1ac- inequality ac 1nc- T-A case 1ar- case T-a 2nr- case 2ar- case
Damus Hollywood Invitational
2
Opponent: Marlborough JH | Judge: David Kilpatrick
1ac- incarcerated workers ac 1nc- T-workers Plea bargaining cp case 1ar- case Cp T 2nr- T case 2ar- case T
Glenbrooks
1
Opponent: Strake Jesuit DA | Judge: Das, Sreyaash
1ac- Korsgaard US 1nc- Vx mandate da Util case 1ar- case Theory 2nr- Theory case 2ar- theory
Glenbrooks
4
Opponent: Garland LY | Judge: Krause, Lukas
1ac- afropess 1nc- t-framework case 1ar- all 2nr- all 2ar- all
Glenbrooks
5
Opponent: Westside SY | Judge: Kuffour, Julian
1ac- disassembly k 1nc- t-framework case 1ar- all 2nr- all 2ar- all
Meadows Invitational
3
Opponent: Marlborough ML | Judge: Gabriela Gonzalez
1ac- Cvd Vx Apartheid 1nc- EU cp Innovation da case 1ar- all 2nr- all 2ar- all
Meadows Invitational
2
Opponent: Sage MP | Judge: Sam Larson
1ac- Jordan 1nc- Innovation da T wto case 1ar- all 2nr- T wto case 2ar- all
Meadows Invitational
6
Opponent: Bishops SR | Judge: Josh Del Busto
1ac- Insulin adv Dev worlds adv 1nc- Innovation da Framing 2 adv 1ar- all 2nr- all 2ar- Insulin adv Framing
St Marks
1
Opponent: Marlborough HL | Judge: Leah-Clark Villanueva
1AC- Covid 1NC- Innovation DA Case 1AR- All 2NR- All 2Ar- All
UT
1
Opponent: Dulles Tommy Yu | Judge: Sheikh, Ibbi
1ac- lot of tricks 1nc- econ da comparative worlds framing case 1ar- all 2nr- all 2ar- all
x
1
Opponent: x | Judge: x
x
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Cites
Entry
Date
0 - contact
Tournament: x | Round: 1 | Opponent: x | Judge: x spisarik2023@ihs.immaculateheart.org Simone Pisarik she/her
10/16/21
0- Util
Tournament: Damus Hollywood Invitational | Round: 2 | Opponent: Marlborough JH | Judge: David Kilpatrick The standard is maximizing expected wellbeing First, pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. People consistently regard pleasure and pain as good reasons for action, despite the fact that pleasure doesn’t seem to be instrumentally valuable for anything. Moen 16 Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo “An Argument for Hedonism” Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281 SJDI Let us start by observing, empirically, that a widely shared judgment about intrinsic value and disvalue is that pleasure is intrinsically valuable and pain is intrinsically disvaluable. On virtually any proposed list of intrinsic values and disvalues (we will look at some of them below), pleasure is included among the intrinsic values and pain among the intrinsic disvalues. This inclusion makes intuitive sense, moreover, for there is something undeniably good about the way pleasure feels and something undeniably bad about the way pain feels, and neither the goodness of pleasure nor the badness of pain seems to be exhausted by the further effects that these experiences might have. “Pleasure” and “pain” are here understood inclusively, as encompassing anything hedonically positive and anything hedonically negative.2 The special value statuses of pleasure and pain are manifested in how we treat these experiences in our everyday reasoning about values. If you tell me that you are heading for the convenience store, I might ask: “What for?” This is a reasonable question, for when you go to the convenience store you usually do so, not merely for the sake of going to the convenience store, but for the sake of achieving something further that you deem to be valuable. You might answer, for example: “To buy soda.” This answer makes sense, for soda is a nice thing and you can get it at the convenience store. I might further inquire, however: “What is buying the soda good for?” This further question can also be a reasonable one, for it need not be obvious why you want the soda. You might answer: “Well, I want it for the pleasure of drinking it.” If I then proceed by asking “But what is the pleasure of drinking the soda good for?” the discussion is likely to reach an awkward end. The reason is that the pleasure is not good for anything further; it is simply that for which going to the convenience store and buying the soda is good.3 As Aristotle observes: “We never ask a man what his end is in being pleased, because we assume that pleasure is choice worthy in itself.”4 Presumably, a similar story can be told in the case of pains, for if someone says “This is painful!” we never respond by asking: “And why is that a problem?” We take for granted that if something is painful, we have a sufficient explanation of why it is bad. If we are onto something in our everyday reasoning about values, it seems that pleasure and pain are both places where we reach the end of the line in matters of value. Moreover, only pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. All other values can be explained with reference to pleasure; Occam’s razor requires us to treat these as instrumentally valuable. Moen 16 Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo “An Argument for Hedonism” Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281 SJDI I think several things should be said in response to Moore’s challenge to hedonists. First, I do not think the burden of proof lies on hedonists to explain why the additional values are not intrinsic values. If someone claims that X is intrinsically valuable, this is a substantive, positive claim, and it lies on him or her to explain why we should believe that X is in fact intrinsically valuable. Possibly, this could be done through thought experiments analogous to those employed in the previous section. Second, there is something peculiar about the list of additional intrinsic values that counts in hedonism’s favor: the listed values have a strong tendency to be well explained as things that help promote pleasure and avert pain. To go through Frankena’s list, life and consciousness are necessary presuppositions for pleasure; activity, health, and strength bring about pleasure; and happiness, beatitude, and contentment are regarded by Frankena himself as “pleasures and satisfactions.” The same is arguably true of beauty, harmony, and “proportion in objects contemplated,” and also of affection, friendship, harmony, and proportion in life, experiences of achievement, adventure and novelty, self-expression, good reputation, honor and esteem. Other things on Frankena’s list, such as understanding, wisdom, freedom, peace, and security, although they are perhaps not themselves pleasurable, are important means to achieve a happy life, and as such, they are things that hedonists would value highly. Morally good dispositions and virtues, cooperation, and just distribution of goods and evils, moreover, are things that, on a collective level, contribute a happy society, and thus the traits that would be promoted and cultivated if this were something sought after. To a very large extent, the intrinsic values suggested by pluralists tend to be hedonic instrumental values. Indeed, pluralists’ suggested intrinsic values all point toward pleasure, for while the other values are reasonably explainable as a means toward pleasure, pleasure itself is not reasonably explainable as a means toward the other values. Some have noticed this. Moore himself, for example, writes that though his pluralistic theory of intrinsic value is opposed to hedonism, its application would, in practice, look very much like hedonism’s: “Hedonists,” he writes “do, in general, recommend a course of conduct which is very similar to that which I should recommend.”24 Ross writes that “it is quite certain that by promoting virtue and knowledge we shall inevitably produce much more pleasant consciousness. These are, by general agreement, among the surest sources of happiness for their possessors.”25 Roger Crisp observes that “those goods cited by non-hedonists are goods we often, indeed usually, enjoy.”26 What Moore and Ross do not seem to notice is that their observations give rise to two reasons to reject pluralism and endorse hedonism. The first reason is that if the suggested non-hedonic intrinsic values are potentially explainable by appeal to just pleasure and pain (which, following my argument in the previous chapter, we should accept as intrinsically valuable and disvaluable), then—by appeal to Occam’s razor—we have at least a pro tanto reason to resist the introduction of any further intrinsic values and disvalues. It is ontologically more costly to posit a plurality of intrinsic values and disvalues, so in case all values admit of explanation by reference to a single intrinsic value and a single intrinsic disvalue, we have reason to reject more complicated accounts. The fact that suggested non-hedonic intrinsic values tend to be hedonistic instrumental values does not, however, count in favor of hedonism solely in virtue of being most elegantly explained by hedonism; it also does so in virtue of creating an explanatory challenge for pluralists. The challenge can be phrased as the following question: If the non-hedonic values suggested by pluralists are truly intrinsic values in their own right, then why do they tend to point toward pleasure and away from pain?27 Moral uncertainty means preventing extinction should be our highest priority. Bostrom 12 Nick Bostrom. Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Martin School University of Oxford. “Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority.” Global Policy (2012) These reflections on moral uncertainty suggest an alternative, complementary way of looking at existential risk; they also suggest a new way of thinking about the ideal of sustainability. Let me elaborate.¶ Our present understanding of axiology might well be confused. We may not now know — at least not in concrete detail — what outcomes would count as a big win for humanity; we might not even yet be able to imagine the best ends of our journey. If we are indeed profoundly uncertain about our ultimate aims, then we should recognize that there is a great option value in preserving — and ideally improving — our ability to recognize value and to steer the future accordingly. Ensuring that there will be a future version of humanity with great powers and a propensity to use them wisely is plausibly the best way available to us to increase the probability that the future will contain a lot of value. To do this, we must prevent any existential catastrophe. Reducing the risk of extinction is always priority number one. Bostrom 12 Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford., Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority. Forthcoming book (Global Policy). MP. http://www.existenti...org/concept.pdf Even if we use the most conservative of these estimates, which entirely ignores the possibility of space colonization and software minds, we find that the expected loss of an existential catastrophe is greater than the value of 10^16 human lives. This implies that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one millionth of one percentage point is at least a hundred times the value of a million human lives. The more technologically comprehensive estimate of 10 54 humanbrain-emulation subjective life-years (or 10 52 lives of ordinary length) makes the same point even more starkly. Even if we give this allegedly lower bound on the cumulative output potential of a technologically mature civilization a mere 1 chance of being correct, we find that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one billionth of one billionth of one percentage point is worth a hundred billion times as much as a billion human lives. One might consequently argue that even the tiniest reduction of existential risk has an expected value greater than that of the definite provision of any ordinary good, such as the direct benefit of saving 1 billion lives. And, further, that the absolute value of the indirect effect of saving 1 billion lives on the total cumulative amount of existential risk—positive or negative—is almost certainly larger than the positive value of the direct benefit of such an action.
11/7/21
NovDec- Econ DA
Tournament: UT | Round: 1 | Opponent: Dulles Tommy Yu | Judge: Sheikh, Ibbi Global economy is set to recover but there is still uncertainty— recession, incomplete recovery OECD 9/21 (OECD, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is an international organisation that works to build better policies for better lives. Our goal is to shape policies that foster prosperity, equality, opportunity and well-being for all. We draw on 60 years of experience and insights to better prepare the world of tomorrow.) “Global economic recovery continues but remains uneven, says OECD,” OECD, 9/21/21. https://www.oecd.org/newsroom/global-economic-recovery-continues-but-remains-uneven-says-oecd.htm RR The global economy is growing far more strongly than anticipated a year ago but the recovery remains uneven, exposing both advanced and emerging markets to a range of risks, according to the OECD’s latest Interim Economic Outlook. The OECD says extraordinary support from governments and central banks helped avoid the worst once the COVID-19 pandemic hit. With the vaccine roll-out continuing and a gradual resumption of economic activity underway, the OECD projects strong global growth of 5.7 this year and 4.5 in 2022, little changed from its May 2021 Outlook of 5.8 and 4.4 respectively. Countries are emerging from the crisis with different challenges, often reflecting their pre-COVID 19 strengths and weaknesses, and their policy approaches during the pandemic. Even in the countries where output or employment have recovered to their pre-pandemic levels, the recovery is incomplete, with jobs and incomes still short of the levels expected before the pandemic. Large differences in vaccination rates between countries are adding to the unevenness of the recovery. Renewed outbreaks of the virus are forcing some countries to restrict activities, resulting in bottlenecks and adding to supply shortages. There is a marked variation in the outlook for inflation, which has risen sharply in the US and some emerging market economies but remains relatively low in many other advanced economies, particularly in the euro area. A rapid increase in demand as economies reopen has pushed up prices in key commodities such as oil and metals as well as food, which has a stronger effect on inflation in emerging markets. The disruption to supply chains caused by the pandemic has added to cost pressures. At the same time, shipping costs have increased sharply. But the Interim Outlook says that these inflationary pressures should eventually fade. Consumer price inflation in the G20 countries is projected to peak towards the end of 2021 and slow throughout 2022. Wage growth remains broadly moderate and medium-term inflation expectations remain contained. The report warns that to keep the recovery on track stronger international efforts are needed to provide low-income countries with the resources to vaccinate their populations, both for their own and global benefits. Macroeconomic policy support is still needed as long as the outlook is uncertain and employment has not yet recovered fully, but clear guidance is called upon from policymakers to minimise risks looking forward. Central banks should communicate clearly about the likely sequencing of moves towards eventual policy normalisation and the extent to which any overshooting of inflation targets will be tolerated. The report says fiscal policies should remain flexible and avoid a premature withdrawal of support, operating within credible and transparent medium-term fiscal frameworks that provide space for stronger public infrastructure investment. Presenting the Interim Economic Outlook alongside Chief Economist Laurence Boone, OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann said: “The world is experiencing a strong recovery thanks to decisive action taken by governments and central banks at the height of the crisis. But as we have seen with vaccine distribution, progress is uneven. Ensuring the recovery is sustained and widespread requires action on a number of fronts – from effective vaccination programmes across all countries to concerted public investment strategies to build for the future.” Ms Boone said: “Policies have been efficient in buffering the shock and ensuring a strong recovery; planning for more efficient public finances, shifted towards investment in physical and human capital is necessary and will help monetary policy to normalise smoothly once the recovery is firmly established.” Strikes cause economic decline— Condon 18 (Jacki, Reporter for Creamer Media’s Engineering News) “Strikes And Their Economic Consequences,” Creamer Media’s Engineering News, 10/1/18. https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/strikes-and-their-economic-consequences-2018-10-01/rep_id:4136 RR “Whilst there are potential benefits from strikes (e.g. better work morale, lower absenteeism, or improved labour productivity), strike action also brings about numerous direct and indirect economic costs that can be high, depending on duration, number of workers involved and divisions affected,” the Initiative confirmed. According to labour expert Suleyman Alley, there are seven key causes of labour unrest: health hazards in the workplace; excessive working hours; low wages; demand for leave with pay; discrimination; inadequate working tools; and aggressive behaviour of managers towards employees. While several activities can be taken in an effort to prevent strikes from occurring or escalating, in the South African context, the tendency towards violent outbursts seems to outweigh reasonable action. “Strikes and labour unrest have marked negative impacts on the employees themselves, the employers and their stakeholders, the government, consumers, and the economy,” advises Jacki Condon, Managing Director of Apache Security Services. “The negative effects on international trade include the hinderance of economic development, creating great economic uncertainty – especially as the global media continues to share details, images and videos of violence, damage to property and ferocious clashes between strikers and security.” Strike action results in less productivity, which in turn means less profits. Labour Law expert, Ivan Israelstam confirms that; “The employer is likely to lose money due to delayed service to clients or to lost production time. The employees will lose their pay due to the no work, no pay principle. If the strikers are dismissed they will lose their livelihoods altogether.” This year alone, Eskom, Prasa, various manufacturing plants, Sasol and the Post Office have faced crippling strikes – to name but a few. Condon argues that there are more immediate consequences to consider than loss of income. “As the socio-economic issues continue to affect South Africans across the board, tensions are constantly rising,” states Condon. “Businesses must protect themselves, their assets, business property, and their non-striking employees from violence and intimidation.” Condon believes that this requires the deft hand of well-trained and highly qualified close protection operatives. These operatives provide not only protection, but video evidence as well, ensuring those responsible for damage can be held to account. “The key is to create a strategic partnership with a reliable security provider. Plans must be put into place to protect businesses against vandalism, physical assault, property invasion and intimidation during labour unrest,” concludes Condon.
Economic decline causes global nuclear war Tønnesson 15 (Stein, Research Professor, Peace Research Institute Oslo; Leader of East Asia Peace program, Uppsala University) “Deterrence, interdependence and Sino–US peace,” International Area Studies Review, Vol. 18, No. 3, p. 297-311, 2015 SJDI Several recent works on China and Sino–US relations have made substantial contributions to the current understanding of how and under what circumstances a combination of nuclear deterrence and economic interdependence may reduce the risk of war between major powers. At least four conclusions can be drawn from the review above: first, those who say that interdependence may both inhibit and drive conflict are right. Interdependence raises the cost of conflict for all sides but asymmetrical or unbalanced dependencies and negative trade expectations may generate tensions leading to trade wars among inter-dependent states that in turn increase the risk of military conflict (Copeland, 2015: 1, 14, 437; Roach, 2014). The risk may increase if one of the interdependent countries is governed by an inward-looking socio-economic coalition (Solingen, 2015); second, the risk of war between China and the US should not just be analysed bilaterally but include their allies and partners. Third party countries could drag China or the US into confrontation; third, in this context it is of some comfort that the three main economic powers in Northeast Asia (China, Japan and South Korea) are all deeply integrated economically through production networks within a global system of trade and finance (Ravenhill, 2014; Yoshimatsu, 2014: 576); and fourth, decisions for war and peace are taken by very few people, who act on the basis of their future expectations. International relations theory must be supplemented by foreign policy analysis in order to assess the value attributed by national decision-makers to economic development and their assessments of risks and opportunities. If leaders on either side of the Atlantic begin to seriously fear or anticipate their own nation’s decline then they may blame this on external dependence, appeal to anti-foreign sentiments, contemplate the use of force to gain respect or credibility, adopt protectionist policies, and ultimately refuse to be deterred by either nuclear arms or prospects of socioeconomic calamities. Such a dangerous shift could happen abruptly, i.e. under the instigation of actions by a third party – or against a third party. Yet as long as there is both nuclear deterrence and interdependence, the tensions in East Asia are unlikely to escalate to war. As Chan (2013) says, all states in the region are aware that they cannot count on support from either China or the US if they make provocative moves. The greatest risk is not that a territorial dispute leads to war under present circumstances but that changes in the world economy alter those circumstances in ways that render inter-state peace more precarious. If China and the US fail to rebalance their financial and trading relations (Roach, 2014) then a trade war could result, interrupting transnational production networks, provoking social distress, and exacerbating nationalist emotions. This could have unforeseen consequences in the field of security, with nuclear deterrence remaining the only factor to protect the world from Armageddon, and unreliably so. Deterrence could lose its credibility: one of the two great powers might gamble that the other yield in a cyber-war or conventional limited war, or third party countries might engage in conflict with each other, with a view to obliging Washington or Beijing to intervene.
12/7/21
NovDec- Industrial Workers CP
Tournament: Damus | Round: 5 | Opponent: Brentwood MH | Judge: River Cook CP: A just government, except for the United States, should recognize the unconditional right for workers to strike except for industrial workers.
Mandates boost overall vaccination rates – skeptics eventually get vaxxed Jones 9/29 (Ja'han Jones is The ReidOut Blog writer. He's a futurist and multimedia producer focused on culture and politics. His previous projects include "Black Hair Defined" and the "Black Obituary Project.") “Turns out, COVID vaccine mandates work. Good thing more are on the way.” MSNBC. September 29, 2021. AW As it turns out, many people who previously refused the Covid-19 vaccines are discovering that they will have to pay a great deal if they want to remain unvaccinated. I don’t hate to say, “I told you so,” so I’ll say it: I told you so. The Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in August effectively paved the way for vaccination requirements across the U.S. Turns out those mandates boosted the overall vaccination rate among some groups of workers, including teachers and health care professionals. The number of vaccination mandates is growing. Given the choice between joblessness and getting a potentially lifesaving vaccine shot, many people are choosing the latter — even if begrudgingly. After a vaccination mandate went into effect for health care workers in New York on Monday, the state reported that 92 percent of all its hospital and nursing home employees have gotten at least one shot — that’s a roughly 10 percentage-point increase among both groups. And never fret, America’s private industry workers. If you clock in for a nongovernmental entity, it’s highly likely that your job imposes a vaccination mandate, as well. The mandates are taking hold beyond the world of health. After United Airlines instituted a vaccination deadline of this Monday for its employees, CEO Scott Kirby said this week that 98.5 percent of its roughly 67,000 employees have been vaccinated. Some states — including Maine, Rhode Island and Washington — will require vaccinations for health care workers beginning next month. Others — like Oregon and Colorado — will implement mandates for health care professionals later next month. On Monday, a federal judge ruled that the New York City school district — the country’s largest — can require its employees to get vaccinated. On Wednesday, the San Diego Unified School District — California’s second-largest school district — announced a requirement that all eligible students and staff be vaccinated by December. On Sept. 9, President Joe Biden said the government will require that all federal employees and contractors be vaccinated and that all private employers with 100 or more employees must require either vaccinations or weekly testing. Covid-19 mandates are legal and ethical – but current labor laws are the only barrier preventing widespread strikes Millhiser 7/30 (Ian Millhiser is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. Before joining Vox, Ian was a columnist at ThinkProgress. Among other things, he clerked for Judge Eric L. Clay of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and served as a Teach for America corps member in the Mississippi Delta. He received a B.A. in philosophy from Kenyon College and a J.D., magna cum laude, from Duke University, where he served as senior note editor on the Duke Law Journal and was elected to the Order of the Coif. He is the author of Injustices: The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted.) “Yes, Covid-19 Mandates are Legal” Vox. July 30, 2021. AW In 1902, the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, faced a smallpox outbreak. In response, the local health board ordered the city’s residents over the age of 21 to be vaccinated against this disease. Violators faced a $5 fine. After a local pastor was fined for violating this vaccine mandate, he appealed his case all the way to the Supreme Court. The Court told him to pound sand in Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905). “The liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States to every person within its jurisdiction does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint,” Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote for the Court. He added that “there are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good.” Under Jacobson, state and local governments — though not necessarily the federal government — may mandate vaccines for nearly all of their residents. That decision has obvious relevance today. We now have multiple vaccines against Covid-19 that are both safe and shockingly effective, and they are available for free for all Americans. Yet the pandemic continues to rage in the United States because a large minority of Americans have yet to get a shot. While some people may face legitimate obstacles, others are just obstinate. Policymakers and other leaders, in other words, may need to take a page from Cambridge’s early 20th-century health board. Some already are. Many of the first mandates are from employers: The state of New York, for example, recently announced that all of its employees will have to either get vaccinated or submit to weekly coronavirus testing, and President Joe Biden plans to impose similar requirements on federal employees. Many private employers also require vaccines — Google, for example, will insist that its employees be vaccinated in order to enter the company’s offices. More than 600 colleges and universities require at least some of their students, faculty, and staff to be vaccinated. These sorts of mandates will undoubtedly trigger lawsuits from vaccine resisters. In some cases, individuals with religious objections to vaccines or people with disabilities that preclude them from being vaccinated will have strong legal claims — much like schoolchildren who can already seek exemptions from schools’ vaccination requirements if they have religious objections. But, assuming that the courts follow existing law — and assuming that Republican state governments do not enact new laws prohibiting employers from disciplining workers who refuse to be vaccinated — most challenges to employer-imposed vaccination requirements should fail. Under Jacobson, moreover, states should be free to order everyone within their borders to be vaccinated against Covid-19, although it’s far from clear whether the federal government could do the same. Of course, there is no guarantee that the Roberts Court, which is eager to impose limits on public health officials and not especially bothered about overruling precedents, will follow Jacobson if a state does enact a vaccine mandate. But there is good reason to believe that it will. Even Justice Neil Gorsuch, one of the most conservative members of the current Court, recently described Jacobson as a “modest” decision that “didn’t seek to depart from normal legal rules during a pandemic.” The bottom line, in other words, is that, under existing law, numerous institutions within the United States may require their employees — and, in some cases, their citizens — to be vaccinated against Covid-19. Your boss probably can require you to get vaccinated Employment relationships in the United States are typically “at-will,” meaning that an employee can be fired at any time and for any reason, even if that reason is completely arbitrary. If you have an at-will relationship with your employer, your boss can fire you because they don’t like your haircut. Or because they don’t like what you had for breakfast last Tuesday. Or, for that matter, because you refuse to get a Covid-19 vaccine. The general rule, in other words, is that your employer can fire you for any reason unless some outside legal force — a federal or state law, or maybe an individual or collective bargaining contract between you and your employer — intervenes to give you additional job security. And there is no federal law prohibiting employers from requiring nearly all of their employees to get vaccinated. Vaccine mandates guarantee strikes – that kills the work force Koenig 11/4 (David Koenig of the Associated Press contributed to this report and is a contributor to K5 News) “Vaccine mandate rules affecting 84 million Americans finalized” K5 News. November 4, 2021 AW WASHINGTON — Tens of millions of Americans who work at companies with 100 or more employees will need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 4 or get tested for the virus weekly under government rules that took effect Thursday. The new requirements are the Biden administration’s boldest move yet to persuade reluctant Americans to finally get a vaccine that has been widely available for months -- or potentially face financial consequences. If successful, administration officials believe it will go a long way toward ending a pandemic that has killed more than 750,000 Americans. First previewed by President Joe Biden in September, the requirements will apply to about 84 million workers at medium and large businesses, although it is not clear how many of those employees are unvaccinated. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations will force the companies to require that unvaccinated workers test negative for COVID-19 at least once a week and wear a mask while in the workplace. OSHA left open the possibility of expanding the requirement to smaller businesses. It asked for public comment on whether employers with fewer than 100 employees could handle vaccination or testing programs. Tougher rules will apply to another 17 million people who work in nursing homes, hospitals and other facilities that receive money from Medicare and Medicaid. Those workers will not have an option for testing — they will need to be vaccinated. Workers will be able to ask for exemptions on medical or religious grounds. The requirements will not apply to people who work at home or outdoors. Biden framed the issue as a simple choice between getting more people vaccinated or prolonging the pandemic. “While I would have much preferred that requirements not become necessary, too many people remain unvaccinated for us to get out of this pandemic for good,” he said Thursday in a statement. Biden said his encouragement for businesses to impose mandates and his own previous requirements for the military and federal contractors have helped reduce the number of unvaccinated Americans over 12 from 100 million in late July to about 60 million now. Those measures, he said, have not led to mass firings or worker shortages, adding that vaccines have been required before to fight other diseases. OSHA said companies that fail to comply with the regulations could face penalties of nearly $14,000 per violation. The agency will face enforcement challenges. Even counting help from states, OSHA has only 1,850 inspectors to oversee 130 million workers at 8 million workplaces. An administration official said the agency will respond to whistleblower complaints and make limited spot checks. The release of the rules followed weeks of regulatory review and meetings with business groups, labor unions and others. OSHA drafted the rules under emergency authority meant to protect workers from an imminent health hazard. The agency estimated that the vaccine mandate will save more than 6,500 worker lives and prevent more than 250,000 hospitalizations over the next six months. The rules set up potential legal battles along partisan lines between states and the federal government. Several states and Republican governors threatened to sue, contending that the administration lacks the power to make such sweeping mandates under emergency authority. OSHA's parent agency, the Labor Department, says it is on sound legal footing. The department's top legal official, Seema Nanda, said OSHA rules preempt conflicting state laws or orders, including those that bar employers from requiring vaccinations, testing or face masks. Senate Republicans immediately launched a petition to force a vote to overturn the vaccine mandate, but with Democrats controlling the chamber, the effort is nearly certain to fail. The rules will require workers to receive either two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or one dose of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine by Jan. 4 or be tested weekly. Employees who test positive must be removed from the workplace. Companies won't be required to provide or pay for tests for unvaccinated workers, but they must give paid time off for employees to get the shots and sick leave to recover from side effects that prevent them from working. The requirements for masks and paid time off for shots take effect Dec. 5. Employers covered by the requirements must verify their workers’ vaccination status by checking documents such as CDC vaccination cards or records from doctors or pharmacies. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued a separate rule requiring vaccination for workers in 76,000 health facilities and home health care providers that get funding from the government health programs. A senior administration official said that several large private health care organizations imposed their own mandates and achieved high vaccination rates — 96 or higher — without widespread resignations. A previously announced requirement for federal contractors to make sure workers are vaccinated was scheduled to take effect Dec. 8, but on Thursday the administration delayed that measure until Jan. 4 to match the requirements on other large employers and health care providers. Already more than a dozen states have sued to block the mandate on contractors. For weeks, Biden has encouraged businesses not to wait for OSHA to act. He has touted businesses that announced their own vaccine requirements and urged other companies to follow their lead. Administration officials say those efforts are paying off, with about 70 of the nation's adults now fully vaccinated. Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, said in late July it was requiring all workers at its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, and managers who travel within the United States to be vaccinated by Oct. 4. The retailer stopped short of requiring shots for frontline workers, however. United Airlines required 67,000 U.S. employees to get vaccinated or face termination. Only a couple hundred refused to do so, although about 2,000 are seeking exemptions. In August, Tyson Foods told its 120,000 U.S. workers that they must be vaccinated by Nov. 1. On Thursday, the company said more than 96 of its workforce was vaccinated, including 60,500 people who got their shots after the August announcement. However, some companies have expressed fear that some vaccine-hesitant workers might quit, leaving their workforces even thinner in an already-tight labor market. Several corporate groups, including the Business Roundtable, endorsed the mandate. However, retail groups worried the requirement could disrupt their operations during the critical Christmas shopping period. Retailers and others also said it could worsen supply chain disruptions. The National Retail Federation suggested the new rules are not needed because the rolling average number of new daily cases in the U.S. has fallen by more than half since September. “Nevertheless, the Biden administration has chosen to declare an ‘emergency’ and impose burdensome new requirements on retailers during the crucial holiday shopping season,” said David French, a senior vice president for the trade group. The number of new infections in the U.S. is still falling from a summer surge caused by the highly contagious delta variant, but the rate of decline has slowed in recent weeks. The 7-day moving average is down 6 from two weeks ago, at more than 76,000 new cases and 1,200 deaths per day. The earlier mandate on federal contractors led to demonstrations by opponents, including workers at a NASA rocket engine test site in Mississippi. Some said they are immune because they contracted COVID-19. Others said vaccines violated their religious beliefs and constitutional rights. “No one should be forced to take a medical treatment just to keep their job,” said Nyla Trumbach, an engineer at the site. “There’s years and years of experience and skill out here, and I just want anyone who’s watching to see what we stand to lose here if these people don’t keep their jobs.”
Industrial workforce shortages are happening now— Covid and inability to compete. Scull and Stone 8/28 (John, an associate in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, office of Jackson Lewis P.C. His practice focuses on representing employers in workplace law matters, including preventive advice and counseling.) (James, a principal of the Cleveland, Ohio, office of Jackson Lewis P.C. From the opening of the office in 2006 until early 2020, Jim served as office managing principal in Cleveland. At that time, he stepped down to focus on his busy practice and increased task force activities within practice groups and serving as co-leader of the firm’s Manufacturing industry group.) “Manufacturing Labor Shortage: Cultivating Skilled Labor By Engaging Local Communities,” JDSupra, 8/28/21. https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/manufacturing-labor-shortage-1463687/ RR The worker shortage in manufacturing has been exacerbated by the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, which erased over a decade of job gains in the manufacturing sector, eliminating more than 1.4 million positions, according to a report by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute (MI). To counter the trend, manufacturers should consider working with local schools and youth programs to develop a sustainable pipeline of talent. While approximately 820,000 of the jobs lost in the COVID-19 pandemic have since been backfilled, nearly 500,000 positions remain open and manufacturing employers have had difficulty filling these roles. According to the MI report, manufacturing employers say it is currently 36 percent harder to find talent than it was in 2018, even though the unemployment rate today is much higher. This manufacturing employment shortage is likely to intensify as the number of unfilled manufacturing positions in the United States is expected to grow to approximately 2.1 million by 2030 — damaging the U.S. economy by up to $1 trillion. While the pandemic certainly played a large role in damaging the U.S. manufacturing sector’s employment numbers, the worker shortage is nothing new. There are approximately five million fewer Americans employed in the manufacturing sector today than 20 years ago. Employers hope to reverse this trend and are under pressure to do so quickly as the median age of an American working in manufacturing is 44 years old, and older workers are retiring faster than they are being replaced. A strong industrial workforce is key to US military primacy Bloomberg Editorial Board 4/7 (Members of the editorial board will write and edit in other capacities within Bloomberg Opinion. Because our columnists have always spoken for themselves, they will continue as before — though columnists will still refrain from endorsing candidates, a policy we have had in place since we started in 2011.) “America’s Depleted Industrial Base Is a National Security Crisis,” Bloomberg, 4/7/21. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-04-07/america-s-depleted-industrial-base-is-a-national-security-crisis RR President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address is most famous for its warning against the “unwarranted influence” of the military-industrial complex. But Eisenhower also stressed the defense industry’s importance to the country’s security: After all, it helped the U.S. maintain superiority over its rivals, forestall great-power conflict and win the Cold War. Six decades on, America’s military remains the most advanced in the world — but the industrial base supporting it has deteriorated. Industry consolidation, domestic manufacturing decline and dysfunctional federal budgeting have combined to reduce competition throughout the defense supply chain, eroding military readiness and potentially jeopardizing national security. As Congress considers the Defense Department’s next budget, investing in a more nimble, innovative and resilient defense-industrial base should be among its highest priorities. Some parts of the defense industry, to be sure, continue to flourish. The U.S. spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined, with the Pentagon’s budget consuming more than half of all federal discretionary spending. Revenue for defense contractors has increased by 83 since 2011, with annual spending per company doubling in the past five years alone. That money, however, is flowing to a reduced cast of contractors. An analysis by Bloomberg Government found that the number of Pentagon “prime vendors” — those that receive contracts directly from the government — has dropped by 36 in the last decade. An even smaller handful has reaped the most gains. According to the Government Accountability Office, nearly half of the 183 major contracts awarded by the Pentagon in 2018 went to just five contractors and their subsidiaries. Such concentration imposes costs on both the military and the public. The first is financial. More than two-thirds of major Defense Department contracts are awarded without a competitive bidding process, according to the GAO; most of the rest receive bids from two or fewer companies. Fewer bidders means pricier contracts: Between 2008 and 2018, the average acquisition cost of a U.S. weapons program, in constant dollars, increased by 12.5. A lack of suppliers also undermines America’s ability to respond to crises. The Pentagon has identified a “staggering” number of cases where it relies on a single vendor for critical components. It’s down to a lone domestic source of both ammonium perchlorate, a key ingredient for warship propulsion systems, and chaff, a material that fighter jets release to evade enemy radar systems. A sole manufacturer provides all of the Army’s gun and howitzer barrels and mortar tubes. Meanwhile, offshoring has made the supply chain more vulnerable to trade disruptions, cyberattacks and sabotage. This attenuation of the U.S.’s military supply chain poses a growing national security risk — and it demands a bold response. President Joe Biden’s $2.25 trillion infrastructure plan includes $180 billion in investments to strengthen U.S. supply chains. The administration should use the Defense Production Act and other authorities to boost support for smaller domestic suppliers of critical goods and services. The Pentagon should also streamline its cumbersome contracting and acquisition process, which discourages innovation and crowds out nontraditional vendors. Initiatives like the Trusted Capital program, which connects investors with companies developing new military technologies, should be expanded. Finally, the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department should increase scrutiny of defense-industry mergers and acquisitions to limit excessive consolidation. A well-functioning supply chain depends on a diverse array of private-sector companies. The viability of those companies, in turn, depends on a sufficient supply of skilled labor. Upgrading the skills of both service members and the civilian workforce that supports the military is critical. The Pentagon should expand digital training for current employees and offer promotions and higher pay to civilian staff with advanced technical skills. Congress should boost funding for the department’s Skills Imperative initiative, which brings together schools and employers to address defense-industry workforce needs. It should also encourage apprenticeship programs in key sectors, such as shipbuilding, that lack qualified workers. As Eisenhower recognized, America’s influence abroad depends on its strength at home. Revitalizing the defense-industrial base is essential not only for national security, but also for the preservation of peace around the world. US primacy prevents great-power conflict — multipolar revisionism fragments the global order and causes nuclear war Brands and Edel, 19 — Hal Brands; PhD, Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Charles Edel; PhD, Senior Fellow and Visiting Scholar at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. (“The Lessons of Tragedy: Statecraft and World Order;” Ch. 6: Darkening Horizon; Published by Yale University Press; GrRv) Each of these geopolitical challenges is different, and each reflects the distinctive interests, ambitions, and history of the country undertaking it. Yet there is growing cooperation between the countries that are challenging the regional pillars of the U.S.-led order. Russia and China have collaborated on issues such as energy, sales and development of military technology, opposition to additional U.S. military deployments on the Korean peninsula, and naval exercises from the South China Sea to the Baltic. In Syria, Iran provided the shock troops that helped keep Russia’s ally, Bashar al-Assad, in power, as Moscow provided the air power and the diplomatic cover. “Our cooperation can isolate America,” supreme leader Ali Khamenei told Putin in 2017. More broadly, what links these challenges together is their opposition to the constellation of power, norms, and relationships that the U.S.-led order entails, and in their propensity to use violence, coercion, and intimidation as means of making that opposition effective. Taken collectively, these challenges constitute a geopolitical sea change from the post-Cold War era. The revival of great-power competition entails higher international tensions than the world has known for decades, and the revival of arms races, security dilemmas, and other artifacts of a more dangerous past. It entails sharper conflicts over the international rules of the road on issues ranging from freedom of navigation to the illegitimacy of altering borders by force, and intensifying competitions over states that reside at the intersection of rival powers’ areas of interest. It requires confronting the prospect that rival powers could overturn the favorable regional balances that have underpinned the U.S.-led order for decades, and that they might construct rival spheres of influence from which America and the liberal ideas it has long promoted would be excluded. Finally, it necessitates recognizing that great-power rivalry could lead to great-power war, a prospect that seemed to have followed the Soviet empire onto the ash heap of history. Both Beijing and Moscow are, after all, optimizing their forces and exercising aggressively in preparation for potential conflicts with the United States and its allies; Russian doctrine explicitly emphasizes the limited use of nuclear weapons to achieve escalation dominance in a war with Washington. In Syria, U.S. and Russian forces even came into deadly contact in early 2018. American airpower decimated a contingent of government-sponsored Russian mercenaries that was attacking a base at which U.S. troops were present, an incident demonstrating the increasing boldness of Russian operations and the corresponding potential for escalation. The world has not yet returned to the epic clashes for global dominance that characterized the twentieth century, but it has returned to the historical norm of great-power struggle, with all the associated dangers. Those dangers may be even greater than most observers appreciate, because if today’s great-power competitions are still most intense at the regional level, who is to say where these competitions will end? By all appearances, Russia does not simply want to be a “regional power” (as Obama cuttingly described it) that dominates South Ossetia and Crimea.37 It aspires to the deep European and extra-regional impact that previous incarnations of the Russian state enjoyed. Why else would Putin boast about how far his troops can drive into Eastern Europe? Why else would Moscow be deploying military power into the Middle East? Why else would it be continuing to cultivate intelligence and military relationships in regions as remote as Latin America? Likewise, China is today focused primarily on securing its own geopolitical neighborhood, but its ambitions for tomorrow are clearly much bolder. Beijing probably does not envision itself fully overthrowing the international order, simply because it has profited far too much from the U.S.-anchored global economy. Yet China has nonetheless positioned itself for a global challenge to U.S. influence. Chinese military forces are deploying ever farther from China’s immediate periphery; Beijing has projected power into the Arctic and established bases and logistical points in the Indian Ocean and Horn of Africa. Popular Chinese movies depict Beijing replacing Washington as the dominant actor in sub-Saharan Africa—a fictional representation of a real-life effort long under way. The Belt and Road Initiative bespeaks an aspiration to link China to countries throughout Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe; BRI, AIIB, and RCEP look like the beginning of an alternative institutional architecture to rival Washington’s. In 2017, Xi Jinping told the Nineteenth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party that Beijing could now “take center stage in the world” and act as an alternative to U.S. leadership.38 These ambitions may or may not be realistic. But they demonstrate just how significantly the world’s leading authoritarian powers desire to shift the global environment over time. The revisionism we are seeing today may therefore be only the beginning. As China’s power continues to grow, or if it is successful in dominating the Western Pacific, it will surely move on to grander endeavors. If Russia reconsolidates control over the former Soviet space, it may seek to bring parts of the former Warsaw Pact to heel. Historically, this has been a recurring pattern of great-power behavior—interests expand with power, the appetite grows with the eating, risk-taking increases as early gambles are seen to pay off.39 This pattern is precisely why the revival of great-power competition is so concerning—because geopolitical revisionism by unsatisfied major powers has so often presaged intensifying international conflict, confrontation, and even war. The great-power behavior occurring today represents the warning light flashing on the dashboard. It tells us there may be still-greater traumas to come. The threats today are compelling and urgent, and there may someday come a time when the balance of power has shifted so markedly that the postwar international system cannot be sustained. Yet that moment of failure has not yet arrived, and so the goal of U.S. strategy should be not to hasten it by giving up prematurely, but to push it off as far into the future as possible. Rather than simply acquiescing in the decline of a world it spent generations building, America should aggressively bolster its defenses, with an eye to preserving and perhaps even selectively advancing its remarkable achievements.
11/7/21
NovDec- Plea Bargaining CP
Tournament: Damus Hollywood Invitational | Round: 2 | Opponent: Marlborough JH | Judge: David Kilpatrick CP: The United States should abolish plea bargaining Plea bargaining is the leading contributor to mass incarceration – it manufactures a forfeiture of rights that subordinates people of color to the state Heiner 16 (Brady, Affiliated Faculty of African American Studies, California State University, Fullerton) “The procedural entrapment of mass incarceration: prosecution, race, and the unfinished project of American abolition,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, 2016 DRD First, the procedural entrapment thesis is that the American plea bargain system (as an apparatus of population management wherein the USA maintains 5 per cent of the global population but 25 per cent of the world’s imprisoned population, and as an insti- tution that coerces the forfeiture of due process rights to accelerate criminal conviction and confinement of those charged), is massively and predominantly, though not acciden- tally or exclusively, a technology of racial domination. As a system of procedural entrap- ment, the plea bargain regime is a necessary condition of and a leading contributor to mass incarceration, which is fundamentally immoral and racially unjust. ¶ Without the widespread ‘forfeiture’ of rights that the plea bargain regime manufac- tures, the American criminal justice system simply could not process – i.e. arrest, detain, prosecute, imprison, and supervise – the vast numbers of people (predomi- nantly of color) that it currently does. The Supreme Court recognized this in 1971: ‘If every criminal charge were subjected to a full-scale trial, the States and the Federal Government would need to multiply by many times the number of judges and court facilities.’78 (And this was just 5 months after President Richard Nixon declared the war on drugs, which inaugurated the era of mass incarceration that has since led to the upsurge of the imprisoned population by over 500 per cent. If criminal justice proce- dural capacity would have had to multiply many times over to accommodate every criminal defendant’s constitutional right to trial in 1971, the equivalent capacity requirements today would be paralysing to state and federal budgets.) The Court then concluded that plea bargaining is ‘an essential component of the administration of jus- tice’.79 ‘The truth is’, writes Timothy Lynch, director of the criminal justice project at the libertarian Cato Institute, ‘government officials have deliberately engineered the system to assure that the jury trial system established by the Constitution is seldom used. And plea bargaining is the primary technique used by the government to bypass the institutional safeguards in trials.’80 ¶ Second, the sedimentation thesis is directed toward the irresponsible prosecutorial prerogative that undergirds the system of procedural entrapment. As an institutional agency in the entrapment, confinement and social death of millions of Black, Latino/Latina and Native American people, the power of the prosecutorial function is a functional analogue, a postbellum sedimentation, of the irresponsible power of the administrators of plantation law (i.e. the southern slaveholding class). Both function massively and predominantly to enforce and reinscribe the terms of the racial contract of their day. The discretionary power of Frederick Douglass’ overseer was not subject to judicial investigation and was shielded from the censure of the public; and the Black subjects who may have sought refuge from the overseer’s arbitrary executions were extended no legal standing and thus had no recourse to equal protection of the law.81 Though the Reconstruction Amendments to the US Constitution ostensibly abolished such racial exclusions from the American social contract, present-day prosecutorial discretion, which sometimes makes life-and-death decisions, is analogously unac- countable and unreviewable, is almost always exercised behind closed doors, is answerable only to other prosecutors, and functions analogously to subordinate, entrap and confine people of color.82 ¶
11/7/21
NovDec- Police PIC
Tournament: Damus | Round: 5 | Opponent: Brentwood MH | Judge: River Cook CP: A just government should recognize an unconditional right to strike for worker with the exception of law enforcement in the United States.
Criminal justice reform is depleting police union influence Willis 20 (Jay Willis, senior contributor at The Appeal.) ,” POLICE UNIONS ARE LOSING THE WAR ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM” ,The Appeal , https://theappeal.org/police-unions-are-losing-the-war-on-criminal-justice-reform/, Nov 10, 2020 SS Law enforcement organizations have long treated mass incarceration as a job creation program. In 2020, the tide began turning against them. This commentary is part of The Appeal’s collection of opinion and analysis. Law enforcement unions are maybe the most powerful force in politics that most voters never think twice about. By quietly dumping millions of dollars in key prosecutor elections and ballot initiative fights, these organizations manage to affect everything in the criminal legal system’s orbit, usually while flying well beneath the political radar. Police unions are sort of like gravity, if gravity played a significant role in enabling agents of the state to systematically terrorize communities of color without facing meaningful consequences. In races that take place outside the quadrennial spending bonanzas for control of the White House, these strategic allocations of time and outlays of resources can be decisive in elections, especially since no cohesive pro-reform interest group exists to counteract their influence. (Tight-knit, well-organized police unions can coordinate in ways that the larger but more heterogenous and dispersed coalition of people who favor criminal justice reform cannot.) One recent study found that law enforcement groups have spent about $87 million in local and state elections over the past 20 years, including almost $65 million in Los Angeles alone. At the federal level, their recent campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures approach $50 million, according to The Guardian. Such expenditures are savvy investments for police unions, who keenly understand the value of having sympathetic friends in high places. Because prosecutors work so closely with police, they have a strong incentive to develop a friendly relationship with rank-and-file officers, even if earning that trust comes at the price of turning a blind eye to abuse: It is not a coincidence that researchers have tracked the rise of police unions to an increase in on-the-job police killings. In a country where law-and-order rhetoric is deeply embedded in the cultural zeitgeist, if you’re a prosecutor intent on keeping your job, filing charges against the badge-wearing hand that feeds might not feel worth the retaliatory smear campaign that will inevitably follow. In recent years, however—and especially as a result of the sustained protests of police violence in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis—people have grown more attuned to how these organizations bend the criminal legal system to their will and stymie efforts to reform it. A growing number of elected officials have pledged to refuse the support of law enforcement organizations; in California, a coalition of reform-minded prosecutors has been lobbying for a state bar ethics rule that would prohibit DAs from accepting donations from these sources altogether, arguing that prosecutors cannot ethically prosecute police officers if they are receiving the support of their unions. “The ties that bind elected officials to police unions must be broken,” the Los Angeles Times editorial board wrote in June. “An elected official considering whether to prosecute officers should not be, in essence, on the political payroll of the agency defending the very same people.” On Election Day 2020 in California, voters delivered police unions a series of resounding defeats that threaten to flip this time-honored paradigm on its head. In the race for Los Angeles County District Attorney, reform-oriented challenger George Gascón ousted incumbent Jackie Lacey, earning control of a sprawling office that employs nearly 1,000 line prosecutors and retains jurisdiction over more than 10 million people. Lacey was the clear favorite of law enforcement organizations, who spent some $5 million boosting her candidacy and attacking her opponent’s. And for good reason: During Lacey’s eight years on the job, she reviewed more than 250 fatal shootings by on-duty law enforcement officers. She filed charges in one of them. Occasionally, Lacey’s penchant for lenience extended beyond even that of high-profile police officials. None other than then-LAPD chief Charlie Beck called on Lacey to charge one of his officers, Clifford Proctor, in the 2015 killing of Brendon Glenn, an unarmed, homeless Black man. Lacey declined. “As independent prosecutors, we’re supposed to look at the evidence and the law,” she said. “And that’s what we did.” When the time came for Lacey to seek re-election, it seems that grateful police unions did not forget her choice. Gascón’s résumé is one that might seem as if it would appeal to law enforcement types: A former LAPD patrol officer who rose to the rank of assistant chief, he also served as police chief in San Francisco and Mesa, Arizona, and as district attorney in San Francisco, before returning to run for DA in the city where he grew up. But Gascón is among the group of prosecutors who have disclaimed the support of police unions, and his campaign pledges include reducing the population of the county’s chronically overcrowded jail system, reopening investigations of high-profile police shootings that Lacey had closed, and declining to seek the death penalty altogether. For the unions, loyalty apparently extends only so far as it will allow their members to evade accountability. Their efforts echoed those of the San Francisco Police Officers Association during last year’s DA election, when it spent some $650,000 on, among other things, mailers that declared progressive DA candidate Chesa Boudin to be “the #1 choice of criminals and gang members.” These scaremongering predictions were insufficient to prevent the city’s voters from electing Boudin—also a member of the no-money-from-cop-unions coalition—as Gascón’s successor. Further down the ballot in 2020, California voters rejected Proposition 20, which would have reclassified certain misdemeanor theft offenses as felonies and reduced the availability of parole. (Incidentally, this would have rolled back the reforms of Proposition 47, a successful 2014 referendum co-authored by Gascón.) In other words, Proposition 20 would have resulted in more incarceration for more people for longer periods of time, which is why law enforcement organizations contributed roughly $2 million to the campaign to pass it. Police unions also opposed San Francisco’s Proposition E, which eliminated the city’s minimum police staffing requirement, and Los Angeles’s Measure J, which earmarked hundreds of millions of dollars in public resources for non-police community investment. The Los Angeles County Professional Peace Officers Association, which represents sheriff’s deputies, claimed that Measure J would “cripple public safety,” and local law enforcement organizations combined to spend more than $3.5 million fighting it. Both measures nonetheless passed with overwhelming support. Law enforcement unions reliably oppose criminal justice reform for the simple reason that any attempts to reduce the criminal justice system’s footprint will make police less relevant. (Over the years, they have opposed everything from body camera mandates to the simple requirement that officers wear nametags.) For them, mass incarceration is the world’s most lucrative job creation machine. To justify their lavish spending habits and the generous rules that apply to their conduct, police always frame themselves as a mere half-step ahead of staving off mass chaos, warning that any abrogation of their authority by naive do-gooders will put everyone in danger. What this year’s election results demonstrate is that people understand the lies that infuse this narrative, which conspicuously omits from the ledger the staggering human costs that policing imposes on the communities it purports to keep safe. These losses won’t put an end to incidents of police brutality, or any other strain of rot that pervades the American criminal justice system. But they do signal that police unions are likelier to have to answer for their myriad failures, instead of relying on beneficiaries of their largesse to pretend that these failures do not exist.
The plan reverses that Lopez 20 (Laura Barrón-López, is a White House Correspondent for POLITICO.), “Democrats’ Coming Civil War Over Police Unions” , POLITICO , https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/14/police-reform-police-unions-qualified-immunity-democratic-party-420122, 10/14/2020 SS Earlier this year, House Democrats were close to pushing through a bill that would have cemented the power of police unions across the country. For a pro-labor party, the bill, which gave police officers the federal right to collectively bargain on working conditions, appeared to be a no-brainer. Nearly every Democrat in the House co-signed the legislation, including members of the Squad, a group of progressive superstars that includes Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib. The Democrats have supported public-sector unions for generations — often fighting with Republican state officials who’ve worked to gut the memberships of public employee unions and limit bargaining abilities. The bill would have granted the right to form a union and bargain contracts to firefighters, emergency medical personnel and police, including in states that currently prohibit some in public safety from negotiating collectively for wages and working conditions. As talk of moving the bill increased in March, Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas was a rare voice raising alarms. He warned his colleagues on the Education and Labor Committee that the bill would formalize the authority of police unions to determine misconduct standards in their contracts, which are increasingly viewed as a barrier to holding police accountable for wrongdoing. Castro, a Democrat, fought it, asking racial justice groups like Campaign Zero and Color of Change to talk to his Democratic colleagues. He suggested new language limiting how much police could negotiate over accountability provisions with cities. But labor organizations weren’t pleased with the idea of singling out police affiliates by restricting their ability to bargain over disciplinary standards in the bill. Then the coronavirus pandemic exploded, and negotiations stalled. Two months later, a video of a white police officer using his knee to pin George Floyd’s neck to the pavement for nine minutes rocketed around the country. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets across the nation in response to Floyd’s killing, calling for a full re-imagining of policing and thrusting police unions into the center of the national argument. Activists, multiple legal experts and even some conservative think tanks, say police unions are one of the biggest impediments to reform, pushing hard to weaken accountability rules, and preventing new ones from being passed. In the wake of Floyd’s killing, the bill expanding bargaining rights for police unions is all but dead as currently written, and not because of the pandemic. House Democrats rushed to pass a first of its kind police reform bill that would, among other measures, ban choke holds, establish a national database tracking misconduct and end the doctrine of qualified immunity, which shields police officers from civil lawsuits. More quietly, they quickly backed away from the collective-bargaining bill. In the span of three months, the party had changed its calculus, now viewing a labor bill that was endorsed by nearly every House Democrat as recently as March as untouchable in its current form. Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.), co-author of the measure, said in a statement that he asked House leadership to not move the bill unless the right for police to negotiate on accountability standards is addressed. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who also signed on to the bill, is “withdrawing her support” from it “as long as it remains in its current form,” said Lauren Hitt, a spokesperson for the New York Democrat. Rep. Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania, author of a separate broader bill to expand collective bargaining rights of public-sector workers, is also deciding “whether any changes need to be made to his bill to hold officers with problematic records accountable” and will consider changes Kildee makes to his legislation, said Cartwright spokesman Matt Slavoski. All Democrats POLITICO spoke to said they support police’s right to unionize and bargain over wages and working conditions; it’s police’s ability to negotiate misconduct standards through union contracts that some are now questioning or flat out opposing.
Police unions are the root cause of police brutality Greenhouse 20 (Steven Greenhouse, reporter at the New York Times for thirty-one years; he covered labor and workplace matters there for nineteen. He is the author of “Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor”), “How Police Unions Enable and Conceal Abuses of Power”, The New Yorker , https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-police-union-power-helped-increase-abuses, June 18, 2020 SS Police unions have long had a singular—and divisive—place in American labor. What is different at this fraught moment, however, is that these unions, long considered untouchable, due to their extraordinary power on the streets and among politicians, face a potential reckoning, as their conduct roils not just one city but the entire nation. Since the nineteen-sixties, when police unions first became like traditional unions and won the right to bargain collectively, they have had a controversial history. And recent studies suggest that their political and bargaining power has enabled them to win disciplinary systems so lax that they have helped increase police abuses in the United States. A 2018 University of Oxford study of the hundred largest American cities found that the extent of protections in police contracts was directly and positively correlated with police violence and other abuses against citizens. A 2019 University of Chicago study found that extending collective-bargaining rights to Florida sheriffs’ deputies led to a forty per cent statewide increase in cases of violent misconduct—translating to nearly twelve additional such incidents annually. In a forthcoming study, Rob Gillezeau, a professor and researcher, concluded that, from the nineteen-fifties to the nineteen-eighties, the ability of police to collectively bargain led to a substantial rise in police killings of civilians, with a greater impact on people of color. “With the caveat that this is very early work,” Gillezeau wrote on Twitter, on May 30th, “it looks like collective bargaining rights are being used to protect the ability of officers to discriminate in the disproportionate use of force against the non-white population.” Other studies revealed that many existing mechanisms for disciplining police are toothless. WBEZ, a Chicago radio station, found that, between 2007 and 2015, Chicago’s Independent Police Review Authority investigated four hundred shootings by police and deemed the officers justified in all but two incidents. Since 2012, when Minneapolis replaced its civilian review board with an Office of Police Conduct Review, the public has filed more than twenty-six hundred misconduct complaints, yet only twelve resulted in a police officer being punished. The most severe penalty: a forty-hour suspension. When the St. Paul Pioneer Press reviewed appeals involving terminations from 2014 to 2019, it discovered that arbitrators ruled in favor of the discharged police and corrections officers and ordered them reinstated forty-six per cent of the time. (Non-law-enforcement workers were reinstated at a similar rate.) For those demanding more accountability, a large obstacle is that disciplinary actions are often overturned if an arbitrator finds that the penalty the department meted out is tougher than it was in a similar, previous case—no matter if the penalty in the previous case seemed far too lenient. To critics, all of this highlights that the disciplinary process for law enforcement is woefully broken, and that police unions have far too much power. They contend that robust protections, including qualified immunity, give many police officers a sense of impunity—an attitude exemplified by Derek Chauvin keeping his knee on George Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, even as onlookers pleaded with him to stop. “We’re at a place where something has to change, so that police collective bargaining no longer contributes to police violence,” Benjamin Sachs, a labor-law professor at Harvard, told me. Sachs said that bargaining on “matters of discipline, especially related to the use of force, has insulated police officers from accountability, and that predictably can increase the problem.” For decades, members of the public have complained about police violence and police unions, and a relatively recent development—mobile-phone videos—has sparked even more public anger. These complaints grew with the killings of Eric Garner, Laquan McDonald, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, and many others. Each time, there were protests and urgent calls for police reform, but the matter blew over. Until the horrific killing of George Floyd. Historians often talk of two distinct genealogies for policing in the North and in the South, and both help to explain the crisis that the police and its unions find themselves in today. Northern cities began to establish police departments in the eighteen-thirties; by the end of the century, many had become best known for using ruthless force to crush labor agitation and strikes, an aim to which they were pushed by the industrial and financial élite. In 1886, the Chicago police killed four strikers and injured dozens more at the McCormick Reaper Works. In the South, policing has very different roots: slave patrols, in which white men brutally enforced slave codes, checking to see whether black people had proper passes whenever they were off their masters’ estates and often beating them if they did something the patrols didn’t like. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a historian at Harvard, said that the patrols “were explicit in their design to empower the entire white population” to control “the movements of black people.” At the turn of the twentieth century, many police officers—frustrated, like other workers, with low pay and long hours—formed fraternal associations, rather than unions, to seek better conditions—mayors and police commissioners insisted that the police had no more right to join a union than did soldiers and sailors. In 1897, a group of Cleveland police officers sought to form a union and petitioned the American Federation of Labor—founded in 1886, with Samuel Gompers as its first president—to grant them a union charter. The A.F.L. rejected them, saying, “It is not within the province of the trade union movement to especially organize policemen, no more than to organize militiamen, as both policemen and militiamen are often controlled by forces inimical to the labor movement.”
Police brutality is racialized structural violence that has an inter-generational impact on communities of color Ang 20 (Desmond, Assistant Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government) “Wider Effects of Police Killings in Minority Neighborhoods,” The Econofact Network, 06/24/20 High-profile officer-involved killings of unarmed minorities have sparked nationwide protests and raised important questions about the appropriate role of law enforcement in local communities. These events comprise just a handful of the roughly one thousand officer-involved killings that occur each year in the United States. There is growing evidence that acts of police violence may have widespread impacts that go well beyond the individuals involved and their immediate families, negatively affecting academic achievement, school attendance and crime reporting in the neighborhoods where they occur. Negative effects on educational performance are driven by the impact on Black and Hispanic students following the killing of an individual who is also part of a minority group. The Facts: Roughly 1,000 people are killed by American law enforcement officers each year. While whites make up the majority of those killed, these incidents disproportionately involve African-Americans and Hispanics relative to their share of the U.S. population. The number of fatal shootings by the police has been remarkably stable at close to a thousand per year, as tracked by the Washington Post since 2015. Nearly half of the people killed by police in 2019 were Black or Hispanic and about 40 were not armed with a gun. Recent research suggests that roughly one in 1,000 Black men and one in 2,000 Hispanic men will be killed by police. Black men are nearly 2.5 times more likely than white men to die at the hands of law enforcement. Young Black men face particularly high risks with police violence representing their sixth leading cause of death (behind accidents, suicides, other homicides, heart disease and cancer). At the same time, lethal shootings comprise a tiny fraction of all use of force incidents. Nearly a million people experienced nonfatal threats or use of force during contacts with police in 2015 for instance, according to a 2018 report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (see Table 18).
Officers involved in police killings went unprosecuted in nearly all cases. Judicial precedence grants law enforcement officers wide latitude in employing force against civilians and department procedures for handling and reporting these incidents are often far from comprehensive. In one large urban county I studied just one out of over 600 incidents resulted in criminal charges against police. Nationally, researchers found 31 cases in which police officers were arrested for murder or nonnegligent manslaughter between 2005 and 2011. This amounts to one-half of one-percent of all officer-involved killings during that period. The impacts of police violence can extend beyond the direct victims to nearby high school students. Students who live close to a police killing during high school are estimated to be 2.5 less likely to graduate from high school and 2 less likely to enroll in college than students from the same neighborhood who live farther from the shooting. To estimate these effects, I analyzed detailed data for over 600 officer-involved killings and more than 700,000 public high school students in a large, urban county. Because the data includes home addresses and tracks student performance over time, I am able to compare how achievement changes after a killing for students who lived close to the incident relative to students in the same neighborhood who lived slightly farther away. I find that students living within a half a mile of a killing are more likely to miss school the following day and experience significant decreases in GPA lasting several semesters. The highly localized effect may be due to the fact that more than 80 percent of incidents went unreported in area newspapers. Nearby students are estimated to be 15 more likely to be diagnosed with emotional disturbance - a chronic learning disability associated with PTSD and depression - and twice as likely to report feeling unsafe in their neighborhood. The effects of police killings on academic performance in my analysis are driven entirely by effects on Black and Hispanic students in response to police killings of other underrepresented minorities. I find no significant impact on white or Asian students, nor do I find a significant impact for police killings of white or Asian individuals. These racial differences cannot be explained by other factors like the neighborhoods where killings occur, media coverage or socioeconomic background. Even taking all of these factors into account, I continue to find significant differences in effects based on the race of the student and of the person killed. The chart shows the estimated effects on educational attainment by student race. For Black and Hispanic students, I find large, negative impacts on cumulative GPA, high school completion and college enrollment with very little margin of error, whereas for white and Asian students all the estimated effects are near zero. The adverse effects on academic performance are largest for police killings of unarmed minorities. I find that police killings of individuals that were completely unarmed (as described in District Attorney incident reports) lead to decreases in GPA that are about twice as large as police killings of individuals that were armed with a gun. This suggests that students are not responding to those events with the most gunfire or the largest shootouts but instead to those incidents in which the use of lethal force may have been least warranted. In a similar fashion, I find that the effects of gun-related criminal homicides on GPA are only half as large as those for police killings and do not vary with the race of the person killed. The pattern of effects is consistent with longstanding concerns expressed by minorities about how their neighborhoods are policed. The Kerner Commission, established by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968, reported the “widespread belief among Negroes in the existence of police brutality and in a ‘double standard’ of justice and protection.” More recent national surveys, such as this one from 2015, find that a vast majority of Black and Hispanic individuals believe that police “deal more roughly with members of minority groups” and that these individuals are far more likely than white counterparts to believe that police violence is a serious issue. As national protests following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor continue to demonstrate, police killings of unarmed minorities may have negative consequences for social cohesion and institutional trust, with much of the costs borne by underrepresented groups.
11/7/21
NovDec- T-A
Tournament: Damus Hollywood Invitational | Round: 3 | Opponent: Harvard Westlake MT | Judge: Diana Alvarez Interpretation: the affirmative may not spec a government 1 The letter “A” is an indefinite article that modifies “just government” – the resolution must be proven true in all instances, not one particular instance CCC ND Capital Community College a nonprofit 501 c-3 organization that supports scholarships, faculty development, and curriculum innovation, “Articles, Determiners, and Quantifiers”, http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/determiners/determiners.htm#articles AG The three articles — a, an, the — are a kind of adjective. The is called the definite article because it usually precedes a specific or previously mentioned noun; a and an are called indefinite articles because they are used to refer to something in a less specific manner (an unspecified count noun). These words are also listed among the noun markers or determiners because they are almost invariably followed by a noun (or something else acting as a noun). caution CAUTION! Even after you learn all the principles behind the use of these articles, you will find an abundance of situations where choosing the correct article or choosing whether to use one or not will prove chancy. Icy highways are dangerous. The icy highways are dangerous. And both are correct. The is used with specific nouns. The is required when the noun it refers to represents something that is one of a kind: The moon circles the earth. The is required when the noun it refers to represents something in the abstract: The United States has encouraged the use of the private automobile as opposed to the use of public transit. The is required when the noun it refers to represents something named earlier in the text. (See below..) If you would like help with the distinction between count and non-count nouns, please refer to Count and Non-Count Nouns. We use a before singular count-nouns that begin with consonants (a cow, a barn, a sheep); we use an before singular count-nouns that begin with vowels or vowel-like sounds (an apple, an urban blight, an open door). Words that begin with an h sound often require an a (as in a horse, a history book, a hotel), but if an h-word begins with an actual vowel sound, use an an (as in an hour, an honor). We would say a useful device and a union matter because the u of those words actually sounds like yoo (as opposed, say, to the u of an ugly incident). The same is true of a European and a Euro (because of that consonantal "Yoo" sound). We would say a once-in-a-lifetime experience or a one-time hero because the words once and one begin with a w sound (as if they were spelled wuntz and won). Merriam-Webster's Dictionary says that we can use an before an h- word that begins with an unstressed syllable. Thus, we might say an hisTORical moment, but we would say a HIStory book. Many writers would call that an affectation and prefer that we say a historical, but apparently, this choice is a matter of personal taste. For help on using articles with abbreviations and acronyms (a or an FBI agent?), see the section on Abbreviations. First and subsequent reference: When we first refer to something in written text, we often use an indefinite article to modify it. A newspaper has an obligation to seek out and tell the truth. In a subsequent reference to this newspaper, however, we will use the definite article: There are situations, however, when the newspaper must determine whether the public's safety is jeopardized by knowing the truth. Another example: "I'd like a glass of orange juice, please," John said. "I put the glass of juice on the counter already," Sheila replied. Exception: When a modifier appears between the article and the noun, the subsequent article will continue to be indefinite: "I'd like a big glass of orange juice, please," John said. "I put a big glass of juice on the counter already," Sheila replied. Generic reference: We can refer to something in a generic way by using any of the three articles. We can do the same thing by omitting the article altogether. A beagle makes a great hunting dog and family companion. An airedale is sometimes a rather skittish animal. The golden retriever is a marvelous pet for children. Irish setters are not the highly intelligent animals they used to be. The difference between the generic indefinite pronoun and the normal indefinite pronoun is that the latter refers to any of that class ("I want to buy a beagle, and any old beagle will do.") whereas the former (see beagle sentence) refers to all members of that class
2 Government is an indefinite singular– the aff may not defend a specific set of governments Nebel 20 Jake Nebel is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California and executive director of Victory Briefs. He writes a lot of this stuff lol – duh. “Indefinite Singular Generics in Debate” Victory Briefs, 19 Sept 2020. no url AG I agree that if “a democracy” in the resolution just meant “one or more democracy,” then a country-specific affirmative could be topical. But, as I will explain in this topic analysis, that isn’t what “a democracy” means in the resolution. To see why, we first need to back up a bit and review (or learn) the idea of generic generalizations. The most common way of expressing a generic in English is through a bare plural. A bare plural is a plural noun phrase, like “dogs” and “cats,” that lacks an overt determiner. (A determiner is a word that tells us which or how many: determiners include quantifier words like “all,” “some,” and “most,” demonstratives like “this” and “those,” posses- sives like “mine” and “its,” and so on.) LD resolutions often contain bare plurals, and that is the most common clue to their genericity. We have already seen some examples of generics that are not bare plurals: “A whale is a mammal,” “A beaver builds dams,” and “The woolly mammoth is extinct.” The first two examples use indefinite singulars—singular nouns preceded by the indefinite article “a”—and the third is a definite singular since it is preceded by the definite article “the.” Generics can also be expressed with bare singulars (“Syrup is viscous”) and even verbs (as we’ll see later on). The resolution’s “a democracy” is an indefinite singular, and so it very well might be—and, as we’ll soon see, is—generic. But it is also important to keep in mind that, just as not all generics are bare plurals, not all bare plurals are generic. “Dogs are barking” is true as long as some dogs are barking. Bare plurals can be used in particular ways to express existential statements. The key question for any given debate resolution that contains a bare plural is whether that occurrence of the bare plural is generic or existential. The same is true of indefinite singulars. As debaters will be quick to point out, some uses of the indefinite singular really do mean “some” or “one or more”: “A cat is on the mat” is clearly not a generic generalization about cats; it’s true as long as some cat is on the mat. The question is whether the indefinite singular “a democracy” is existential or generic in the resolution. Now, my own view is that, if we understand the difference between existential and generic statements, and if we approach the question impartially, without any invest- ment in one side of the debate, we can almost always just tell which reading is correct just by thinking about it. It is clear that “In a democracy, voting ought to be compul- sory” doesn’t mean “There is one or more democracy in which voting ought to be com- pulsory.” I don’t think a fancy argument should be required to show this any more than a fancy argument should be required to show that “A duck doesn’t lay eggs” is a generic—a false one because ducks do lay eggs, even though some ducks (namely males) don’t. And if a debater contests this by insisting that “a democracy” is existen- tial, the judge should be willing to resolve competing claims by, well, judging—that is, by using her judgment. Contesting a claim by insisting on its negation or demanding justification doesn’t put any obligation on the judge to be neutral about it. (Otherwise the negative could make every debate irresolvable by just insisting on the negation of every statement in the affirmative speeches.) Even if the insistence is backed by some sort of argument, we can reasonably reject an argument if we know its conclusion to be false, even if we are not in a position to know exactly where the argument goes wrong. Particularly in matters of logic and language, speakers have more direct knowledge of particular cases (e.g., that some specific inference is invalid or some specific sentence is infelicitious) than of the underlying explanations. But that is just my view, and not every judge agrees with me, so it will be helpful to consider some arguments for the conclusion that we already know to be true: that, even if the United States is a democracy and ought to have compulsory voting, that doesn’t suffice to show that, in a democracy, voting ought to be compulsory—in other words, that “a democracy” in the resolution is generic, not existential. Second, existential uses of the indefinite, such as “A cat is on the mat,” are upward- entailing.3 This means that if you replace the noun with a more general one, such as “An animal is on the mat,” the sentence will still be true. So let’s do that with “a democracy.” Does the resolution entail “In a society, voting ought to be compulsory”? Intuitively not, because you could think that voting ought to be compulsory in democracies but not in other sorts of societies. This suggests that “a democracy” in the resolution is not existential.
It applies to government:
Upward entailment test – spec fails the upward entailment test because saying that China ought to have the unconditional right to strike does not entail that those governments ought to have the unconditional right to strike. 2. Adverb test – adding “usually” to the res doesn’t substantially change its meaning because a recognition is universal and permanent
Violation – they only defend the United States
Vote neg:
Semantics outweigh: a. T is a constitutive rule of the activity and a basic aff burden – they agreed to debate the topic when they came here b. Jurisdiction – you can’t vote aff if they haven’t affirmed the resolution c. It’s the only stasis point we know before the round so it controls the internal link to engagement – there’s no way to use ground if debaters aren’t prepared to defend it Standards: 2. Limits – there are 195 affs accounting for hundreds of governments— unlimited topics incentivize obscure affs that negs won’t have prep on – limits are key to reciprocal prep burden – potential abuse doesn’t justify foregoing the topic and 1AR theory checks PICs. Banerjee 4/12 (Vasabjit Banerjee, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Mississippi State University),”How many states and provinces are in the world?” , The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/how-many-states-and-provinces-are-in-the-world-157847, April 12, 2021 SS There are 195 national governments recognized by the United Nations, but there are as many as nine other places with nationlike governments, including Taiwan and Kosovo, though they are not recognized by the U.N. Most of these countries are divided into smaller sections, the way the U.S. is broken up into 50 states along with territories, like Puerto Rico and Guam, and a federal district, Washington, D.C. They are not all called “states,” though: Switzerland has cantons, Bangladesh has divisions, Cameroon has regions, Germany has lander, Jordan has governorates, Montserrat has parishes, Zambia has provinces, and Japan has prefectures – among many other names.
3. Ground – spec guts core generics like the econ DA which rely on all governments having the unconditional right to strike because individual governments don’t have an impact on the global economy as a whole – also means there is no universal DA to spec affs 4. TVA solves – read as an advantage to whole rez
Paradigm issues:
Drop the debater – their abusive advocacy skewed the debate from the start 2. Comes before 1AR theory – NC abuse is responsive to them not being topical 3. Competing interps – reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention and a race to the bottom of questionable argumentation 4. No RVIs – fairness and education are a priori burdens – and encourages baiting – outweighs because if T is frivolous, they can beat it quickly 5. Fairness is a voter ¬– necessary to determine the better debater 6. Education is a voter – why schools fund debate
11/6/21
NovDec- T-Workers Nebel
Tournament: Damus Hollywood Invitational | Round: 2 | Opponent: Marlborough JH | Judge: David Kilpatrick T-Nebel Interpretation: workers are a generic bare plural. The aff may not defend that A just government should recognize an unconditional right to strike for a subset of workers. Nebel 19 Jake Nebel Jake Nebel is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California and executive director of Victory Briefs. , 8-12-2019, "Genericity on the Standardized Tests Resolution," Briefly, https://www.vbriefly.com/2019/08/12/genericity-on-the-standardized-tests-resolution/ SM Both distinctions are important. Generic resolutions can’t be affirmed by specifying particular instances. But, since generics tolerate exceptions, plan-inclusive counterplans (PICs) do not negate generic resolutions. Bare plurals are typically used to express generic generalizations. But there are two important things to keep in mind. First, generic generalizations are also often expressed via other means (e.g., definite singulars, indefinite singulars, and bare singulars). Second, and more importantly for present purposes, bare plurals can also be used to express existential generalizations. For example, “Birds are singing outside my window” is true just in case there are some birds singing outside my window; it doesn’t require birds in general to be singing outside my window. So, what about “colleges and universities,” “standardized tests,” and “undergraduate admissions decisions”? Are they generic or existential bare plurals? On other topics I have taken great pains to point out that their bare plurals are generic—because, well, they are. On this topic, though, I think the answer is a bit more nuanced. Let’s see why. 1.1 “Colleges and Universities” “Colleges and universities” is a generic bare plural. I don’t think this claim should require any argument, when you think about it, but here are a few reasons. First, ask yourself, honestly, whether the following speech sounds good to you: “Eight colleges and universities—namely, those in the Ivy League—ought not consider standardized tests in undergraduate admissions decisions. Maybe other colleges and universities ought to consider them, but not the Ivies. Therefore, in the United States, colleges and universities ought not consider standardized tests in undergraduate admissions decisions.” That is obviously not a valid argument: the conclusion does not follow. Anyone who sincerely believes that it is valid argument is, to be charitable, deeply confused. But the inference above would be good if “colleges and universities” in the resolution were existential. By way of contrast: “Eight birds are singing outside my window. Maybe lots of birds aren’t singing outside my window, but eight birds are. Therefore, birds are singing outside my window.” Since the bare plural “birds” in the conclusion gets an existential reading, the conclusion follows from the premise that eight birds are singing outside my window: “eight” entails “some.” If the resolution were existential with respect to “colleges and universities,” then the Ivy League argument above would be a valid inference. Since it’s not a valid inference, “colleges and universities” must be a generic bare plural. Second, “colleges and universities” fails the upward-entailment test for existential uses of bare plurals. Consider the sentence, “Lima beans are on my plate.” This sentence expresses an existential statement that is true just in case there are some lima beans on my plate. One test of this is that it entails the more general sentence, “Beans are on my plate.” Now consider the sentence, “Colleges and universities ought not consider the SAT.” (To isolate “colleges and universities,” I’ve eliminated the other bare plurals in the resolution; it cannot plausibly be generic in the isolated case but existential in the resolution.) This sentence does not entail the more general statement that educational institutions ought not consider the SAT. This shows that “colleges and universities” is generic, because it fails the upward-entailment test for existential bare plurals. Third, “colleges and universities” fails the adverb of quantification test for existential bare plurals. Consider the sentence, “Dogs are barking outside my window.” This sentence expresses an existential statement that is true just in case there are some dogs barking outside my window. One test of this appeals to the drastic change of meaning caused by inserting any adverb of quantification (e.g., always, sometimes, generally, often, seldom, never, ever). You cannot add any such adverb into the sentence without drastically changing its meaning. To apply this test to the resolution, let’s again isolate the bare plural subject: “Colleges and universities ought not consider the SAT.” Adding generally (“Colleges and universities generally ought not consider the SAT”) or ever (“Colleges and universities ought not ever consider the SAT”) result in comparatively minor changes of meaning. (Note that this test doesn’t require there to be no change of meaning and doesn’t have to work for every adverb of quantification.) This strongly suggests what we already know: that “colleges and universities” is generic rather than existential in the resolution. Fourth, it is extremely unlikely that the topic committee would have written the resolution with the existential interpretation of “colleges and universities” in mind. If they intended the existential interpretation, they would have added explicit existential quantifiers like “some.” No such addition would be necessary or expected for the generic interpretation since generics lack explicit quantifiers by default. The topic committee’s likely intentions are not decisive, but they strongly suggest that the generic interpretation is correct, since it’s prima facie unlikely that a committee charged with writing a sentence to be debated would be so badly mistaken about what their sentence means (which they would be if they intended the existential interpretation). The committee, moreover, does not write resolutions for the 0.1 percent of debaters who debate on the national circuit; they write resolutions, at least in large part, to be debated by the vast majority of students on the vast majority of circuits, who would take the resolution to be (pretty obviously, I’d imagine) generic with respect to “colleges and universities,” given its face-value meaning and standard expectations about what LD resolutions tend to mean.
It applies to workers:
Upward entailment test – spec fails the upward entailment test because saying that governments ought to recognize a right for one type of workers does not entail that those governments ought to recognize the right for all workers 2. Adverb test – adding “usually” to the res doesn’t substantially change its meaning because a recognition is universal and permanent
Vote neg:
Semantics outweigh: a. T is a constitutive rule of the activity and a basic aff burden – they agreed to debate the topic when they came here b. Jurisdiction – you can’t vote aff if they haven’t affirmed the resolution c. It’s the only stasis point we know before the round so it controls the internal link to engagement – there’s no way to use ground if debaters aren’t prepared to defend it
2. Limits – there are countless affs accounting for thousands of types of workers– unlimited topics incentivize obscure affs that negs won’t have prep on – limits are key to reciprocal prep burden – potential abuse doesn’t justify foregoing the topic and 1AR theory checks PICs
3. Ground – spec guts core generics like the cap K or the econ DA that rely on recognizing rights for all workers because individual jobs don’t affect the economy broadly – also means there is no universal DA to spec affs
4. TVA solves – read as an advantage to whole rez
Paradigm issues:
Drop the debater – their abusive advocacy skewed the debate from the start 2. Comes before 1AR theory – NC abuse is responsive to them not being topical 3. Competing interps – reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention and a race to the bottom of questionable argumentation 4. No RVIs – fairness and education are a priori burdens – and encourages baiting – outweighs because if T is frivolous, they can beat it quickly 5. Fairness is a voter ¬– necessary to determine the better debater 6. Education is a voter – why schools fund debate
CP: The United States should abolish plea bargaining Plea bargaining is the leading contributor to mass incarceration – it manufactures a forfeiture of rights that subordinates people of color to the state Heiner 16 (Brady, Affiliated Faculty of African American Studies, California State University, Fullerton) “The procedural entrapment of mass incarceration: prosecution, race, and the unfinished project of American abolition,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, 2016 DRD First, the procedural entrapment thesis is that the American plea bargain system (as an apparatus of population management wherein the USA maintains 5 per cent of the global population but 25 per cent of the world’s imprisoned population, and as an insti- tution that coerces the forfeiture of due process rights to accelerate criminal conviction and confinement of those charged), is massively and predominantly, though not acciden- tally or exclusively, a technology of racial domination. As a system of procedural entrap- ment, the plea bargain regime is a necessary condition of and a leading contributor to mass incarceration, which is fundamentally immoral and racially unjust. ¶ Without the widespread ‘forfeiture’ of rights that the plea bargain regime manufac- tures, the American criminal justice system simply could not process – i.e. arrest, detain, prosecute, imprison, and supervise – the vast numbers of people (predomi- nantly of color) that it currently does. The Supreme Court recognized this in 1971: ‘If every criminal charge were subjected to a full-scale trial, the States and the Federal Government would need to multiply by many times the number of judges and court facilities.’78 (And this was just 5 months after President Richard Nixon declared the war on drugs, which inaugurated the era of mass incarceration that has since led to the upsurge of the imprisoned population by over 500 per cent. If criminal justice proce- dural capacity would have had to multiply many times over to accommodate every criminal defendant’s constitutional right to trial in 1971, the equivalent capacity requirements today would be paralysing to state and federal budgets.) The Court then concluded that plea bargaining is ‘an essential component of the administration of jus- tice’.79 ‘The truth is’, writes Timothy Lynch, director of the criminal justice project at the libertarian Cato Institute, ‘government officials have deliberately engineered the system to assure that the jury trial system established by the Constitution is seldom used. And plea bargaining is the primary technique used by the government to bypass the institutional safeguards in trials.’80 ¶ Second, the sedimentation thesis is directed toward the irresponsible prosecutorial prerogative that undergirds the system of procedural entrapment. As an institutional agency in the entrapment, confinement and social death of millions of Black, Latino/Latina and Native American people, the power of the prosecutorial function is a functional analogue, a postbellum sedimentation, of the irresponsible power of the administrators of plantation law (i.e. the southern slaveholding class). Both function massively and predominantly to enforce and reinscribe the terms of the racial contract of their day. The discretionary power of Frederick Douglass’ overseer was not subject to judicial investigation and was shielded from the censure of the public; and the Black subjects who may have sought refuge from the overseer’s arbitrary executions were extended no legal standing and thus had no recourse to equal protection of the law.81 Though the Reconstruction Amendments to the US Constitution ostensibly abolished such racial exclusions from the American social contract, present-day prosecutorial discretion, which sometimes makes life-and-death decisions, is analogously unac- countable and unreviewable, is almost always exercised behind closed doors, is answerable only to other prosecutors, and functions analogously to subordinate, entrap and confine people of color.82 ¶
11/7/21
SeptOct- DA Innovation
Tournament: St Marks | Round: 1 | Opponent: Marlborough HL | Judge: Leah-Clark Villanueva DA Biotech industry strong now Cancherini et al. 4/30 (Laura, Engagement Manager @ McKinsey and Company, Joseph Lydon, Associate Partner @ McKinsey and Company, Jorge Santos Da Silva, Senior Partner at McKinsey and Company, and Alexandra Zemp, Partner at McKinsey and Company), “What’s ahead for biotech: Another wave or low tide?“, McKinsey and Company, 4-30-2021, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/pharmaceuticals-and-medical-products/our-insights/whats-ahead-for-biotech-another-wave-or-low-tide TDI Belying this downbeat mood, biotech has in fact had one of its best years so far. By January 2021, venture capitalists had invested some 60 percent more than they had in January 2020, with more than $3 billion invested worldwide in January 2021 alone.5 IPO activity grew strongly: there were 19 more closures than in the same period in 2020, with an average of $150 million per raise, 17 percent more than in 2020. Other deals have also had a bumper start to 2021, with the average deal size reaching more than $500 million, up by more than 66 percent on the 2020 average (Exhibit 3).6 What about SPACs? The analysis above does not include special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), which have recently become significant in IPOs in several industries. Some biotech investors we interviewed believe that SPACs represent a route to an IPO. How SPACs will evolve remains to be seen, but biotechs may be part of their story. Fundamentals continue strong When we asked executives and investors why the biotech sector had stayed so resilient during the worst economic crisis in decades, they cited innovation as the main reason. The number of assets transitioning to clinical phases is still rising, and further waves of innovation are on the horizon, driven by the convergence of biological and technological advances. In the present day, many biotechs, along with the wider pharmaceutical industry, are taking steps to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Together, biotechs and pharma companies have more than 250 vaccine candidates in their pipelines, along with a similar number of therapeutics. What’s more, the crisis has shone a spotlight on pharma as the public seeks to understand the roadblocks involved in delivering a vaccine at speed and the measures needed to maintain safety and efficacy standards. To that extent, the world has been living through a time of mass education in science research and development. Biotech has also benefited from its innate financial resilience. Healthcare as a whole is less dependent on economic cycles than most other industries. Biotech is an innovator, actively identifying and addressing patients’ unmet needs. In addition, biotechs’ top-line revenues have been less affected by lockdowns than is the case in most other industries. Another factor acting in the sector’s favor is that larger pharmaceutical companies still rely on biotechs as a source of innovation. With the top dozen pharma companies having more than $170 billion in excess reserves that could be available for spending on MandA, the prospects for further financing and deal making look promising. For these and other reasons, many investors regard biotech as a safe haven. One interviewee felt it had benefited from a halo effect during the pandemic. More innovation on the horizon The investors and executives we interviewed agreed that biotech innovation continues to increase in quality and quantity despite the macroeconomic environment. Evidence can be seen in the accelerating pace of assets transitioning across the development lifecycle. When we tracked the number of assets transitioning to Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III clinical trials, we found that Phase I and Phase II assets have transitioned 50 percent faster since 2018 than between 2013 and 2018, whereas Phase III assets have maintained much the same pace. There could be many reasons for this, but it is worth noting that biotechs with Phase I and Phase II assets as their lead assets have accounted for more than half of biotech IPOs. Having an early IPO gives a biotech earlier access to capital and leaves it with more scope to concentrate on science.
Lack of IP protection makes medical innovation prohibitively risky and expensive Grabowski et al 15 (Henry, Professor of Economics, member of the faculty for the Health Sector Management Program, and Director of the Program in Pharmaceuticals and Health Economics at Duke University) “The Roles of Patents and Research And Development Incentives In Biopharmaceutical Innovation,” Health Affairs, 2/2015 JL The essential rationale for patent protection for biopharmaceuticals is that long-term benefits in the form of continued future innovation by pioneer or brand-name drug manufacturers outweigh the relatively short-term restrictions on imitative cost competition associated with market exclusivity. Regardless, the entry of other branded agents remains an important source of therapeutic competition during the patent term. Several economic characteristics make patents and intellectual property protection particularly important to innovation incentives for the biopharmaceutical industry. 5 The RandD process often takes more than a decade to complete, and according to a recent analysis by Joseph DiMasi and colleagues, per new drug approval (including failed attempts), it involves more than a billion dollars in out-of-pocket costs. 6 Only approximately one in eight drug candidates survive clinical testing. 6 As a result of the high risks of failure and the high costs, research and development must be funded by the few successful, on-market products (the top quintile of marketed products provide the dominant share of RandD returns). 7,8 Once a new drug’s patent term and any regulatory exclusivity provisions have expired, competing manufacturers are allowed to sell generic equivalents that require the investment of only several million dollars and that have a high likelihood of commercial success. Absent intellectual property protections that allow marketing exclusivity, innovative firms would be unlikely to make the costly and risky investments needed to bring a new drug to market. Patents confer the right to exclude competitors for a limited time within a given scope, as defined by patent claims. However, they do not guarantee demand, nor do they prevent competition from nonidentical drugs that treat the same diseases and fall outside the protection of the patents. New products may enter the same therapeutic class with common mechanisms of action but different molecular structures (for example, different statins) or with differing mechanisms of action (such as calcium channel blockers and angiotensin receptor blockers). 9 Joseph DiMasi and Laura Faden have found that the time between a first-in-class new drug and subsequent new drugs in the same therapeutic class has been dramatically reduced, from a median of 10.2 years in the 1970s to 2.5 years in the early 2000s. 10 Drugs in the same class compete through quality and price for preferred placement on drug formularies and physicians’ choices for patient treatment. Patents play an essential role in the economic “ecosystem” of discovery and investment that has developed since the 1980s. Hundreds of start-up firms, often backed by venture capital, have been launched, and a robust innovation market has emerged. 11 The value of these development-stage firms is largely determined by their proprietary technologies and the candidate drugs they have in development. As a result, the strength of intellectual property protection plays a key role in funding and partnership opportunities for such firms.
MRNA solves a litany of diseases, but continued innovation is key Gupta 5/7 (Swati, vice president and head of emerging infectious diseases and scientific strategy at IAVI, a nonprofit scientific research organization that develops vaccines and antibodies for HIV, tuberculosis, emerging infectious diseases (including COVID-19) and neglected diseases, PhD and MPH from Yale University) “The Application and Future Potential of mRNA Vaccines,” Yale School of Public Health, 5/7/2021 JL The implications of mRNA technology are staggering. Several vaccine developers are studying this technology for deployment against rabies, influenza, Zika, HIV and cancer, as well as for veterinary purposes. Its potential utility is based upon its being a “platform technology” that can be developed and scaled rapidly. Given that only the genetic code for a protein of interest is needed, synthetically produced mRNA vaccines can be made rapidly, in days. Other vaccine approaches involve growing and/or producing proteins in cells, a process that can take months. Messenger RNA vaccines are generally regarded as safe, since they do not integrate into our cells’ DNA and naturally degrade in the body after injection. They also can be safely administered repeatedly, as we are seeing with the two-dose regimen for both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. Despite the current success of mRNA vaccines for COVID-19, scientists continue to work on making the technology better. A number of laboratories are testing more thermostable formulations of mRNA vaccines, which currently must be kept at freezing or ultra-cold temperatures. Others are investigating second-generation vaccines that will only require a single shot, and “universal” coronavirus vaccines that could protect against future emerging coronaviruses. Messenger RNA vaccines that target a broad range of different diseases, all in one shot, are also in development; this approach has the potential to greatly simplify current vaccination schedules. Taken together, these advantages and potential future developments position mRNA vaccines as an increasingly important technology in our arsenal of tools against infectious disease outbreaks, and are likely to be critical to fighting future epidemics and pandemics. Global partnerships like the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovation (CEPI), tasked with facilitating the development of vaccines to stop future epidemics, have called for vaccines to be able to be tested in the clinic within months after a new pathogen is identified. With the latest discoveries in mRNA technology, we are well on our way to this goal; the ability of this platform technology to be transformative is no longer a hope, but more likely to be a reality in the very near future.
Disease causes extinction – defense is wrong Piers Millett 17, Consultant for the World Health Organization, PhD in International Relations and Affairs, University of Bradford, Andrew Snyder-Beattie, “Existential Risk and Cost-Effective Biosecurity”, Health Security, Vol 15(4), http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/hs.2017.0028 Historically, disease events have been responsible for the greatest death tolls on humanity. The 1918 flu was responsible for more than 50 million deaths,1 while smallpox killed perhaps 10 times that many in the 20th century alone.2 The Black Death was responsible for killing over 25 of the European population,3 while other pandemics, such as the plague of Justinian, are thought to have killed 25 million in the 6th century—constituting over 10 of the world’s population at the time.4 It is an open question whether a future pandemic could result in outright human extinction or the irreversible collapse of civilization. A skeptic would have many good reasons to think that existential risk from disease is unlikely. Such a disease would need to spread worldwide to remote populations, overcome rare genetic resistances, and evade detection, cures, and countermeasures. Even evolution itself may work in humanity’s favor: Virulence and transmission is often a trade-off, and so evolutionary pressures could push against maximally lethal wild-type pathogens.5,6 While these arguments point to a very small risk of human extinction, they do not rule the possibility out entirely. Although rare, there are recorded instances of species going extinct due to disease—primarily in amphibians, but also in 1 mammalian species of rat on Christmas Island.7,8 There are also historical examples of large human populations being almost entirely wiped out by disease, especially when multiple diseases were simultaneously introduced into a population without immunity. The most striking examples of total population collapse include native American tribes exposed to European diseases, such as the Massachusett (86 loss of population), Quiripi-Unquachog (95 loss of population), and theWestern Abenaki (which suffered a staggering 98 loss of population). In the modern context, no single disease currently exists that combines the worst-case levels of transmissibility, lethality, resistance to countermeasures, and global reach. But many diseases are proof of principle that each worst-case attribute can be realized independently. For example, some diseases exhibit nearly a 100 case fatality ratio in the absence of treatment, such as rabies or septicemic plague. Other diseases have a track record of spreading to virtually every human community worldwide, such as the 1918 flu,10 and seroprevalence studies indicate that other pathogens, such as chickenpox and HSV-1, can successfully reach over 95 of a population.11,12 Under optimal virulence theory, natural evolution would be an unlikely source for pathogens with the highest possible levels of transmissibility, virulence, and global reach. But advances in biotechnology might allow the creation of diseases that combine such traits. Recent controversy has already emerged over a number of scientific experiments that resulted in viruses with enhanced transmissibility, lethality, and/or the ability to overcome therapeutics.13-17 Other experiments demonstrated that mousepox could be modified to have a 100 case fatality rate and render a vaccine ineffective.18 In addition to transmissibility and lethality, studies have shown that other disease traits, such as incubation time, environmental survival, and available vectors, could be modified as well.19-2
10/16/21
SeptOct- EU Proposal CP
Tournament: Meadows Invitational | Round: 3 | Opponent: Marlborough ML | Judge: Gabriela Gonzalez CP: Member nations of the World Trade Organization should adopt the European Union’s proposal to:
Ensure that COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and their components can cross borders freely 2. Encourage producers to expand their production, while ensuring that those countries most in need of vaccines receive them at an affordable price 3. Facilitate the use of compulsory licensing within the WTO's existing Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Solves vaccine access but avoids innovation Brachmann 6/8 (Steve, contributor to IPWatchdog.com, Research on Point, and Main Street Host writing about technology and innovation) “EU Offers Alternative to COVID-19 IP Waiver That Supports Innovation and Addresses Supply Chain Problems,” IP Watchdog, 6/8/2021 JL The EU’s proposal to the WTO regarding COVID-19 vaccine access focuses on three key elements. The first element focuses on international supply chain issues, advocating for countries producing vaccines to increase international exports and to avoid any trade restrictions on vaccines or their raw materials that could hinder the supply chain either for countries in need or the global COVAX Facility initiative. Supply chain issues have a real and devastating effect on unvaccinated communities, as evidenced by the recent news that Thailand government officials acknowledged delays and reductions for a promised shipment of 17 million doses of Thai-produced AstraZeneca vaccines to the Philippines. One of the biggest supply chain issues facing the unvaccinated world right now is the decision of India’s government, which along with South Africa proposed the patent waiver at the WTO, to stop exporting vaccines manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, in order to address India’s own exploding COVID-19 infection rates. For its part, the United States under President Joe Biden recently announced an increase of 20 million doses to the country’s planned COVID-19 vaccine exports. The second key element in the EU’s proposal requests that governments support vaccine manufacturers and developers to ensure affordable vaccine supplies. This portion of the EU’s proposal acknowledges the beneficial impacts of licensing, which ensures that developers and manufacturers enter into agreements that those companies are incentivized to uphold because they promote business interests. The EU’s proposal notes that the vaccine developers Pfizer, BioNTech, Johnson and Johnson and Moderna have all committed to agreements to deliver a combined 1.3 billion doses through 2021 at no profit to low-income countries and at low cost to middle-income countries. The final key element in the EU’s alternative focuses on intellectual property and recognizes that “voluntary licenses are the most effective instrument to facilitate the expansion of production and sharing of expertise.” While compulsory licensing could be available without voluntary licensing due to the extraordinary nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, the EU advocates for using existing mechanisms for compulsory licensing under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). While the EU is currently drafting a communication dedicated to intellectual property rights which it plans to submit to all WTO members, the governmental body was clear on its thoughts regarding the India-South Africa proposal backed by many governments, including the Biden Administration: As regards the broad waiver proposed by a number of WTO members, the European Commission, while ready to discuss any option that helps end the pandemic as soon as possible, is not convinced that this would provide the best immediate response to reach the objective of the widest and timely distribution of COVID-19 vaccines that the world urgently needs. The forces urging the world towards waiving international patent rights under TRIPS for COVID-19 vaccines are about as legion as they are misguided. On June 7, the WTO announced that it had received a petition signed by 2.7 million people around the world calling for the suspension of patent rights on COVID-19 vaccines. Currently more than 60 nations have publicly supported the India-South Africa proposal to waive patent rights under TRIPS for COVID-19 vaccines. However, as the EU’s proposal indicates, developing effective responses to international supply chain issues regarding vaccines do not have to stoop to dismantling the system for encouraging the investment in pharmaceutical RandD that produced the vaccine in the first place. In fact, the EU’s proposal recognizes that properly respecting IP rights and encouraging voluntary licensing, while making some allowances for Article 31 of TRIPS, will be a much more effective answer than a political stance that creates more problems than it solves by reducing medical innovation at exactly the time that the world needs it the most. In supporting the waiver, the Biden Administration has arguably abdicated one of its first promises: that it would be an administration guided by science and truth. There is no science that exists to show that patents are barriers to vaccine access. That is a fact that has been acknowledged by the World Intellectual Property Organization, the UN’s agency for intellectual property rights, since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The sentimentality driving those supporting the TRIPS waiver for COVID-19 vaccines won’t solve supply chain issues in manufacturing capacity, which the EU’s alternative does address, but it will do a great job at decreasing investment into medical RandD because weak patent rights decrease economic productivity. Decreased investment in medical RandD will slow down the research needed to cure new COVID-19 variants that continue to appear across the world, and needless human death will continue.
11/1/21
SeptOct- Vx Mandate DA
Tournament: Glenbrooks | Round: 1 | Opponent: Strake Jesuit DA | Judge: Das, Sreyaash Current labor laws prevent widespread vaccine mandates strikes. Millhiser 7/30 (Ian Millhiser is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. Before joining Vox, Ian was a columnist at ThinkProgress. Among other things, he clerked for Judge Eric L. Clay of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and served as a Teach for America corps member in the Mississippi Delta. He received a B.A. in philosophy from Kenyon College and a J.D., magna cum laude, from Duke University, where he served as senior note editor on the Duke Law Journal and was elected to the Order of the Coif. He is the author of Injustices: The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted.) “Yes, Covid-19 Mandates are Legal” Vox. July 30, 2021. AW In 1902, the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, faced a smallpox outbreak. In response, the local health board ordered the city’s residents over the age of 21 to be vaccinated against this disease. Violators faced a $5 fine. After a local pastor was fined for violating this vaccine mandate, he appealed his case all the way to the Supreme Court. The Court told him to pound sand in Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905). “The liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States to every person within its jurisdiction does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint,” Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote for the Court. He added that “there are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good.” Under Jacobson, state and local governments — though not necessarily the federal government — may mandate vaccines for nearly all of their residents. That decision has obvious relevance today. We now have multiple vaccines against Covid-19 that are both safe and shockingly effective, and they are available for free for all Americans. Yet the pandemic continues to rage in the United States because a large minority of Americans have yet to get a shot. While some people may face legitimate obstacles, others are just obstinate. Policymakers and other leaders, in other words, may need to take a page from Cambridge’s early 20th-century health board. Some already are. Many of the first mandates are from employers: The state of New York, for example, recently announced that all of its employees will have to either get vaccinated or submit to weekly coronavirus testing, and President Joe Biden plans to impose similar requirements on federal employees. Many private employers also require vaccines — Google, for example, will insist that its employees be vaccinated in order to enter the company’s offices. More than 600 colleges and universities require at least some of their students, faculty, and staff to be vaccinated. These sorts of mandates will undoubtedly trigger lawsuits from vaccine resisters. In some cases, individuals with religious objections to vaccines or people with disabilities that preclude them from being vaccinated will have strong legal claims — much like schoolchildren who can already seek exemptions from schools’ vaccination requirements if they have religious objections. But, assuming that the courts follow existing law — and assuming that Republican state governments do not enact new laws prohibiting employers from disciplining workers who refuse to be vaccinated — most challenges to employer-imposed vaccination requirements should fail. Under Jacobson, moreover, states should be free to order everyone within their borders to be vaccinated against Covid-19, although it’s far from clear whether the federal government could do the same. Of course, there is no guarantee that the Roberts Court, which is eager to impose limits on public health officials and not especially bothered about overruling precedents, will follow Jacobson if a state does enact a vaccine mandate. But there is good reason to believe that it will. Even Justice Neil Gorsuch, one of the most conservative members of the current Court, recently described Jacobson as a “modest” decision that “didn’t seek to depart from normal legal rules during a pandemic.” The bottom line, in other words, is that, under existing law, numerous institutions within the United States may require their employees — and, in some cases, their citizens — to be vaccinated against Covid-19. Your boss probably can require you to get vaccinated Employment relationships in the United States are typically “at-will,” meaning that an employee can be fired at any time and for any reason, even if that reason is completely arbitrary. If you have an at-will relationship with your employer, your boss can fire you because they don’t like your haircut. Or because they don’t like what you had for breakfast last Tuesday. Or, for that matter, because you refuse to get a Covid-19 vaccine. The general rule, in other words, is that your employer can fire you for any reason unless some outside legal force — a federal or state law, or maybe an individual or collective bargaining contract between you and your employer — intervenes to give you additional job security. And there is no federal law prohibiting employers from requiring nearly all of their employees to get vaccinated. The plan flips that— the unconditional right legitimizes strikes and kills the work force Koenig 11/4 (David Koenig of the Associated Press contributed to this report and is a contributor to K5 News) “Vaccine mandate rules affecting 84 million Americans finalized” K5 News. November 4, 2021 AW WASHINGTON — Tens of millions of Americans who work at companies with 100 or more employees will need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 4 or get tested for the virus weekly under government rules that took effect Thursday. The new requirements are the Biden administration’s boldest move yet to persuade reluctant Americans to finally get a vaccine that has been widely available for months -- or potentially face financial consequences. If successful, administration officials believe it will go a long way toward ending a pandemic that has killed more than 750,000 Americans. First previewed by President Joe Biden in September, the requirements will apply to about 84 million workers at medium and large businesses, although it is not clear how many of those employees are unvaccinated. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations will force the companies to require that unvaccinated workers test negative for COVID-19 at least once a week and wear a mask while in the workplace. OSHA left open the possibility of expanding the requirement to smaller businesses. It asked for public comment on whether employers with fewer than 100 employees could handle vaccination or testing programs. Tougher rules will apply to another 17 million people who work in nursing homes, hospitals and other facilities that receive money from Medicare and Medicaid. Those workers will not have an option for testing — they will need to be vaccinated. Workers will be able to ask for exemptions on medical or religious grounds. The requirements will not apply to people who work at home or outdoors. Biden framed the issue as a simple choice between getting more people vaccinated or prolonging the pandemic. “While I would have much preferred that requirements not become necessary, too many people remain unvaccinated for us to get out of this pandemic for good,” he said Thursday in a statement. Biden said his encouragement for businesses to impose mandates and his own previous requirements for the military and federal contractors have helped reduce the number of unvaccinated Americans over 12 from 100 million in late July to about 60 million now. Those measures, he said, have not led to mass firings or worker shortages, adding that vaccines have been required before to fight other diseases. OSHA said companies that fail to comply with the regulations could face penalties of nearly $14,000 per violation. The agency will face enforcement challenges. Even counting help from states, OSHA has only 1,850 inspectors to oversee 130 million workers at 8 million workplaces. An administration official said the agency will respond to whistleblower complaints and make limited spot checks. The release of the rules followed weeks of regulatory review and meetings with business groups, labor unions and others. OSHA drafted the rules under emergency authority meant to protect workers from an imminent health hazard. The agency estimated that the vaccine mandate will save more than 6,500 worker lives and prevent more than 250,000 hospitalizations over the next six months. The rules set up potential legal battles along partisan lines between states and the federal government. Several states and Republican governors threatened to sue, contending that the administration lacks the power to make such sweeping mandates under emergency authority. OSHA's parent agency, the Labor Department, says it is on sound legal footing. The department's top legal official, Seema Nanda, said OSHA rules preempt conflicting state laws or orders, including those that bar employers from requiring vaccinations, testing or face masks. Senate Republicans immediately launched a petition to force a vote to overturn the vaccine mandate, but with Democrats controlling the chamber, the effort is nearly certain to fail. The rules will require workers to receive either two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or one dose of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine by Jan. 4 or be tested weekly. Employees who test positive must be removed from the workplace. Companies won't be required to provide or pay for tests for unvaccinated workers, but they must give paid time off for employees to get the shots and sick leave to recover from side effects that prevent them from working. The requirements for masks and paid time off for shots take effect Dec. 5. Employers covered by the requirements must verify their workers’ vaccination status by checking documents such as CDC vaccination cards or records from doctors or pharmacies. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued a separate rule requiring vaccination for workers in 76,000 health facilities and home health care providers that get funding from the government health programs. A senior administration official said that several large private health care organizations imposed their own mandates and achieved high vaccination rates — 96 or higher — without widespread resignations. A previously announced requirement for federal contractors to make sure workers are vaccinated was scheduled to take effect Dec. 8, but on Thursday the administration delayed that measure until Jan. 4 to match the requirements on other large employers and health care providers. Already more than a dozen states have sued to block the mandate on contractors. For weeks, Biden has encouraged businesses not to wait for OSHA to act. He has touted businesses that announced their own vaccine requirements and urged other companies to follow their lead. Administration officials say those efforts are paying off, with about 70 of the nation's adults now fully vaccinated. Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, said in late July it was requiring all workers at its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, and managers who travel within the United States to be vaccinated by Oct. 4. The retailer stopped short of requiring shots for frontline workers, however. United Airlines required 67,000 U.S. employees to get vaccinated or face termination. Only a couple hundred refused to do so, although about 2,000 are seeking exemptions. In August, Tyson Foods told its 120,000 U.S. workers that they must be vaccinated by Nov. 1. On Thursday, the company said more than 96 of its workforce was vaccinated, including 60,500 people who got their shots after the August announcement. However, some companies have expressed fear that some vaccine-hesitant workers might quit, leaving their workforces even thinner in an already-tight labor market. Several corporate groups, including the Business Roundtable, endorsed the mandate. However, retail groups worried the requirement could disrupt their operations during the critical Christmas shopping period. Retailers and others also said it could worsen supply chain disruptions. The National Retail Federation suggested the new rules are not needed because the rolling average number of new daily cases in the U.S. has fallen by more than half since September. “Nevertheless, the Biden administration has chosen to declare an ‘emergency’ and impose burdensome new requirements on retailers during the crucial holiday shopping season,” said David French, a senior vice president for the trade group. The number of new infections in the U.S. is still falling from a summer surge caused by the highly contagious delta variant, but the rate of decline has slowed in recent weeks. The 7-day moving average is down 6 from two weeks ago, at more than 76,000 new cases and 1,200 deaths per day. The earlier mandate on federal contractors led to demonstrations by opponents, including workers at a NASA rocket engine test site in Mississippi. Some said they are immune because they contracted COVID-19. Others said vaccines violated their religious beliefs and constitutional rights. “No one should be forced to take a medical treatment just to keep their job,” said Nyla Trumbach, an engineer at the site. “There’s years and years of experience and skill out here, and I just want anyone who’s watching to see what we stand to lose here if these people don’t keep their jobs.” A declining workforce decimates the economy Isidore 8/20 (Chris Isidore is a senior writer for CNN Business, where he covers the auto industry, airlines, labor and all other manner of breaking financial news. Over the last 30 years, he has covered most major US bankruptcies, including GM, Chrysler, Lehman Brothers, most US airlines and Sears, as well as the city of Detroit.) “Vaccine mandates at work meet their toughest opponent: America’s labor shortage” August 20, 2021. AW
At Kevin Smith's home health care agency in Massachusetts, only 52 of his 400 staff members have been vaccinated. He'd like to order them all to get the shot, but he says he can't risk a mass exodus. It's a legitimate fear. The labor market is very tight, with a record number of job openings and not enough job candidates. And among unvaccinated workers asked what they would do if their employer instituted a mandate, 50 said they'd leave their job, according to a June survey by health policy think tank KFF. "It puts you at risk of alienating the staff, if not losing them to a competitor," said Smith, who has run the family-owned Best of Care since 2013. "No one can afford to do that. That is why any employer in our industry is so reluctant to impose a mandate." The meeting of the labor market challenge and public health crisis puts employers in a tough spot: The worker shortage means employer mandates are not likely to be the answer to raising the nation's vaccination rate. But a higher inoculation rate is exactly what experts say we need to end the pandemic. Difficulty finding workers The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has given guidance to employers that they have the right to impose a vaccine mandate as long as there are exceptions for employees with health conditions that pose a risk or legitimate religious objections. Yet "employers in a labor shortage environment don't want to create any barrier for employment, let alone any cause for people to go elsewhere," said Julia Pollak, chief economist for job site Ziprecruiter. It's not clear how many employers are taking that step. A June survey from the Society of Human Resource Management showed 29 of workers say their employers are requiring vaccines. A Gartner survey from the end of July found only 9 doing so. Even among hospitals, most employers don't have vaccine mandates: The American Hospital Association said only 2,100 hospitals, about a third of the nation's total, require vaccines. And many are in places where state laws or executive orders mandate them. Brian Kropp, chief of research at consulting firm Gartner's HR practice, says he believes that figure will remain a minority -— even as household-name companies have begun implementing mandates in response to the Delta variant surge of Covid cases. They're most common at major tech companies such as Google (GOOG) and Facebook (FB), or Wall Street banks such as Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS). But there's a critical difference here: These employers offer high-paying jobs, benefits and other advantages that inspire workers to stick around. For the many small businesses and other employers who depend on hourly workers to fill most positions, there's greater fear about losing vaccine-hesitant employees and not being able to find vaccinated workers to replace them. "If you run a restaurant or a store and you have employees who are vaccine-hesitant, they are going to quit and go to the store or restaurant next door," said Kropp. "It's a whole lot easier for people to switch jobs, particularly in today's labor market." Even some employers with stable workforces are reluctant to impose a vaccine mandate. While United Airlines (UAL) recent ordered all US employees to be vaccinated, rivals American (AAL), Delta (DAL) and Southwest (LUV) have yet to do so. 'Divisive' moral arguments and partial rules Further complicating matters is opposition to mandates, even from employees who have gotten vaccinated themselves. The KFF survey in June found that even among those who are vaccinated, 42 said they don't want it mandated by their employer, while only 43 want a vaccine required. "In general we find that vaccine mandates are very divisive," said Liz Hamel, vice president and director of public opinion and survey research at KFF. "There's a sense that getting a vaccine is personal choice." Attitudes may be changing with the recent surge in cases, however: Recent polls conducted by Axios/Ipos and Gallup found a slight majority of Americans favoring employer vaccine mandates. That compares to KFF's June survey that found only 28 wanted an employer mandate and 61 opposed the idea. Seven states — Arizona, Arkansas, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota and Tennessee — have passed laws banning vaccine mandates for at least some employers, according to the National Academy for State Health Policy. Similar legislation has been introduced in 39 other states, all but Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada and West Virginia. Another complex issue is differing rules for white-collar vs. blue-collar employees. Major employers including Walmart (WMT) and UPS (UPS) are requiring vaccines for corporate office staff, but not for those on the front lines, working in stores or driving trucks. Neither company would comment on whether the labor crunch for hourly workers is the driving force of the different rules. "Those office environments are very different than our operating facilities, which have been safely staffed in-person since the beginning and throughout the pandemic," said a statement from UPS. Some employers are following the lead of President Joe Biden's order for federal workers, giving them the choice of vaccination or the more stringent testing and masking, said Amber Clayton, director of SHRM's HR Knowledge Center. "That's probably what we'll see more of than full vaccine mandates," she said. A plea to government leaders Smith, the CEO of the home health care agency in Massachusetts, wants more than just a model from the government: He would prefer a mandate at the state or federal level to require everyone in his industry to get vaccinated. It would level the playing field among all employers in the sector, he explained, and would help protect the health of his employees and clients. "From a pure safety standpoint, it would make me feel better if it were required," he said. "And it would take the pressure off me." Smith's wish is hardly unique, Kropp said. Many other employers are worried unvaccinated workers could spread the virus even to inoculated coworkers and cause high absenteeism. And some workers, especially those with young children at home or other vulnerable family members, won't want to return to the office unless they know everyone else is vaccinated, he said. "What almost every employer wants is either the governors or some other government body to say vaccines are required," Kropp said. "Then they get what they want, and they don't get any of the blame or frustration." Economic decline causes global nuclear war Tønnesson 15 (Stein, Research Professor, Peace Research Institute Oslo; Leader of East Asia Peace program, Uppsala University) “Deterrence, interdependence and Sino–US peace,” International Area Studies Review, Vol. 18, No. 3, p. 297-311, 2015 SJDI Several recent works on China and Sino–US relations have made substantial contributions to the current understanding of how and under what circumstances a combination of nuclear deterrence and economic interdependence may reduce the risk of war between major powers. At least four conclusions can be drawn from the review above: first, those who say that interdependence may both inhibit and drive conflict are right. Interdependence raises the cost of conflict for all sides but asymmetrical or unbalanced dependencies and negative trade expectations may generate tensions leading to trade wars among inter-dependent states that in turn increase the risk of military conflict (Copeland, 2015: 1, 14, 437; Roach, 2014). The risk may increase if one of the interdependent countries is governed by an inward-looking socio-economic coalition (Solingen, 2015); second, the risk of war between China and the US should not just be analysed bilaterally but include their allies and partners. Third party countries could drag China or the US into confrontation; third, in this context it is of some comfort that the three main economic powers in Northeast Asia (China, Japan and South Korea) are all deeply integrated economically through production networks within a global system of trade and finance (Ravenhill, 2014; Yoshimatsu, 2014: 576); and fourth, decisions for war and peace are taken by very few people, who act on the basis of their future expectations. International relations theory must be supplemented by foreign policy analysis in order to assess the value attributed by national decision-makers to economic development and their assessments of risks and opportunities. If leaders on either side of the Atlantic begin to seriously fear or anticipate their own nation’s decline then they may blame this on external dependence, appeal to anti-foreign sentiments, contemplate the use of force to gain respect or credibility, adopt protectionist policies, and ultimately refuse to be deterred by either nuclear arms or prospects of socioeconomic calamities. Such a dangerous shift could happen abruptly, i.e. under the instigation of actions by a third party – or against a third party. Yet as long as there is both nuclear deterrence and interdependence, the tensions in East Asia are unlikely to escalate to war. As Chan (2013) says, all states in the region are aware that they cannot count on support from either China or the US if they make provocative moves. The greatest risk is not that a territorial dispute leads to war under present circumstances but that changes in the world economy alter those circumstances in ways that render inter-state peace more precarious. If China and the US fail to rebalance their financial and trading relations (Roach, 2014) then a trade war could result, interrupting transnational production networks, provoking social distress, and exacerbating nationalist emotions. This could have unforeseen consequences in the field of security, with nuclear deterrence remaining the only factor to protect the world from Armageddon, and unreliably so. Deterrence could lose its credibility: one of the two great powers might gamble that the other yield in a cyber-war or conventional limited war, or third party countries might engage in conflict with each other, with a view to obliging Washington or Beijing to intervene.
Nuclear war causes extinction – famine and climate change Starr 15 (Steven, Director of the University of Missouri’s Clinical Laboratory Science Program and a senior scientist at the Physicians for Social Responsibility) “Nuclear War, Nuclear Winter, and Human Extinction,” Federation of American Scientists, 10/14/2015 DD While it is impossible to precisely predict all the human impacts that would result from a nuclear winter, it is relatively simple to predict those which would be most profound. That is, a nuclear winter would cause most humans and large animals to die from nuclear famine in a mass extinction event similar to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. Following the detonation (in conflict) of US and/or Russian launch-ready strategic nuclear weapons, nuclear firestorms would burn simultaneously over a total land surface area of many thousands or tens of thousands of square miles. These mass fires, many of which would rage over large cities and industrial areas, would release many tens of millions of tons of black carbon soot and smoke (up to 180 million tons, according to peer-reviewed studies), which would rise rapidly above cloud level and into the stratosphere. For an explanation of the calculation of smoke emissions, see Atmospheric effects and societal consequences of regional scale nuclear conflicts. The scientists who completed the most recent peer-reviewed studies on nuclear winter discovered that the sunlight would heat the smoke, producing a self-lofting effect that would not only aid the rise of the smoke into the stratosphere (above cloud level, where it could not be rained out), but act to keep the smoke in the stratosphere for 10 years or more. The longevity of the smoke layer would act to greatly increase the severity of its effects upon the biosphere. Once in the stratosphere, the smoke (predicted to be produced by a range of strategic nuclear wars) would rapidly engulf the Earth and form a dense stratospheric smoke layer. The smoke from a war fought with strategic nuclear weapons would quickly prevent up to 70 of sunlight from reaching the surface of the Northern Hemisphere and 35 of sunlight from reaching the surface of the Southern Hemisphere. Such an enormous loss of warming sunlight would produce Ice Age weather conditions on Earth in a matter of weeks. For a period of 1-3 years following the war, temperatures would fall below freezing every day in the central agricultural zones of North America and Eurasia. For an explanation of nuclear winter, see Nuclear winter revisited with a modern climate model and current nuclear arsenals: Still catastrophic consequences. Nuclear winter would cause average global surface temperatures to become colder than they were at the height of the last Ice Age. Such extreme cold would eliminate growing seasons for many years, probably for a decade or longer. Can you imagine a winter that lasts for ten years? The results of such a scenario are obvious. Temperatures would be much too cold to grow food, and they would remain this way long enough to cause most humans and animals to starve to death. Global nuclear famine would ensue in a setting in which the infrastructure of the combatant nations has been totally destroyed, resulting in massive amounts of chemical and radioactive toxins being released into the biosphere. We don’t need a sophisticated study to tell us that no food and Ice Age temperatures for a decade would kill most people and animals on the planet. Would the few remaining survivors be able to survive in a radioactive, toxic environment?
11/20/21
SeptOct- WTO T
Tournament: Meadows Invitational | Round: 2 | Opponent: Sage MP | Judge: Sam Larson Interpretation: member nations of the World Trade Organization is a generic bare plural. The aff may not defend that a subset of member nations ought to reduce IP protections for medicines. Nebel 19 Jake Nebel Jake Nebel is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California and executive director of Victory Briefs. , 8-12-2019, "Genericity on the Standardized Tests Resolution," Briefly, https://www.vbriefly.com/2019/08/12/genericity-on-the-standardized-tests-resolution/ SM Both distinctions are important. Generic resolutions can’t be affirmed by specifying particular instances. But, since generics tolerate exceptions, plan-inclusive counterplans (PICs) do not negate generic resolutions. Bare plurals are typically used to express generic generalizations. But there are two important things to keep in mind. First, generic generalizations are also often expressed via other means (e.g., definite singulars, indefinite singulars, and bare singulars). Second, and more importantly for present purposes, bare plurals can also be used to express existential generalizations. For example, “Birds are singing outside my window” is true just in case there are some birds singing outside my window; it doesn’t require birds in general to be singing outside my window. So, what about “colleges and universities,” “standardized tests,” and “undergraduate admissions decisions”? Are they generic or existential bare plurals? On other topics I have taken great pains to point out that their bare plurals are generic—because, well, they are. On this topic, though, I think the answer is a bit more nuanced. Let’s see why. 1.1 “Colleges and Universities” “Colleges and universities” is a generic bare plural. I don’t think this claim should require any argument, when you think about it, but here are a few reasons. First, ask yourself, honestly, whether the following speech sounds good to you: “Eight colleges and universities—namely, those in the Ivy League—ought not consider standardized tests in undergraduate admissions decisions. Maybe other colleges and universities ought to consider them, but not the Ivies. Therefore, in the United States, colleges and universities ought not consider standardized tests in undergraduate admissions decisions.” That is obviously not a valid argument: the conclusion does not follow. Anyone who sincerely believes that it is valid argument is, to be charitable, deeply confused. But the inference above would be good if “colleges and universities” in the resolution were existential. By way of contrast: “Eight birds are singing outside my window. Maybe lots of birds aren’t singing outside my window, but eight birds are. Therefore, birds are singing outside my window.” Since the bare plural “birds” in the conclusion gets an existential reading, the conclusion follows from the premise that eight birds are singing outside my window: “eight” entails “some.” If the resolution were existential with respect to “colleges and universities,” then the Ivy League argument above would be a valid inference. Since it’s not a valid inference, “colleges and universities” must be a generic bare plural. Second, “colleges and universities” fails the upward-entailment test for existential uses of bare plurals. Consider the sentence, “Lima beans are on my plate.” This sentence expresses an existential statement that is true just in case there are some lima beans on my plate. One test of this is that it entails the more general sentence, “Beans are on my plate.” Now consider the sentence, “Colleges and universities ought not consider the SAT.” (To isolate “colleges and universities,” I’ve eliminated the other bare plurals in the resolution; it cannot plausibly be generic in the isolated case but existential in the resolution.) This sentence does not entail the more general statement that educational institutions ought not consider the SAT. This shows that “colleges and universities” is generic, because it fails the upward-entailment test for existential bare plurals. Third, “colleges and universities” fails the adverb of quantification test for existential bare plurals. Consider the sentence, “Dogs are barking outside my window.” This sentence expresses an existential statement that is true just in case there are some dogs barking outside my window. One test of this appeals to the drastic change of meaning caused by inserting any adverb of quantification (e.g., always, sometimes, generally, often, seldom, never, ever). You cannot add any such adverb into the sentence without drastically changing its meaning. To apply this test to the resolution, let’s again isolate the bare plural subject: “Colleges and universities ought not consider the SAT.” Adding generally (“Colleges and universities generally ought not consider the SAT”) or ever (“Colleges and universities ought not ever consider the SAT”) result in comparatively minor changes of meaning. (Note that this test doesn’t require there to be no change of meaning and doesn’t have to work for every adverb of quantification.) This strongly suggests what we already know: that “colleges and universities” is generic rather than existential in the resolution. Fourth, it is extremely unlikely that the topic committee would have written the resolution with the existential interpretation of “colleges and universities” in mind. If they intended the existential interpretation, they would have added explicit existential quantifiers like “some.” No such addition would be necessary or expected for the generic interpretation since generics lack explicit quantifiers by default. The topic committee’s likely intentions are not decisive, but they strongly suggest that the generic interpretation is correct, since it’s prima facie unlikely that a committee charged with writing a sentence to be debated would be so badly mistaken about what their sentence means (which they would be if they intended the existential interpretation). The committee, moreover, does not write resolutions for the 0.1 percent of debaters who debate on the national circuit; they write resolutions, at least in large part, to be debated by the vast majority of students on the vast majority of circuits, who would take the resolution to be (pretty obviously, I’d imagine) generic with respect to “colleges and universities,” given its face-value meaning and standard expectations about what LD resolutions tend to mean.
It applies to member nations:
Upward entailment test – spec fails the upward entailment test because saying “US ought to reduce IPP for medicines” doesn’t entail that all nations ought to 2. Adverb test – adding “usually” to the res doesn’t substantially change its meaning
Vote neg:
Semantics outweigh: a. Topicality is a constitutive rule of the activity and a basic aff burden, they agreed to debate the topic when they came to the tournament b. Jurisdiction – you can’t vote aff if they haven’t affirmed the resolution c. It’s the only stasis point we know before the round so it controls the internal link to engagement, and there’s no way to use ground if debaters aren’t prepared to defend it
2. Limits – there are countless affs accounting for any permutation of 164 member nations that are home to vastly different pharmaceutical industries and illnesses – unlimited topics incentivize obscure affs that negs won’t have prep on – limits are key to reciprocal prep burden – potential abuse doesn’t justify foregoing the topic and 1AR theory checks PICs
3. Ground – spec guts core generics like WTO bad and the health multilateralism DA that rely on all nations reducing IP and shifts away from the core topic lit of WTO patent waivers – also means there is no universal DA to spec affs
4. TVA solves – read as an advantage to whole rez
Paradigm issues:
Drop the debater – their abusive advocacy skewed the debate from the start 2. Comes before 1AR theory – NC abuse is responsive to them not being topical A If we had to be abusive it’s because it was impossible to engage their aff 3. Competing interps – reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention and a race to the bottom of questionable argumentation 4. No RVIs – fairness and education are a priori burdens – and encourages baiting – outweighs because if T is frivolous, they can beat it quickly 5. Fairness is a voter ¬– necessary to determine the better debater 6. Education is a voter – why schools fund debate