Blake Invitational 1 Kamiak nb aff

Aff Util Econ, Movements Adv

The standard is maximizing expected well being. prefer it:

1 Moral substitutability is true and only consequentialism explains it.

Sinnott-Armstrong ’92 Walter, Dartmouth College Philosophical Perspectives, 6, Ethics, AN ARGUMENT FOR CONSEQUENTIALISM

fulfillment of a promise and not because of its consequences."2 Such deontologists claim in effect that if I promise to mow the grass, there is a moral reason for me to mow the grass and this moral reason is constituted by the fact that mowing the grass fulfills my promise. This reason exists regardless of the consequences of mowing the grass even though it might be overridden by certain bad consequences. However if this is why I have a moral reason to mow the grass then even if I cannot mow the grass without starting my mower and starting the mower would enable me to mow the grass it still would not follow that l have any moral reason to start my mower since I did not promise to start my mower and starting my mower does not fulfill my promise. Thus a moral theory cannot explain moral substitutability ii it claims that properties like this provide moral reasons. Of course this argument is too simple to be conclusive by itself since deontologists will have many responses. The question is whether any response is adequate. I will argue that no response can meet the basic challenge. A deontologist might respond that his moral theory includes not only the principle that there is a moral reason to keep one's promises but also another principle that there is a moral reason to do whatever is a necessary enabler for what there is a moral reason to do. This other principle just is the principle of moral substitutability. So of course. I agree that it is true. However, the question is why it is true. This new principle is very different from the substantive principles in a deontological theory. So it cries out for an explanation. ii a deontologist simply adds this new principle to the substantive principles in his theory. he has done nothing to explain why the new principle is true. It would be ad hoc to tack it on solely in order to yield moral reasons like the moral reason to start the mower. in order to explain or justify moral substitutability. A deontologist needs to show how this principle coheres in some deeper way with the substantive principles of the theory. That is what deontologists cannot do. A second response is that l misdescribed the property that provides the moral reason. Deontologists might admit that the reason to mow the lawn is not that this fulfills a promise. but they can claim instead that the moral reason to mow the lawn is that this is a necessary enabler for keeping a promise. They can then claim that there is a moral reason to start the mower. because starting the mower is also a necessary enabler for keeping my promise. Again. I agree that these reasons exist. But the question is why. This deontologist needs to explain why the moral reason has to be that the act is a necessary enabler for fulfilling a promise instead of just that the act does fulfill a promise. Ii there is no moral reason to keep a promise. it is hard to understand why there is any moral reason to do what is a necessary enabler for keeping a promise. Furthermore, deontologists claim that the crucial act is not about consequences but directly about promises. My moral reason is supposed to arise from what I said before my act and not from consequences alter my act. However, what I said was “I promise to mow the grass'. I did not say. ‘l promise to do what is a necessary enabler for mowing the grass.’ Thus I did not promise to do what is a necessary enabler for keeping the promise. What I promised was only to keep the promise. Because of this deontologists who base moral reasons directly on promises cannot explain why there is not only a moral reason to do what I promised to do (mow the grass) but also a moral reason to do what i did not promise to do (start the mower). Deontologists might try to defend the claim that moral reasons are based on promises by claiming that promise keeping is intrinsically good and there is a moral reason to do what is a necessary enabler of what is intrinsically good. However, this response runs into two problems. First, on this theory, the reason to keep a promise is a reason to do what is itself intrinsically good, but the reason to start the mower is not a reason to do what is intrinsically good. Since these reasons are so different, they are derived in different ways. This creates an incoherence or lack of unity, which is avoided in other theories. Second, this response conflicts with a basic theme in deontological theories. If my promise keeping is intrinsically good, your promise keeping is just as intrinsically good. But then, if what gives me a moral reason to keep my promise is that I have a moral reason to do whatever is intrinsically good, I have just as much moral reason to do what is a necessary enabler for you to keep your promise. And, if my breaking my promise is a necessary enabler for two other people to keep their promises, then my moral reason to break my promise is stronger than my moral reason to keep it (other things being equal). This undermines the basic deontological claim that my reasons derive in a special way from my promises.13 So this response explains moral sub- stitutability at the expense of giving up deontology.

2 Actor specificity: A Governments must aggregate since every policy benefits some and harms others, which also means side constraints freeze action. B States lack wills or intentions since policies are collective actions. C No act-omission distinction—governments are responsible for everything in the public sphere so inaction is implicit authorization of action: they have to yes/no bills, which means everything collapse to aggregation. D No intent-foresight distinction – the actions we take are inevitably informed by predictions from certain mental states, meaning consequences are a collective part of the will. Actor-specificity comes first since different agents have different ethical standings. Takes out util calc indicts since they’re empirically denied and link turns them because the alt would be no action.

3 All judgments are determined based on consequences of pleasure and pain. Nagel:

Thomas Nagel, The View From Nowhere, HUP, 1986: 156-168.

I shall defend the unsurprising claim that sensory pleasure is good and pain bad, no matter whose they are. The point of the exercise is to see how the pressures of objectification operate in a simple case. Physical pleasure and pain do not usually depend on activities or desires which themselves raise questions of justification and value. They are just is a sensory experiences in relation to which we are fairly passive, but toward which we feel involuntary desire or aversion. Almost everyone takes the avoidance of his own pain and the promotion of his own pleasure as subjective reasons for action in a fairly simple way; they are not back up by any further reasons. On the other hand if someone pursues pain or avoids pleasure, either it as a means to some end or it is backed up by dark reasons like guilt or sexual masochism. What sort of general value, if any, ought to be assigned to pleasure and pain when we consider these facts from an objective standpoint? What kind of judgment can we reasonably make about these things when we view them in abstraction from who we are? We can begin by asking why there is no plausibility in the zero position, that pleasure and pain have no value of any kind that can be objectively recognized. That would mean that I have no reason to take aspirin for a severe headache, however I may in fact be motivated; and that looking at it from outside, you couldn't even say that someone had a reason not to put his hand on a hot stove, just because of the pain. Try looking at it from the outside and see whether you can manage to withhold that judgment. If the idea of objective practical reason makes any sense at all, so that there is some judgment to withhold, it does not seem possible. If the general arguments against the reality of objective reasons are no good, then it is at least possible that I have a reason, and not just an inclination, to refrain from putting my hand on a hot stove. But given the possibility, it seems meaningless to deny that this is so. Oddly enough, however, we can think of a story that would go with such a denial. It might be suggested that the aversion to pain is a useful phobia—having nothing to do with the intrinsic undesirability of pain itself—which helps us avoid or escape the injuries that are signaled by pain. (The same type of purely instrumental value might be ascribed to sensory pleasure: the pleasures of food, drink, and sex might be regarded as having no value in themselves, though our natural attraction to them assists survival and reproduction.) There would then be nothing wrong with pain in itself, and someone who was never motivated deliberately to do anything just because he knew it would reduce or avoid pain would have nothing the matter with him. He would still have involuntary avoidance reactions, otherwise it would be hard to say that he felt pain at all. And he would be motivated to reduce pain for other reasons—because it was an effective way to avoid the danger being signaled, or because interfered with some physical or mental activity that was important to him. He just wouldn't regard the pain as itself something he had any reason to avoid, even though he hated the feeling just as much as the rest of us. (And of course he wouldn't be able to justify the avoidance of pain in the way that we customarily justify avoiding what we hate without reason—that is, on the ground that even an irrational hatred makes its object very unpleasant!) There is nothing self-contradictory in this proposal, but it seems nevertheless insane. Without some positive reason to think there is nothing in itself good or bad about having an experience you intensely like or dislike, we can't seriously regard the common impression to the contrary as a collective illusion. Such things are at least good or bad for us, if anything is. What seems to be going on here is that we cannot from an objective standpoint withhold a certain kind of endorsement of the most direct and immediate subjective value judgments we make concerning the contents of our own consciousness. We regard ourselves as too close to those things to be mistaken in our immediate, nonideological evaluative impressions. No objective view we can attain could possibly overrule our subjective authority in such cases. There can be no reason to reject the appearances here.

Util is prerek to other frameworks

a. Threats to bodily security and life preclude the ability for moral actors to effectively utilize and act upon other moral theories since they are in a constant state of crisis that inhibit the ideal moral conditions which other theories presuppose – so, util comes first and my offense outweighs theirs under their own framework.

b. The only way that we know an action is good or bad is through its results. A violation of a constraint might be bad because it results in treating someone as a means. Talking about how we can only know intent does nothing for you: consequentialists concede this, and speculate about end states based on the aims of the actions.

Advantage 1 - Justice System

Justice system is broken now fixed on mass incarceration

America's criminal justice system is broken

By Chris Coons and Thom Tillis

Updated 8:50 AM ET, Mon January 9, 2017

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/09/opinions/america-needs-criminal-justice-reform-coons-tillis/index.html

That's not the case. We share a strong belief that America's criminal justice system is broken, focusing far too much on criminalization and incarceration and far too little on rehabilitation. A compelling example of the urgent need for reform is how our system treats juvenile offenders. We know that young people's relationship with the criminal justice apparatus has powerful, lasting consequences for them, their families, and their communities. It is therefore vitally important we make sure that all children who come into contact with the criminal justice system are treated fairly and appropriately, are not forgotten, and are afforded an opportunity to rehabilitate and become productive, contributing members of society. Our agreement on this issue was on display late last year at a juvenile justice summit, where we shared the stage for a discussion on a key challenge facing our country: a criminal justice system that over-emphasizes incarceration and is woefully inadequate when it comes to rehabilitation, even for our nation's youth. Men and women in law enforcement work hard to protect our communities across the country. As legislators, we must be committed to developing a criminal justice system that effectively promotes public safety, fairness, and rehabilitation. We believe Congress has both a moral and a fiscal imperative to ensure that our criminal justice system appropriately calibrates sentences to offenses. That is being smart on crime, not soft on crime. Despite political disagreements in Congress on a broader criminal justice reform package -- disagreements we hope to move past next year -- Democrats and Republicans surely can agree that children shouldn't be locked in a solitary confinement cell for 23 hours a day, or housed with other prisoners twice their age and size, or unnecessarily restrained and shackled for minor infractions, or harshly punished for low-level, nonviolent offenses. Surely we can agree that juveniles' interactions with the judicial system shouldn't be just about punishment, but instead must also focus on understanding the impacts of what they have done and why it was wrong. A system that focuses on rehabilitation, not punishment, doesn't excuse bad behavior. Rather, it helps all parties heal and move forward, and it keeps all of us safer by breaking cycles of recidivism. We both recognize that this system is in desperate need of reform. We share a frustration that some politicians in both parties have been too willing to put politics before policy. We also share a belief that our home states offer a road map forward. In North Carolina, several reforms have been made in recent years, including allowing a juvenile's criminal record to be expunged of non-violent offenses, limiting detention for certain offenses, and requiring a parent, guardian, or attorney to be present during police interrogations of any child under the age of 16. In Delaware, this year alone, the state legislature passed laws to expand the use of civil citations instead of criminal charges, to end shackling of youth except where it's necessary for safety, to provide free legal representation to all children charged with a crime, and to make it easier for juveniles to expunge their records. We've seen some progress at the national level. President Barack Obama rightly acted to end solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prisons. The Supreme Court ruled that it is cruel and unusual to sentence juveniles to the death penalty or to a mandatory sentence of death in prison. Here in Congress, the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which we both serve, passed the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act on a bipartisan 15-5 vote. Among its many provisions, the bill would limit solitary confinement for juveniles in federal custody. More broadly, it would begin to address the imbalance between incarceration and rehabilitation to reconstitute families, save taxpayer dollars, and restore fairness to our criminal justice system. It achieves this without harming the integrity of public safety as prison sentences would only be recalibrated for certain nonviolent offenders and would require careful judicial oversight.

Plea Bargaining sends innocents to jail who cant afford to defend themselves

“Researchers say plea bargains actually send innocent defendants to jail” Rina Palta June 13 2012”

https://www.scpr.org/blogs/news/2012/06/13/6603/plea-bargainings-innocence-problem/

Wrongful convictions happen fairly regularly, it seems, from examining statistics from the University of Michigan's Law School. What's more shocking is how many people actually plead guilty to crimes they didn't commit. Brian Banks is probably the most famous recent example. The young man, once a football star at Long Beach Polytechnic High School, spent over five years in prison for rape. Last month, a judge exonerated Banks, clearing both his name and possibly his path to a professional sports career. One of the hardest questions to answer about Banks' case (and there are several) is why the then-17-year-old pled "no contest" to the charges instead of fighting what folks are now saying was a porous case against him. Outside the Long Beach courthouse in May, moments after being exonerated, Banks told reporters he had taken the plea deal out of fear: attorneys had told him if he didn't, he could have been sentenced to life in prison. The most common way cases are handled once they're charged is through plea bargains, and research suggests that innocent people pleading guilty is actually common. In a new study Vanessa Edkins, an assistant professor of psychology at the Florida Institute of Technology, and Lucian Dervin, an assistant professor of law at Southern Illinois University, call this phenomenon experienced by Banks, "plea bargaining's innocence problem." In their study, Edkins and Dervin set up college students by enrolling them in a "logic" study, administering a test and then accusing them of knowingly cheating on it. After being accused of cheating, individual students were offered two choices: if the student admitted they'd cheated, they would lose their promised compensation for participating in the study; if they didn't admit they'd cheated and an academic review board found them guilty, they'd not only lose their compensation, but their faculty advisor would be informed and they'd be enrolled in a mandatory ethics course. In the course of the study, over half (56.4 percent) of the students wrongfully accused of cheating chose to plead guilty. The students, researchers wrote, "simply wanted to go home," much like criminal defendants who while they may be innocent, choose to plead guilty for a lesser sentence that either sends them home right away (like probation) or sooner than if they fight their charge and lose (like in Banks' case). Applying that finding to the approximately 96 percent of criminal defendants who take plea bargains, researchers wrote, "it is time for the U.S. Supreme Court to reevaluate the constitutionality of the institution."

Getting rid of plea bargaining key to stop innocents from receiving sentences

And more prison growth stifles funding to higher education harming economic growth

“How high prison costs slash education and hurt the economy” By David brodwin , May 24,2012, https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2012/05/24/how-high-prison-costs-slash-education-and-hurt-the-economy

Michigan, like many states, suffers an education gap that threatens its growth. According to a state turnaround plan, 62 percent of jobs will require a post-secondary education by 2018. Sadly, less than 40 percent of today's workers qualify. Without more college graduates, the best-paying jobs will move away—or they will never be created in the first place. The Higher Education Gap Hurts Economic Growth Why don't more Michigan residents finish college? What does this have to with jails? The answer is money: Prisons and universities compete for shrinking state budgets. Much of the state's budget is protected by statute or long-standing contracts. It can't be cut in the near term. Higher education budgets are the least protected, and they have suffered the deepest cuts. "Our public universities are a major driver of Michigan's economy yet we are spending more on a prisoner in one year than we are to help a Michigan student go to college for four years. This investment strategy is upside down if we want to attract business investment and good paying jobs," says Doug Rothwell, president and CEO of Business Leaders for Michigan, a council of CEOs and other top executives from Michigan's largest companies. Business Leaders for Michigan developed Michigan's Turnaround Plan with help from McKinsey and the Lumina Foundation. Prison Costs Have Strong Advocates Across the United States. Powerful constituencies protect prison budgets by putting more people in jail and keeping them there longer. "Law and order" conservatives want to show toughness on crime. Corporations that run outsourced prisons want to raise revenues. Unions representing correctional workers want to protect jobs and salaries. These groups promote tough mandatory sentencing and parole restrictions. Michigan is a relatively high-cost jailer. It imprisons 51 percent more of its residents than its neighbors (as a percent of population). Compared to its neighbors, Michigan spends more money per prisoner per year to keep to keep its prisoners in jail. California and many other states also confront soaring, entrenched prison costs. Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger summed it up this way: Thirty years ago, 10 percent of the general fund went to higher education and only 3 percent went to prisons. Today, almost 11 percent goes to prisons and only 7.5 percent goes to higher education. Spending 45 percent more on prisons than universities is no way to proceed into the future. Higher Prison Costs Lead to Higher Tuitions and Fewer Graduate. With state revenues under pressure and prison budgets off-limits, funds for higher education have been slashed. Colleges and universities must raise tuition, since they have no other way to bridge the funding gap. The chart below shows the dramatic change. When college costs soar, fewer people enroll and graduate. The damage will likely spread through the economy. Michigan-based companies will move jobs elsewhere if they can't fill them locally. Out-of-state companies will hesitate to expand in Michigan. Talented and ambitious graduates will flee for better opportunities. Burdened with loans, those who stay will spend little on consumer goods and services. The future of Michigan's economy depends on educating its residents. "Our state cannot afford to continue its recent trend of declining investment in the talent pool of tomorrow," said J. Patrick Doyle, president and CEO of Domino's Pizza, Inc., which is based in Ann Arbor, Mich. "Businesses are struggling now to find the right talent."

Competitiveness is key to US dominance – we need to keep innovating faster to ensure economic prosperity and hegemony

Segal 04 – Senior Fellow in China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations

Adam, Foreign Affairs, “Is America Losing Its Edge?” November / December 2004, http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20041101facomment83601/adam-segal/is-america-losing-its-edge.html

The United States' global primacy depends in large part on its ability to develop new technologies and industries faster than anyone else. For the last five decades, U.S. scientific innovation and technological entrepreneurship have ensured the country's economic prosperity and military power. It was Americans who invented and commercialized the semiconductor, the personal computer, and the Internet; other countries merely followed the U.S. lead. Today, however, this technological edge-so long taken for granted-may be slipping, and the most serious challenge is coming from Asia. Through competitive tax policies, increased investment in research and development (RandD), and preferential policies for science and technology (SandT) personnel, Asian governments are improving the quality of their science and ensuring the exploitation of future innovations. The percentage of patents issued to and science journal articles published by scientists in China, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan is rising. Indian companies are quickly becoming the second-largest producers of application services in the world, developing, supplying, and managing database and other types of software for clients around the world. South Korea has rapidly eaten away at the U.S. advantage in the manufacture of computer chips and telecommunications software. And even China has made impressive gains in advanced technologies such as lasers, biotechnology, and advanced materials used in semiconductors, aerospace, and many other types of manufacturing. Although the United States' technical dominance remains solid, the globalization of research and development is exerting considerable pressures on the American system. Indeed, as the United States is learning, globalization cuts both ways: it is both a potent catalyst of U.S. technological innovation and a significant threat to it. The United States will never be able to prevent rivals from developing new technologies; it can remain dominant only by continuing to innovate faster than everyone else. But this won't be easy; to keep its privileged position in the world, the United States must get better at fostering technological entrepreneurship at home.

Loss of competitiveness results in great power conflict—retrenchment makes war inevitable and ensures the US would be dragged in – that causes your heg bad impacts so it’s try or die for the AFF

Khalilzad 11 — Zalmay Khalilzad, Counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, served as the United States ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United Nations during the presidency of George W. Bush, served as the director of policy planning at the Defense Department during the Presidency of George H.W. Bush, holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, 2011 (“The Economy and National Security,” National Review, February 8th, Available Online at http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/259024, Accessed 02-08-2011)

Today, economic and fiscal trends pose the most severe long-term threat to the United States’ position as global leader. While the United States suffers from fiscal imbalances and low economic growth, the economies of rival powers are developing rapidly. The continuation of these two trends could lead to a shift from American primacy toward a multi-polar global system, leading in turn to increased geopolitical rivalry and even war among the great powers. The current recession is the result of a deep financial crisis, not a mere fluctuation in the business cycle. Recovery is likely to be protracted. The crisis was preceded by the buildup over two decades of enormous amounts of debt throughout the U.S. economy — ultimately totaling almost 350 percent of GDP — and the development of credit-fueled asset bubbles, particularly in the housing sector. When the bubbles burst, huge amounts of wealth were destroyed, and unemployment rose to over 10 percent. The decline of tax revenues and massive countercyclical spending put the U.S. government on an unsustainable fiscal path. Publicly held national debt rose from 38 to over 60 percent of GDP in three years. Without faster economic growth and actions to reduce deficits, publicly held national debt is projected to reach dangerous proportions. If interest rates were to rise significantly, annual interest payments — which already are larger than the defense budget — would crowd out other spending or require substantial tax increases that would undercut economic growth. Even worse, if unanticipated events trigger what economists call a “sudden stop” in credit markets for U.S. debt, the United States would be unable to roll over its outstanding obligations, precipitating a sovereign-debt crisis that would almost certainly compel a radical retrenchment of the United States internationally. Such scenarios would reshape the international order. It was the economic devastation of Britain and France during World War II, as well as the rise of other powers, that led both countries to relinquish their empires. In the late 1960s, British leaders concluded that they lacked the economic capacity to maintain a presence “east of Suez.” Soviet economic weakness, which crystallized under Gorbachev, contributed to their decisions to withdraw from Afghanistan, abandon Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, and allow the Soviet Union to fragment. If the U.S. debt problem goes critical, the United States would be compelled to retrench, reducing its military spending and shedding international commitments. We face this domestic challenge while other major powers are experiencing rapid economic growth. Even though countries such as China, India, and Brazil have profound political, social, demographic, and economic problems, their economies are growing faster than ours, and this could alter the global distribution of power. These trends could in the long term produce a multi-polar world. If U.S. policymakers fail to act and other powers continue to grow, it is not a question of whether but when a new international order will emerge. The closing of the gap between the United States and its rivals could intensify geopolitical competition among major powers, increase incentives for local powers to play major powers against one another, and undercut our will to preclude or respond to international crises because of the higher risk of escalation. The stakes are high. In modern history, the longest period of peace among the great powers has been the era of U.S. leadership. By contrast, multi-polar systems have been unstable, with their competitive dynamics resulting in frequent crises and major wars among the great powers. Failures of multi-polar international systems produced both world wars. American retrenchment could have devastating consequences. Without an American security blanket, regional powers could rearm in an attempt to balance against emerging threats. Under this scenario, there would be a heightened possibility of arms races, miscalculation, or other crises spiraling into all-out conflict. Alternatively, in seeking to accommodate the stronger powers, weaker powers may shift their geopolitical posture away from the United States. Either way, hostile states would be emboldened to make aggressive moves in their regions. As rival powers rise, Asia in particular is likely to emerge as a zone of great-power competition. Beijing’s economic rise has enabled a dramatic military buildup focused on acquisitions of naval, cruise, and ballistic missiles, long-range stealth aircraft, and anti-satellite capabilities. China’s strategic modernization is aimed, ultimately, at denying the United States access to the seas around China. Even as cooperative economic ties in the region have grown, China’s expansive territorial claims — and provocative statements and actions following crises in Korea and incidents at sea — have roiled its relations with South Korea, Japan, India, and Southeast Asian states. Still, the United States is the most significant barrier facing Chinese hegemony and aggression. Given the risks, the United States must focus on restoring its economic and fiscal condition while checking and managing the rise of potential adversarial regional powers such as China. While we face significant challenges, the U.S. economy still accounts for over 20 percent of the world’s GDP. American institutions — particularly those providing enforceable rule of law — set it apart from all the rising powers. Social cohesion underwrites political stability. U.S. demographic trends are healthier than those of any other developed country. A culture of innovation, excellent institutions of higher education, and a vital sector of small and medium-sized enterprises propel the U.S. economy in ways difficult to quantify. Historically, Americans have responded pragmatically, and sometimes through trial and error, to work our way through the kind of crisis that we face today. The policy question is how to enhance economic growth and employment while cutting discretionary spending in the near term and curbing the growth of entitlement spending in the out years. Republican members of Congress have outlined a plan. Several think tanks and commissions, including President Obama’s debt commission, have done so as well. Some consensus exists on measures to pare back the recent increases in domestic spending, restrain future growth in defense spending, and reform the tax code (by reducing tax expenditures while lowering individual and corporate rates). These are promising options. The key remaining question is whether the president and leaders of both parties on Capitol Hill have the will to act and the skill to fashion bipartisan solutions. Whether we take the needed actions is a choice, however difficult it might be. It is clearly within our capacity to put our economy on a better trajectory. In garnering political support for cutbacks, the president and members of Congress should point not only to the domestic consequences of inaction — but also to the geopolitical implications. As the United States gets its economic and fiscal house in order, it should take steps to prevent a flare-up in Asia. The United States can do so by signaling that its domestic challenges will not impede its intentions to check Chinese expansionism. This can be done in cost-efficient ways. While China’s economic rise enables its military modernization and international assertiveness, it also frightens rival powers. The Obama administration has wisely moved to strengthen relations with allies and potential partners in the region but more can be done. Some Chinese policies encourage other parties to join with the United States, and the U.S. should not let these opportunities pass. China’s military assertiveness should enable security cooperation with countries on China’s periphery — particularly Japan, India, and Vietnam — in ways that complicate Beijing’s strategic calculus. China’s mercantilist policies and currency manipulation — which harm developing states both in East Asia and elsewhere — should be used to fashion a coalition in favor of a more balanced trade system. Since Beijing’s over-the-top reaction to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to a Chinese democracy activist alienated European leaders, highlighting human-rights questions would not only draw supporters from nearby countries but also embolden reformers within China. Since the end of the Cold War, a stable economic and financial condition at home has enabled America to have an expansive role in the world. Today we can no longer take this for granted. Unless we get our economic house in order, there is a risk that domestic stagnation in combination with the rise of rival powers will undermine our ability to deal with growing international problems. Regional hegemons in Asia could seize the moment, leading the world toward a new, dangerous era of multi-polarity.

Independently, economic decline causes multiple war scenarios – the impact is extinction

Harris and Burrows - 2009 (Counselor in the National Intelligence Council, Member at the National Intelligence Council - Mathew J. Burrows, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World—an unclassified report by the NIC published every four years that projects trends over a 15-year period, has served in the Central Intelligence Agency since 1986, holds a Ph.D. in European History from Cambridge University, and Jennifer Harris, Member of the Long Range Analysis Unit at the National Intelligence Council, holds an M.Phil. in International Relations from Oxford University and a J.D. from Yale University, 2009 (“Revisiting the Future: Geopolitical Effects of the Financial Crisis,” The Washington Quarterly, Volume 32, Issue 2, April, Available Online at http://www.twq.com/09april/docs/09apr_Burrows.pdf, Accessed 08-22-2011, p. 35-37)

Of course, the report encompasses more than economics and indeed believes the future is likely to be the result of a number of intersecting and interlocking forces. With so many possible permutations of outcomes, each with ample end page 35 opportunity for unintended consequences, there is a growing sense of insecurity.¶ Even so, history may be more instructive than ever. While we continue to believe that the Great Depression is not likely to be repeated, the lessons to be drawn from that period include the harmful effects on fledgling democracies and multiethnic societies (think Central Europe in 1920s and 1930s) and on the sustainability of multilateral institutions (think League of Nations in the same period). There is no reason to think that this would not be true in the twenty-first as much as in the twentieth century. For that reason, the ways in which the potential for greater conflict could grow would seem to be even more apt in a constantly volatile economic environment as they would be if change would be steadier. In surveying those risks, the report stressed the likelihood that terrorism and nonproliferation will remain priorities even as resource issues move up on the international agenda. Terrorism’s appeal will decline if economic growth continues in the Middle East and youth unemployment is reduced. For those terrorist groups that remain active in 2025, however, the diffusion of technologies and scientific knowledge will place some of the world’s most dangerous capabilities within their reach. Terrorist groups in 2025 will likely be a combination of descendants of long established groups—inheriting organizational structures, command and control processes, and training procedures necessary to conduct sophisticated attacks—and newly emergent collections of the angry and disenfranchised that become self-radicalized, particularly in the absence of economic outlets that would become narrower in an economic downturn. The most dangerous casualty of any economically-induced drawdown of U.S. military presence would almost certainly be the Middle East. Although Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons is not inevitable, worries about a nuclear-armed Iran could lead states in the region to develop new security arrangements with external powers, acquire additional weapons, and consider pursuing their own nuclear ambitions. It is not clear that the type of stable deterrent relationship that existed between the great powers for most of the Cold War would emerge naturally in the Middle East with a nuclear Iran. Episodes of low intensity conflict and terrorism taking place under a nuclear umbrella could lead to an unintended escalation and broader conflict if clear red lines between those states involved are not well established. The close proximity of potential nuclear rivals combined with underdeveloped surveillance capabilities and mobile dual-capable Iranian missile systems also will produce inherent difficulties in achieving reliable indications and warning of an impending nuclear attack. The lack of strategic depth in neighboring states like Israel, short warning and missile flight times, and uncertainty of Iranian intentions may place more focus on preemption rather than defense, potentially leading to escalating crises. end page 36 Types of conflict that the world continues to experience, such as over resources, could reemerge, particularly if protectionism grows and there is a resort to neo-mercantilist practices. Perceptions of renewed energy scarcity will drive countries to take actions to assure their future access to energy supplies. In the worst case, this could result in interstate conflicts if government leaders deem assured access to energy resources, for example, to be essential for maintaining domestic stability and the survival of their regime. Even actions short of war, however, will have important geopolitical implications. Maritime security concerns are providing a rationale for naval buildups and modernization efforts, such as China’s and India’s development of blue water naval capabilities. If the fiscal stimulus focus for these countries indeed turns inward, one of the most obvious funding targets may be military. Buildup of regional naval capabilities could lead to increased tensions, rivalries, and counterbalancing moves, but it also will create opportunities for multinational cooperation in protecting critical sea lanes. With water also becoming scarcer in Asia and the Middle East, cooperation to manage changing water resources is likely to be increasingly difficult both within and between states in a more dog-eat-dog world.

Advantage 2 is movements

Abolishing plea bargaining would be a massive and successful revolt against the corrupt justice system

Alexander 12 Go to Trial: Crash the Justice System By MICHELLE ALEXANDERMARCH 10, 2012 Michelle Alexander is the author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/opinion/sunday/go-to-trial-crash-the-justice-system.html?_r=0 DOA 12/11/17 Premier

I launched, predictably, into a lecture about what prosecutors would do to people if they actually tried to stand up for their rights. The Bill of Rights guarantees the accused basic safeguards, including the right to be informed of charges against them, to an impartial, fair and speedy jury trial, to cross-examine witnesses and to the assistance of counsel. But in this era of mass incarceration — when our nation’s prison population has quintupled in a few decades partly as a result of the war on drugs and the “get tough” movement — these rights are, for the overwhelming majority of people hauled into courtrooms across America, theoretical. More than 90 percent of criminal cases are never tried before a jury. Most people charged with crimes forfeit their constitutional rights and plead guilty. “The truth is that government officials have deliberately engineered the system to assure that the jury trial system established by the Constitution is seldom used,” said Timothy Lynch, director of the criminal justice project at the libertarian Cato Institute. In other words: the system is rigged. In the race to incarcerate, politicians champion stiff sentences for nearly all crimes, including harsh mandatory minimum sentences and three-strikes laws; the result is a dramatic power shift, from judges to prosecutors. The Supreme Court ruled in 1978 that threatening someone with life imprisonment for a minor crime in an effort to induce him to forfeit a jury trial did not violate his Sixth Amendment right to trial. Thirteen years later, in Harmelin v. Michigan, the court ruled that life imprisonment for a first-time drug offense did not violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. No wonder, then, that most people waive their rights. Take the case of Erma Faye Stewart, a single African-American mother of two who was arrested at age 30 in a drug sweep in Hearne, Tex., in 2000. In jail, with no one to care for her two young children, she began to panic. Though she maintained her innocence, her court-appointed lawyer told her to plead guilty, since the prosecutor offered probation. Ms. Stewart spent a month in jail, and then relented to a plea. She was sentenced to 10 years’ probation and ordered to pay a $1,000 fine. Then her real punishment began: upon her release, Ms. Stewart was saddled with a felony record; she was destitute, barred from food stamps and evicted from public housing. Once they were homeless, Ms. Stewart’s children were taken away and placed in foster care. In the end, she lost everything even though she took the deal. On the phone, Susan said she knew exactly what was involved in asking people who have been charged with crimes to reject plea bargains, and press for trial. “Believe me, I know. I’m asking what we can do. Can we crash the system just by exercising our rights?” The answer is yes. The system of mass incarceration depends almost entirely on the cooperation of those it seeks to control. If everyone charged with crimes suddenly exercised his constitutional rights, there would not be enough judges, lawyers or prison cells to deal with the ensuing tsunami of litigation. Not everyone would have to join for the revolt to have an impact; as the legal scholar Angela J. Davis noted, “if the number of people exercising their trial rights suddenly doubled or tripled in some jurisdictions, it would create chaos.” Such chaos would force mass incarceration to the top of the agenda for politicians and policy makers, leaving them only two viable options: sharply scale back the number of criminal cases filed (for drug possession, for example) or amend the Constitution (or eviscerate it by judicial “emergency” fiat). Either action would create a crisis and the system would crash — it could no longer function as it had before. Mass protest would force a public conversation that, to date, we have been content to avoid.

The U.S. system of Plea Bargaining is being modeled worldwide and has created injustice on a massive scale.

Bowcott 2017. Bowcott, Owen. Bowcott is the legal affairs correspondent for the Guardian. He was formerly the Guardian's Ireland correspondent and also worked on the foreign news desk. “Global epidemic' of US-style plea bargaining prompts miscarriage warning.” The Guardian, April 27, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/law/2017/apr/27/traditional-trial-rights-renounced-as-countries-adopt-us-style-plea-bargaining Premier

The adoption of US-style plea bargaining has reached “epidemic proportions” as more and more countries persuade defendants to plead guilty and renounce traditional trial rights, a survey of international justice systems warns. The study of 90 countries by the human rights organisation Fair Trials reveals that use of such procedures has increased by 300 since 1990, boosting, it is alleged, the risk of miscarriages of justice. In the United States – which houses a fifth of the world’s prison population – as many as 97 of federal criminal cases are resolved through guilty pleas involving unregulated negotiations between prosecutors and defendants. In 2015, 44 of documented US miscarriages of justice involved cases where the defendant had pleaded guilty. Popular television culture may be flooded with US courtroom dramas, the report says, but it increasingly represents an outdated view of the American justice system where even juveniles, who are less able to understand the legal consequences, are encouraged to plead guilty. The US model has been the ideological inspiration for adopting trial-waiver systems worldwide, the study notes. The US government has provided development funding and technical support for rule of law projects, primarily through the Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development and Training sending out American prosecutors to train foreign judges and lawyers. Fair Trials says that use of trial waivers in some countries has skyrocketed over the course of a few years because they are promoted as providing a more efficient form of justice. In Georgia, 12.7 of cases were resolved through plea bargaining in 2005 but that figure had soared to 87.8 of cases by 2012. In Russia, deployment of plea bargaining deals shot up from 37 in 2008 to 64 in 2014. In the first instance courts in Chongqing, one of China’s major cities, use of ‘summary procedures’ – equivalent to trial waivers – increased from 61 in 2011, to 82 two years later. In South Africa, the number of similar “plea and sentence agreements” increased by a third in 2014-15. The Fair Trials report, The Disappearing Trial, was written with the international law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. It acknowledges that there can be some merit in plea bargaining – such as waiting times, pre-trial detention, costs and protecting vulnerable victims from having to relive their ordeals – but it argues there should be more safeguards such as mandatory access to lawyers.

Advantage 3 is convictions

Plea bargaining coerces defendants into pleading guilty for crimes they didn’t commit – there are no other options for them in the current criminal justice system.

Yoffe 17. Yoffe, Emily. Journalist and contributing editor to the Atlantic. “Innocence is Irrelevant.” The Atlantic. September 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/innocence-is-irrelevant/534171/ Premier

This is the age of the plea bargain. Most people adjudicated in the criminal-justice system today waive the right to a trial and the host of protections that go along with one, including the right to appeal. Instead, they plead guilty. The vast majority of felony convictions are now the result of plea bargains—some 94 percent at the state level, and some 97 percent at the federal level. Estimates for misdemeanor convictions run even higher. These are astonishing statistics, and they reveal a stark new truth about the American criminal-justice system: Very few cases go to trial. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy acknowledged this reality in 2012, writing for the majority in Missouri v. Frye, a case that helped establish the right to competent counsel for defendants who are offered a plea bargain. Quoting a law-review article, Kennedy wrote, “‘Horse trading between prosecutor and defense counsel determines who goes to jail and for how long. That is what plea bargaining is. It is not some adjunct to the criminal justice system; it is the criminal justice system.’” Ideally, plea bargains work like this: Defendants for whom there is clear evidence of guilt accept responsibility for their actions; in exchange, they get leniency. A time-consuming and costly trial is avoided, and everybody benefits. But in recent decades, American legislators have criminalized so many behaviors that police are arresting millions of people annually—almost 11 million in 2015, the most recent year for which figures are available. Taking to trial even a significant proportion of those who are charged would grind proceedings to a halt. According to Stephanos Bibas, a professor of law and criminology at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, the criminal-justice system has become a “capacious, onerous machinery that sweeps everyone in,” and plea bargains, with their swift finality, are what keep that machinery running smoothly. Because of plea bargains, the system can quickly handle the criminal cases of millions of Americans each year, involving everything from petty violations to violent crimes. But plea bargains make it easy for prosecutors to convict defendants who may not be guilty, who don’t present a danger to society, or whose “crime” may primarily be a matter of suffering from poverty, mental illness, or addiction. And plea bargains are intrinsically tied up with race, of course, especially in our era of mass incarceration. As prosecutors have accumulated power in recent decades, judges and public defenders have lost it. To induce defendants to plead, prosecutors often threaten “the trial penalty”: They make it known that defendants will face more-serious charges and harsher sentences if they take their case to court and are convicted. About 80 percent of defendants are eligible for court-appointed attorneys, including overworked public defenders who don’t have the time or resources to even consider bringing more than a tiny fraction of these cases to trial. The result, one frustrated Missouri public defender complained a decade ago, is a style of defense that is nothing more than “meet ’em and greet ’em and plead ’em.” According to the Prison Policy Initiative, 630,000 people are in jail on any given day, and 443,000 of them—70 percent—are in pretrial detention. Many of these defendants are facing minor charges that would not mandate further incarceration, but they lack the resources to make bail and secure their freedom. Some therefore feel compelled to take whatever deal the prosecutor offers, even if they are innocent. Writing in 2016 in the William and Mary Law Review, Donald Dripps, a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, illustrated the capricious and coercive nature of plea bargains. Dripps cited the case of Terrance Graham, a black 16-year-old who, in 2003, attempted to rob a restaurant with some friends. The prosecutor charged Graham as an adult, and he faced a life sentence without the possibility of parole at trial. The prosecutor offered Graham a great deal in exchange for a guilty plea: one year in jail and two more years of probation. Graham took the deal. But he was later accused of participating in another robbery and violated his probation—at which point the judge imposed the life sentence. What’s startling about this case, Dripps noted, is that Graham faced two radically different punishments for the same crime: either be put away for life or spend minimal time behind bars in exchange for a guilty plea. In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled, in Graham v. Florida, that the punishment Graham faced at trial was so cruel and unusual as to be unconstitutional. The Court found that a juvenile who did not commit homicide cannot face life without parole.

Plea bargains give millions of people criminal records

Yoffe 17 Emily(Emily Yoffe is a contributing editor to the Atlantic) Innocence is Irrelevant in the Age of the Plea Bargain, The Atlantic, September 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/innocence-is-irrelevant/534171/ accessed 12/9/17 Premier

Thanks in part to plea bargains, millions of Americans have a criminal record; in 2011, the National Employment Law Project estimated that figure at 65 million. It is a mark that can carry lifetime consequences for education, employment, and housing. Having a record, even for a violation that is trivial or specious, means a person can face tougher charges and punishment if they he or she again encounters the criminal-justice system. Plea bargaining has become so coercive that many innocent people feel they have no option but to plead guilty. “Our system makes it a rational choice to plead guilty to something you didn’t do,” Maddy deLone, the executive director of the Innocence Project, told me. The result, according to the late Harvard law professor William J. Stuntz, who wrote extensively about the history of plea bargains in The Collapse of American Criminal Justice (2011), is a system that has become “the harshest in the history of democratic government.”

Underview –

Court clog is empirically denied Alaska proves

ALASKA'S PLEA BARGAINING BAN RE-EVALUATED EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Teresa White Carns Project Director Alaska Judicial Council Dr. John Kruse Research Consultant Institute for Social and Economic Research University of Alaska Anchorage 1991

http://www.ajc.state.ak.us/reports/plea91Exec.pdf

The Council's initial study found that the ban appeared to have had many of the Attorney General's desired effects without having most of the negative consequences that had been widely predicted. It found that although more trials occurred immediately after the ban, the system managed to accommodate them without major disruptions. Nor was there substantial evidence that plea bargaining went underground. Most attorneys and judges interviewed in the middle 1970s agreed that their opportunities to charge or sentence bargain had been greatly curtailed. In particular, sentence bargaining, which had been the preferred mode of case disposition,12 came to virtual halt and most cases were sentenced at open hearings after the judge heard arguments from bothdefenseandprosecution.13 Some argued that longer sentences imposed on defendants whose cases had been tried as compared to those who had pled indicated implicit plea bargaining, and suggested that pleas were just as coerced as if they had been openly bargained. However, while some sentence differentials persisted after the ban, others disappeared. In short, the ban appeared to have had many of the Attorney General's desired effects without having most of the negative consequences that had been widely predicted.