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Legalizing marijuana is a tactic of neoliberal governmentality that places the onus on
individuals to govern themselves while the government sits back and makes sure that
they’re doing it right – this increases state control through regulatory mechanisms while
minimizing its perception
O’Brien 2013 - University of Wisconsin-Whitewater (February 25, Patrick, “Medical Marijuana and Social
Control: Escaping Criminalization and Embracing Medicalization” Deviant Behavior, 34: 423–443, Taylor &
Francis)
A latent outcome of this legal-medical system has been its adaptation to the new criminologies evidenced in late
modern society (Garland 1996, 2001). The medicalization of cannabis has defined deviance down significantly
(Moynihan 1993) and effectively reduced the demands placed on the State’s criminal justice agencies. At the same
time, the State has increasingly embedded social controls into the fabric of society , rather than inserting
them from above in the form of sovereign command (Garland 2001). Medical dispensary owners, cultivators,
investors, and employees, along with local politicians and affiliated business owners, have remained bound to
State laws and policies, but have also been expected to proctor themselves while government powers watch
at a distance for a breakdown in control. The State has conceded that it is unable to manage the illicit
marijuana market alone and has redirected its control efforts away from the sole authority of the police, the
courts, and the prisons. The dispensary industry has provided the State a situation in which it governs, but
does not coercively control marijuana and its users. Instead, the State manages the drug through the actors
involved in the legal-medical industry, and has effectively mandated them as active partners in sustaining and
enforcing the formal and informal controls of the dispensary system. The State controls at an ostensibly distant
fashion, but it has not resigned its power. On the contrary, it has retained its traditional command over the
police and the prisons while expanding its efficiency and capacity to control marijuana and its users . This
new reality in crime control has stratified itself across all facets of society, including its structural, cultural, and
interactional dimensions. At the structural level, the legal-medical model has reduced the strain of a substantial
segment of society by institutionalizing acceptable and lawful means of accessing marijuana, effectively
shifting this population into an ecological position where they can be watched and controlled . The groups
once involved in the illicit market have become visible, and the laws that govern the use, distribution, and
production of cannabis have actually become enforceable by the State. Marijuana users have become patients,
requiring a physician’s recommendation to con sume the drug lawfully. The State has mandated what medical
conditions warrant a registry card, monitoring people through licensing applications, doctors’ files, government
paperwork, and the medical marijuana registry. Dispensary owners have been required to grow 70%of their own
product, to provide live 24-hour surveillance camera feeds of their cultivation and distribution warehouses, and to
subject themselves to periodic inspection. Dispensary owners and employees have been fingerprinted and undergone
extensive background checks, and marijuana businesses only operate in State zoned locations. By amassing
knowledge about the social organization of the marijuana industry and its users, the government has
engaged in monitoring, aggregating, and transmitting such information to law enforcement and the public. At
the cultural level, the legal-medical system has provided a greater degree of social order, stability, and
integration by relocating marijuana users into the fold of conventional norms and values. Cultural cohesion
and conformity have been fostered through legitimate business opera tions that cater to conventional lifestyles
and work hours, that quell concerns over safety and lawfulness, and reduce the alienation of a subculture of
users. The State has effectively aligned a once criminal population of people with dominant ideals of
normality (Goffman 1983) and dismantled a framework of deviant organization (Best and Luckenbill 1982) with
distinct ideol ogies and norms concerning marijuana sales and use. The government has incorporated the norms
and values of conventional society into the processes of distributing and using cannabis, and now assists in
controlling marijuana through the cultural transmission (Shaw and McKay 1972) of rituals and sanctions now
aligned with the normative social order. Both of these macro- and meso-level shifts have augmented State
control of marijuana and its users at an interactional level. These structural and cultural changes have directly
influenced micro-level processes and mediated people’s differential associations and social learning processes
(Akers 2000; Sutherland 1949; Sutherland and Cressey 1955) as users have been increasingly socialized into a
conventional drug lifestyle. Marijuana users in the dispensary sys tem have decreased their contacts with deviant
others and increased their contacts with legitimate associations by purchasing lawfully from licensed distributors.
Dispensary owners have come to interact with banks, contractors, real estate firms, tax specialists, and
lawyers because they exist in legitimate occupational associations and lawful community relations. This legalmedical model has allowed the State to further monitor interactional processes through receipts, taxes, and
video surveillance. This continuous supervision has led to growing discipline and normal ization. The State
has prescribed conforming modes of conduct upon marijuana users with new found power (Foucault 1975).
Zoning laws have mandated where transactions occur, distribution laws have defined how much can be purchased,
and monitored business hours have controlled the time sales occur. The State has also strengthened individual
bonds to society (Hirschi 1969) as a medical license protects users’ conventional investments (i.e., education,
career, and family) and caters to their time-consuming activities as they have decided the time, speed, and location
of their purchases. Finally, State medicalization of marijuana has prompted people to endorse society’s rules as
progressively more politically and morally correct , since users are typically critical of cannabis prohibition.
This legal-medical system has also accommodated the ideals of neoliberalism . Through the adaptive strategy
of responsibilization (Garland 2001), the penalization strategies (i.e., control mechanisms) regulating marijuana
have become increasingly privatized , operating through civil society. For example, although the State has
demanded 24-hour video surveillance over dispensary operations, it has also required these businesses to regulate
their own marijuana production and distribution, monitor their own employees and financial accounts, and
direct their own branding and promotional campaigns. Furthermore, by defining deviance down, marijuana has
become legally sold through privately owned dispensaries. In neoliberal fashion, marijuana has been
deregulated for capital gain.
Biopower and neoliberalism combine to create a unique form of necropolitics that drives
endless extermination in the name of maintaining the strength of the market
Banerjee 2006 - University of South Australia (Subhabrata Bobby, “Live and Let Die: Colonial Sovereignties
and the Death Worlds of Necrocapitalism,” Borderlands, Volume 5 No. 1,
http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol5no1_2006/banerjee_live.htm)
10. Agamben shows how sovereign power operates in the production of bare life in a variety of contexts:
concentration camps, 'human guinea pigs' used by Nazi doctors, current debates on euthanasia, debates on human
rights and refugee rights. A sovereign decision to apply a state of exception invokes a power to decide the
value of life, which would allow a life to be killed without the charge of homicide. The killings of mentally and
physically handicapped people during the Nazi regime was justified as ending a 'life devoid of value', a life
'unworthy to be lived'. Sovereignty thus becomes a decision on the value of life, 'a power to decide the point at
which life ceases to be politically relevant' (Agamben, 1998: 142). Life is no more sovereign as enshrined in the
declaration of 'human' rights but becomes instead a political decision, an exercise of biopower (Foucault,
1980). In the context of the 'war on terror' operating in a neoliberal economy, the exercise of biopower results in
the creation of a type of sovereignty that has profound implications for those whose livelihoods depend on the
war on terror as well as those whose lives become constituted as 'bare life' in the economy of the war on terror. 11.
However, it is not enough to situate sovereignty and biopower in the context of a neoliberal economy especially in
the case of the war on terror. In a neoliberal economy, the colony represents a greater potential for profit
especially as it is this space that, as Mbembe (2003: 14) suggests, represents a permanent state of exception
where sovereignty is the exercise of power outside the law, where 'peace was more likely to take on the face
of a war without end' and where violence could operate in the name of civilization. But these forms of
necropolitical power, as Mbembe reads it in the context of the occupation of Palestine, literally create 'death
worlds, new and unique forms of social existence in which vast populations are subjected to conditions of life
conferring upon them the status of theliving dead ' (Mbembe, 2003: 40). The state of endless war is precisely
the space where profits accrue whether it is through the extraction of resources or the use of privatized
militias or through contracts for reconstruction. Sovereignty over death worlds results in the application of
necropower either literally as the right to kill or the right to 'civilize', a supposedly 'benevolent' form of power
that requires the destruction of a culture in order to 'save the people from themselves' (Mbembe, 2003:22).
This attempt to save the people from themselves has, of course, been the rhetoric used by the U.S. government
in the war on terror and the war in Iraq. 12. Situating necropolitics in the context of economy, Montag (2005:
11) argues that if necropolitics is interested in the production of death or subjugating life to the power of death then
it is possible to speak of a necroeconomics - a space of 'letting die or exposing to death'. Montag explores the
relation of the market to life and death in his reading of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral
Sentiments. In Montag's reading of Smith, it is 'the dread of death, the great poison to the happiness...which while it
afflicts and mortifies the individual, guards and protects the society' (cited in Montag, 2005: 12). If social life was
driven solely by unrestrained self-interest then the fear of punishment or death through juridical systems kept the
pursuit of excessive self-interest in check, otherwise people would simply rob, injure and kill for material wealth.
Thus, for Smith the universality of life is contingent on the particularity of death, the production of life on the
production of death where the intersection of the political and the economic makes it necessary to exercise the right
to kill. The market then, as a 'concrete form of the universal' becomes the 'very form of universality as life' and
requires at certain moments to 'let die'. Or as Montag theorizes it, Death establishes the conditions of life; death as
by an invisible hand restores the market to what it must be to support life. The allowing of death of the
particular is necessary to the production of life of the universal. The market reduces and rations life; it not
only allows death , it demands death be allowed by the sovereign power , as well as by those who suffer it. In
other words, it demands and required the latter allow themselves to die. Thus alongside the figure of homo
sacer, the one who may be killed with impunity, is another figure, one whose death is no doubt less spectacular
than the first and is the object of no memorial or commemoration: he who with impunity may be allowed to die,
slowly or quickly, in the name of the rationality and equilibrium of the market (Montag, 2005: 15). Montag,
therefore, theorizes a necroeconomics where the state becomes the legitimate purveyor of violence: in this
scenario, the state can compel by force by 'those who refuse to allow themselves to die' (Montag, 2005: 15).
However, Montag's concept of necroeconomics appears to universalize conditions of poverty through the logic of
the market. My concern however, is the creation of death worlds in colonial contexts through the collusion between
states and corporations. 13. If states and corporations work in tandem with each other in colonial contexts,
creating states of exception and exercising necropower to profit from the death worlds that they establish, then
necroeconomics fails to consider the specificities of colonial capitalist practices. In this sense, I would argue that
necrocapitalism emerges from the intersection of necropolitics and necroeconomics, as practices of accumulation
in colonial contexts by specific economic actors - multinational corporations for example - that involve
dispossession, death, torture, suicide, slavery, destruction of livelihoods and the general management of
violence. It is a new form of imperialism, an imperialism that has learned to 'manage things better' . Colonial
sovereignty can be established even in metropolitan sites where necrocapitalism may operate in states of exception:
refugee detention centres in Australia are examples of these states of exception (Perera, 2002). However, in the
colonies (either 'post' or 'neo'), entire regions in the Middle East or Africa may be designated as states of exception.
The alternative is a critical refusal of the affirmative – criticism of power is necessary to
destabilizing the status quo
DONEGAN 2006 – PHD STUDENT DEPT ANTHROPOLIGY SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL STUDIES
GOVERNMENTAL REGIONALISM, MILLENNIUM, VOL 35 NO 23
The typical reproach to Foucault’s conception of power as immanent to all types of relationships is that such
a conception prevents us from ever being able to step outside a conflict, whether it be epistemic or political, in order to
resolve it. Of course it is the case that ‘to make truth-claims is to try to strengthen some epistemic alignments, and to challenge, undermine, or
evade others’.148 To criticise power is to attempt to resist or evade it; it is also to take a stance, a position. Foucault’s
critics ask: how is it possible to take a stance without some outside, neutral position from which to make a decision about which side to adopt,
about which side is ‘right’? According to Foucault, neither
side is right. But [m]y point is not that everything is bad, but that
everything is dangerous , which is not exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have something to
do . So my position leads not to apathy but to a hyper- and pessimistic activism . I think that the ethico-political
choice we have to make every day is to determine which is the main danger.149 Is there any reason why a neoliberal,
neo-medieval world order of multiple levels of governance need be ‘worse’ than the present world order? This is the wrong question. The
question to ask is: how are things developing, how are social relations changing, and who will be hit hardest,
and who will benefit most? These are the questions we need to be asking, as analysts. A governmentality perspective can contribute
to our ability to respond to this task. Mitchell Dean has emphasised that the study of governmentality as an empirical phenomenon ‘does
not amount to a study of politics or power relations in general; it is a study only of the attempts to (more or less) rationally affect the conduct
of others and ourselves’.150 In this sense, the picture of power relations that governmentality scholarship can offer is therefore partial and
incomplete. But to the extent that the particular power relations it portrays are both hard to see and increasingly
significant, the governmentality framework offers something useful to the analyst of power in the
contemporary global social order. It may seem that post-structuralist theorists are constantly engaged in a game of
‘catch-up’,151 unpacking and teasing out how those with power do what they do, always after the event. But the conclusion to be
drawn should not focus on the fact that the deconstructive practice is always post- and thus ‘too late’, in vain, without
hope; rather
it should focus on the fact that in order for those in power to do what they do the use of such
material and discursive practices is necessary – which suggests, as Foucault points out, that their hold on power is far
more fragile , that the relationships of power they impose are far closer to relationships of confrontation, than
they would like us to believe. Thus the deconstructive practice is not essentially negative, pessimistic, and nihilistic.
In seeking not simply to understand what or why any particular action was undertaken in the past, but also to use that understanding when
engaging with political practice in the present, it is hopeful, optimistic, and pro-active.
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Text: The United States should fully fund non-hemp phytoremediation programs. The
United States federal government should grant further independence to the states for
experimentation with regards to immigration policy. The United States should
Other plants can be used for phytoremediation
Florio 97 – prof of chemical engineering @ RPI
(Nathan, http://www.rpi.edu/dept/chem-eng/Biotech-Environ/MISC/phytorem.html)
Some of the plants used in phytoremediation are:
Alfalfa
Hybrid Poplar Trees
Blue-green Algae
Duck Weed
Arrowroot
Sudan Grass
Rye Grass
Bermuda Grass
Alpine Bluegrass
Yellow or White Water Lillies
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interpretation—legalization is regulation
Kreit 10—Director of the Center for Law and Social Justice @ Thomas Jefferson School of Law [Alex Kreit,
“The Decriminalization Option: Should States Consider Moving from a Criminal to a Civil Drug Court Model?”
University of Chicago Legal Forum, 2010 U Chi Legal F 299 (2010)]
Despite all of the debate about drug decriminalization in policy and legal circles, the term remains surprisingly nebulous, especially in relation to
the distinct but associated concept of drug legalization. 101 That said, decriminalizing a drug generally means removing criminal
penalties for its use and possession.102¶ Manufacture and retail sale of the drug, however, remain prohibited in a
decriminalization regime. Legalization, by contrast, refers to a system in which a substance is taxed and
regulated like alcohol or tobacco. Pg. 325
aff’s not legalization – only removes the federal ban on marijuana, which leaves in place all
state laws criminalizing it
Altieri 13 – NORML Communications Director
Erik, “Everything You Wanted to Know About the New Federal Marijuana Legalization Measures”
[http://blog.norml.org/2013/02/05/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-the-new-federal-marijuanalegalization-measures/] February 5 //
Today, Representatives Jared Polis and Earl Blumenauer introduced two legislative measures that would end the federal
prohibition on marijuana and permit for the regulated production and retail sales of cannabis to adults in states that have legalized
its consumption.¶ Representative Polis’ legislation, The Ending Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2013, would remove
marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act, transfer the Drug Enforcement Administration’s authority to regulate
marijuana to a newly renamed Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Marijuana and Firearms, require commercial marijuana producers to
purchase a permit, and ensure federal law distinguishes between individuals who grow marijuana for personal use and those involved in
commercial sale and distribution.¶ Speaking on the bill, Rep. Polis stated, “This legislation doesn’t force any state to legalize marijuana,
but Colorado and the 18 other jurisdictions that have chosen to allow marijuana for medical or recreational use deserve the certainty of
knowing that federal agents won’t raid state-legal businesses. Congress should simply allow states to regulate marijuana as they see fit
and stop wasting federal tax dollars on the failed drug war.”¶ Representative Blumenauer’s legislation is aimed at creating a federal tax
structure which would allow for the federal government to collect excise taxes on marijuana sales and businesses in states that have
legalized its use. The Marijuana Tax Equity Act, would impose an excise tax on the first sale of marijuana, from the producer to the next
stage of production, usually the processor. These regulations are similar to those that now exist for alcohol and tobacco. The bill will also
require the IRS to produce a study of the industry after two years, and every five years after that, and to issue recommendations to
Congress to continue improving the administration of the tax.¶ “We are in the process of a dramatic shift in the marijuana policy
landscape,” said Rep. Blumenauer. “Public attitude, state law, and established practices are all creating irreconcilable difficulties for
public officials at every level of government. We want the federal government to be a responsible partner with the rest of the universe of
marijuana interests while we address what federal policy should be regarding drug taxation, classification, and legality.” ¶ You can use
NORML’s Take Action Center here to easily contact your elected officials and urge them to support these measures. ¶ These two pieces of
legislation are historic in their scope and forward looking nature and it is likely you have many unanswered questions. NORML has
compiled the below FAQs to hopefully address many of these inquiries.¶ FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS¶ Q: Would this make
marijuana legal everywhere?¶ A: No , but it would allow states who wish to pursue legalization to do so
without federal incursion. Currently, the federal government claims that state laws which have legalized medical and recreational
marijuana use are in conflict with federal law. It is under this claim that they raid medical marijuana dispensaries, arrest consumers, etc.
If these measures were to pass, marijuana law would be the domain of the states . If a state choses to legalize
and regulate its use, it can do so in the way it would any other product and the federal government would issue permits to commercial
growers and sellers and collect tax revenue. If a state choses to retain marijuana prohibition, they may as well , and the
federal government would assist in stopping flow of marijuana into the state’s borders, as transporting marijuana from a legalized state
into one retaining prohibition would still be illegal under this legislation
“Nearly all” means almost 100% - prefer legal definitions.
Lee 85 (District Judge, United States District Court, N.D. Indiana, Fort Wayne Division, CENTRAL STATES, ET
AL., PENSION FUND v. BELLMONT TRUCKING CO, CIV. NO. F 84-375. 6/12/85,
http://www.leagle.com/decision/19852115610FSupp1505_11901.xml/CENTRAL%20STATES,%20ET%20AL.,%2
0PENSION%20FUND%20v.%20BELLMONT%20TRUCKING%20CO.)
In an attempt to ascertain the common [**15] meaning of the term "substantially," the court consulted several
dictionaries. Many define the term as meaning "of ample or considerable amount, size, or quantity," see e.g., Random House Dictionary of the
English Language, p. 1418. Webster's Third New International Dictionary, p. 2280, defines "substantially" as "being that specified to a large
These definitions indicate that the
common meaning of the phrase "substantially all" must be something which indicates "a large degree" or "large
amount" of all; the terms "almost all" or "nearly all," though admittedly imprecise, capture the essence of the
phrase. If "substantially" is synonymous with "massive," then "substantially all" must mean some percentage which
is very near 100%.
degree or in the main." Webster's goes on to list "massive" as the synonym of "substantially."
limits – allows affs that only tinker with single laws or only work with some of the
governments of the united states
devastates neg ground – basing your advantages around letting the states choose whether
or not to legalize destroys predictability for negative links
1NC DA
Best models say the GOP will win but it’ll be close
Silver, 9-28-14—Nate, most widely-cited political analyst, “Senate Update: When Should Democrats Panic?”
Five Thirty Eight, http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/senate-update-when-should-democrats-panic/
The Des Moines Register’s Iowa Poll always makes news and with good reason: The pollster that conducts it, Selzer & Company, is
among the best in the country, according to FiveThirtyEight’s pollster ratings. On Saturday evening, the poll had an especially
interesting result in Iowa’s Senate race. It put the Republican candidate Joni Ernst six points ahead of the
Democrat, Representative Bruce Braley. Most other recent polls of the state had shown a roughly tied race. SENATE UPDATE Consider the
implications. Republicans need to pick up six seats to win the Senate. Right now, they’re favored to win the
Democratic-held seats in Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia , according to
the FiveThirtyEight forecast. That’s six seats right there. In Kansas, however, the independent candidate Greg
Orman is a slight favorite to defeat the Republican incumbent Pat Roberts — and Orman could caucus with Democrats if he wins. If he
does, Republicans would need to pick up one more seat somewhere. That’s where Iowa comes into play. If
Republicans are favored there also, they have a path to a Senate majority without having to worry about the
crazy race in Kansas. Nor is Iowa their only option. Polls have also moved toward Republicans in Colorado,
where their candidate Cory Gardner is now a slight favorite. This is an awfully flexible set of outcomes for
Republicans. Win the six “path of least resistance” states that I mentioned before, avoid surprises in races like Kentucky, and all Republicans
need to do is win either Iowa or Colorado to guarantee a Senate majority. Or they could have Roberts hold on in Kansas. Or Orman could win
that race, but the GOP could persuade him to caucus with them. Sounds like it’s time for Democrats to panic? Not quite, at
least according to the FiveThirtyEight model. Republicans are favored to take control of the Senate but the
race is close; essentially the same conditions have held all year. As of Sunday morning, the GOP’s odds of winning the Senate
are 60 percent in the forecast, only half a percentage point better than where they were after our previous update on Friday. What’s the flaw
with the narrative I described above? It conceals too much of the uncertainty in the outlook. Republicans, for instance, are almost certain to win
the Democrat-held seats in Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia. But Alaska, Arkansas and Louisiana are closer calls. Republicans have
between a 70 and a 75 percent chance of winning each state, according to the FiveThirtyEight model. It’s proper to describe the GOP candidates
as favored, but that’s much different than they’re being guaranteed to win. (Democrats were aided slightly by a CNN poll of Louisiana, also out
on Sunday, which had their incumbent Senator Mary Landrieu behind but by a closer margin than other recent surveys have shown.) It’s also not
certain that Republicans will hold all their own seats apart from Kansas. Georgia, where our forecast gives the Democrat Michelle Nunn a 27
percent chance, remains somewhat competitive. As for Iowa itself, the Des Moines Register’s poll may be a great one — our forecast model
weighs it more heavily than any other in the state, and Ernst’s chances improved to 56 percent from 48 percent as a result — but it’s still just one
poll. As I described last week, it’s usually a mistake to bank on any one poll as opposed to the average or consensus. There are intrinsic limits on
how accurate one poll can be, especially if it has a small sample size as the Register’s poll did (546 likely voters). Finally, we still have
more than five weeks to go until the election. If I reprogram the model, telling it the election will be held
today (Sunday, Sept. 28) — I hope you can get to the ballot booth in between watching football — Republicans would be somewhat
heavier favorites, about 70 percent to take the Senate. But there’s still a lot of campaigning to do, and one should
be careful about concluding that Republicans have the “momentum” (a concept that is constantly misused
and misunderstood by other media outlets). Just two weeks ago, it was Democrats who’d gotten a string of strong polls. The
FiveThirtyEight model is pretty conservative compared to most others out there. It didn’t show as large a swing toward Democrats as others did
two weeks ago — they never quite pulled even in the forecast — and it’s not showing quite as large a swing back toward Republicans now. So
what conditions would merit outright panic from Democrats? They should keep a close eye on North Carolina and Kansas. These states have
been moving toward Democrats in our forecast, helping them offset Republican gains elsewhere. But these are also races in which the Democrat
is doing better than the “fundamentals” of the states might suggest. The Democratic incumbent in North Carolina, Kay Hagan, is pretty clearly
ahead in the polls today (including in a CNN survey that was released on Sunday). However, two other states with vulnerable Democratic
incumbents, Colorado and Alaska, have shifted toward Republicans. Perhaps if the Republican challenger Thom Tillis can equalize the ad
spending in the Tar Heel State, the polls will show a more even race there as well. And the Kansas race is still in its formative stages. No one has
yet polled the race after the Democratic candidate, Chad Taylor, was officially allowed to remove his name from the ballot on Sept. 18. Since
then, the ad spending has become more even after nearly a month in which Orman had a pronounced advantage over Roberts. In about 7 percent
of our forecast model’s simulations, Democrats held the Senate solely because they won Kansas and Orman elected to caucus with them; without
it, Republicans would already be 2-to-1 favorites to take the Senate. Democrats should also monitor the polls in Louisiana, Arkansas and Alaska.
As I mentioned, if these go from being probable GOP pickups to near-certain ones, it will make a lot of difference in the model. A more
macro-level concern for Democrats is that some of the highest-quality polls, like the Des Moines Register poll, tend
to show the worst results for them. Quinnipiac University polls, which also have a good track record, have recently shown clear
Republican leads in Iowa and Colorado. And the highest-rated polls of the generic Congressional ballot tend to show a Republican lead. This
pattern is the reverse of 2012, when Democrats tended to do better in more highly-rated surveys. It may be that some of the mediocre polls will
converge toward the stronger polls in states like Iowa and Colorado; a Public Policy Polling survey of Iowa to be released later this week is also
likely to show Ernst ahead, for instance. Still, the whole advantage of having a statistical model like ours is that it
provides for some discipline — a rule-driven approach that doesn’t flinch just because the media narrative
does. Democrats may have had a restless Saturday night, but no one poll ought to change your perception of the campaign all that much.
The GOP has an edge because of turnout—the plan is the key issue in flipping that
Linskey, 14—Annie, citing; George Washington U polling, Lake Research Partners polling firm and the Tarrance
Group, a public affairs firm
“Poll: Marijuana Legalization Measures Will Drive Voters,” Bloomberg, Mar 25,
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-25/poll-marijuana-legalization-measures-will-drive-voters.html --BR
A majority of Americans favor legalizing marijuana and would be motivated to vote if a measure to do so is on the
ballot, according
to a George Washington University Battleground poll released today. The survey of 1,000 likely
voters found 73 percent support allowing marijuana for legal medical purposes, 53 percent favor decriminalization and 68
percent are “more likely” to go to their polling place to weigh in on a ballot. “Marijuana legalization and
marijuana decriminalization is at a tipping point ” said Celinda Lake, president of Lake Research Partners and
one of the two pollsters who conducted the survey. Support crosses party lines, though younger
and single voters -- who tend to
vote for Democrats -- are more motivated by those issues, she said. Ballot measures on legalizing pot are set for Alaska’s
August primary and probably this November in Oregon, according to Allen St. Pierre, the executive director Norml, a Washington-based
nonprofit pushing for more access to the drug. Florida will see a decriminalization effort, he said. The marijuana question was part of a wideranging poll that tested President Barack Obama’s approval rating, potential 2016 presidential candidates and American’s views on the billionaire
Koch brothers. The survey, conducted March 16-20, was released today at a breakfast sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor. It has a
margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. Republican Edge While the poll showed Americans are evenly split between supporting
Democrats and Republicans on a generic ballot, Republicans
hold an advantage because they are more motivated to
vote : 64 percent said they are “extremely likely” to go to the polls compared with 57 percent of Democrats. The president’s job-approval rating
is 44 percent in the survey -- up 3 points from when the question was last asked in mid-January. Obama’s disapproval is 53 percent, down a point
from when the question was last asked. “This data gives an edge to Republicans,” said Ed Goeas, chief executive officer of
the Tarrance Group, a public affairs firm based in Alexandria, Virginia, who also worked on the survey. “Obama’s name
will not be on the ballot but Obama’s polices will be,” he said. And “you don’t have the operation of the presidential race there
turning out votes on that side.”
GOP Senate is key to entitlement reform
Bolton, 9-12-14—“GOP Senate's first 100 days,” The Hill, http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/217518-senategops-first-100-days --BR
Republicans say they want to pass a budget in the first half of next year that would include special procedural
instructions known as reconciliation to smooth the way for broader tax reform and entitlement reform. Under
reconciliation, the majority party can pass legislation through the Senate with only a simple-majority vote
instead of the 60 votes usually required. Democrats used it in 2010 to pass changes to the Affordable Care Act. Sen.
Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who is poised to become chairman of the Budget Committee if the Senate flips, said the
majority party “has an obligation to lay out a financial plan for America.” Portman, who served as director of
the Office of Management and Budget under former President George W. Bush, said special procedural rules in the
budget could “provide for something on the revenue side, which could lead to tax reform [and] something on the
spending side, which could lead to some of the necessary changes to our incredibly important but unsustainable
entitlement reform.” Sessions said he hopes Democrats who pursued a grand bargain on tax and entitlement reform
in 2011 could be persuaded to sit down at the negotiating table next year. “We’re going to be working toward it,”
he said of entitlement reform. “There’s no doubt about it that serious legislative reform of things like
Medicare, Medicaid and other entitlement programs, food stamps, would need some bipartisan support.”
Senate Republicans want to dispel the image painted by Democrats over the past four years that they are
obstructionists bent on grinding government to a halt. They want to show they can get legislation passed after
years of frustrating gridlock. “One guy is blocking all the legislation — that’s the majority leader. If we get
rid of him, then the spigot opens an we start passing legislation again,” said a Republican leadership aide,
referring to Reid.
Lack of entitlement reform causes an aging crisis
Nasdaq, 13—“5 Years Later: The Crisis We Haven’t Tackled Yet,” Sept 9, written by the sub-firm BlackRock,
an investment firm, http://www.nasdaq.com/article/5-years-later-the-crisis-we-havent-tackled-yetcm278809#ixzz3ETL4ndnM – BR
The old adage is that "generals always fight the last war." By that measure, the United States has successfully
addressed most of the threats that precipitated the 2008 financial crisis . The problem is that while policy makers
have spent the past five years putting out the fires from the last crisis, they've done less to prepare for the
next: a retirement crisis. But before highlighting the future risks to the US economy, let me take a step back and
remark on what has improved since the time of the Lehman bankruptcy. Back then, the global economy was facing
the prospects of another Great Depression. That scenario was thankfully avoided, and the US financial system the proximate cause of the crisis - is in much better shape than it was in 2008, as Larry Fink recently pointed out .
Leverage levels are considerably lower and we have seen a regulatory overhaul that has left US financial institutions
better capitalized and less risky. In other words, the risk of another imminent financial system crisis has likely
abated. Unfortunately, given the global economy's aging population and slowing growth, there are two major
issues that foretell a coming retirement funding crisis. 1. Government debt levels remain elevated, a troubling
prospect considering that the US government has failed to address entitlement reform and an aging
population will put increasing demands on state coffers . As a result of softening the blow to the household
sector during the last financial crisis, most governments, and specifically the US government, have levered up their
own balance sheets . US federal debt outstanding - which excludes debt held by the social security trust fund - has
climbed by approximately $6.5 trillion since the Lehman bankruptcy. As a result, US non-financial debt is actually
$7 trillion higher than it was five years ago. This means that, as the chart below shows, despite the "deleveraging" of
the past five years, US non-financial debt now stands at 245% of gross domestic product ( GDP ), compared to
225% in the second quarter of 2008. Debt to GDP Chart Source: Bloomberg 2. US household savings are
inadequate to fund an increasingly lengthy retirement. Amid surging government debt and an aging
population, future retirees may have to fund more of their retirement themselves. Unfortunately, the post-crisis
savings surge predicted by many pundits has yet to materialize, and most US households can no longer look forward
to a private sector pension. The good news is that while the recovery has impressed few, it has been much better
than the alternative we were all facing five years ago, and there is still time to avoid, or at least mitigate, the pending
retirement crisis. The bad news is that, following five years of post-crisis reform fatigue, neither the government nor
US households are showing much inclination to do so.
Aging crisis causes retrenchment and international wars
Haas, ‘7 – Mark, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Political Science at Duquesne University, “A Geriatric Peace? The
Future of U.S. Power in a World of Aging Populations,” International Security, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Summer 2007), pp.
112–147. Available online @ Harvard Belfer Center, http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/is3201_pp112147.pdf. //BR
Second, while the United States should expect less international aid from its allies, it, too, is likely to experience
the slowing of economic growth and the crowding out of military expenditures for elderly care. Although the
scope of the aging crisis confronting the United States is smaller than in all the other great powers (with the possible
exception of the United Kingdom), this does not mean that this challenge is trivial. To pay for the massive fiscal
costs associated with its aging population, the United States will in all likelihood have to scale back the scope of
its international policies . The current U.S. position of unprecedented power allows its leaders to pursue
highly extensive international military, economic, and humanitarian commitments.114 The economic effects
of an aging population will likely deny even the U nited S tates the fiscal room necessary to maintain the
extent of its current global position, let alone adopt major new international initiatives. In the face of the
exploding costs for elderly care, the crowding out of other spending will occur even for the richest country in the
history of the world. An important consequence of the United States’ aging problem and the fiscal constraints it will
create is that neo-isolationist foreign policy strategies are likely to become more compelling for U.S. leaders in
coming decades than they would be in the absence of these conditions. The salience of these strategies will
increase because they mesh with the need to reduce spending. If isolationist strategies come to dominate U.S.
decisionmaking circles, the United States may end up retreating from the world even more than the burdens
created by its aging population dictate. The preceding analysis points to a paradox for U.S. security in an aging
world. Because the other great powers are aging faster and to a greater extent than is the United States, thereby
creating a more austere fiscal environment in these other states than the United States, the latter’s currently
dominant power position in relation to the other great powers will be preserved. Yet, because the United
States, too, will experience many of the negative economic effects of an aging population, its absolute military
power will likely decline from its current position. As a result, the United States (and its allies) will be less able
to dedicate significant resources to preventing WMD proliferation, funding nation building, engaging in
humanitarian interventions, and pursuing various other costly strategies of international confiict resolution and
prevention . Global aging may help to make the twenty-first century a particularly dangerous time for U.S.
international interests. Although this article has concentrated on population aging in the great powers, the same
phenomenon is likely to affect much of the world at some point in this century. In fact, the aging problem in many
developing states is likely to be as acute as for the industrialized countries, but the former also suffer from the huge
disadvantage of growing old before growing rich, thus greatly handicapping these states’ ability to pay for elderly
care costs. If the strain on governments’ resources caused by the costs of aging populations becomes sufficiently
great, it is not difficult to imagine either an increased probability of wars to acquire resources or the creation in
these countries of “failed states.” (Failed states are countries whose governments do not possess the capacity to
provide for citizens’ basic needs.) These countries are prime targets to become both breeding grounds and safe
havens for international terrorists.115While global aging may be helping to create more failed states than ever
before, the United States and its allies will have significantly fewer resources at their disposal than they do
today to address adequately this problem, potentially to the great detriment of these states’ security.
1NC Hemp
NO EV THAT IT WILL BE USED FOR PHYTOREMEDIATION
THEIR EV THAT SAYS IT CAN BE ISN’T A FUCKING SCIENTIST
Be skeptical of their evidence – pro-hemp propaganda is a tool to legalize marijuana
Mitchell 2013 (October 17, Dan, “Why Legalized Hemp Will Not Be a Miracle Crop”
http://modernfarmer.com/2013/10/legal-industrial-hemp-wont-matter/)
There has never been a good reason for the ban on industrial hemp. It's no more harmful than industrial switchgrass, or industrial lumber for
that matter. But at the same time, the claims of hemp activists are often overblown. It's a highly useful, highly versatile crop, but its
utility is, for the most part, fairly marginal , at least going by the size of its existing markets and estimates for how big a domestic U.S.
market could be. That “activists” have rallied behind hemp is, of course, mainly due to its relationship to marijuana .
The plants are cousins — both are cannabis. Not that hemp should ever have been illegal, but it’s hard to imagine that if flax or jute
were for some reason illegal, such a large, politically-tinged campaign would be organized around legalizing either of them. As
with any political movement, hemp activism has generated tons of wildly exaggerated claims , such as when a Daily Kos
writer in 2011 declared that “Industrial Hemp can save America.”
Hemp demand is low and will remain so – importation is legal now – no emergence of
industry post-plan
Mitchell 2013 (October 17, Dan, “Why Legalized Hemp Will Not Be a Miracle Crop”
http://modernfarmer.com/2013/10/legal-industrial-hemp-wont-matter/)
But “thriving” doesn’t mean “huge” — not by a longshot. Worldwide, only about 200,000 acres of land were devoted to
hemp cultivation in 2011, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, with that number being “flat to decreasing”
in recent years in the 30 countries where hemp is cultivated. Meanwhile, in North Dakota alone, flax was harvested from
more than 315,000 acres (95 percent of the U.S. crop) in 2012, according to the Agricultural Marketing Resource Association. For further
perspective, consider that corn is planted on about 85 million acres in the U.S. alone every year (though that might say more about our reliance on
corn than it says about hemp.) Demand for hemp isn’t as high as hemp’s loudest proponents would have it. There are
good reasons for this. Chief among them is demand, which isn’t as high as hemp’s loudest proponents would have it. In Europe, demand fell
through the 20th century as industrial buyers increasingly chose cheaper or better alternatives for many applications — often artificial fibers. That
phenomenon has been replicated elsewhere. And as more uses for hemp have been found, demand has grown, but not at
levels that would indicate a coming hemp revolution. The crop’s illegality in the United States hasn’t helped either, of course,
though imports of hemp-based products — many of them from China — have been legal since 1998. The total retail market
for hemp in the United States is only about $500 million. That will no doubt grow with domestic cultivation — and perhaps with innovations in
manufacturing technologies that could increase demand. But hemp is unlikely to ever be a world-changer.
The status quo is decriminalization but legalization causes regulations that
disproportionately harm poor people and minorities – causes net more persecution
Gulite 2014 - graduated cum laude from The George Washington University’s Honors Program with degrees in
Political Science and Criminal Justice. During her time at school, she served as the GW Liberty Society’s president
and worked closely with the DC Forum for Freedom in addition to Students for Liberty (Kelli, “3 Ways Marijuana
Legalization Can Screw Poor Minorities” http://thoughtsonliberty.com/3-ways-marijuana-legalization-can-screwpoor-minorities)
Luckily, the nationwide decriminalization of marijuana is almost here. In October, Maryland will be the
seventeenth state to decriminalize the possession of marijuana. It’s not unreasonable to believe that the nationwide
legalization, commercial production, and regulation of marijuana will soon follow. A majority of Americans support
legalization, the New York Times recently came out in full support of federal legalization, and the two states that
have already legalized marijuana, Colorado and Washington, have only reported positive results. With the dawn of
the commercial production of legal pot, it is important to keep in mind those who the drug war has affected most,
poor minorities. Yes, marijuana legalization would generate millions in tax revenue and could provide a substantial
boost to the economy. However, we should be wary of regulations surrounding the legalized commercial
production of weed that protect big business or state interests to the detriment of poor minorities. Here are three
potentially harmful regulations: 1. Criminal Background Checks and Occupational Licensing In Colorado and
Washington, marijuana businesses have been subject to fairly strict licensing laws. The Colorado Department of
Revenue has an entire Marijuana Enforcement Division to review marijuana business and professional license
applications. To obtain an occupational license in Colorado, owners must undergo a full criminal background
check as licensees may not have any Controlled Substance Felony Convictions that have not been fully
discharged for five years prior to applying. Given the well-documented disproportionate enforcement of drug
policy on minorities, such licensing requirements could easily and unfairly skew the new legal marijuana
market in favor of whites. 2. The Overbearing Costs of Marijuana Retail Licenses and Taxation Legalization
proponents have consistently argued that states should legalize in order to tax marijuana businesses and
collect revenue from licensing fees. The states that have legalized marijuana have taken this mantra to heart.
Colorado made nearly $6 million in revenue from marijuana dispensaries just this past month. One Colorado
marijuana business owner reported that permit and licensing fees cost him $20,000 just in one year. While poor
minorities were able to participate in the illegal marijuana economy, they will not be able to participate in the
legal drug economy if the state continues to charge such enormous fees and taxes. 3. Zealously Persecuting
Black Market Distribution As it stands now, marijuana legalization has created a perfect storm to continue to
imprison poor minorities for nonviolent weed offenses. Poor minorities, who are more likely to have felony drug
charges, are largely unable to participate in the legal marijuana market. If they do have a clean criminal
history, they are still priced out of the market by bigger businesses who can afford outrageously high state taxes
and fees upfront. While dispensaries are charging high premiums to cover their overhead, a black market for
cheap marijuana will emerge in poor communities. But now, laws intended to protect legal marijuana
business interests will be used to persecute those participating in the black market, as decriminalization
doesn’t yet protect distributors or dealers.
Radiation good – low levels reduce cancer deaths by a third – we save 33% of all cancer
deaths – the Native American lives are saved – they can’t produce 1 piece of evidence
documenting a cancer death
MORTAZARI 99 Professor of Biology – Kyoto University of Education
[S. M. Javad, “An Introduction to Radiation Hormesis,” http://www.angelfire.com/mo/radioadaptive/inthorm.html]
Hormesis at a Glance
All living organisms evolved and exist in a sea of ionizing radiation, much of which is internal. It is
a general belief that low doses of ionizing radiation produce detrimental effects proportional to the effects produced by
high-level radiation. Over the past decades, however, some pioneer scientists reported that low-dose ionizing
radiation is not only a harmless agent but often has a beneficial or hormetic effect. That is, low-level ionizing
radiation may be an essential trace energy for life, analogous to essential trace elements. It has been even
suggested that about one third of all cancer deaths are preventable by increasing our low dose radiation.
Introduction Despite the fact that high doses of ionizing radiation are detrimental, substantial data from both
humans and experimental animals show that biologic functions are stimulated by low dose radiation (Luckey
1980). The word "hormesis" is derived from the Greek word "hormaein" which means "to excite". It has long
been known that many popular substances such as alcohol and caffeine have mild stimulating effects in low
doses but are detrimental or even lethal in high doses. In the early 1940s C. Southam and his coworker J. Erlish found that
despite the fact that high concentrations of Oak bark extract inhibited fungi growth, low doses of this agent stimulated fungi growth.
They modified starling's word "hormone to "hormesis" to describe stimulation induced by low doses of agents which are harmful or even
lethal at high doses. They published their findings regarding the new term "hormesis" in 1943 (Bruce M. 1987). Generally, hormesis is
any stimulatory or beneficial effect, induced by low doses of an agent, that can not be predicted by the extrapolation of detrimental or
lethal effects induced by high doses of the same agent. During the 1950`s, Luckey, a pioneer researcher in radiation
hormesis, indicated that low dose dietary antibiotics caused a growth surge in livestock. Later he found that
hormesis could be induced effectively by low doses of ionizing radiation. In 1980 the first complete report on radiation
hormesis was published (Luckey TD 1980). In this report he reviewed numerous articles regarding radiation hormesis. Since the first reports,
3000 papers have been published on the benefits of low doses of ionizing radiation (for a review see Luckey 1980,
Luckey 1982, Luckey 1991). The concept of radiation hormesis is usually applied to physiological benefits from low LET radiation in the range of 1-50 cGy
total absorbed dose (Macklis 1991). It
is widely believed that radiation biology in the future will be focused on
biomolecular and genetic implications, problems of damage and repair and connected problems such as
radiation hormesis and radioadaptive response.
Hormesis and LNT Model
In the early days of X-rays and radioactivity it was
generally believed that ionizing radiation has numerous beneficial effects. It was claimed that blindness might be cured by X-rays. Ladies corsets contained
radium! Drinking mineral water containing radium was very popular. People went to spas to drink radioactive water or stayed for hours in caves to be
irradiated by ionizing radiation (for a review see Wolff 1992). Between 1925 and 1930 over 400,000 bottles of distilled water containing radium 226 and
radium 228 were sold. It was advertised that some mixtures could treat over 150 disease, especially lassitude and sexually impotence (Macklis 1990). It is
estimated that the collective skeletal radiation dose of victims of such radioactive medicine may had exceeded 350 Sv by the time the user died (Macklis
1991). Gradually people found that the improper use of ionizing radiation could lead to many complications and harmful effects. Later, In 1927 Herman J.
Muller,a Nobel Prize winner, found that X-rays are mutagen and there is a linear relationship between mutation rate and dose. He proposed that mutations,
which are induced by radiation (or other mutagens) are mostly detrimental. When it was generally accepted that excessive radiation may be harmful, the
first regulations for dose limits were introduced. . Despite carcinogenicity of X-rays was observed as early as 1902 (Kathren 1996), the first radiation
protection limits suggested in 1925 and for three decades these limits were based on the concept of a tolerance dose (Muller 1928). Surprisingly, until the
end of World War II, ionizing radiation was considered a great scientific miracle. After the war the development of nuclear weapons and later increased use
After
the atomic bomb explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, studies concerning life span of atomic bomb
survivors showed a linear relationship between cancer mortality and high doses of radiation (Pollycove 1998). The
of nuclear power changed this great miracle into radiophobia. At that time people became afraid of even very small doses of ionizing radiation.
United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), then proposed the linear no-threshold (LNT) theory in 1958
(UNSCEAR 1958). According to LNT theory: 1-The effects of low doses of ionizing radiation can be estimated by linear extrapolation from effects
observed by linear extrapolation from effects observed by high doses. 2-There is not any safe dose because even very low doses of ionizing radiation
produce some biological effect. In1959 the international commission on radiation protection (ICRP) adopted the LNT theory (ICRP 1959). The results of
many investigations do not support the LNT theory (for an integrative review see Jaworowski 1997). Furthermore several studies including Cohen's studies
of the relationship between environmental radon concentrations and lung cancer even contradict this theory and clearly suggest a hormetic effect. This
contradictory evidence is discussed in the following section.
Extensive Evidence Suggesting Hormesis
1. Experimental Evidence Cancer
Prevention
Bhattarcharjee in 1996 showed that when the mice preirradiated with just adapting doses of 1 cGy/day for 5 days (without a challenge dose),
thymic lymphoma was induced in 16% of the animals (Bhattarcharjee 1996). Interstingly, when preirradiated mice were exposed to a 2 Gy challenge dose,
thymic lymphoma was induced again in 16% of the animals. However, the challenge dose alone, induced thymic lymphoma in 46% of the mice. From these
results, it can be concluded that the low dose preirradiation possibly cancel the induction of thymic lymphoma by the 2 Gy challenge dose. In 1996, Azzam
and his colleagues showed that a single exposure of C3H 10T1/2 cells to doses as low as 0.1 cGy reduces the risk of neoplastic transformations. They
suggested that a
single low-dose at background or occupational exposure levels, may reduce cancer risk.
Recently, Redpath and his co-workers have confirmed the findings of Azzam and his coworkers (Azzam et al.
1996). To test the generality of the observations of Azzam and his colleagues, they used the Hela x skin
fibroblast human hybrid cell. Using a similar experimental protocol, they demonstrated a significantly reduced transformation frequency for
adapted to unirradiated cells (pooled data from four separate experiments). In addition, recently Mitchel and his co-workers in
Canada have indicated that a low dose preirradiation (10 cGy, 0.5 Gy/h) modifies latency for radiation
induced myeloid leukemia in CBA/H mice after exposure to a 1 Gy chronic radiation exposure (Mitchel et al. 1999). They showed that
the latent period for development of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) was significantly increased by the prior
low radiation dose. Interestingly, according to T.D. Luckey one third of all cancer deaths are premature and
preventable by low-level ionizing radiation (Luckey 1994, 1997). 1.2. Survival Rate In 1996, Yonezawa and his colleagues indicated
that when 21-ICR mice were exposed to a 8 Gy of X-rays, about 30% of the animals survived 30 days after the irradiation. However, when mice
preirradiated with 5 cGy of X-rays, the survival rate increased to about 70% (Yonezawa et al. 1996).
1NC Federalism
The court is upholding plenary power over immigration in the status quo
Tate 13, Law Prof at Virginia
(Kerry, Plenary Power Preemption, papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2278341)
This essay responds to the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Arizona v. United States, which struck down all but one
of the disputed sections of Arizona’s S.B. 1070 immigration law. It advances the theory that although the Arizona Court
purported to apply classic conflict and field preemption analyses, it was actually using a different form of preemption, one that
gives particular weight to federal interests where questions of national sovereignty are at stake. The Court
did so through doctrinal borrowing of the “plenary power doctrine,” which gives the political branches
special deference when passing or executing immigration legislation, even where doing so would otherwise
violate individual constitutional rights. This Essay labels the form of preemption used in Arizona and other alienage cases “plenary
power preemption.” It shows how this doctrine developed over time, as the scope of the legitimate exercise of state police power and federal
immigration changed, and federal and state regulation of noncitizens became more complex and enmeshed. It argues that plenary power
preemption has two important effects: it allows courts to evade the thorny question of the scope of executive — as
opposed to legislative—power over immigration, and it substitutes for the lack of an equal protection doctrine that adequately protects
unauthorized aliens from discrimination.
NASA FUNDING CUTS
Asteroids won’t cause extinction – the environment will adapt
Boulter, 2005
(Michael Boutler, professor of paleobiology at the Natural History Museum and the University of East London,
scientist with the Fossil Record 2, the world's largest database of fossil remains, 2005 “Extinction, Evolution, and
the End of Man,” p. 89-90, Credits to GDS)
But suddenly, 65 million years ago, the dinosaurs were gone, both the carnivores and the herbivores. Although
most plants were burnt to the ground by the fireballs that followed the impact, and although the air was dark
and smoky, halting photosynthesis, their roots survived . The environment responded to the crisis and quickly
recovered. No longer were the conifers and ferns harvested by these hungry foes, the soil was the richer for the forest debris
and its microbiology boomed. The temperature of the atmosphere increased and it started to rain very hard in
places where it had been drier. The changing environments encouraged the new flowering plants to evolve very
quickly. With warm productive ecosystems on land, in the marine realm phytoplankton were major benefactors
from these big environmental changes. Microscopic organisms in the sea, soil and air are especially able to
adjust to changes very quickly. Small organisms have a much simpler structure and physiology, more
vulnerable to most changes, yet more able to recover quickly. Without oxygen most species became extinct at
the C–T and K–T events, but those that didn’t quickly recovered and the empty space helped those species to
evolve very quickly. There is a sharp delineation at the boundary where some became extinct and others originated in their place.
The algae continued to photosynthesise, gathering energy from the sunlight and converting it into food and
oxygen, eating up carbon dioxide in the process, clearly a very important stabilising role in the planet’s environment. They
had done this through the Cretaceous and before, so we know a lot about the great diversity of the microscopic creatures. Most small
mammals also survived, hiding from the heat, being protected by their own sense of exploration. Within a few
years some of the planet’s ecosystems were beginning to host a new range of animals, plants and bugs. Life
began to assume a new normality. Most important of all, there was not a serious loss of the range of DNA, so many
branches of the tree of life were able to continue and recover from the cull. Out of adversity there is usually opportunity,
and there was a really creative aspect of the catastrophe. Those organisms that did survive were able to find new
opportunities to express structural adaptations. They were able to evolve through the mixing of genes or their mutations that
had been taking place quietly through the millions of years before the cull and immediately afterwards. Because the environment
had changed very little before the catastrophe there had been no opportunities for these molecular
characteristics to express themselves. Evolution was going on inside the cells, in the genes’ DNA, and was not
showing up in structural features like the colour of a mammal’s eyes or a flower’s petals. It was as though a strong
genetic metal spring had been winding up, collecting energy for millions of years, and then at an instant was released. It caused quick
increases in the species diversity of those animal and plant groups that had been inhibited in the wrong environment with its attendant
dominant groups of competitors.
Asteroid deflection technology risks extinction via intentional misuse—highly probable.
Sagan 97 — Carl Sagan, Professor and Director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell University,
winner of the Oersted Medal, two NASA Distinguished Public Service Medals, the Pulitzer Prize for General NonFiction, and the National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal, holds a Ph.D. in Astronomy and Astrophysics
from the University of Chicago, 1997 (“The Marsh of Camarina,” Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in
Space, Published by Ballantine Books, ISBN 0345376595, p. kindle)
The foregoing are examples of inadvertence. But there’s another kind of peril: We are sometimes told that this or that invention
would of course not be misused. No sane person would be so reckless. This is the “only a madman” argument.
Whenever I hear it (and it’s often trotted out in such debates), I remind myself that madmen really exist.
Sometimes they achieve the highest levels of political power in modern industrial nations. This is the century of Hitler and Stalin,
tyrants who posed the gravest dangers not just to the rest of the human family, but to their own people as well .
In the winter and spring of 1945, Hitler ordered Germany to be destroyed—even “what the people need for elementary
survival”—because the surviving Germans had “betrayed” him, and at any rate were “inferior” to those who had already
died. If Hitler had had nuclear weapons, the threat of a counterstrike by Allied nuclear weapons, had there been
any, is unlikely to have dissuaded him. It might have encouraged him. Can we humans be trusted with civilizationthreatening technologies? If the chance is almost one in a thousand that much of the human population will be
killed by an impact in the next century, isn’t it more likely that asteroid deflection technology will get into the
wrong hands in another century—some misanthropic sociopath like a Hitler or a Stalin eager to kill everybody,
a megalomaniac lusting after “greatness” and “glory,” a victim of ethnic violence bent on revenge, someone in
the grip of unusually severe testosterone poisoning, some religious fanatic hastening the Day of Judgment, or
just technicians incompetent or insufficiently vigilant in handling the controls and safeguards? Such people
exist. The risks seem far worse than the benefits, the cure worse than the disease. The cloud of near-Earth
asteroids through which the Earth plows may constitute a modern Camarine marsh.
The Feds won’t crack down – their ev is from 2013, our’s is predictive – Feds will respect
the most important parts of cooperative federalism
Schoenherr, 14—citing Gregory P. Magarian, JD, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis.
Neil, “Wash U Expert: States should have some power over criminal laws of marijuana,” Wash U News,
http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/27165.aspx
Role of the states “If the federal government decriminalizes or legalizes marijuana possession at the federal level, it could do so in a way that left
the states free to criminalize marijuana, or it could do so in a way that stripped the states of that power,” Magarian said. “The relevant
constitutional doctrine is called federal preemption. The federal government, where it has power to regulate, always has power to
bar the states from regulating. “Often the federal government doesn’t do this, in what are often called ‘cooperative
federalism’ arrangements, such as Medicaid. If the federal government really wanted to federalize all marijuana
law, it could most directly do so by enacting a comprehensive set of marijuana regulations — taxing sales, imposing standards for medical
marijuana, etc.” The federal government “As
marijuana,” Magarian said. “At
a predictive matter, I don’t think the federal government will do that with
a minimum, the feds would be very unlikely to step on core areas of state regulation
— schools, traffic, etc. — as
they relate to marijuana. “Beyond that, I think for both political and policy reasons the feds
will leave states with substantial power to criminalize marijuana possession and sale. The feds may preempt state
regulation in specific policy areas, like insurance coverage rules for medical marijuana.”
Several huge alt causes to federalism—Obamacare
Moffit 10, Robert E. Moffit, Ph.D., is Senior Fellow in Domestic and Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage
Foundation, Revitalizing Federalism: The High Road Back to Health Care Independence,
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/06/revitalizing-federalism-the-high-road-back-to-health-careindependence
Americans face a direct and historic challenge to their personal liberty and to their unique citizenship in a federal republic. Though its enactment
of the massive Patient Protection and
health care, but is also
A ffordable C are A ct (PPACA), official Washington is not merely engi-neering a federal takeover of
radically altering the relationships between individ-uals and the government as well as the national
gov-ernment and the states. In other words, the PPACA is a direct threat to federalism itself . As Jonathan Turley,
professor of law at George Washington University, has argued, “Federalism was
already on life support before the
individual mandate. Make no mistake about it, this plan might provide a bill of good health for the pub-lic, but it could amount to a
‘ do not resuscitate’ order for federalism .”[1] Never before has Congress exercised its power under Article I,
Section 8 of the Federal Constitu-tion to force American citizens to purchase a pri-vate good or a service , such as a
health insurance policy.[2] Congress is also intruding deeply into the internal affairs of the states , commandeering
their officers, specifying in minute detail how they are to arrange health insurance markets within their
bor-ders, and determining the products that will be sold to their citizens. If allowed to stand, this unprecedented
concen-tration of political power in Washington will result in the states being reduced to mere instruments of
federal health policy rather than “distinct and inde­pendent sovereigns,” as James Madison described them in Federalist
No. 40.[3]
a) Political polarization
Pickerill and Bowling 6-23, J. Mitchell Pickerill is an Associate Professor in the Northern Illinois University
Department of Political Science, Cynthia Bowling is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Auburn
University, Polarized Parties, Politics, and Policies: Fragmented Federalism in 2013–2014,
http://publius.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/05/22/publius.pju026.full
Polarized parties, politics, and policies at the federal and state levels of government continue to affect the
nature of federalism and intergovernmental relations in the United States. Although polarization and
fragmentation are prevalent, there are important instances of cooperation and collaboration. But bottom-up state
activism has yielded polarized policies across the states in important issue areas such as same-sex marriage
and marijuana policy. And even as states collaborate on implementation of the Common Core standards for
K-12 education, the rhetoric remains politicized . The effects of polarization have also been significant for fiscal
policies and budgeting. We conclude that, even as states push forward their agendas in light of a gridlocked
national government , federalism faces continued challenges, remaining fragmented in both theory and
practice.
2NC
T
Legalization involeves removing criminal penalties for possession and implementing a
regulated system---prefer kay evidence---it’s a legal definition
Kay, 2 Amanda, J.D. Candidate, Fordham University School of Law, “THE AGONY OF ECSTASY:
RECONSIDERING THE PUNITIVE APPROACH TO UNITED STATES DRUG POLICY,” 29 Fordham Urb. L.J.
2133, Lexis
Harm reduction is often confused with legalization. Legalization involves removing criminal penalties for possession of
some or all illicit drugs and usually involves implementing a system of regulated distribution similar to that
which is in place for alcohol and cigarettes, with state-run sales , quality and price control , and a ban on
advertising . n115 Legalization advocates often point to crime caused by prohibitive drug laws themselves as support for legalization. n116
Although many harm reduction advocates support legalization [*2150] to some extent, legalization is a broader approach to drug policy that is
not necessarily informed by the social and medical concerns underlying harm reduction. n117 In fact, most legalization arguments are economic.
n118
Legalization means the implementation of a regulated system---this understanding is often
misunderstood but we cite the consensus of advocates on this issue
Kay, 2 Amanda, J.D. Candidate, Fordham University School of Law, “THE AGONY OF ECSTASY:
RECONSIDERING THE PUNITIVE APPROACH TO UNITED STATES DRUG POLICY,” 29 Fordham Urb. L.J.
2133, Lexis
Legalization is often misunderstood . As most advocates define it , legalization involves the repeal of laws
prohibiting drug use and the implementation of regulated system of Ecstasy distribution [*2184] similar to that
which currently exists for alcohol and cigarettes, with state-run sales, quality and price control, and regulated advertising. n433 The goal of
such legalization is to undercut the criminal element . n434 Advocates claim that legalization would reduce health risks to users
because pills would be tested as part of the regulation process; only a set strength and purity level would be available for purchase. n435
Advocates also cite the high financial cost and ineffectiveness of the drug war as reasons for legalization. In addition to the Office of Drug
Control Policy's annual budget, "It costs approximately $ 8.6 billion per year to keep drug law violators behind bars." n436 Drug-related criminal
and medical costs total over $ 67 billion, and almost seventy percent of that is attributable to drug-related crime. n437 While legalization may
initially drive drug use up, proponents argue that any such increase would taper off and the net result would be less harm than exists under the
current prohibition-based drug policy. n438 Some argue that legalization would reduce crimes committed indirectly because of drug use, such as
those related to the black market for drug sales which has developed in response to drug prohibition. n439
The aff is decrim---legal definitions prove
Duncan, 9 Cynthia, University of Colorado, B.A. 2006; University of Connecticut School of Law, J.D. Candidate
2009, “THE NEED FOR CHANGE: AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF MARIJUANA POLICY,” Lexis
Decriminalization of marijuana is a wholly unsatisfactory compromise between strict prohibition and legalization. n132 Decriminalization carries
with it many of the same societal costs associated with total prohibition n133 and retains almost every negative aspect associated with
prohibition. n134 [*1727]
Decriminalization as it currently exists removes the criminal sanctions for possession of
marijuana for personal use n135 without providing for a non- criminal method of obtaining it; n136 therefore, all
trafficking remains illegal . n137 The enforcement and deterrence efforts aimed at trafficking remain the same as
under strict prohibition, n138 which means that the racial and economic disparities associated with these methods are also retained. [*1728] In
addition, because decriminalization offers no new methods of deterring underage use, there is no positive impact on the underage usage rates
attributable to decriminalization. n139
regulations debates key to education
Gettman 13 – Former head of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws [Jon Gettman (PhD in public policy and
regional economic development from George Mason University), “Where is Public Support for Marijuana Industry?,” High Times, Thu Oct 24,
2013, pg. http://tinyurl.com/kf8pqsa
A recent and well-publicized Gallup poll indicates that 58% of the population supports the legalization of marijuana use. But, critics ask, what
about public support for legalizing marijuana’s manufacture and distribution?
This is not just a snarky retort from prohibition’s opponents, but instead a solid indication of how the
battle of legalization is shifting
from when to how .
Kevin Sabet has inserted himself and his new group – Project SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana) – at the forefront of opposition to
marijuana’s legalization. In a Huffington Post Column he takes issue with the recent Gallup Poll’s relevance, pointing out (as have several others)
that the poll is about marijuana’s use rather than its commercialization by the emerging marijuana industry.
Sabet raises three issues. 1) The poll is about use rather than sale. 2) Gallup shows greater support for legalization than other polls. 3) The Gallup
poll is based on a smaller sample size than other polls that show less support for legalization.
Nonetheless, Sabet concedes “There is no doubt that marijuana legalization enjoys more support than it did a few years ago.” One of his concerns
is that the emerging marijuana industry will be a new version of “Big Tobacco,” an industrial behemoth that will spend billions to attract new
customers and, in effect, be responsible for massive increases in teenage marijuana use. Sabet argues that this development does not have the
same widespread support that exists for ending criminal penalties for marijuana use.
Sabet also links to a column by Mark Kleiman, Washington State’s “Pot Czar,” who advises on regulatory policy for the state’s recreational
marijuana law. Kleiman makes similar observations about the Gallup poll and related polling trends. According to Kleiman, “If the
question of whether to legalize now seems largely settled, that makes the much-less-debated question of how to
legalize even more topical . Some of the smarter opponents of cannabis have figured this out, and are now looking for ways of limiting
the increase in drug abuse likely to follow legal availability.”
Kleiman observes that many anti-prohibitionists remain on auto-pilot in their opposition to any form of marijuana law reform, arguing that “By
doing so, the warriors will help to ensure that the legal system that eventually arises will be over-commercialized, under-regulated, and undertaxed.”
This debate illustrates what’s at stake as Colorado and Washington implement their new regulatory models, and as new states potentially approve
legalization measures in the next election cycle and create their own regulatory models. Interestingly, many marijuana users also have
concerns about how the new marijuana industry will be regulated. Most marijuana reform advocates have misgivings about
handing over the marijuana industry to corporate America, favoring instead small-scale local production models and widespread personal
cultivation.
While this may be an impractical approach to supply large scale demand, even at present usage levels, it underscores widespread interest
in just how marijuana will be regulated and controlled in a legal market. This is not just a matter of critics of
legalization versus proponents.
If marijuana is over-taxed, it will artificially maintain high prices that will discourage consumer participation in the new market. If marijuana is
under-regulated, it will lead to public backlash against legal markets as an alternative to prohibition. And, frankly, if marijuana is overcommercialized, this may unite marijuana users and critics of legalization to seek more realistic controls over corporate commerce – especially if
regulations create corporate monopolies at the expense of personal cultivation.
These are just a few issues that frame this evolved debate over marijuana’s legalization. It is important, though, to
recognize that the context of the debate is rapidly changing . Kleiman is right, the question now is how to
legalize marijuana, and this means how to actually implement a regulated market.
States will get several years to experiment with different regulatory models before there is public support, and public demand for a national
policy. But when this question gets considered at the national level, Sabet is right on the money. The big money will decide the issue in
Congress.
Supporters of marijuana’s legalization won’t agree with Sabet on much, and his arguments against legalization are and will continue to be
strenuously opposed by reform advocates. Sabet and Klieman raise an important issue in response to the Gallup Poll, though, and one
that all marijuana reform advocates should understand. Right now, the issue is all about regulation – who profits
and how does this affect both consumers and public interest.
AT: Add-Ons
Separation of Powers
SOP is impossible to measure- powers are fluid and constantly shifting
Hamilton ‘4
(Lee H.-, Dem. Congressman from Indiana, Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign
Affairs, How Congress Works and Why You Should Care, P. 13; Jacob)
We live in an era that is more difficult to categorize. On the one hand, the federal government has responded to
the threat of terrorism by expanding and consolidating its power, especially for its various law enforcement and
national security agencies. At’ the same time, however, the attorneys general in the various states have been
responding to slow action at the federal level by taking on more responsibility, for consumer enforcement in
everything from policing Wall Street to suing drug makers for blocking lower-cost competitors. The
distribution of power is constantly shifting, and sometimes, as at the moment, it moves in different directions
simultaneously. In addition, the private sector today is often very much involved in carrying out government
activities with government funding, so even the line between the government and the private sector is eroding.
Bio-D
99.9% biodiversity loss has no impact on humanity
Sagoff- Sr researcher, U Maryland - ’97 (Mark, Senior Research Scholar @ Institute for
Philosophy and Public policy in School of Public Affairs @ U. Maryland, William and
Mary Law Review, “INSTITUTE OF BILL OF RIGHTS LAW SYMPOSIUM DEFINING
TAKINGS: PRIVATE PROPERTY AND THE FUTURE OF GOVERNMENT
REGULATION: MUDDLE OR MUDDLE THROUGH? TAKINGS JURISPRUDENCE
MEETS THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT”, 38 Wm and Mary L. Rev. 825, March,
L/N)
Although one may agree with ecologists such as Ehrlich and Raven that the earth stands on the brink of an episode
of massive extinction, it may not follow from this grim fact that human beings will suffer as a result. On the
contrary, skeptics such as science writer Colin Tudge have challenged biologists to explain why we need more
than a tenth of the 10 to 100 million species that grace the earth. Noting that "cultivated systems often outproduce wild systems by 100-fold or more," Tudge declared that "the argument that humans need the variety
of other species is, when you think about it, a theological one." n343 Tudge observed that "the elimination of all
but a tiny minority of our fellow creatures does not affect the material well-being of humans one iota." n344
This skeptic challenged ecologists to list more than 10,000 species (other than unthreatened microbes) that are
essential to ecosystem productivity or functioning. n345 "The human species could survive just as well if 99.9%
of our fellow creatures went extinct, provided only that we retained the appropriate 0.1% that we need." n346
[*906] The monumental Global Biodiversity Assessment ("the Assessment") identified two positions with respect
to redundancy of species. "At one extreme is the idea that each species is unique and important, such that its removal
or loss will have demonstrable consequences to the functioning of the community or ecosystem." n347 The authors
of the Assessment, a panel of eminent ecologists, endorsed this position, saying it is "unlikely that there is much, if
any, ecological redundancy in communities over time scales of decades to centuries, the time period over which
environmental policy should operate." n348 These eminent ecologists rejected the opposing view, "the notion that
species overlap in function to a sufficient degree that removal or loss of a species will be compensated by others,
with negligible overall consequences to the community or ecosystem." n349 Other biologists believe, however, that
species are so fabulously redundant in the ecological functions they perform that the life-support systems and
processes of the planet and ecological processes in general will function perfectly well with fewer of them,
certainly fewer than the millions and millions we can expect to remain even if every threatened organism
becomes extinct. n350 Even the kind of sparse and miserable world depicted in the movie Blade Runner could
provide a "sustainable" context for the human economy as long as people forgot their aesthetic and moral
commitment to the glory and beauty of the natural world. n351 The Assessment makes this point. "Although any
ecosystem contains hundreds to thousands of species interacting among themselves and their physical environment,
the emerging consensus is that the system is driven by a small number of . . . biotic variables on whose interactions
the balance of species are, in a sense, carried along." n352 [*907] To make up your mind on the question of the
functional redundancy of species, consider an endangered species of bird, plant, or insect and ask how the
ecosystem would fare in its absence. The fact that the creature is endangered suggests an answer: it is already
in limbo as far as ecosystem processes are concerned. What crucial ecological services does the black-capped
vireo, for example, serve? Are any of the species threatened with extinction necessary to the provision of any
ecosystem service on which humans depend? If so, which ones are they? Ecosystems and the species that compose
them have changed, dramatically, continually, and totally in virtually every part of the United States. There is little
ecological similarity, for example, between New England today and the land where the Pilgrims died. n353 In
view of the constant reconfiguration of the biota, one may wonder why Americans have not suffered more as
a result of ecological catastrophes. The cast of species in nearly every environment changes constantly-local
extinction is commonplace in nature-but the crops still grow. Somehow, it seems, property values keep going up on
Martha's Vineyard in spite of the tragic disappearance of the heath hen. One might argue that the sheer number and
variety of creatures available to any ecosystem buffers that system against stress. Accordingly, we should be
concerned if the "library" of creatures ready, willing, and able to colonize ecosystems gets too small. (Advances in
genetic engineering may well permit us to write a large number of additions to that "library.") In the United States
as in many other parts of the world, however, the number of species has been increasing dramatically, not
decreasing, as a result of human activity. This is because the hordes of exotic species coming into ecosystems in
the United States far exceed the number of species that are becoming extinct. Indeed, introductions may
outnumber extinctions by more than ten to one, so that the United States is becoming more and more species-rich
all the time largely as a result of human action. n354 [*908] Peter Vitousek and colleagues estimate that over
1000 non-native plants grow in California alone; in Hawaii there are 861; in Florida, 1210. n355 In Florida more
than 1000 non-native insects, 23 species of mammals, and about 11 exotic birds have established themselves. n356
Anyone who waters a lawn or hoes a garden knows how many weeds desire to grow there, how many birds and bugs
visit the yard, and how many fungi, creepy-crawlies, and other odd life forms show forth when it rains. All belong to
nature, from wherever they might hail, but not many homeowners would claim that there are too few of them. Now,
not all exotic species provide ecosystem services; indeed, some may be disruptive or have no instrumental value.
n357 This also may be true, of course, of native species as well, especially because all exotics are native somewhere.
Certain exotic species, however, such as Kentucky blue grass, establish an area's sense of identity and place; others,
such as the green crabs showing up around Martha's Vineyard, are nuisances. n358 Consider an analogy [*909]
with human migration. Everyone knows that after a generation or two, immigrants to this country are hard to
distinguish from everyone else. The vast majority of Americans did not evolve here, as it were, from hominids; most
of us "came over" at one time or another. This is true of many of our fellow species as well, and they may fit in here
just as well as we do. It is possible to distinguish exotic species from native ones for a period of time, just as we can
distinguish immigrants from native-born Americans, but as the centuries roll by, species, like people, fit into the
landscape or the society, changing and often enriching it. Shall we have a rule that a species had to come over on the
Mayflower, as so many did, to count as "truly" American? Plainly not. When, then, is the cutoff date? Insofar as we
are concerned with the absolute numbers of "rivets" holding ecosystems together, extinction seems not to pose a
general problem because a far greater number of kinds of mammals, insects, fish, plants, and other creatures thrive
on land and in water in America today than in prelapsarian times. n359 The Ecological Society of America has
urged managers to maintain biological diversity as a critical component in strengthening ecosystems against
disturbance. n360 Yet as Simon Levin observed, "much of the detail about species composition will be irrelevant in
terms of influences on ecosystem properties." n361 [*910] He added: "For net primary productivity, as is likely to
be the case for any system property, biodiversity matters only up to a point; above a certain level, increasing
biodiversity is likely to make little difference." n362 What about the use of plants and animals in agriculture?
There is no scarcity foreseeable. "Of an estimated 80,000 types of plants [we] know to be edible," a U.S.
Department of the Interior document says, "only about 150 are extensively cultivated." n363 About twenty
species, not one of which is endangered, provide ninety percent of the food the world takes from plants. n364 Any
new food has to take "shelf space" or "market share" from one that is now produced. Corporations also find it
difficult to create demand for a new product; for example, people are not inclined to eat paw-paws, even though they
are delicious. It is hard enough to get people to eat their broccoli and lima beans. It is harder still to develop
consumer demand for new foods. This may be the reason the Kraft Corporation does not prospect in remote places
for rare and unusual plants and animals to add to the world's diet.
Species extinction won't cause human extinction – humans and the environment are
adaptable
Doremus’ 00
(Holly, Professor of Law at UC Davis Washington & Lee Law Review, Winter 57 Wash &
Lee L. Rev. 11, lexis)
In recent years, this discourse frequently has taken the form of the ecological horror story. That too is no mystery.
The ecological horror story is unquestionably an attention-getter, especially in the hands of skilled writers
[*46] like Carson and the Ehrlichs. The image of the airplane earth, its wings wobbling as rivet after rivet is
carelessly popped out, is difficult to ignore. The apocalyptic depiction of an impending crisis of potentially dire
proportions is designed to spur the political community to quick action . Furthermore, this story suggests a goal
that appeals to many nature lovers: that virtually everything must be protected. To reinforce this suggestion, tellers
of the ecological horror story often imply that the relative importance of various rivets to the ecological plane cannot
be determined. They offer reams of data and dozens of anecdotes demonstrating the unexpected value of apparently
useless parts of nature. The moth that saved Australia from prickly pear invasion, the scrubby Pacific yew, and the
downright unattractive leech are among the uncharismatic flora and fauna who star in these anecdotes. n211 The
moral is obvious: because we cannot be sure which rivets are holding the plane together, saving them all is the only
sensible course. Notwithstanding its attractions, the material discourse in general, and the ecological horror story in
particular, are not likely to generate policies that will satisfy nature lovers. The ecological horror story implies that
there is no reason to protect nature until catastrophe looms. The Ehrlichs' rivet-popper account, for example,
presents species simply as the (fungible) hardware holding together the ecosystem. If we could be reasonably certain
that a particular rivet was not needed to prevent a crash, the rivet-popper story suggests that we would lose very little
by pulling it out. Many environmentalists, though, would disagree. Reluctant to concede such losses, tellers of the
ecological horror story highlight how close a catastrophe might be, and how little we know about what actions might
trigger one. But the apocalyptic vision is less credible today than it seemed in the 1970s. Although it is clear that
the earth is experiencing a mass wave of extinctions, the complete elimination of life on earth seems unlikely.
Life is remarkably robust. Nor is human extinction probable any time soon. Homo sapiens is adaptable to
nearly any environment. Even if the world of the future includes far fewer species, it likely will hold people.
One response to this credibility problem tones the story down a bit, arguing not that humans will go extinct but that
ecological disruption will bring economies, and consequently civilizations, to their knees. But this too may be
overstating the case. Most ecosystem functions are performed by multiple species. This functional redundancy
means that a high proportion of species can be lost without precipitating a collapse.
EXTINCTION IS LOCALLY CONTAINED
NEW SCIENTIST 8-23-2003
However, one of the biggest supporters of such regional studies, Geerat Vermeij from the University of California,
Davis, thinks any attempt to create global diversity curves is pointless, because lumping numbers together
only obscures the details of local trends. "Global numbers mean absolutely nothing," he says. "An organism
in the tundra couldn't care less about how many species there are in the rainforest." Instead, Vermeij argues,
extinction should be viewed purely as a regional phenomenon. As an example, he points to the Pliocene,
between 5.2 and 1.6 million years ago, when few extinctions happened in the Indo-West Pacific, but up to 70
per cent of bivalves disappeared from the western Atlantic. In that case, a global analysis might turn up only a
minor extinction event, even though the event was catastrophic on a regional scale among a select group of
creatures.
1NR
2nc Overview
Only a GOP senate can pass entitlement reform—GOP control means they can use
reconciliation to pass it with a simple majority. That’s key to rein in entitlement spending,
which creates unsustainable budget pressure that causes the U.S. to quote “retreat from the
world,” which independently causes war by removing every tool for conflict de-escalation
The DA outweighs –
A – Try or die – The 2AC conceded multilat – it prevents extinction
Feffer, 9 – Fellow @ Open Society Foundation
John, Fellow at Open Society Foundation, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus, an international affairs
online news service and journal. “World Beat,” FPIF, Feb 17. Vol. 4 No. 7. Lexis – br
The neoconservative movement thrilled to what it called the "unipolar moment." After the Berlin Wall collapsed and the Soviet Union
followed suit, the United States was the last superpower standing. America faced a choice. It could use the unprecedented opportunity to help
build a new international system out of the rubble of the Cold War. Or it could try to maintain that unipolar moment as long as possible. The
neocons preferred the king-of-the-hill approach. The Clinton administration flirted with multilateralism. It came into
office promising to support a range of international treaties and institutions. It of-fered to play well with
others. But this more robust multilateral approach ran up against the three gorgons of the immediate
post-Cold War period: Somalia, Bosnia, and Rwanda. Whatever the Clinton administration's
commitment to multi-lateralism had been, these gorgons turned it to stone. The administration fell back on what it
called "Ã la carte multilateralism." That is, the United States would pursue multilateralism when it could, but act unilaterally when it
must.History is on the verge of repeating itself. After eight years of neocon-servatives trying desperately to extend the unipolar moment, a
new group is in the White House promising to change America's relationship with the world. Yet, plenty of gorgons beckon: Iraq,
Afghanistan, North Korea. Will Obama's multilat-eral resolve turn to stone or will his administration truly remap U.S. global relations? "The
new president is off to a good start," writes Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) contributor Ehsan Ahrari in The Making of a New Global
Strategy. "He al-ready spoke to the Islamic world, stating that America will deal with it re-spectfully and on the basis of pragmatism; he
invited Iran to unclench its fist and initiate an era of negotiations on the basis of mutual respect; and he ap-pointed George Mitchell and
Richard Holbrooke as special envoys for the Middle East and South Asia, respectively. He sent Vice President Joe Biden to talk to the
Europeans and to the Russians." The vice president was indeed in Europe the other week, but he spoke out of both sides of his mouth on the
issue of multi-lateralism. He promised our European allies a "new era of cooperation." But he also warned that the United States would
"work in a partnership whenever we can, and alone only when we must," which sounded an awful lot like the Clinton ad-ministration's
eventual default position. But times have changed, argues FPIF contributor Hannes Artens. " These aren't the golden 1990s, when
U.S. power was at its zenith. In this first decade of the 21st century, the capitalist West is facing defeat in Afghanistan and
is on the verge of 'the worst recession in a hundred years,' as British minister Ed Balls put it in perhaps only slight exaggeration," he
writes in Multilateralism in Mu-nich. "This combination will force the Obama administration to stop cherry-picking issues on which it wants
to cooperate and forging ahead on those issues it believes it can still handle alone. Necessity will dictate a more pragmatic multilateralism, in
which all sides humbly accept what is realistically possi-ble." Are we thus witnessing the final end of the unipolar moment? China is
coming up fast. The European Union's expansion has been accompanied by relatively few growing pains.
Several powerful countries in the South (particularly India, Bra-zil, and South Africa) are quietly acquiring more
geopolitical heft. Global problems like climate change and financial collapse require global solutions , so
we either evolve multilateral responses or we do a dinosaur dive into extinction . Over here, meanwhile, the
Pentagon is still maintaining the world's largest military force - but we have failed to defeat al-Qaeda, we are quagmired in
Afghanistan, and all of our nuclear weapons have done little to prevent North Korea from entering the nuclear
club. The global recession is hammering the U.S. economy, and we might finally see the end of the dollar's reign as global
currency. With the bank bailout, the stimulus package, the bill for two wars plus the Pentagon's already gargantuan budget, the red ink
is mounting. Debt has been the gravedigger of many an empire. I can hear the adding machine totting up the numbers.
Hege solves middle east war.
Kagan 7 – Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Robert “End of Dreams, Return
of History” Policy Review (http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/8552512.html#n10
It is also optimistic to imagine that a retrenchment of the American position in the Middle East and the
assumption of a more passive, “offshore” role would lead to greater stability there. The vital interest the
United States has in access to oil and the role it plays in keeping access open to other nations in Europe and
Asia make it unlikely that American leaders could or would stand back and hope for the best while the
powers in the region battle it out. Nor would a more “even-handed” policy toward Israel, which
some see as the magic key to unlocking peace, stability, and comity in the Middle East,
obviate the need to come to Israel ’s aid if its security became threatened. That
commitment, paired with the American commitment to protect strategic oil supplies for most of the
world, practically ensures a heavy American military presence in the region, both on the seas and on the
ground. The subtraction of American power from any region would not end conflict but
would simply change the equation. In the Middle East, competition for influence among
powers both inside and outside the region has raged for at least two centuries. The rise of
Islamic fundamentalism doesn ’t change this. It only adds a new and more threatening
dimension to the competition, which neither a sudden end to the conflict between Israel and
the Palestinians nor an immediate American withdrawal from Iraq would change. The
alternative to American predominance in the region is not balance and peace. It is further competition. The
region and the states within it remain relatively weak. A diminution of American influence would not be
followed by a diminution of other external influences. One could expect deeper involvement by both China
and Russia, if only to secure their interests. 18 And one could also expect the more powerful states of the
region, particularly Iran, to expand and fill the vacuum. It is doubtful that any American
administration would voluntarily take actions that could shift the balance of power in the
Middle East further toward Russia, China, or Iran. The world hasn ’t changed that much.
An American withdrawal from Iraq will not return things to “normal” or to a new kind of
stability in the region. It will produce a new instability, one likely to draw the United States back in
again. The alternative to American regional predominance in the Middle East and
elsewhere is not a new regional stability. In an era of burgeoning nationalism, the future is likely to
be one of intensified competition among nations and nationalist movements . Difficult as it may be to
extend American predominance into the future, no one should imagine that a reduction of
American power or a retraction of American influence and global involvement will provide
an easier path.
Hege key to environmental protections.
Falkner 5 – Dept. IR @ London School of Economics, Robert, “American Hegemony and the Global
Environment”, International Studies Review (2005) 7, 585–599
The first use of hegemony in international environmental politics revolves around the use
of superior power in the interest of international regime building. Young (1989:88) has
argued in International Cooperation: Building Regimes for Natural Re- sources and the
Environment that, even though hegemonic states rarely impose in- ternational regimes against
the wishes of other states, they play an important role in providing leadership in the creation of
mutually agreeable environmental regimes. Although environmental leadership does not
necessarily result from hegemonic power, it is closely linked to such power. Environmental
leadership can take many different forms: policy entrepreneurship of individual actors in international bargaining that facilitates compromise and agreement in the interest of environmental causes
(entrepreneurial leadership); diffusion and role model effects of national environmental policy
(intellectual leadership); and the more explicit use of eco- nomic incentives and sanctions in pursuit of
international environmental objectives (structural leadership) (Young 1991; Lake 1993; Vogel
1997; Tews 2004). Even though hegemony is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for
the existence of environmental leadership, it is usually only powerful states that have a lasting effect
on international negotiations and norm creation. Weaker states may assume a leading position when it comes
to developing progressive environmental policies or demanding stringent international rules. But such
initiatives will remain ineffective if they are not backed up by political and economic clout that can foster
For example, smaller European states such as
Denmark and the Netherlands have often been in the vanguard of environmental policy
innovation, but Germany, Europe’s largest economy, is usu- ally credited with providing
the essential leadership for advancing environmental policies at the EU level. A similar
picture emerges in the international system. It is mainly states that have dominant
economic and political clout and whose position in the international economy affords them
the possibility of exerting indirect or direct pressure on other states that can provide
effective leadership on environmental issues. The United States is a good example of this
conclusion. For much of the early phase of international environmental politics, the United States provided
international agreement and induce compliance.
inter- national leadership in one form or the other. It was one of the first leading in- dustrialized nations to
develop comprehensive environmental legislation and reg- ulatory institutions. The US Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA), which was set up in 1970 to integrate the widely scattered
programs and institutions dealing with environmental matters, instantly became a model
for similar regulatory agencies that were created in other industrialized countries during
the 1970s. Much of this state activity was underpinned by the world’s most dynamic
environmental move- ment, which came into existence in the mid-1960s. US environmental
groups ranging from the more traditional bodies (Sierra Club, National Audubon Society)
to modern environmental nongovernmental organizations (Environmental Defense Fund,
Natural Resources Defense Council, Greenpeace) worked to create broadly based domestic
support for a more ambitious environmental policy at home and abroad. US scientists and
activists came to play a leading role in the global envi- ronmental movement that began to
emerge in the 1970s (Kraft 2004). At the international level, the United States began to claim the
mantle of en- vironmental leader, first at the UN Conference on the Human Environment in
Stockholm in 1972 (Hopgood 1998:96), and later in the context of the multilateral efforts to
agree on environmental treaties. Having declared eight whale species endangered based on
the Endangered Species Act of 1969, the United States took up the issue of whale preservation
internationally and initiated a transformation of the international whaling regime to
emphasize species protection rather than nat- ural resource usage. US diplomatic pressure and
threat of sanctions were instrumental in getting the International Whaling Commission to place a ban on
commercial whaling in 1984 (Porter and Brown 1996:77–81; Fletcher 2001). Also in the 1970s, the
United States began to support international efforts to take action against ozone layer depletion and in the
1980s became a key advocate of international restrictions on the use of ozone-depleting chemicals. During
the ne- gotiations on the Montreal Protocol, the US government provided important leadership and exerted pressure on skeptical states, especially the European producers of
ozone-depleting substances, that objected to strong international measures (Benedick
1991). Whereas the ozone negotiations provided the United States with an opportunity to
display leadership in a multilateral context, US policy on the conservation of species took
on a more unilateral character. More than any other country, the United States has used the threat of
sanctions to change other nations’ behavior in areas that endanger threatened species. Using import
restrictions on products made in an environmentally damaging way, the US government forced foreign
fishing fleets to comply with American standards of protection of, for ex- ample, dolphins and sea turtles
(DeSombre 2001).
TURNS THEIR SCIENCE IMPACT
A2 Gridlock Bad
GOP would have a strong incentive against gridlock—defer to several experts
Tomasky, 14—MA in PoliSci @ NYU, lifelong journalist/author, special Newsweek correspondent
Michael, “Here’s What Happens When the GOP Takes Over the Senate,” 4-30, The Daily Beast,
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/30/here-s-what-happens-when-the-gop-takes-over-the-senate.html -BR
But here’s the counterintuitive view, expressed by several folks : If Republicans have full control of Congress,
they won’t have Harry Reid to kick around anymore. In a divided Congress, each party can point its finger at
the other and say: “Obstructionist!” But if one party is running the show, the responsibility for getting results
falls entirely on that party’s shoulders. “If I were a Republican looking forward to 2016, I would actually want to get a
little something done,” says William Galston of Brookings . “And if the president has any desire for his last six
years to be anything other than trench warfare over the ACA [Affordable Care Act, as the Obamacare law is officially known],
then maybe he’ll want to do something, too.” Several people I spoke with noted that we do have precedent for this, and
it’s hardly ancient history. “The model is the late ’90s template,” says Nicholas Eberstadt of the American
Enterprise Institute . “Maybe a little less cordial.” Or a lot less. But he has a point. In the 1994 election, the GOP took over the
House and the Senate. At first, Republicans under Bob Dole and especially Newt Gingrich threw everything they could at Bill Clinton. But after a
short while, Gingrich softened, and he and Clinton did pass some things—a landmark budget, and welfare reform. “When Newt took over, at
first, they were awful revolutionaries,” says Jim Kessler of Third Way, the centrist Democratic group. “They passed things that went nowhere. It
was a Bataan Death March to a dead end. Then with the shutdown [in early 1996] they went too far, and then they realized that to keep their
majority they had to govern.” Hence, West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin’s advice to the president: “My recommendation
immediately would be for President Obama to sit down with Clinton and ask him how he did it. You don’t
have to reinvent the wheel here .”
GOP Senate is key to cutting Medicare costs
Peterson, 9-1
Kristina, “GOP Eyes Agenda for Senate,” Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/articles/gop-eyes-agenda-forsenate-1409614151 -- BR
As odds improve that the GOP will control both chambers of Congress next year, Senate Republicans are starting
to plan an agenda intended to extract policy concessions from President Barack Obama without inducing the capital's market-rattling
brinkmanship of recent years. Republican senators say the emerging plans aim to show voters that the party can successfully govern—enacting
GOP policy while avoiding a sharply confrontational tone that some Republicans fear could endanger the party's electoral prospects in 2016.
Some of the top goals include approving the Keystone XL pipeline, passing accelerated rules for overseas trade agreements, speeding up federal
reviews of natural-gas exports and repealing the 2010 health law's medical-device tax. Such an approach has some in the tea-party wing calling
the strategy too cautious, saying the point of fighting for a GOP majority is to push for more ambitious Republican priorities. Republicans control
the House and need to gain six seats for a majority in the Senate, an outcome that independent analysts say is increasingly likely due to Mr.
Obama's low approval ratings and an election map that forces Democrats to defend seats in some GOP-leaning states. Top Republicans from each
Senate committee have been meeting "for some time" to discuss which bills stand the best chance of clearing a GOP-controlled Congress, said
Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee. Many of these measures have drawn some level of
Democratic support, suggesting that Mr. Obama might have trouble rejecting them. "I want to put things on the president's desk that he will have
to think long and hard about and would be encouraged to sign," Mr. Barrasso said. Republicans aren't expected to win the 60 seats needed in the
Senate to overcome Democratic procedural hurdles on most legislation, leading some in the GOP to aim for opportunities to pull policy modestly
to the right and at least map out priorities for bigger issues like overhauling the tax code. In addition, some Republicans worry that the kind of
confrontation that marked recent budget talks could create voter backlash ahead of 2016, when the party is aiming to win the White House and
may have to defend more than two-thirds of the Senate seats up for election that year. "No senator will be more disappointed if we happen to end
up in the majority and we squander it totally by overreaching." said Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.). Mr. Obama, in a Labor Day speech Monday in
Milwaukee, urged voters not to let Republicans set the national agenda. "They oppose almost everything," Mr. Obama said in comments aimed at
motivating Democratic voters. "They oppose stuff they used to be for. They used to be for building roads and bridges." When the crowd booed
the GOP, Mr. Obama said: "It's easy to boo. I want you to vote.'' Regaining a Senate majority would give Republicans full control of Congress for
the first time since 2007. It also would end what has been a relative rarity in Congress: divided control of the House and Senate. Five of the past
10 Congresses, dating to 1995, have been under Republican control, with two under Democratic control and the bulk of three sessions divided.
The approach described by some GOP lawmakers and aides risks frustrating the most conservative corners of the party, who pushed the
confrontational tactics that helped lead to last fall's partial government shutdown. "There's certainly a risk that if the mentality is to make the
trains run on time and find some small areas of agreement that conservatives will be left on the outside," said Dan Holler, spokesman of Heritage
Action for America, the lobbying arm of a think tank that has championed the party's most conservative lawmakers and legislation. Rep. Jack
Kingston (R., Ga.) said he would be disappointed if the party deferred bold action because it had its eye on the next election. He said the best
course was to commit to a firm agenda, so that a GOP takeover of the Senate wouldn't amount to "one magnificent gavel switch, and nothing of
substance happening." One area likely to foster some internal GOP divisions is how to approach the Affordable Care Act. Some Republicans
think seeking narrow changes would be most effective. In addition to repealing the medical-device tax, some Republicans aim to change the
definition of a full-time worker under the health law to ease the law's requirements on businesses. Others say that voting on a wholesale scrapping
of the law is crucial to establishing a GOP agenda. "A Republican-controlled Congress has to reaffirm its position that Obamacare needs to be
repealed," said Mr. Holler. "That's a no-brainer." Should they take the Senate majority, one area in which Republicans plan to exercise their new
leverage without Democratic support is the federal budget, which requires only a simple majority, generally 51 votes, to pass the chamber. "So,
in the House and Senate, we own the budget," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said at a private June summit of
conservatives and donors, outlining his strategy for a GOP-controlled Senate. Republicans will try to pressure Mr. Obama to agree to policy
changes by attaching GOP-favored measures to their budget, Mr. McConnell said. The budget can be a vehicle for policy on a
range of issues if lawmakers use a parliamentary tactic called "reconciliation" to enable measures to pass with a simple majority. Still,
passing a GOP budget would meet significant political challenges. With 24 Republican seats likely to be up for election in 2016, compared with a
likely 10 Democratic seats, efforts to clear a budget through both chambers could prove difficult if House Republicans coalesce around deep cuts
to federal safety-net programs such as Medicare and Medicaid to rein in the budget deficit. Democrats already are criticizing GOP budget plans
that they say would cut social programs. "Republicans are clearly planning to continue pushing their irresponsible and extreme
budget policies, and families and communities across the country know exactly what that looks like—slashing job-creating investments in
education, infrastructure and research and making deep cuts to programs like Medicare that seniors depend on,'' said Sen. Patty
Murray (D., Wash.), who leads the Senate Budget Committee. Republicans also need to find a way to navigate often-treacherous issues such as
the U.S. government hitting its borrowing limit in mid-March. Past confrontations over the debt ceiling have been ugly. "I've always thought it's
easy to overreach there, and you don't want to do that," said former Sen. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.), who served as the party's Senate whip, or No. 2
leader. Complicating the task of party leaders: Some of the Senate's most fiscally conservative members are likely to be among those contending
for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, among them Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida. They
may be looking to policy gains important to GOP presidential primary voters at a time when party leaders are looking to the broader electorate.
Sen. Rob Portman (R., Ohio) said GOP lawmakers are motivated to remain largely unified. "There's an understanding among my colleagues that
we do need to get to yes," he said.
2NC AT Fettweis
Empirics go aff – hegemony has made war obsolete**
Owen, Professor Politics U of Virginia, ’11 (John, February 11, “Don’t Discount Hegemony” Cato,
www.cato-unbound.org/2011/02/11/john-owen/dont-discount-hegemony/)
Andrew Mack and his colleagues at the Human Security Report Project are to be congratulated. Not only do
they present a study with a striking conclusion, driven by data, free of theoretical or ideological
bias, but they also do something quite unfashionable: they bear good news. Social scientists really are not supposed
to do that. Our job is, if not to be Malthusians, then at least to point out disturbing trends, looming catastrophes, and
the imbecility and mendacity of policy makers. And then it is to say why, if people listen to us, things will get better.
We do this as if our careers depended upon it, and perhaps they do; for if all is going to be well, what need then for
us? Our colleagues at Simon Fraser University are brave indeed. That may sound like a setup, but it is not. I shall
challenge neither the data nor the general conclusion that violent conflict around the world has been
decreasing in fits and starts since the Second World War. When it comes to violent conflict among and
within countries, things have been getting better. (The trends have not been linear—Figure 1.1 actually
shows that the frequency of interstate wars peaked in the 1980s—but the 65-year movement is clear.) Instead I shall
accept that Mack et al. are correct on the macro-trends, and focus on their explanations they advance for these
remarkable trends. With apologies to any readers of this forum who recoil from academic debates, this might get
mildly theoretical and even more mildly methodological. Concerning international wars, one version of the
“nuclear-peace” theory is not in fact laid to rest by the data. It is certainly true that nuclear-armed states have been
involved in many wars. They have even been attacked (think of Israel), which falsifies the simple claim of “assured
destruction”—that any nuclear country A will deter any kind of attack by any country B because B fears a retaliatory
nuclear strike from A. But the most important “nuclear-peace” claim has been about mutually
assured destruction, which obtains between two robustly nuclear-armed states. The claim is that (1) rational
states having second-strike capabilities—enough deliverable nuclear weaponry to survive a nuclear first strike by an
enemy—will have an overwhelming incentive not to attack one another; and (2) we can safely assume that nucleararmed states are rational. It follows that states with a second-strike capability will not fight one another. Their
colossal atomic arsenals neither kept the United States at peace with North Vietnam during the Cold War nor
the Soviet Union at peace with Afghanistan. But the argument remains strong that those arsenals did help keep
the United States and Soviet Union at peace with each other. Why non-nuclear states are not deterred
from fighting nuclear states is an important and open question. But in a time when calls to ban the Bomb are being
heard from more and more quarters, we must be clear about precisely what the broad trends toward peace can and
cannot tell us. They may tell us nothing about why we have had no World War III, and little about the wisdom of
banning the Bomb now. Regarding the downward trend in international war, Professor Mack is friendlier to
more palatable theories such as the “democratic peace” (democracies do not fight one another, and the
proportion of democracies has increased, hence less war);the interdependence or “commercial peace” (states
with extensive economic ties find it irrational to fight one another, and interdependence has increased, hence less
war); and the notion that people around the world are more anti-war than their forebears were.
Concerning the downward trend in civil wars, he favors theories of economic growth (where commerce is enriching
enough people, violence is less appealing—a logic similar to that of the “commercial peace” thesis that applies
among nations) and the end of the Cold War (which end reduced superpower support for rival rebel factions in so
many Third-World countries). These are all plausible mechanisms for peace. What is more, none of
them excludes any other; all could be working toward the same end. That would be somewhat puzzling,
however. Is the world just lucky these days? How is it that an array of peace-inducing factors happens
to be working coincidentally in our time, when such a magical array was absent in the past? The
answer may be that one or more of these mechanisms reinforces some of the others , or perhaps some
of them are mutually reinforcing. Some scholars, for example, have been focusing on whether economic growth
might support democracy and vice versa, and whether both might support international cooperation, including to end
civil wars. We would still need to explain how this charmed circle of causes got started, however. And here let me
raise another factor, perhaps even less appealing than the “nuclear peace” thesis, at least outside of the United States.
That factor is what international relations scholars call hegemony—specifically American hegemony. A theory
that many regard as discredited, but that refuses to go away, is called hegemonic stability theory. The
theory emerged in the 1970s in the realm of international political economy. It asserts that for the global
economy to remain open—for countries to keep barriers to trade and investment low—one powerful
country must take the lead. Depending on the theorist we consult, “taking the lead” entails paying for global
public goods (keeping the sea lanes open, providing liquidity to the international economy), coercion (threatening to
raise trade barriers or withdraw military protection from countries that cheat on the rules), or both. The theory is
skeptical that international cooperation in economic matters can emerge or endure absent a
hegemon. The distastefulness of such claims is self-evident: they imply that it is good for everyone the world over
if one country has more wealth and power than others. More precisely, they imply that it has been good for the
world that the United States has been so predominant. There is no obvious reason why hegemonic
stability theory could not apply to other areas of international cooperation, including in security
affairs, human rights, international law, peacekeeping (UN or otherwise), and so on. What I want to
suggest here—suggest, not test—is that American hegemony might just be a deep cause of the steady
decline of political deaths in the world. How could that be? After all, the report states that United States is
the third most war-prone country since 1945. Many of the deaths depicted in Figure 10.4 were in wars that involved
the United States (the Vietnam War being the leading one). Notwithstanding politicians’ claims to the contrary, a
candid look at U.S. foreign policy reveals that the country is as ruthlessly self-interested as any other great power in
history. The answer is that U.S. hegemony might just be a deeper cause of the proximate causes
outlined by Professor Mack. Consider economic growth and openness to foreign trade and
investment, which (so say some theories) render violence irrational. American power and policies
may be responsible for these in two related ways. First, at least since the 1940s Washington has
prodded other countries to embrace the market capitalism that entails economic openness and
produces sustainable economic growth. The United States promotes capitalism for selfish
reasons, of course: its own domestic system depends upon growth, which in turn depends upon the efficiency
gains from economic interaction with foreign countries, and the more the better. During the Cold War most of its
allies accepted some degree of market-driven growth. Second, the U.S.-led western victory in the Cold War
damaged the credibility of alternative paths to development—communism and importsubstituting industrialization being the two leading ones—and left market capitalism the
best model. The end of the Cold War also involved an end to the billions of rubles in Soviet
material support for regimes that tried to make these alternative models work. (It also, as
Professor Mack notes, eliminated the superpowers’ incentives to feed civil violence in the Third
World.) What we call globalization is caused in part by the emergence of the United States as
the global hegemon.
2NC—UQ Wall
The GOP will win six seats now – they’re 60% favorites but the race is close – the highestquality polls and 538’s statistical model all show they’re slight favorites – defer to Silver, he
correctly picked every Senate race in 2008 and his model was 95% correct in 2010
Campbell, 9-4-14 – Greg, Colorado bureau chief for The Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Gardner Edging Out Udall In Latest Senate Forecasts,” Daily Caller, http://dailycaller.com/2014/09/04/gardneredging-out-udall-in-latest-senate-forecasts/#ixzz3CT2sd7ys – BR
FiveThirtyEight successfully predicted the outcomes of 34 of 36 Senate races in 2010 , but as noted by the conservative
blog Colorado Peak Politics, one of those he missed was a Colorado race. Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet beat challenger Ken Buck by one
point when Silver predicted it would go the opposite way by one point.
The GOP is ahead and Kansas is irrelevant but the link threshold is low
Cohn, 9-26-14—Nate, self-made pollster extraordinaire, Republicans Pull Ahead Again in Battle for Senate, The
Upshot blog @ NY Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/27/upshot/republicans-pull-ahead-again-in-battle-forsenate.html?abt=0002&abg=0
If the polls of early September were a reminder that the Democratic path to 50 seats remains open, then the
last two weeks were a reminder of how quickly that path could close. Recent polls in Iowa, Colorado and Alaska have offered
better news for Republicans. As a result, the Republicans are again slight favorites to retake the Senate, according to Leo, The
Upshot’s Senate model. They have a 61 percent chance of retaking the chamber, up from 50 percent in the middle of last week. The shift toward the
Republicans is not necessarily significant. The national race is so close that moving a key state by one or two points in
either direction can produce a seemingly large shift in the overall Senate picture. Nonetheless, the last week or so of one- or
two-point shifts have made the Republican path to 51 seats look easier. The Republicans are clear favorites to win at least 49 seats,
including five seats currently held by Democrats: South Dakota, Montana, West Virginia, Arkansas and Louisiana. Republicans aren’t assured to win in Louisiana or
Arkansas — where a Suffolk poll recently gave Senator Mark Pryor his first lead in a while — but the public data leaves few serious questions about which candidate
there, Republicans would need positive news in two of five races — Kansas, Alaska, Iowa,
Colorado and North Carolina — to control the 51 seats needed to avoid the tiebreaking vote of Vice President Joe Biden.
The Democratic path to victory, on the other hand, is steeper. There is no Democratic candidate in Kansas,
and the party has little control over the prospects of the independent candidate Greg Orman or whether he
would caucus with the Democrats if he won. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is probably not counting on Mr. Orman to win in
Kansas — even if he might well do so. Democrats thus need to plan on winning all four of those competitive races with a
Democratic candidate: Iowa, North Carolina, Alaska and Colorado. If they lose one, they will need to hope for a comeback in
has the advantage. From
Louisiana, Arkansas or Georgia, where Democrats remain competitive in an open contest for a Republican-held seat. Otherwise, they would need Mr. Orman to win
and caucus with the Democrats. A couple of weeks ago, the Democrats appeared to hold at least a nominal lead in all four of those competitive states. The last week of
polls highlighted just how tenuous those leads were — and therefore how quickly the Democratic path to 50 seats might close off. Four consecutive surveys have
shown Cory Gardner, the Republican candidate in Colorado, in the lead. Two nonpartisan polls — the only two of the last three weeks — showed Dan Sullivan, the
Republican candidate in Alaska, also in the lead. The Republicans have not held a consistent lead in Iowa, but the Democrats haven’t led any of the last three polls
there, either. As a result, Leo now makes Republicans slight favorites in these states — and that’s the main reason the fight for Senate control has drifted toward the
Republicans. Alaska, Iowa and Colorado remain tossups, according to Leo. It is entirely possible that the next wave of public polling will bring much better news for
Democrats, as the wave in early September did. But if the Republicans continue to lead in Colorado and Alaska polls,
the polls in the 51 seats necessary to secure the majority — even without Kansas .
they will have an advantage in
2NC—Thumpers Screen
Thumpers don’t answer our internal link—people will already turnout because of (insert
their thumper here)—our internal link is based on the plan inspiring Dem voters who
otherwise won’t turn out for anything else—they’ve only read a brink that proves the
election is close and the link threshold is low
The GOP gave up on Obamacare—they aren’t even spending on ads
Maloy, 8-20-14—
Simon, “GOP surrenders on Obamacare: Why they slashed spending on anti-ACA ads,” Salon,
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/20/gop_surrenders_on_obamacare_why_they_slashed_spending_on_anti_aca_ads/ -BR
The Obamacare air war is turning out to be one of the most interesting facets of the 2014 midterms. At the end of last year and in early 2014,
Republicans and conservative pundits were forthright in their belief that the Affordable Care Act and its many
implementation-related stumbles were political kryptonite for Democrats, and many millions of dollars were spent producing and
airing advertisements attacking the law and anyone with a (D) next to their name who was even tangentially associated with it. The strategy
made sense at the time: The Affordable Care was going through a public relations nightmare, and GOP strategists saw not only a political
weapon to use against the Democrats, but an enduring policy failure that would not get better. “Fixing the website problems will not fix
Obamacare,” Republican pollster Whit Ayres wrote in November 2013. “The myriad problems identified by Republicans throughout the
congressional debate are becoming obvious as the law is implemented. Policies are being canceled. Requirements to buy comprehensive policies
that people do not want or need are causing premiums to skyrocket. Healthy young people are not signing up.” That message, and the promise of
anti-Obamacare ads sinking Democrats, was eaten up by pundits. And so the negative ACA ads blared across competitive districts and states,
completely drowning out the mild whisper of pro-ACA advertisements by a factor of 15-to-1. But in the months since the law’s
rollout, the many problems Obamacare faced – broken website, skyrocketing premiums, insufficient numbers of young enrollees –
were either fixed or never materialized. And Obamacare , contrary to Republican expectations, started working. Enrollees
started receiving benefits and benefiting from subsidized coverage. And now, according to Bloomberg, spending on anti-ACA
advertisements has plummeted: Republicans seeking to unseat the U.S. Senate incumbent in North Carolina have cut in half the portion
of their top issue ads citing Obamacare, a sign that the party’s favorite attack against Democrats is losing its punch. The shift — also taking
place in competitive states such as Arkansas and Louisiana — shows Republicans are easing off their strategy of criticizing Democrats
over the Affordable Care Act now that many Americans are benefiting from the law and the measure is unlikely to be repealed.
Thus died
the Republican dream of riding Obamacare to a crushing midterm victory . As Bloomberg put it, the focus is shifting
from simply attacking the ACA to linking it to economic ills, like the slow recovery and the weak job market. “The party’s experience
across the country shows that Republicans can’t count on the issue to motivate independent voters they need to
oust Democrats in Arkansas, Louisiana and Alaska,” Bloomberg reports.
2nc Link Wall
A majority of Americans favor legalizing weed and would be highly motivated to vote—
polls of likely voters conclude people are 68% more likely to show up at the polls, flipping
the GOP’s turnout edge by driving key youth voters to the polls—that’s the Linskey
evidence
Legalization alone is sufficient to keep the Senate Democratic
Hudak, 8-20-14—Fellow in Governance Studies @ Brookings, M.A. and Ph.D., Vanderbilt University, Political
Science
John, “Harry Reid Should Love Marijuana: How Legalization Could Keep the Senate Blue,” The Brookings Institute
– FixGov, FixGov is a blog that identifies and aims to solve the nation’s most pressing political and governance
challenges, http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/fixgov/posts/2014/08/20-harry-reid-marijuana-keep-the-senate-bluehudak -- BR
Marijuana legalization might ensure Harry Reid remains the Senate Majority Leader in 2014 . In a year in which
the battle for majority control of the Senate is the biggest story of the midterms, every race counts. One of the more competitive
battles for the Senate is taking place in Alaska, where incumbent Sen. Mark Begich is fighting for another six-year term. However,
the Senate race is not the only choice Alaskans will face this November. They will decide whether their state will legalize recreational marijuana,
following their counterparts to the south: Washington and Colorado. There are many reasons why the Alaska Senate race is competitive. Begich
eked out a win in 2008 over the late Senator Ted Stevens. Alaska is a conservative, Republican-voting state. Mitt Romney carried
the state by 14 points in 2012. In fact, Alaska has only given its electoral votes to a Democratic candidate once since statehood, during LBJ’s
1964 landslide victory. Finally, this year’s Senate race falls during a midterm, when electorates tend to favor Republican candidates, particularly
with an unpopular Democrat in the White House. Marijuana legalization could change that by dramatically changing the
character and nature of the midterm electorate in Alaska, and helping Sen. Begich win reelection. People turn out for
elections when they feel passion about a candidate or a race, but ballot
initiatives can also generate interest, passion and
turnout . Research by Smith, DeSantis & Kassel illustrate that ballot initiatives in 2004 centering on outlawing same sex
marriage generated additional turnout (even in a presidential year) among conservatives in key states. Passion about
marijuana legalization can do the same, and we have evidence of this effect. In 2012, Colorado and Washington had
statewide referenda on the question of marijuana legalization. With those initiatives on the ballot, the composition of each state’s electorate
changed in significant ways. Using exit poll data to compare changes in the characteristics of the electorate in each state between 2008 and 2012,
we can make inferences about the effects of legalization initiatives. Marijuana legalization supporters, particularly passionate
ones, tend to be younger and either more liberal or more libertarian in nature—though recent polls suggest broader
support in the electorate. In Washington in 2008, the 18-29 demographic composed 10% of the electorate. In 2012, with legalization on the ballot,
that number increased to 21% of the electorate—a more than 100% increase. The effect was even more pronounced for the 18-24 demographic,
where electoral composition increased from 5% to 13% In addition, in 2008, 27% of the electorate called themselves “liberal.” In 2012, that
number increased to 31%. Similar trends existed in Colorado. In 2008, the 18-29 demographic composed 14% of the electorate. In 2012, that
group composed 20% of voters. In fact, in Colorado the 18-24 demographic increased from 5% to 12% of the electorate from 2008 to 2012. The
ideological composition of turnout changed as well. In 2008, 17% of the electorate called itself liberal. In 2012, that figure skyrocketed to 28%.
In Washington and Colorado, the composition of those who turned out to voted changed dramatically between 2008 and 2012—each a
presidential year. Nationally, there was little change in the composition of the electorate in terms of youth and liberalism. But in the states with
marijuana legalization initiatives it did, dramatically. There is also evidence those electoral shifts helped Democrats. In
Colorado, those who voted in favor of Amendment 64 (marijuana legalization) voted for President Obama at a rate of 68%—far above his
support among all Colorado voters (51%). Similarly, in Washington, among those who voted in favor of Initiative 502 (marijuana
legalization), 72% also voted for President Obama. The president won about 56% statewide. Roll Call’s Henry Decker and FireDogLake’s Jon
Walker have also offered great insight into how electoral changes coincide with marijuana legalization initiatives. However, there is more
to this story than simply turnout. In many ways, Democrats have missed a real opportunity to make
electoral gains—or limit losses —by pushing legalization initiatives. Some credit President Bush’s reelection in 2004 to the
push for same sex marriage initiatives on statewide ballots by spurring social conservative turnout. Democrats could have received a similar boost
by pushing legalization initiatives that would alter the electorate in a year when Democrats need it for structural and political reasons.
Nevertheless, marijuana legalization efforts are quite different than 2004 same sex marriage initiatives—even beyond the nature of the issues
themselves. Same sex marriage initiatives were pushed by the Republican Party in 2004. Efforts in the White House, Congress, and in statehouses
drove such initiatives and the political planning around them. On the other hand, the Democratic Party is not spearheading legalization efforts. In
fact, there are many factions of the Democratic Party still quite resistant to legalization. Instead, legalization supporters are the ones pushing
legalization initiatives. They compose an odd combination of liberal Democrats, libertarian and conservative Republicans, and apathetic
moderates. In many ways, Democratic Party institutions are still not ready or too timid to spearhead legalization movements. And frankly,
legalization supporters would likely resist such party control of the movement—and for good reason. Including legalization initiatives on
midterm ballots would almost certainly change the composition of the electorate, but they do not guarantee a win. In fact, the standard
composition of midterm electorates—which favors older, wealthier, and more conservative voters—will likely discourage initiatives in many
states because of the risk of failure. When a state rejects an initiative, it serves as a blow to the momentum of that movement within the state—
something legalization supporters would prefer to avoid. Alaska and Oregon will vote whether to legalize marijuana this November, and
regardless of the outcomes, the presence of those initiatives will likely drive younger and more liberal voters to the
polls. However, legalization supporters would be wise to wait until 2016 and capitalize on a dual effect. A presidential election year will bring
out voters more sympathetic to legalization, and legalization will bring out even more young, liberal voters than normal. Marijuana may
keep Mark Begich in the Senate and Harry Reid at the helm in 2014, but it may have an even bigger impact on
Democratic gains in 2016.
The plan delivers a Democratic victory—turnout, lobbies and youth and elderly voters
Abdullah, 14—citing;
 Gettman, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Shenandoah University
 Sabet, an assistant professor at the University of Florida's Drug Policy Institute
 Arterton, a political management professor at George Washington University
 Several polls including Pew and a CNN/ORC national poll
Halimah , “Could pot push voters to the polls this fall?” CNN Politics, May 8,
http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/08/politics/marijuana-midterms/ --BR
Political operatives are pushing pot legalization in several states this year in the hopes of sparking high turnout in
this fall's midterm elections, and are looking ahead to 2016 as well. If voters approve a closely-watched ballot initiative in November,
Florida could become the first Southern state to allow medical marijuana. And voters in Alaska and Oregon — two states that already
allow medical marijuana and have decriminalized harsh sentencing for some recreational use — will likely vote on whether to join Colorado
and Washington in allowing, taxing and regulating pot for recreational use. A look at marijuana laws in the U.S. There's not much of a
smoke screen shrouding as to why some Democratic political strategists would want marijuana measures on
ballots this year given President Barack Obama's low approval numbers and the party's historic slump in terms of
turnout in midterm election years, marijuana policy analysts said. 'Young adults and legalization' "It's nothing but politics,"
said Jon Gettman, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Shenandoah University. "If anyone's electoral strategy is to
bring out new voters , one area they would target is young adults and marijuana legalization." That's because
people under 30 are more likely to use and be arrested for pot , Gettman said. And, he added, young voter attitudes about
legalizing marijuana also tends to cut across political ideologies and includes a cross section of liberals and libertarians. According to a
Pew Research Center poll conducted in February, 70% of respondents between 18 and 29 believe marijuana should
be legalized. Comparatively, 32% of people 65 and older support legalization. So, political operatives and their well-heeled backers have
sallied forth, in part, with the hopes of hooking those elusive young voters with the allure of legalizing marijuana. For example, Oregon's petition
drive, which the National Conference of State Legislatures said is gaining steam, is funded by New Approach Oregon. The group last year
received $50,000 from the Drug Policy Alliance, an organization with ties to billionaire and pro-marijuana legalization advocate George Soros.
Alaska's Begich in tight race In Alaska, "the finances were right" to put money and effort into getting a ballot initiative, said Dan
Riffle, director of federal policies for the Marijuana Policy Project, a pro-pot legalization group. In that state, Democratic Sen. Mark Begich is in
a competitive race to keep his seat. Those
who oppose marijuana legalization balk at the influence of big cash and
election year pushes. "It hasn't been a fair fight in terms of messaging. They've spent over $100 million to advocate this,"
said Kevin Sabet, an assistant professor at the University of Florida's Drug Policy Institute. "It speaks to the money in
marijuana politics." Pot Politics "You have special interest groups lobbying, pollsters, public relations and
marijuana companies that are funding this. They stand to make a lot of money if (marijuana legalizes nationally)," said
Sabet who served as a drug policy adviser to both Republican and Democratic administrations and is on the board of directors of Smart
Approaches to Marijuana, an anti-pot legalization group. "This
is about creating the next big tobacco and getting rich off of other
legalization advocates have also netted the
support of older voters who perhaps may be more likely to suffer from ailments they hope marijuana can
alleviate, and those who were born during the 1960s and 70s and bore witness to looser cultural attitudes about drug use, marijuana policy
experts said. Drawing voters to polls Pot measures are more likely to draw voters to the polls, said Chris Arterton, a
political management professor at George Washington University who helped conduct a national poll in late March examining
people's addictions." In the effort to get marijuana-related ballot initiatives, pro-pot
the issue.
Boosting Millennial turnout wins Dems the Senate
McDermott, 14
Kevin, “Millennials could hold the key for Democrats in congressional midterms,” St Louis Post Dispatch,
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/millennials-could-hold-the-key-for-democrats-incongressional-midterms/article_a1e79d10-43a7-5bc9-94cb-269c41f2fb61.html --BR
The Millennial Generation could salvage Democrats' hopes going in to an ominous midterm congressional
election season this year. But only if those young people actually make it to the polls. And recent history says
that's a big “if.” That's what one Democratic polling firm calls “the challenge and the opportunity” facing the party this year regarding 18to-31-year-olds. The firm, Harstad Strategic Research, released a new national poll Thursday that largely reiterates what the nation's political
class has understood for a while now: Today's young voters are overwhelmingly progressive, and are far more likely
to
side with Democrats than Republicans on an array of issues. But they also have this way of not showing up. “I
think the Democrats have a real challenge in 2014. The (electoral) dropouts are a very real factor. There's real potential
here to change the electorate, but it's not easy ,” pollster Paul Harstad said on a national conference call with reporters Thursday
outlining the results of the poll. A long-time pollster for President Barack Obama, Harstad's current poll was conducted at the behest of the Youth
Engagement Fund and Project New America, which advocate progressive politics, to take the temperature of our youngest voting bloc. The
results aren't particularly surprising. We already knew that Millennials put Obama over the top in 2008, then
sat on their hands in 2010 and allowed the GOP take over of the House. Indeed, the poll indicates that history may repeat
itself in the next two elections: It found that, while 55 percent of Millennials plan to vote for president in 2016 —
generally good news for whoever is the Democratic nominee that year — just 28 percent are willing to make
the same vow to vote in this year's midterms, as Democrats struggle to hold the Senate. The question isn't how Millennials will
vote. Poll after poll, including this one, shows the 20-somethings, while less likely than their older counterparts to identify specifically with any
one party, are overwhelmingly in favor of progressive policies on the economy, guns, gay rights, abortion and other issues, aligning them strongly
with Democrats. The question, Harstad said, is “if these young adults can be persuaded to vote .” In 2010, only one in six
eligible Millennials went to the polls, and their absence was widely viewed as a significant factor in the Republican takeover of the House that
year. Those young voters came out in relative force in 2012, however, and were again a deciding factor, helping
give Obama a second term by backing him about 67 percent to 30 percent. The national online survey of 2,004 Americans ages 18-31 was
conducted March 30 through April 3, and has a margin for error of plus or minus 2.2 percent.