1NC – T Establish

“Establish” means make laws

Word Net 12 Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2012 Princeton
University, Farlex Inc.http://www.thefreedictionary.com/establish
4. establish - institute, enact, or establish; "make laws"
lay down, make
set, mark - establish as the highest level or best performance; "set a record"
create, make - make or cause to be or to become; "make a mess in one's office"; "create a furor"

Only Congress may establish laws

Charney 85
Jonathan I. Charney, Professor of Law, Vanderbilt University; Board of Editors, Judicial Deference In Foreign Relations, 83 Am. J.
Int'l L. 805, 1985, Westlaw

Disputes with foreign policy implications have often been brought to the federal courts. These cases call attention to the tension
between the authority of the political branches to conduct the foreign relations of the United States and the authority of the courts to
render judgments according to the law. How this tension is resolved, in turn, bears directly on the commitment of the United States
to the rule of law. The courts have responded in various ways when U.S. foreign policy has been implicated in cases
before them. In some circumstances, courts have accorded complete deference to the position expressed by the executive branch. In
others, that position has been given great weight, has been treated as particularly persuasive evidence or has been considered as
merely relevant evidence. In still other cases, courts have disregarded the Executive's position completely. Sometimes courts have
abstained from deciding such issues. Cases have been dismissed outright without prejudice to the merits, and judgments have been
rendered without addressing the foreign policy questions. Finally, through the application of conflicts-of-law rules, courts have
relied upon foreign determinations. This variety may reflect a purely political approach by the courts or the application of a
normative rule derived from the constitutional relationship between the courts and the political branches—but it most likely reflects
a combination of the two. This essay summarizes and critiques the principal arguments with respect to the propriety of judicial
deference and abstention in such cases. While lengthy and highly reasoned judicial opinions have addressed this question, no
consensus has been reached on the appropriate role for the judiciary in cases relating to U.S. foreign relations. Neutral constitutional
*806 principles that support judicial deference or abstention have not been established. Pragmatic concerns about the effective
execution of U.S. foreign policy appear to demand that the executive branch of the Government be accorded a salient role when such
matters are involved in litigation. These concerns have led courts to accord great respect to the executive branch's positions. This
deference, however, may be unjustified in many cases. Constitutional theories differ on the allocation of federal authority and the
appropriate role of the courts in foreign affairs. Notwithstanding United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp.,1 the U.S.
Constitution does not allocate the entire foreign affairs power to the President or to the Congress. With few exceptions, the
Constitution is devoid of any specific assignment of responsibilities for establishing U.S. law and policy in the area of foreign
relations. Furthermore, it contains no textual basis for excluding, limiting or altering the role of the courts when the cases or
controversies they are called upon to decide relate to U.S. foreign relations. The lack of a textual disposition of foreign relations
responsibilities may not have been an oversight. The Framers of the Constitution focused upon the relationship of the federal
checks and balances built into the system were
Government to state governments and to private citizens. The
designed principally to protect the direct interests of the states and their citizens, not foreign states or
aliens. Because the federal Government had the authority of an independent state, the Framers did not devote much attention to the
allocation of foreign relations authority. That authority may have been presumed and may be extraconstitutional. Traditional
separation of powers analysis cannot therefore be easily invoked to decide the distribution of foreign affairs authority. One of the
Framers' objectives arguably was to design a system that would limit the authority of the executive branch so that the policymaking
power of the people could be expressed through legislation enacted by their elected representatives in Congress. The Founding
Fathers sought to establish the United States as a trustworthy member of the international community. As a consequence, they gave
Congress, not the Executive, authority to define and punish offenses against the law of nations through legislation. The Constitution
describes the President's authority as the “executive Power,” requiring that “he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”2
Thus, the President may conduct U.S. foreign relations directly or through ambassadors received or appointed by him. Yet
Congress may be the only branch that establishes U.S. law and policy . The President alone
may not have the authority to make policy, domestic or foreign, that would dictate the results of litigation in courts of law
Vote neg for
limits – Courts affs add a new set of mechanisms that are
unpredictable and large
Ground – courts cant enforce laws so they could read congressional
non compliance to no link disads.
 1NC – T must be all
NHI means government healthcare provided based on citizenship
Starr, Pulitzer Prize winner/PhD Harvard, 92
(Paul, His book The Social Transformation of American Medicine won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction[1] as well as
the Bancroft Prize, Sociology @Princeton,

In recent years the phrase national health insurance has increasingly become identified with a
federally financed and regulated insurance system- a more narrow conception than was current
only a decade ago. When I use the words national health insurance, I mean a system that provides access to a
mainstream standard of coverage on the basis of citizenship rather than employment. All
Americans would be included , and residents who are not citizens could qualify for coverage through their own or a
family member's legal employment or study. (15)

Mandates do not meet – managed competition is not NHI

The Blade 08 (Toledo, Ohio) Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News April 1, 2008
Tuesday National health plan support up: 59% of doctors say yes in poll BYLINE: Julie M.
Mckinnon, The Blade, Toledo, Ohio SECTION: STATE AND REGIONAL NEWS LexisNexis
National health insurance typically involves having a federally administered fund
guaranteeing health coverage for all, as Medicare does for those at least 65 years old and
some disabled people. Incremental reform, meanwhile, involves taking steps such as
mandating that consumers buy coverage from private insurance companies and
offering tax incentives.

Vote neg –
Limits – their interp requires managed competition as being NHI
which allows any amount of tinkering with the ACA, in strength,
services covered, eligibility etc. Limits incentive nuanced research
which is the foundation of prep and clash.
Ground – structural change to healthcare is the core of negative
ground. If modifying healthcare is possible, the negative incredibly
limited. The community chose this topic over the increase financial
access wording
 1NC – Cosmo [G]
National health insurance treats social protection as national good.
The grammar of the welfare nation-state constitutively excludes and
exploits the periphery.
John CLARKE Faculty of Social Sciences @ Open University ‘5 “Welfare States as Nation
States: Some Conceptual Reflections” Social Policy & Society 4:4 p. 409-413
Of these forces unsettling welfare states, globalisation has possibly received the most attention and critical discussion. The
apocalyptic claim that globalisation meant the ‘End of the Welfare State’ has largely been discredited as evidence of the persistence
or survival of (national) welfare states has mounted (see, for example, Esping-Anderson, 1996; Kuhnle, 2000; Sykes, Palier and
Prior, 2001; Taylor-Gooby, 2001). Increasingly, political-institutionalist analyses of persistence have supplanted ‘strong’
globalisation approaches, at least in the field of comparative social policy, and treat nation-states as the locus of adaptation to the
external pressures of globalisation. Taylor-Gooby argues that the ‘national’ is central because:
welfare systems are successful in adjusting to a changed environment in ways that reflect differences in
their current structure and organisation and the political and cultural characteristics of the national context in which they
developed.Welfare is being ‘recalibrated’, ‘recast’, is ‘in transition’, ‘adapting’, ‘restructuring’, ‘evolving’ or ‘being modified’, as the
titles of recent work suggest. (2001: 2–3)

This view retains the foundational concept of the nation-state as the site of welfare politics , policy
and practice. However, treating globalisation as an external or exogenous force mistakes the spatial
formation of nation-states in two ways. First, it juxtaposes the solidly rooted, territorialised, and
institutionally dense space of nation-states with the mobile, transient and deterritorialised flows
of global capital. In contrast, Sassen argues that: the global economy is something that has to be actively
implemented, reproduced, serviced and financed . . . global-economic features like hypermobility and time-space
compression are not self-generative. They need to be produced, and such a feat of production requires capital fixity . . .
vast concentrations of very material and not so mobile facilities and infra-structures. (2001: 262)

At the same time, the ‘external pressure/internal adaptation’ conception of welfare state change mis-
places globalisation. Globalisation clearly involves flows, relationships and institutions that take place beyond particular
nation-states (transnational corporations, the IMF andWorld Bank, or cross-border flows of people). Nevertheless, these
processes, relationships and institutions are also materialised within the borders of nation-states.
Corporate headquarters, production and distribution systems, call centres, etc. are all territorially embodied within specific nation-
states (Yeates, 2001: ch. 3). So, too, are the outputs, products and ‘consumables’ of global capitalism. The ‘external pressure/internal
adaptation’ model tries to sustain a distinction that limits our capacity to understand the spatial realignments associated with
globalisation (Cameron and Palan, 2004). There are forms and fractions of capital that are already (or wish to be) international or
transnational within the ‘national’ space of nation-states. There are political blocs and projects that propound the necessity or
desirability of becoming ‘global’ within the ‘national’ political formation. Similarly, there are ‘national’ citizens who actively seek
aspects of international, transnational and global politics and culture (from international aid, through transnational political
alliances to baseball caps), and there are transnational citizens who seek to locate themselves in more than one national space (Ong,
1999).

In this view, globalisation is not a disembodied external condition, it is materialised within and across nation-states. Globalisation
means, not the dissolution of the nationstate, but the unsettling presence of the ‘world’ within the nation-state. Yeates has argued
that globalisation is a difficult issue for the study of social policy: Its integration into the field of social policy poses questions about
many of the assumptions, concepts and theories that have been integral to social policy analysis. Social policy as a field of academic
study is ill-suited to thinking beyond the nation state as its theories and concepts were developed in a national context. (2001: 19)

The nation-state provides the conceptual foundation for most national studies of social policies, politics and ideologies – the terrain
on which such policy conflicts and developments are seen to take place. In general, welfare states are understood as the result of
The
national histories or national configurations of political/policy/institutional developments (Huber and Stephens, 2001).
nation-state is also the elementary unit of analysis for comparative social policy analysis , enabling
the consideration of the (more or less) divergent models, principles, institutions and trajectories of national welfare systems (see, for
example, Alcock and Craig, 2001; Clasen, 1999; Cochrane, Clarke and Gewirtz, 2001; Esping-Anderson, 1996; Kennet, 2001).

Backtracking the nation-state

The contemporary destabilisation of the apparent unity of people, place, nation and state that
underpinned the nation-state/welfare state formations of the post-war period enables a different
view of the articulation of nation, state and welfare. The ‘container’ conception of the nation-
state saw a people, united in a culture, occupying a clearly defined space, whose collective
identity was expressed in a national politics, working through national institutions that
delivered collective security and progress to the people of the nation . Instead of this organic and expressive
unity, we can now think of the institutionalisation of welfare, state and nation as a constructed
unity: an assemblage that presented itself as natural and normal, and as the highest point of
social development (Leibfried and Z¨ urn, 2005). In the unsettled world of contemporary globalisation, the solidity of the
national (as space, as way of life, as sovereignty) cannot be taken for granted (Gupta and Ferguson, 1992). The traces of this
disturbance can be seen in discussions of the shift from closed to open economies; the relationships between national, regional and
global governance; the forms of mobility and migration; and the proliferation of nations and states, as new or revived collective
identities lay claim to places.

One way of reading these changes is that globalisation has changed the world from one in which organic nation-state/welfare state
formations existed, to one in which they have become destabilised. Such an analysis makes possible, and even legitimates, a certain
political-cultural nostalgia:

Britain in the 1950s was a country stratified by class and region. But inmost of its cities, suburbs, towns and villages there was a good
chance of predicting the attitudes, even the behaviour, of the people living in your immediate neighbourhood . . .

After three centuries of homogenisation though industrialisation, urbanisation, nation-building and war, the British have become
freer and more varied. Fifty years of peace, wealth and mobility have allowed a greater diversity in lifestyles and values. To this
‘value diversity’ has been added ethnic diversity through two big waves of immigration: from the West Indies and Asia in the 1950s
and 1960s, followed by asylum-driven migrants from Europe, Africa and the greater middle east in the late 1990s. (Goodhart, 2004:
30)

But we can think of the national differently. Eley and Suny (1996) argue that nations
should be seen as the outcome,
rather than the basis, of ‘nation building’ projects. Such projects lay claim to spaces, defining their
boundaries and what they contain, and attempt to nationalise them. Nation-building projects are attempts
to make the nation come into being through state institutions, policies and practices which
define and promote a ‘way of life’ for the nation. In the process, nations – as projects, not entities – always have to
deal with ‘difference’, inside as well as outside the nation’s borders. Although the tempos, trajectories and institutional formations
differ substantially, European nation states are the outcome of such processes. We might observe that neither their national cultural
unity nor their territorial integrity quite matches the Westphalian model of the nation-state. This gap between model and experience
creates problems for the image of the unified, sovereign nation-state as the aspirational or normative conception (Leibfried and Z¨
urn, 2005; see also Biersteker and Weber, 1996). In particular, it is the state to which developing or ex-colonised
nations are expected to aspire – and it is, of course, the measure against which ‘failing states’ are judged. It is a hard
model against which to test colonised nations, forged out of domination and dependence, and vulnerable to changes to ownership,
definition and direction. There, the
fragile and constructed character of the relationships between nation,
state and (sometimes) welfare is more evident. The diversity of forms and trajectories of
colonisation and de-colonisation should not obscure the ways in which European ‘nation-
building’ projects were intimately intertwined with colonialism (Balibar, 2002). Metropole and
colony were mutually constitutive in the processes of colonialism : each shaped the conditions and
development of the other. So, what happens if we add to Goodhart’s ‘three centuries of homogenisation’ the question of empire? In
these three centuries, Britain was not a closed economy, society or polity – it was produced in and through its colonial relations,
places and practices. Hall captures this change of perspective in describing the changing conditions of being a historian of Britain:

I was a historian of Britain who assumed that Britain could be understood in itself, without reference to other histories: a legacy of
the assumption that Britain provided the model for the modern world, the touchstone whereby all other national histories could be
judged . . .I have become a historian of Britain who is convinced that, in order to understand the specificity of the national
formation, we have to look outside it. A focus on national histories as constructed, rather than given, on the imagined community of
the nation as created, rather than simply there, on national identities as brought into being through particular discursive work,
requires transnational thinking. (2002: 9)

So, rather than a view of a shift from closed/unitary to open/diverse societies, we might think more carefully about the history of
forms of open-ness and patterns of interrelationship on the one hand, and forms of closure and models of integration on the other.
At the most general level, European nations have been constituted through the effort to create a nation out of contradictory, diverse
and sometimes conflicting, conditions, including their colonial fields. Colonies provided the economic resources for
capital accumulation and economic development; they provided populations on whom to
practise innovative modes of governance; and they provided (some of) the Others against whom
the (racialised) national identity could be defined and elaborated.
I want to argue the importance of locating the trajectory of the nation-state in changing transnational conditions and processes,
rather than see it as moving from a national to a ‘post-national’ form (or merely staying national). In the process, we might come to
see specific nation-states as temporary constructed achievements. Some of these constructions are more visible than others –
whether this is the constructed unity of a United Kingdom, the persistence of the ‘Southern question’ in a unified Italy, the post-
Soviet remaking of central and Eastern Europe, or the complex transitions of South Africa through the twentieth century. But while
such visibility is relative, even the most apparently settled, unified and organic nation-state represents a constructed and naturalised
achievement, rather than a state of nature (Gupta, 1998).

We can now consider the ways in which welfare

states are national in a more constitutive sense. Rather than
taking place in a national space, or reflecting national character or culture, welfare has been one of the
means through which nations are formed and reformed (Lewis, 1998). Welfare states seek to produce a
nation – a People. They attempt to reinforce or enforce certain ‘ways of life’; they regulate forms
of being and behaviour; they classify and categorise the population (and deal differently with its segments);
and they manage the relationships between the public and private realms . I stress ‘seek to’ and ‘attempt
to’ above, because there is no guarantee that such projects succeed (Clarke, 2004). Welfare is enmeshed in the institutionalisation of
conceptions of the nation, its ways of life, its needs and the complex socio-demography of its people and how they are to be governed
(Chatterjee, 2004; Riley and McCarthy, 2003). States are one of the key agencies though which formations of difference are
produced and one of the means by which those differences are reconciled into the imagined unity of a people. Catherine Hall’s
observations on the relation of metropole and colony identify the importance ofmarking andmapping ‘difference’ (see also Lewis,
2003). In the articulation of class, gender, racialised, and sexualised identifications, she argues
that
Marking differences was a way of classifying, of categorising, of constructing boundaries for the
body politic and the body social. Processes of differentiation, positioning men and women, colonisers and colonised, as if
these divisions were natural, were constantly in the making, in conflicts of power . . . The mapping of difference, I suggest, the
constant discursive work of creating, bringing into being, or reworking these hieratic categories, was always a matter of historical
contingency. The map constantly shifted, the categories faltered, as different colonial sites came into the metropolitan focus, as
conflicts of power produced new configurations in one place or another. (2002: 17, 20)

This ‘grammar of difference’ is simultaneously mobile and prone to being solidified and naturalised. It
provides the taxonomic basics for the golden age of welfare states as nation-states: the
distinctions between citizens and non-citizens (aliens, foreigners, migrants, etc.); the racialised imagining
of the nation and its Others; the architecture of gendered worlds of (waged) work and family
(and public and private realms), as well as their embodiment of ‘normal’ sexuality ; the age
norms of ‘dependent’ younger and older people; and the work/welfare distinctions between
able-bodied and disabled people. Many of the struggles around welfare policy and practice that mark the trajectory of
western welfare states have been about trying to rearticulate this taxonomy – to reorder its structure of inclusions and exclusions,
dominations and subordinations, marginalisations and repressions. Challenges to ‘second-class citizenship’ have tried to re-map the
‘body politic and the body social’.

Moving to a constitutive view of welfare draws attention to what conceptions of the nation are installed and enacted in the
institutions of welfare (and other state practices, too). States
both operationalise the grammar of difference
(addressing people in their categoric identities) and articulate conceptions of how all these
differences fit together – the unity of the nation . For example, there are dominant conceptions of a ‘modern’
British people that are articulated by the political project of New Labour and find their way into policies about the relationships
between work and welfare, about the future of family life, about the conditions and character of citizenship, about the problems and
possibilities of a multi-cultural modernity (Clarke and Newman, 1998 and 2004). These are not the same as the dominant
conceptions of a Modern Finnish People that are articulated in the policies and practices of Finnish welfare (Castells and Himanen,
2002). However, both operate on the terrain of similar dynamics and instabilities – the interpenetration of the national, regional
and global spaces; challenges to the public realm; the perception of ‘demographic’ difficulties; the relationships between work and
welfare, and between work, welfare and the private realm (usually described as the family); and the question of ‘post-national’
national identities.
The affirmative misframes the issue of health as distribution. We
must consider the prior political injustice of misrepresentation.
Nancy FRASER Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Philosophy and Politics and at the New
School for Social Research ’13 Fortunes of Feminism p. 12-14
Part III shifts the scene to the present. Today, when neoliberalism is everywhere in crisis, reductive culturalism is widely discredited,
and feminist interest in political economy is fast reviving. What is needed now, accordingly, is a gender-sensitive framework that can
grasp the fundamental character of the crisis— as well as the prospects for an emancipatory resolution. One imperative is to
conceptualize the multilayered nature of the current crisis, which encompasses simultaneous destabilizations of finance, ecology,
and social reproduction.

Another is to
map the grammar of the social struggles that are responding to the crisis and
reshaping the political terrain on which feminists operate. Crucial to both enterprises is the new salience of
transnationalizing forces, which are problematizing “ the Westphalian frame” : that is, the previously
unquestioned idea that the bounded territorial state is the appropriate unit for reflecting on, and
struggling for, justice. As that doxa recedes in the face of intensified transnational power, feminist struggles are
transnationalizing too. Thus, many of the assumptions that undergirded earlier feminist projects are being called into question—
revealed to be indefensible expressions of what Ulrich Beck calls “methodological nationalism.” 4

The chapters comprising Part III aim to develop models of feminist theorizing that can clarify this situation. “ Reframing Justice in a
Global World” (2005) observes that so-called “ globalization” is changing the grammar of political claims-
making. Contests that used to focus chiefly on the question of what is owed as a matter of justice
to members of political communities now turn quickly into disputes about who should count as
a member and which is the relevant community. Not only the substance of justice but also the
frame is in dispute. The result is a major challenge to received understandings, which fail to ponder who should count in
matters of justice. To meet the challenge, I argue, the theory of justice must become three-dimensional,
incorporating the political dimension of representation alongside the economic dimension of
distribution and the cultural dimension of recognition.
“ Reframing Justice in a Global World” constitutes a major revision of the model developed in the previous chapters. Adapting
Weber’s triad of class, status, and party, it identifies not two but three analytically distinct kinds of obstacles to parity of
participation in capitalist societies. Whereas distribution
foregrounds impediments rooted in political
economy, and recognition discloses obstacles grounded in the status order, representation conceptualizes barriers
to participatory parity that are entrenched in the political constitution of society . At issue here are the
procedures for staging and resolving conflicts over injustice: How are claims for redistribution and recognition to be adjudicated?
And who belongs to the circle of those who are entitled to raise them? Directed at clarifying struggles over globalization, this third, “
political” dimension of justice operates on two different levels. On the one hand, I theorize “ ordinary-political injustices,” which
arise internally, within a bounded political community, when skewed decision rules entrench disparities of political voice among
fellow citizens. Feminist struggles for gender quotas on electoral lists are a response to this sort of ordinary-political
misrepresentation. But that’s not all. Equally important, if less familiar, are “ meta-political
injustices,” which arise
when the division of political space into bounded polities miscasts what are actually
transnational injustices as national matters. In this case, affected noncitizens are wrongly excluded
from consideration— as, for example, when the claims of the global poor are shunted into the
domestic political arenas of weak or failed states and diverted from the offshore causes of their
dispossession. Naming this second, meta-political injustice “ misframing,” I argue for a post-
Westphalian theory of democratic justice which problematizes unjust frames. The result is a major
revision of my theory, aimed at addressing transborder inequities in a globalizing world .

Without post-Westaphalian social protection transnational financial

and environmental crisis will destroy the globe.
Nancy FRASER Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Philosophy and Politics and at the New
School for Social Research ’12 “Can society be commodities all the way down? Polanyian
reflections on capitalist crisis” https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00725060
This revision enables a better understanding of the “labor” dimension of the current crisis. By introducing the problematic of male
domination and women’s emancipation, we can grasp crucial aspects of the present constellation that are occulted in more orthodox
Polanyian accounts. It is true, of course, as these accounts suggest, that
wage labor is everywhere in crisis as a
result of neoliberal globalization–witness astronomical rates of unemployment, attacks on
unions, and the involuntary exclusion of roughly two-thirds of the world’s population from
official labor markets. But that is not all. In a further turn of the screw, much of the formerly unwaged activity
of social reproduction is now being commodified– witness, the burgeoning global markets in
adoptions, child-care, babies, sexual services, elder care, and bodily organs . Now add to this the fact it
is increasingly women who are being recruited today into waged work . Thus, neoliberalism is
proletarianizing those who still do the lion’s share of the unwaged work of social reproduction.

And it is doing so at the very moment when it is also insisting on reduced public provision of social welfare and curtailed state
provision of social infrastructure. The overall result is
a deficit of care. To fill the gap, global capitalism
imports migrant workers from poorer to richer countries. Typically, it is racialized and/or rural
women from poor regions who take on reproductive and caring labor previously performed by
wealthier women. But to do this, the migrants must transfer their own familial and community responsibilities to other, still
poorer caregivers, who must in turn do the same–and on and on, in ever longer “global care chains.” Far from filling the care gap,
the net effect is to displace it–from richer to poorer families, from the Global North to the Global South.

Here we see a new, intensified form of fictitious commodification. Activities that once formed the uncommodified background that
made commodified labor possible are now themselves being commodified. The result can only be intensified crisis, as the tiger bites
ever more deeply into its tail. No
wonder, then, that struggles over the social construction of “family and
work” have exploded over recent years–witness the rise of feminist movements and women’s
movements of various stripes; of grass-roots community movements seeking to defend
entitlements to housing, health care, job training, and income support ; of movements for the
rights of migrants, domestic workers, public employees, and of those who perform social service
work in for-profit nursing homes, hospitals, and child care centers . But these struggles do not take the form
of a double movement. they are better grasped, rather, as threesided struggles, encompassing not only neoliberals and social
protectionists, but also proponents of emancipation, including those for whom exploitation represents an advance.

Consider, next, the commodification of nature.

Here, too, Polanyi was prescient, laying the basis in 1944 for an ecological critique of capitalism avant la lettre. He understood that
nature is an indispensable precondition both for social life in general and for commodity
production in particular. He understood too that unbridled commodification of nature is unsustainable, bound to impair both
society and economy. He understood, finally, that, reduced to a factor of production and subjected to unregulated market exchange,
nature is destined to become a node of crisis. Such treatment is bound, moreover, to provoke resistance, sparking movements to
protect nature and human habitats from the market’s ravages. Here, too Polanyi envisioned a “double movement,” a two-sided battle
between environmentalists and free marketeers.

Without question, this perspective is pertinent today. In the 21st century, commodification of nature has proceeded far beyond
anything Polanyi imagined–witness the privatization of water, the bioengineering of sterile seeds, and the patenting of DNA. Such
developments are far more intrusive, and destabilizing, than the land enclosures and free trade in corn he wrote about. Far from
simply trading already existing natural objects, these forms of commodification generate new ones; probing deep into nature, they
alter its internal grammar, much as the assembly line altered the grammar of human labor. Adapting terminology used by Marx, one
could say that such new forms of fictitious commodification effect not just the “formal subsumption,” but the “real subsumption,” of
nature into capitalism. Hence, nature truly is now produced for sale. In addition, the
depletion of the earth’s non-
renewable resources is far more advanced today than in Polanyi’s time–so advanced, indeed, as to raise the
prospect of full-scale ecological collapse. Finally, the neoliberal cure for the ills of markets in nature is more markets–
markets in strange new entities, such as carbon emissions permits and offsets, and in even stranger meta-entities derived from
them, “environmental derivatives,” such as carbon emissions “tranches,” modeled after the mortgage-backed CDOs that nearly
crashed the global financial order in 2008 and now being briskly traded by Goldman Sachs.

No wonder, then, that struggles over nature have exploded over recent years–witness the rise of environmental and indigenous
movements, locked in battles with corporate interests and proponents of “development,” on the one hand, and with workers and
would-be workers who fear the loss of jobs, on the other hand. If there were ever a time when nature was a flashpoint of crisis, it is
today. But these conlicts, like those surrounding labor and care, do not take the form of a simple two-sided struggle between
neoliberals and environmentalists. Like labor, nature is now a site of conlict for a complex array of social
forces, which also include labor unions and indigenous peoples, ecofeminists and ecosocialists,
and opponents of environmental racism. Here, too, in other words, not a double, but a triple movement.
Also encompassing movements for emancipation, such struggles belie romantic
ecofundamentalist perspectives that would flat out prohibit commodification of nature , just as
the feminist critique of patriarchal protection belied romantic communitarian approaches that
would ban commodification of the labor of care . In this case, too, accordingly, what is needed is a
structural critique, divested of all nostalgia and linked to the critique of domination.
Consider, finally, the commodification of money. In this case, too, Polanyi was remarkably prescient. In the 21st century,
financialization has achieved new heights of dizziness, far beyond anything he could have imagined. With the invention of
derivatives, and their metastasization, the commodification of money has floated so free of the materiality of social life as to take on
a life of its own. Untethered
from reality and out of control, “securitization” has unleashed a tsunami
of insecurity, nearly crashing the world economy, bringing down governments , devastating
communities, flooding neighborhoods with under-water mortgages, and destroying the jobs and
livelihoods of billions of people. As I write, moreover, financialization is threatening to destroy the euro, the European
Union, and any pretense of democracy, as bankers routinely overrule parliaments and install governments that will do their bidding.
No wonder, then, that politics is everywhere in turmoil, as movements both on the Left and the Right, mobilize to seek protective
cover. More perhaps even than in Polanyi’s time, finance is at the center of capitalist crisis. Here, too, however, Polanyi’s perspective
harbors a major blindspot. He identified the modern territorial state as the principal arena and agent of social protection. Granted,
he appreciated that the regulatory capacities of states depend importantly on international arrangements. Thus, he rejected the early
20th century free trade regimes that had deprived European states of control over their money supplies and prevented from
adopting policies of full employment and deficit spending. But the best alternative Polanyi could envision was a new international
regime that would reinstate national currency controls and thus facilitate protective policies at the national level. What he did not
anticipate was that the “Embedded Liberalism” (Ruggie 1982) established after the War would serve some states better than others.
In that era of decolonization, imperialism took on a new, indirect, “non-political” form, based on unequal exchange between newly
independent ex-colonies and their erstwhile masters. As a result of this exchange, the wealthy states of the core could continue to
finance their domestic welfare systems on the backs of their former colonial subjects. The disparity was exacerbated in the neoliberal
era, moreover, by the policies of structural adjustment, as international agencies like the IMF used the weapon of debt to further
undercut the protective capacities of postcolonial states, compelling them to divest their assets, open their markets, and slash social
spending. Historically, therefore, international arrangements have entrenched disparities in the capacities of states to protect their
populations from the vagaries of international markets. They have shielded the citizens of the core, but not those of the periphery.

In fact, the national social protection envisioned by Polanyi was never in fact universalizable to the entire world; its viability in the
Global North always depended on value siphoned of from the Global South. Thus, even the most internally egalitarian variants of
postwar social democracy rested on external neo-imperial predation. Today, moreover, as many on the Left have long warned, and
as Greeks have discovered to their dismay, the construction of Europe as an economic and monetary union, without corresponding
political and fiscal integration, simply disables the protective capacities of member states without creating broader, European-level
protective capacities to take up the slack. But that is not all. Absent
global financial regulation, even very
wealthy, free-standing countries find their efforts at national social protection stymied by global
market forces, including transnational corporations, international currency speculators, financiers,
and large institutional investors. The globalization of finance requires a new, post-westphalian way of
imagining the arenas and agents of social protection. It requires arenas in which the circle of
those entitled to protection matches the circle of those subject to risk; and it requires agents
whose protective capacities and regulatory powers are sufficiently robust and broad to
effectively rein in transnational private powers and to pacify global finance . No wonder, then, that
present-day struggles over finance do not conform to the schema of the double movement. Alongside the neoliberals and national
protectionists that Polanyi foregrounded, we also find alter-globalization movements, movements for global or transnational
democracy, and those who seek to transform finance from a profit-making enterprise into a public utility, which can be used to guide
investment, create jobs, promote ecologically sustainable development, and support social reproduction, while also combating
entrenched forms of domination. Such actors represent a new configuration, which aims to integrate social protection with
emancipation. What all of this shows, I believe, is that Polanyi was right to identify labor, land, and money as central nodes and
flashpoints of crisis. But if we are to exploit his insights today, we must complicate his perspective, connecting a structural critique of
fictitious commodification to a critique of domination.

Conclusion

Let me close, however, by returning to a point I stressed at the outset. The

purpose of centering our understanding
of crisis on nature, social reproduction, and finance is not to treat these three dimensions
separately. It is rather to overcome critical separatism by developing a single comprehensive
framework, able to encompass all three of them and thus to connect the concerns of ecologists, feminist theorists and political
economists.

Far from being neatly separated from one another, the three strands of capitalist crisis are inextricably interwoven, as are the three
corresponding processes of fictitious commodification. I have already noted the neoliberals are pressing governments everywhere to
reduce deficits by slashing social spending, thereby jeopardizing the capacity of families and communities to care for their members
and to maintain social bonds; thus, their response to financial crisis is undermining social reproduction. Likewise, I have mentioned
the new speculation in environmental derivatives. What such “green finance” portends is not only economic breakdown, but also
ecological meltdown, as the promise of quick speculative super-profits draws capital away from the long-term, large-scale
investment that is needed to develop renewable energy and to transform unsustainable modes of production and forms of life that
are premised on fossil fuels. he resulting environmental
destruction is bound to further disturb processes of
social reproduction and will likely produce some nasty effects–including zerosum conlicts over oil, water,
air, and arable land, conflicts in which broader solidarities give way to “lifeboat ethics,” to
scapegoating and militarism, and perhaps again to fascism and world war . In any case, we do not need to
rely on such predictions to see that inance, ecology and social reproduction are not neatly separated from one another, but are
deeply and inextricably intertwined.

Alternative: We should frame social policy as the protection of global

public goods not national resources. The political frame for justice
pre-figures the institutional scope of the remedy.
Fiona WILLIAMS Emeritus Social Policy @ New South Wales and Research Associate Centre
on Migration, Policy, and Society @ Oxford ’16 “Critical Thinking in Social Policy: The
Challenges of Past, Present and Future” Social Policy & Administration 50 (6) p. Wiley
This review has followed some of the key developments in critical thinking over the last four decades. It has been necessarily
selective and has taken a synthetic approach which draws out some common and general implications for the study of social policy,
rather than, in the conventional method, treating each critique/movement as a discrete set of ideas. This is in line with an
intersectional method and contributes to my argument that, in the context we now face, generating an integrated
approach is important. Indeed, drawing lessons from contemporary and resurgent activism around, for
example, feminism, welfare cuts, basic income, tax avoidance, human rights, environmentalism,
migration, racism, poverty, social protection, then the importance of alliances is now given greater
priority. Alliances require dialogue and deliberation, a new approach to democratic politics that has been termed
‘transversal politics’ (Yuval-Davis 1999). This has also been the focus of social movements in Latin America in creating ways
of working across diverse groups. Elsewhere, I have argued that social policy academics can assist this process by
developing ‘conceptual alliances’ which bring together the vertical multi-scalar concepts that
enlighten and connect research at micro-meso-macro levels with the horizontal intersections across
fields of contestation and critique (Williams 2015).
Conceptual alliances help in understanding the many dimensions of global crises, austerity
politics and inequalities. For example, Nancy Fraser's analysis of the global crisis links the concurrent
global crises of ecology, finance and social reproduction (Fraser 2013). Each of these follows similar logics: of
devaluing money, the planet's resources and the capacities for care, and of together jeopardizing
security, human solidarity and sustainability. I would add to this the crisis of migration, which has led
not only to the devaluation of solidarity, interdependence and hospitality, but is jeopardizing the
discourses of welfare, social protection and human rights.
However, the past two decades have seen a tendency to separate development within and
between both mainstream and critical approaches in social policy. In a review, Ann Orloff has commented
that while the debates between feminists and mainstream scholars in comparative work have been productive, ‘yet the
mainstream still resists the deeper implications of feminist work, and has difficulties
assimilating concepts of care, gendered power, dependency and interdependency’ (Orloff 2009: 317).
This could also be said of disability and of non-heteronormative models. It is even more marked in areas of race,
ethnicity and migration. There have been helpful developments in understanding the heterogeneity of ethnicity in social
policy, and, after the opening of borders in 2004, there was more social policy research in migration, but this, good as it is, has
tended to be piecemeal.7 In so far as race, migration and ethnicity have been incorporated into mainstream texts on the current state
of welfare then it has tended to be seen as an exogenous phenomenon of migration, and/or coupled with integration or labour
activation policies. The ‘deeper implications’ and framing of recent migration – in terms of the meanings of
nation and nationhood, the development of Islamophobia, the disavowal of multiculturalist policies and of
post-colonial perspectives, the reassertion of European/US/Christian values, which hails feminists and
LGBT activists as its supporters, is now articulated by many states – is not found in mainstream social policy . This is
in spite of the fact that if contemporary public and political discourse about migration is about anything, it is about welfare provision
(Keskinen et al. 2016).

In relation to austerity and inequalities, it is not just that the development of workfare states hits disabled people, working-class
women and youth, minority ethnic groups and migrants in particular ways, it is that the very underpinnings of the emancipatory
politics of those who mobilize for these groups fundamentally challenges the dominant ethic of paid work as the driver of human
existence. Strange, then, that in Thomas Pikketty's powerful analysis of the inequalities of capitalism, none of gender, ethnicity,
minority, migrant or disabled appear in the index (Piketty 2014).

I have argued that key concepts of contradiction and contestation are basic conceptual pillars of critique. Examining the
contradictions of contexts reveals the cracks, gaps and fissures where contestation manifests itself. But critique only goes so far. One
of the significant aspects of 1970s
social movement critique was based on its pre-figurative politics and it
is this, the attempts by new voices to put into practice actions and strategies which imagine and
prefigure an alternative future, that denotes a more optimistic route from past to present to future. This represents a
fifth turn – the Utopian turn – which has a tradition that goes back to the Utopian Socialists of the 19th century and now
resurfaces in scholarship (Wright 2010; Roseneil 2012; Levitas 2013; Cooper 2014), in civil society groups (Hall et al. 2014; Compass
2016) and in grass roots politics – for example, experiments in generating zero growth, and ecologically sustainable local economies
in transition towns. Some of these
movements coalesce in claims for the ‘Commons’, which also have
their application to a social policy future in which the state ‘reasserts collective (public) interests
and enables collective (public) action’ (Newman and Clarke 2014: 7–8). More expansively, Francine Mestrum in a
reconfiguration of the International Labour Organization's proposals for global social protection, argues for the
‘Social Commons’ which are not just about social protection rights but seek to support and
protect the interdependent and solidaristic dimensions of the Commons, including care and the
environment, through a participative democracy in which the diversity of social relations is
represented (Mestrum 2015). The Commons provides a further conceptual device that links different
claims and demands in the here-and-now to alternatives for the future.
The argument for an integrated critical approach does not mean returning to metanarratives, nor embracing every new perspective
uncritically, but examining the salience that past and present challenges have for the future of social policy. The frame of Family-
Nation-Work with its focus on contestation, contradiction and consolidation in multi-layered but unstable welfare settlements can
still provide a way of pulling different dimensions together, especially in its highlighting of Nation. But it is not sufficient to
appreciate either the nature of contemporary challenges or the priorities for governing. I conclude by starting another ball rolling.
Synthesizing the discussions above, then from the work of Fraser (1995) and Honneth (1995) we get three types of claim: for
redistribution, recognition and representation. From work on global social policy, Deacon (2014 2014) has proposed ‘ the
three
Rs of global social policy’ to involve mechanisms of global redistribution; global regulation (of private
companies as well as labour standards); and global social rights (involving income maintenance and international
conventions on rights), to which, following critiques (Kaasch and Stubbs 2014), he broadened these to include ‘resource
consciousness’ which refers to environmental concerns (Gough 2014 2014) and ‘relational’ to signal the need for global justice on
care (Williams 2014). Bringing all these together reflects the many of the priorities from the waves of critical thinking about social
policy over the past 40 years which this article has discussed. It provides the seven Rs as a repertoire of critical demands:
Redistribution, Recognition, Representation, Rights, Regulation, Relationality and Resource-awareness.
 1NC – CP
The federal judiciary should clarify that all of the provisions of the
Clean Air Act are constitutionally legitimate uses of federal spending
power. This ruling should distinguish the Medicaid expansion holding
in NFIB v Sebelius from the enforcement provisions of the Clean Air
Act.
 1NC – DA
Strengthening the ACA accelerates market consolidation in health
care
Christopher M. Pope 14, PhD, former Graduate Fellow in the Center for Health Policy
Studies, of the Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity, at The Heritage Foundation,
8/1/14, “How the Affordable Care Act Fuels Health Care Market Consolidation,”
http://www.heritage.org/health-care-reform/report/how-the-affordable-care-act-fuels-health-
care-market-consolidation

The Affordable Care Act (ACA), often called Obamacare, accelerates the pernicious growth of
market consolidation in American health care.[1]
The national health care law reinforces the trend of providers, including doctors and hospitals,
to merge into large regional health systems that dominate local markets. The law also introduces
new rules and restrictions that will reduce the degree of competition in the insurance market.
This growth of monopoly power is not the result of free-market forces, but the deliberate product of public policy. Instead of
honestly budgeting in order to finance health care, policymakers have repeatedly sanctioned monopolistic hospital markets in the
hope that dominant providers will use higher revenues to cross-subsidize indigent and emergency care. The purchasing power of the
Medicare program has been increasingly employed by the federal government to shape the structure of the hospital industry, and its
payment rates are deliberately designed to give incumbent general hospitals an advantage over less expensive specialty facilities. At
the state level, policies such as certificate-of-need
(CON) laws have been defended by local hospital
monopolies to prevent the construction or expansion of facilities by potential competitors.

Obamacare’s Impact. The ACA eliminates many of the essential competitive checks remaining
in the American health care system. Because the law relies so heavily on unfunded regulatory mandates to
finance the benefit structure, it is obliged to strengthen the power of incumbent providers to prevent
targeted competition from eliminating their profit centers. The provisions of the law attempt to
do so by:

Closing off alternatives to paying for health care by requiring individuals to purchase
comprehensive insurance .

Reducing the ability of insurers to compete with innovations in benefit design by requiring
standardized benefit packages.

Increasing the discriminatory subsidies that protect dominant hospitals from competition.
Limiting patient choices by using Medicare payment policies to drive doctors and other medical professionals into a small number of
integrated hospital systems.

The President’s health care reform therefore represents a concerted attempt to prevent competition in various aspects of health
insurance—including health benefits, provider networks, and cost. In the process, the law has become a fountain of federal
regulation. With
the law’s individual mandate, forcing most Americans to purchase health insurance
regardless of cost, the power of insurers and providers to profit from a captive market is likely to
increase even further. The ACA adds to the array of regulatory instruments that attempt to
contain the damage of anticompetitive policies.
But, the way to increase provider responsiveness to the needs of patients is not through a second set of regulations that punishes
providers for doing what the first set of regulations encouraged them to do. In the absence of competition, highly integrated health
care providers tend to be irresponsive to patient needs, and reliant on crude bureaucratic instruments to prevent costs from
spiraling out of control. Rather than trusting monopolies to provide “uncompensated care” as desired, policymakers should remove
the shackles that have been placed on competition in health care, and transparently appropriate the necessary funds for the care that
they wish to subsidize.

Combating the Conglomerates. There is no shortcut for fixing the problem of monopoly power in American health care. It was
deliberately constructed, and policymakers seeking to reform it must take on a formidable set of entrenched practices and policies.
Specifically, they must: Eliminate unfunded mandates that are incompatible with competition;
repeal legal or regulatory restraints on market entry; retarget health care subsidies and tax breaks from
institutions to individuals; allow patients to shop around for less expensive options; and abolish health
care benefit mandates that create captive markets for providers regardless of value for money.

Consolidation causes financial collapse

Ken Blackwell 15, Senior Fellow with the Family Research Council, Masters from Xavier
University, 11/12/2015, Obamacare’s Creation of ‘Too-Big-to-Fail’ Insurance Companies May
Cause Financial Meltdown, https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/ken-
blackwell/obamacares-creation-too-big-fail-insurance-companies-may-cause-financial
At a recent Congressional hearing, Dr. Mandy Cohen of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services explained that almost
700,000 Americans have lost their health coverage because the insurance co-ops formed under
ObamaCare to foster competition couldn’t compete with “big, experienced players” in the
insurance marketplace.¶ Dr. Cohen was talking about the five major insurance companies that cover the vast majority of
Americans: Aetna, Anthem, Cigna, UnitedHealthcare, and Humana. If the ObamaCare co-ops continue to fold (a virtual certainty)
and the Aetna / Humana and Anthem / Cigna mergers take place (both probabilities), almost all Americans – and indeed America’s
entire healthcare system – will rely on just three insurance companies. ¶ “My guiding principle is, and always has been that
consumers do better when there is choice and competition,” said President Barack Obama in 2009. “That’s how the market works.
In Alabama, almost 90 percent of the market is controlled by just one company. And without competition, the price of insurance
goes up and quality goes down.Ӧ His analysis was quite right, of course. Unfortunately, his signature policy has exacerbated the very
problem he identified. Does anyone believe the co-op collapse and big insurance mergers will save consumers money or expand their
health care options? No chance.¶ It’s important to note that market-driven mergers and acquisitions are generally good for investors
and consumers, relative to the alternatives. But the present insurance industry consolidation is being driven by government policy,
not free markets.¶ Just as big a concern as the lack of competition, insurance industry consolidation will lead
America down a path eerily similar to the financial collapse of 2007 with three insurance
companies replacing “too big to fail” financial institutions and costly insurance payouts
replacing subprime mortgages.¶ By 2007 big lenders had become vehicles for implementing a
government policy promoting universal homeownership. Likewise, insurance companies are
now the vehicles for implementing government policy that promotes universal health coverage.
By 2007 millions of people had purchased homes they would not have otherwise been able to
purchase. Likewise, insurance companies today cover 18 million people who might otherwise
not have had insurance or even be insurable.¶ Making high quality health coverage affordable for
all is a laudable policy objective. Reasonable people can disagree as to whether the coverage ObamaCare makes available
is indeed high quality or affordable. Regardless, what happens if the ObamaCare model is unsustainable? Last month
Anthem stated that its ObamaCare business is underperforming and that pressure for keeping
premiums low is unrealistic. Meanwhile, the insurance industry lobby in Washington, DC is quietly advocating for
prescription drug price controls to cushion their bottom line at the expense of patient health and well-being, while simultaneously
seeking 20 – 40 percent premium rate increases in 2016. ¶ As ObamaCare relies on a dwindling number of
insurance companies to administer the U.S. healthcare system, would the f ederal g overnment
hesitate to prop them up if – perhaps when – things go pear-shaped? The federal government seems
perfectly willing to pour money into its failed ObamaCare experiment. The co-op collapse alone will likely cost the
American taxpayer over $2 trillion .¶ With health insurance co-ops dropping like flies and
huge mergers in the offing, ObamaCare has created an environment in which the U.S. health
system is beholden to a small number of “too-big-to-fail” insurance companies creating risks
reminiscent of financial meltdown almost a decade ago
Slowing growth causes conflict – this is specifically true under trump.
Foster 12/16 - Dennis M. Foster is professor of international studies and political science at
the Virginia Military Institute. “Would President Trump go to war to divert attention from
problems at home?” December 19, 2016, Washington Post Monkey Cage Blog,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/12/19/yes-trump-might-well-
go-to-war-to-divert-attention-from-problems-at-home/?utm_term=.9ac2999a0f48) RMT
Then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gives a speech aboard the World War II
battleship USS Iowa in San Pedro, Calif., in September, 2015. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)

If the U.S. economy tanks, should we expect Donald Trump to engage in a diversionary war?
Since the age of Machiavelli , analysts have expected world leaders to launch international
conflicts to deflect popular attention away from problems at home. By stirring up feelings of
patriotism, leaders might escape the political costs of scandal, unpopularity — or a poorly
performing economy.
One often-cited example of diversionary war in modern times is Argentina’s 1982 invasion of the
Falklands, which several (though not all) political scientists attribute to the junta’s desire to
divert the people’s attention from a disastrous economy.
In a 2014 article, Jonathan Keller and I argued that whether U.S. presidents engage in
diversionary conflicts depends in part on their psychological traits — how they frame the world,
process information and develop plans of action. Certain traits predispose leaders to more
belligerent behavior.
Do words translate into foreign policy action?
One way to identify these traits is content analyses of leaders’ rhetoric. The more leaders use
certain types of verbal constructs, the more likely they are to possess traits that lead them to use
military force.
[Trump may put 5 former top military brass in his administration. That’s unprecedented.]
For one, conceptually simplistic leaders view the world in “black and white” terms; they develop
unsophisticated solutions to problems and are largely insensitive to risks. Similarly, distrustful
leaders tend to exaggerate threats and rely on aggression to deal with threats. Distrustful leaders
typically favor military action and are confident in their ability to wield it effectively.
Thus, when faced with politically damaging problems that are hard to solve — such as a faltering
economy — leaders who are both distrustful and simplistic are less likely to put together
complex, direct responses. Instead, they develop simplistic but risky “solutions” that divert
popular attention from the problem, utilizing the tools with which they are most comfortable
and confident (military force).
[Will Beijing cut Trump some slack after that phone call with Taiwan?]
Based on our analysis of the rhetoric of previous U.S. presidents, we found that presidents
whose language appeared more simplistic and distrustful, such as Harry Truman, Dwight
Eisenhower and George W. Bush, were more likely to use force abroad in times of rising
inflation and unemployment . By contrast, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, whose
rhetoric pegged them as more complex and trusting, were less likely to do so.
What about Donald Trump?

Since Donald Trump’s election, many commentators have expressed concern about how he will
react to new challenges and whether he might make quick recourse to military action. For
example, the Guardian’s George Monbiot has argued that political realities will stymie Trump’s
agenda, especially his promises regarding the economy. Then, rather than risk disappointing his
base, Trump might try to rally public opinion to his side via military action.

I sampled Trump’s campaign rhetoric, analyzing 71,446 words across 24 events from January
2015 to December 2016. Using a program for measuring leadership traits in rhetoric, I estimated
what Trump’s words may tell us about his level of distrust and conceptual complexity. The
graph below shows Trump’s level of distrust compared to previous presidents.

These results are startling . Nearly 35 percent of Trump’s references to outside groups
paint them as harmful to himself, his allies and friends, and causes that are important to him —
a percentage almost twice the previous high . The data suggest that Americans have elected a
leader who, if his campaign rhetoric is any indication, will be historically unparalleled among
modern presidents in his active suspicion of those unlike himself and his inner circle, and those
who disagree with his goals.

As a candidate, Trump also scored second-lowest among presidents in conceptual

complexity . Compared to earlier presidents, he used more words and phrases that indicate
less willingness to see multiple dimensions or ambiguities in the decision-making
environment. These include words and phrases like “absolutely,” “greatest” and “without a
doubt.”
A possible implication for military action
I took these data on Trump and plugged them into the statistical model that we developed to
predict major uses of force by the United States from 1953 to 2000. For a president of average
distrust and conceptual complexity, an economic downturn only weakly predicts an increase in
the use of force.

But the model would predict that a president with Trump’s numbers would respond to even
a minor economic downturn with an increase in the use of force. For example, were the
misery index (aggregate inflation and unemployment) equal to 12 — about where it stood in
October 2011 — the model predicts a president with Trump’s psychological traits would initiate
more than one major conflict per quarter.
 1NC – Stripping
The plan’s ruling causes court stripping – turns enforcement
Crabb 11 BARBARA B. CRABB, United States District Judge, Western District of Wisconsin. I am
grateful to the many people who talked with me about Congress and the courts and provided insight into
the topic: Sarah Evans Barker, Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of
Indiana and former member of the Judicial Conference and its Long Range Planning Committee;
Representative Judy Biggert from the 13th Congressional District of Illinois, co-founder of the
Congressional Caucus on the Judicial Branch; Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, former senator and member
of the Senate Judiciary Committee; Julia Smith Gibbons, Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for
the Sixth Circuit and chair of the Judicial Conference Committee on the Budget; John Kaminski, founder
and director of the Center for the Study of the American Constitution at the University of Wisconsin;
Robert A. Katzmann, Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and former fellow
of the Brookings Institution; Carolyn Dineen King, Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the
Fifth Circuit and former chair of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference; David Obey, former
representative and former chair of the House Committee on Appropriations from the Seventh
Congressional District of Wisconsin; Michael Remington, Partner, Drinker Biddle and former chief
counsel of the Judiciary Subcommittee of the United States House of Representatives on Intellectual
Property and Judicial Administration; and Russell Wheeler, former deputy director of the Federal Judicial
Center and now visiting fellow, Governance Studies, Brookings Institution. ROBERT W. KASTENMEIER
LECTURE BRIDGING THE DIVIDE BETWEEN CONGRESS AND THE COURTS The Robert W.
Kastenmeier Lecture University of Wisconsin Law School September 16, 2011
http://wisconsinlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/1-Crabb.pdf
These major changes in court administration put the judicial branch on a firmer footing than it had been in the nineteenth century and gave it a larger
measure of autonomy, but they did not change the basic relationship between the two branches. The
judiciary remained dependent
on Congress for the confirmation of new judges, the creation of new judgeships, funding for
courthouses, their basic budgets, and procedural rules, just as it is today. The courts still have no
independent source of funding. They have no right to be heard on congressional decisions
to expand or restrict the scope of the courts’ jurisdiction or to enact laws that will increase
the courts’ workload. In other words, when it comes to matters affecting institutional independence,
the judiciary has no constitutional protection and its power is limited to persuasion. If Congress
wanted to, it could retaliate against the courts by cutting the courts’ funding;
disestablishing individual courts; adding or taking away Justices from the Supreme
Court; imposing crippling restrictions on the operations of the courts; narrowing their
jurisdiction; impeaching individual judges and Justices; and refusing to confirm nominees to fill
judicial vacancies.

The framers set up what could well be a recipe for disaster: giving the judiciary the last word on the law,
with the inevitable controversies that authority will provoke, and then giving it no
institutional protection. It is a little like giving a person a very old and very unpredictable gun for personal security. If used
properly, the gun may perform its intended function, but it’s just as possible that it will inflict great damage on its owner. Making the
judiciary the final arbiter on the meaning of the law, with the authority to declare a law or practice unconstitutional
gives it power, but a power that can be explosive and set off backlashes of varying proportions .
By no means is it a power that can ward off encroachment by the other branches . When an entity has little
power in a relationship, it behooves it to assess the sticking points between it and its protagonist, husband carefully what little power it possesses,
employ diplomacy, look for areas in which the interests of both parties are in alignment, and seek ways to enhance what little power of persuasion it
has.

Between Congress and the judiciary, the sticking points are legion. Consider the experience Representative Judy Biggert of
Illinois described in a 2006 speech to the American Bar Association. She tried to persuade her colleagues to join her in co-sponsoring a bill to give
judges a pay increase that would make up for six of the nine cost of living increases they had been denied in previous years.26 She found it tough going.
Her colleagues told her,
 “Not until those judges leave the legislating to
“They aren’t getting theirs until we get ours”;
Congress”; and “Why should they automatically get a raise when their jobs are safe, while every two years we have to fight to get
reelected and keep our jobs?” . . . [Other members] found some federal court rulings outrageous . . . .
[or] just didn’t care.27

As these comments show, the very idea of judicial review of legislation raises hackles among
legislators. They envision self-righteous judges acting as the super-ego of another branch to
keep it within its authorized limits. A scenario comes to mind of an elegant dinner , much fussed-over in advance. All menu,
napkin colors, flowers, and china have been agreed upon. The night of the dinner arrives: the candles are lit, the doors are opened, but wait! In
marches an uninvited guest, who takes a hard look at the table, the gleaming silver and starched linens, and
whips the tablecloth out from under the feast.
The high-handedness of this, the nerve! Who would not react negatively when an
outsider undoes the hard work of others, whatever its nature? Why then should we be surprised
when legislators react negatively when an unelected judge calls a piece of
legislation unconstitutional, undoing the efforts of many people? One can imagine legislators thinking to
themselves or saying out loud that the judge did not do the heavy lifting of drafting the legislation,
shepherding it through the committee hearings, sitting out the midnight sessions, or corralling party members to persuade them of the value of this
particular piece of legislation. The judge has no idea what compromises were necessary .
Moreover, the judge is not required to consider the exigencies of compromise. She is free to make the decision she
believes is the correct one, without fearing the loss of her job. No such luxury exists for legislators after they make tough decisions.
And, adding salt to the wounds, legislators often share in the backlash of unpopular
judicial opinions in which they played no part, just because of the public tendency to attribute the
decision to the government, without distinguishing between the branches.
At such times, it
may be hard for legislators and others to remember that the judge is simply
carrying out her duty, not flaunting her power, and it may be easy to overlook the reality that
the judge’s decision is not unconstrained. The judge is bound by precedent, the terms of the Constitution, statutes, procedural
rules, the factual record, and legal principles. And, unless the judge is a member of the Supreme Court, her power to overturn a statute is heavily
circumscribed by the availability of appellate review. At least three judges of the court of appeals, and possibly all of the nine Justices of the Supreme
Court, will review her decision.

Even when a judge upholds a statute, she may frustrate the will of Congress unknowingly by
reading the statute in a way Congress never intended . It may be that Congress did not
make its intention clear or the statute contains a drafting error or the judge simply makes a mistake. It is true, of
course, that not every legislator feels a personal affront when a statute is ruled unconstitutional or when it is misread. Some were not in office when it
was passed; others opposed its passage and are glad to see it overturned; others voted for it only because they anticipated it would not survive judicial
review. Nevertheless, the fact that judges have this responsibility and exercise it is a source of irritation to members of
Congress.
But it is not the only one. As Representative Biggert’s colleagues pointed out, it is hard for many members of Congress
not to resent the judges’ situation: their guaranteed-for-life salaries; their life tenure, which frees them from the constant
worries of reelection and the accompanying struggle for campaign contributions; and their opportunity to live and work in one place. Judge Frank
Coffin, who served on the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and was a former legislator, described the heavy price legislators pay in the form of a
bifurcated life:

[B]etween home and the Capitol, between public and private life; the frustrations of having to scatter one’s energies, of never being able to
know very much about anything, of having always to read on the run; and the haunting specter of the next election. Variety, breadth,
respect, and influence on the one hand; lack of time, depth, privacy, security, and serenity on the other.28
Court stripping crushes international federalism – signals the
collapse of separation of powers
Gerhardt 05 Michael J. Gerhardt, Arthur B. Hanson Professor, William & Mary Law School; Visiting
Professor, University of Minnesota Law School, Fall2004. College of William & Mary Law School William
& Mary Law School Scholarship Repository Faculty Publications Faculty and Deans The Constitutional
Limits to Court-Stripping http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1895&context=facpubs

Another aspect of federalism, to which I have alluded, is that it is not just concerned with protecting the
states from federal encroachments. It also protects the federal government and officials from state
encroachments. In a classic decision in Tarble 's Case, 38 the Supreme Court held that the Constitution precluded state judges from
adjudicating federal officials' compliance with state habeas laws. The prospect of state judges exercising authority over federal officials is not consistent
with the structure of the Constitution. They could then direct, or impede, the exercise of federal power. The Act, however, allows state courts to do this.
By strippingall federal jurisdiction over certain claims against federal officials, the Act leaves only state
courts with jurisdiction over claims brought against those officials. It further leaves only to the state courts enforcement of the provisions
of the Bill pertaining to federal officials. 39 The popular will might lead state judges to be disposed to be hostile to federal claims or federal officials.
Hostility to the federal claims poses problems with the Fifth Amendment, while hostility to federal officials poses serious federalism difficulties.

Beyond the constitutional defects with the Act,40 it may not be good policy. It
may send the wrong signals to the American
people and to people around the world. It expresses hostility to our Article III courts, in spite of their
special function in upholding constitutional rights and enforcing and interpreting federal law. If
a branch of our government demonstrates a lack of respect for federal courts, our
citizens and citizens in other countries may have a hard time figuring out why they
should do otherwise. Rejecting proposals to exclude all federal jurisdiction or inferior court jurisdiction
for some constitutional claims extends an admirable tradition within Congress and reminds the world of
our hard-won, justifiable confidence in the special role performed by Article III courts throughout our
history in vindicating the rule of law.

Separation of powers is a body of law based on inferences from the design of the Constitution. Separation of powers
constrains the power to regulate federal jurisdiction (including abolishing some inferior Article III courts) in at least three ways: First, it
constrains Congress from using this power to usurp the authority of the other branches in
any way. Second, it constrains Congress from using this power in any way that undermines the functioning of
Article III courts. Consequently, if Congress used its power to abolish inferior federal courts in an
effort to retaliate against or to override their substantive constitutional decisions, that would
violate separation of powers. Third, separation of powers constrains Congress from bypassing the constitutional requirements
for achieving certain outcomes. For instance, the Supreme Court has recognized in its INS v. Chadha41 decision and the decision in Clinton v. City of
New York42 that the presentment and bicameral clauses need to be satisfied in order for a bill to become a law. For instance, at the June 24th hearings,
Professor Redish inquired about the nature of the separation of powers problem if Congress abolished an inferior court that was occupied.43 Say,
Congress abolished a particular judge's seat on the Ninth Circuit. This would completely undermine that particular judge's ability to exercise Article III
power and thus to be an Article III judge. He would have no forum in which to exercise his power unless Congress reassigned his jurisdiction, i.e.,
assigned him-for some neutral reason-to exercise his authority elsewhere within the circuit. (Even then, there might still be an equal protection
problem with why this judge has been singled out for disparate treatment.) Abolishing a particular judge's seat or perhaps an entire district deviates
from the limited paths by which constitutional decisions of Article III courts may be overridden-by constitutional amendment or the Court's overruling
itself. Moreover, if Congress abolished an inferior court that was occupied, it would be effectively removing an Article III judge without complying with
the constitutional requirements for impeachment and removal of Article III judges. These requirements include impeachment by a majority of the
House and a vote to remove by at least two-thirds of the Senate.44

US leadership on federalism is essential to democracy worldwide

Broder, 01 – columnist for The Post, former political reporter at the Congressional Quarterly, The Washington Star, and
the New York Times. Books include “Democracy Derailed: Initiative Campaigns and the Power of Money" (2000); "Behind the Front
Page: A Candid Look at How the News is Made" (1987); "The Party's Over: The Failure of Politics in America" (1972); and "The
Republican Establishment: The Present and Future of the G.O.P." with Stephen Hess (1967). Won the White Burkett Miller
Presidential Award, the 1990 4th Estate Award, and the 1993 Distinguished Contributions to Journalism Award from the National
Press Foundation. He received the Elijah Parrish Lovejoy Award from Colby College in 1990, and was elected to Sigma Delta Chi's
Hall of Fame. He won the William Allen White Foundation's award for distinguished achievement in journalism in 1997, and
received the National Society of Newspaper Columnists Lifetime Achievement Award in the same year. He won the Pulitzer Prize for
distinguished commentary in 1973. (David, “Lessons On Freedom”, Washington Post, 6/24/01, Lexis Nexis )

Even more persistent were the questions about the role the United States would play, under this
new administration, in supporting democratic movements around the world. It is sobering to be
reminded how often, during the long decades of the Cold War, this country backed (and in some cases, created) undemocratic
regimes, simply because we thought military rulers and other autocrats were more reliable allies against communism. The week of
the Salzburg Seminar coincided with President Bush's first tour of Europe. He was a target of jokes and ridicule for many of the
fellows as the week began. But the coverage of his meetings and, especially, his major address in Poland on his vision of Europe's
future and America's role in it, earned him grudging respect, even though it remains uncertain how high a priority human rights and
promotion of democracy will have in the Bush foreign policy. Another great lesson for an American reporter is thatthe struggle
to maintain the legitimacy of representative government in the eyes of the public is a worldwide
battle. Election turnouts are dropping in almost all the established democracies, so much so that seminar participants seriously
discussed the advisability of compulsory voting, before most of them rejected it as smacking too much of authoritarian regimes.
Political parties -- which most of us have regarded as essential agents of democracy -- are in decline everywhere. They are viewed by
more and more of the national publics as being tied to special interests or locked in increasingly irrelevant or petty rivalries --
anything but effective instruments for tackling current challenges. One large but unresolved question throughout the week: Can you
organize and sustain representative government without strong parties? The single most impressive visitor to the seminar was Vaira
Vike-Freiberga, the president of Latvia, a woman of Thatcherite determination when it comes to pressing for her country's
admission to NATO, but a democrat who has gone through exile four times in her quest for freedom. She is a member of no party,
chosen unanimously by a parliament of eight parties, and bolstered by her popular support. But how many such leaders are there?
Meantime, even as democracy is tested everywhere from Venezuela to Romania to the Philippines, a new and perhaps tougher
accountability examination awaits in the supranational organizations. The European Union has operated so far with a strong
council, where each nation has a veto, and a weak parliament, with majority rule. But with its membership seemingly certain to
expand, theage-old dilemma of democracy -- majority rule vs. minority and individual rights -- is
bound to come to the fore. The principle of federalism will be vital to its success . And, once
again, the United States has important lessons to teach. But only if we can keep democracy strong
and vital in our own country.

Democracy solves extinction- now is key

Larry Diamond 16 (Larry Diamond, he wrote Diamond 95, "Democracy In Decline," Foreign Affairs,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2016-06-13/democracy-decline)//RTF

In the decade following the Cold War, democracy flourished around the world as never before.
In recent years, however, much of this progress has steadily eroded. Between 2000 and 2015, democracy
broke down in 27 countries, among them Kenya, Russia, Thailand, and Turkey. Around the same time, several other global “swing
states”—countries that, thanks to their large populations and economies, could have an outsize impact on the future of global
democracy—also took a turn for the worse. In nearly half of them, political liberties, as measured by the U.S. nonprofit Freedom
House, contracted. Meanwhile, many existing authoritarian regimes have become even less open,
transparent, and responsive to their citizens. They are silencing online dissent by censoring, regulating, and
arresting those they perceive as threats. Many of them are attempting to control the Internet by passing
laws, for example, that require foreign companies to store citizens’ data within the home country’s
borders. Offline, states are also constraining civil society by restricting the ability of
organizations to operate, communicate, and fundraise. Since 2012, governments across the globe have proposed
or enacted more than 90 laws restricting freedom of association or assembly. Adding to the problem, democracy itself
seems to have lost its appeal. Many emerging democracies have failed to meet their citizens’
hopes for freedom, security, and economic growth, just as the world’s established democracies,
including the United States, have grown increasingly dysfunctional. In China, meanwhile, decades of
economic growth have proved that a state need not liberalize to generate prosperity. Not all the trends are bad. Optimists can point
to Nigeria, which in May 2015 experienced the first truly democratic transfer of power—from a defeated ruling party to the
opposition—in its history, or to Sri Lanka, which returned to electoral democracy in January 2015 after five years of electoral
autocracy. The first Arab democracy in decades has emerged in Tunisia, and in Myanmar (also called Burma), a democratically
elected government now shares significant power with the military. The authoritarian model of capitalism has also lost some of its
shine, as China’s growth has slowed markedly and the plunge in oil prices has weakened Russia and other petrostates.
Proponents of democracy should act energetically to capitalize on these and other opportunities.
The right kind of support from the United States and its allies could unleash a new wave of
freedom across the globe, particularly in Asia’s swing states. Without that support, however,
autocracies will continue to proliferate, leading to more instability and less freedom . TURNING
INWARD One of the biggest challenges facing democracy today is that its biggest champion—the United States—has lost interest in
promoting it. In a 2013 Pew survey, 80 percent of Americans polled agreed with the idea that their country should “not think so
much in international terms” and instead “concentrate more on [its] national problems.” Just 18 percent expressed the belief that
democracy promotion should be a top foreign policy priority. It should thus come as no surprise that none of the current presidential
candidates has made democracy promotion a cornerstone of his or her campaign. Between 2000 and 2015, democracy broke down
in 27 countries. Washington has continued to support some nongovernmental efforts. Congress increased its appropriation for the
National Endowment for Democracy, a nonprofit that funds pro-democracy groups abroad, from $115 million in 2009 to $170
million in 2016. For the most part, however, as public support for democracy promotion has declined, funding for it has stagnated.
During this same period, U.S. government spending on democracy, human rights, and governance programs (mainly through the
U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID) fell by nearly $400 million. Even excluding the decline in funding for
Afghanistan and Iraq, funding for such programs in other countries stayed flat. Supporters of presidential candidate Muhammadu
Buhari and his All Progressive Congress party celebrate in Kano, March 2015. Three decades after seizing power in a military coup,
Buhari became the first Nigerian to oust a president through the ballot box. GORAN TOMASEVIC / REUTERS Supporters of
presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari and his All Progressive Congress party celebrate in Kano, March 2015. Three decades
after seizing power in a military coup, Buhari became the first Nigerian to oust a president through the ballot box. As the United
States has lagged behind, few other countries have stepped in. The most ambitious intergovernmental attempt to promote
democracy—the Community of Democracies, a coalition established in 2000—lacks the resources and visibility to have much
impact. Regional organizations are not doing much better. The EU, for example, has largely stood by as Hungarian Prime Minister
Viktor Orban has flouted democratic norms. And the union was so desperate to secure Turkey’s help in stemming the flow of Syrian
refugees that it agreed to revive membership talks with Ankara, even as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accelerated his
efforts to suppress dissent. Although some European countries, such as Sweden and the United Kingdom, have continued to support
significant bilateral programs to promote democracy and improve governance, the budget of the European Endowment for
Democracy, established in 2013, reached just over $11 million last year. The United Kingdom’s Westminster Foundation for
Democracy currently has a public budget of just $5 million. Canada’s International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic
Development shut down in 2012. And developing democracies such as Brazil, India, and Indonesia have hesitated to contribute
much, focusing instead on their own many problems. Authoritarian
leaders have capitalized on this vacuum by
exporting their illiberal values and repressive technologies. Iran has been using its financial, political,
and military influence to shape or destabilize governments in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. Russia
has used violence and intimidation and has funneled money to support separatist movements
and to prop up pro-Russian, antireform political forces in Georgia and Ukraine . Moreover, Russia has
built what the Internet freedom organization Access Now has termed a “commonwealth of surveillance states,” exporting
sophisticated electronic surveillance technologies throughout Central Asia. China, too, has reportedly supplied Ethiopia, Iran, and
several Central Asian dictatorships—Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—with Internet and telecommunications surveillance
technology to help them repress and spy on their citizens. THE BEST FORM OF GOVERNMENT Although democracy promotion
may have fallen out of favor with the U.S. public, such efforts very much remain in the national interest. Democracies
are
less violent toward their citizens and more protective of human rights. They do not go to war
with one another. They are more likely to develop market economies, and those economies are
more likely to be stable and prosperous. Their citizens enjoy higher life expectancies and lower
levels of infant and maternal mortality than people living under other forms of government.
Democracies also make good allies. As Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, has written, “Not every democracy in
the world was or is a close ally of the United States, but no
democracy in the world has been or is an American
enemy. And all of America’s most enduring allies have been and remain democracies.” Authoritarian regimes, by
contrast, are inherently unstable, since they face a central dilemma. If an autocracy is successful
—if it produces a wealthy and educated population— that population will construct a civil society that will
sooner or later demand political change. But if an autocracy is unsuccessful—if it fails to
generate economic growth and raise living standards—it is liable to collapse. The United States
still has the tools to promote democracy, even if it lacks the will. As Thomas Carothers, a vice president at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has shown, over the past quarter century, U.S. electoral assistance has evolved from
superficial, in-and-out jobs to deeper partnerships with domestic organizations. Support for civil society has spread beyond simply
aiding elites in national capitals. Efforts to promote the rule of law have expanded beyond the short-term technical training of judges
and lawyers to focus on broader issues of accountability and human rights. These efforts appear to have paid off. A 2006 study of the
effects of U.S. foreign assistance on democracy found that $10 million of additional USAID spending produced a roughly fivefold
increase in the amount of democratic change a country could be expected to achieve based on the Freedom House scale. LET
FREEDOM RING But the United States can and should do more. The next president should make democracy promotion a pillar of
his or her foreign policy. Washington could do so peacefully, multilaterally, and without significant new spending. Pursuing such a
policy requires, first of all, taking care to avoid legitimizing authoritarian rule. President Barack Obama did just the opposite during
a July 2015 visit to Ethiopia, when he twice called its government “democratically elected,” even though it had held sham elections
earlier that same year. When he visited Kenya on the same trip, Obama expressed the hope that its corrupt and semiauthoritarian
regime would keep “continuing down the path of a strong, more inclusive, more accountable and transparent democracy.” Regimes
pounce on such language, using implicit U.S. endorsements to stifle free speech and activism at home. In 1981, George H. W. Bush,
then vice president, visited Manila and said to the country’s dictator, Ferdinand Marcos, “We love your adherence to democratic
principle.” Within the next few years, Marcos’ abuses intensified, and his principal rival in the democratic opposition, Benigno
Aquino, Jr., was assassinated. Washington should also seize opportunities to reaffirm the country’s commitment to democracy
abroad. In 2015, the United States assumed leadership of the Community of Democracies, which will hold its next biennial meeting
in Washington in 2017, a few months after the next president is inaugurated. He or she should speak at the meeting to emphasize the
organization’s importance and to endorse the values for which it stands. The next president should also increase financial support to
fragile democracies. States undergoing political transitions—such as Myanmar, Tunisia, and Ukraine—are particularly vulnerable to
outside influence. So U.S. support can have an outsize impact in such places. Congress has already increased assistance to Tunisia,
from $61 million in 2015 to $142 million this year, and to Ukraine, from $88 million in 2014 to $659 million today. It could and
should do still more for these countries, and for other emerging and fragile democracies both small (Senegal, for example) and large
(such as Indonesia). But part of the bargain for increased economic aid has to be a serious commitment by the leaders of those
countries to fight corruption and improve the quality of governance. Countries bordered by democracies tend to evolve in a
democratic direction, while those bordered by authoritarian regimes tend toward autocracy. Washington should thus develop a
comprehensive strategy for targeting states where democratic progress could affect the entire region. Populous countries tend to be
more influential, so the next president should find ways to nudge states such as Bangladesh, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan,
the Philippines, and South Africa toward more effective, accountable, and democratic governance. At the same time, he or she
should not neglect smaller democracies such as Georgia, Senegal, and Tunisia. In the post-Soviet sphere, in West Africa, and in the
Arab world, civic and political actors are closely watching these three high-profile experiments. In each case, success could generate
significant spillover effects. The United States should also focus on places on the cusp of a breakthrough. Venezuela, for instance,
has been poised for a democratic transition since late 2015, when the opposition trounced the governing party in legislative
elections, undermining roughly two decades of socialist rule. And Vietnam represents an intriguing opportunity, due to its emerging
civil society, membership in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and clear desire to draw closer to the United States in order to counter
the threat from China. Any policy to promote democracy must include bolder, smarter efforts to fight corruption, which sustains
most authoritarian regimes. In the past decade, Washington has made progress in identifying, tracking, and seizing ill-gotten wealth
—a crucial step in the wars against terrorism and drug trafficking that can also advance democracy and human rights. But the United
States must do more to identify the international assets of venal dictators and their cronies, prosecute them for money laundering,
and return their vast fortunes to their neglected citizens. The next administration should direct USAID to prioritize programs that
help countries build professional bureaucracies and autonomous agencies capable of auditing government accounts and prosecuting
corruption. And it should aid civil society groups and the media in their efforts to track stolen funds and hold public servants
accountable. As part of a push to discourage corruption, the next president should accelerate the use of legal strategies and tools to
seize the U.S.-based assets of venal dictators. Since the United States launched the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative in 2010,
lawyers and investigators from the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI have brought 25 legal
cases against 20 foreign officials, seeking to recover $1.5 billion in ill-gotten gains, including from the estate of the late Nigerian
dictator Sani Abacha and from Gulnara Karimova, daughter of the Uzbek president. Washington has also been stepping up efforts to
halt the flow of illicit money into U.S. banks. The next president should dramatically increase the resources and political capital for
such efforts, both nationally and globally, to ensure that kleptocrats can find no safe haven. Democracy itself seems to have lost its
appeal. He or she should also encourage U.S. diplomats to make support for democracy a major priority in their work on the ground.
These envoys can use their diplomatic immunity to shield activists from arrest or to make it more difficult for a regime to target
them, as has been the case with U.S. and European diplomatic support for Las Damas de Blanco (the Ladies in White), the
opposition movement that wives of jailed dissidents and other women founded in Cuba. In extreme circumstances, they can and
should shelter dissidents in their embassies and consulates, as the U.S. embassy did for the Chinese scientist and dissident Fang
Lizhi after the 1989 crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protesters. Diplomats also have unparalleled access to local leaders, which
gives them a unique opportunity to nudge autocrats toward reform. In a country transitioning to democracy, such as South Africa in
the late 1980s and early 1990s, or Myanmar today, such engagement can help foster and sustain the resolve for democratic change.
Where an authoritarian regime is powerful, confident, and sitting tight, as in China today, it may seem as though such efforts are
hopeless. But most authoritarian regimes have moderate and pragmatic elements who may see the need for political opening. China
is no different. The marginal moderates of today could well become the rulers of tomorrow. Obama talks about presidential term
limits during remarks at the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, July 2015. JONATHAN ERNST / REUTERS Obama talks
about presidential term limits during remarks at the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, July 2015. Meanwhile, the next
administration ought to support Internet freedom and digital rights—an especially important effort in light of what the Edward
Snowden leaks revealing U.S. government surveillance of Internet and phone communications did to U.S. credibility. In this vein,
the government should start by refining its economic sanctions. In 2014, Washington exempted the export of software for “personal
communications over the Internet, such as instant messaging, chat and email, social networking, sharing of photos and movies, web
browsing, and blogging” from its sanctions against Iran. Such exemptions, as well as the free distribution of software to circumvent
Internet censorship and allow dissidents to communicate securely, should become a standard part of any U.S. sanctions effort,
including that against North Korea. Authoritarian regimes need to filter information and control communications to sustain their
rule, and undermining that control is one of the best ways the United States can foster democratic change. The next president can
also use trade agreements to advance democracy. Academic studies confirm that when free-trade agreements are conditional on
governments taking specific measures to protect human rights, meaningful improvements follow. The White House has reported
that the mere process of negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership induced Brunei to sign and Vietnam to ratify the UN Convention
Against Torture, while also encouraging other human rights improvements in these two countries and in Malaysia. Embedding
strong guarantees for human rights (including labor rights) into future trade agreements offers a dual benefit: it can nurture
democratic reform in partner countries and help undermine the charge that U.S. trade pacts establish an unfair playing field for
American workers and companies. Needless to say, the success of such provisions will depend on whether Washington is willing to
bring legal action against member states that violate them. YES WE CAN Above all, any push for democracy abroad should begin at
home. The sad fact is that American democracy no longer inspires admiration or emulation. The U.S. presidential election has
revealed deep currents of alienation and anger among the public—currents Washington appears unable to calm. The
gerrymandering of congressional districts, the flood of so-called dark money into election campaigns, and the ever-growing power of
special-interest lobbies have polarized politics to an unprecedented degree, resulting in the passing of fewer bills, a breakdown in
bipartisan foreign-policy making, and regular government shutdowns. These political failings have given ammunition to
democracy’s enemies. Russian President Vladimir Putin, for instance, has claimed that “there is no true democracy” in the United
States, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former president of Iran, has criticized U.S. elections as “a battleground for capitalists.” The
next administration could take a number of steps to counter such charges and restore people’s confidence in American democracy.
Working with Congress, it should reform campaign finance laws and require the rapid and full disclosure of all campaign contri-
butions, even to so-called independent committees. It should also encourage state governments to invigorate political competition—
for example, by ending gerrymandering, introducing ranked-choice voting for Congress and state offices, and removing sore-loser
laws, which prevent defeated primary candidates from running as independents in the general election. Together, these steps could
improve democracy in the United States and abroad at little to no financial cost. They could help restore the United States’
leadership role in the world. And they could tip the world out of its persistent democratic recession and into a new period of
progress.
 1NC – CP
The federal judiciary should reverse its Medicaid expansion holding
in NFIB v Sebelius. Congress should pass legislation replacing the
mandate that state governments expand medicaid eligibility to 400%
of the federal poverty line with the offer of federal government
spending to support state expansion of medicaid eligibility to 400% of
the federal poverty line.
 1NC – Advantage 1
Ozone hole healing now.
National Geographic, 6/30/2016. “Remember the Ozone Hole? Now There's Proof It's Healing,”
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/06/antarctic-ozone-hole-healing-fingerprints/.

After three decades of observation, scientists have finally found the first fingerprints of healing in the notorious
Southern Hemisphere ozone hole.

In 1974, Mario Molina and Sherwood Rowland, two chemists at the University of California, Irvine, published an
article in Nature detailing the threats to the ozone layer from chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases. At the time, CFCs were
commonly used in spray bottles and as coolants in many refrigerators, and they were rapidly accumulating in the
atmosphere.

The groundbreaking research—for which they were awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry—concluded that the
atmosphere only had a “finite capacity for absorbing chlorine” atoms in the stratosphere.

After being widely attacked by the chemical industry, Molina and Rowland’s work was vindicated 11 years later, in
1985, when a team of English scientists realized the dire implications of their findings: the CFCs in the atmosphere
had created a hole in the ozone layer. The loss of the protective ozone can lead to increased rates of skin cancer in
humans and animals.

The Emergence of Healing

The research team, led by Susan Solomon, a professor of atmospheric chemistry and climate science at MIT, found
multiple lines of evidence for the healing. The findings were published Thursday in Science.

The ozone hole forms every year over Antarctica, beginning in August and generally peaking in October. Solomon's
team compared September ozone measurements, collected from balloon data and satellites, with statistical
simulations that predict ozone.

Solomon’s team found that, in recent years, the hole is not eclipsing the 12-million-square-kilometer threshold until
later in the southern spring, which indicates that the September hole is shrinking. In fact, the researchers believe
the ozone hole has shrunk by more than 4 million square kilometers. Furthermore, the hole is
not as deep as it used to be.
“The fact that the ozone hole is opening later is really the key here,” says Solomon. “It is opening later,
it is
smaller, and its depth is depleted. All of the measurements are independent, and when they all
point to this [healing], it is hard to imagine any other explanation.”
The researchers also found that the observations matched model predictions, and that more than half the shrinkage
could be traced to the reduction in atmospheric chlorine.

According to Donald Blake, a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Irvine, the research represents the
most complete study of polar ozone to date.

Tackling the Problem

In the 1980s, ozone in the atmosphere dropped like a rock at the initial onset of the affliction. The implementation of
the 1987 Montreal Protocol—widely considered a triumph of international cooperation—quickly phased out
industrial CFCs, and the ozone layer stabilized , though it was still at a depleted level.
The size of the ozone hole varies from year to year, influenced by changes in meteorology and volcanism, which can
make it difficult to identify a healing trend. Scientists believe it has remained relatively stable since the turn of the
century, but the October 2015 hole was the largest on record.
Scientists have long thought the ozone layer was recovering slowly, but Solomon and her team—
comprising researchers from MIT, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and the University of Leeds—are
the first to rigorously uncover evidence of the healing.

Though the size of the 2015 hole was unusual, Solomon attributes it largely to the April 2015
eruption of the Calbuco volcano in Chile. Though volcanoes do not spew chlorine molecules into the
atmosphere, their contribution of small particles increases the number of polar stratospheric clouds that react with
human-made chlorine.

Future Implications

These findings suggest that ozone healing is right on pace with the expected timeline. As Blake explained,
this shows that the gases that affect ozone are decreasing in the atmosphere.

No impact to ozone and not anthro

Ridley 8/17/12 [Matt Ridley, columnist for The Wall Street Journal and author of The
Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, “Apocalypse Not: Here’s Why You Shouldn’t
Worry About End Times,”
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/ff_apocalypsenot/all/]
The threat to the ozone layer came next. In the 1970s scientists discovered a decline in the
concentration of ozone over Antarctica during several springs, and the Armageddon
megaphone was dusted off yet again. The blame was pinned on chlorofluorocarbons, used in
refrigerators and aerosol cans, reacting with sunlight. The disappearance of frogs and an alleged
rise of melanoma in people were both attributed to ozone depletion. So too was a supposed
rash of blindness in animals: Al Gore wrote in 1992 about blind salmon and rabbits, while The New York Times
reported “an increase in Twilight Zone-type reports of sheep and rabbits with cataracts” in Patagonia. But all
these accounts proved incorrect. The frogs were dying of a fungal disease
spread by people; the sheep had viral pinkeye; the mortality rate from melanoma
actually leveled off during the growth of the ozone hole; and as for the blind salmon and rabbits, they
were never heard of again.¶ There was an international agreement to cease using CFCs
by 1996. But the predicted recovery of the ozone layer never happened: The hole stopped
growing before the ban took effect, then failed to shrink afterward. The ozone hole still grows
every Antarctic spring, to roughly the same extent each year. Nobody quite knows why.
Some scientists think it is simply taking longer than expected for the chemicals to disintegrate; a few
believe that the cause of the hole was misdiagnosed in the first place. Either way, the
ozone hole cannot yet be claimed as a looming catastrophe , let alone one averted by
political action.

Resiliency empirically checks environmental damage. Our evidence

cites the largest data sets.
Kareiva et al. 11—Peter Kareiva is a Breakthrough Institute Senior Fellow and chief
scientist and vice president of The Nature Conservancy as well as a member of the National
Academy of Sciences. Robert Lalasz is director of science communications for The Nature
Conservancy. He is founding editor of the Conservancy's blog, “Cool Green Science.” Michelle
Marvier is professor and department chair of Environmental Studies and Sciences at Santa Clara
University. [Fall, 2011, “Conservation in the Anthropocene,” Breakthrough Journal, No. 2,
http://breakthroughjournal.org/content/authors/peter-kareiva-robert-lalasz-an-
1/conservation-in-the-anthropoce.shtml]

As conservation became a global enterprise in the 1970s and 1980s, the movement's justification for saving nature
shifted from spiritual and aesthetic values to focus on biodiversity. Nature was described as primeval, fragile, and
at risk of collapse from too much human use and abuse . And indeed, there are consequences
when humans convert landscapes for mining, logging, intensive agriculture, and urban
development and when key species or ecosystems are lost.

But ecologists and conservationists have grossly overstated the fragility of nature ,
frequently arguing that once an ecosystem is altered, it is gone forever. Some ecologists suggest
that if a single species is lost, a whole ecosystem will be in danger of collapse, and that if too
much biodiversity is lost, spaceship Earth will start to come apart. Everything, from the
expansion of agriculture to rainforest destruction to changing waterways, has been painted as a
threat to the delicate inner-workings of our planetary ecosystem.

The fragility trope dates back, at least, to Rachel Carson, who wrote plaintively in Silent Spring of the delicate
web of life and warned that perturbing the intricate balance of nature could have disastrous
consequences.22 Al Gore made a similar argument in his 1992 book, Earth in the Balance.23 And the 2005 Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment warned darkly that, while the expansion of agriculture and other forms
of development have been overwhelmingly positive for the world's poor, ecosystem degradation
was simultaneously putting systems in jeopardy of collapse. 24
The trouble for conservation is that the data simply do not support the idea of a fragile nature at risk of
collapse. Ecologists now know that the disappearance of one species does not necessarily lead to
the extinction of any others, much less all others in the same ecosystem. In many circumstances, the
demise of formerly abundant species can be inconsequential to ecosystem function. The
American chestnut, once a dominant tree in eastern North America, has been extinguished by a
foreign disease, yet the forest ecosystem is surprisingly unaffected. The passenger pigeon , once so
abundant that its flocks darkened the sky, went extinct, along with countless other species from the Steller's
sea cow to the dodo, with no catastrophic or even measurable effects.
These stories of resilience are not isolated examples -- a thorough review of the scientific
literature identified 240 studies of ecosystems following major disturbances such as
deforestation, mining, oil spills, and other types of pollution. The abundance of plant and
animal species as well as other measures of ecosystem function recovered, at least partially, in 173 ( 72
percent ) of these studies.25

Aquifiers cant solve – there’s a drought and skyrocketing water prices

inevitably shift onto food prices
Food prices don’t cause conflict---reject their bad studies.
Demarest 15—PhD Researcher at the Centre for Research on Peace and Development [Leila,
“Food price rises and political instability: Problematizing a complex relationship,” The
European Journal of Development Research, Vol. 27, No. 5, p. 650-671, Emory Libraries]
6. Conclusions and Way Forward
While some progress has been made in improving our understanding of the linkages between rising food prices and conflict, several
important gaps remain. Firstly, notions of conflict and political instability are often used
interchangeably, while these concepts and the relationships between them remain to some extent vague. The ‘food riot’
concept in particular leads to confusion . Although it is popularly seen as a violent rise of the masses, in reality, many
peaceful events are gathered under this term, while violence is often committed by the state
rather than by hungry consumers. The term also presupposes that food is the central issue at
hand, which does not necessarily have to be the case. Many misunderstanding arise from the
second gap identified in this paper: the uncritical data gathering based on international news reports.
Not only are these remarkably inconsistent , they also make use of classifications which are
not scientifically investigated. Finally, causal mechanisms in the relationship between rising food
prices and conflict often remain assumptions in the literature and lack empirical foundation . Three
crosscutting avenues for improvement therefore exist: better concept definitions, better data gathering, and more focus on contexts.

Clearly defined concepts and categorizations of conflict and instability are a necessary foundation for research on the linkages
between rising food prices and conflict. For (food) protests in particular, purposeful categorizations require an enhanced insight in
the events that took place on the ground. Local news sources for data gathering can prove to be more reliable than Western (English)
media to accomplish this. Event descriptions are also likely to be more detailed in local sources, which allows for a first-hand
qualitative analysis of causes and context.

As international food prices are likely to remain high, improving our understanding of the causal mechanisms which can lead to
conflict remains crucial. We can draw important lessons from the literature on poverty and conflict, resource scarcity and conflict,
and regime transition in Africa. The causal role of economic factors alone has continuously been
questioned, and ‘context’ or prevailing political, economic, and social factors play a crucial role
in the conflict outcome. The argument that adverse economic shocks seem more of a trigger to conflict
rather than an important cause is not particularly remarkable in itself. Yet while many authors acknowledge this,
the focus often remains on the trigger. Resource scarcity, climate change, population growth, or food insecurity often
remain the starting point of analyses, with researchers consequently tracing the divergent (theoretical) possibilities for conflict. In
the end, most admit that these factors do not automatically lead to conflict everywhere, and
stress the importance of context. Because the theoretical possibilities for conflict are so large, however, the context factor
remains rather understudied with as most agreed upon notions that elements of ‘grievance’ and ‘collective action’ are required.

It is hence important to focus more on the ‘contexts’ that can lead to conflict and, in doing so, to make the distinction between
different forms of conflict. This also implies a data collection exercise. Contextual data are currently collected at the
aggregate, national level, and only on a yearly basis, which can lead to spurious relations .
While the use of these variables is increasingly questioned in civil war studies, we can also doubt their strength in
the study of highly localized, one-time events such as riots. I particularly make the case for ‘bringing politics
back in’. The policies taken by the government are crucial in the violent escalation of social conflict (e.g. accommodation versus
repression), but the only variable currently in use to explain state behaviour seems to be the country-level regime type variable
(Polity IV or Freedom House), which is also used with regards to highly localized conflicts. Other ways in which politics matter, can
be the strength of the political opposition. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, for example, was probably better organized than other
opposition groups to make use of economic unrest.
 1NC – Advantage 2
No terror internal link – their evidence is about data sharing – the
general theory of federalism doesn’t matter to it
No WMD or escalation
Weiss 15—Visiting scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at
Stanford University, a member of the National Advisory Board of the Center for Arms Control
and Non-Proliferation in Washington, DC, and a former professor of applied mathematics and
engineering at Brown and the University of Maryland [Leonard, “On fear and nuclear
terrorism,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March/April, Vol. 71, No. 2, p. 75-87]

If the fear of nuclear war has thus had some positive effects, the fear of nuclear terrorism has had mainly negative effects on the lives
of millions of people around the world, including in the United States, and even affects negatively the prospects for a more peaceful
world. Although there has been much commentary on the interest that Osama bin Laden, when he
was alive, reportedly expressed in obtaining nuclear weapons (see Mowatt-Larssen, 2010), and some terrorists no
doubt desire to obtain such weapons, evidence of any terrorist group working seriously
toward the theft of nuclear weapons or the acquisition of such weapons by other means is
virtually nonexistent . This may be due to a combination of reasons. Terrorists understand that it is not
hard to terrorize a population without committing mass murder : In 2002, a single sniper in the Washington,
DC area, operating within his own automobile and with one accomplice, killed 10 people and changed the behavior of virtually the
entire populace of the city over a period of three weeks by instilling fear of being a randomly chosen shooting victim when out
shopping.

Terrorists who believe the commission of violence helps their cause have access to many explosive materials and conventional
weapons to ply their “trade.”
If public sympathy is important to their cause, an apparent plan or
commission of mass murder is not going to help them, and indeed will make their enemies even
more implacable, reducing the prospects of achieving their goals. The acquisition of nuclear weapons by
terrorists is not like the acquisition of conventional weapons; it requires significant time ,
planning , resources , and expertise , with no guarantees that an acquired device would
work. It requires putting aside at least some aspects of a group’s more immediate activities and
goals for an attempted operation that no terrorist group has previously accomplished . While absence
of evidence does not mean evidence of absence (as then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld kept reminding us during the search
for Saddam’s nonexistent nuclear weapons), it is reasonable to conclude that the fear of nuclear terrorism has swamped realistic
consideration of the threat. As Brian Jenkins, a longtime observer of terrorist groups, wrote in 2008:

Nuclear terrorism … turns out to be a world of truly worrisome particles of truth. Yet it is also a world of fantasies, nightmares, urban
legends, fakes, hoaxes, scams, stings, mysterious substances, terrorist boasts, sensational claims, description of vast conspiracies,
allegations of coverups, lurid headlines, layers of misinformation and disinformation. Much is inconclusive or contradictory. Only
the terror is real. (Jenkins, 2008: 26)

The three ways terrorists might get a nuke

To illustrate in more detail how fear has distorted the threat of nuclear terrorism, consider
the three possibilities for
terrorists to obtain a nuclear weapon: steal one; be given one created by a nuclear weapon state;
manufacture one. None of these possibilities has a high probability of occurring .

Stealing nukes. Nothing is better protected in a nuclear weapon state than the weapons themselves,
which have multiple layers of safeguards that, in the United States, include intelligence and
surveillance, electronic locks (including so-called “permissive action links” that prevent detonation unless a code is
entered into the lock), gated and locked storage facilities, armed guards, and teams of elite responders
if an attempt at theft were to occur. We know that most weapon states have such protections, and
there is no reason to believe that such protections are missing in the remaining states, since
no weapon state would want to put itself at risk of an unintended nuclear detonation of its own
weapons by a malevolent agent. Thus, the likelihood of an unauthorized agent secretly planning
a theft, without being discovered, and getting access to weapons with the intent and physical ability to carry
them off in the face of such layers of protection is extremely low —but it isn’t impossible, especially in the case where the
thief is an insider.

The insider threat helped give credibility to the stories, circulating about 20 years ago, that there were “loose nukes” in the USSR,
based on some statements by a Soviet general who claimed the regime could not account for more than 40 “suitcase nukes” that had
been built. The Russian government denied the claim, and at this point there is no evidence that any nukes were ever loose. Now, it
is unclear if any such weapon would even work after 20 years of corrosion of both the nuclear and non-nuclear materials in the
device and the radioactive decay of certain isotopes.

Because of the large number of terrorist groups operating in its geographic vicinity, Pakistan
is frequently suggested as
a possible candidate for scenarios in which a terrorist group either seizes a weapon via collaboration with insiders
sympathetic to its cause, or in which terrorists “inherit” nuclear weapons by taking over the arsenal of a failed nuclear state that has
devolved into chaos. Attacks by a terrorist group on a Pakistani military base, at Kamra, which is believed to house nuclear weapons
in some form, have been referenced in connection with such security concerns (Nelson and Hussain, 2012). However, the Kamra
base contained US fighter planes, including F-16s, used to bomb Taliban bases in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, so the planes,
not nuclear weapons, were the likely target of the terrorists, and in any case the mission was a failure. Moreover, Pakistan
is
not about to collapse, and the Pakistanis are known to have received major international
assistance in technologies for protecting their weapons from unauthorized use, store them in
somewhat disassembled fashion at multiple locations, and have a sophisticated nuclear
security structure in place (see Gregory, 2013; Khan, 2012).

However, the
weapons are assembled at times of high tension in the region, and, to keep a degree
of uncertainty in their location, they are moved from place to place, making them more
vulnerable to seizure at such times (Goldberg and Ambinder, 2011). (It should be noted that US nuclear weapons were
subject to such risks during various times when the weapons traveled US highways in disguised trucks and accompanying vehicles,
but such travel and the possibility of terrorist seizure was never mentioned publicly.)

Such scenarios of seizure in Pakistan would require a major security breakdown within the army leading to a takeover of weapons by
a nihilistic terrorist group with little warning, while army loyalists along with India and other interested parties (like the United
States) stand by and do not intervene. This is not a particularly realistic scenario, but it’s also not a reason to conclude that
Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is of no concern. It is, not only because of an internal threat, but especially because it raises the possibility
of nuclear war with India. For this and other reasons, intelligence agencies in multiple countries spend considerable resources
tracking the Pakistani nuclear situation to reduce the likelihood of surprises. But any consideration of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal
does bring home (once again) the folly of US policy in the 1980s, when stopping the Pakistani nuclear program was put on a back
burner in order to prosecute the Cold War against the Soviets in Afghanistan (which ultimately led to the establishment of Al
Qaeda). Some of the loudest voices expressing concern about nuclear terrorism belong to former senior government officials who
supported US assistance to the mujahideen and the accompanying diminution of US opposition to Pakistan’s nuclear activities.

Acquiring nukes as a gift. Following the shock of 9/11, government officials and the media imagined many scenarios in which
terrorists obtain nuclear weapons; one of those scenarios involves a weapon state using a terrorist group for delivery of a nuclear
weapon. There are at least two reasons why this scenario is unlikely: First, once a weapon state loses
control of a weapon, it cannot be sure the weapon will be used by the terrorist group as intended.
Second, the state cannot be sure that the transfer of the weapon has been undetected either before
or after the fact of its detonation (see Lieber and Press, 2013). The use of the weapon by a terrorist group will ultimately
result in the transferring nation becoming a nuclear target just as if it had itself detonated the device. This is a powerful
deterrent to such a transfer, making the transfer a low-probability event.
Although these first two ways in which terrorists might obtain a nuclear weapon have very small probabilities of occurring (there is
no available data suggesting that terrorist groups have produced plans for stealing a weapon, nor has there been any public
information suggesting that any nuclear weapon state has seriously considered providing a nuclear weapon to a sub-national group),
the probabilities cannot be said to be zero as long as nuclear weapons exist.
Manufacturing a nuclear weapon. To accomplish this, a terrorist group would have to obtain an
appropriate amount of one of the two most popular materials for nuclear weapons, highly enriched uranium (HEU) or
plutonium separated from fuel used in a production reactor or a power reactor. Weapon-grade plutonium is found in weapon
manufacturing facilities in nuclear weapon states and is very highly protected until it is inserted in a weapon. Reactor-
grade plutonium, although still capable of being weaponized, is less protected, and in that sense is a more attractive
target for a terrorist, especially since it has been produced and stored in prodigious quantities in a number of nuclear weapon
states and non-weapon states, particularly Japan.

But terrorist use of plutonium for a nuclear explosive device would require the construction of an
implosion weapon, requiring the fashioning of an appropriate explosive lens of TNT, a notoriously difficult
technical problem. And if a high nuclear yield (much greater than 1 kiloton) is desired, the use of reactor-grade
plutonium would require a still more sophisticated design. Moreover, if the plutonium is only available
through chemical separation from some (presumably stolen) spent fuel rods, additional technical complications present
themselves. There is at least one study showing that a small team of people with the appropriate technical skills and equipment
could, in principle, build a plutonium-based nuclear explosive device (Mark et al., 1986). But even if one discounts the
high probability that the plan would be discovered at some stage (missing plutonium or spent fuel rods
would put the authorities and intelligence operations under high alert), translating this into a real-world situation
suggests an extremely low probability of technical success . More likely, according to one well-
known weapon designer,4 would be the death of the person or persons in the attempt to build the device.

There is the possibility of an insider threat; in one example, a team of people working at a reactor or reprocessing site could
conspire to steal some material and try to hide the diversion as MUF (materials unaccounted for) within the nuclear safeguards
system. But this scenario would
require intimate knowledge of the materials accounting system on
which safeguards in that state are based and adds another layer of complexity to an operation
with low probability of success.
The situation is different in the case of using highly enriched uranium , which presents fewer technical
challenges. Here an implosion design is not necessary, and a “gun type” design is the more likely approach. Fear of this scenario has
sometimes been promoted in the literature via the quotation of a famous statement by nuclear physicist Luis Alvarez that dropping a
subcritical amount of HEU onto another subcritical amount from a distance of five feet could result in a nuclear yield. The
probability of such a yield (and its size) would depend on the geometry of the HEU components and the amount of material. More
likely than a substantial nuclear explosion from such a scenario would be a criticality accident that would release an intense burst of
radiation, killing persons in the immediate vicinity, or (even less likely) a low-yield nuclear “fizzle” that could be quite damaging
locally (like a large TNT explosion) but also carry a psychological effect because of its nuclear dimension.

stealing that
In any case, since the critical mass of a bare metal perfect sphere of pure U-235 is approximately 56 kilograms,
much highly enriched material (and getting away without detection, an armed fight, or a criticality accident) is a
major problem for any thief and one significantly greater than the stealing of small amounts
of HEU and lower-enriched material that has been reported from time to time over the past two
decades, mostly from former Soviet sites that have since had their security greatly strengthened. Moreover, fashioning the
material into a form more useful or convenient for explosive purposes could likely mean a need for
still more material than suggested above, plus a means for machining it, as would be the case for
HEU fuel assemblies from a research reactor. In a recent paper, physics professor B. C. Reed discusses the
feasibility of terrorists building a low-yield, gun-type fission weapon, but admittedly avoids the issue of whether the terrorists would
likely have the technical ability to carry feasibility to realization and whether the terrorists are likely to be successful in stealing the
needed material and hiding their project as it proceeds (Reed, 2014). But this is the crux of the nuclear terrorism issue. There is no
argument about feasibility, which has been accepted for decades, even for plutonium-based weapons, ever since Ted Taylor first
raised it in the early 1970s5 and a Senate subcommittee held hearings in the late 1970s on a weapon design created by a Harvard
dropout from information he obtained from the public section of the Los Alamos National Laboratory library (Fialka, 1978).
Likewise, no one can deny the terrible consequences of a nuclear explosion. The question is the level of risk, and what steps are
acceptable in a democracy for reducing it.

Although the attention in the literature given to nuclear terrorism scenarios involving HEU would suggest major attempts to obtain
such material by terrorist groups, there is only one known case of a major theft of HEU. It involves a US
government contractor processing HEU for the US Navy in Apollo, Pennsylvania in the 1970s at a time when security and materials
accounting were extremely lax. The theft was almost surely carried out by agents of the Israeli government with the probable
involvement of a person or persons working for the contractor, not a sub-national terrorist group intent on making its own weapons
(Gilinsky and Mattson, 2010). The
circumstances under which this theft occurred were unique, and
there was significant information about the contractor’s relationship to Israel that should have
rung alarm bells and would do so today. Although it involved a government and not a sub-national group, the theft
underscores the importance of security and accounting of nuclear materials, especially because the technical requirements for
making an HEU weapon are less daunting than for a plutonium weapon, and the probability of success by a terrorist group, though
low, is certainly greater than zero. Over the past two decades, there has been a significant effort to increase
protection of such materials, particularly in recent years through the efforts of nongovernmental
organizations like the International Panel on Fissile Materials6 and advocates like Matthew Bunn working within the
Obama administration (Bunn and Newman, 2008), though the administration has apparently not seen the need to make the
materials as secure as the weapons themselves.

Are terrorists even interested in making their own nuclear weapons?

A recent paper (Friedman and Lewis, 2014) postulates a scenario by which terrorists might seize nuclear materials in Pakistan for
there is
fashioning a weapon. While jihadist sympathizers are known to have worked within the Pakistani nuclear establishment,
little to no evidence that terrorist groups in or outside the region are seriously trying to
obtain a nuclear capability. And Pakistan has been operating a uranium enrichment plant for its weapons program for
nearly 30 years with no credible reports of diversion of HEU from the plant.

Thereis one stark example of a terrorist organization that actually started a nuclear effort: the
Aum Shinrikyo group. At its peak, this religious cult had a membership estimated in the tens of thousands spread over a
variety of countries, including Japan; its members had scientific expertise in many areas; and the group was well funded. Aum
Shinrikyo obtained access to natural uranium supplies, but the
nuclear weapon effort stalled and was
abandoned. The group was also interested in chemical weapons and did produce sarin nerve gas with which they attacked the
Tokyo subway system, killing 13 persons. Aum Shinrikyo is now a small organization under continuing
close surveillance.
What about highly organized groups, designated appropriately as terrorist, that have acquired enough territory to
enable them to operate in a quasi-governmental fashion, like the Islamic State (IS)? Such organizations are certainly
dangerous, but how would nuclear terrorism fit in with a program for building and sustaining a new
caliphate that would restore past glories of Islamic society, especially since, like any organized
government, the Islamic State would itself be vulnerable to nuclear attack ? Building a new
Islamic state out of radioactive ashes is an unlikely ambition for such groups. However, now that it has
become notorious, apocalyptic pronouncements in Western media may begin at any time, warning of the possible acquisition and
use of nuclear weapons by IS.

Even if a terror group were to achieve technical nuclear proficiency, the time, money, and
infrastructure needed to build nuclear weapons creates significant risks of discovery
that would put the group at risk of attack. Given the ease of obtaining conventional explosives
and the ability to deploy them, a terrorist group is unlikely to exchange a big part of its
operational program to engage in a risky nuclear development effort with such doubtful
prospects. And, of course, 9/11 has heightened sensitivity to the need for protection, lowering further
the probability of a successful effort.
Innovation is empirically denied and explained by PR
Forman 8 – Lisa Forman, BA, LLB, MA, SJD, is a Canadian Institutes of Health Research
(CIHR) postdoctoral fellow with the Comparative Program on Health and Society (CPHS),
Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto ““rights” and wrongs: what utility
for the right to health in reforming trade rules on medicines?
*”https://cdn2.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2013/07/4-Forman1.pdf) RMT

Questions about drug prices are closely linked to arguments about the necessity of patenting for
assuring rewards and incentives for drug developers. While pharmaceutical patents play
important roles in financing the pharmaceutical industry and stimulating research and
development, drug patents in poor countries produce very limited profits; in 2005, patented
drug sales in Africa and the Indian sub-continent combined amounted to only 2.3% of global
sales. In contrast, drug consumption in North America, Europe, and Japan alone contributed to
over 85% of the global pharmaceutical market.14 Whatever the extent of reward accruing from
developing regions, it manifestly does not ensure drug innovations for the primary disease
burdens prevalent in such countries; as Trouiller et al. found, for example, only 0.1% of new
chemical entities produced between 1975 and 1999 were for tropical diseases and tuberculosis.15
While corporate attention to drug development for neglected diseases has increased in the past
eight years, Moran attributes this increase not to commercial incentives but rather to
pharmaceutical industry efforts to minimize reputational damage resulting from the failure
to address developing country needs.16

In this light, it is not surprising that there is growing consensus that in poor countries,
“patents are not a relevant factor or effective in stimulating research and development and
bringing new products to market.”17 If patents in poor countries are not necessary to sustain the
innovation of new medicines, this raises valid questions about the justifications for requiring
them, particularly considering the human costs of limited drug access in poor countries.18

Innovation profit arguments are false

Kantajian and Ho 16 – Hagop Kantarjian is chairman of the Leukemia Department at the
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and a Baker Institute scholar for health
policies at Rice University. Vivian Ho , Ph.D., is the James A Baker III Institute Chair in health
economics, director of the Center for Health and Biosciences, a professor in the department of
economics at Rice University and a professor in the department of medicine at Baylor College of
Medicine. (“The Harm of High Drug Prices”, https://www.usnews.com/opinion/policy-
dose/articles/2016-12-12/the-harm-of-high-drug-prices-to-americans-a-continuing-saga) RMT
Despite protests, prices continue to escalate. In 2015, the average price of a new cancer drug was
$145,000/year. The price per year of life gained increased from $54,000 in 1995 to $207,000 in
2013, while real median American household income rose by seven percent. Unlike in Europe
and elsewhere, the prices of older drugs in the U.S. continue to increase by an average of 8-12
percent annually, allowing new cancer drugs to be launched at higher prices every year, in
lockstep with the rising prices of older drugs.
Under criticism, the drug industry repeats the same arguments: 1) high cost of research and
development; 2) benefit justifies price; 3) market forces; and 4) regulating prices stifles
innovation. But all four arguments lack validity. The cost of research and development is only
10 percent of the $1-2.6 billion figure that is claimed in industry-supported studies. More
than 50 percent of important discoveries are made in independent academic centers ,
funded by taxpayers, and 85 percent of basic research is conducted in academic centers.
The drug industry spends 1.3 percent of its budget on basic research , but 20-40 percent
on advertisements and related activities. Some studies show no relationship between drug
benefits and price. Drug companies enjoy monopoly-like conditions that discourage competition
based on price. Finally, innovation is driven by independent investigators who will continue
to conduct research even if drug prices fall.
We Can Make Medicine Affordable
Commonsense fixes to Medicare and FDA drug approval can lower the cost of lifesaving drugs.
High drug prices are harmful. Medical costs and out-of-pocket expenses result in high rates of
bankruptcies, and 10-25 percent of patients either delay, abandon or compromise treatments
because of financial constraints. Survival is also compromised. For example, in chronic myeloid
leukemia, the 8-10 year survival rate is 80 percent in Europe (where treatment is universally
affordable); in the U.S., where finances may limit access to drugs, the 5-year survival is 60
percent. In surveys, 78 percent of Americans worry most about costs of drugs.
Sadly, three years after the issue was raised, there has been little progress. The problem is
compounded by 2 additional factors. First is the increasing shift in the cost of care and drugs to
patients. Insurers justify this "skin-in-the-game" strategy as effective in reducing costs, but the
high out-of-pocket expenses have turned this into "deterrence-in-the-game," discouraging
patients from seeking care or purchasing drugs. In a recent survey, one-third of insured Texans
delayed or did not pursue care because of high out-of-pocket expenses. Second is the spill-over
of high drug prices to generics. Complex regulatory issues and shortages allow companies to
increase prices of generics to levels as high as patented drugs. The latest scandals – Turing,
Valiant and Mylan – are only the most extreme examples of a common strategy in pricing drugs.
Generic Imatinib to treat chronic myeloid leukemia is priced at $5,000-8,000/year in Canada,
$400/year in India, but $140,000/year in the U.S. For generic drugs to be priced low, four to
five generics have to be available. The average cost of filing for FDA approval of a drug is $5
million in 2016, and the average time to approval is 4 years. There are currently more than
3,800 generic drug applications awaiting FDA action. The FDA should overhaul its procedures
to reduce the cost of filing to less than $1 million per drug, reduce the timeline to approval to 6-
12 months and monitor for the availability of multiple generics at all times.
Lawmakers want affordable health care, but none seem willing to ban pharma-backed
advertising.

While expressing a desire to "be part of the solution," the drug industry has done little .
‘gInstead, it funded a $100+ million public relations campaign in 2016 to support the
sustenance of high prices. Of interest, some drug industry CEOs favor lowering drug prices,
arguing that affordable drugs will have deeper market penetration, keeping more patients alive
who continue to purchase and use these drugs, thus generating more long-term profits.
Several solutions can be implemented to reduce drug prices: 1) Allow Medicare to negotiate drug
prices (this can save $400-800 billion over a decade). 2) Establish a post-FDA mechanism to
review the benefits of drugs and define fair prices. 3) Encourage medical organizations to
incorporate price into definitions of "treatment value." 4) Prevent strategies that delay the
availability of generics (this saved the U.S. health care system $227 billion in 2015 and $1.46
trillion over a decade. 5) Accelerate the process of generics approval and reduce costs of filing. 6)
Request that drug companies report transparently the costs of research and development to
justify prices.
Unfortunately, these measures are opposed in Congress because of the influence of the drug
industry lobby. Elected officials seem to represent industry interests rather than interests of
American citizens who elected them. Future actions and legislation will show whether the U.S. is
still a democracy, or whether it has transformed into a "pharmaceutocracy."

Diseases won’t cause extinction – burnout or variation

York ’14 Ian, head of the Influenza Molecular Virology and Vaccines team in the Immunology and Pathogenesis
Branch, Influenza Division at the CDC, former assistant professor in immunology/virology/molecular biology (MSU),
former RA Professor in antiviral and antitumor immunity (UMass Medical School), Research Fellow (Harvard),
Ph.D., Virology (McMaster), M.Sc., Immunology (Guelph), “Why Don't Diseases Completely Wipe Out Species?” 6/4,
http://www.quora.com/Why-dont-diseases-completely-wipe-out-species

But mostly diseases don't drive species extinct . There are several reasons for that. For one, the most
dangerous diseases are those that spread from one individual to another. If the disease is highly
lethal, then the population drops, and it becomes less likely that individuals will contact
each other during the infectious phase. Highly contagious diseases tend to burn
themselves out that way. Probably the
main reason is variation. Within the host and the
pathogen population there will be a wide range of variants. Some hosts may be naturally resistant. Some
pathogens will be less virulent. And either alone or in combination, you end up with
infected individuals who survive . We see this in HIV, for example. There is a small
fraction of humans who are naturally resistant or altogether immune to HIV, either because of their CCR5 allele or their
MHC Class I type. And there are a handful of people who were infected with defective versions of HIV that

didn't progress to disease. We can see indications of this sort of thing happening in the past, because our
genomes contain many instances of pathogen resistance genes that have spread through the
whole population. Those all started off as rare mutations that conferred a strong selection advantage to the carriers, meaning that the
specific infectious diseases were serious threats to the species.

Diseases are unlikely, preparedness checks and immunology solves

Adalja 16 -- AMESH ADALJA, Dr. Adalja is a Senior Associate at the Johns Hopkins
University Center for Health Security. He also serves on the City of Pittsburgh’s HIV
Commission. He is board certified in internal medicine, emergency medicine, infectious
diseases, and critical care medicine. Dr. Adalja is currently a member of the National Quality
Forum’s Infectious Disease Standing Committee, the Infectious Diseases Society of America’s
(IDSA) Diagnostics Committee. He is also a member of the American College of Emergency
Physicians Pennsylvania Chapter’s EMS & Terrorism and Disaster Preparedness Committee as
well as the Allegheny County Medical Reserve Corps. He was formerly a member of the IDSA
Public Health Committee and the US Department of Health and Human Services’ National
Disaster Medical System, with which he was deployed to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and
also selected for their mobile acute care strike team(JUN 17, 2016“Why Hasn't Disease Wiped
out the Human Race?” https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/06/infectious-
diseases-extinction/487514/) RMT

Any yet, of course, humanity continued to flourish . Our species’ recent explosion in
lifespan is almost exclusively the result of the control of infectious diseases through sanitation,
vaccination, and antimicrobial therapies. Only in the modern era, in which many infectious
diseases have been tamed in the industrial world, do people have the luxury of death from
cancer, heart disease, or stroke in the 8th decade of life. Childhoods are free from watching
siblings and friends die from outbreaks of typhoid, scarlet fever, smallpox, measles, and the like.

So what would it take for a disease to wipe out humanity now?

In Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain, the canonical book in the disease-outbreak genre,
an alien microbe threatens the human race with extinction, and humanity’s best minds are
marshaled to combat the enemy organism. Fortunately, outside of fiction, there’s no reason to
expect alien pathogens to wage war on the human race any time soon, and my analysis suggests
that any real-life domestic microbe reaching an extinction level of threat probably is just as
unlikely.

When humans began to focus their minds on the problems posed by infectious disease, human
life ceased being nasty, brutish, and short.
Any apocalyptic pathogen would need to possess a very special combination of two attributes.
First, it would have to be so unfamiliar that no existing therapy or vaccine could be applied to
it. Second, it would need to have a high and surreptitious transmissibility before
symptoms occur. The first is essential because any microbe from a known class of pathogens
would, by definition, have family members that could serve as models for containment and
countermeasures. The second would allow the hypothetical disease to spread without being
detected by even the most astute clinicians.
The three infectious diseases most likely to be considered extinction-level threats in the world
today—influenza, HIV, and Ebola—don’t meet these two requirements. Influenza, for instance,
despite its well-established ability to kill on a large scale, its contagiousness, and its unrivaled
ability to shift and drift away from our vaccines, is still what I would call a “known unknown.”
While there are many mysteries about how new flu strains emerge, from at least the time of
Hippocrates, humans have been attuned to its risk. And in the modern era, a full-fledged
industry of influenza preparedness exists, with effective vaccine strategies and antiviral
therapies.
HIV, which has killed 39 million people over several decades, is similarly limited due to several
factors. Most importantly, HIV’s dependency on blood and body fluid for transmission (similar
to Ebola) requires intimate human-to-human contact, which limits contagion. Highly potent
antiviral therapy allows most people to live normally with the disease, and a substantial group of
the population has genetic mutations that render them impervious to infection in the first place.
Lastly, simple prevention strategies such as needle exchange for injection drug users and
barrier contraceptives—when available—can curtail transmission risk .

Ebola, for many of the same reasons as HIV as well as several others, also falls short of the mark.
This is especially due to the fact that it spreads almost exclusively through people with easily
recognizable symptoms, plus the taming of its once unfathomable 90 percent mortality rate by
simple supportive care.
Beyond those three, every other known disease falls short of what seems required to wipe out
humans—which is, of course, why we’re still here. And it’s not that diseases are ineffective. On
the contrary, diseases’ failure to knock us out is a testament to just how resilient humans
are. Part of our evolutionary heritage is our immune system, one of the most complex on the
planet, even without the benefit of vaccines or the helping hand of antimicrobial drugs. This
system, when viewed at a species level, can adapt to almost any enemy imaginable. Coupled to
genetic variations amongst humans—which open up the possibility for a range of advantages,
from imperviousness to infection to a tendency for mild symptoms—this adaptability ensures
that almost any infectious disease onslaught will leave a large proportion of the population alive
to rebuild, in contrast to the fictional Hollywood versions.