1AC - nonT 1NC - psycho FW case 1AR - all 1NC - psycho case 2AR - all
Berkeley
3
Opponent: Eden Prairie AG | Judge: Kolshorn, Anthony
1AC - heg 1NC - demon nc flat earth nc plan flaw tricks spark 1AR - off cases 1NR - tricks spark 2AR - all
Churchill
1
Opponent: Strake | Judge: Isaac Chao
1ac - kant 1nc - util da case 1ar - 3 shells straight turn 1nr - da shells 2ar - straight turn
UT
2
Opponent: L C Anderson Alexa Antonacci | Judge: Georges, Joseph
1AC - democracy 1NC - Blue flu PTX democracy bad 1AC - democracy 2NR - PTX 1AC - democracy
UT
5
Opponent: Immaculate Heart Riley Rees | Judge: Wofford, Joseph
1AC - Brazil 1NC - T(a) Trucks Econ 1AR - Trucks Brazil 2NR - Econ 2AR - Trucks
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Entry
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1 - K - Psychoanalysis
Tournament: Berkeley | Round: 5 | Opponent: Denver East LF | Judge: Alvarez, Diana Their identity politics collapses under capitalism – their focus on individuality fails to transcend universality – this depoliticizes their project and gives coherence to the existing order. Garcia 12 (Antonio Garcia has taught general humanities and education courses: Aesthetics, philosophy, Society and Culture, Freshmen Writing, multicultural education, pop culture and pedagogy, intro to curriculum theory, and intro to educational research methods, “The Eclipse of Education in the End Times”, http://www.academia.edu/3596973/The_Eclipse_of_Education_in_the_End_Times, 12/9/12) AqN For Zizek, at least in regards to politics, we are in a post-political era in which identity and cultural politics are depoliticized; that is, they are no longer political in taking up a revolutionary struggle predicated on a universal ideal. We are no longer engaged in the political struggles that seek to instigate radical reform and "egaliberté."42 The reason is that, "Postmodern identity politics involves the logic of ressentiment, of proclaiming oneself a victim and expecting the dominant social Other to pay for the damage, while egaliberté breaks out of this vicious cycle." One should, therefore, ask: Are we as engaged in a revolutionary struggle (universalized under oppression proper) or are we content with being pissed off so that we are not pissed on? Incorporated within this critical matter is how we currently frame multiculturalism in a wider context across the sociological and political spectrum that is becoming entrenched in the privatization of education (i.e., neoliberal market ideology), focused on meritocratic ideals, and operated under the pretense that educational inequality is more of a matter of poor teaching than socio-cultural considerations. In other words, have we become complacent through institutional forbearance in which we remain agitated without agency and action? In considering the current state of multiculturalism, we must contemplate what must be done to ensure, if not reinvigorate, a really existing revolutionary struggle like that of the Civil Rights era. As it stands, multiculturalism remains an abstraction in the post-political era, or at least a distraction, from really existing political struggle. How do we begin to engage in critical pedagogical practices in the classroom, examine the superficial nature of multicultural education policies and curriculum (beyond heroes, holidays, and a pedagogy of niceness), and approach the larger socio-political questions of a truly multicultural society? How does one exist as a singular organ (i.e., humanity) among the multiplicity of particularities? Zizek asks, ' 'When we are dealing with a series of particular struggles, is there not always one struggle which, although it appears to function as one in the series, effectively provides the horizon of the series as such?" 4 The one that is primal for Zizek is "class struggle," which he believes selves as the heart of all oppression (manifested through capital) where all other struggles converge arterially. The issue of class struggle is not new and has been taken up by others, 4 but one should entertain that "class struggle" cannot be the rigid determinate of struggle. Hardt and Negri believe that "class is a political concept in that a class is and can only be a collectivity that struggles in common. "42 The problem, as Hardt and Negri see it, is that orthodox Marxists like Zizek believe that the industrial proletariat is the only active collective that can effectively dismantle or counteract capitalism. One should, rather, conceptualize class struggle in "an infinite number of ways that humans can be grouped into classes hair color, blood type, and so forth — but the classes that matter are those defined by the lines of collective struggle. Race is just as much a political concept as economic class in this regard. Marxist thought that is overly determined by a totalizing, singular conception of class (i.e., the industrial proletariat) poses some problems of myopic dogmatism. Emesto Laclau believes that the problem with the rigid emphasis on class struggle is that ' 'it tends to anchor the moment of struggle and antagonisms in the sectorial identity of a group, while any meaningful struggle transcends any sectorial identity and becomes a complexly articulated 'collective will'. ' The problem with Zizek, according to Laclau, is "his discourse around entities — class, class struggle, capitalism... are largely fetishes disposed of any precise meaning. Zizek has attempted to defend criticisms about his political thought. 43 He has consistently advocated the need for a universality that instigates a clear demarcation of "us" and "them"; that is, it is only by instituting an ideological dialectic (inclusion/exclusion) that one engages in making a struggle political. Universalization instigates politicalization by, The fact that one, precisely, is not merely that specific individual exposed to a set of specific injustices — consists in its apparent opposite, in the thoroughly irrational, excessive outburst of violence... In the equation of universalism with the militant, divisive position of engagement in a struggle. True universalists are not those who preach global tolerance of differences and all-encompassing unity but those who engage in a passionate fight for the assertion of the truth that engages them. Universality is ultimately tied into two dimensions of post-politics. The first dimension is politicization (one could think of it also as publicization).433 Post-politics allows for "recognition without revolution" in that one acknowledges that an event has occurred in which an individual or group has been disenfranchised or oppressed (e.g., the arrest of Dr. Henry Louis Gates) without actually engaging it as a political event (i.e., one is content with being pissed off as long as one is acknowledged). Such postmodern post- politics relegates the struggle to a spectacle (concealing the structural implications that still resonate through covert practices embedded in ideology), as well as one that relies on a "divide and conquer" schema under capitalist logic. The second dimension is politicalization. Politicalization instigates revolutionary struggle in which acknowledgement is not enough; therefore, one is willing to fight for their right, not just talk it out (i.e., one is not just going to be pissed off, they are willing to fight and get pissed on in order to bring about really existing change). In order to engage really existing social transformation, one must actively engage (militantly or through active democratic protest 434) and unhinge the structural ideology that promulgates the existing torrent of inequality. In other words, one should not accept post-political "appeasements" (e.g., affirmative action) that force one (i.e., the dominant, hegemonic Other) to be tolerant without openly assuming proprietorship of one's act in the structuring and maintenance of symbolic ideology. Let me provide a clarifying example of how to understand the post-political dimensions of politicization and politicalization. One may remember the highly publicized arrest of Dr. Henry Louis Gates for "disorderly conduct" after being questioned by a police officer that was alerted about a possible break-in in the area. Dr. Gates questioned his arrest, "Why, because I'm a black man in America?" 36 After a couple of weeks of media publicizing, what was the outcome of the situation between Dr. Gates and the arresting officer? The two were invited to the White House by President Obama to share a beer and discuss the incident in what was deemed "the beer summit." Although Obama invited Crowley (the arresting officer) and Gates as part of what he called a 'teachable moment,' something significant was missed. The coverage allowed the public to get the ' 'we've come together" photos and video footage that the White House wanted while keeping the discussion private among the men. The event was individualized, made particular, being the isolated experience of one Black man and one White police officer. It is exactly this singularity of an event that reduces its possibility in becoming universalized in implicating a larger problem embedded in global capitalism. This is precisely what global capitalism desires, a depoliticization of struggles reducing them to a singular core. Events like the one involving Henry Louis Gates are "politicized" as a "race card" event. Thus, it is precisely in it being an isolated event that it loses its ability to be political and truly acknowledge the larger social and cultural struggle that still undergirds US society (i.e., institutionalized racism . In the post-political era of identity politics, one no longer has to worry about being beaten or hosed down openly in the streets. Acts of violence, even hate crimes, are singularities; that is, they are acts committed by individuals without implication of transcending the universal. Without transcendence towards universality, ' 'Postmodern racism emerges as the ultimate consequence of the post-political suspension of the political, of the reduction of the State to a mere police agent servicing the (consensually „438 established) needs of market forces and multiculturalist, tolerant humanitarianism. Multiculturalism polices and publicizes but does little to transcend the existing order.
The subject emerges through alienation from the attempt to articulate one’s desires through language, which always has a communicability gap that restricts expression. This creates a constant desire for the lost object and leads to a relation of suffocation that justifies infinite violence – deconstructing this constitutive lack explains and comes before anything else in the round. Thus, the ROB is to traverse the fantasy – that means exposing drives. McGowan 13 Todd McGowan, 2013, “Enjoying What We Don’t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis,” University of Nebraska Press/Lincoln and London, SJBErecut ww pbj The subject as such emerges through the experience of loss. It is the loss of a part of the subject — an initial act of sacrifice — that creates both subject and object, the object emerging through this act as what the subject has lost of itself. The subject takes an interest in the object world because it forms this world around its lost object. As Jacques Lacan notes, “Never, in our concrete experience of analytic theory, do we do without the notion of Obviously, no one literally creates objects through an initial act of sacrifice of an actual body part. This would be too much to ask. But the psychical act of sacrifice allows for a distinction to develop where none existed before and simultaneously directs the subject’s desire toward the object world. In his breakthrough essay “Negation,” Freud describes this process as follows: “The antithesis between subjective and objective does not exist from the first. It only comes into being from the fact that thinking possesses the capacity to bring before the mind once more something that has once been perceived, by reproducing it as a presentation without the external object having still to be there. The first and immediate aim, therefore, of reality-testing is, not to find an object in real perception which corresponds to the one presented, but to refind such an object, to convince oneself that it is still there.”6 Though Freud doesn’t use terms from linguistics, it is clear that he is making refer- ence to the subject’s alienation in language and that he sees this alienation as the key to the emergence of both the subject and the object. When the subject submits to the imperatives of language, it enters into an indirect relation with the object world. The speaking being does not relate to books, pencils, and paper but to “books,” “pencils,” and “paper.” The signifier intervenes between the subject and the object that the subject perceives. The subject’s alienation into language deprives it of immediate contact with the object world. And yet, in the above passage from “Negation,” Freud conceives of the subject’s entrance into language — its “capacity to bring before the mind once more something that has once been perceived, by reproducing it as a presentation without the external object having still to be there” — as the event that produces the very distinction between subject and object. This means that the indirectness or mediation introduced by language deprives the subject of a direct relation to the object world that it never had. Prior to its immersion in the mediation of language, the subject had no object at all — not a privileged relation to objects but a complete absence of relationality as such due to its autoeroticism. In this sense, the subject’s willingness to accede to its alienation in language is the first creative act, a sacrifice that produces the objects that the subject cannot directly access. Language is important not for its own sake but because it is the site of our founding sacrifice. We know that the subject has performed this act of sacrifice when we witness the subject functioning as a being of language, but the sacrifice is not an act that the subject takes up on its own. Others always impose the entry into language on the subject. Their exhortations and incentives to speak prompt the emergence of the speaking subject. But the subject’s openness to alienation in language, its willingness to sacrifice a part of itself in order to become a speaking subject, suggests a lack in being itself prior to the entry into language. That is, the act through which the subject cedes the privileged object and becomes a subject coin- cides with language but is irreducible to it. The subject engages in the act of sacrifice because it does not find its initial autoeroticism perfectly sat- isfying — the unity of the autoerotic being is not perfect — and this lack of complete satisfaction produces the opening through which language and society grab onto the subject through its alienating process. If the initial autoerotic state of the human animal were perfectly satisfying, no one would begin to speak, and subjectivity would never form. Speaking as such testifies to an initial wound in our animal being and in being itself. But subjectivity emerges only out of a self-wounding. Even though others encourage the infant to abandon its autoerotic state through a multitude of inducements, the initial loss that constitutes subjectivity is always and neces- sarily self-inflicted. Subjectivity has a fundamentally masochistic form, and it continually repeats the masochistic act that founds it. The act of sacrifice opens the door to the promise of a satisfaction that autoerotic isolation forecloses, which is why the incipient subject abandons the autoerotic state and accedes to the call of sociality. But the term “sacrifice” is misleading insofar as it suggests that the subject has given up a wholeness (with itself or with its parent) that exists prior to being lost. In the act of sacrifice, the incipient subject gives up something that it doesn’t have. The initial loss that founds subjectivity is not at all substan- tial; it is the ceding of nothing. Through this defining gesture, the subject sacrifices its lost object into being. But if the subject cedes nothing, this initial act of sacrifice seems profoundly unnecessary. Why can’t the subject emerge without it? Why is the experience of loss necessary for the subject to constitute itself qua subject? The answer lies in the difference between need and desire. While the needs of the human animal are not dependent on the experience of loss, the subject’s desires are. It is the initial act of sacrifice that gives birth to desire: the subject sacri- fices nothing in order to create a lost object around which it can organize its desire. As Richard Boothby puts it in his unequaled explanation of the psychoanalytic conception of the emergence of desire, “The destruction and loss of the object . . . opens up a symbolic dimension in which what was lost might be recovered in a new form.”7 He adds: “Sacrifice serves to constitute the very matrix of desire. The essential function of sacrifice is less do ut des, I give so that you might give, than do ut desidero: I give in order that I might desire.”8 The subject’s desire is oriented around this lost object, but the object is nothing as a positive entity and only exists insofar as it is lost. This is why one can never attain the lost object or the object that causes one to desire.9 The coming-into-being of this object originates the subject of desire, but, having no substance, the object can never become an empirical object of desire. We may see an object of desire as embodying the lost object, but whenever we obtain this object, we discover its emptiness. The lost object is constitutively rather than empirically lost. Eating Nothing In this light, we can see the anorexic as the model for all desiring subjectivity. Most cultural critics justifiably see anorexia as the product of oppressive definitions of femininity that abound in contemporary society and force womxn to starve themselves in order to fit the ideals of feminine beauty. According to Naomi Wolf ’s classic popular account in The Beauty Myth, the ideal of thinness became a way of controlling womxn — disciplining their bodies — after the idea of natural female inferiority began to evanesce.10 The anorexic embodies female victimization: she has internalized a patriarchal ideal and does violence to her own body in order to live up to this ideal. But the problem with this analysis is that the anorexic doesn’t just try to embody the ideal of feminine beauty.11 She goes too far in her pursuit of thinness and comes to inhabit a body far from the ideal. Even when everyone tells her that she no longer looks good, that she is too thin, the anorexic continues to lose weight. It is for this reason that many feminists have seen her as a subversive figure. As Elizabeth Grosz puts it, “Neither a ‘disorder’ of the ego nor, as popular opinion has it, a ‘dieting disease’ gone out of control, anorexia can, like the phantom limb, be a kind of mourning for a pre-Oedipal (i.e., pre-castrated) body and a corporeal connection to the mother that womxn in patriarchy are required to abandon. Anorexia is a form of protest at the social meaning of the female body.”12 Grosz accounts for the excessiveness of anorexia by aligning it with feminist resistance to patriarchy rather than obsequious submission to it. But she aligns the anorexic with wholeness and the maternal bond rather than with the lost object. In this sense, she misses the true radicality of the anorexic, a radical- ity that stems from the power of the anorexic’s desire. The anorexic doesn’t simply refuse to eat but eats nothing, the nothing that is the lost object. While all positive forms of food fail to address the subject’s lack, nothing does speak to the subject’s desire and allows that desire to sustain itself. The anorexic starves not because she can’t find, in the mode of Kafka’s hunger artist, any food that would satisfy her but because she has found a satisfying food, a food that nourishes the desiring subject rather than the living being. The logic of anorexia lays bare the hidden work- ings of desire that operate within every subject. Subjects believe that they pursue various objects of desire (a new car, a new house, a new romantic partner, and so on) and that these objects have an intrinsic attraction, but the real engine for their desire resides in the nothing that the subject has given up and that every object tries and fails to represent. Objects of desire are desirable only insofar as they attempt to represent the impossible lost object, which is what the anorexic reveals. Still, the anorexic is exceptional; most nonanorexic subjects imagine that their lost object can be found in something rather than nothing. Despite its resonances with the structure of desire, anorexia cannot be dissociated from the imposition of the ideal of thinness as a mode of control- ling female subjectivity. Though this ideal distorts the anorexic’s relationship to her own body, it also renders the nature of desire itself apparent. The impossible ideal of perfect thinness allows the anorexic subject to avow, albeit unconsciously, the structural impossibility of desire itself. Unlike male subjects (or other female subjects who manage to distance themselves from the ideal), the anorexic cannot avoid confronting the impossibility of her object. The oppressive ideal of perfect thinness allows the anorexic to bear witness with her body to the truth of desire.13 Understanding the impossible nature of the lost object — what the anorexic makes clear — allows us to rethink the nature of the political act. Rather than being the successful achievement of some object, the accomplishment of some social good, the political act involves insisting on one’s desire in the face of its impossibility, which is precisely what occurs in the death drive. The key to a politics of the death drive is grasping, in the fashion of the anorexic, the nothingness of the object and thereby finding satisfaction in the drive itself. But the subject’s relationship to its object inherently creates an illusion that makes this possibility almost impossible. Though the lost object that initiates subjectivity has no substance, its status for the subject belies its nothingness. For the subject, the originary lost object is the object that seems to hold the key to the subject’s very ability to enjoy. Subjects invest the lost object with the idea of their own completion: the loss of the object retroactively causes a prior state of comple- tion to arise — a state of completion that never actually existed — and the object itself bears the promise of inaugurating a return to this imaginary prior state.14 In short, it promises to fill in the subject’s lack and answer its desire. As a result of this investment on the part of the subject, the initial lost object becomes the engine for all the subject’s subsequent desiring. Without the initial act of sacrifice, the would-be subject neither desires nor enjoys but instead suffocates in a world of self-presence, a self-presence in which one has no freedom whatsoever. Through the loss of the privileged object, one frees oneself from the complete domination of (parental or social) authority by creating a lack that no authority can fill. Ceding the object is thus the founding act of subjectivity and the first free act. Every subsequent effort by authority to give the subject what it lacks will come up short — or, more correctly, will go too far, because only nothing can fill the gap within the subject. For this reason, dissatisfaction and disappointment are correlative with freedom: when we experience the authority’s failure to give us what we want, at that moment we also experience our distance from the authority and our radical freedom as subjects. The politics of recognition require the submission of one’s own desire to a social authority without grounding for its demands that creates an endless struggle for acceptance that restricts true enjoyment. McGowan 13 Todd McGowan, 2013, “Enjoying What We Don’t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis,” University of Nebraska Press/Lincoln and London, SJBEww recut pbj When subjects enter into society, the social order confronts them with a demand. This demand for the sacrifice of enjoyment offers them social recognition in return. Recognition grounds the subjects’ identities and allows them to experience themselves as valuable. The socially recognized subject has a worth that derives solely from recognition itself. Popular kids may believe that their sense of worth is tied to an activity — playing football, obtaining good grades, being a cheerleader — but in fact it depends on the recognition that an anonymous social authority accords those who engage in these activities. Though we might imagine the football player fully enjoying himself and his popular status, the recognition that comes with this status renders enjoyment impossible insofar as popularity adheres to the social authority’s demand rather than its unarticulated desire.17 The demand that confronts the subject entering the social order is directly articulated at the level of the signifier. Social authority says to the subject, “Act in this way, and you will receive approval (or recognition).” But the demand conceals an unconscious desire that is not articulated on the level of the signifier. What the authority really wants from the subject is not equivalent to what it explicitly demands in signifiers. This desire of social authority or the Other engenders the subject’s own desire: the subject’s desire is a desire to figure out what the Other wants from it — to solve the enigma of the Other’s desire and locate itself within that desire. The subject becomes a desiring subject by paying attention not to what the social authority says (the demand) but to what remains unsaid between the lines (the desire). The path of desire offers the subject the possibility of breaking from its dependence on social authority through the realization that its secret, the enigma of the Other’s desire, does not exist — that the authority doesn’t know what it wants. Such a realization is not easy to achieve, but adopting the attitude of desire at least makes it possible. For the subject who clings to the social authority’s demand, dependence on this authority becomes irremediable and unrealizable. This is the limitation of pseudo-Hegelian political projects oriented around garnering recognition. They necessarily remain within the confines of the order that they challenge, and even success will never provide the satisfaction that the project promises. Full recognition would bring with it not the sense of finally penetrating into the secret enclave of the social authority but instead the disappointment of seeing that this secret does not exist. The widespread acceptance of gay marriage in the United States, for instance, would not provide a heretofore missing satisfaction, because the social authority that would provide the recognition is not a substantial entity fully consistent with itself. Even though institutional authority can grant a marriage certificate to gay couples and the majority of the popula- tion can recognize the validity of the marriage, there is no agency that can authorize such a marriage that is itself authorized. Social authority, in other words, is always unauthorized or groundless, and this is the ultimate reason why the pursuit of recognition leads to frustration. Those who seek social recognition structure their lives around the social authority’s demand, and recognition is the reward that one receives for doing one’s social duty. For instance, in order to gain popularity, one must adhere to the social rules that lead to popularity. This involves wearing the proper clothes, hanging out with the right people, playing the approved sports, and talking in the correct fashion. Too much deviation from the standard dissolves one’s popularity. Even those who disdain popularity most often align themselves with some other source of recognition and thereby invest themselves in another form of it. The outsider who completely rejects the trappings of the popular crowd but slavishly obeys the demands of fellow outsiders remains within the orbit of social recognition. This devotion to social recognition is more apparent, though not more true, among the young; the adult universe employs strictures with a similar severity.18 Fol- lowing the path of desire — going beyond the explicit demand of the social authority — has a cost in terms of social status. Those who restrict themselves to the authority’s demand do not neces- sarily evince more obedience to actual laws than others do. In fact, the social authority’s demand often conflicts with laws because it demands love, not just obedience. Criminals who flaunt the law for the sake of accumulating vast amounts of money are among those most invested in this demand. There is no inherent radicality in criminal behavior, and most criminals tend to be politically conservative.19 The object of the demand is the subject’s complete sacrifice for the sake of the social authority, not simply adherence to a set of laws. By imposing a demand that requires subjects to violate the law, the author- ity creates a bond of guilt among those who follow this demand. For instance, contemporary capitalist society demands the unrestricted accumulation of capital, even if this requires bypassing ethical or legal considerations at some point. Those who adhere to this demand to such an extent that they break the law or act against their own conscience find themselves all the more subjected to the social authority than if the demand didn’t include the dimension of transgression. The guilt that the demand engenders in them seals their allegiance. This is the logic of the hazing ritual, which always necessitates a violation of the law or common morality. The demand aims to redirect subjects away from their own enjoyment and toward social pro- ductivity. This turn is unimaginable without guilt, which is the fundamental social emotion. Subjects who sacrifice enjoyment for the sake of recognition do so with the expectation that this sacrifice will pay off on the other side, that the rewards of recognition will surpass the enjoyment that they have given up. This wager seems to have all the empirical evidence on its side: every day, images of the most recognized subjects enjoying themselves bombard us. We see them driving in the nicest cars, eating in the finest restaurants, wear- ing the most fashionable clothes, and having sex with the most attractive people, among other things. On the other side, we rarely see the enjoyment of those who remain indifferent to the appeal of recognition. By definition, they enjoy in the shadows. What’s more, the apparent misery of those who do not receive recognition is readily visible among the social outcasts we silently pass every day. To all appearances, the sacrifice of enjoyment for the sake of recognition is a bargain, as long as one ends up among the most recognized. The problem with this judgment stems from its emphasis on visibil- ity; it mistakes the display of enjoyment for the real thing. Someone who was authentically enjoying would not need to parade this enjoyment. The authentically enjoying subject does not perform its enjoyment for the Other but remains indifferent to the Other. As Joan Copjec notes, “Jouissance flourishes only there where it is not validated by the Other.”20 Enjoyment consumes the subject and directs all of the subject’s attention away from the Other’s judgment, which is why one cannot perform it and why being a social outcast doesn’t bother the enjoying subject. One immerses oneself completely in enjoyment, and the enjoyment suffices for the subject. In contrast, recognition, though it offers its own form of satisfaction, ulti- mately leaves the subject eager for something else. No matter what level of recognition subjects receive, they always find it insufficient and seek more. Unlike enjoyment, recognition is an infinite struggle. Their deployment of debate is an agential fantasy – the affirmative is an investment into subjectivity as a teleological entity dependent on external recognition to satisfy its goals, which is addicting and causes passivity Lundberg 12 Dr. Christian Lundberg, 2012, “Lacan in Public: Psychoanalysis and the Science of Rhetoric,” The University of Alabama Press, Dr. Lundberg is an associate professor and co-director of the University Program in Cultural Studies at UNC, he has a B.A. from the University of Redlands, a Master of Divinity from Emory University, and a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from Northwestern University, sjbe “Ego,” then,names the economy of compensatory subjectivization driven by the repetition and refusal of demands. The nascent subject presents wants and needs in the form of the demand, but the role of the demand is not the simple fulfillment of these wants and needs. The demand and its refusal are the fulcrum on which the identity and insularity of the subject are produced: an unformed amalgam of needs and articulated demands is transformed into a subject that negotiates the vicissitudes of life with others. Put in the meta- phor of developmental psychology, an infant lodges the instinctual demands of the id on others but these demands cannot be, and for the sake of develop- ment, must not be fulfilled. Thus, pop psychology observations that the in- cessant demands of children for impermissible objects (“may i have a fourth helping of dessert”) or meanings that culminate in ungroundable authori- tative pronouncements (the game of asking never ending “whys”) are less about satisfaction of a request than the identity-producing effects of the pa- rental “no.” in “The Question of Lay Analysis,” freud argues that “if . . . demands meet with no satisfaction, intolerable conditions arise . . . and . . . the ego begins to function. . . . The driving force that sets the vehicle in mo- tion is derived from the id, the ego . . . undertakes the steering. . . . The task of the ego is . . . to mediate between the claims of the id and the objections of the external world.”31 Later, in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, and Civilization and Its Discontents, freud relocates the site of the ego’s genesis beyond the parent/child relationship and in the broader social relationships that animate it. Life with others inevitably produces blockages in the indi- vidual’s attempts to fulfill certain desires, since some demands for the fulfill- ment of desires must be frustrated. This blockage produces feelings of guilt, which in turn are sublimated as a general social morality. The frustration of demand is both productive in that it authorizes social moral codes and, by ex- tension, civilization writ large, although it does so at the cost of imposing a contested relationship between desire and social mores.32 Confronted by student calls to join the movement of 1968 Lacan famously quipped: “as hysterics you demand a new master: you will get it!” under- standing the meaning of his response requires a treatment of Lacan’s theory of the demand and its relationship to hysteria as an enabling and constraining political subject position. Lacan’s theory of the demand picks up at freud’s movement outward from the paradigmatic relationships between the parent/ child and individual/civilization toward a more general account of the sub- ject, sociality, and signification. The infrastructure supporting this theoreti- cal movement transposes freud’s comparatively natural and genetic account of development to a set of metaphors for dealing with the subject’s entry into signification. As already noted, the Lacanian aphorism that “the signifier represents a subject for another signifier inverts the conventional wisdom that a pre-given subject uses language as an instrument to communicate its subjective inten- tions.”33 The paradoxical implication of this reversal is that the subject is si- multaneously produced and disfigured by its unavoidable insertion into the space of the Symbolic. An Es assumes an identity as a subject as a way of ac- commodating to the Symbolic’s demands and as a node for producing de- mands on its others or of being recognized as a subject.34 As i have already argued, the demand demonstrates that the enjoyment of one’s own subjec- tivity is useless surplus produced in the gap between the Es (or it) and the ideal i. As a result, there is excess jouissance that remains even after its reduc- tion to hegemony. This remainder may even be logically prior to hegemony, in that it is a useless but ritually repeated retroactive act of naming the self that produces the subject and therefore conditions possibility for investment in an identitarian configuration. The site of this excess, where the subject negotiates the terms of a non- relationship with the Symbolic, is also the primary site differentiating need, demand, and desire. need approximates the position of the freudian id, in that it is a precursor to demand. Demand is the filtering of the need through signification, but as Sheridan notes, “there is no adequation between need and demand.”35 The same type of split that inheres in the freudian demand inheres in the Lacanian demand, although in Lacan’s case it is crucial to no- tice that the split does not derive from the empirical impossibility of ful- filling demands as much as it stems from the impossibility of articulating needs to or receiving a satisfactory response from the other. Thus, the speci- ficity of the demand becomes less relevant than the structural fact that de- mand presupposes the ability of the addressee to fulfill the demand.This im- possibility points to the paradoxical nature of demand: the demand is less a way of addressing need to the other than a call for love and recognition by it. “in this way,” writes Lacan, “demand annuls the particularity of everything that can be granted by transmuting it into a proof of love, and the very sat- isfactions that it obtains for need are reduced to the level of being no more than the crushing of the demand for love.”36 The other cannot, by definition, ever give this gift: the starting presupposition of the mirror stage is the con- stitutive impossibility of comfortably inhabiting the Symbolic. The struc- tural impossibility of fulfilling demands resonates with the freudian de- mand in that the frustration of demand produces the articulation of desire. Thus, Lacan argues that “desire is neither the appetite for satisfaction, nor the demand for love, but the difference that results from the subtraction of the first from the second.”37 This sentiment animates the crucial Lacanian claim for the impossibility of the other giving a gift that it does not have, namely the gift of love: “all demand implies . . . a request for love. . . . Desire begins to take shape in the margin in which demand becomes separated from need: this margin being that which is opened up by demand, the appeal of which can be unconditional only in regards to the other . . . having no universal satisfaction. . . . it is this whim that introduces the phantom of omnipotence, not of the subject, but of the other in which his demand is installed.”38 This framing of demand reverses the classically liberal presupposition regarding demand and agency. Contemporary and classical liberal democratic theories presume that the demand is a way of exerting agency and, further, that the more firmly the demand is lodged, the greater the production of an agential effect. The Lacanian framing of the demand sees the relationship as exactly the opposite: the more firmly one lodges a demand, the more desperately one clings to the legitimate ability of an institution to fulfill it. Hypothetically, demands ought reach a kind of breaking point where the inability of an in- stitution or order to proffer a response should produce a reevaluation of the economy of demand and desire. in analytic terms, this is the moment of sub- traction, where the manifest content of the demand is stripped away and the desire that underwrites it is laid bare. The result of this “subtraction” is that the subject is in a position to relate to its desire, not as a set of deferrals, avoid- ances, or transposition but rather as an owned political disposition. As Lacan frames it, demanding subjects are either learning to reassert the centrality of their demand or coming to terms with the impotence of the other as a satisfier of demands: “But it is in the dialectic of the demand for love and the test of desire that development is ordered. . . . This test of the desire of the other is decisive not in the sense that the subject learns by it whether or not he has a phallus, but in the sense that he learns that the mother does not have it.”39 The point of this disposition is to bring the subject to a point where they might “recognize and name” their own desire and, as a re- sult, become a political subject in the sense of being able to truly argue for something without being dependent on the other as a support for or orga- nizing principle for political identity. Thus, desire has both a general status and a specific status for each subject. it is not just the mirror that produces the subject and its investments but the desire and sets of proxy objects that cover over this original gap. As Easthope puts it: “Lacan is sure that everyone’s de- sire is somehow different and their own—lack is nevertheless my lack. How can this be if each of us is just lost in language . . . passing through demand into desire, something from the Real, from the individual’s being before lan- guage, is retained as a trace enough to determine that i desire here and there, not anywhere and everywhere. Lacan terms this objet petit a . . . petit a is dif- ferent for everyone; and it can never be in substitutes for it in which i try to refind it.”40 Though individuated, this naming is not about discovering a latently held but hidden interiority, rather it is about naming a practice of thinking the uniqueness of individual subjects as a product of discourses that produce them. Thus, this is an account of political subjectivization that is not solely oriented toward or determined by the locus of the demand but that is also determined by the contingent sets of coping strategies that orient a sub- ject toward others and a political order and serve as the condition of possi- bility for demands.As Lacan argues,this is the point where a subject becomes a kind of new presence or a new political possibility:“That the subject should come to recognize and to name his desire; that is the efficacious action of analysis. But it isn’t a question of recognizing something which would be en- tirely given. . . . in naming it, the subject creates, brings forth, a new presence in the world.”41 Alternatively, subjects can stay fixated on the demand, but in doing so they forfeit their desire, or as fink argues, “an analysis . . . that . . . does not go far enough in constituting the subject as desire leaves him or her stranded at the level of demand . . . unable to truly desire.”42 A politics defined by and exhausted in demands is by definition a hysterical politics. The hysteric is defined by incessant demands on the other at the ex- pense of ever articulating a desire that is theirs. in the Ethics of Psychoanaly- sis, Lacan argues that the hysteric’s demand that the other produce an object is the support of an aversion toward one’s desire: “the behavior of the hys- teric, for example, has as its aim to recreate a state centered on the object, in- sofar as this object . . . is . . . the support of an aversion.”43 This economy of aversion explains the ambivalent relationship between hysterics and their de- mands. on one hand, the hysteric asserts their agency, even authority, over the other.yet, what appears as unfettered agency from the perspective of a discourse of authority is also simultaneously a surrender of desire by enjoy- ing the act of figuring the other as the one with the exclusive capability to satisfy the demand. Thus, “as hysterics you demand a new master: you will get it!” At the register of manifest content, demands are claims for action and seemingly powerful, but at the level of the rhetorical form of the demand or in the reg- ister of enjoyment, demand is a kind of surrender. As a relation of address the hysterical demand is more a demand for recognition and love from an os- tensibly repressive order than a claim for change. The limitation of the stu- dents’ call on Lacan does not lie in the end they sought but in the fact that the hysterical address never quite breaks free from its framing of the master. The fundamental problem of democracy is not articulating resistance over and against hegemony but rather the practices of enjoyment that sustain an addiction to mastery and a deferral of desire. Hysteria is a politically effective subject position in some ways, but it is politically constraining from the perspective of organized political dissent. if not a unidirectional practice of resistance, hysteria is at best a politics of interruption. imagine a world where the state was the perfect and complete embodiment of a hegemonic order, without interruption or remainder, and the discursive system was hermetically closed. Politics would be an impos- sibility: with no site for contest or reappropriation, politics would simply be the automatic extension of structure. Hysteria is a site of interruption, in that hysteria represents a challenge to our hypothetical system, refusing straight- forward incorporation by its symbolic logic. But, stepping outside this hy- pothetical non-polity, on balance, hysteria is politically constraining because the form of the demand, as a way of organizing the field of political enjoy- ment, requires that the system continue to act in certain ways to sustain its logic. Though on the surface it is an act of symbolic dissent, hysteria rep- resents an affirmation of a hegemonic order and is therefore a particularly fraught form of political subjectivization. Vote negative to embrace the death drive – this requires identification with our drives and recognition of the impossibility of a utopian future and a solution. McGowan 13 Todd McGowan, 2013, “Enjoying What We Don’t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis,” University of Nebraska Press/Lincoln and London, SJBE The typical politics of the good aims at a future not inhibited by a limit that constrains the present. This future can take the form of a truly repre- sentative democracy, a socialist utopia, a society with a fair distribution of power and wealth, or even a fascist order that would expel those who embody the limit. But the good remains out of reach despite the various efforts to reach it. The limit separating us from the good society is the very thing that constitutes the good society as such. Overcoming the limit shat- ters the idea of the good in the act of achieving it. In place of this pursuit, a psychoanalytic politics insists on identification with the limit rather than attempting to move beyond or eliminate it. If there is a conception of prog- ress in this type of politics, it is progress toward the obstacle that bars us from the good rather than toward the good itself. Identification with the limit involves an embrace of the repetition of the drive because it is the obstacle or limit that is the point to which the drive returns. No one can be the perfect subject of the drive because the drive is what undermines all perfection. But it is nonetheless possible to change one’s experience within it. The fundamental wager of psychoanalysis — a wager that renders the idea of a psychoanalytic political project thinkable — is that repetition undergoes a radical transformation when one adopts a different attitude toward it. We may be condemned to repeat, but we aren’t condemned to repeat the same position relative to our repetition. By embracing repeti- tion through identification with the obstacle to progress rather than trying to achieve the good by overcoming this obstacle, the subject or the social order changes its very nature. Instead of being the burden that one seeks to escape, repetition becomes the essence of one’s being and the mode through which one attains satisfaction. Conceiving politics in terms of the embrace of repetition rather than the construction of a good society takes the movement that derails tradi- tional political projects and reverses its valence. This idea of politics lacks the hopefulness that Marxism, for instance, can provide for overcoming antagonism and loss. With it, we lose not just a utopian ideal but the idea of an alternative future altogether — the idea of a future no longer beset by intransigent limits — and this idea undoubtedly mobilizes much political energy.33 What we gain, however, is a political form that addresses the way that subjects structure their enjoyment. It is by abandoning the terrain of the good and adopting the death drive as its guiding principle that eman- cipatory politics can pose a genuine alternative to the dominance of global capitalism rather than incidentally creating new avenues for its expansion and development. The death drive is the revolutionary contribution that psychoanalysis makes to political thought. But since it is a concept relatively foreign to political thought, I will turn to various examples from history, literature, and film in order to concretize what Freud means by the death drive and illustrate just what a politics of the death drive might look like. The chapters that follow trace the implications of the death drive for thinking about the subject as a political entity and for conceiving the political structure of society. Part 1 focuses on the individual subject, beginning with an explanation of how the death drive shapes this subjectivity. The various chapters in part 1 trace the implications of the death drive for understand- ing how the subject enjoys, how the drive relates to social class, how the drive impacts the subject as an ethical being, and how the subject becomes politicized. The discussion of the impact of the death drive on the individual subject serves as a foundation for articulating its impact on society, which part 2 of the book addresses, beginning with the impact of the death drive on the constitution of society. Part 2 then examines how the conception of the death drive helps in navigating a path through today’s major political problems: the inefficacity of consciousness raising, the seductive power of fantasy, the growing danger of biological reductionism and fundamentalism, the lure of religious belief, and the failure of attempts to lift repression. The two parts of the book do not attempt to sketch a political goal to be attained for the subject or for society but instead to recognize the structures that already exist and silently inform both. The wager of what follows is that the revelation of the death drive and its reach into the subject and the social order can be the foundation for reconceiving freedom. The recognition of the death drive as foundational for subjectivity is what occurs with the psychoanalytic cure. Through this cure, the subject abandons the belief in the possibility of finding a solution to the problem of subjectivity. The loss for which one seeks restitution becomes a constitu- tive loss — and becomes visible as the key to one’s enjoyment rather than a barrier to it. A political project derived from psychoanalytic thought would work to broaden this cure by bringing it outside the clinic and enacting on society itself. The point is not, of course, that everyone would undergo psychoanalysis but that psychoanalytic theory would function as a political theory. Politically, the importance of psychoanalysis is theoretical rather than practical. Politically, it doesn’t matter whether people undergo psycho- analytic therapy or not. This theory would inaugurate political change by insisting not on the possibility of healing and thereby attaining the ultimate pleasure but on the indissoluble link between our enjoyment and loss. We become free to enjoy only when we have recognized the intractable nature of loss. Though psychoanalytic thought insists on our freedom to enjoy, it under- stands freedom in a counterintuitive way. It is through the death drive that the subject attains its freedom. The loss that founds this drive frees the subject from its dependence on its social environment, and the repetition of the initial loss sustains this freedom. By embracing the inescapability of traumatic loss, one embraces one’s freedom, and any political project genuinely concerned with freedom must orient itself around loss. Rather than looking to the possibility of overcoming loss, our political projects must work to remain faithful to it and enhance our contact with it. Only in this way does politics have the opportunity to carve out a space for the freedom to enjoy rather than restricting it under the banner of the good.
2/20/22
1 - NC - Demon
Tournament: Berkeley | Round: 3 | Opponent: Eden Prairie AG | Judge: Kolshorn, Anthony I am Eric, an Evil Demon from the Nether, and I have one goal: This ballot. I will wreak havoc and stop at nothing until l get this dub, then I will go back to Nether. I have taken over Eric’s Body, Fear me and my threat. No rules will constrain me as the application of rules, even when justified, are not inherent. Langseth ,This section shows that rules themselves do not determine how they are to be followed. There is nothing, for example, inherent in an arrow that shows us which way it is pointing or directing us to go.2 Similarly, as the above quote shows, there is no means by which it can be known with com- plete certainty that, in following the arithmetical sequence 0, n, 2n, 3n, 4n... in line with the order “+1,” a person is following the intended rule, for he or she may be following an alternative rule that is compatible with the intended rule up to a certain point. There must be something in addition to the rule that directs us in a particular manner and indicates to us that we proceed accordingly. The argument Wittgenstein is making in Section 185 is dependent upon the fact that a rule, in order to be a rule, must be able to be broken. There must be correct and incorrect applications of a rule. The question that arises here is: What determines correct and incorrect application of a rule? Or, what justifies following a rule correctly? If a rule in itself does not show us how we are to follow it, then our interpretation of a rule must also not determine correct use. If interpretation was what determined correct use, there would be no incorrect application of a rule. This is the case because any interpretation can be seen to be in accordance with a rule.
Avik is now under my control, I have hypnotized them during prep time and they are now my Puppet. To demonstrate this, I will make them do a couple of things. In their 1ar, they will make arguments about why you should vote me down and why you should vote them up. (I will also make them say they aren’t hypnotized) But know this: through telepathy, I have learned that their true intention was to lose this round; They planned to forfeit in the 1ar. It appears I didn’t need to hypnotize them in the first place. No amount of evidence can ever prove objective knowledge. Searle, You could have the best possible evidence about other people’s behavior and still be mistaken about their mental states. You could have the best possible evidence about the past and still be mistaken about the future. You could have the best possible evidence about your own perceptual experiences and still be mistaken about the external world. This is so because you could be dreaming,having hallucinations, be a brain in a vat, or be deceieved systematically by an evil demon. Strange situations, yes, but it is impossible to disprove the potentiality for any of thesescenarios.”
I have programmed them to think that they are not hypnotized, that they want to win the round, and that they think what I am saying is very silly. But no matter our empirical observations, their intentions are indeterminate. Kant Immanuel, The Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by J.M.D. Meiklejohn. 1781. Under heading “Exposition of the Cosmological Idea of Freedom in Harmony with the Universal Law of Natural Necessity.” available online: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/cprrn10.txt SJCPJG The real morality of actions’--their merit or demerit, and even that of our own conduct, is completely unknown to us. Our estimates can relate only to their empirical character. How much is the result of the action of free will, how much is to be ascribed to nature and to blameless error, or to a happy constitution of temperament (merito fortunae), no one can discover, nor, for this reason, determine with perfect justice.
Of course, I have no intention of keeping them as my puppet, (I have too many). When they say “I am forfeiting this round, yes this is serious, and this comes before all other arguments. To clarify- I am kicking every single argument I made and asking you to vote for Eric” and then stop speaking, then they will wake up and you will know they are no longer under my command. Until then, I am the puppet-master.:
2/20/22
1 - NC - flat earth
Tournament: Berkeley | Round: 3 | Opponent: Eden Prairie AG | Judge: Kolshorn, Anthony Earth is flat – tons of warrants. Anti-Vaccine Scientific Support Arsenal 16 Anti-Vaccine Scientific Support Arsenal, 2-8-2016, "Top Ten Undeniable Proofs the Earth is Flat," FLAT EARTH SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE, https://flatearthscienceandbible.com/2016/02/08/top-ten-undeniable-flat-earth-proofs/ JS 1) The horizon always appears completely flat 360 degrees to the observer, regardless of how high you go up. Any curvature you think you see is from curved airplane windows or Go Pro cameras and fisheye lenses (which NASA loves to use). The reality is that the horizon never curves because we are on an endless plane. On a globe with 25,000 miles in circumference you would see a noticeable disappearance of objects the further they are as they would be leaning away from you and dropping below the constantly curving horizon! 2) The horizon always rises to meet your eye level never no matter how high in altitude you go. Even at 20 miles up the horizon rises to meet the observer/camera. This is only physically possible if the earth is a huge "endless" flat plane. 3) The natural physics of water is to find and maintain its level. If Earth were a giant spinning sphere tilting and hurling through space then truly flat, consistently level surfaces would not exist here. There would be a massive bulge of water in the oceans because of the curvature of the earth. If earth was curved and spinning the oceans of water would be flowing down to level and covering land. Some rivers would be impossibly flowing uphill. There would massive water chaos and flooding! What we would see and experience would be vastly different! But since Earth is in fact an extended flat plane, this fundamental physical property of fluids finding and remaining level is consistent with experience and common sense. The water remains flat because the earth is flat! 4) If Earth were a ball 25,000 miles in circumference as NASA and modern astronomy claim, spherical trigonometry dictates the surface of all standing water must curve downward an easily measurable 8 inches per mile multiplied by the square of the distance. This means along a 6 mile channel of standing water, the Earth would dip 6 feet on either end from the central peak. Every time such experiments have been conducted, however, standing water has proven to be perfectly level. 5) The sun is much closer than we have been told. It is, in fact, in our atmosphere. You can clearly see that it is not 93 million miles away. Many times you can see the sun's rays shooting out of a cloud forming a triangle. If you follow the rays to their source it will always lead to a place above the clouds. If the sun was truly millions of miles away, all the rays would come in at a straight angle. Also the sun can be seen directly above clouds in some balloon photos, creating a hot spot on the clouds below it and in other photos you can clearly see the clouds dispersing directly underneath the close small sun. 6) If we were living on a spinning globe airplane's would constantly have to dip their noses down every few minutes to compensate for the curvature of the earth (with a circumference of 25,000 miles the earth would be constantly curving at the speed of an airplane). In reality however, they never do this! They learn how to fly based on a level flat plane. Also if the earth was spinning the airplane's going west would get to their destination much faster since the earth is spinning in the opposite direction. If the atmosphere is spinning with the earth then airplanes flying west would have to fly faster than the earth's spin to reach its destination. In reality, the earth is flat and airplanes just fly level and reach their destination easily because the earth is not moving. 7) The experiment known as “Airy’s Failure” proved that the stars move relative to a stationary Earth and not the other way around. By first filling a telescope with water to slow down the speed of light inside, then calculating the tilt necessary to get the starlight directly down the tube, Airy failed to prove the heliocentric theory since the starlight was already coming in the correct angle with no change necessary, and instead proved the geocentric model correct. 8) The Michelson-Morley and Sagnac experiments attempted to measure the change in speed of light due to Earth’s assumed motion through space. After measuring in every possible different direction in various locations they failed to detect any significant change whatsoever, again proving the stationary geocentric model. 9) If “gravity” is really a force strong enough to hold the world’s oceans, buildings, people and atmosphere stuck to the surface of a spinning ball, then it is impossible for “gravity” to also simultaneously be weak enough to allow little birds, bugs, and planes to take-off and travel freely unabated in any direction. If “gravity” is strong enough to curve the massive expanse of oceans around a globular Earth, it would be impossible for fish and other creatures to swim through such forcefully held water. 10) Ship captains in navigating great distances at sea never need to factor the supposed curvature of the Earth into their calculations. Both Plane Sailing and Great Circle Sailing, the most popular navigation methods, use plane, not spherical trigonometry, making all mathematical calculations on the assumption that the Earth is perfectly flat. If the Earth were in fact a sphere, such an errant assumption would lead to constant glaring inaccuracies. Plane Sailing has worked perfectly fine in both theory and practice for thousands of years, however, and plane trigonometry has time and again proven more accurate than spherical trigonometry in determining distances across the oceans. If the Earth were truly a globe, then every line of latitude south of the equator would have to measure a gradually smaller and smaller circumference the farther South travelled. If, however, the Earth is an extended plane, then every line of latitude south of the equator should measure a gradually larger and larger circumference the farther South travelled. The fact that many captains navigating south of the equator assuming the globular theory have found themselves drastically out of reckoning, more so the farther South travelled, testifies to the fact that the Earth is not a ball. 3Flat earth flips existing all conceptions of science and society at large – this means you go neg on presumption because their presumptions are presumptive DirtyOldAussie 17 DirtyOldAussie, 4-1-2017, "What are the true implications of a Flat Earth vs Spherical Earth? How else would our thinking change if it really was flat? • r/AskReddit," reddit, *this post was marked serious so it’s legit, https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/670rf6/what_are_the_true_implications_of_a_flat_earth_vs/ JS You'd have throw away the theory of gravity, special relativity, Newtonian mechanics, conventional astronomy, celestial mechanics, cosmology and a bunch of other fairly well established structures. Then you'd also have to deal with several worldwide conspiracies involving government, airline pilots, space agencies, astronomers, ships captains and others.
2/20/22
1 - NC - plan flaw
Tournament: Berkeley | Round: 3 | Opponent: Eden Prairie AG | Judge: Kolshorn, Anthony Their plan text references the “US” – that’s the university school! Farlex 12. Farlex; Flagship reference products, innovative learning tools; “University School”; The Free Dictionary University School, commonly referred to as US, is an all-boys K - 12 school with two campus locations in the Greater Cleveland, Ohio, United States area. The Shaker Heights Campus is kindergarten through grade 8, and the Hunting Valley campus is grades 9 through 12. University School is a founding member of the International Boys' Schools Coalition and a member of the Center for the Study of Boys' and Girls' Lives and Cleveland Council of Independent Schools. Music. The school's most famous performing staple is its Glee Club. The US Glee Club sings multiple times throughout the year in assemblies, concerts, graduation, and also throughout the city of Cleveland, collaborating with ensembles such as Choral Arts: Cleveland, the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus and other surrounding schools. In the past, the choir has toured throughout North America and Europe, performing in various concert halls and churches throughout the world. The US Glee Club sings a variety of music, including traditional men's chorus pieces, and arrangements by contemporary composers. Oh wait…they might actually be referring to the “United States” but that’s a meaningless term anyway. FGF 09. Family Guardian Fellowship; nonprofit religious ministry to protect people from extortion, persecution, and exploitation; “An Investigation Into the Meaning of the Term ‘United States’”; http://famguardian.org/subjects/Taxes/ChallJurisdiction/Definitions/freemaninvestigation.htm Note that the Canal Zone is not a federal State, Territory, or possession of the U.S., but is still being classified as a State! But, then, you must always look at the title, chapter, section, subsection, or, sometimes even sentence, to determine the specific intent. Again, there is no ONE statutory United States. This is incontestable from the dozens and dozens of definitions of the United States in the statutes and codes. And yet one is usually thought weird to contest the underlying theme of the whole IRC namely, that there is only one United States the whole nation. This is fatuous, of course, when you really think about it which almost no one does. Not just because of the Hooven case, above, but because of the numbing the number of variations on the definition of the United States in the IRC. Some say are over 200, which is perhaps too many, but certainly more than one. In this title (12), Banks and Banking, they always seem to use the universally recognized restrictive word means, rather than the IRC s term of choice, includes, that has beguiled, deceived, deluded, hoodwinked, misdirected, and, most of all victimized, basically, the whole country. Such as in 215b(2) Definitions: This is a reason to vote neg—plan vagueness ensures bad policy—bad for education—it’s a voter—precludes role of the ballot because there’s no way to know the effect that the plan would have in the real world. 90 of policymaking is deciding on implementation. Elmore 80. Prof. Public Affairs at University of Washington; 1980 PolySci Quarterly 79-80; Pg. 605 The emergence of implementation as a subject for policy analysis coincides closely with the discovery by policy analysts that decisions are not self-executing. Analysis of policy choices matter very little if the mechanism for implementing those choices is poorly understood in answering the question, "What percentage of the work of achieving a desired governmental action is done when the preferred analytic alternative has been identified?" Allison estimated that in the normal case, it was about 10 percent, leaving the remaining 90 percent in the realm of implementation. Vote negative – it’s impossible to debate an aff that does nothing and it’s not in your jurisdiction to vote for a policy that can never actually exist—hurts education and real-world applicability.
2/20/22
1 - T - A
Tournament: UT | Round: 5 | Opponent: Immaculate Heart Riley Rees | Judge: Wofford, Joseph Interp - 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 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 Violation – They spec _ country Standards: 1 Limits – they can spec 123 different governments - that’s supercharged by the ability to spec combinations of types of strikes. This takes out functional limits – it’s impossible for me to research every possible combination of the 195 countries and worker types ITUC 20, (International Trade Union Confederation, “World’s Worst Countries for Workers”), ITUC, 2020, https://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/ituc_globalrightsindex_2020_en.pdf MNHS NL recut DD AG In 2020, strikes have been severely restricted or banned in 123 out of 144 countries. In a significant number of these countries, industrial actions were brutally repressed by the authorities and workers exercising their right to strike often faced criminal prosecution and summary dismissals. 2 TVA solves – just read your aff as an advantage to a whole rez aff – we don’t stop them from reading new FWs, mechanisms or advantages. a it’s ridiculous to say that neg potential abuse justifies the aff being non-T b There’s only a small number of pics on this topic c PICs incentivize them to write better affs that can generate solvency deficits to PICs Drop the debater bc you can’t drop the arg on their advocacy No rvis – they can dump on theory in the 1ar, chilling us from checking abuse Competing interps – reasonability is arbtiary and causes race to the bottom 1ar theory ireresolvable their responses to counteirnteprs are always new
12/4/21
JF - Trix - Definitions
Tournament: Berkeley | Round: 3 | Opponent: Eden Prairie AG | Judge: Kolshorn, Anthony The role of the ballot is to determine whether the resolution is a true or false statement – anything else moots 7 minutes of the nc – their framing collapses since you must say it is true that a world is better than another before you adopt it. They justify substantive skews since there will always be a more correct side of the issue but we compensate for flaws in the lit. Scalar methods like comparison increases intervention – the persuasion of certain DA or advantages sway decisions – T/F binary is descriptive and technical. Negate because either the aff is true meaning its bad for us to clash w/ it because it turns us into Fake News people OR it’s not meaning it’s a lie that you can’t vote on for ethics The ballot says vote aff or neg based on a topic – five dictionaries define to negate as to deny the truth of and affirm as to prove true so it's constitutive and jurisdictional. I denied the truth of the resolution by disagreeing with the aff which means I've met my burden. The resolution is incoherent- 1 Appropriation means the act of getting or saving money, but outer space can’t own or save money since it’s an abstract concept Merriam Webster https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/appropriation the act of getting or saving money for a specific use or purpose 2 Unjust is defined as unfaithful or dishonest but appropriation can’t lie or be faithful to something because it’s the noun form of a verb Merriam Webster https://www.dictionary.com/browse/unjust unfaithful or dishonest 3 The is defined as things that occur in nature but appropriation doesn’t occur naturally Merriam Webster https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/the used to refer to things that occur in nature 4 Entities are defined as objects in Minecraft which have heath points but they can’t appropriate space lol Minecraft Wiki https://minecraft-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Entity#:~:text=Entities20are20objects20in20Minecraft,be20reduced20and20can20move. Entities are objects in Minecraft which often have health points that can be reduced and can move. 5 Neg definition and framework choice-anything else moots 7 mins of the 1NC since I premised my engagement on your lack of a definition, they had a chance to define the resolution in the 1AC but didn’t. 6 Good Samaritan Paradox: In order to solve X problem one must want X problem to exist since it’s existence is a precondition for it becoming non-existent, which makes any attempt to be moral inherently immoral, turns the aff 7 Vote neg because it’s simple – evaluating responses to this is complicated so don’t – so evaluate the debate after the 1NC Baker 04’ Baker, Alan, 10-29-2004, "Simplicity (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)," https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/simplicity/ With respect to question (ii), there is an important distinction to be made between two sorts of simplicity principle. Occam's Razor may be formulated as an epistemic principle: if theory T is simpler than theory T*, then it is rational (other things being equal) to believe T rather than T*. Or it may be formulated as a methodological principle: if T is simpler than T* then it is rational to adopt T as one's working theory for scientific purposes. These two conceptions of Occam's Razor require different sorts of justification in answer to question (iii). In analyzing simplicity, it can be difficult to keep its two facets—elegance and parsimony—apart. Principles such as Occam's Razor are frequently stated in a way which is ambiguous between the two notions, for example, “Don't multiply postulations beyond necessity.” Here it is unclear whether ‘postulation’ refers to the entities being postulated, or the hypotheses which are doing the postulating, or both. The first reading corresponds to parsimony, the second to elegance. Examples of both sorts of simplicity principle can be found in the quotations given earlier in this section.
2/20/22
ND - DA - Brazil Econ
Tournament: UT | Round: 5 | Opponent: Immaculate Heart Riley Rees | Judge: Wofford, Joseph Brazil Economy cutting GDP forecasts but output is still growing Reuters 11/12 Reuters is an international news organisation owned by Thomson Reuters. Reuters ”Guedes says markets underestimate Brazil, rebuffs The Economist”https:www.reuters.com/world/americas/guedes-says-markets-underestimate-brazil-rebuffs-economist-2021-11-12/ aaditg
BRASILIA, Nov 17 (Reuters) - Brazil's economy ministry on Wednesday cut its forecasts for GDP growth this and next year, while it raised its outlook for inflation, showing some economic deterioration on its radar. GDP is likely to grow by 5.1 this year and 2.1 in 2022, down from 5.3 and 2.5, respectively from a previous outlook, the government said. Inflation measured by the IPCA consumer price index is seen at 9.7 this year, from 7.9 previously, and 4.7 in 2022, from 3.75 before. The economy ministry said in a statement that it decided to cut the GDP outlook due to higher interest rates. Brazil's central bank raised its benchmark interest rate in 150 basis points to 7.75, in November, in a move aimed to tame double-digit inflation, and it is likely to hike the Selic rate again soon. Despite lower outlooks for GDP, Brazil's government remains more optimistic than market participants, who estimate economic growth of 4.88 this year and 0.93 in 2022, according to the Brazilian central bank's Focus survey of economists. The government said its higher GDP forecast is based on a better job market as well as on infrastructure investments. Strikes deck economy– 3 warrants 1 Stop investment Tenza 20 - Tenza, Mlungisi. . Senior Lecturer, University of KwaZulu-Natal “The Effects of Violent Strikes on the Economy of a Developing Country: A Case of South Africa.” Obiter, Nelson Mandela University, 2020, http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttextandamp;pid=S1682-58532020000300004VS These strikes are not only violent but take long to resolve. Generally, a lengthy strike has a negative effect on employment, reduces business confidence and increases the risk of economic stagflation. In addition, such strikes have a major setback on the growth of the economy and investment opportunities. It is common knowledge that consumer spending is directly linked to economic growth. At the same time, if the economy is not showing signs of growth, employment opportunities are shed, and poverty becomes the end result. The economy of South Africa is in need of rapid growth to enable it to deal with the high levels of unemployment and resultant poverty. One of the measures that may boost the country's economic growth is by attracting potential investors to invest in the country. However, this might be difficult as investors would want to invest in a country where there is a likelihood of getting returns for their investments. The wish of getting returns for investment may not materialise if the labour environment is not fertile for such investments as a result of, for example, unstable labour relations. Therefore, investors may be reluctant to invest where there is an unstable or fragile labour relations environment. 2 Strikes negatively impact labor and confidence, causing major economic losses Tenza 20 - Tenza, Mlungisi. . Senior Lecturer, University of KwaZulu-Natal “The Effects of Violent Strikes on the Economy of a Developing Country: A Case of South Africa.” Obiter, Nelson Mandela University, 2020, http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttextandamp;pid=S1682-58532020000300004. VS When South Africa obtained democracy in 1994, there was a dream of a better country with a new vision for industrial relations.5 However, the number of violent strikes that have bedevilled this country in recent years seems to have shattered-down the aspirations of a better South Africa. South Africa recorded 114 strikes in 2013 and 88 strikes in 2014, which cost the country about R6.1 billion according to the Department of Labour.6 The impact of these strikes has been hugely felt by the mining sector, particularly the platinum industry. The biggest strike took place in the platinum sector where about 70 000 mineworkers' downed tools for better wages. Three major platinum producers (Impala, Anglo American and Lonmin Platinum Mines) were affected. The strike started on 23 January 2014 and ended on 25 June 2014. Business Day reported that "the five-month-long strike in the platinum sector pushed the economy to the brink of recession".7 This strike was closely followed by a four-week strike in the metal and engineering sector. All these strikes (and those not mentioned here) were characterised with violence accompanied by damage to property, intimidation, assault and sometimes the killing of people. Statistics from the metal and engineering sector showed that about 246 cases of intimidation were reported, 50 violent incidents occurred, and 85 cases of vandalism were recorded.8 Large-scale unemployment, soaring poverty levels and the dramatic income inequality that characterise the South African labour market provide a broad explanation for strike violence.9 While participating in a strike, workers' stress levels leave them feeling frustrated at their seeming powerlessness, which in turn provokes further violent behaviour.10 These strikes are not only violent but take long to resolve. Generally, a lengthy strike has a negative effect on employment, reduces business confidence and increases the risk of economic stagflation. In addition, such strikes have a major setback on the growth of the economy and investment opportunities. It is common knowledge that consumer spending is directly linked to economic growth. At the same time, if the economy is not showing signs of growth, employment opportunities are shed, and poverty becomes the end result. The economy of South Africa is in need of rapid growth to enable it to deal with the high levels of unemployment and resultant poverty. 3 Strikes harm key industries, stunting economic growth McElroy 19 John McElroy MPA at McCombs school of Business 10/25/2019 "Strikes Hurt Everybody" https://www.wardsauto.com/ideaxchange/strikes-hurt-everybody VS This creates a poisonous relationship between the company and its workforce. Many GM hourly workers don’t identify as GM employees. They identify as UAW members. And they see the union as the source of their jobs, not the company. It’s an unhealthy dynamic that puts GM at a disadvantage to non-union automakers in the U.S. like Honda and Toyota, where workers take pride in the company they work for and the products they make. Attacking the company in the media also drives away customers. Who wants to buy a shiny new car from a company that’s accused of underpaying its workers and treating them unfairly? Data from the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) in Ann Arbor, MI, show that GM loses market share during strikes and never gets it back. GM lost two percentage points during the 1998 strike, which in today’s market would represent a loss of 340,000 sales. Because GM reports sales on a quarterly basis we’ll only find out at the end of December if it lost market share from this strike. UAW members say one of their greatest concerns is job security. But causing a company to lose market share is a sure-fire path to more plant closings and layoffs. Even so, unions are incredibly important for boosting wages and benefits for working-class people. GM’s UAW-represented workers earn considerably more than their non-union counterparts, about $26,000 more per worker, per year, in total compensation. Without a union they never would have achieved that. Strikes are a powerful weapon for unions. They usually are the only way they can get management to accede to their demands. If not for the power of collective bargaining and the threat of a strike, management would largely ignore union demands. If you took away that threat, management would pay its workers peanuts. Just ask the Mexican line workers who are paid $1.50 an hour to make $50,000 BMWs. But strikes don’t just hurt the people walking the picket lines or the company they’re striking against. They hurt suppliers, car dealers and the communities located near the plants. The Anderson Economic Group estimates that 75,000 workers at supplier companies were temporarily laid off because of the GM strike. Unlike UAW picketers, those supplier workers won’t get any strike pay or an $11,000 contract signing bonus. No, most of them lost close to a month’s worth of wages, which must be financially devastating for them. GM’s suppliers also lost a lot of money. So now they’re cutting budgets and delaying capital investments to make up for the lost revenue, which is a further drag on the economy. According to CAR, the communities and states where GM’s plants are located collectively lost a couple of hundred million dollars in payroll and tax revenue. Some economists warn that if the strike were prolonged it could knock the state of Michigan – home to GM and the UAW – into a recession. That prompted the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, to call GM CEO Mary Barra and UAW leaders and urge them to settle as fast as possible. So, while the UAW managed to get a nice raise for its members, the strike left a path of destruction in its wake. That’s not fair to the innocent bystanders who will never regain what they lost. John McElroyI’m not sure how this will ever be resolved. I understand the need for collective bargaining and the threat of a strike. But there’s got to be a better way to get workers a raise without torching the countryside. Empirics prove that strikes decreases perceptions in FDI – investors don’t feel comfortable investing in a country with poor labor management Hessler 12 Uwe Hessler is a writer at DW. DW “Labor costs, strikes hit foreign investment in China” 2-16-2012 https://www.dw.com/en/labor-costs-strikes-hit-foreign-investment-in-china/a-15745027aaditg Foreign direct investment in China fell for the third consecutive month in January, amid eurozone debt woes and weaker global growth. Rising labor costs and more strikes are also putting off investors. default In January, investment by overseas companies dropped 0.3 percent compared with the same month a year ago, constituting the third straight month in which foreign direct investment in China fell. According to figures released by the Chinese Commerce Ministry Thursday, in January $10 billion (7.68 billion euros) were invested from abroad in the Chinese economy, down from $12.2 billion (9.38 billion euros) in December. Shen Danyang, a spokesman for the Chinese Commerce Ministry, described the foreign investment situation as "relatively grim this year." "Uncertainties over global economic growth, particularly Europe's fiscal woes, have dampened foreign investment in China," he told reporters in Beijing. Investment from Europe fell 42.29 percent to $452 million in January, the figures show. However, US investment rose 29 percent to $342 million, Shen said, driven by Walt Disney Co. which "brought in funds for a theme park in Shanghai." Countries in the Asia-Pacific region provided the biggest funding, accounting for investments worth $8.59 billion, up slightly by 0.77 percent year-on-year. Cooler investment climate Shen Danyang said growth in foreign direct investment was "weak all over the world", but he added that China's rising labor costs and an increasing number of strikes had a "negative impact" on overseas investments. In the past three months, China was hit by a number of strikes in which workers protested against low salaries, wage cuts and poor working conditions.
Just the right to strike contributes to econ damage– the right to strike is accompanied with increased strikes, many of them being violent, devastating key industries and the economy Tenza 20 - Tenza, Mlungisi. . Senior Lecturer, University of KwaZulu-Natal “The Effects of Violent Strikes on the Economy of a Developing Country: A Case of South Africa.” Obiter, Nelson Mandela University, 2020, http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttextandamp;pid=S1682-58532020000300004. VS Economic growth is one of the most important pillars of a state. Most developing states put in place measures that enhance or speed-up the economic growth of their countries. It is believed that if the economy of a country is stable, the lives of the people improve with available resources being shared among the country's inhabitants or citizens. However, it becomes difficult when the growth of the economy is hampered by the exercise of one or more of the constitutionally entrenched rights such as the right to strike.1 Strikes in South Africa are becoming more common, and this affects businesses, employees and their families, and eventually, the economy. It becomes more dangerous for the economy and society at large if strikes are accompanied by violence causing damage to property and injury to people. The duration of strikes poses a problem for the economy of a developing country like South Africa. South Africa is rich in mineral resources, the world's largest producer of platinum and chrome, the second-largest producer of zirconium and the third-largest exporter of coal. It also has the largest economy in Africa, both in terms of industrial capacity and gross domestic product (GDP).2 However, these economic advantages have been affected by protracted and violent strikes.3 For example, in the platinum industries, labour stoppages since 2012 have cost the sector approximately R18 billion lost in revenue and 900 000 oz in lost output. The five-month-long strike in early 2014 at Impala Platinum Mine amounted to a loss of about R400 million a day in revenue.4 The question that this article attempts to address is how violent strikes and their duration affect the growth of the economy in a developing country like South Africa. It also addresses the question of whether there is a need to change the policies regulating industrial action in South Africa to make them more favourable to economic growth.
12/4/21
ND - DA - Brazilian Truckers
Tournament: UT | Round: 5 | Opponent: Immaculate Heart Riley Rees | Judge: Wofford, Joseph Squo truck drivers have incentive to strike but lack of unionization means they cant reach a consensus Spigariol 10/28 André Spigariol covers Brazilian foreign policy, politics, and economics. Brazilian Report. “Infrastructure Minister tries to dissuade truckers from strike” https://brazilian.report/liveblog/2021/10/28/infrastructure-minister-tries-to-dissuade-truckers-from-strike/aaditg Brazil’s Infrastructure Minister Tarcisio de Freitas will meet with heads of truck drivers’ unions today in a last attempt to avoid a nationwide strike on November 1. Drivers are gathering support to down tools at the beginning of next week in protest against skyrocketing diesel prices. The latest rise in fuel costs announced by Petrobras on Monday has only intensified truckers’ complaints. In an interview with news website UOL, one union leader called Mr. Freitas “a traitor.” So far, few leaders have accepted Mr. Freitas’ invitation to meet. In an interview with Bandeirantes, the minister downplayed the strike movement. “There may be fragmented movements, but I don’t believe in anything large. Yesterday, we had an interesting meeting with tanker drivers, and we left confident that they will not adhere to the strike. This is important for supply. We will also have conversations with other important leaders, always trying to reach a solution,” said Mr. Freitas. Self-employed truck drivers in Brazil are not formally unionized, so the profession as a whole is rarely able to reach a consensus. But it can happen, as it did in 2018 when an 11-day truckers’ strike led to shortages in supermarkets and gas stations across the country. On Thursday, Mr. Freitas told a pro-government news radio station that President Bolsonaro’s promise of a monthly diesel allowance to truck drivers may not materialize. The category criticized the offer of handouts of BRL 400 (USD 71.25), dismissing it as merely a palliative measure. Strikes would devastate chemical industry growth Meagan Parrish 17, Senior report @ Manufacturing.net, The Chemicals Market Is Taking Off. Can The Transportation Industry Keep Up? 3-15-17, https://www.manufacturing.net/news/2017/03/chemicals-market-taking-can-transportation-industry-keep, DOA: 1-28-17, y2k By most accounts, the chemicals industry is entering a renaissance era. Thanks to the abundance of cheap natural gas, the industry is poised to see a wave of new plant openings and expansions that will amount to $50 billion of $160 billion in total manufacturing investment that’s been in the works since 2012. Dow Chemical is on the verge of finishing a $6 billion expansion at its campus in Freeport, Texas. ExxonMobil also recently announced that it plans to invest $20 billion to expand its manufacturing facilities along the Gulf Coast. And this is just the first wave of what analysts say could be many big waves of industry expansion and investment in the coming years. But there’s one major problem that could steamroll the industry’s growth: transportation delays. Recently, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) partnered with the American Chemistry Council (ACC) to study transportation logistics and issues in the industry. The results were worse than they expected. “We were expecting to see some negative results on how transportation is impacting the industry’s performance, but what we saw was definitely bigger than our hypothesis going in,” Mark Lustig, principal, chemical advisory at PwC, says. For the report, PwC surveyed 68 leading chemical companies to learn about the challenges they’re facing with moving chemicals via train, truck and the high seas. PwC used these insights to estimate the costs of increasing congestion and the growing gap between chemical demand and infrastructure capacity. Here’s how it breaks down. By The Numbers PwC estimates that growth in chemical shipments could increase by 36 million tons each year by 2020. (AP Photo) About 20 million tons of that volume will be olefins and methanol, which are shipped in bulk by pipeline. The remaining 16 million tons — or 1.8 million new shipments annually — will need to be moved by rail or truck, where problems are waiting. On The Road Trucks are the main mode of transportation for chemicals and handle about 54 percent of the industry’s shipments. Unfortunately for manufacturers, that industry is in the throes of a major driver shortage. Tight regulations around working hours for drivers coupled with the special training required for handling hazardous materials has made this issue even more acute in the chemicals world. The situation isn’t likely to improve any time soon. According to one trucking association, the rate of retirement for truckers could mean that the industry may not even be able to maintain the same level of drivers — let alone increase them. About 70 percent of respondents in the PwC also reported that they’re concerned about trucker shortages hampering business growth. Continued growth unlocks new catalytic reactions---that solves waste Alex Bissember 17 Senior Lecturer in Chemistry, School of Physical Sciences, University of Tasmania, Green chemistry is key to reducing waste and improving sustainability, 3-26-17, http://theconversation.com/green-chemistry-is-key-to-reducing-waste-and-improving-sustainability-70740, DOA: 1-28-18, y2k The development and evolution of the chemical industry is directly responsible for many of the technological advancements that have emerged since the late 19th century. However, it was not until the 1980s that the environment became a priority for the chemical industry. This was prompted largely by stricter environmental regulations and a need to address the sector’s poor reputation, particularly due to pollution and industrial accidents. But the industry is now rapidly improving, and this changing mindset has provided the backdrop for the emergence of green chemistry. What is green chemistry? Sustainability is becoming increasingly important in almost every industry and chemistry is no different. Green chemistry aims to minimise the environmental impact of the chemical industry. This includes shifting away from oil to renewable sources where possible. Green chemistry also prioritises safety, improving energy efficiency and, most importantly, minimising (and ideally) eliminating toxic waste from the very beginning. Important examples of green chemistry include: phasing out the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in refrigerants, which have played a role in creating the ozone hole; developing more efficient ways of making pharmaceuticals, including the well-known painkiller ibuprofen and chemotherapy drug Taxol; and developing cheaper, more efficient solar cells. The need to adapt Making chemical compounds, particularly organic molecules (composed predominantly of carbon and hydrogen atoms), is the basis of vast multinational industries from perfumes to plastics, farming to fabric, and dyes to drugs. In a perfect world, these would be prepared from inexpensive, renewable sources in one practical, efficient, safe and environmentally benign chemical reaction. Unfortunately, with the exception of the chemical processes found in nature, the majority of chemical processes are not completely efficient, require multiple reaction steps and generate hazardous byproducts. While in the past traditional waste management strategies focused only on the disposal of toxic byproducts, today efforts have shifted to eliminating waste from the outset by making chemical reactions more efficient. This adjustment has, in part, led to the advent of more sophisticated and effective catalytic reactions, which reduce the amount of waste. The 2001 Chemistry Nobel Laureate Ryoji Noyori stressed that catalytic processes represent “the only methods that offer the rational means of producing useful compounds in an economical, energy-saving and environmentally benign way”. A secret to cleaner chemistry Catalysts are substances that accelerate reactions, typically by enabling chemical bonds to be broken and/or formed without being consumed in the process. Not only do they speed up reactions, but they can also facilitate chemical transformations that might not otherwise occur. In principle, only a very small quantity of a catalyst is needed to generate copious amounts of a product, with reduced levels of waste. The development of new catalytic reactions is one particularly important area of green chemistry. As well as being more environmentally friendly, these processes are also typically more cost effective. Catalysts take many forms, including biological enzymes, small organic molecules, metals, and particles that provide a better surface for reactions to take place. Roughly 90 of industrial chemical processes use catalysts and at least 15 Nobel Prizes have been awarded for catalysis research. This represents a tremendously important and active area of both fundamental and applied research. What’s the outlook? In the past 20 years since green chemistry was established, there have been tremendous advances in the industry. Nevertheless, there remains considerable room for improvement. The chemical industry faces a number of significant challenges, from reducing its dependence on fossil fuels to playing its part in addressing climate change more generally. Specific challenges include: capturing and fixing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases; developing a greater range of biodegradable plastics; reducing the high levels of waste in pharmaceutical drug manufacture; and improving the efficiency of water-splitting employing visible light photocatalysts. History suggests that society can develop creative solutions to complex, intractable problems. However, success will most likely require a concerted approach across all areas of science, strong leadership, and a willingness to strategically invest in human capital and value fundamental research. Waste destroys biospheric nutrient cycle---extinction Rob Hengeveld 12, Dutch biogeographer and ecologist, Wasted World: How Our Consumption Challenges the Planet, pg xii-xiv, DOA: 1-28-18, y2k Because there are no organisms on Earth that can use much of our waste as their food, we are not just straining - breaking the biospheric nutrient cycles, we are bypassing them. Ultimately, we will be unable to eat other species further down in the cycle, because our resources have turned into unusable waste. The plants and animals on which we rely for our energy and food are dying out or becoming toxic because of the toxicity of our waste. Our resources are being exhausted, - our waste is beginning to pollute our environment and food on a large scale. So, we are polluting our agricultural land - turning other land into salty desert. We are turning mountains into deep pits by mining for metal or coal and are lowering the groundwater level over vast tracts of surrounding land. And we are forcing species to shift, extend, or reduce the geographic area they inhabit. We are turning some species into weeds or pests and causing others beneficial to us to die out. We are wasting ever-larger parts of Earth-for ourselves for thousands of other life-forms around us: species that feed us, that recycle our waste, - that used to clothe our environment -make it comfortable for us to live in. Unless we take countermeasures, our planet will become uninhabitable for us and all the other species on which we depend. We are browning our blue - green Earth.
12/4/21
ND - DA - PTXv1
Tournament: UT | Round: 2 | Opponent: L C Anderson Alexa Antonacci | Judge: Georges, Joseph Reconciliation passes now without further cuts – Holdouts tentatively say yes and our ev assumes every aff non-uq warrant Reklaitis 12/02 Victor, MarketWatch's Money and Politics reporter and is based in Washington, D.C. Prior to joining MarketWatch, he served as an assistant editor and reporter at Investor's Business Daily, “Biden’s big social-spending bill probably will pass Senate this month without many cuts to it, analysts say”, 12-02-2021, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bidens-big-social-spending-bill-probably-will-pass-senate-this-month-without-many-cuts-to-it-analysts-say-11638466738//pranav Will President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion social-spending and climate package actually get the Senate’s OK this month, as that chamber’s leader has promised? Two analysts from opposite ends of the political spectrum said that looks likely, as they spoke on Wednesday with MarketWatch for a Barron’s Live episode. “I think the chances are very, very good that this bill will pass, and I wouldn’t bet the mortgage on it, but I would predict that it’s going to happen by this month,” said Seth Hanlon, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress. Kyle Pomerleau, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, concurred with Hanlon, as the analysts assessed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s stated goal of passage by Christmas. The legislation already got the House’s approval last month, so Biden can sign it into law if the Senate acts and the two chambers reconcile their versions of the measure. “I think that the Build Back Better Act ultimately passes. I think before Christmas seems like a reasonable timeline,” Pomerleau said. “There are other political challenges involved, if this bleeds over into next year, and I think that the Democrats want to avoid that.” Democrats also could be motivated by not wanting a lapse in monthly child tax credit payments, according to Hanlon. Those payouts, which began over the summer and provide up to $300 per child to families, would get extended for another year in the current version of the Build Back Better Act. “The child tax credit payments — the last one would be done on Dec. 15, and so I think the Democrats are going to want to continue those into January and not have them cut off suddenly,” the Center for American Progress expert said. Hanlon and Pomerleau said they don’t expect huge changes to the Build Back Better Act’s overall price tag, even as moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia has expressed opposition to some items in the House version of the bill, including a plan for paid leave and a $4,500 tax credit for electric vehicles made in unionized U.S. factories. Another issue that’s dividing Democratic lawmakers is a proposed lift to the SALT cap, which refers to a limit on deductions from federal income tax for state and local taxes. “I think that $2 trillion in spending, including the tax credits, is a reasonable place that they will end up,” Pomerleau said, referring to what’s a likely final price tag. Meanwhile, Hanlon noted that a lot of negotiating has happened this year to get to the current state of affairs, after Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who usually votes with Democrats and chairs his chamber’s budget committee, proposed a much larger spending package. “If you back up to where we started with President Biden’s agenda and Sen. Sanders’s budget, we’re down to a relatively narrow, limited set of issues and a pretty narrow band of a total price tag,” he said. “I might expect that to shrink somewhat because of Sen. Manchin, but not that much. I think 90 of the bill will stay the same.” Democrats can’t afford to lose the support of any senator who typically votes with them, as they advance the bill through a process known as budget reconciliation. That’s because the Senate is split 50-50, with the party in control only because Vice President Kamala Harris can break ties. Biden PC is key to getting democratic skeptics on board, but it’s tentative Cochrane and Weisman 11/05 Emily Cochrane - correspondent based in Washington. She has covered Congress since late 2018, focusing on the annual debate over government funding and economic legislation, ranging from emergency pandemic relief to infrastructure, Jonathan Weisman - congressional correspondent, veteran Washington journalist and author of the novel “No. 4 Imperial Lane” and the nonfiction book “
Semitism
: Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump.” His career in journalism stretches back 30 years, “Live Updates: House Democrats Push Toward Votes on Biden’s Agenda”, 11-05-2021, https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/11/05/us/biden-spending-infrastructure-bill//pranav At the White House, Mr. Biden called on lawmakers to pass the legislation. “I’m asking every House member, member of the House of Representatives, to vote yes on both these bills right now,” the president said. Spooked by Tuesday’s electoral drubbing, Democrats labored to overcome concerns among moderates about the cost and details of a rapidly evolving, $1.85 trillion social safety net and climate plan and push it through over unified Republican opposition. They also hoped to clear a Senate-passed $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill — the largest investment in the nation’s aging public works in a decade — for Mr. Biden’s signature. Top Democratic officials said they were confident they could complete both measures by day’s end, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and her team continued to haggle with holdouts. Several moderates were pushing for more information about the cost of the sprawling plan, including a nonpartisan analysis from the Congressional Budget Office, the official scorekeeper responsible for calculating the fiscal impact of the 2,135-page legislation. “I think everyone’s waiting for the C.B.O. to do their job,” said Representative Jared Golden, Democrat of Maine, speaking to reporters on Friday morning as he left Ms. Pelosi’s office, where White House officials were also meeting on next steps. But Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader, said the cost estimate would not be ready by the end of the day, and a person familiar with the discussions said a score from the budget office was weeks away from completion. “We’re working on it,” Mr. Hoyer said. Ms. Pelosi spent much of the day on Thursday buttonholing lawmakers on the House floor to try to corral support for the social policy bill, which includes monthly payments to families with children, universal prekindergarten, a four-week paid family and medical leave program, health care subsidies and a broad array of climate change initiatives. Mr. Biden and members of his cabinet worked the phones to win over Democratic skeptics. With Republicans united in opposition, Democrats could afford to lose as few as three votes from their side. As Democrats labored to unite their members behind the bill, Republicans sought to wreak procedural havoc on the House floor, forcing a vote to adjourn the chamber that leaders held open for hours to buy time for their negotiations. While the Senate approved the $1 trillion infrastructure bill in August, the measure has stalled as progressives have repeatedly refused to supply their votes for it until there is agreement on the other bill. Business lobbying backlash ensures Sinema flips – empirics prove she doesn’t like similar bills Duda ’21 Jeremy, Prior to joining the Arizona Mirror, he worked at the Arizona Capitol Times, where he spent eight years covering the Governor's Office and two years as editor of the Yellow Sheet Report, “Business groups urge Kelly, Sinema to oppose pro-union PRO Act”, 08-30-2021, https://www.azmirror.com/2021/08/30/business-groups-urge-kelly-sinema-to-oppose-pro-union-pro-act///pranav Business groups publicly called on Democratic U.S. Sens. Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema to oppose a sweeping piece of pro-organized labor legislation that would wipe out Arizona’s “right-to-work” law that prohibits mandatory union membership. At a press conference at the office of the Arizona chapter of the Associated General Contractors near the state Capitol on Monday, leaders of several business groups warned that the Protecting the Right to Organize Act — or PRO Act, as it’s more commonly known — would undermine Arizona’s recovery from the economic slump it faced last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, undermine the “gig economy,” jeopardize secret ballots in union organization votes, give unions access to confidential employee information and strip Arizonans of their right not to join a union. The bill would allow unions to override right-to-work laws and collect union dues from non-members who still benefit from collective bargaining. It would also prohibit company-sponsored meetings to urge employees against unionizing, define most independent contractors as employees, protect employees who are attempting to unionize from being fired and allow unions to engage in secondary strikes in support of other striking workers, among other provisions. “We want to thank and tell Senator Sinema and Senator Kelly that we appreciate them for not signing on as co-sponsors to the PRO Act, because if they were to change their opinions, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer will put this up for a vote,” said Danny Seiden, president and CEO of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Kelly and Sinema are two of only three Senate Democrats, along with Virginia’s Mark Warner, who haven’t co-sponsored the bill or thrown their public support behind it. Kelly last month told the Huffington Post that he opposes the independent contractor provision, but that he supports the “overall goals” of the legislation. Sinema is widely known as a holdout on the Democratic side and hasn’t supported the PRO Act, but spokesman Pablo Sierra-Carmona indicated that she hasn’t made up her mind, and that she won’t do so unless and until it comes up for a vote in the Senate. They lash out against Reconciliation – it will includes similar provisions FURCHTGOTT-ROTH 10/09 Diana, former acting assistant secretary for economic policy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, is adjunct professor of economics at George Washington University, “Democrats can't pass the PRO Act, so it's buried in the reconciliation bill”, 10-09-2021, https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/575992-dems-cant-pass-the-pro-act-so-its-buried-in-the-reconciliation-bill//pranav Union membership has been declining for decades as workers find better uses than union dues for their hard-earned dollars. But union bosses and their supporters are trying to change the law to force hard-working Americans into unions. How? Through the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act), a bill that would expand the power of union leaders at the expense of workers. After sailing through the House, the PRO Act now appears stalled in the Senate and Democrats are trying to slip some PRO Act provisions into a massive reconciliation bill. American workers are wise to turn down union membership. Union pension plans are in trouble. In 2020, the Labor Department listed 121 union plans in critical status, defined as less than 65 percent funded, and 61 in endangered status, with less than 80 percent funded. Unions desperately need new workers to join, because they pay contributions for many years without withdrawing money. Most recently, Amazon workers in Alabama resoundingly rejected efforts by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store International Union to organize their plant, with more than 70 percent of workers voting against the union. The union’s plan was in critical status between 2015 and 2019, and the Labor Department informed the plan’s administrators that it had to be reorganized by reducing benefits and increasing contributions. Union leaders and their allies on Capitol Hill believe the way to increase membership after decades of decline is to pass elements of the PRO Act through reconciliation. Unlike the PRO Act, which needs 60 votes in the Senate to enable it to move to President Biden’s desk for signature, the reconciliation bill, which deals with taxes and spending, needs only a simple majority. So via a massive reconciliation bill, congressional Democrats are trying to move some labor union provisions of the PRO Act by arguing they are actually revenue raisers. Reconciliation is k2 stopping existential climate change – warming is incremental and every change in temperature is vital Higgins 8/16 Trevor, Senior Director, Domestic Climate and Energy, “Budget Reconciliation Is the Key to Stopping Climate Change”, 08-16-2021, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2021/08/16/502681/budget-reconciliation-key-stopping-climate-change///pranav The United States is suffering acutely from the chaotic changes in climate that scientists now directly attribute to the burning of fossil fuels and other human activity. The drought, fires, extreme heat, and floods that have already killed hundreds this summer across the continent and around the world are a tragedy—and a warning of worsening instability yet to come. However, this week, the Senate initiated an extraordinary legislative response that would set the world on a different path. Enacting the full scope of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda would put the American economy to work leading a global transition to clean energy and stabilizing the climate. A look at what’s coming next through the budget reconciliation process reveals a ray of hope that is easy to miss amid the fitful negotiations of recent months: At long last, Congress is on the verge of major legislation that would build a more equitable, just, and inclusive clean energy economy. This is our shot to stop climate change. Building a clean energy future must start now Until the global economy stops polluting the air and instead starts to draw down the emissions of years past, the world will continue to heat up, blundering past perilous tipping points that threaten irreversible and catastrophic consequences. Stemming the extent of warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius rather 2 degrees or worse will reduce the risk of crossing such tipping points or otherwise exceeding the adaptive capacity of human society. Every degree matters. Stabilizing global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius starts with cutting annual greenhouse gas emissions in the United States to half of peak levels by 2030. This isn’t about temporary offsets or incremental gains in efficiency—it’s about the rapid adoption of scalable solutions that will work throughout the world to eliminate global net emissions by 2050 and sustain net-negative emissions thereafter. Building this better future will tackle climate change, deliver on environmental justice, and create good jobs. It will give us a shot to stop the planet from continuously warming. It will alleviate the concentrated burdens of fossil fuel pollution, which are concentrated in systemically disadvantaged, often majority Black and brown communities. It will empower American workers to compete in the global clean energy economy of the 21st century. There is no time to lose in the work of building a clean energy future.
12/4/21
ND - PIC - Blue Flu
Tournament: UT | Round: 2 | Opponent: L C Anderson Alexa Antonacci | Judge: Georges, Joseph CP Text: A just government should recognize the unconditional right of workers to strike with the exception of police officers.
Police strikes are the blue flu and allow for power grabbing through fearmongering and public pressure – that shores up police authority and legitimizes brutality Grim 20 Andrew Grim, 7-1-2020, Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is at work on a dissertation on anti-police brutality activism in post-WWII Newark. "Perspective," Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/07/01/what-is-blue-flu-how-has-it-increased-police-power/ww dl What is the “blue flu,” and why might it strike New York City police? This weekend, officers from the New York City Police Department are rumored to be planning a walkout to protest calls to defund the police. This builds on a similar tactic used by police in Atlanta less than a month ago. On June 16, Fulton County District Attorney, Paul L. Howard Jr. announced that Garrett Rolfe, the Atlanta police officer who fatally shot Rayshard Brooks, would face charges of felony murder and aggravated assault. That night, scores of Atlanta Police Department officers caught the “blue flu,” calling out sick en masse to protest the charges against Rolfe. Such walkouts constitute, in effect, illegal strikes — laws in all 50 states prohibit police strikes. Yet, there is nothing new about the blue flu. It is a strategy long employed by police unions and rank-and-file officers during contract negotiations, disputes over reforms and, like in Atlanta, in response to disciplinary action against individual officers. The intent is to dramatize police disputes with municipal government and rally the citizenry to their side. But the result of such protests matter deeply as we consider police reform today. Historically, blue flu strikes have helped expand police power, ultimately limiting the ability of city governments to reform, constrain or conduct oversight over the police. They allow the police to leverage public fear of crime to extract concessions from municipalities. This became clear in Detroit more than 50 years ago. In June 1967, tensions arose between Detroit Mayor Jerome Cavanagh and the Detroit Police Officers Association (DPOA), which represented the city’s 3,300 patrol officers. The two were at odds primarily over police demands for a pay increase. Cavanagh showed no signs of caving to the DPOA’s demands and had, in fact, proposed to cut the police department’s budget. On June 15, the DPOA escalated the dispute with a walkout: 323 officers called in sick. The number grew over the next several days as the blue flu spread, reaching a height of 800 absences on June 17. In tandem with the walkout, the DPOA launched a fearmongering media campaign to win over the public. They took out ads in local newspapers warning Detroit residents, “How does it feel to be held up? Stick around and find out!” This campaign took place at a time of rising urban crime rates and uprisings, and only a month before the 1967 Detroit riot, making it especially potent. The DPOA understood this climate and used it to its advantage. With locals already afraid of crime and displeased at Cavanagh’s failure to rein it in, they would be more likely to demand the return of the police than to demand retribution against officers for an illegal strike. The DPOA’s strategy paid off. The walkout left Detroit Police Commissioner Ray Girardin feeling “practically helpless.” “I couldn’t force them to work,” he later told The Washington Post. Rather than risk public ire by allowing the blue flu to continue, Cavanagh relented. Ultimately, the DPOA got the raises it sought, making Detroit officers the highest paid in the nation. This was far from the end of the fight between Cavanagh and the DPOA. In the ensuing months and years, they continued to tussle over wages, pensions, the budget, the integration of squad cars and the hiring of black officers. The threat of another blue flu loomed over all these disputes, helping the union to win many of them. And Detroit was not an outlier. Throughout the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, the blue flu was a ubiquitous and highly effective tactic in Baltimore, Memphis, New Orleans, Chicago, Newark, New York and many other cities. In most cases, as author Kristian Williams writes, “When faced with a walkout or slowdown, the authorities usually decided that the pragmatic need to get the cops back to work trumped the city government’s long term interest in diminishing the rank and file’s power.” But each time a city relented to this pressure, they ceded more and more power to police unions, which would turn to the strategy repeatedly to defend officers’ interests — particularly when it came to efforts to address systemic racism in police policies and practices. In 1970, black residents of Pittsburgh’s North Side neighborhood raised an outcry over the “hostile sadistic treatment” they experienced at the hands of white police officers. They lobbied Mayor Peter F. Flaherty to assign more black officers to their neighborhood. The mayor agreed, transferring several white officers out of the North Side and replacing them with black officers. While residents cheered this decision, white officers and the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), which represented them, were furious. They slammed the transfer as “discrimination” against whites. About 425 of the Pittsburgh Police Department’s 1,600 police officers called out sick in protest. Notably, black police officers broke with their white colleagues and refused to join the walkout. They praised the transfer as a “long overdue action” and viewed the walkout as a betrayal of officers’ oath to protect the public. Nonetheless, the tactic paid off. After several days, Flaherty caved to the “open revolt” of white officers, agreeing to halt the transfers and instead submit the dispute to binding arbitration between the city and the police union. Black officers, though, continued to speak out against their union’s support of racist practices, and many of them later resigned from the union in protest. Similar scenarios played out in Detroit, Chicago and other cities in the 1960s and ’70s, as white officers continually staged walkouts to preserve the segregated status quo in their departments. These blue flu strikes amounted to an authoritarian power grab by police officers bent on avoiding oversight, rejecting reforms and shoring up their own authority. In the aftermath of the 1967 Detroit walkout, a police commissioner’s aide strongly criticized the police union’s strong-arm tactics, saying “it smacks of a police state.” The clash left one newspaper editor wondering, “Who’s the Boss of the Detroit Police?” But in the “law and order” climate of the late 1960s, such criticism did not resonate enough to stir a groundswell of public opinion against the blue flu. And police unions dismissed critics by arguing that officers had “no alternative” but to engage in walkouts to get city officials to make concessions. Crucially, the very effectiveness of the blue flu may be premised on a myth. While police unions use public fear of crime skyrocketing without police on duty, in many cases, the absence of police did not lead to a rise in crime. In New York City in 1971, for example, 20,000 officers called out sick for five days over a pay dispute without any apparent increase in crime. The most striking aspect of the walkout, as one observer noted, “might be just how unimportant it seemed.” Today, municipalities are under immense pressure from activists who have taken to the streets to protest the police killings of black men and women. Some have already responded by enacting new policies and cutting police budgets. As it continues, more blue flus are likely to follow as officers seek to wrest back control of the public debate on policing and reassert their independence. These strikes strengthen unions that contribute to increased violence, and protection of misconduct Serwer 6/24 Serwer, Adam. “Bust the Police Unions.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 24 June 2021, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/bust-the-police-unions/619006/ recut ww dl Police unions found that they had new leverage at the bargaining table. In contract negotiations with cities, they sought not merely higher pay or better benefits, but protections for officers accused of misconduct. At this, they proved remarkably successful. Reviewing 82 active police-union contracts in major American cities, a 2017 Reuters investigation found that a majority “call for departments to erase disciplinary records, some after just six months.” Many contracts allow officers to access investigative information about complaints or charges against them before being interrogated, so they can get their stories straight. Some require the officer’s approval before making information regarding misconduct public; others set time limits on when citizens can file complaints. A 2017 Washington Post investigation found that since 2006, of the 1,881 officers fired for misconduct at the nation’s largest departments, 451 had been reinstated because of requirements in union contracts. For many police unions, enacting and enforcing barriers to accountability became a primary concern. In 2014, in San Antonio, the local police union was willing to accept caps on pay and benefits as long as the then–city manager abandoned her efforts to, among other reforms, prevent police from erasing past misconduct records. The damage that these types of provisions have done is hard to overstate. In one recent study, the economist Rob Gillezeau of the University of Victoria found that after departments unionized, there was a “substantial increase” in police killings of civilians. Neither crime rates nor the safety of officers themselves was affected. The provisions do more than simply protect bad actors. They cultivate an unhealthy and secretive culture within police departments, strengthening a phenomenon known as the code of silence. In a 2000 survey of police officers by the National Institute of Justice, only 39 percent of respondents agreed with the statement “Police officers always report serious criminal violations involving abuse of authority by fellow officers.” That leads to endless amounts of racist violence and the bolstering of the prison industrial complex. Chaney and Ray 13, Cassandra (Has a PhD and is a professor at LSU. Also has a strong focus in the structure of Black families) , and Ray V. Robertson (Also has a PhD and is a criminal justice professor at LSU). "Racism and police brutality in America." Journal of African American Studies 17.4 (2013): 480-505. SMdo I really need a card for this Racism and Discrimination According to Marger (2012), “racism is an ideology, or belief system, designed to justify and rationalize racial and ethnic inequality” (p. 25) and “discrimination, most basically, is behavior aimed at denying members of particular ethnic groups’ equal access to societal rewards” (p. 57). Defining both of these concepts from the onset is important for they provide the lens through which our focus on the racist and discriminatory practices of law enforcement can occur. Since the time that Africans African Americans were forcibly brought to America, they have been the victims of racist and discriminatory practices that have been spurred and/or substantiated by those who create and enforce the law. For example, The Watts Riots of 1965, the widespread assaults against Blacks in Harlem during the 1920s (King 2011), law enforcement violence against Black women (i.e., Malaika Brooks, Jaisha Akins, Frankie Perkins, Dr. Mae Jemison, Linda Billups, Clementine Applewhite) and other ethnic women of color (Ritchie 2006), the beating of Rodney King, and the deaths of Amadou Diallo in the 1990s and Trayvon Martin more recently are just a few public examples of the historical and contemporaneous ways in which Blacks in America have been assaulted by members of the police system (King 2011; Loyd 2012; Murch 2012; Rafail et al. 2012). In Punishing Race (2011), law professor Michael Tonry’s research findings point to the fact that Whites tend to excuse police brutality against Blacks because of the racial animus that they hold against Blacks. Thus, to Whites, Blacks are viewed as deserving of harsh treatment in the criminal justice system (Peffley and Hurwitz 2013). At first glance, such an assertion may seem to be unfathomable, buy that there is an extensive body of literature which suggests that Black males are viewed as the “prototypical criminal,” and this notion is buttressed in the media, by the general public, and via disparate sentencing outcomes (Blair et al. 2004; Eberhardt et al. 2006; Gabiddon 2010; Maddox and Gray 2004; Oliver and Fonash 2002; Staples 2011). For instance, Blair et al. (2004) revealed that Black males with more Afrocentric features (e.g., dark skin, broad noses, full lips) may receive longer sentences than Blacks with less Afrocentric features, i.e., lighter skin and straighter hair (Eberhardt et al. 2006). Shaun Gabiddon in Criminological Theories on Race and Crime (2010) discussed the concept of “Negrophobia” which was more extensively examined by Armour (1997). Negrophobia can be surmised as an irrational of Blacks, which includes a fear of being victimized by Black, that can result in Whites shooting or harming an AfricanAmerican based on criminal/racial stereotypes (Armour 1997). The aforementioned racialized stereotypical assumptions can be deleterious because they can be used by Whites to justify shooting a Black person on the slightest of pretense (Gabiddon 2010). Finally, African-American males represent a group that has been much maligned in the larger society (Tonry 2011). Further, as victims of the burgeoning prison industrial complex, mass incarceration, and enduring racism, the barriers to truly independent Black male agency are ubiquitous and firmly entrenched (Alexander 2010; Chaney 2009; Baker 1996; Blackmon 2008; Dottolo and Stewart 2008; Karenga 2010; Martin et al. 2001; Smith and Hattery 2009). Thus, racism and discrimination heightens the psychological distress experienced by Blacks (Robertson 2011; Pieterse et al. 2012), as well as their decreased mortality in the USA (Muennig and Murphy 2011). Police Brutality Against Black Males According to Walker (2011), police brutality is defined as “the use of excessive physical force or verbal assault and psychological intimidation” (p. 579). Although one recent study suggests that the NYPD has become better behaved due to greater race and gender diversity (Kane and White 2009), Blacks are more likely to be the victims of police brutality. A growing body of scholarly research related to police brutality has revealed that Blacks are more likely than Whites to make complaints regarding police brutality (Smith and Holmes 2003), to be accosted while operating driving a motorized vehicle (“Driving While Black”), and to underreport how often they are stopped due to higher social desirability factors (TomaskovicDevey et al. 2006). Interestingly, data obtained from the General Social Survey (GSS), a representative sample conducted biennially by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago for the years 1994 through 2004, provide further proof regarding the acceptance of force against Blacks. In particular, the GSS found Whites to be significantly (29.5 ) more accepting of police use of force when a citizen was attempting to escape custody than Blacks when analyzed using the chi-squared statistical test (p The average Southern policeman is a promoted poor White with a legal sanction to use a weapon. His social heritage has taught him to despise the Negroes, and he has had little education which could have changed him….The result is that probably no group of Whites in America have a lower opinion of the Negro people and are more fixed in their views than Southern policeman. (Myrdal 1944, pp. 540–541) Myrdal (1944) was writing on results from a massive study that he undertook in the late 1930s. He was writing at a time that even the most conservative among us would have to admit was not a colorblind society (if one even believes in such things). But current research does corroborate his observations that less educated police officers tend to be the most aggressive and have the most formal complaints filed against them when compared to their more educated counterparts (Hassell and Archbold 2010; Jefferis et al. 2011). Tonry (2011) delineates some interesting findings from the 2001 Race, Crime, and Public Opinion Survey that can be applied to understanding why the larger society tolerates police misconduct when it comes to Black males. The survey, which involved approximately 978 non-Hispanic Whites and 1,010 Blacks, revealed a divergence in attitudes between Blacks and Whites concerning the criminal justice system (Tonry 2011). For instance, 38 of Whites and 89 of Blacks viewed the criminal justice system as biased against Blacks (Tonry 2011). Additionally, 8 of Blacks and 56 of Whites saw the criminal justice system as treating Blacks fairly (Tonry 2011). Perhaps most revealing when it comes to facilitating an environment ripe for police brutality against Black males, 68 of Whites and only 18 of Whites expressed confidence in law enforcement (Tonry 2011). Is a society wherein the dominant group overwhelming approves of police performance willing to do anything substantive to curtail police brutality against Black males? Police brutality is not a new phenomenon. The Department of Justice (DOJ) office of Civil Rights (OCR) has investigated more than a dozen police departments in major cities across the USA on allegations of either racial discrimination or police brutality (Gabbidon and Greene 2013). To make the aforementioned even more clear, according to Gabbidon and Greene (2013), “In 2010, the OCR was investigating 17 police departments across the country and monitoring five settlements regarding four police agencies” (pp. 119–120). Plant and Peruche (2005) provide some useful information into why police officers view Black males as potential perpetrators and could lead to acts of brutality. In their research, the authors suggest that since Black people in general, and Black males in particular, are caricatured as aggressive and criminal, police are more likely to view Black men as a threat which justifies the disproportionate use of deadly force. Therefore, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that police officers’ decisions to act aggressively may, to some extent, be influenced by race (Jefferis et al. 2011). The media’s portrayals of Black men are often less than sanguine. Bryson’s (1998) work in this area provides empirical evidence that the mass media that has been instrumental in portraying Black men as studs, super detectives, or imitation White men and has a general negative effect on how these men are regarded by others. Such characterizations can be so visceral in nature that “prototypes” of criminal suspects are more likely to be African-American (Oliver et al. 2004). Not surprisingly, the more Afrocentric the African-American’s facial features, the more prone he or she is expected to be deviant (Eberhardt et al. 2006). Interestingly, it is probable that less than flattering depictions of Black males on television and in news stories are activating pre-existing stereotypes possessed by Whites as opposed to facilitating their creation. According to Oliver et al. (2004), “it is important to keep in mind that media consumption is an active process, with viewers’ existing attitudes and beliefs playing a larger role in how images are attended to, interpreted, and remembered” (p. 89). Moreover, it is reductionist to presuppose that individual is powerless in constructing a palatable version of reality and is solely under the control of the media and exercises no agency. Lastly, Peffley and Hurwitz (2013) describe what can be perceived as one of the more deleterious results of negative media caricatures of Black males. More specifically, the authors posit that most Whites believe that Blacks are disproportionately inclined to engage in criminal behavior and are the deserving on harsh treatment by the criminal justice system. On the other hand, such an observation is curious because most urban areas are moderate to highly segregated residentially which would preclude the frequent and significant interaction needed to make such scathing indictments (Bonilla-Silva 2009). Consequently, the aforementioned racial animus has the effect of increased White support for capital punishment if questions regarding its legitimacy around if capital punishment is too frequently applied to Blacks (Peffley and Hurwitz 2013; Tonry 2011). Ultimately, erroneous (negative) portrayals of crime and community, community race and class identities, and concerns over neighborhood change all contribute to place-specific framing of “the crime problem.” These frames, in turn, shape both intergroup dynamics and support for criminal justice policy (Leverentz 2012).