goods. Focused deterrence and selective targeting strategies allow for more appropriate goals,
take into account the harms associated with particular illicit economies and law enforcement
actions to suppress them, and offer attractive alternatives to zero-tolerance approaches. They
allow for the mitigation of some of the problems and negative side-effects generated by zerotolerance approaches. They also tend to be less resource-intensive than zero-tolerance
approaches. In the U nited S tates, where focused- deterrence strategies have been pioneered,
they have produced impressive results . The implementation of such approaches elsewhere in the world,
particularly in areas where law enforcement is weak to begin with, has often run into difficulties, and their
effectiveness has been comparatively small. Nonetheless, even in such settings, they still provide some of the
best available policy alternatives. Designers of such strategies will need to grapple with some acute policy
dilemmas that cannot be resolved in the abstract and need to take into account local circumstances. However,
recognising the implementation difficulties encountered outside of the United States, and the limitations and policy
dilemmas of such strategies, allows for tailoring their design to enhance their policy effectiveness even in less than
optimal settings. 16 of civil society and the business community in the law enforcement strategy – should also be
sought. • Where the scale and geographical area of dangerous criminality is extensive, law enforcement agencies
should adopt ‘spreading inkspot’ approaches. But it is equally important to seize ‘low-hanging fruit’ (i.e. relatively easy
law enforcement targets) to demonstrate success and build up political support for the adopted strategies. • When
picking the objectives and bases around which focused-deterrence strategies and selective targeting will be built, law
enforcement managers should consider carefully the political context, the level of pre-existing intelligence and
enforcement capacity of the government, the government’s capacity to concentrate resources, the size and scale of
criminality, the complexity of and power distribution in the criminal market, and the structure of criminal groups.
Consideration must be given to how these factors might disrupt the effectiveness of the strategies and mitigation
responses built into the law enforcement strategy design. • If violence subsides as a result of new balances of power
having been formed in the criminal market, managers must resist the temptation to declare victory and end the law
enforcement effort. The relative calm should be seized to deepen police reform, build up intelligence capacity,
advance community policing, and beef up socioeconomic policies focused on crime prevention so as to address the
root causes of crime and violence. In light of these issues and aware of a variety of socio-political environments within
which police services operate, a number of specific recommendations can be made: • Mindful of the limitations and
often damaging effects of a zero-tolerance approach, law enforcement agencies should consider adopting
focused-deterrence strategies and selective interdiction approaches. • For most transactional
crimes, such as drug trafficking, the law enforcement focus should shift to reducing violence and
the capacity of criminal groups to corrupt state institutions instead of defining suppression of
flows as the most important objective. • Policies that further alienate marginalised populations
from the state and strengthen their dependence on illicit economies and dangerous non-state
patrons should be avoided.
Det solves--Zetas
Deterrence works in mexico- Zetas prove
Vanda Felbab-Brown Vanda Felbab-Brown is a senior fellow with the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence in
the Foreign Policy program at Brookings, expert on international and internal conflicts and nontraditional security threats, including
insurgency, organized crime, urban violence and illicit economies Felbab-Brown regularly provides congressional testimony on
these issues. She received her Ph.D. in political science from MIT and her B.A. from Harvard University. February 2013
Modernising Drug Law Enforcement¶ Report 2 “Focused deterrence, selective targeting, drug trafficking and organised crime:
Concepts and practicalities” Brookings,
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2013/03/drug%20law%20enforcement%20felbabbrown/drug%20law%20en
forcement%20felbabbrown.pdf ac 8-22
When two U.S. agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Jaime Zapata and Victor Avila,
were attacked and shot in Mexico in February 2011, the perpetrator, later identified as the Zetas,
apparently actively cooperated with U.S. law enforcement officials and disclosed which group
members were behind the act. 28 The Zeta leadership also claimed that it did not know or authorise
the attack. Irrespective of whether the latter is actually true, the de facto handing over of someone
whom the Zetas leadership designated as the perpetrator (or as the scapegoat, whichever the
case may be) shows that the Zetas had some active fear of U.S. law enforcement capacity, and
deterrence effects were in fact in play .
Banking Adv
Banks don’t’ care
Douglas 8-12-14 (Danielle, staff writer, "Banks are slowly welcoming legal marijuana dealers" Washington Post)
www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/banks-are-slowly-welcoming-legal-marijuana-dealers/2014/08/12/01c17960-225b11e4-8593-da634b334390_story.html
A top federal official on Tuesday said that 105 banks and credit unions are doing business with
legal marijuana sellers, suggesting that federal rules giving financial institutions the go-ahead to
provide services to dealers are starting to work.
The Obama administration in
February gave the banking industry the green light to offer financing and
accounts to pot distributors who can legally conduct business in 20 states and the District.
Their ev says it’s good
Small banks strong now—and regs are key
Wayne A. Abernathy 14, executive vice president for financial institutions policy and regulatory affairs at the American
Bankers Association and former assistant secretary of the Treasury for financial institutions and staff director of the Senate Banking
Committee, "A Diminished Banking System Is Bad for Americans," July 30, American Banker,
www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/a-diminished-banking-system-is-bad-for-americans-1069037-1.html
Is America getting the banking it needs? A look at current statistics suggests that the disturbing answer may
be no.¶ The number of banks in the U.S. fell to 6,730 at the end of March, with only one new charter since 2010. By
comparison, in 1892 there were 7,118 banks in America—723 more than the year before. The attrition is concentrated at the lower
end of the size range, as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s consolidation study reported earlier this year. If you prefer
community banks and what they offer, your options are dwindling. If you value a flourishing
Broadening the perspective,
erosion of U.S. banking is also happening on a global scale. A recent
industry, the lack of new entrants should cause alarm. ¶
report from SNL Financial confirmed that four of the top 10 global banks are headquartered in China. Only one is headquartered in
the United States. In 1999, six of the largest banks in the world were headquartered here, including the world’s two largest. ¶ These
new signs suggest a lack of growth and vitality . Either one, taken in isolation, would seem to be a whiff of a
smoldering problem. Taken together, they suggest a fire that is burning our national financial future at both
ends. This is particularly worrisome because the U.S. banking tradition has historically
encouraged the development of banks of all sizes and business models to accommodate a variety
of banking customers. ¶ Banks are essential to the economic success of any modern nation . They
play a central role in the conduct of monetary policy, bring savers and investors together
efficiently and operate a reliable, fast and safe national payments system. We cannot afford to be
complacent about the industry’s future.¶ Some observers might argue that a concentrated banking system could be a
good thing, pointing to the Canadian banking model. That system has five very large banks that dominate the industry, along with a
handful of boutique banks that could all be listed on one side of a single sheet of paper. Maybe that works in an economy the size of
California’s, but I question its suitability for the largest and most diverse economy in the world. ¶ Bank customers come in
all sizes, shapes, and business models, and so do our banks. Over the years our economy has
naturally bred some very large, internationally active banks, as well as thousands of community banks and
hundreds of regional banks, working to meet the needs of customers at home and abroad.¶ We
need to promote this system , not just preserve it. To
that end, U.S. regulators must
get back in the business of chartering new banks. As the economy
recovers, we can expect to see more customers with growing needs,
often in new places. Existing banks are ready to meet many of those
needs, but customers are also increasingly reaching for bank lookalikes—demonstrating the
growing demand for bank services.¶ Unfortunately, many of these substitutes are less safe, more exposed to fraud and
have thin resources for weathering economic and financial storms. New opportunities call for new bank entrants and a regulatory
The most recent reports from the FDIC reveal
an American banking industry that has recovered from the recession.
Banks are holding record amounts of capital at a higher quality.
Troubled loans are at pre-recession levels. Deposits and liquidity are
robust. These measures apply to banks of all sizes, showing strength
at all levels of an industry completing a turnaround.
environment that supports industry growth.¶
¶
Alt cause—regulators
Regulatory oversight has played a role in promoting the industry’s financial health. But
regulators cannot run a
successful banking business. If government officials make the business decisions, the results will tend toward meeting
the needs of government. If customers drive the decisions, then results will tend toward meeting the
needs of customers. The latest comments by federal bank regulators evince a willingness to review recent regulations and
consider how well they fit the banking industry and meet the needs of our economy. That is timely and appropriate. ¶ Within the
context of suitable and effective supervision, let the bankers of an industry ready for growth get on with the
business of supporting an accelerating economic recovery. As we do, customers will be more likely to obtain all
the banking they need.
Banks Resilient 2NC
Econ and banking sectors projected to remain stable—cites the FDIC report their
abernathy card is about
REUTERS 9—19, http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/19/fitch-affirms-united-states-at-aaa-outlo-idUSFit75668020140919
Fitch Ratings has affirmed the United States of America's Long-term foreign and local currency Issuer Default Ratings (IDR) at 'AAA'
with Stable Outlooks. The ratings on senior unsecured foreign and local currency bonds have also been affirmed at 'AAA'. The
Country Ceiling has been affirmed at 'AAA' and the Short-term foreign currency IDR at 'F1+'. KEY RATING DRIVERS The US has
unparalleled financing flexibility as the issuer of the world's pre-eminent reserve currency and benchmark fixed-income
asset, and as home to the world's deepest and most liquid capital markets. This means the US rating can tolerate a
higher level of public debt than other 'AAA' sovereigns. Foreign holdings of Treasury securities have risen every month
since the debt ceiling crisis in October 2013, suggesting the role of the US dollar has not been undermined. The economy is
large, rich and diverse, with GDP per capita (at purchasing power parity) and levels of human development above the 'AAA'
median. The economy is one of the most productive, dynamic and technologically advanced in the
world, underpinned by strong institutions and a favourable business climate. A strong fiscal
consolidation is being achieved, reflecting the economic recovery and tax and spending
measures. We forecast the federal government budget deficit to decline to 2.9% of GDP in FY14, from 4.1% of GDP in FY13 and
9.8% in FY09. However, on current policies it will start rising again from FY16, reaching 3.8% in 2022, driven by the impact of
population ageing on social security and health spending, and higher net interest costs. We forecast federal government debt held
by the public at 73.5% at end-2014 and to rise to 75% in 2024. Fitch forecasts gross general government debt (GGGD) to peak at
100% at end-2014 (excluding trade payables and unfunded pension liabilities, consistent with EU countries). We then project it to
decline slightly to 98% in 2018, before starting to trend up again, reaching 104% by 2024. However, long-term projections are
uncertain as they are sensitive to the economic outlook and future fiscal measures, which may be possible in a more conducive
political environment. Our projections for GGGD are little changed from our estimates in March 2014 when we removed the US
rating from Rating Watch Negative and affirmed it at 'AAA'. The debt peak is below the threshold of 110% of GDP, which we
previously identified as incompatible with 'AAA' for the US (the highest of any country owing to its exceptional financing flexibility).
Renewed brinksmanship over the federal debt ceiling is possible in 2015, although its suspension in February 2014 was in a timely
manner and in a way that avoided casting uncertainty over the full faith and credit of the US. The suspension elapses on 15 March
2015, after which the seasonality of tax payments and use of extraordinary measures might allow the Treasury to fund the
government and retain payment capacity into the summer. In our view, the coherence of economic policymaking is weaker than in
most 'AAA' peers - evident in across-the-board discretionary spending cuts, the federal government shutdown in October 2013 and
debt ceiling crises in August 2011 and October 2013. The US recovery is outpacing that in most advanced countries, albeit sluggish
by its own historical standards. Fitch forecasts GDP growth of 2% in 2014, picking up to 3.1% in 2015 and 3% in 2016. We expect
the Federal Reserve to start raising interest rates in mid-2015, after completing 'tapering' of its asset purchase programme in
October 2014. Our base case is that the normalisation of monetary policy will not fundamentally destabilise the recovery or financial
markets, although it will trigger some increase in volatility. Nonetheless, downside risks are material after an unprecedented period
of low interest rates and quantitative easing. External liabilities are high, albeit US dollar-denominated, reflecting persistent current
account deficits and low national savings rates, making the economy more vulnerable to adverse external shocks. RATING
SENSITIVITIES The current Rating Outlook is Stable. Consequently, Fitch's sensitivity analysis does not currently anticipate
developments with a material likelihood, individually or collectively, of leading to a downgrade. However, future developments that
may, individually or collectively, lead to negative rating action include: - A significant increase in government deficits and debt/GDP
ratio, for example if the US authorities do not take measures in the medium term to offset rising expenditure pressures from ageing
and higher interest rates later in the decade. - A material deterioration in the coherence and credibility of economic policymaking or
a negative shock that erodes the role of the US dollar as the pre-eminent global reserve currency and reduces financing flexibility
and debt tolerance. KEY ASSUMPTIONS Fitch assumes that the federal debt limit, which has been suspended until 15 March 2015,
will be suspended again or raised in due course before the Treasury exhausts its extraordinary measures and capacity to fund the
government. Fitch's medium-term fiscal projections draw heavily upon Congressional Budget Office projections, which incorporate a
baseline assumption that current laws governing federal taxes and spending generally remain the same. Fitch's projections also
assume that the medium-term growth potential of the US economy is 2.2%; and that state and local government budget deficits
remain the same as a percentage of GDP. Its projections are sensitive to these and other economic and fiscal assumptions.
Financial sector risks are currently judged to be low, as reflected in Fitch's stable outlook for the
US banking sector and Bank Systemic Indicator of 'a' . Contact: Primary Analyst Ed Parker Managing Director
+44 20 3530 1176 Fitch Ratings Limited 30 North Colonnade London E14 5GN Secondary Analyst James McCormack Managing
Director +44 20 3530 1286 Committee Chairperson Andrew Colquhoun Senior Director +85 2226 39 938 Media Relations: Peter
Fitzpatrick, London, Tel: +44 20 3530 1103, Email: peter.fitzpatrick@fitchratings.com. Additional information is available on
www.fitchratings.com Applicable criteria, 'Sovereign Rating Criteria' dated 12 August 2014 and 'Country Ceilings' dated 28 August
2014, are available at www.fitchratings.com. Related Research: --United States Full Rating Report, September 2014 (forthcoming) -U.S. Government Debt and Rating Outlook, March 2014 here -- 'AAA' Sovereign Characteristics and Public Debt Ratios, 22 October
2013 here Applicable Criteria and Related Research: Sovereign Rating Criteria here Country Ceilings here US Government Debt
and Rating Outlook here ‘AAA’ Sovereign Characteristics and Public Debt Ratios here Additional Disclosure Solicitation
Status here ALL FITCH CREDIT RATINGS ARE SUBJECT TO CERTAIN LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS. PLEASE READ
THESE LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS BY FOLLOWING THIS LINK: here. IN ADDITION, RATING DEFINITIONS AND THE
TERMS OF USE OF SUCH RATINGS ARE AVAILABLE ON THE AGENCY'S PUBLIC WEBSITE 'WWW.FITCHRATINGS.COM'.
PUBLISHED RATINGS, CRITERIA AND METHODOLOGIES ARE AVAILABLE FROM THIS SITE AT ALL TIMES. FITCH'S CODE
OF CONDUCT, CONFIDENTIALITY, CONFLICTS OF INTEREST, AFFILIATE FIREWALL, COMPLIANCE AND OTHER
RELEVANT POLICIES AND PROCEDURES ARE ALSO AVAILABLE FROM THE 'CODE OF CONDUCT' SECTION OF THIS
SITE. FITCH MAY HAVE PROVIDED ANOTHER PERMISSIBLE SERVICE TO THE RATED ENTITY OR ITS RELATED THIRD
PARTIES. DETAILS OF THIS SERVICE FOR RATINGS FOR WHICH THE LEAD ANALYST IS BASED IN AN EU-REGISTERED
ENTITY CAN BE FOUND ON THE ENTITY SUMMARY PAGE FOR THIS ISSUER ON THE FITCH WEBSITE.
Small Banks--Ext2—Not k2 Stability
Small banks not key to financial sector
Persaud 10
Avinash Persaud, is Chairman of Intelligence Capital Limited and Emeritus Professor of Gresham College, London, Project
Syndicate, October 11, 2010, “Why Target Big Banks?”, http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/why-target-big-banks-
Banks’ balance sheets are systemically dangerous when bloated by leverage, and it is this that
regulatory or fiscal policy should address through liquidity buffers and leverage ratios. After all, it is
the contagiousness of financial crises, not banks’ size , that matters. Any list conjured up in 2006 of
institutions that were “too big to fail” would not have included Northern Rock, Bradford & Bingley, IKB, Bear Sterns, or even Lehman
Brothers.
Banks lend to banks, so while some are more illiquid than others, they are all intrinsically illiquid institutions.
Small failures can give birth to large panics, which means that in a crisis almost everyone is “too
big to fail.” The reality is that we can have as large a financial boom and subsequent bust as we just
experienced, resulting in the same economic misery, in a world made up only of small banks .
Many argue that bankers’ belief that their institutions are too big to fail and that their jobs are safe encourages them to
underestimate the risks that they assume. But if that belief dominated bankers’ thinking, they would still worry about their savings. In
other words, they would not wrap themselves up in their institutions’ equity and the leveraged
products they were selling.
Yet they did. The revealed preference of banks’ and bankers’ behavior is that they did not lend
more because they thought they could get away with it, but because they thought it was safe. They
were fools more than knaves.
The main driver of excessive lending and leverage is a mistaken view of risk that is shared by
everyone . The riskiest institutions were not the largest: firms like J. P. Morgan and HSBC proved safer than
others, and neither sought nor needed state funding. Those that failed were relatively small, like IKB, Bear Sterns, and so on.
Small Banks--Ext3—Dodd-Frank
Dodd frank destroys small banks
Abha Bhattarai and Catherine Ho, Washington Post, “Four years into Dodd-Frank, local banks say this is the year they’ll feel the
most impact,” February 7, ’14, http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/four-years-into-dodd-frank-local-bankssay-this-is-the-year-theyll-feel-the-most-impact/2014/02/07/12c7ca48-877e-11e3-a5bd-844629433ba3_story.html
L awmakers and regulators have spent the past four years drafting more than 200 new rules in an
effort to clean up the financial industry. Now as those new measures begin to kick in, local
bankers say they are bracing for the impact . “It’s one thing for rules to be issued and made final,” said
Bert Ely, a banking industry consultant in Alexandria. “It’s another thing entirely for them to be implemented and
enforced. There is going to be a lot of learning for the banks.” More than a dozen Washington area banks and
credit unions have merged with one another in recent years, citing heightened regulation as a
factor. Others have done away with mortgage divisions and clamped down on consumer loans. At
least one local bank has expanded its compliance team seven-fold to 35 full-time employees in
four years. “It creates a very confusing situation for the entire industry,” said Ronald D. Paul, chairman
and chief executive of Eagle Bancorp in Bethesda. “Each new rule puts a whole different spin on swaps, on derivatives, on capital
requirements. You have to constantly be adapting.” The new rules coming into effect represent just about half
of the 398 regulations that will eventually be in place as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and
Consumer Protection Act. The legislation, which requires oversight from a number of federal agencies, seeks to hold banks more
accountable in response to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Industry experts say the Dodd-Frank Act,
combined with global Basel III requirements and rising interest rates, have made 2014 one big guessing game for banks. “ The
United States has never had a piece of legislation that’s required so many new [banking]
regulations,” said Wayne Abernathy, an executive vice president at the American Bankers Association. “That is no
exaggeration.” Among the most sweeping changes, area bankers say, are the Volcker Rule, which is aimed at
preventing banks that receive deposit insurance from dabbling in riskier investments, and new mortgage lending
requirements, both of which come into effect in the first part half of the year. “A lot of things are in a state
of flux,” Ely said. “There is still a lot of uncertainty with how regulations are going to be implemented.” Even the people that
banks hire to keep track of the new rules — who in some cases helped write the rules — are
overwhelmed. “Staying current with all of the changes in the law right now is a time consuming endeavor,” said Andrew Olmem,
a financial services regulatory attorney at Venable who served on the Senate Banking Committee during the time Congress was
writing the Dodd-Frank Act. “The Volcker rule is 800 pages. And it isn’t 800 pages of fluff. And that’s just one rule of several hundred
required by Dodd-Frank.” Effect on mortgages At Burke & Herbert Bank in Alexandria, preparations for new mortgage rules began
more than a year before they went into effect Jan. 10. The company updated its software systems, trained employees and alerted
clients that mortgage requirements might change in the coming year. “It was important to tell our customers, ‘We’re not singling you
out. These rules are universal,’ ” said Christopher S. Reddick, who heads the bank’s mortgage unit. “We’ve been preparing for the
new regulations for the better part of last year.” Banks are now required to double-check all documentation — corroborating a
borrower’s tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service, for example, or verifying salary figures with an employer. The extra
documentation adds about a week to the overall mortgage process, Reddick said, adding that the bank is hiring new mortgage loan
officers as well as a senior compliance officer. “There are a bunch of rules, but as far as community banks are concerned, certainly
the mortgage rules that went into effect in January have been among the most dramatic,” said Chris Cole, senior regulatory counsel
for the Independent Community Bankers of America. To complicate matters for mortgage lenders, the Federal Reserve last month
began scaling back its bond-buying program. That process is widely expected to push interest rates higher, though rates have
declined so far this year on concerns about slowing economic growth. In response, the Bank of Georgetown in the District and John
Marshall Bank in Reston have reconfigured mortgages so that interest rates are adjusted every five years to guard against the
prospect of rising rates. A number of other banks, including Access National Bank in Reston, have shifted away from mortgages,
choosing instead to focus on commercial lending, which so far has been largely untouched by Dodd-Frank rules. Many area banks
say they are also fine-tuning their missions, honing in on either mortgage-lending, small-business loans or commercial real estate.
It’s become less possible to do it all. “Nobody is dabbling anymore,” Ely said. “You either do car loans or you don’t. Same with
mortgages. Any form of lending — mortgages, car loans — has become riskier.” Concern for smaller banks Mostly, local
bankers say, this is a time of extreme uncertainty. So far many of the new rules have centered on consumerrelated affairs, targeting mortgage loans, pay-day lending and other matters that directly affect everyday Americans. But, Ely says,
there are indications that regulatory guidelines could eventually spill over into business lending,
the bread-and-butter of many of the area’s community banks, including Eagle Bank and John Marshall Bank.
“Some examiners are starting to look at small-business lending as a variant of consumer lending ,”
thing is becoming more cookie-cutter, more formulaic.” To keep up, Olney-based
Sandy Spring Bank has hired an employee whose sole job is to track — and interpret — Dodd-Frank
happenings. In all, the $4.1 billion bank has allocated 15 percent more money toward compliance-related efforts in recent years,
according to Ed Nastalski, director of regulatory management. “For the bigger banks, these costs just roll off their
backs,” he said. “They see it as the cost of doing business. But for smaller community banks, it’s harder to
Ely said. “Every
absorb.” One of the early complaints about Dodd-Frank regulations hinged on the fact that small
community banks and credit unions were being treated exactly the same as their multibilliondollar Wall Street counterparts. Regulators have since addressed those concerns, banking experts say, tacking on
exemptions for smaller banks. So-called stress tests that gauge whether a bank can hold up in tough times, for example, are only
required for companies with more than $10 billion in assets. (Banks larger than $50 billion face more strenuous guidelines.) Some
executive compensation rules, meanwhile, apply only to banks larger than $1 billion. “With the early rules, there was a lot of onesize-fits-all,” Abernathy said. “Regulators are doing a better job of scaling rules, of making them more tailor-made for a mid-size or
smaller bank.” Even so, smaller area banks say they have been impacted. In December, WashingtonFirst
Bankshares sold off $2.7 million worth of high-risk securities for $700,000, a move the Reston-based company chalked up to the
uncertainty regarding new Volcker Rule guidelines. “Even medium-sized banks say, ‘We have XYZ in our
portfolio, do we have to divest ourselves of that?’” said Micah S. Green, an attorney who leads the financial
services practice at Patton Boggs. Green said his firm is getting many calls from middle-market banks asking for help interpreting
the Volcker Rule and what they should do about it. And with nearly 200 Dodd-Frank measures still waiting to be drafted, area
bankers say it’s largely impossible to predict what comes next. “The general approach [for banks] has been to be
cautious,” Ely said. “Even though Dodd-Frank has been around for four years, it’s only now starting
to take off.”
Econ--Ext 1--No War 2NC
Best stats prove
Miller 2k – Professor of Management, Ottawa (Morris, Poverty As A Cause Of Wars?,
http://www.pugwash.org/reports/pac/pac256/WG4draft1.htm, AG)
Thus, these armed conflicts can hardly be said to be caused by poverty as a principal factor when the greed and envy of leaders
and their hegemonic ambitions provide sufficient cause. The poor would appear to be more the victims than the perpetrators of
armed conflict. It might be alleged that some dramatic event or rapid sequence of those types of events that lead to the exacerbation
of poverty might be the catalyst for a violent reaction on the part of the people or on the part of the political leadership who might be
tempted to seek a diversion by finding/fabricating an enemy and going to war. According to a study undertaken by Minxin Pei and
Ariel Adesnik of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, there would not appear to be any merit in this hypothesis.
After studying 93 episodes of economic crisis in 22 countries in Latin America and Asia in the years since
World War II they concluded that Much of the conventional wisdom about the political impact of economic
crises may be wrong... The severity of economic crisis - as measured in terms of inflation and negative growth bore no relationship to the collapse of regimes. A more direct role was played by political variables such as ideological
polarization, labor radicalism, guerilla insurgencies and an anti-Communist military... (In democratic states) such
changes seldom lead to an outbreak of violence (while) in the cases of dictatorships and semi-democracies, the
ruling elites responded to crises by increasing repression (thereby using one form of violence to abort another.
It’s resilient
Zakaria ’9 [Fareed Zakaria is editor of Newsweek International “The Secrets of Stability,” 12/12 http://www.newsweek.com/id/226425/page/2]
One year ago, the world seemed as if it might be coming apart. The global financial system, which had fueled a
great expansion of capitalism and trade across the world, was crumbling. All the certainties of the age of globalization—about the
virtues of free markets, trade, and technology—were being called into question. Faith in the American model had collapsed. The
financial industry had crumbled. Once-roaring emerging markets like China, India, and Brazil were sinking. Worldwide trade was
shrinking to a degree not seen since the 1930s. Pundits whose bearishness had been vindicated predicted we were doomed to a
long, painful bust, with cascading failures in sector after sector, country after country. In a widely cited essay that appeared in The
Atlantic this May, Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, wrote: "The conventional wisdom
among the elite is still that the current slump 'cannot be as bad as the Great Depression.' This view is wrong. What we face now
could, in fact, be worse than the Great Depression." Others predicted that these economic shocks would lead
to political instability and violence in the worst-hit countries. At his confirmation hearing in February, the new
U.S. director of national intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, cautioned the Senate that "the financial crisis and global recession are likely
to produce a wave of economic crises in emerging-market nations over the next year." Hillary Clinton endorsed this grim view. And
she was hardly alone. Foreign Policy ran a cover story predicting serious unrest in several emerging markets. Of one thing everyone
was sure: nothing would ever be the same again. Not the financial industry, not capitalism, not globalization. One year later, how
much has the world really changed? Well, Wall Street is home to two fewer investment banks (three, if you count Merrill Lynch).
Some regional banks have gone bust. There was some turmoil in Moldova and (entirely unrelated to the financial crisis) in Iran.
Severe problems remain, like high unemployment in the West, and we face new problems caused by responses to the crisis—
soaring debt and fears of inflation. But
overall, things look nothing like they did in the 1930s. The
predictions of economic and political collapse have not materialized at all. A key measure of fear and
fragility is the ability of poor and unstable countries to borrow money on the debt markets. So consider this: the sovereign bonds of
tottering Pakistan have returned 168 percent so far this year. All this doesn't add up to a recovery yet, but it does reflect a return to
some level of normalcy. And that rebound has been so rapid that even the shrewdest observers remain puzzled. "The question I
have at the back of my head is 'Is that it?' " says Charles Kaye, the co-head of Warburg Pincus. "We had this huge crisis, and now
we're back to business as usual?" This revival did not happen because markets managed to stabilize themselves on their own.
Rather, governments, having learned the lessons of the Great Depression, were determined not to repeat the same mistakes once
this crisis hit. By massively expanding state support for the economy—through central banks and national
treasuries—they buffered the worst of the damage. (Whether they made new mistakes in the process remains to be
seen.) The extensive social safety nets that have been established across the industrialized world also cushioned the pain felt by
many. Times are still tough, but things are nowhere near as bad as in the 1930s, when governments played a tiny role in national
economies. It's true that the massive state interventions of the past year may be fueling some new bubbles: the cheap cash and
government guarantees provided to banks, companies, and consumers have fueled some irrational exuberance in stock and bond
markets. Yet these rallies also demonstrate the return of confidence, and confidence is a very
powerful economic force. When John Maynard Keynes described his own prescriptions for economic growth, he believed
government action could provide only a temporary fix until the real motor of the economy started cranking again—the animal spirits
of investors, consumers, and companies seeking risk and profit. Beyond all this, though, I believe there's a fundamental reason why
we have not faced global collapse in the last year. It is the same reason that we weathered the stock-market crash of 1987, the
recession of 1992, the Asian crisis of 1997, the Russian default of 1998, and the tech-bubble collapse of 2000. The current
global economic system is inherently more resilient than we think. The world today is
characterized by three major forces for stability, each reinforcing the other and each historical in
nature.
Econ UP
US growth strong—every indicator
Reuters 14 BY LUCIA MUTIKANI WASHINGTON Tue Jun 17, 2014 11:00am EDT “U.S. economic growth sustainable, rates to
rise in third quarter 2015” http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/17/us-economy-poll-usa-idUSKBN0ES1RD20140617
(Reuters) - The
U.S. economy is on a self-sustaining growth path that should allow the Federal Reserve to start
raising interest rates in the second half of 2015, according
to a Reuters survey of economists.¶ Despite trimming
growth estimates for 2014 because of a dismal first quarter, nearly all of the 48 economists in the survey
said the recovery was durable given a decline in uncertainty over fiscal policy and a pick-up in
job growth .¶ "The pieces are in place for a sustained pick-up in activity, and the successful
transition to self-sustaining growth will remove one layer of uncertainty and provide the necessary
condition for the Fed to consider raising rates," said Millan Mulraine, deputy chief economist at TD Securities in New York. ¶ The
survey forecast the economy growing 2.2 percent this year, down from a May projection of 2.5 percent. The median growth
forecast for 2015 held at 3.0 percent .¶ The modest 2014 projection reflects a contraction in the economy in the
January-March period, when activity was held back by an unusually cold winter. The government said last month that gross
domestic product tumbled at a 1.0 percent annual rate in the first quarter, and many economists expect that already cheerless figure
to be revised sharply lower.¶ While growth
is expected to rebound to a rate of about 3.6 percent in the
second quarter, GDP growth in the first half of the year will probably come in at just over a 1 percent pace. ¶ Gains in the
labor market, which last month recouped all the 8.7 million jobs lost during the recession, were
seen underpinning the recovery.¶ The survey forecast non-farm payrolls expanding by an average
of 234,000 jobs per month in the second quarter and maintaining a solid pace of growth through
2015.¶ It forecast the unemployment rate averaging 6.3 percent this year and falling to an average of 5.8 percent in
2015.¶ BETTER SENTIMENT¶ "The
collective psyche has improved. We can see that in the various
measures of consumer sentiment and in business sentiment as well," said Ryan Sweet, a senior
economist at Moody's Analytics in West Chester, Pennsylvania.¶ "This is very important because businesses will have to
continue to hire and invest to keep the economy chugging along ."
2NC-_Cartels
**Data disproves heg impacts
Fettweis, 11 Christopher J. Fettweis, Department of Political Science, Tulane University, 9/26/11, Free Riding or Restraint?
Examining European Grand Strategy, Comparative Strategy, 30:316–332, EBSCO
It is perhaps worth noting that there
is no evidence to support a direct relationship between the relative level of
U.S. activism and international stability. In fact, the limited data we do have suggest the opposite
may be true. During the 1990s, the United States cut back on its defense spending fairly substantially. By 1998, the
United States was spending $100 billion less on defense in real terms than it had in 1990.51 To
internationalists, defense hawks and believers in hegemonic stability, this irresponsible “peace dividend” endangered both national
and global security. “No serious analyst of American military capabilities,” argued Kristol and Kagan, “doubts that the defense
budget has been cut much too far to meet America’s responsibilities to itself and to world peace.”52 On the other hand, if the pacific
trends were not based upon U.S. hegemony but a strengthening norm against interstate war, one
would not have expected an increase in global instability and violence. The verdict from the past two
decades is fairly plain: The world grew more peaceful while the United States cut its forces. No state
seemed to believe that its security was endangered by a less-capable United States military, or at least
none took any action that would suggest such a belief. No militaries were enhanced to address
power vacuums, no security dilemmas drove insecurity or arms races, and no regional balancing
occurred once the stabilizing presence of the U.S. military was diminished . The rest of the world acted as
if the threat of international war was not a pressing concern, despite the reduction in U.S. capabilities. Most of all, the United States
and its allies were no less safe. The incidence and magnitude of global conflict declined while the United States cut its military
spending under President Clinton, and kept declining as the Bush Administration ramped the spending back up. No complex
statistical analysis should be necessary to reach the conclusion that the two are unrelated. Military spending figures by themselves
are insufficient to disprove a connection between overall U.S. actions and international stability. Once again, one could presumably
argue that spending is not the only or even the best indication of hegemony, and that it is instead U.S. foreign political and security
commitments that maintain stability. Since neither was significantly altered during this period, instability should not have been
expected. Alternately, advocates of hegemonic stability could believe that relative rather than absolute spending is decisive in
bringing peace. Although the United States cut back on its spending during the 1990s, its relative advantage never wavered.
However, even if it is true that either U.S. commitments or relative spending account for global pacific
trends, then at the very least stability can evidently be maintained at drastically lower levels of both. In other words, even if one
can be allowed to argue in the alternative for a moment and suppose that there is in fact a level of engagement below
which the United States cannot drop without increasing international disorder, a rational grand
strategist would still recommend cutting back on engagement and spending until that level is
determined. Grand strategic decisions are never final; continual adjustments can and must be made as
time goes on. Basic logic suggests that the United States ought to spend the minimum amount of its blood and treasure while
seeking the maximum return on its investment. And if the current era of stability is as stable as many believe it to be, no increase in
conflict would ever occur irrespective of U.S. spending, which would save untold trillions for an increasingly debt-ridden nation. It is
also perhaps worth noting that if opposite trends had unfolded, if other states had reacted to news of cuts in U.S. defense spending
with more aggressive or insecure behavior, then internationalists would surely argue that their expectations had been fulfilled. If
increases in conflict would have been interpreted as proof of the wisdom of internationalist
strategies, then logical consistency demands that the lack thereof should at least pose a problem. As
it stands, the only evidence we have regarding the likely systemic reaction to a more restrained
United States suggests that the current peaceful trends are unrelated to U.S. military spending.
Evidently the rest of the world can operate quite effectively without the presence of a global
policeman. Those who think otherwise base their view on faith alone .
DTO DA: U 2NC
Mexico stability up
Barone, 13 (Michael, "Mexico becomes a stable, politically diverse neighbor", www.aei.org/article/politics-and-publicopinion/mexico-becomes-a-stable-politically-diverse-neighbor/)
We Americans are lucky, though we seldom reflect on it, that we have good neighbors. In East Asia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan
and the Philippines face challenges from China over islands they have long claimed in the East China Sea. In Europe, Germany and
other prosperous nations face demands for subsidies from debt-ridden nations to avoid the collapse of the euro. When Southern
Europeans look across the Mediterranean, they see Muslim nations facing post-Arab Spring upheaval and disorder. The United
States has land borders with just two nations, Canada (more on that another day) and Mexico, where Barack
Obama is headed next month. They're both good neighbors. I realize that most of the recent news on Mexico has been
about violent drug wars. You get 500,000 hits when you Google "Mexico failed state." But that's a
misleading picture. The war on drug lords waged by President Felipe Calderon from 2006 to 2012 has had
considerable success and has been de-emphasized by his successor, Enrique Pena Nieto. The focus
on the drug war ignores Mexico's progress over the last 25 years as an electoral democracy. For 71
years, it had one-party rule of the PRI, or Party of the Institutional Revolution. Under PRI rule, a president selected by his
predecessor selected his successor. But under PRI Presidents Carlos Salinas (1988-94) and Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000), Mexico
established a clean election system under which the opposition conservative PAN and leftist PRD parties won state and legislative
offices. This was capped when PAN candidate Vicente Fox was elected president in July 2000. When Zedillo came on television
and said, "I recognize that Vicente Fox is the next president of Mexico," thousands of Fox supporters gathered around Mexico City's
Angel of Independence and stomped so strongly in unison that the Earth shook. Fox and his PAN successor, Calderon,
had some significant policy successes. But they were frustrated in getting changes in the energy sector, in which the
state-owned monopoly Pemex has lagged behind, and in education, where teacher jobs are handed down from parent to child. The
reason is that since 2000, none of Mexico's three parties has had a majority in Congress. That's one result of genuine political
competition, in which voters have imposed rotation in office in governorships and legislative seats. But it also meant that the PAN
presidents could not get reforms through Congress if they were opposed by the PRI and the PRD. Things have been
different since the 2012 presidential election. PRI candidate Enrique Pena Nieto seemed a depressingly
conventional politician, who as governor of the state of Mexico (which surrounds central Mexico City) won publicity for dating a
telenovela star. Pena won the July election handily and on taking office in December called for major reforms. He
issued a 34-page Pact for Mexico, which proposed greater competition for Pemex in the energy
sector, plus education and judicial reforms. Remarkably, it was endorsed by PAN and PRD as well as the
PRI. Pemex has been a sacred cow in Mexico since the 1930s when President Lazaro Cardenas seized foreign oil operations and
created the state-owned monopoly. The Pemex union was a pillar of the PRI establishment. Now a PRI president was proposing to
reform it, and his move was endorsed by a PRI party convention in March. Pena also acted on education. In February,
Congress passed a law establishing a transparent system for teacher hiring and evaluation. The
next day, the government arrested the head of the teachers union and charged her with spending $156 million of union funds on
luxury goods. And Pena has moved to deregulate telecommunications, which threatens the position of telecom
Mexico's economy is moving ahead
with 5 percent growth. Since the NAFTA treaty went into effect in the 1990s, it seemed that Mexico's economy was tethered
to ours, leaving it unable to close the gap with the United States. Now as our economy slogs along slowly, Mexico is
moving toward catching up. It is, as former Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda has proclaimed, a majority middle-class
billionaire Carlos Slim. There is other heartening news from south of our border.
country now. It is also a country from which, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, there has been no net migration to the United
States since 2007. All this vindicates our previous four presidents, who pressed for closer ties with Mexico. But most of the
credit belongs to the leaders and people of Mexico. Good neighbors .
Economic growth creates Mexican stability
Corchado, 14 (Alfredo, "20 years after NAFTA, Mexico has transformed", www.dallasnews.com/news/local-news/2014010120-years-after-nafta-mexico-has-transformed.ece)
LA VALLA, Mexico — Leodegarco Ramírez Ramírez smiles as he stands in a spot symbolizing the rise of a new Mexico, an area of
cornfields that are slowly being replaced by manufacturing plants where his sons and nephews make airplanes and automobiles.
Ramirez and his countrymen are part of a transformation as Mexico moves from a commodity, crisis-
prone, agriculture-dominated economy to a more broad-based one with manufacturing plants that
produce everything from aerospace and auto parts to refrigerators. “I tell my sons things are looking up for Mexico,” he
said. “We’ll go to the United States more out of curiosity than necessity.” There is debate over how much of the change is due to the
North American Free Trade Agreement. This week marks the 20th anniversary since the accord took effect for the United States,
Mexico and Canada. “Mexico has a world-class manufacturing sector, and NAFTA has certainly helped
bring this industry up to the highest global standards ,” said Pia Orrenius, an economist and migration specialist
at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. “Would this have happened without NAFTA? Maybe, but it probably would have taken
longer. … Overall, I think Mexicans see a brighter future for their nation than they did 20 years ago .”
Mexico is stable and resilient
By Peter Hakim President of the Inter-American Dialogue. May 1, 2013 “Which Mexico for Obama?”
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/05/01/which-mexico-for-obama/ ac 8-27
Mexico clearly looks better than ever, but it was never as seriously endangered as it was reported
to be. It was never close to being a failed state . It is true that its homicide rate and violence rose rapidly in the past
murders per capita are still far from the
highest in Latin America. They regularly trail those of Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, most of Central
America and the Caribbean.¶ On the economic side, yes, Mexico has only recently emerged from some 15
years of listless growth. During that period, however, the economy and banking system were well
managed. Mexico maintained ample reserves and a low ratio of debt to gross domestic product.
Inflation was kept firmly under control.¶ For more than two decades now, Mexico has been
building a modern economy with vibrant manufacturing and export sectors well integrated into
U.S. supply chains. The Mexican economy was never as troubled as it was portrayed — and now the opportunities for
five years — and the associated brutality was unparalleled. But Mexico’s
improvement are greater than ever.
PEMEX
Pemex: Independence Now 2NC
No prices shocks—shale
Elizabeth Rosenberg, Senior Fellow and Director, Energy Environment and Security Program, Center for a New American
Century, ENERGY RUSH: SHALE PRODUCTION AND U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY, Report of the Unconventional Energy and
U.S. National Security Task Force, 2—14, p. 5.
of sophisticated, “unconventional” oil and gas extractive technology to shale rock formations
precipitated a dramatic increase in U.S. energy production. A glut of gas
has flooded the U.S. market and caused prices to plummet from historical levels. Unconventional
oil production, moreover, led to the largest annual production increase in U.S. history in 2012 and
substantially reduced the need for oil imports. Internationally, new U.S. oil supplies have helped to cap the
The application
over the past five years has
price spikes caused by severe global supply disruptions and to moderate oil prices for consumers.
Oil Shocks--General—2NC
Econ is insulated, speculation means inventories increase, shock causes dollar
depreciation which spurs job growth which offsets high prices—that’s
whitehouse
No impact to oil shocks
Kahn 11 (Jeremy, Managing Editor – New Republic and Contributor – New York Times and International Herald Tribune, “Crude
Reality”, The Boston Globe, 2-13, Lexis)
But a
growing body of economic research suggests that this conventional view of oil shocks is wrong.
The US economy is far less susceptible to interruptions in the oil supply than previously assumed,
according to these studies. Scholars examining the recent history of oil disruptions have found the worldwide oil
market to be remarkably adaptable and surprisingly quick at compensating for shortfalls. Economists
have found that much of the damage once attributed to oil shocks can more persuasively be laid at the feet of bad
government policies. The US economy, meanwhile, has become less dependent on Persian Gulf oil and less
sensitive to changes in crude prices overall than it was in 1973.
These findings have led a few bold political scientists and foreign policy experts to start asking an uncomfortable question: If the U nited S tates
could withstand a disruption in Persian Gulf oil supplies, why does it need a permanent military presence in the region
at all? There's a lot riding on that question: America's presence in the Middle East exacts a heavy toll in political capital, financial resources, and lives.
Washington's support for Middle East autocrats makes America appear hypocritical on issues of human rights and democracy. The United States
spends billions of dollars every year to maintain troops in the Middle East, and the troops risk their lives simply by being there, since they make
tempting targets for the region's Islamic extremists. And arguably, because the presence of these forces inflames radicals and delegitimizes local
rulers, they may actually be undermining the very stability they are ostensibly there to ensure.
Among those asking this tough question are two young professors, Eugene Gholz, at the University of Texas, and Daryl Press, at Dartmouth
College. To find out what actually happens when the world's petroleum supply is interrupted, the duo analyzed
every major oil
disruption since 19 73 . The results, published in a recent issue of the journal Strategic Studies, showed that in almost all
cases, the ensuing rise in prices, while sometimes steep, was short-lived and had little lasting economic
impact . When there have been prolonged price rises, they found the cause to be panic on the part of oil purchasers rather than a supply shortage.
When oil runs short, in other words, the market is usually adept at filling the gap.
Oil Shocks--War—2NC
No resource wars over oil
David Victor, David G. Victor is a professor of law at Stanford Law School and the director of the Program on Energy
and Sustainable Development, November 12, 2007, What Resource Wars?,
http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=16020
RISING ENERGY prices and mounting concerns about environmental depletion have
animated fears that the world may be headed for a spate of “resource wars”—hot conflicts
triggered by a struggle to grab valuable resources. Such fears come in many stripes, but the threat
industry has sounded the alarm bells especially loudly in three areas . First is the rise of
China, which is poorly endowed with many of the resources it needs—such as oil, gas, timber and most minerals—
and has already “gone out” to the world with the goal of securing what it wants. Violent
conflicts may follow as the country shunts others aside. A second potential path down the road to
resource wars starts with all the money now flowing into poorly governed but resourcerich countries. Money can fund civil wars and other hostilities, even leaking into the
hands of terrorists. And third is global climate change, which could multiply stresses on
natural resources and trigger water wars, catalyze the spread of disease or bring about
mass migrations. Most of this is bunk, and nearly all of it has focused on the wrong
lessons for policy. Classic resource wars are good material for Hollywood screenwriters.
They rarely occur in the real world.
To be sure, resource money can magnify and prolong some conflicts, but the root causes
of those hostilities usually lie elsewhere. Fixing them requires focusing on the
underlying institutions that govern how resources are used and largely determine
whether stress explodes into violence. When conflicts do arise, the weak link isn’t a
dearth in resources but a dearth in governance.
Asia Pivot: Middle East Focus Inev 2NC
Oil insufificnet to cause pivot --US will stay involved in the ME allied commitments,
Israel, and regional balancing
Business Monitor International 12 (3/6/12, “US Energy Independence: Geopolitical Consequences”)
http://www.riskwatchdog.com/2012/03/06/us-energy-independence-geopolitical-consequences/
Recently, there has been considerable speculation that the US can achieve energy
independence over the coming years as a result of the development of unconventional domestic oil and gas
resources. Some proponents of US energy independence argue that Washington would no longer
need to involve itself in the affairs of the Middle East, or to a lesser extent, the Caucasus-Caspian SeaCentral Asia region. This is a false argument. There is indeed a case for US energy independence, but this would
not necessarily reduce American involvement (some would say ‘interference’) in the Middle East. For a start, the US is
not in the region solely because America needs oil. The US is in the region at least partly because it is
expected to guarantee the security of oil shipments (especially through the Strait of Hormuz) to its
allies, namely Europe, Japan, South Korea, and a few others. This role augments the United States’ importance in
global affairs. If Washington relinquished these perceived responsibilities, then other countries dependent on Middle
Eastern oil imports, such as China and India, could be expected to expand their naval capabilities and more actively
project their influence in the Middle East. Given that China and India/Japan are already geopolitical competitors in Asia,
their rivalry could be carried into the Middle East. Of course, it is highly likely that Beijing and New Delhi
(and possibly even Tokyo and Seoul) will seek greater involvement in the Middle East regardless of
what the US does, but Washington will not take action to hasten this eventuality. The second
major reason that the US is heavily involved in Middle Eastern affairs is the protection of
Israel fro
m external threats. In the past, these have come from Egypt and Syria (until the 1970s), and Iraq
(until 2003), and at present, it mainly stems from Iran (and its proxies). If the US were seen to be
reducing its commitment to Israel’s security, the Jewish state would become alarmed,
potentially prompting it to increase its already powerful military capabilities or even carry out military action against real
or imagined threats more frequently. The third major reason for US involvement in the Middle East is
to maintain a balance of power between the region’s most powerful states, namely Iran, Saudi
Arabia, Turkey, and Iraq (pre-2003). In fact, the US went to war in the Gulf in 1991 because Iraq, which at the
time had the fourth-largest military in the world, invaded a small sovereign state, Kuwait. The US went to war against
Iraq again in 2003 on the basis that the latter’s alleged weapons of mass destruction made it a regional threat. Now,
there is speculation that the US and/or Israel may attack Iran, because if the latter requires nuclear weapons, it will
become the hegemonic power in the region.
1NR
Ebola
Ebola causes extinction
Pearsen 9/4
Jordan Pearsen, contributor to Motherboard Vice News, 9/4/14, “This Mathematical Model from 2006 Shows How Ebola Could Wipe
Us Out” http://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-2006-mathematical-model-shows-how-ebola-could-wipe-us-out
The current Ebola outbreak in West Africa is the worst in history, and the death tolljust surpassed 1,900. Previous
WHO estimates indicated that the outbreak would end mid-fall, but the situation is quickly spiraling out of control and
into a sea of unknowns. The “Ebola epidemic is the largest, and most severe, and most complex
we have ever seen in the nearly 40-year history of this disease,” W orld H ealth O rganization
director general Margaret Chan said in a special briefing yesterday. “No one, even outbreak
responders, [has] ever seen anything like it.” Yaneer Bar-Yam, the complex systems analyst whose
model accurately predicted the global unrest that led to the Arab Spring, is also worried about the
patterns he sees in the disease's advance. Models he designed for the New England Complex
Systems Institute back in 2006 show that Ebola could rapidly spread, and, in a worse case scenario, even
cause an extinction event, if enough infected people make it through an international airport. “What
happened was that we were modelling the dynamics of the evolution of diseases—of pathogens—and
we showed that if you just add a very small amount of long-range transportation, the diseases
escape their local context and eventually drive everything to extinction ,” Bar-Yam told Motherboard.
“They drive their hosts to extinction.” Bar-Yam says he has informed the WHO and the CDC of his findings, but they
haven’t listened, he said. “I just gave a lecture to the World Health Organization in January and I told them. I said, there’s this
transition to extinction and we don’t know when it’s going to happen,” Bar-Yam explained. “But I don’t think that there has been a
sufficient response.”
Normally , the spread of a predator—and this is as true for Ebola as it is for invasive animal
species—is stymied when it overexploits its prey, effectively drying up its own food source. In rural
areas like those where the current Ebola outbreak is centered, diseases tend to contain themselves by wiping out all available hosts
in a concentrated area. If a particularly aggressive predator happens to make it out of its local context,
say, on an international flight, Bar-Yam’s models show that it can avoid local extinction through
long-range dispersal . At this point, the linear model of the disease's outbreak makes a statistical
transition into an entirely different dynamic ; extinction for all of its hosts across vast
geographic distances, and only afterwards for the disease . The argument has been made that an Ebola
outbreak would not be as severe in the West as it is in Africa, because the poor healthcare infrastructure where the disease has
struck is the chief vector of its spread. Bar-Yam sees this assumption as a vast overestimation of our handle on the dynamics of
disease containment. “The behavior of an individual in a major metropolitan area in terms of engaging with the health care system
depends on a lot of different factors,” Bar-Yam explained. “A reasonable person might be have in one way, but another person will
behave in another. We don’t know what happens if someone with Ebola throws up in a subway before that gets cleaned up and
people understand that happened because of Ebola.”
Turns Case – General
Turns case- pandemic causes state collapse and war
Brown, 3 -- RAND science & technology policy analyst
(Jennifer Brown, RAND S&T policy analyst, Ph.D. in public health from Harvard University, Codirected the
congressionally mandated Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism
Involving WMD, and Peter Chalk, RAND senior political scientist, Ph.D. in political science from the
University of British Columbia, correspondent for Jane's Intelligence Review and associate editor of
Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, one of the foremost journals in the international security field, adjunct
professor at the Postgraduate Naval School in Monterey, California, and contractor for the Asia Pacific
Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, HI, and the United States Institute of Peace, "The Global Threat
of New and Reemerging Infectious Diseases; Reconciling U.S. National Security and Public Health
Policy," www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1602.html, accessed 9-16-12)
The argument that the transnational spread of disease poses a threat to human security rests on the simple proposition that it
seriously threatens both the individual and the quality of life that a person is able to attain within a given society, polity or state.
Specifically, this occurs in at least six ways. First and most fundamental, disease kills—far surpassing war as a threat to human life.
AIDS alone is expected to have killed over 80 million people by the year 2011, while tuberculosis (TB), one of the virus’s main
opportunistic diseases, accounts for three million deaths every year, including 100,000 children. 2 1 In general, a staggering 1,500
people die each hour from infectious ailments, the vast bulk of which are caused by just six groups of disease: HIV/AIDS, malaria,
measles, pneumonia, TB, and dysentery and other gastrointestinal disorders. 22 Second, if left unchecked, disease can undermine
public confidence in the state’s general custodian function, in the process eroding a polity’s overall governing legitimacy as well as
undermining the ability of the state itself to function. When large-scale outbreaks occur, such effects can become particularly
acute as the ranks of first responders and medical personnel are decimated, making it doubly difficult for an already stressed
government to respond adequately. During the initial weeks of the anthrax attacks in fall 2001, the lack of coordination at the federal
level, especially with regard to communication, led to a loss of confidence by some citizens, especially postal workers in
Washington, D.C. Potentially exposed individuals were given conflicting advice on antibiotic treatment and the efficacy of the
anthrax vaccine. The general public, largely because of inconsistent information enunciated by government officials, bought Cipro,
the antibiotic approved for the treatment of anthrax, in large numbers. Similarly, in 1996, Japan suffered a severe food poisoning
epidemic caused by Escherichia coli O157. Over the course of two months, eight people died and thousands of others were
sickened. The perceived inability of the Tokyo government to enact an appropriate response generated widespread public criticism,
compounding popular dissatisfaction with an administration that was still reeling from the effects of the previous year’s Kobe
earthquake. As one commentator remarked at the height of the crisis, “The cries against government authorities are growing louder
by the day. . . . The impression here [in Japan] is too much talk and not enough action has led to yet another situation that has spun
out of control.” 23 Third, disease adversely affects the economic foundation upon which both human and state security depends.
The fiscal burden imposed by the HIV/AIDS epidemic provides a case in point. Twenty-five million people are currently HIV-positive
in subSaharan Africa, costing already impoverished governments billions of dollars in direct economic costs and loss of productivity.
Treating HIV-related illnesses in South Africa, the worst-hit country on the continent, is expected to generate annual increases in
healthcare costs in excess of US$500 million by 2009 (see Chapter Three). 2 4 South and Southeast Asia are expected to surpass
Africa in terms of infections by the year 2010. If this in fact occurs, demographic upheaval could tax and widely destabilize
countries with fragile economies and public health infrastructures. Economies will be greatly affected by the loss of a stable and
productive workforce as well as from a reduction of external capital investment, potentially reducing general gross domestic product
(GDP) by as much as 20 percent. 25 Fourth, disease can have a profound, negative impact on a state’s social order, functioning,
and psyche. In Papua New Guinea, for instance, AIDS has severely distorted the wa n t o k system—which formalizes reciprocal
responsibilities, ensuring that those who hit hard times will be taken care of by extended family—because of the fear and stigma
attached to the disease. 26 The Ebola outbreak that hit the crowded Ugandan district of Gulu in late 2000 caused people to
completely withdraw from contact with the outside world, reducing common societal interactions and functions to a bare minimum.
27 Epidemics may also lead to forms of post-traumatic stress. A number of analyses have been undertaken to assess the long-term
psychological effects on those who have been continually subjected to poor sanitary conditions and outbreaks of disease. The
studies consistently document the extreme emotional stress suffered by these people and the difficulty of integrating them back into
“normal society.” 28 Fifth, the spread of infectious diseases can act as a catalyst for regional instability. Epidemics can severely
undermine defense force capabilities (just as they distort civilian worker productivity). By galvanizing mass cross-border population
flows and fostering economic problems, they can also help create the type of widespread volatility that can quickly translate into
heightened tension both within and between states. This combination of military, demographic, and fiscal effects has already been
created by the AIDS crisis in Africa. Indeed, the U.S. State Department increasingly speculates that the disease will emerge as one
of the most significant “conflict starters” and possibly even “war outcome determinants” during the next decade.
Takes out
Even small attacks wreck the economy—trillions in losses
NUCLEAR NEWS,
"The Clock is Ticking on Taking Preventive Action," December 2009, npg.
The report also says that the threat of bioterrorism is real. In its December 2008 report, "World at Risk," the
commission concluded that terrorists are more likely to be able to obtain and use a biological
weapon than a nuclear weapon, and in recent years the U nited S tates has received strategic
warnings of biological weapons use from dozens of government reports and expert panels. The
consequences of ignoring these warnings could be dire, according to the October report. For example, the
report notes that "one recent study from the intelligence community projected that a one- to twokilogram release of anthrax spores from a crop duster plane could kill more Americans than
died in World War II. Cleanup and other economic costs could exceed $1.8 trillion."
BioT: 1NC
That R&D is key to prevent bioterror
Washington Post ‘1 (Justin Gillis, 2001 "Scientists Race for Vaccines," lexis)
U.S. scientists, spurred into action by the events of Sept. 11, have begun a concerted assault on bioterrorism, working to produce
an array of new medicines that include treatments for smallpox, a safer smallpox vaccine and a painless anthrax vaccine. At least
one major drug company, Pharmacia Corp. of Peapack, N.J., has offered to let government scientists roam through the confidential
libraries of millions of compounds it has synthesized to look for drugs against bioterror agents. Other companies have signaled that
they will do the same if asked. These are unprecedented offers, since a drug company's chemical library, painstakingly assembled
over decades, is one of its primary assets, to which federal scientists usually have no access. "A lot of people would say we
won World War II with the help of a mighty industrial base," said Michael Friedman, a onetime administrator at
the Food and Drug Administration who was appointed days ago to coordinate the pharmaceutical industry's efforts. "In this new
war against bioterrorism, the mighty industrial power is the pharmaceutical industry."
One example
of the new urgency is an initiative launched by Eli Lilly & Co. One of the company's infectious-disease experts, Gail Cassell, realized
during the anthrax scare that her company had three drugs that might work as treatments for smallpox, even scarier than anthrax as
a potential terrorist weapon. In a matter of days Cassell, a Lilly vice president, tore through paperwork that normally would have
taken months, put samples of the drugs on a plane and flew them to government laboratories in the Washington area to be tested
against smallpox. It's not clear yet whether the drugs will prove effective. "We all have to think of the situation as being rather
Researchers
say a generation of young scientists never called upon before to defend the nation is working
overtime in a push for rapid progress. At laboratories of the National Institutes of Health, at universities and research
urgent," Cassell said. "You're kind of waiting for the next shoe to drop, given the events of the last two months."
institutes across the land, people are scrambling. "This has been such a shock to so many people," said Carole Heilman, a division
director at NIH, which is paying for much of the bioterror research. "People aren't sleeping anymore. Everybody is working as much
as they possibly can. Bureaucracy is not a word that's acceptable anymore." But the campaign, for all its urgency,
faces hurdles both scientific and logistical. The kind of research now underway would normally take at least a decade before
products appeared on pharmacy shelves. Scientists are talking about getting at least some new products out the door within two
years, a daunting schedule in medical research. If that happens, it will be with considerable assistance from the nation's
drug companies. They are the only organizations in the country with the scale to move rapidly to
produce pills and vials of medicine that might be needed by the billions. The companies and their powerful
lobby in Washington have been working over the past few weeks to seize the moment and rehabilitate their reputations, tarnished in
recent years by controversy over drug prices and the lack of access to AIDS drugs among poor countries. The companies have
already made broad commitments to aid the government in the short term, offering free pills with a wholesale value in excess of $ 1
billion, as well as other help. The question now is whether that commitment will extend over the several years it will take to build a
national stockpile of next-generation medicines. "This is a time of crisis," Friedman said. "I think the industry is going
to be very patient and going to be making a long-term commitment. It's the right thing to do."
Bioweapons cause extinction
Ochs 02 − Member of the Depleted Uranium Task force of the Military Toxics Project and the Chemical Weapons Working Group
(Richard, “biological weapons must be abolished immediately”, 7/9, http://www.freefromterror.net/other_articles/abolish.html)
Of all the weapons of mass destruction, the genetically engineered biological weapons, many
without a known cure or vaccine, are an extreme danger to the continued survival of life on earth .
Any perceived military value or deterrence pales in comparison to the great risk these weapons pose just sitting in vials in
laboratories. While a "nuclear winter," resulting from a massive exchange of nuclear weapons, could also kill
off
most of life on earth and severely compromise the health of future generations, they are easier to
control. Biological weapons, on the other hand, can get out of control very easily, as the recent anthrax
attacks has demonstrated. There is no way to guarantee the security of these doomsday weapons because very tiny amounts can
be stolen or accidentally released and then grow or be grown to horrendous proportions. The Black Death of the Middle Ages would
be small in comparison to the potential damage bioweapons could cause. Abolition of chemical weapons is less of a priority
because, while they can also kill millions of people outright, their persistence in the environment would be less than nuclear or
biological agents or more localized. Hence, chemical weapons would have a lesser effect on future generations of innocent people
and the natural environment. Like the Holocaust, once a localized chemical extermination is over, it is over. With nuclear and
biological weapons, the killing will probably never end. Radioactive elements last tens of thousands of years and will keep causing
cancers virtually forever. Potentially worse than that, bio-engineered agents by the hundreds with no known
cure could wreck even greater calamity on the human race than could persistent radiation. AIDS
and ebola viruses are just a small example of recently emerging plagues with no known cure or
vaccine. Can we imagine hundreds of such plagues? Human extinction is now possible.
Threat Real – Frontline
Synthetic biology makes bioterror inevitable- creates means and motive
Rose, 14 -- PhD, recognized international biodefense expert
[Patrick, Center for Health & Homeland Security senior policy analyst & biosecurity expert, National Defense University lecturer, and
Adam Bernier, expert in counter-terrorism, "DIY Bioterrorism Part II: The proliferation of bioterrorism through synthetic biology,"
CBRNePortal, 2-24-14, www.cbrneportal.com/diy-bioterrorism-part-ii-the-proliferation-of-bioterrorism-through-synthetic-biology/,
accessed 8-16-14]
In Part I of this series, we examined how the advancement of synthetic biology has made bio-engineering accessible to the
mainstream biological community. Non-state actors who wish to employ biological agents for ill intent are sure to be aware of how
tangible bio-weapons are becoming as applications of synthetic biology become more affordable and the probability of success
increases with each scientific breakthrough. The willingness of non-state actors to engage in biological attacks is not a new concept;
however, the past biological threat environment has been subdued compared to that of conventional or even chemical terrorism.
The frequency and deadliness of biological attacks has, thankfully, been limited; much of which can be attributed to the technical
complexity or apparent ineptitude of the perpetrators developing biological weapons. Despite the infrequency and ineffectiveness of
biological attacks in the last four decades, the threat may be changing with the continued advancement of synthetic biology
applications. Coupled with the ease of information sharing and a rapidly growing do-it-yourself-biology (DIYbio) movement
(discussed in Part I), the chances of not only , more attacks , but potentially more deadly ones will inevitably increase .¶
During the last half century terrorist organizations have consistently had an interest in using biological weapons as a means of
attacking their targets, but only few have actually made a weapon and used it. The attraction is that terrorist activities with biological
weapons are difficult to detect and even more difficult to attribute without a specific perpetrator claiming responsibility. Since 1971
there have been more than 113,113 terrorist attacks globally and 33 of them have been biological. The majority of bio-terrorism
incidents recorded occurred during the year 2001 (17 of the 33); before 2001 there were 10 incidents and since 2001 there were 6
(not counting the most recent Ricin attacks). The lack of a discernable trend in use of bio-terrorism does not negate the clear intent
of extremist organizations to use biological weapons. In fact, the capacity to harness biological weapons more effectively today only
increases the risk that they will successfully be employed. ¶ The landscape is changing : previously the instances where biological
attacks had the potential to do the most harm (e.g., Rajneeshees cult’s Salmonella attacks in 1984, Aum Shinri Kyo’s Botulinum
toxin, and Anthrax attacks in the early 90’s) included non-state actors with access to large amounts of funding and scientists.
Funding and a cadre of willing scientists does not guarantee success though. The assertion was thus made that biological weapons
are not only expensive, they require advanced technical training to make and are even more difficult to effectively perpetrate acts of
terrorism with. While it is difficult to determine with certainty whether the expense and expertise needed to create biological
weapons has acted as a major deterrent for groups thinking of obtaining them, many experts would argue that the cost/expertise
barrier makes the threat from biological attacks extremely small. This assertion is supported by the evidence that the vast majority of
attacks have taken place in Western countries and was performed by Western citizens with advanced training in scientific research.¶
In the past decade the cost/expertise assertion has become less accurate.
Despite the lack of biological attacks, there are a number of very dangerous and motivated organizations that have or are actively
pursuing biological weapons. The largest and most outspoken organization has been the global Al Qaeda network, whose leaders
have frequently and passionately called for the development (or purchase) of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). The principal
message from Al Qaeda Central and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has included the call to use biological WMDs to
terrorize Western nations. Al Qaeda has had a particular focus on biological and nuclear weapons because of their potential for
greatest harm. Osama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Anwar al-Awlaki have all called for attacks using biological weapons,
going so far as to say that Muslims everywhere should seek to kill Westerners wherever possible and that obtaining WMDs is the
responsibility of all Muslims. Before the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, Al Qaeda had spent significant funds on building a biolaboratory and had begun collecting scientists from around the world; however, the Afghanistan invasion and subsequent global War
on Terrorism is thought to have disrupted their capabilities and killed or captured many of their assets. Despite the physical
setbacks, this disruption does not appear to have changed the aggressive attitude towards obtaining WMDs (e.g., more recently
U.S. Intelligence has been concerned about AQAP attempting to make Ricin).¶ The emergence of synthetic biology and DIYbio has
increased the likelihood that Al Qaeda will succeed in developing biological WMDs. The low cost and significantly reduced level
of necessary expertise may change how many non-state actors view bio logical weapons as a worthwhile investment.
This is not to say that suddenly anyone can make a weapon or that it is easy. To the contrary making an effective biological weapon
will still be difficult, only much easier and cheaper than it has been in the past.¶ The rapid advancements of synthetic bio logy
could be a game changer , giving organizations currently pursuing biological weapons more options, and encouraging other
organizations to reconsider their worth. Because the bar for attaining bio logical weapons has been lowered and is likely to
continue to be lowered as more advances in biological technology are made, it is important that the international community
begin to formulate policy that protects advances in science that acts to prevent the intentional misuse of synthetic biology. Disregard
for this consideration will be costly. A successful attack with a potent biological weapon, where no pharmaceutical interventions
might exist, will be deadly and the impact of such an attack will reverberate around the globe because biological weapons are not
bound by international borders.
Pharma: UQ – Innovation Now
Pharma innovation now and the industry is thriving – important report proves
Thomson Reuters, 9/8/14, Thomson Reuters Annual Pharmaceutical Factbook Projects Industry’s Sales Will Reach $1
Trillion in 2014” http://thomsonreuters.com/press-releases/092014/pharmaceutical-factbook-2014
The Intellectual Property and Science business of Thomson Reuters, the world's leading source of
intelligent information for businesses and professionals, today released its annual synopsis of
pharmaceutical industry trends in its 2014 Pharmaceutical R&D Factbook, compiled by CMR International, a Thomson
Reuters business and world leader in global pharmaceutical R&D performance metrics. The report found a number of
positive trends across the biopharmaceutical landscape—including an all-time high in
pharmaceutical sales and an increase in New Molecular Entities (NMEs) and in drugs successfully
completing late stage clinical trials—that contradict industry perceptions of a decline in R&D
productivity.
The CMR Factbook—a leading publication of pharmaceutical facts containing 11 chapters of
essential data on R&D pipeline volume, success rates, cycle times, regional comparisons,
therapeutic areas, generics and other areas—provides valuable strategic insight to
pharmaceutical industry leaders. This year’s report underscores a promising industry outlook, as
evidenced by:
Global pharmaceutical sales highest ever: Global pharmaceutical sales reached an all-time high of approximately
$980 billion in 2013 and are expected to rise to $1 trillion this year. However, the rate of growth declined in 2013 compared to
previous years due to the expiration of patent protection on a number of blockbuster drugs in markets dominated by lower-cost
generic equivalents.
Third-most NMEs or novel drugs launched in last decade: The number of NMEs launched in 2013 was the third-
highest in the last decade. Regulators and payers are demanding safer, more effective and differentiated drugs to try to
contain the rising costs of healthcare. The industry continues to respond to these challenges by diversifying into areas of unmet
need and rare indications. Approximately half of all drugs were specialty indicated for the treatment of cancer, pulmonary arterial
hypertension and HIV. All oncology NME first-world launches in 2013 received orphan drug status.
Cancer treatment benefits from advances in precision medicine: Anti-cancer development
continues to attract the highest amount of investment across all therapeutic areas , with the majority of
recent approvals receiving orphan drug status from the FDA.
Pharma increases rate of successful drugs by improving ability to fail “fast and cheaply”: There has
been a decline in pipeline volumes and success rates in early clinical development phases, yet there is a trend in stable success
rates across the later phases. This indicates that the industry is improving its ability to “fail fast, fail
cheaply,” which is increasing the success rate of more advanced drug candidates.
“Pharmaceutical R&D is a difficult and expensive process in an industry with high expectations,” said Jon Brett-Harris, managing
director of Thomson Reuters Life Sciences. “With much of the recent conversation focused on the hurdles in
the pharma space, it is reassuring to see positive developments and an encouraging future
landscape.”
Pharma: UQ/Links – 2NC
Marijuana legalization severely damages powerful drug companies
Benson ‘12
Jonathan Benson, staffwriter for Natural News, 4/22/12, “Hundreds of Economists Agree Marijuana Legalization Could Save U.S
Taxpayers $13.7 Billion Per Year” http://www.nationofchange.org/hundreds-economists-agree-marijuana-legalization-could-save-ustaxpayers-137-billion-year-1335161573
If marijuana were legalized nationwide, however, the drug industry and the prison system, much of which has
now been privatized, would suffer greatly. And this, of course, is one of the primary reasons why these special interests are
working hard to squelch all efforts to legalize marijuana at the national level.
According to a 2009 report published by NowPublic, the United States incarcerates the most individuals per capita compared to any other country in the world. And the "War on Drugs," which continually targets
marijuana users and dealers, is largely responsible for making America the most imprisoned nation in the world (http://www.nowpublic.com).
"According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), 30 to 40 percent of all current prison admissions involve crimes that have no direct or obvious victim other than the perpetrator," says a 2008 DOJ report. "The
drug category constitutes the largest offense category, with 31 percent of all prison admissions resulting from such crimes."
If drugs like marijuana became decriminalized, the prison industry would lose a large chunk of its business -- after all, who is going to fill all those empty prison cells in all the new privately-owned prisons being
erected across the country?
Big Pharma, which stands to lose a significant portion of its
business if marijuana is legalized as well. Marijuana, after all, is a powerful, natural medicine that can
eliminate chronic pain, balance brain chemistry, mimic the regulatory system of cellular
physiology, and even treat cancer, among other things.
The other major player in the "War on Drugs" is
Legalized marijuana replaces painkillers and hurts the multibillion dollar pharma
industry
Fang ‘14
Lee Fang, Investigative journalist and contributor to The Nation and Salon and others and is a reporting fellow with The Investigative
Fund at The Nation Institute and has had his work result in multiple calls for hearings in Congress and the Federal Election
Commission, 9/7/14, “Leading Anti-Marijuana Academics Are Paid By Painkiller Drug Companies”
https://news.vice.com/article/leading-anti-marijuana-academics-are-paid-by-painkiller-drug-companies
VICE has found that many of the researchers who have advocated against legalizing pot have also been on the payroll of leading
pharmaceutical firms with products that could be easily replaced by using marijuana. When these
individuals have been quoted in the media, their drug-industry ties have not been revealed.
Take, for example, Dr. Herbert Kleber of Columbia University. Kleber has impeccable academic credentials, and has been quoted in the press and in academic publicationswarning against the use of marijuana,
which he stresses may cause wide-ranging addiction and public health issues. But when he's writing anti-pot opinion pieces for CBS News, or being quoted by NPR and CNBC, what's left unsaid is that Kleber
has served as a paid consultant to leading prescription drug companies, including Purdue Pharma (the maker of OxyContin), Reckitt Benckiser (the producer of a painkiller called Nurofen), and Alkermes (the
producer of a powerful new opioid called Zohydro).
Kleber, who did not respond to a request for comment, maintains important influence over the pot debate. For instance, his writing has been cited by the New York State Association of Chiefs of Police in its
opposition to marijuana legalization, and has been published by the American Psychiatric Association in the organization's statement warning against marijuana for medicinal uses.
Could Kleber's long-term financial relationship with drug firms be viewed as a conflict of interest? Studies
have found that
pot can be used for pain relief as a substitute for major prescription painkillers. The opioid
painkiller industry is a multibillion business that has faced rising criticism from experts because
painkillers now cause about 16,000 deaths a year, more than heroin and cocaine combined. Researchers view marijuana
as a safe alternative to opioid products like OxyContin, and there are no known overdose deaths from pot.
Other leading academic opponents of pot have ties to the painkiller industry. Dr. A. Eden Evins, an associate professor of psychiatry
at Harvard Medical School, is a frequent critic of efforts to legalize marijuana. She is on the board of an anti-marijuana advocacy
group, Project SAM, and has been quoted by leading media outlets criticizing the wave of new pot-related reforms. "When
people can go to a 'clinic' or 'cafe' and buy pot, that creates the perception that it's safe," she
told the Times last year.
These academic revelations add fodder to the argument that drug firms maintain quiet ties to the marijuana prohibition lobby.
Notably, when Evins participated in a commentary on marijuana legalization for the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, the publication found that her financial relationships required a disclosure statement, which noted
that as of November 2012, she was a "consultant for Pfizer and DLA Piper and has received grant/research support from Envivo, GlaxoSmithKline, and Pfizer." Pfizer has moved aggressively into the $7.3 billion
painkiller market. In 2011, the company acquired King Pharmaceuticals (the makers of several opioid products) and is currently working to introduce Remoxy, an OxyContin competitor.
Dr. Mark L. Kraus, who runs a private practice and is a board member to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, submitted testimony in 2012 in opposition to a medical marijuana law in Connecticut.
According to financial disclosures, Kraus served on the scientific advisory panel for painkiller companies such as Pfizer and Reckitt Benckiser in the year prior to his activism against the medical pot bill. Neither
Kraus or Evins responded to a request for comment.
These academic revelations add fodder to the argument that drug firms maintain quiet ties to the marijuana prohibition lobby. In July, I reported for the Nation that many of the largest anti-pot advocacy groups,
including the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions for America, which has organized opposition to reform through its network of activists and through handing out advocacy material (sample op-eds against medical pot
along with Reefer Madness-style videos, for example), has relied on significant funding from painkiller companies, including Purdue Pharma and Alkermes. Pharmaceutical-funded anti-drug groups like the
Partnership for Drug-Free Kids and CADCA use their budget to obsess over weed while paying lip-service to the much bigger drug problem in America of over-prescribed opioids.
As ProPublica reported, painkiller-funded researchers helped fuel America's deadly addiction to opioids such as OxyContin and
Vicodin. These academics, with quiet funding from major pain pill firms, encouraged doctors to over-prescribe these
drugs for a range of pain relief issues, leading to where we stand today as the world's biggest
consumer of painkillers and the overdose capital of the planet. What does it say about medical academia today that many
of that painkiller-funded researchers are now standing in the way of a safer alternative: smoking a joint.
Pharma: A2: Link Turn “We Help Pharma”
Even if the plan actually helps pharmaceuticals, they think it’ll hurt them and the
perception alone is enough to trigger the impact
CBO ‘06
CBO, Congressional Budget Office, 2006,
("Research and Development in the Pharmaceutical Industry," CBO, October, Pg. 9-10, PAS)
www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/76xx/doc7615/10-02-drugr-d.pdf
A recent, widely circulated estimate put the average cost ¶ of developing an innovative new drug
at more than $800 ¶ million, including expenditures on failed projects and the ¶ value of forgone alternative investments.1 Although that ¶ average
cost suggests that new-drug discovery and devel opment can be very expensive, it reflects the
research ¶ strategies and drug-development choices that companies ¶ make on the basis of their
expectations about future revenue . If companies expected to earn less from future drug ¶ sales,
they would alter their research strategies to lower ¶ their
average
R&D spending
per drug. Moreover, that ¶ estimate
represents only NMEs developed by a sample of ¶ large pharmaceutical firms. Other types of drugs often ¶ cost much less to develop (although NMEs have been ¶ the source of most of the major therapeutic
advances in ¶ pharmaceuticals).
Pharma: A2: Link Turn “We Help Pharma”
Prohibition ensures only drug companies can profit off of medical marijuana—
can’t patent a plant
Berkman Center ‘10
Berkman Center for Internet and Society, at Harvard University, 2010, “HEALTH CONFLICTS: WHAT ARE THE ECONOMIC
INCENTIVES OF DRUG COMPANIES?” http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/evidence99/marijuana/Economic_2.html
Another party interested in keeping marijuana illegal for economic reasons is the pharmaceutical
industry. Drug companies make money essentially in two ways. First, they provide their
customers with drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Obtaining approval,
though, can be a daunting task. Drug companies can spend anywhere from 80 to 100 million
dollars in the testing and development phase before receiving approval from the FDA. Of course,
there is never a guarantee that the FDA will grant approval. These costs, including presumably the
calculated risk of a loss, of course, are passed on to customers in the price they pay for these
drugs. Drug companies may also apply for patents that protect the development of new drugs.
This is another source of wealth for these companies.
By keeping marijuana illegal, drug companies have the opportunity to develop cannaboids, or
drugs that employ the active ingredient in marijuana, THC, which also cause the sensation and feeling a
marijuana smoker might experience. However, this requires the companies to go through the rigorous and
expensive testing procedures that are required for any drug being offered on the market. A
successful development, though, will lead to profits from sales and probably a valuable patent for
the company.
Oftentimes, though, the cannaboids developed by the drug companies are ingested orally and
must infiltrate the blood stream before the patient experiences any effect. This may be too long of
a delay for the patient experiencing nausea immediately after chemotherapy and the results may last too long afterward. By
giving patients marijuana cigarettes, the patient can determine the dosage required to reduce
whatever negative effects they desire to avoid. And as mentioned elsewhere, there is no threat that the patient will
overdose on marijuana.
Also, the drug companies will charge an exorbitant amount for these newly developed drugs ; they will
be prohibitively expensive for many patients. [The average street price of marijuana per pound can be found
at www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dope/laws/prices.html] Indeed, one of the advantages of marijuana is that it can be
obtained relatively cheaply.
Drug companies may be in favor of legalizing marijuana in its traditional smokable form only if
they have control over its production. Again, though, that would put marijuana within the ambit of the FDA. Additionally,
drug companies would be less enthusiastic about such a proposal since part of the advantage of
developing new drugs is the patent. Since marijuana is a plant, it cannot be patented. Therefore,
drug companies lose some of the value inherent in developing other new drugs.
Pharmaceutical companies are shifting their R&D efforts to vaccines now even if
they weren’t before
Wet Feet ‘12
Wet Feet News, industry insiders, 12/3/12, “Industry Overview: Pharmaceuticals and Biotech”
http://www.wetfeet.com/articles/industry-overview-pharmaceuticals-and-biotech
Vaccines long held a low spot on the drug development totem pole as Big Pharma pursued
products that traditionally offered a better return on investment. (Part of the reason for this is that developing
nations that need vaccines the most often lack the funds to pay for them .) The situation has changed, however, due to
a renewed drive to produce vaccines that will prevent or treat devastating illnesses common in the
developed world, such as cancer and Alzheimer's disease. Some experts are predicting that vaccines will
eventually supplant other medications to become Big Pharma's biggest sellers.
(if they read above card and say vaccines solve the link, say it just proves legalization inev + vaccines solves in the long run but all
the other ev about R&D being expensive means that in the SHORT TERM the companies need their profits from other drugs to fund
developing vaccines)
A2: Pharma Not Doing Research Now
Empirically true but not anymore – pharma research into diseases is going up
now
Ohlheiser 10/1
Abby Ohlheiser, staffwriter for the Washington Post, 10/1/14, “When Ebola comes to the U.S., who stands to profit?”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/10/01/when-ebola-comes-to-the-u-s-who-stands-to-profit/
As the Wall Street Journal points out, pharmaceutical companies rarely have a financial incentive
to work on treatments for rare diseases such as Ebola, which usually kills no more than hundreds in a typical
year.
But that's been changing recently: Research and development spending on rarer illnesses such
as Ebola and TB went up 20 percent between 2008 and 2012, according to the Journal.
A2: Gov Solves
Government funding cut now – pharma key to fill in the gap which it is doing now
Jan 3/9
Tracy Jan, Boston Globe, 3/9/14, “Cancer science leans more on industry funds”
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/science/2014/03/09/cancer-centers-rely-more-heavily-pharmaceutical-money-for-researchraising-concerns/vtft7nZ8Q4rdWzyJLqH74K/story.html
Cancer institutes across the country are relying more heavily than ever on pharmaceutical industry
funding for research as the proportion of federal support shrinks , raising concerns among scientists
struggling to compete for the next oncology breakthrough.
At Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, industry money
makes up nearly a quarter of its research support,
compared with 10 percent a decade ago, according to the institute. The federal share of research money
has eroded during that time from more than 70 percent of funding to just under 60 percent.
A Globe survey of major cancer institutes shows that the shift at Dana-Farber reflects a national trend. Even as
researchers seek funding from pharmaceutical companies, they raise questions about the increasing role that the pursuit of profits
plays in science, the impact on the kinds of research ultimately conducted, and the future of cancer therapies.
“I worry that the type of research is subtly shifting,” said Dr. Barrett Rollins, chief scientific officer at Dana-Farber. “Government is really the only entity that can support unfettered research because it recognizes
that there may be a great time lag between a discovery and its application that benefits society. Shareholders would not want a company to think that way.’’
“Company-sponsored research is really about benefitting a company,’’ Rollins said. “There is a high expectation of a practical outcome over a short timeline.”
While both the industry and federal funding pools have risen over the decade,
pharmaceutical industry funding for
research has grown much faster. In addition to Dana-Farber, other major cancer institutes have sought industry support to
help offset the shrinking percentage of federal dollars, including the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Johns Hopkins
Kimmel Cancer Center in Baltimore, the University of California San Francisco, and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, said he worries about whether the government is abdicating its
responsibility to science as a result of stagnant federal funding. The NIH research budget has lost almost 25
percent of its purchasing power since 2003, after accounting for inflatio n, he said.
“The success stories that have gotten us some pretty major advances in cancer have really depended upon federally funded basic science research, which is not directly connected to a product and therefore less
likely for industry to support,” Collins said. “If you cut the foundation away, which is the basic science discovery, what exactly will be there years from now in therapeutics and diagnostics?”
As a result of these financial trends, the competition for research grants is the most daunting in
NIH history, he said, with just 17 percent of proposals winning grants compared with the historically more typical rate of more
than 30 percent. For cancer research, it’s even more competitive. Less than 14 percent of cancer grant proposals get funded, a
situation Collins deemed “demoralizing” and “unhealthy.”
The government will fund only the best proposals, as judged by peers in the scientific community. But scientists have become “risk averse because things are so tight,” Collins said. “They’re aiming for the more
predictable experiment.”
“That causes me a lot of anxiety in the middle of the night,” Collins said. “How are we going to get through this and not waste the opportunity to advance the field and alleviate suffering and prevent unnecessary
death? We are not chasing that goal as vigorously as we could be.”
President Obama, whose mother died from ovarian cancer, said while campaigning in 2007 that he would push to double the funding for cancer research within five years. But given his incremental budget
proposals and the national spending constraints forced by Congress, the budget for the National Cancer Institute, the nation’s main source of cancer research funding, has risen only 5 percent since Obama was
elected in 2008.
At Dana-Farber, the
primary reason for the shift toward industry support is driven by scientists
desperately seeking alternate sources of funding , said Rollins, who, even as he expressed concerns, praised
industry for “stepping up to plug the gap.”
Africa
African instability escalates
Mead 13
Walter Russell Mead is the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College and Editor-at-Large of
The American Interest, The American Interest, December 15, 2013, "Peace In The Congo? Why The World Should Care",
http://www.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/12/15/peace-in-the-congo-why-the-world-should-care/
The second lesson from this conflict stems from the realization of how much patience and commitment from the international
community (which in this case included the Atlantic democracies and a coalition of African states working as individual countries and
through various international institutions) it has taken to get this far towards peace. Particularly at a time when many Americans
want the US to turn inwards, there are people who make the argument that it is really none of America’s business to invest time and
energy in the often thankless task of solving these conflicts. That might be an ugly but defensible position if we didn’t live in
such a tinderbox world. Someone could rationally say, yes, it’s terrible that a million plus people are being killed overseas in
a horrific conflict, but the war is really very far away and America has urgent needs at home and we should husband the resources
we have available for foreign policy on things that have more power to affect us directly. The problem is that
these wars
spread . They may start in places that we don’t care much about (most Americans didn’t give a rat’s patootie about whether
Germany controlled the Sudetenland in 1938 or Danzig in 1939) but they tend to spread to places that we do care
very much about. This can be because a revisionist great power like Germany in 1938-39 needs to overturn the balance of
power in Europe to achieve its goals, or it can be because instability in a very remote place triggers problems in
places that we care about very much. Out of Afghanistan in 2001 came both 9/11 and the waves of insurgency and
instability that threaten to rip nuclear-armed Pakistan apart or trigger wider conflict with India. Out of the mess in Syria a witches’
brew of terrorism and religious conflict looks set to complicate the security of our allies in Europe and the Middle East and even the
security of the oil supply on which the world economy so profoundly depends. Africa, and the potential for upheaval
there, is of more importance to American security than many people may understand. The line
between Africa and the Middle East is a soft one . The weak states that straddle the southern approaches of the
Sahara are ideal petri dishes for Al Qaeda type groups to form and attract local support . There are networks
of funding and religious contact that give groups in these countries potential access to funds, fighters, training and weapons from the
Middle East. A war in the eastern Congo might not directly trigger these other conflicts, but it helps to create the
swirling underworld of arms trading, money transfers, illegal commerce and the rise of a generation of young men who
become experienced fighters—and know no other way to make a living. It destabilizes the environment for
neighboring states (like Uganda and Kenya) that play much more direct role in potential crises of greater
concern to us. This is why the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations (representing three very different kinds of American
politics) have all been engaged in efforts like the peace keeping effort in the Congo. It is why, despite our budget problems at home
and despite our often justifiable impatience with the complexities of dealing with international coalitions and the inadequacies of
international institutions, we need to continue the slow and painstaking work that makes agreements like this one possible.
The
world we live in is an explosive one. There are all kinds of things that can go horribly wrong, and what happens in
one corner of the world doesn’t necessarily stay there. Reducing the danger requires an active, global American
foreign policy whether we like it or not. The potential for new communal and religious wars that kill millions of people and endanger
American security and world peace is very real. The world seems safer than the world of the 1930s and 1940s in part because the
United States and many of our friends and allies are working quietly around the world to contain outbreaks of violence, address the
issues that exacerbate hatred and distrust, and in the last analysis are willing to provide the security guarantees and deterrents that
prevent mass mayhem.