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West Coast 2012November Update

West Coast – November 2012 Policy Update

West Coast 2012November Update

Table Of Contents

West Coast – November 2012 Policy Update..........................................................................................1Table Of Contents................................................................................................................................2

Keystone Pipeline Neg.............................................................................................................................4SQ Solves Keystone – General.............................................................................................................5SQ Solves Keystone – Romney.............................................................................................................6No Keystone Till After Election............................................................................................................7AT: Gas Prices Advantage – Keystone Won’t Solve..............................................................................8AT: Oil Dependence Advantage – Keystone Won’t Solve....................................................................9AT: Economy Advantage – Keystone Not Boost Jobs.........................................................................10AT: China Advantage – Keystone Doesn’t China/Canada Coop.....................................................11AT: US-Canada Relations Advantage..................................................................................................12AT: Ocean Spills Advantage...............................................................................................................13Keystone Bad – Renewables Tradeoff Shell.......................................................................................14Keystone Bad – Ogallala Turn Shell....................................................................................................15Ext – Keystone Bad - Ogallala.............................................................................................................16Keystone Bad – Oil Prices..................................................................................................................17Keystone Bad – Oil Dependence........................................................................................................18Keystone Bad – Forests......................................................................................................................19Keystone Bad – Warming...................................................................................................................20Politics Link – Keystone Controversial...............................................................................................21Politics Link – Plan Popular................................................................................................................221NC China DA.....................................................................................................................................23China DA – Uniqueness......................................................................................................................24China DA – Coal Outweighs Tar Sands...............................................................................................25China DA – China Key Emissions........................................................................................................26China DA – Alternative Energy Doesn’t Solve....................................................................................27China DA – Impact – Warming = Extinction.......................................................................................28Transportation Infrastructure T 1NC.................................................................................................29

Courts Neg – Fisher v Texas Court Capital DA........................................................................................301NC Fisher v Texas DA 1/2.................................................................................................................311NC Fisher v Texas DA 2/2.................................................................................................................32Uniqueness – Yes Fisher Win.............................................................................................................33Uniqueness – AT: Health Care Thumper............................................................................................34Link – Plan Costs Capital....................................................................................................................35Link – Court Capital = Zero Sum.........................................................................................................36Link – Court Capital Is Finite..............................................................................................................37Link – AT: Plan Builds Capital.............................................................................................................38Link – AT: Court Winners Win............................................................................................................39Link – AT: Judges Aren’t Ideological...................................................................................................40AT: Aff = 9-0.......................................................................................................................................41AT: Fisher v Texas Oral Arguments Already Happened......................................................................42

Answers To Fisher v Texas Court Capital DA..........................................................................................43Yes Affirmative Action.......................................................................................................................44Aff Action Key Readiness...................................................................................................................45

West Coast 2012November Update

Link Turn – Courts Winners Win........................................................................................................46No Link – No One Cares About Court.................................................................................................47No Link – No Court Spillover..............................................................................................................48Court Capital Resilient.......................................................................................................................49

Lame Duck Updates...............................................................................................................................50Hurricane Sandy Thumper.................................................................................................................51Yes Lame Duck Gridlock.....................................................................................................................52No Fiscal Cliff Deal.............................................................................................................................53No Cybersecurity...............................................................................................................................54No Farm Bill.......................................................................................................................................55No Closing Guantanamo....................................................................................................................56Econ Thumper – Hurricane Sandy......................................................................................................57

West Coast 2012November Update

Keystone Pipeline Neg

West Coast 2012November Update

SQ Solves Keystone – General

Keystone XL is already moving forwardIndian Country Today, 10-17-2012, “Romney and Obama Debate Keystone XL Pipeline,” http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/10/17/romney-and-obama-debate-keystone-xl-140496, da 11-1-2012Never mind the Binders Full of Women. “We’re going to bring that pipeline in from Canada. How in the world the president said no to that pipeline? I will never know.” What Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney also didn’t seem to know, or want to let on in the second Presidential debate, was that the southern portion of the Keystone XL pipeline is actually already being laid out. The last Texas landowners contesting the seizure of their land by eminent domain lost a court battle at the end of September. Since then they have been watching helplessly as excavators and workmen cleared their land in preparation for laying the pipeline.

Keystone will get built now – opposition is dyingLisa Song, 10-18-2012, “Pipeline debate dies down despite problems route,” Bellingham Herald, http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2012/10/18/2733185/pipeline-debate-dies-down-despite.html, da 11-1-2012The decision to detour the Keystone XL around land owned by its noisiest opponents, plus the distraction of

the fall election, has lowered the volume of protests against the proposed pipeline. In the reroute TransCanada released in early September, 55 miles of the pipeline still run through Holt County, an area that sits above the aquifer and is especially vulnerable to oil spills due to its permeable soils and high water table. Despite a few small adjustments, the route through the county is nearly identical to the route TransCanada, the pipeline operator, proposed in April. The project's opponents blame the sudden drop in activism on the fact that local environmental groups that organized much of the anti-pipeline publicity are now focused on the November elections. They also say that TransCanada blunted the opposition by moving the pipeline off of land owned by some of the pipeline's most vocal opponents, including Karl Connell, Calvin Dobias, Richard Miles, Joe Moller, Randy Thompson, and Kurt and Laura Meusch. "When you look at a map, when you know the landowners, (you see) they've avoided the landowners who've gone to the press," said Ben Gotschall, energy director for the advocacy group Bold Nebraska. "They're just figuring out the easiest way to get their pipeline built."

Keystone is inevitable – half of it is already being builtLisa Song, 10-18-2012, “Pipeline debate dies down despite problems route,” Bellingham Herald, http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2012/10/18/2733185/pipeline-debate-dies-down-despite.html, da 11-1-2012To keep the project moving, TransCanada divided it into two parts. While the company waits for federal and state permits for the northern section, which includes Nebraska, construction has begun on the southern half, which doesn't require a State Department permit. Activists in Texas recently blocked access to several properties along that section of the route. More than 20 protesters have been arrested and two New York Times journalists were briefly detained while reporting on the blockade. Dobias, the Holt County landowner, sympathizes with the people in Texas who are "fighting a fight that's very tough." He said he had planned to travel to Texas in early October to support the protestors, but was unable to go due to the work demands on his ranch. Dobias worries that newly affected landowners along the Nebraska route see the pipeline as inevitable and won't fight to delay or halt construction. "They just think it's going to go through. Once we get them educated about (the risks) ... they don't want it, but they don't know what to do."

West Coast 2012November Update

SQ Solves Keystone – Romney

Romney will winJohn Podhoretz, 10-18-2012, “Winning ‘national,’” NY Post, http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/winning_national_cS6qE0w6r4wIuHFzB2BEkL, da 11-1-2012Moving ahead nationwide — including many swing states: Mitt Romney greeting supporters in Virginia on Wednesday. Even

more striking, it demonstrates that Obama has failed to harness any kind of national momentum himself. Nobody understands how political momentum works, the way nobody understands how a curve ball works when technically a baseball’s path can’t curve. But just as a curve ball seems to curve, momentum is a very real thing as elections approach. Momentum feeds off a national theme. People get a sense they’re participating in something larger than themselves, making a historic social-racial-generational choice (as in 2008) or a choice to alter the nation’s direction with one vote (if Romney wins on Nov. 6).

It hasn’t hit that point yet for Romney, not with 18 days, one last debate and probably some October surprises yet to come. But if his message keeps on resonating from now until Election Day, we can expect the combination of national theme and momentum to continue. If so, he’ll end up winning most or all of the states where the race is tight now, and win not only by a comfortable popular-vote margin but by more than 300 electoral votes (he needs 270).

Romney will build Keystone XLIndian Country Today, 10-17-2012, “Romney and Obama Debate Keystone XL Pipeline,” http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/10/17/romney-and-obama-debate-keystone-xl-140496, da 11-1-2012“I will fight for oil, coal and natural gas. And the proof, the proof of whether a strategy is working or not is what the price is that you’re paying at the pump,” Romney said. “If you’re paying less than you paid a year or two ago, why, then, the strategy is working. But you’re paying

more.” He added, “If the president’s energy policies are working, you’re going to see the cost of energy come down. I will fight to create more energy in this country, to get America energy secure. And part of that is bringing in a pipeline of oil from Canada, taking advantage of the oil and coal we have here, drilling offshore in Alaska, drilling offshore in Virginia where the people want it. Those things will get us the energy we need.”

Romney would build KeystoneKara Kirtley, 10-17-2012, “Candidates Talk About Keystone XL Pipeline,” KFBB News, http://www.kfbb.com/news/local/Candidates-Talk-About-Keystone-XL-Pipeline-174680431.html, da 11-1-2012During last night's presidential debate, Mitt Romney brought up an issue that many Montana politicans are passionate about, the

Keystone XL Pipeline. The proposed 1,700 mile pipeline would run between Alberta, Canada and the Gulf Coast of Texas, and right through

the eastern portion of Montana. President Obama rejected a proposal to build the pipeline earlier this year. However, Mitt

Romney says his plans are much different, "We're gonna bring that pipeline in from Canada, how in the world the president said no to that pipeline, I will never know. This is about bringing good jobs back for the middle class of America."

West Coast 2012November Update

No Keystone Till After Election

Obama won’t do anything on Keystone before the electionLisa Song, 10-18-2012, “Pipeline debate dies down despite problems route,” Bellingham Herald, http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2012/10/18/2733185/pipeline-debate-dies-down-despite.html, da 11-1-2012The Keystone XL was originally intended to run from Alberta, Canada to the Texas coast. But the project needs State Department approval before it can cross the U.S.-Canada border, and the Obama administration has said it won't make that decision until after the November presidential election.

No action on Keystone till after the electionLisa Song, 10-18-2012, “Pipeline debate dies down despite problems route,” Bellingham Herald, http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2012/10/18/2733185/pipeline-debate-dies-down-despite.html, da 11-1-2012The most important permit is the federal approval that TransCanada needs to cross the U.S.-Canada border. Mitt Romney has pledged to grant the permit on his first day in office if he is elected president. It's unclear how the Obama administration would respond if the president is re-elected.

Obama won’t do anything with Keystone till after the electionKen Silverstein, 10-3-2012, “After the Election, Keystone Pipeline Will Get Freed From Political Trap,” Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2012/10/03/keystone-pipeline-will-get-freed-from-political-trap/But if President Obama uses his microphone to push through the deal right now, he would risk alienating an important part of his base just weeks before the election. That’s probably why last January he said he would put off making a decision on the XL line. While he is giving legal and logistical reasons, the president is still coming across as being a weak lapdog of the environmental movement — placing his desire to be president ahead of creating new jobs. So, the deal will have to wait until the coast is clear. Any movement will be postponed until early next year, which is safely after the election and when all the regulators say that they will have fairly assessed the proposal. The pipeline could then take on a different route, which still won’t appease its true opponents.

West Coast 2012November Update

AT: Gas Prices Advantage – Keystone Won’t Solve

Keystone won’t lower oil pricesIndian Country Today, 10-17-2012, “Romney and Obama Debate Keystone XL Pipeline,” http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/10/17/romney-and-obama-debate-keystone-xl-140496, da 11-1-2012However, indications are that building Keystone XL will not actually bring down the price of gasoline and oil, because the pipeline is bringing the oil—and not just any oil, but thick, sludgy, bituminous crude from the Alberta oil sands in Canada—to the coast for export. Neither will it create jobs or energy security, according to other reports. In other words, as former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, now a senior fellow at the Nation Institute, puts it, we are committing “ecological suicide” in the name of corporate profit. “Keystone XL is part of the final phase of extreme exploitation by the corporate state,” the veteran foreign correspondent and Pulitzer-prize winning reporter wrote on TruthDig. “The corporations intend to squeeze the last vestiges of profit from an ecosystem careening toward collapse.”

Keystone won’t lower gas prices – will be used for exportsMatthew Yglesias, 10-17-2012, “Why the Keystone Pipeline Won’t Lower Gas Prices,” Slate, http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/10/17/keystone_pipeline_and_gasoline_prices_oil_exports_will_make_money_but_raise.html, da 11-1-2012You might wonder why that is. The answer is that we've had a lot of technological improvements in North American fossil fuel extraction recently but precisely because these are new developments we don't have the infrastructure properly set up to take advantage of the situation. Yet this is also the reason that projects like the Keystone XL pipeline are very unlikely to reduce North American gasoline prices. The short-term goal of the pipeline is to deliver more cheap North American crude to American refineries so it can be exported. In the longer-term, oil interests would want to reduce legal restrictions on the export of crude oil to more directly take advantage of the gap in prices.

Keystone doesn’t lower oil pricesMichael Levi, senior fellow @ CFR, 1-18-2012, “Five myths about the Keystone XL pipeline”, Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-the-keystone-xl-pipeline/2011/12/19/gIQApUAX8P_story_1.html, da 11-1-2012If we don’t build the pipeline and buy their oil, the Canadians will sell it to China. So what? World oil prices depend on how much oil is produced — not who sells what to whom. Whether the United States or China buys oil at the world price from Canada or Brazil or Saudi Arabia or Nigeria won’t affect U.S. economic fortunes. Some argue that buying oil from Canada rather than elsewhere would shrink the yawning U.S. trade deficit, since Canadians are more likely than others to spend their petro-profits in the United States. But Canada gets richer no matter whether it sells its oil to American or Chinese consumers, and its newfound wealth spills over to the U.S. economy regardless. What ultimately matters to our economy is not whether the United States or China buys oil from Canada — it’s whether Canada produces and sells that oil at all. The fate of the Keystone XL pipeline will be of limited consequence to either long-term U.S. energy security or climate change (though its rejection will probably be ugly for U.S.-Canada relations). The Keystone decision ultimately became far more about symbolism than substance. It’s a shame that so much attention was diverted from things that matter more.

West Coast 2012November Update

AT: Oil Dependence Advantage – Keystone Won’t Solve

Keystone won’t lower US oil use – all gets exportedEdward Flattau, nation’s longest running syndicated environmental newspaper columnist, 1-30-2012, “Canadian Keystone XL Oil Pipeline: Why the Deception?” Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-flattau/keystone-pipeline-deception_b_1238169.html, da 11-1-2012The answer is that there is much more to the story than its face value and it is all about drawbacks. When you get past the Republican hype designed to politically embarrass President Obama for refusing to approve the project's route across the American heartland, you discover the pipeline is not the economic bonanza or environmentally benign entity depicted by its boosters. On the

contrary, a strong case can be made that our nation would be better off with no Keystone XL pipeline whatsoever. One needs only examine the proponents' exaggerated claims (including downplaying of environmental risks) to see why.¶ TransCanada Corp., the corporate sponsor behind Keystone, actually admits that if its tar sands oil is piped down to our Gulf Coast refineries, it would be shipped overseas for a more attractive price than it could garner here. So much for the Keystone supporters' contention that the project would ease our dependency on oil imports from unstable parts of the world. We are talking essentially about a sweetheart deal for TransCanada.

Keystone doesn’t solve oil dependenceOil Change International, 2012, “Keystone XL Does Not Enhance U.S. Energy Security”, http://priceofoil.org/keystone-xl-and-energy-security/, da 11-1-2012What is energy security? Essentially, energy security is based on two prime concepts: • Protection against energy supply disruption; • Protection against energy price volatility. In addition, when we talk about oil, we often hear the following related concerns expressed: • Oil revenue flows to hostile regimes and dependence on those regimes for oil; • Foreign policy consequences of dependence on oil from hostile regimes; • Sustainability of oil supply: climate change and environmental impacts. Does Keystone XL address any of these concerns? The answer is an emphatic NO! Essentially, the global nature of the oil market undermines Keystone XL’s impact on any of these issues. There will not be fewer imports from the Middle East, hostile regimes will not be hampered by a reduction in oil revenues and the U.S. will be no more insulated from global oil price spikes as it was in 2008 or in April/May 2011, when global events caused gas prices to spike despite record imports from Canada.

Keystone doesn’t solve dependence – doesn’t lower demandMichael Levi, senior fellow @ CFR, 1-18-2012, “Five myths about the Keystone XL pipeline”, Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-the-keystone-xl-pipeline/2011/12/19/gIQApUAX8P_story_1.html, da 11-1-2012Worries about dependence on Middle Eastern oil have long animated U.S. energy policy — and the Keystone XL pipeline would have transported more than half as much oil each year as the United States currently imports annually from Saudi Arabia. But U.S. vulnerability to turmoil in the Middle East is linked to how much oil we consume, not where we buy it from. The price of oil is set on world markets: When convulsions in Libya sent the price of crude up 30 percent last year, prices for Canadian heavy oil (similar to what is produced from oil sands) rose by nearly 55 percent. Some pipeline proponents also pointed out that Canadian oil currently sells at a discount compared with oil supplies from the rest of the world. Keystone XL, however, wouldn’t have led Canada to start offering greater amounts of crude at reduced prices — instead, Canadian producers would have gained more leverage and would have been able to sell their oil at the world price.

West Coast 2012November Update

AT: Economy Advantage – Keystone Not Boost Jobs

Keystone won’t produce jobs – only boosts oil for exportDaryl Hannah, famous actress, 10-17-2012, “Why I’m standing up to TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline in east Texas,” Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/17/daryl-hannah-transcanada-keystonexl-pipeline, da 11-1-2012Proponents of KXL have made efforts to sell the pipeline to US citizens, greatly exaggerating job opportunities, quoting numbers upward of 50,000, while a Cornell University independent study said it would bring roughly 4,000 temporary jobs. TransCanada has also spent enormous amounts of PR money putting ads on Oprah's network and the like, in an attempt to rebrand itself as "ethical oil", insinuating that the Keystone XL pipeline would ensure America receives its oil from friendly Canada, instead of unstable regions elsewhere in the world. But the Keystone XL pipeline has been mischaracterized, and the American people have been misled. Portraying the pipeline as a "public use" project carrying crude oil to the US, enables the foreign corporation to take US private property through "eminent domain" but for foreign private profit. With no evidence to support those claims, politicians have jumped on this bandwagon to tout the KXL project as a means to enhance US energy security and energy independence. In fact, in a congressional energy and commerce subcommittee hearing, TransCanada refused to support a requirement that KXL oil be sold in US markets. This oil will be sold, most likely for export, on the open market to the highest bidder, most likely India (which itself manufactured the pipeline) or China. What is evident is that the Keystone XL pipeline is a private profit venture, not a "public use" project that serves the US national interest.

Keystone won’t create jobs and they’ll only be temporaryEdward Flattau, nation’s longest running syndicated environmental newspaper columnist, 1-30-2012, “Canadian Keystone XL Oil Pipeline: Why the Deception?” Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-flattau/keystone-pipeline-deception_b_1238169.html, da 11-1-2012What about jobs? Keystone backers' assertion that the pipeline will generate anywhere from twenty thousand to one hundred thousand jobs is wildly inflated. More realistic estimates by our State Department and independent researchers fix the number of jobs at 6,000, with most of them lasting no more than the two years it would take to complete the project. Still, some jobs are better than none, right? Maybe not in this case.

Keystone causes net job lossesEdward Flattau, nation’s longest running syndicated environmental newspaper columnist, 1-30-2012, “Canadian Keystone XL Oil Pipeline: Why the Deception?” Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-flattau/keystone-pipeline-deception_b_1238169.html, da 11-1-2012What of the possibility that the pipeline could turn out to be a net job loser? The increase in fuel prices could have a deleterious effect on Midwest employment. If there were a significant oil spill that contaminated the region's water supply, the adverse economic impact on farming and communities in the path of the pollution would be devastating.¶ By the way, if you think such an outcome is farfetched, TransCanada's oversight record is hardly stellar. Although mostly minor, there were 12 spills during the first year of the company's operation of its existing original Keystone pipeline.

West Coast 2012November Update

AT: China Advantage – Keystone Doesn’t China/Canada Coop

Lack of Keystone doesn’t cause Canadian shipping to China – other roadblocks preventElana Schor, reporter, 7-27-2012, “Did Keystone XL really drive Canada-China coziness?” EE news, http://eenews.net/public/energywire/2012/07/27/2, da 11-1-2012In the absence of pipeline infrastructure, rail is emerging as a viable alternative, Verleger added. "Efforts to slow crude oil pipelines probably will not have much of an impact on slowing the development of oil fields in Canada and the Bakken" in North Dakota, he said.¶ Despite the rise of rail, developing fuel from Canadian assets does not necessarily mean Chinese consumers will have easy access to the resources. The most promising avenue for large-scale oil sands crude shipment to Asia, Enbridge Inc.'s Northern Gateway, remains mired in intra-provincial Canadian political battles as acrimonious as those that sidelined Keystone XL (EnergyWire, July 26).¶ Canadian regulatory filings show that Nexen was one of 10 oil companies providing $10 million to help Enbridge navigate the approval process for the Gateway pipeline, which would run west from Alberta to the coast of the liberal province of British Columbia. Still, that contribution would not prevent a CNOOC-owned Nexen from routing future crude through Keystone XL, if it is constructed.¶ Chinese-controlled oil sands producers likely would see some of their fuel shipped to the United States, Jiang said. "Isn't that good? It's market-oriented. Somebody's putting up money, creating jobs in Canada ... to make the U.S. energy supply more stable."

Keystone doesn’t cause Canada/China coopElana Schor, reporter, 7-27-2012, “Did Keystone XL really drive Canada-China coziness?” EE news, http://eenews.net/public/energywire/2012/07/27/2, da 11-1-2012But pitting China against America in a race for Canadian oil sands fuel remains a potent argument for Republicans in Congress as well as the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who dialed up the volume on his pitch for Asian investment in Alberta's energy sector soon after Keystone XL's permit application was delayed in November.¶ If anything, the Beijing-as-economic-rival narrative has gained momentum in Washington, its questionable relevance to the oil sands aside, because of Democratic attacks on GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney as an outsourcer of jobs to China.¶ "I don't think it's as big a deal as people are trying to make it be," Frank Verrastro, director of the energy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, said of the Nexen buyout in an interview.¶ Existing capacity to bring oil sands crude south from Canada is not set to run dry until 2016, he added, and the boom of domestic oil in the Bakken and Eagle Ford shale plays already is complicating the picture for the U.S. market. "That's not true, that we're forcing Canada and China together."

Canada will inevitably ship oil overseas – Keystone not keyTheophilos Argitis and Jeremy Van Loon, 1-19-2012, “Obama’s Keystone Denial Prompts Canada to Look to China Sales,” Bloomberg, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-19/canada-pledges-to-sell-oil-to-asia-after-obama-rejects-keystone-pipeline.html, da 11-1-2012President Barack Obama’s decision yesterday to reject a permit for TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL oil pipeline may prompt Canada to turn to China for oil exports.¶ Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in a telephone call yesterday, told Obama “Canada will continue to work to diversify its energy exports,” according to details provided by Harper’s office. Canadian Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver said relying less on the U.S. would help strengthen the country’s “financial security.”¶ The “decision by the Obama administration underlines the importance of diversifying and expanding our markets, including the growing Asian market,” Oliver told reporters in Ottawa.¶ Currently, 99 percent of Canada’s crude exports go to the U.S., a figure that Harper wants to reduce in his bid to make Canada a “superpower” in global energy markets.

West Coast 2012November Update

AT: US-Canada Relations Advantage

Keystone isn’t key to US-Canada relationsDonald Barry, Poly Sci Prof @ Calgary, 7-5-2012, “Has decision on Keystone XL poisoned Canada-U.S. relations?,” iPolitics, http://www.ipolitics.ca/2012/07/05/donald-barry-has-obamas-decision-on-keystone-pipeline-poisoned-canada-u-s-relations/, da 11-1-2012Is the Canada-U.S. relationship at its “lowest point in decades?”¶ Writing in the online edition of Foreign Affairs Derek Burney and Fen Hampson say it is, and for that they hold President Barack Obama responsible. At the head of their list of complaints is his decision to reject TransCanada Corp’s initial application for the Keystone XL pipeline that would bring oil sands crude from Alberta to Texas Gulf Coast refineries. Ignoring the domestic controversy the issue has created in the United States, Burney and Hampson contend that approval “should have been an easy diplomatic and economic decision,” to enhance energy security and create jobs, and possibly dissuade Canada from diverting oil exports to Asia. But Keystone may not do much to achieve those goals, and the environmental costs could be substantial.¶ The pipeline could help lower U.S. dependence on interruptible foreign oil supplies from “Venezuela or countries in the Middle East,” though the case becomes less compelling as the United States moves closer to self-sufficiency. But with most of Alberta’s oil exported to the American market, Canada would continue to import more than 50 percent of the oil it uses for domestic consumption from the same offshore sources the United States depends upon.¶

Keystone isn’t key to US_Canada relationsDonald Barry, Poly Sci Prof @ Calgary, 7-5-2012, “Has decision on Keystone XL poisoned Canada-U.S. relations?,” iPolitics, http://www.ipolitics.ca/2012/07/05/donald-barry-has-obamas-decision-on-keystone-pipeline-poisoned-canada-u-s-relations/, da 11-1-2012Heavy oil spills are especially difficult to clean. A 35 mile stretch of Michigan’s Kalamazoo River has only recently been re-opened following the July 2010 rupture of an Enbridge Inc. pipeline, which leaked 20,000 barrels of oil sands crude. The cleanup has cost more than $700 million.President Obama’s Keystone decision is not the game changer in Canada-U.S. relations that Burney and Hampson claim. An astute politician, President Obama knows he would be blamed if Keystone went wrong. He is right to withhold approval until the facts are in.

Others issues outweighMike Blanchfield, 6-25-2012, “Obama jilting Canada, plunging relations to new low, says U.S. policy journal ,” Canadian Press, p. npIs Barack Obama squandering Canada's love?¶The answer is a resounding yes, according to an essay in a leading U.S. foreign policy journal.¶ "How Obama Lost Canada," is the headline in the online edition of Foreign Affairs, published by the influential Washington think tank, The Council On Foreign Relations.¶ The article cites a litany of wrongs that its authors pin on the current U.S. president, including the delay in the Keystone XL pipeline, protectionist Buy American provisions,

even disrespect for Canadian military contributions in Libya and Afghanistan.¶ As a result, the U.S. has jilted Canada, leaving relations at "their lowest point in decades."¶The article is by Derek Burney, a former Canadian diplomatic heavyweight and one-time ambassador to the U.S., and Fen Hampson, a Carleton University foreign policy expert.¶ Theirs is not the first analysis to note this pattern. But its publication in a respected U.S. policy journal months before the presidential election offers a ready-made slogan for further Republican attacks on Obama's leadership during an economic downturn. Canada and the U.S. are each other's top trading partners.¶Obama's decision to delay the Keystone decision until 2013 _ after the election and following intense

lobbying by environmentalists _ was a point of attack for Republicans during their protracted primaries.¶But Burney and Hampson cite that as only the latest in long series of blunders, not all of them economic.

West Coast 2012November Update

AT: Ocean Spills Advantage

Canada can respond to spills effectivelyTransport Canada, 4-10-2012, “Oil Tanker Safety and Oil Spill Prevention,” http://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/marinesafety/menu-4100.htm, da 11-1-2012Canada has the world’s longest coastline, at more than 243,000 kilometres. Each year, 80 million tonnes of oil are shipped off Canada’s east and west coasts. On any given day, there are 180 vessels (ships known as “SOLAS vessels,” or those over 500 tonnes gross tonnage that operate internationally) operating within Canada’s Exclusive Economic Zone (200 nautical miles from shore). Transport Canada works in a number of ways to protect Canada’s waters from ships’ pollution, and to help ensure that marine transportation is safe and efficient. The Government of Canada aims to prevent spills through regulatory oversight, inspections, and enforcement measures. Transport Canada’s regulations and standards fall under the Canada Shipping Act, 2001 and the Arctic Waters Pollution Protection Act, combined with international regulations established by the International Maritime Organization (IMO). These provide the framework for the department's comprehensive marine safety inspection and enforcement programs. The Government of Canada is well prepared for and ready to respond to marine accidents from ships in Canadian waters. Ship-source oil spill prevention, preparedness, response and recovery are undertaken in a collaborative “whole-of-government” approach. Key federal departments work with private industry, as well as provincial and municipal governments, to ensure an incident is responded to in a coordinated manner.

Virtually no risk of oil spills – tech solves – spills have been reduced by over 90%Arne Jernelov, former Director of the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis and Professor of Environmental Biochemistry, 7-8-2010, “How to defend against future oil spills” http://rtecrtp.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/nature_paper_oil_spills11.pdf, da 11-1-2012Today, tank washing is banned in most territorial waters. Accidental tanker spills have been reduced from an annual average of 314,000 tonnes in the 1970s to 21,000 tonnes in the 2000s, thanks to mandatory double-layer hulls, the sectioning of oil tanks and better ship traffic control. Global Positioning System navigation has also made a huge difference: even drunk or inexperienced captains now know where they are. When a Chinese ship veered out of its shipping lane and hit the Great Barrier Reef this April, it was a rare and surprising incident.** 21,000 / 314,000 = 6.687898

No risk of Canadian oil spillsTransport Canada, 4-10-2012, “Oil Tanker Safety and Oil Spill Prevention,” http://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/marinesafety/menu-4100.htm, da 11-1-2012To ensure that Canada is prepared for and can respond to oil spills from vessels and oil handling facilities, Transport Canada works with Environment Canada, the Canadian Coast Guard, four response organizations and other agencies to respond to incidents, help reduce and eliminate pollution sources from ships in Canadian waters, and continually improve Canada’s National Oil Spill Preparedness and Response Regime. The regime sets standards for response organizations and oil handling facilities. Transport Canada sets the guidelines and regulatory structure for the preparedness for and response to marine oil spills. The department ensures that the appropriate level of preparedness is available to respond to marine oil pollution incidents in Canada of up to 10,000

tonnes within prescribed time standards and operating environments. Canada is a member of the International Maritime Organization and follows a number of international conventions to reduce pollution worldwide, including: the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL), Annexes I-VI; and the 1990 International Convention on Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Co-Operation (OPRC).

West Coast 2012November Update

Keystone Bad – Renewables Tradeoff Shell

US is switching to renewables nowStephen Lacey, 6-14-2011, “Solar is Ready Now,” Solar Foundation, http://thesolarfoundation.org/blog/solar-ready-now-%E2%80%98ferocious-cost-reductions%E2%80%99-make-solar-pv-competitive, da 11-1-2012“We are considerably lower than natural gas peaker plants,” says Dinwoodie. We’re also coming in lower than new nuclear and becoming lower than new coal. Gigawatts of these plants are being developed in months – not years or decades.” Here’s their comparison between solar PV, natural gas peakers, nuclear and coal. The figures come from Lazzard, an international financial services firm that tracks energy data, and the Department of Energy. You can see that natural gas peaker plants, which sit idling most of the day, are an expensive option for utilities. In sunny markets like California, solar is becoming competitive with large combined-cycle natural gas plants as well. According to Dinwoodie, there have been 4 GW of contracts for solar PV plants in California signed below the Market Price Referent – the projected price of a 500-MW combined cycle natural gas plant. While that is a major milestone for the solar industry, we need to be careful about jumping to conclusions based on these figures. Some in the solar business fear that many developers are signing contracts too low – which means they get the contract, but investors may be hesitant to provide financing because they’re concerned the projects won’t pencil out. But the trend is clear: continued declines in the cost of building solar plants is allowing developers to compete with fossil energies in certain markets. Here’s another important statistic: When SunPower built the 14-MW Nellis Air Force Base system in 2007, it cost $7 per watt. Today, commercial and utility systems are getting installed at around $3 per watt. In 2010 alone, the average installed cost of installing solar PV dropped 20%. It would appear that solar PV is also cheaper than new nuclear.

Keystone causes renewables tradeoff that prevent us solving warmingEdward Flattau, nation’s longest running syndicated environmental newspaper columnist, 1-30-2012, “Canadian Keystone XL Oil Pipeline: Why the Deception?” Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-flattau/keystone-pipeline-deception_b_1238169.html, da 11-1-2012Last but not least, the tar sands product is the dirtiest of oils making it a major pollution threat as it travels over a major aquifer through the heart of our country. Moreover, the pipeline would divert precious time and resources from development and distribution of clean renewable energy alternatives. These alternatives are the core of an effective program to curb global warming, which by extension would bolster the nation's chances for a secure future.

Warming causes extinctionBill Henderson, Environmental Scientist, 8-16-2006, Counter Currents, “Runaway Global Warming Denial.” http://www.countercurrents.org/cc-henderson190806.htm, da 11-1-2012The scientific debate about human induced global warming is over but policy makers - let alone the happily shopping general public - still seem to not understand the scope of the impending tragedy. Global warming isn't just warmer temperatures, heat waves, melting ice and threatened polar bears. Scientific understanding increasingly points to runaway global warming leading to human extinction. If impossibly Draconian security measures are not immediately put in place to keep further emissions of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere we are looking at the death of billions, the end of civilization as we know it and in all probability the end of [hu]man's several million year old existence, along with the extinction of most flora and fauna beloved to man in the world we share.

West Coast 2012November Update

Keystone Bad – Ogallala Turn Shell

Keystone would ruin the Ogallala aquiferDaryl Hannah, famous actress, 10-17-2012, “Why I’m standing up to TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline in east Texas,” Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/17/daryl-hannah-transcanada-keystonexl-pipeline, da 11-1-2012The complete Keystone XL pipeline project that is proposed would come down across the border from Alberta through six states – passing right through the Ogallala aquifer – the source of irrigation water for two-thirds of our nation's farms and ranches. The southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline, which was fast-tracked and is now under construction, would cross through the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer that supplies water for agriculture, industry and fresh drinking water to 10-12 million Texans. Another thing we can all agree on – as even TransCanada admits, it's not a question of "if" there will be spills, but "when". We just can't afford it. TransCanada represented its product as crude oil, while the House ways and means committee clearly states crude oil does not include shale, oil or tar sands oil. Keystone XL would carry tar sands oil – or bitumen – a highly toxic, corrosive substance filled with proprietary chemicals. Unlike crude oil, tar sands sludge has to be pumped at high pressures, and extremely high temperatures to move through pipe. Even federal safety officials don't know precisely which chemicals are used to mix bitumen and create dilbit. There have been no independent scientific studies exploring the relationship between dilbit and pipeline corrosion. In mid 2010, the Endbridge Energy pipeline leaked, dumping 843,000 gallons of dilbit into the Kalamazoo river. The cost to clean it up is expected to exceed $700m. The Keystone I, Keystone XL's predecessor, leaked 12 times in its first year of operation, as Chris Hedges reported.

Causes extinction and food shortagesDaryl Hannah, famous actress, 10-17-2012, “Why I’m standing up to TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline in east Texas,” Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/17/daryl-hannah-transcanada-keystonexl-pipeline, da 11-1-2012No matter what political rhetoric you choose to follow, or what course we choose to take with our energy options, there are things we all can agree on. As the second World Water Forum wisely stated: "Water is everybody's business." Clean, regenerative energy could provide a way past peak oil and our detrimental fossil fuel addiction – if we collectively had the will to employ renewables, and addressed the change as urgently as the US did during the second world war when we unleashed our scientific creativity and industrial ingenuity to support the war effort. But there is no escape from peak water. We simply cannot live without uncontaminated water and food. Since we can't make informed choices without being informed, here is an update on the global water crisis: the International Water Management Institute projects that by 2025, barely 12 years, two-thirds of the world will live under conditions of water scarcity. As Lester Brown from Earth Policy Institute says: "Scores of countries are over-pumping aquifers as they struggle to satisfy their growing water needs … the USDA reports that in parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas – three leading grain-producing states, the underground water table has dropped by more than 30 meters. As a result, wells have gone dry on thousands of farms in the southern Great Plains … for fossil aquifers, such as the vast Ogollala under the Great Plains, which do not replenish … depletion would mean the end of agriculture." Texas was ravaged by drought last year and the majority of the US suffered extreme drought conditions this year. Brown goes on to say: "The over-pumping of aquifers is occurring in many countries more or less simultaneously. This means that the depletion of aquifers and the resulting harvest cutbacks will come in many countries at roughly the same time. And the accelerating depletion of aquifers means this day may come sooner than

expected, creating a potentially unmanageable situation of food scarcity."

West Coast 2012November Update

Ext – Keystone Bad - Ogallala

Keystone would wreck water for millions of people and kills the environmentTed Turner, founder of CNN, chair. UN Foundation, 2-24-2012, “Stop Keystone pipeline before it’s too late,” CNN, http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/22/opinion/turner-keystone-pipeline/index.html da 11-1-2012Closer to home, the pipeline presents an immediate threat to drinking water for millions and to the livelihood of farmers and ranchers.To transport via pipeline, the thick tar sands crude must be mixedwith toxic chemicals and then pumped at extreme temperature and pressure.This sets the stage for more pipeline failures and spills that create a highly toxic mess.The existing Keystone 1 tar sands pipeline has spilled more than 12 times in its first 12 months of operation. In July 2010, a spill of more than 800,000 gallons of toxic tar sands crude from the Enbridge pipeline contaminated more than 30 miles of water and shoreline along the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. This created public health problems, threats to groundwater, widespread fish kills, and destruction of wildlife habitat, contamination that is still being cleaned up at a cost exceeding $700 million. Downstream landowners like me are thinking this is a preview of coming attractions if Keystone XL is built.

Keystone would wreck the Ogallala aquiferTed Turner, founder of CNN, chair. UN Foundation, 2-24-2012, “Stop Keystone pipeline before it’s too late,” CNN, http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/22/opinion/turner-keystone-pipeline/index.html da 11-1-2012The potential for pollution of vital groundwater from the Keystone XL pipeline is even more frightening. Depending on the final route of the pipeline, spills would threaten the Ogallala Aquifer, the largest aquifer in the western North American region, upon which millions of people and agricultural businesses depend for drinking water, irrigation and livestock watering. But spills anywhere along the route would threaten crucial drinking water supplies, from local and municipal drinking water wells to the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer in Texas, a critical water supply for drought-stricken East Texas and Houston. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the water scarcity problems in that region should understand how a sizable pipeline failure could have catastrophic consequences.

Global impact on water and agriculture is hugeSandra Zellmer, Law Prof @ Nebraska, 2008, “Book Review: Boom and Bust on the Great Plains,” 41 Creighton L. Rev. 385, p. 385CONCLUSION "Water is life ... . Each drop is a benediction." 226 Reforms - especially agricultural reforms - are hard to come by. According to Jim Lyons, a former U.S. Agriculture Under Secretary, "the big commodity groups have a stranglehold on policy. And there's not a lot of stomach for new ideas." 227 William Ashworth points out, however, that the depletionof the Ogallala Aquifer is an impending crisis that we ignore at our own peril. 228 Given that the aquifer produces around twenty percent of the U.S. harvest, the ripple effects of its demise could be cataclysmic, nationally and even internationally. 229

West Coast 2012November Update

Keystone Bad – Oil Prices

Keystone will actually raise oil prices – offsets reservesEdward Flattau, nation’s longest running syndicated environmental newspaper columnist, 1-30-2012, “Canadian Keystone XL Oil Pipeline: Why the Deception?” Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-flattau/keystone-pipeline-deception_b_1238169.html, da 11-1-2012In its application, the company discloses that the pipeline is likely to result in higher rather than the cheaper gasoline prices touted by Keystone backers. That is because the project would allow TransCanada to draw down the reserves it has been storing in the Midwest and that have served to suppress prices at the pump.¶ The company warns that if we don't reconsider approval of Keystone XL, it will construct the pipeline across Canada to the British Columbia coast and ship the oil to China.¶ That is an empty threat when you consider that the Keystone oil our refineries would export could easily end up in China anyway. What clearly demonstrates that TransCanada is bluffing is that for all its menacing bluster, the company has said it will resubmit its application to the United States. No small wonder since the company faces considerable opposition from Canada's political minority party, as well as native tribes, farmers and other sundry individuals along the pipeline's prospective right of way. Enough of a ruckus has occurred to prompt Canadian regulators to announce a one year delay while the proposed domestic Keystone route is reviewed. There are environmentalists in Canada too!

Keystone increases oil prices and fuel costs for farmersLaurie Johnson, chief economist @ NRDC, PhD Econ, 2-1-2012, “Keystone XL pipeline: Good for Big Oil, bad for the economy”, http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/ljohnson/keystone_xl_pipeline_good_for.html, da 11-1-2012By TransCanada’s own account, Keystone XL is expected to increase oil prices in the Midwest (building a pipeline to the Gulf Coast will eliminate an excess supply of the oil in the Midwest, pushing up prices). As part of its permit application to the Canadian government, TransCanada said (p.21) annual oil company revenues are expected to increase as a result by $2 to nearly $4 billion. In turn, our farmers could see an increase in fuel costs of $2.6 billion dollars or more over 2009 levels…Higher oil prices might be good for the oil industry, but they will increase the cost of living and doing business in the Midwest, negatively impacting its economy and potentially increasing unemployment.

Keystone causes higher gas pricesJen Alic, 7-4-2012, “How is the Keystone XL Pipeline Progressing?” 247 Wall St, http://247wallst.com/2012/07/04/how-is-the-keystone-xl-pipeline-progressing/, da 11-1-2012In terms of economics, there is some solid research showing that Keystone XL is more likely to result in higher prices at the pump. Canadian tar sands crude pumped into the Midwest and intended for domestic gas consumption would be diverted to the Gulf Coast where it would be used in diesel production and for global exports. It could very well mean reduced gas supplies and higher gas prices in the end.

West Coast 2012November Update

Keystone Bad – Oil Dependence

Keystone distracts from demand reduction strategiesOil Change International, 2012, “Keystone XL Does Not Enhance U.S. Energy Security”, http://priceofoil.org/keystone-xl-and-energy-security/, da 11-1-2012Canadian oil and the Keystone XL pipeline only provide the illusion of energy security. They fail to substantively address any single aspect of energy security concerns. Genuine energy security is achieved through reducing the economy’s dependence on oil through demand reduction. President Obama has started the United States on the road to demand reduction through enacting vehicle efficiency standards and investing public money in technology research and development that enhances efficiency and develops alternatives to oil. There are many more things we can do to reduce demand. We can put Americans to work realizing that goal. But to bring about this change, we must reject the projects that seek to maintain the status quo by keeping America addicted to oil. Keystone XL does not enhance energy security and we should not accept its proponent’s unsubstantiated claims.

Kesytone makes it harder to reduce dependenceSarah Blackman, 3-12-2012, “Buried in the oil sands: the value of Alberta bitumen”, http://www.hydrocarbons-technology.com/features/featureburied-in-the-oil-sand-the-value-of-alberta-bitumen/, da 11-1-2012Developing the pipeline will also make it harder for the US to break its dependence on oil, according to Natural Resources Defense Council international director Susan Casey-Lefkowitz. In a recent blog she said: "The threat of an oil crisis if Iran blocks the Strait of Hormuz is immediate and will not be alleviated by Canadian tar sands oil. "Dependence on oil (from anywhere) is what makes us vulnerable to price spikes or supply disruptions. So the more fuel-efficient we get, the less we are beholden to foreign sources of oil - whether Iranian or Canadian. This is one of many reasons why the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is not in the national interest," Casey-Lefkowitz continued.

We have uniqueness for our turn – US is decreasing dependence nowLester Brown, Prez. Earth Policy Inst., 1-6-2011, “U.S. Gasoline Use Declining, Tar Sands Pipeline Isn't Needed”, http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/22998, da 11-1-2012The US currently consumes more gasoline than the next 16 countries combined. Yes, you read that right. Among them are China, Japan, Russia, Germany, and Brazil. But now this is changing. Not only is the affluence that sustained this extravagant gasoline consumption eroding, but the automobile-centered lifestyle that was considered part of the American birthright is fading as well. U.S. gasoline use has dropped 5% in four years. Four key developments are set to further reduce U.S. gasoline use: a shrinking car fleet, a decline in the miles driven per car, dramatic mandated future gains in new car fuel efficiency, and the shift from gasoline to electricity to power our cars.

West Coast 2012November Update

Keystone Bad – Forests

Keystone kills forests and bio-dTed Turner, founder of CNN, chair. UN Foundation, 2-24-2012, “Stop Keystone pipeline before it’s too late,” CNN, http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/22/opinion/turner-keystone-pipeline/index.html da 11-1-2012In Canada, extraction of tar sands crude requires clear-cutting thousands of acres of boreal forests, diverting rivers, strip-mining, and destroying critical habitat for some of the largest populations of woodland caribou left in the world. Thirty percent of North America's songbirds and 40% of its waterfowl rely on the wetlands and waterways of the boreal forest.Tar sands oil production has already created more than 50 square miles of toxic waste ponds so massive they are visible from space. Even more important, tar sands oil extraction produces three times more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil and gas, putting even greater strain on our atmosphere and oceans, which have little absorptive capacity left.

Keystone causes clear cutting forestsMarta Orpiszewska, February 2012, “Keystone XL: Pipeline to Nowhere UNC Environmental Law Symposium,” http://www.law.unc.edu/documents/clear/orpiszewska.pdf, da 11-1-2012Tar sands oil, or bitumen, is currently a hot topic among environmental groups and others¶ opposed to the Keystone XL project. The tar sands are found in an area approximately the size¶ of Florida under the Boreal Forest of Alberta, Canada.10 Extraction of tar sands oil is very¶ energy-intensive.11 The Boreal Forest must be clear cut in order to get at the oil underneath.12¶ The forest is an important carbon sink, as well as a fragile ecosystem home to caribou and¶ migratory birds.13 Tar sands

extraction has an impact on the forest’s ability to absorb carbon out¶ of the atmosphere and its ability to sustain important species.14 Additionally, excavation requires¶ thousands of gallons of water to separate the bitumen (heavy crude oil) from the sand.15 This¶ mining process leaves behind toxic tailings ponds, the size of small lakes, that consist of the¶ water used to separate the oil contaminated with the toxic chemicals that are the byproducts of¶

the extraction process.16 Extraction of this oil is approximately three times more carbon intensive¶ per barrel than conventional oil.17

Deforestation causes massive species extinctionsMahendra Shah, Executive Secretary to CGIAR Systems review at the World Bank, PhD from Univ. of Cambridge, specialist in sustainable development and economic planning, and Maurice Strong, chairman of the Earth Council and also serves as Senior Advisor to both the United Nations and the World Bank, October 1999, http://www.worldbank.org/html/cgiar/publications/shahbook/shahbook.pdf, da 11-1-2012Perhaps most importantly, disappearing forests threaten the world’s gene pool storehouse. Tropical forests harbor at least half of the world’s genetic biodiversity – and maybe as much as 90 percent of the estimated 10 million species on earth. In the context of the challenge to CGIAR, maintaining genetic diversity is essential to the future food supply. But, to protect what forests remain and maintain this diversity, the CGIAR must also explore ways to improve production on marginal lands so farmers no longer need to move to new lands.

West Coast 2012November Update

Keystone Bad – Warming

Tar sands are net worse for pollutionAndy Rowell, author, 2-22-2012, “Tar Sands: No get-out-of-jail-free card,” Price of Oil, http://priceofoil.org/2012/02/22/tar-sands-no-get-out-of-jail-free-card/, da 11-1-2012The tar sands is an oil versus oil argument. And in that debate, the overwhelming majority of studies independent of the oil industry show that the tar sands are more polluting. More importantly, it is an argument about disinvesting out of dirty oil and beginning the transition to a clean energy future that avoids dangerous climate change. Even Weaver argues that “We’re not giving a get-out-of-jail-free card to the tar-sands industry. This is not the purpose of our study.”

This is a reason to reject Keystone Andy Rowell, author, 2-22-2012, “Tar Sands: No get-out-of-jail-free card,” Price of Oil, http://priceofoil.org/2012/02/22/tar-sands-no-get-out-of-jail-free-card/, da 11-1-2012Some sections of the Canadian press quietly admit this. “Yet what’s also clear is that Dr. Weaver’s work does little to absolve an industry that continues to be Canada’s fastest-growing source of emissions,” concedes the Globe and Mail. Indeed Weaver argues that “If North American and international policymakers wish to limit global warming to less than 2 °C they will clearly need to put in place measures that ensure a rapid transition of global energy systems to non-greenhouse-gas-emitting sources, while avoiding commitments to new infrastructure supporting dependence on fossil fuels.” That reads to me like a recommendation of No Keystone XL, No Northern Gateway and a rapid transition away from the tar sands.

Tar sands triple greenhouse emissionsDan Woynillowicz, senior policy analyst @ Pembina Inst., 2007, World Watch, “Tar Sands Fever,” http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5287, da 11-1-2012The environmental consequences of oil production from tar sands are major, beginning with its effect on climate change. North America's transition to oil from the tar sands not only perpetuates, but actually worsens, emissions of greenhouse gas pollution from oil consumption. While the end products from conventional oil and tar sands are the same (mostly transportation fuels), producing a barrel of synthetic crude oil from the tar sands releases up to three times more greenhouse gas pollution than conventional oil. This is a result of the huge amount of energy (primarily from burning natural gas) required to generate the heat needed to extract bitumen from the tar sands and upgrade it into synthetic crude. The energy equivalent of one barrel of oil is required to produce just three barrels of oil from the tar sands.

West Coast 2012November Update

Politics Link – Keystone Controversial

Building Keystone would be very controversialKen Silverstein, 10-3-2012, “After the Election, Keystone Pipeline Will Get Freed From Political Trap,” Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2012/10/03/keystone-pipeline-will-get-freed-from-political-trap/Creating jobs is the paramount issue in this political season. A few industrial segments are providing the richest veins. But one of those with lots of potential is also one of those that is the most controversial: the Keystone XL Pipeline. Indeed, the 1,200-mile Keystone project got a reference during tonight’s presidential debate. Opponents have labeled the proposal as “ground zero” in their effort to halt the effects of global warming while proponents are saying the $5 billion line would be a job-manufacturing machine that would ease this country’s reliance on overseas crude supplies.

Keystone would cause major oppositionKen Silverstein, 10-3-2012, “After the Election, Keystone Pipeline Will Get Freed From Political Trap,” Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2012/10/03/keystone-pipeline-will-get-freed-from-political-trap/The Keystone project will assuredly swerve through some politically-and-environmentally-sensitive areas. Some of the biggest opponents are Indian Tribes who are saying that the line would not just jeopardize their drinking water but that it would also disrespect some their sacred spots. “The Keystone XL pipeline . . . would threaten, among other things, water aquifers, water ways, cultural sites, agricultural lands, animal life, public drinking water sources and other resources vital to the peoples of the region,” reads a resolution from the National Congress of American Indians.

Keystone is controversialMark Clayton, MSNBC, 3-9-2012, “How much would Keystone pipeline help US consumers,” http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46689167/ns/us_news-christian_science_monitor/t/how-much-would-keystone-pipeline-help-us-consumers/#.T-pMTbVYt2A da 11-1-2012Often lost in the political wrangling over the controversial Keystone XL pipeline – on hold after President Obama rejected TransCanada’s initial construction proposal – are some key findings that run counter to the rosy picture of abundant supply and lower prices so often painted by US politicians. Canadian companies backing the Keystone XL – touted as enhancing US energy security with a big new surge of imported Canadian oil – actually expect it to supply more lucrative Gulf Coast export markets as well as raise Midwest oil prices by reducing “oversupply” in that region. These little-publicized findings are contained in the studies and testimony of experts working for TransCanada, the company that wants to build the pipeline from Alberta’s tar sands across America’s heartland to Gulf Coast refineries. Some of these concerns popped up, albeit briefly, in US congressional testimony last year on the pipeline project, and have given rise to a recent proposal to bar the sale of Keystone oil overseas. In the latest round of Capitol Hill fighting over the pipeline, Senate Democrats on Thursday defeated a Republican amendment to the transportation bill that would have fast-tracked the project by stripping the State Department of its approval authority and giving it to Congress. In February, legislation to force US approval of the pipeline passed the House 237-187. That bill would strip the president of authority to block the project and give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission 30 days to approve the pipeline. But most of the heated partisan rhetoric over job creation and gasoline prices glosses over what Keystone would or wouldn’t do for the US.

West Coast 2012November Update

Politics Link – Plan Popular

Public supports KeystoneDaniel Kish, President of World Access for the Blind, 12-15-2011, “Approving the Keystone XL Pipeline a Matter of National Security,” US News, http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/on-energy/2011/12/15/approving-the-keystone-xl-pipeline-a-matter-of-national-security, da 11-1-2012As for the voices of the American people, a November 23 Rasmussen poll reported that 60 percent of voters support building the Keystone XL pipeline. Last week, a Wall Street Journal poll showed more than 66 percent in support of the pipeline. And as for an open and transparent process, the Institute for Energy Research has filed a Freedom of Information Act Request with the State Department and is awaiting a response. Time will tell just how transparent the administration's decision on Keystone XL will be.

Polls prove the public supports KeystoneDaniel Doherty, editor @ Townhall, 3-22-2012, “Memo to President Obama: Majority of Americans Support the Keystone Pipeline Project,” Townhall, http://townhall.com/tipsheet/danieldoherty/2012/03/22/memo_to_the_president_americans_overwhelmingly_support_the_keystone_xl_pipeline_project, da 11-1-2012A new Gallup pollout today confirmswhat most people already knew – namely, the vast majority of Americans support building the Keystone XL pipeline:A majority of Americans, including a plurality of

Democrats, think the government should approve the building of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, according to a new national survey.A Gallup poll released Thursday indicates 57% of the public says the Obama administration should give the go ahead for the pipeline's construction, with 29% disagreeing and 14% unsure.

Keystone has bipartisan supportRob Cornilles, president Game Face Inc., 1-10-2012, “The proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline is a bipartisan proposal,” PolitiFact, http://www.politifact.com/oregon/statements/2012/jan/14/rob-cornilles/how-bipartisan-support-keystone-xl-oil-pipeline/, da 11-1-2012Does the pipeline have bipartisan support?Much of the really vocal support for this project comes from Republicans. Democrats, not so much, although there are some who want the project. Environmentalists are opposed while labor’s

AFL-CIO has decided not to take a formal position. Senate Democrats who like the project are Max Baucus D-Mont., Jon

Tester D-Mont., Mary Landrieu D-La., Mark Pryor, D-Ark., and Mark Begich, D-Alaska, Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Kent

Conrad, D-N.D. We queried our delegation. Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley are opposed. Rep. Earl Blumenauer was among 32 House Democrats who sent a letter urging the State Department to reject the route. Schrader is opposed to the expedited process, but not necessarily against — or for — the project. We don’t think the support of one Democrat or one Republican makes a proposal bipartisan, but it’s clear some Democrats are on board with the project. If we had to picture a bipartisan meter, the needle probably would surpass the halfway mark but fall short of 75 percent .

West Coast 2012November Update

1NC China DA

Rejecting Keystone means Canada will sell tar sands to China insteadBill Walker, former comm. strategist @ leading env. orgs., 1-18-2012, “Decision by Obama Won’t Keep Oil from Flowing”, http://www.climatecentral.org/blogs/obamas-rejection-of-keystone-xl-itself-wont-keep-tar-sands-oil-out-of-the-u/, da 11-1-2012The fact is that the U.S. doesn’t need tar sands oil. Fuel consumption is flat and will continue to decline as cars

become more fuel-efficient. At the same time, domestic oil production is reaching historic highs. It just doesn’t make sense for TransCanada to invest $7 billion in a pipeline to supply a declining market. Tar sands oil production is projected to double by 2020, so the Canadian oil industry desperately needs access to growth markets. To try to push the U.S. into permitting the pipeline, the Canadian government has threatened to play the China card. If Keystone is rejected, they say, they’ll simply sell the oil to fuel-thirsty China. Another Canadian company, Enbridge Energy, wants to build the Northern Gateway pipeline to carry tar sands oil to the West Coast for export to China and other Asian markets. That pipeline wouldn’t cross American soil, so U.S. approval is not needed.

Selling tar sands to China is key to offset coal use – solves warmingWinnie Hwo, clean energy campaigner @ David Suzuki Foundation, 3-5-2012, “Should Canada sell its tar sands oil to China? It is a decision Canadians need to make”, David Suzuki Foundation, http://www.davidsuzuki.org/blogs/climate-blog/2012/03/should-canada-sell-its-tar-sands-oil-to-china-it-is-a-decision-canadians-need-to/, da 11-1-2012Will selling tar sands oil to China help that country reduce its greenhouse gas emissions? Dr. Wenran Jiang argues it will. In a talk at UBC titled

"Putting Environment into the Canada-China Energy Equation", Dr. Jiang said China burns lots of coal and burning coal creates high levels of greenhouse gas emissions. If Canada sells more tar sands bitumen to China, he said, we can help China lower its GHG emissions because burning oil creates fewer emissions than burning coal. Dr. Jiang — who is the MacTaggart Chair at the University of Alberta, a senior adviser to the Alberta government and a frequent contributor to the Financial Post and CBC — gave his 90-minute presentation as the first of the China in Global Perspective: The Energy-Sustainability Nexus series

hosted by the Institute of Asian Research, with Carbon Talks, the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions and the Liu Centre for Global Issues. Since 2006, China has surpassed the U.S. as the world's top overall greenhouse gas emitter. Although China's current per capita GHG emissions are 6.8 tonnes per year, lower than the U.S.'s 16.9 tonnes and Canada's 16.15 tonnes a year, at the existing rate of industrial and domestic growth in China, per capita GHG emissions could surpass those of the U.S. by 2017. Xie Zhenhua, vice chair of China's National Development and Reform Commission,

said last year that this is not an option. China's GHG emissions and addiction to coal need to be reined in .

Warming is real, anthropogenic and causes extinctionDon Flournoy, PhD/MA UT, Telecomm Prof @ Scripps, January 2012, “Solar Power Satellites,” Springer Briefs in Space Development, p. 10-11In the Online Journal of Space Communication , Dr. Feng Hsu, a NASA scientist at Goddard Space Flight Center, a research center in the forefront of science of space and Earth, writes, “The evidence of global warming is alarming,” noting the potential for a catastrophic planetary climate change is real and troubling (Hsu 2010 ) . Hsu and his NASA colleagues were engaged in monitoring and analyzing climate changes on a global scale, through which they received first-hand scientific information and data relating to global warming issues, including the dynamics of

polar ice cap melting. After discussing this research with colleagues who were world experts on the subject, he wrote: I now have no doubt global temperatures are rising, and that global warming is a serious problem confronting all of humanity . No matter whether these trends are due to human interference or to the cosmic cycling of our solar system, there are two basic facts that

are crystal clear: (a) there is overwhelming scientific evidence showing positive correlations between the level of CO2 concentrations in Earth’s atmosphere with respect to the historical fluctuations of global temperature changes; and (b) the overwhelming majority of the world’s scientific community is in agreement about the risks of a potential catastrophic global climate change. That is, if we humans continue to ignore this problem and do nothing, if we continue dumping huge quantities of greenhouse gases into Earth’s biosphere, humanity will be at dire risk (Hsu 2010 ) . As a technology risk assessment expert, Hsu says he can show with some confidence that the planet will face more risk doing nothing to curb its fossil-based energy addictions than it will in making a fundamental shift in its energy

supply. “This,” he writes, “is because the risks of a catastrophic anthropogenic climate change can be potentially the extinction of human specie s , a risk that is simply too high for us to take any chances” (Hsu 2010 )

West Coast 2012November Update

West Coast 2012November Update

China DA – Uniqueness

Keystone rejection turns Canada to sell to China insteadJoe Nocera, 2-6-2012, “Poisoned Politics of Keystone XL,” NYT, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/opinion/nocera-the-poisoned-politics-of-keystone-xl.html, da 11-1-2012In Canada, the Keystone XL controversy has created a surprising new resolve. “Keystone was a transformative turning point in terms of how Harper sees the bilateral relationship,” says Fen Hampson, a professor of international affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa. Instead of blithely assuming the United States would purchase its oil, Canada is now determined to find diverse buyers so it won’t be held hostage by American politics. Hence, the newfound willingness to do business with China. Canada has concluded that it simply can’t expect much from the United States, even on an issue that would seem to be vital to our own interests.

Canada will sell to China insteadTina Korbe, reporter, 4-3-2012, “Harper: Thanks to Obama’s “no” on Keystone, the price of Canadian crude will go up for the U.S.”, Hot Air, http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/03/harper-thanks-to-obamas-no-on-keystone-the-price-of-canadian-crude-will-go-up-for-the-u-s/, da 11-1-2012In an interview with former U.S. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) in D.C. yesterday, Harper explained that Canada will now seek to expand its export market to Asia and will also cease to supply oil to the United States at a discounted rate. “Look, the very fact that a ‘no’ could even be said underscores to our country that we must diversify our energy export markets,” Harper told Harman in front of a live audience of businesspeople, scholars, diplomats, and journalists. … Harper also told Harman that Canada has been selling its oil to the United States at a discounted price. So not only will America be able to buy less Canadian oil even if Keystone is eventually approved, the U.S. will also have to pay more for it because the market for oilsands crude will be more competitive. “We have taken a significant price hit by virtue of the fact that we are a captive supplier and that just does not make sense in terms of the broader interests of the Canadian economy,” Harper said.

Canada is shipping to China instead nowTheophilos Argitis and Jeremy Van Loon, 1-19-2012, “Obama’s Keystone Denial Prompts Canada to Look to China Sales,” Bloomberg, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-19/canada-pledges-to-sell-oil-to-asia-after-obama-rejects-keystone-pipeline.html, da 11-1-2012President Barack Obama’s decision yesterday to reject a permit for TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL oil pipeline may prompt Canada to turn to China for oil exports.¶ Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in a telephone call yesterday,

told Obama “Canada will continue to work to diversify its energy exports,” according to details provided by Harper’s office.

Canadian Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver said relying less on the U.S. would help strengthen the country’s “financial security.”¶ The “decision by the Obama administration underlines the importance of diversifying and expanding our markets, including the growing Asian market,” Oliver told reporters in Ottawa.¶ Currently, 99 percent of Canada’s crude exports go to the U.S., a figure that Harper wants to reduce in his bid to make Canada a “superpower” in global energy markets.

West Coast 2012November Update

China DA – Coal Outweighs Tar Sands

Coal is the biggest internal link to warming – makes the difference for extinctionAndrew Weaver, Prof and Canada Research Chair, 2-21-2012, “Our New Study: Global Warming From Coal Worse than Oil Sands,” Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/andrew-weaver/eu-law-oil-canada_b_1288264.html, da 11-1-2012In other words: Coal presents a climate challenge that is much greater than that presented by the oil sands. Our overarching conclusion is that as a society, we will live or die by our future consumption of coal. The idea that we're going to somehow run out of coal, natural gas, and other fossil fuels is misplaced. We'll run out of our ability to live on the planet long before we run out of them. Some might point out that our published calculations do not account for the additional greenhouse gases arising from the extraction, transportation, and refining of the tar sand resource. This was deliberate. The so-called "wells-to-wheels" approach to tar-sands mining includes the natural gas, diesel, and coal emissions that arise during extraction and refining, together with the transportation of the oil. However, these would come from the other resource pools and shouldn't be double-counted. The relative mix of such fuels would obviously change in the future as well. We wanted to be consistent to ensure that emissions and subsequent warming from all resources were calculated the same way.

Coal emissions are much worse than tar sandsHuffington Post, 2-20-2012, “Climate Change: Coal, Not Oilsands The Real Bad Guy Says Study”, http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/02/19/coal-oilsands-climate-change_n_1287693.html, da 11-1-2012One of the world's top climate scientists has calculated that emissions from Alberta's oilsands are unlikely to make a big difference to global warming and that the real threat to the planet comes from burning coal. "I was surprised by the results of our analysis," said Andrew Weaver, a University of Victoria climate modeller, who has been a lead author on two reports from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "I thought it was larger than it was." In a commentary published Sunday in the prestigious journal Nature, Weaver and colleague Neil Swart analyze how burning all global stocks of coal, oil and natural gas would affect temperatures. Their analysis breaks out unconventional gas, such as undersea methane hydrates and shale gas produced by fracking, as well as unconventional oil sources including the oilsands. They found that if all the hydrocarbons in the oilsands were mined and consumed, the carbon dioxide released would raise global temperatures by about .36 degrees C. That's about half the total amount of warming over the last century. When only commercially viable oilsands deposits are considered, the temperature increase is only .03 degrees C. In contrast, the paper concludes

that burning all the globe's vast coal deposits would create a 15-degree increase in temperature. Burning all the abundant natural gas would warm the planet by more than three degrees. Governments around the world have agreed to try to keep warming to two degrees.

Oilsands transition is key to solve warmingHuffington Post, 2-20-2012, “Climate Change: Coal, Not Oilsands The Real Bad Guy Says Study”, http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/02/19/coal-oilsands-climate-change_n_1287693.html, da 11-1-2012"The conventional and unconventional oil is not the problem with global warming," Weaver said. "The problem is coal and unconventional natural gas." He said his analysis suggests it is an increased dependence on coal — not the oilsands — that governments have to worry about. As well, there's so much gas in the world that it will also cause problems despite the fact it emits less carbon than oil. "One might argue that the best strategy one might take is to use our oil reserves wisely, but at the same time use them in a way that weans us of our dependence on coal and natural gas," Weaver said. "As we become more and more dependent on these massive reserves, we're less and less likely to wean ourselves away from them."

West Coast 2012November Update

China DA – China Key Emissions

Chinese coal is the key internal link to warmingBloomberg News, 3-3-2012, “China Beats U.S. With Power From Coal Processing,” http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-27/china-beats-u-s-with-power-from-coal-processing-trapping-carbon.html, da 11-1-2012Scientists say China must act now. The world has just two or three decades to avoid irreversible climate change, says Kelly Sims Gallagher, an energy professor at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, and author of two books on pollution.

“If the Chinese don’t dramatically reduce carbon emissions from coal, there’s no way we can make a dent in climate change globally in the time period that matters,” Gallagher says. David Fridley, at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, says it may already be too late to avert higher temperatures, rising seas and melting glaciers. He says China’s emissions won’t stop increasing until its population peaks at 1.45 billion in 2030 -- that’s 15 years after he predicts immutable global warming. “If global emissions don’t start declining after 2015, all we can do is adapt to a world that will be highly disrupted,” he says.

Reducing Chinese emissions is key to prevent the tipping pointKarl Hallding, et al, Commission on Sustainable Development, February 2009, “A Balancing Act: China’s Role in Climate Change,” SEI International, http://www.sei-international.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/china-cluster/chinacluster_abalancingact.pdf, da 11-1-2012China is crucial for success in keeping global warming within the 2°C bracket. As one of the most carbon intensive economies in the world China’s low-cost mitigation potentials are extensive, but fully realising those potentials requires transformative changes. A giant leap is required to move from the so-called reference or baseline scenarios to the level of emission reduction that is in line with reaching a global 2°C target. Yet to reach the reference or baseline scenarios already assumes a “grand achievement” of China’s national ambition, which is far from certain and requires further sharpening of policies and effectiveness in their implementation. (See Figure 1) China’s emissions would have to peak around 2020 to keep the world on track towards a 2°C target. The most ambitious vision from the Chinese economist Hu Angang argues that the peak should occur by 2020 and no later than 2030, and that by 2050 China should be able to cut its emissions by 50 percent compared to 1990 levels. Calculations for China using the Greenhouse Development Rights approach 2 indicate that the global share of emissions from China would have to peak at about eight GtCO2 by 2015 and decrease to just over four by 2030 if global warming were to be kept within a 2°C bracket. Out of this China’s own responsibility would amount to seven GtCO2 while the remaining three would be subject to international responsibility

China is key to warmingKarl Hallding, et al, Commission on Sustainable Development, February 2009, “A Balancing Act: China’s Role in Climate Change,” SEI International, http://www.sei-international.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/china-cluster/chinacluster_abalancingact.pdf, da 11-1-2012The consequences of China standing outside the global process would be dire. It would signal that China does not take the climate threat seriously, and would thwart the world’s chances to solve the climate crisis. Without China as an active partner in a global climate compact the potential for global low-carbon economic development would also be reduced, particularly if the threats of carbon related border tax

adjustments were to become a reality, or if China were hindered in its export of affordable low-carbon products to OECD markets. China’s ability and willingness to slow the growth of its carbon emissions, reaching a point within the coming couple of

decades where total emissions start declining, is crucial for the success of a global effort to come to grips with the climate crisis. It is imperative, therefore, that the international community reaches a deeper understanding of the role that climate and energy security play in China’s development and emergence as a global economic, political and cultural power.

West Coast 2012November Update

China DA – Alternative Energy Doesn’t Solve

Chinese coal outweighs any benefit from alternative energyJonathan Watts, 1-12-2012, “China's renewables surge dampened by growth in coal consumption”, Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/12/china-renewable-energy-coal-consumption, da 11-1-2012China tripled its solar energy generating capacity last year and notched up major increases in wind and hydropower, government figures showed this week, but officials are still struggling to cap the growth in coal burning, which is the biggest source of carbon dioxide emissions in the world. The latest evidence of China's promotion of renewable energy has been welcomed by climate activists, but they warn that the benefits are being wiped out by the surge in coal consumption. After burning an extra 95m tonnes last year, China will soon account for half the coal burned on the planet. This has alarmed state planners concerned about the impact of air pollution and climate change, but their efforts to cap the nation's energy consumption are said to have run into resistance from local governments who fear restrictions on economic growth.

Chinese coal emissions are key – advances elsewhere won’t matterJames Taylor, 1-25-2012, “New Emissions Data Dampen Global Warming Fears”, Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2012/01/25/new-emissions-data-dampen-global-warming-fears/, da 11-1-2012Moreover, U.S. emissions restrictions would have no real-world climate impact. China alone emits more carbon dioxide than the entire Western Hemisphere combined. Chinese emissions are rising at a pace of roughly 10% per year and have more than doubled since 2000. China alone is responsible for 75% of the growth in global emissions since 2000. Even if the United States completely and immediately eliminated all carbon dioxide emissions, in less than a decade China would add more new emissions than what the United States eliminated. Importantly, China has insisted over and over again that it will not accept carbon dioxide restrictions regardless of what the United States and the rest of the world does.

Chinese emissions are key to global stabilityPaul Denlinger, consultant specializing in the China market who is based in Hong Kong, 7-20-2010, “Why China Has To Dominate Green Tech,” Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/sites/china/2010/07/20/why-china-has-to-dominate-green-tech/, da 11-1-2012On the policy level, the Chinese government has to perform a delicate balancing act, it has to balance the desire of many Chinese to live a Western lifestyle, together with its high energy consumption and waste, with the need to preserve the environment, since China, and the world, would suffer enormous damage if 1.3 billion people got all their energy needs from coal and oil, the two most widely used fossil fuels. China’s political and social stability depends on finding the right balance, since the party has an implicit mandate: it will deliver economic growth to the Chinese people.

West Coast 2012November Update

China DA – Impact – Warming = Extinction

Linear risk of the impact based on fuel choice – we have to keep CO2 concentrations under 500ppmJames Hansen, dir. NASA Goddard Inst., 5-9-2012, “Game Over for the Climate,” NYT, www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/opinion/game-over-for-the-climate.html?_r=2, da 11-1-2012We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. The right amount keeps the climate conducive to human life. But add too much, as we are doing now, and temperatures will inevitably rise too high. This is not the result of natural variability , as some argue. The earth is currently in the part of its long-term orbit cycle where temperatures would normally be cooling. But they are rising — and it’s because we are forcing them higher with fossil fuel emissions .¶ The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 280 parts per million to 393 p.p.m. over the last 150 years. The tar sands contain enough carbon — 240 gigatons — to add 120 p.p.m. Tar shale, a close cousin of tar sands found mainly in the United States, contains at least an additional

300 gigatons of carbon. If we turn to these dirtiest of fuels, instead of finding ways to phase out our addiction to fossil fuels, there is no hope of keeping carbon concentrations below 500 p.p.m. — a level that would ,

as earth’s history shows, leave our children a climate system that is out of their control.

Emissions cause the apocalypseJames Hansen, dir. NASA Goddard Inst., 5-9-2012, “Game Over for the Climate,” NYT, www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/opinion/game-over-for-the-climate.html?_r=2, da 11-1-2012GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada

would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”¶ If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.¶ Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in

the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk .¶ That is the long-term

outlook. But near-term, things will be bad enough. Over the next several decades, the Western United States and the semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semi-permanent drought, with rain, when it does come, occurring in

extreme events with heavy flooding. Economic losses would be incalculable. More and more of the Midwest would be a dust bowl. California’s Central Valley could no longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to unprecedented levels.¶ If this sounds apocalyptic, it is. This is why we need to reduce emissions dramatically .

Warming outweighs – magnitude and timeframe Tom Burke, former statutory advisor to the British Government on biodiversity and member of the European Environmental Bureau, 1-29-2008, “Climate change and health,” http://www.e3g.org/index.php/programmes/climate-articles/climate-change-and-health/, da 11-1-2012There are three ways in which climate change is different from any other problem that humanity has ever faced. The first is the sheer scale of the problem. Climate change threatens to undermine the prosperity, security and well being of literally every single one of the six and a half billion people on the planet. No other problem does this. Millions of us are threatened daily by crime and conflict, but

millions more lead lives of peaceful security. Many more of us lead poorly educated lives of unhealthy poverty but millions of others lead lives of well educated, healthy affluence. No-one will escape the consequences of a rapidly changing climate. Second is the urgency. To have any chance of avoiding dangerous climate change total global carbon emissions have to peak within a decade and then decline rapidly. And they have to do this while meeting the rapidly expanding need for energy to fuel economic development. No-one will trade-off energy security for climate security so we must achieve both together. Because agriculture, deforestation and land-use changes produce large carbon emissions which are very difficult to control this means, in effect, that we must develop a carbon neutral global energy system by around the middle of the century. This will require transformational changes in energy technologies on a scale that makes the Apollo or Manhattan Projects look unambitious.

West Coast 2012November Update

Transportation Infrastructure T 1NC

A. Interpretation – Transportation infrastructure is fixed infrastructure for moving people and goods by air, water road and rail – pipelines are excludedUnited States Chamber of Commerce, 9-23-2010, “Transportation Performance Index – Summary Report” http://www.uschamber.com/sites/default/files/lra/files/LRA_TPI%20_Summary_Report%20Final%20092110.pdf, da 11-1-2012It is important to establish a definition of transportation infrastructure in order to establish the ¶ scope of the index.General Definition: Moving people and goods by air, water, road, and rail. ¶ Technical Definition: The fixed facilities―roadway segments, railway tracks, public ¶ transportation terminals, harbors, and airports―flow entities―people, vehicles, container units,¶railroad cars―and control systems that permit people and goods to traverse geographical space¶ in a timely, efficient manner for an intended purpose. Transportation modes include highway,¶public transportation, aviation, freight rail, marine, and intermodal.Note that pipeline infrastructure is not included in this definition. For purposes of the InfrastructurePerformance Index it is considered an element of energy infrastructure.

B. Violation – Keystone XL is a pipeline – energy infrastructure is distinct from transportation infrastructureMSCI Barra, April 2008, “MSCI Infrastructure Indices Methodology,” p. 22.1. Infrastructure Sectors1 and Corresponding GICS® Sub-industriesThe infrastructure indices are dividedinto five infrastructure sectors namely 1)Telecommunication Infrastructure, 2) Utilities, 3) Energy Infrastructure, 4) Transportation Infrastructure and 5) SocialInfrastructure.

C. Reasons to Prefer

1. Limits – Including pipelines explodes the topic – could have a pipeline for hundreds of types of substances. Our interpretation narrows the focus to core infrastructure

2. Ground – Pipelines if a completely different set of literature than infrastructure that moves goods and people – pipelines lets them spike out of all of our ground

3. Intent to Define – our evidence sets a clear brightline for what is and isn’t topical and has an explicit intent to define

D. Voter for fairness and education

West Coast 2012November Update

Courts Neg – Fisher v Texas Court Capital DA

West Coast 2012November Update

1NC Fisher v Texas DA 1/2

The court will strike down affirmative action now – they have enough political capital after the ACAJosh Gerstein, 7-3-2012, “Liberals fear the John Roberts rebound,” Politico, http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=5F132D7E-718E-4CFA-8605-7FADCB0CE654, da 11-1-2012Liberals who celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision on health care may be nursing an ugly hangover after the justices

dive back into their work this fall, with a docket likely to be loaded with controversial cases. And left-leaning courtwatchers are already

worried about the jurist who brought them such relief last week: Chief Justice John Roberts. Some liberals contend that Roberts’s surprise crossover on the health care law has given him a free hand to craft and sign onto a slew of conservative opinions next year

without suffering much of a public drubbing from Democrats and the press. With one major case, Roberts may have inoculated himself and the court against charges of partisanship. The chief will have plenty of chances to make his

mark in the next term. Already, the justices are planning to delve into the politically charged issue of affirmative action. They may well add hot-button disputes over same-sex marriage rights and voter ID laws. And the court could even take up the constitutionality of the landmark law Congress passed nearly half a century ago to guarantee African-Americans equal access to the polls: the Voting Rights Act. The looming slate of cases could have far-reaching impact for the nation. Liberals and President Barack Obama’s administration have strong reason to expect at least some big

disappointments, despite the jubilation they felt when Roberts joined with the court’ s liberal wing to uphold Obama’s health care law. Conservatives could be in line for a series of major wins . “I wonder whether some of the liberals who are pouring effusive praise on the chief justice are

going to feel the same way a year from now,” Duke University law professor Neil Siegel said. Caroline Fredrickson of the American Constitution Society, a liberal lawyers’ group, said the upcoming term will provide far greater definition to the Roberts Court. “A lot of us were considering this term to be an incredible blockbuster because of the scope of cases in front of the court,” Fredrickson said. “The next term is looking to be a close second, if not tied, in terms of its impact. … I’m not sure we now have very much — or have any — cause for optimism simply because the Affordable Care Act was upheld.” George Washington University law

professor Jeffrey Rosen was even more blunt about Roberts’s new leeway. “He has now increased his political capital that will allow him to continue to move the Court in a conservative direction in cases involving affirmative action and the

Voting Rights Act, both of which he may well strike down next year by 5-4 votes,” Rosen wrote in The New Republic.

The aff drains limited court political capitalErnest A. Young, Law Prof @ Texas, 1999, “The Supreme Court Review, State Sovereign Immunity and the Future of Federalism,” Sup. Ct. Rev. 1, p. npThe opportunity cost of immunity rulings. The first reason, and the simplest, is that the Court has limited political capital . n261

As Dean Choper has argued, "the federal judiciary's ability to persuade the populace and public leaders that it is right and they are wrong is determined by the number and frequency of its attempts [*59] to do so, the felt importance of the policies it disapproves, and the perceived substantive correctness of its decisions."

n262 There is thus likely to be, at some point, a limit on the Court's ability to continue striking down federal statutes in the name of states' rights. n263 To the extent that this limit exists, then the Court's extended adventure in aggressive enforcement of state sovereign immunity will trade off with its ability to develop a meaningful jurisprudence of process or power federalism. If protecting state authority to regulate private conduct is the key to a viable state/federal balance, then a considered reaffirmation, explanation, or extension of Lopez may do more good than another expansion of Seminole Tribe. "Political capital," of course, is a pretty vague concept. It might be that the Court's ability to enforce federalism limits is more like muscles than money: it atrophies unless it is exercised regularly. n264 The National League of Cities story arguably illustrates this phenomenon, in that the Court's failure to apply the doctrine to check federal power in a series of subsequent cases may have helped lead to the outright rejection of the doctrine in Garcia. n265 The important point, however, is

that the Justices who matter most on these issues tend to think in terms of limited capital and worry about judicial actions that may draw down the reserves. n266 Political capital [*60] is thus likely to function as an internal constraint on the Court's willingness repeatedly to confront Congress.

West Coast 2012November Update

1NC Fisher v Texas DA 2/2

Striking down affirmative action sparks a paradigm shift to a post-racial society Sarah Cueva, 10-14-2012, “Race-based admissions must end,” Daily Trojan, http://dailytrojan.com/2012/10/14/race-based-admissions-must-end/, da 11-1-2012The future of race-based college admissions once again lies in the hands of U.S. Supreme Court justices, who are currently considering a case challenging the University of Texas

at Austin for its inclusion of race as a factor in the admissions process. The case, Fisher v. The University of Texas at Austin,was brought by a Caucasian applicant, Abigail Fisher, who was rejected by UT in 2008 and is now claiming that the university discriminated

against her based on her race in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. If the court were to rule in Fisher’s favor, against the university’s current policy of race-based affirmative

action, their decision would be a victory for equality of opportunity for all hard-working citizens, regardless of the color of their skin. This would effectively move society closer toward an age in which people are truly judged based on the content of their character. Last Wednesday, the justices began deliberating over affirmative action’s constitutionality, hearing oral arguments from both parties. A ruling that agrees with Fisher could lead to the adoption of race-neutral policies in public universities across the nation and for the sake of integrity and fairness in universities

and the rest of society, the court must do so. The court must consider how the UT Austin admissions process works and if it is constitutional. A state law mandates that all Texas high school seniors who rank in the top 10 percent of their class are accepted. The remaining applicants are considered based on traditional factors such as grades, standardized test scores, extracurricular activities — and race. UT defends its use of race-based admissions as a means to diversify its student body. Affirmative action has long served that beneficial purpose. But college is a time

when young people should be recognized for their positive attributes and potential contributions to the world, whatever color their skin might be. Emphasizing race as a factor of admission reduces applicants to mere statistics, re-drawing the very color lines that affirmative action aims to dissolve . Race is

not, nor will it ever be, an accurate predictor of the contributions an applicant would make if accepted to a university. An additional harm is that race-based affirmative action promotes the myth that individuals of historically disadvantaged backgrounds need the government as their protector and caretaker. These policies keep

individuals dependent on the government for success rather than free them from discrimination. This fosters continued divisions along racial lines, focusing on the physical appearance of individuals

instead of emphasizing their accomplishments. To accept an applicant who is less qualified than another because he or she is a member of an ethnic minority contradicts what universities stand for, especially in a country that values hard work and is expected to award individuals based

on merit. If America is to move into a truly post-racism age in which people do not group themselves into narrow categories of ethnicity, the court must rule that UT’s policy is unconstitutional. As America advances into an age of

globalization, it remains counterintuitive and anachronistic to still be hung up on racial identification. Affirmative action policies keep the wounds of inequalities fresh, creating an endless cycle of racial tensions that detract attention from who individuals are beyond their skin color. The decision made in this case could do one of two things: continue discriminatory policies in university admissions and remain rooted in a close-minded past, or

move society forward toward a future that emphasizes true equality of opportunity. Only once this paradigm shift occurs will the United States will break in to a post-racism era in where people are rewarded for their character and achievements rather than for surface-level

and predetermined qualities such as skin color. There is no better place for this to take place than the nation’s universities, and the Supreme Court must make the decision that will spark this crucial shift.

You should reject racism in every instanceJoseph Barndt, Dismantling Racism: The Continuing Challenge to White America, 1991, p. 155-56To study racism is to study walls. We have looked at barriers and fences and limitations, ghettos and prisons. The prison of racism confines us all, people of color and white people alike. It shackles the victimizer as well as the

victim. The walls forcibly keep people of color and white people separate from each other; in our separate prisons we are all prevented from achieving the human potential that God intends for us. The limitations imposed on people of color by poverty, subservience, and powerlessness are cruel, inhuman, and unjust; the effects of uncontrolled power, privilege, and greed, which are the marks of our white prison will inevitably destroy us as well. But we have also seen that the walls of racism can be dismantled. We are not

condemned to an inexorable fate, but are offered the vision and the possibility of freedom. Brick by brick, stone by stone, the prison of individual, institutional, and cultural racism can be destroyed. You and I are urgently called to join the efforts of those who know it is time to tear down, once and for all, the walls of racism. The danger of self-destruction seems to be drawing ever more near. The results of centuries of national and worldwide conquest and colonization, of military buildups and violent aggression, of overconsumption and environmental destruction may be reaching the point of no return. A small and predominantly white minority of global population derives its power and privilege from sufferings of the vast majority of peoples of color. For the sake of the world and ourselves, we dare not allow it to continue.

West Coast 2012November Update

Uniqueness – Yes Fisher Win

Court will strike down aff action nowCarter Lockwood, 10-18-2012, “Prepare For The Results Of Fisher V. Texas,” Flat Hat News, http://flathatnews.com/2012/10/18/prepare-for-the-results-of-fisher-v-texas/, da 11-1-2012However, the Supreme Court may view the case differently. The court is now viewed widely as being less amenable to affirmative action programs than it was in 2003. Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy all voted to rule unconstitutional certain race-based admission policies in the Grutter case. Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito, who have since joined the court, are seen as sharing similar judicial views, and those five votes would be enough to change the Grutter standards or overrule them entirely. These justices combined to form a majority in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle, a 2007 case whose ruling placed significant restrictions on school districts’ use of race in school assignments. They were all also noticeably skeptical of the University of Texas’s position during last week’s oral arguments in the Fisher case, which may suggest that they are inclined to rule in favor of restricting or banning the use of race in college admissions.

Court will strike down Aff Action now, but it’s controversialMeredith Ramey, 2-27-2012, “Supreme Court to Hear Affirmative Action Case,” The Flat Hat, http://flathatnews.com/2012/02/27/supreme-court-to-hear-affirmative-action-case/, da 11-1-2012The use of affirmative action in college admissions decisions remains controversial, and Feb. 21 the Supreme Court brought the policy back into the spotlight by deciding to hear a case by a white student against the University of

Texas. The case, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, comes in the wake of other landmark cases on the affirmative action policy. In the 2003 case Grutter v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the use of race as a factor in the admissions process after one student felt race was a “predominant” reason why she was not accepted into the University of Michigan Law School. Similar to the student in the Michigan case, Fisher believes she did not receive admission into the University of Texas at Austin because she was not a racial minority. Fisher will graduate from Louisiana State University in May. The ruling of the Fisher case could either reverse or support the decisions of the

Grutter v. Bollinger ruling. The makeup of the Supreme Court is considered more conservative than it was in

2003, which causes concern for some affirmative action advocates, including the College of William and Mary’s own Dean of Admissions Henry Broaddus.

Court will strike down Aff Action nowEdiberto Roman, Law Prof @ Florida Int’l, 2-27-2012, “A Defense of Affirmative Action,” Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ediberto-roman/affirmative-action-defense_b_1302628.html, da 11-1-2012Among the most controversial issues of our day, perhaps with exception of another one of my favorites -- immigration reform -- is affirmative action. It appears that the Supreme Court

of the United States may once and for all end such programs, and with it, society's ongoing debate concerning the propriety of such efforts. Indeed, just a

week ago, the Court granted cert. in Fisher v. University of Texas Austin. In this case, the Court will examine UT's undergraduate admissions program in order to determine whether it comports with the United States Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. If this issue were a matter left to public opinion, many believe there would be little question that affirmative action programs of virtually any kind would be held to be illegal. It is this fact that perhaps makes a defense of such programs challenging, to say the least. Many view such programs to be fostering the advancement of one race ahead of another. As such, affirmative action programs are associated with a repugnant policy of state-sponsored discrimination. Such views at first blush are quite appealing, and frankly understandable if the analysis begins and ends at that point. However, when one examines the controversial issue, such programs' principles, history, and the purpose of said policies shed considerable light. Ultimately, it is principle and context that should carry the legal day on this issue, even if the Sisyphean task of

convincing the public is not achieved. Let us therefore examine the issue as the Court will in all likelihood address, namely, it will examine whether the affirmative

action program in question, here the UT admissions plan, comports with the Constitution's notion of Equal Protection. Though I believe my position should

carry the day, even on the current Court, affirmative action is anything but popular. In fact, the anti-affirmative action stance is evidenced by the words of Justice Clarence Thomas, a jurist who many believe is a beneficiary of affirmative action. He has opined, "There is a moral constitutional equivalence between laws designed to subjugate a race and those that distribute benefits on the basis of race... In each instance, it is racial discrimination, plain and simple." In other words, the anti-affirmative action advocates argue that any efforts to use remedial measures to address is wrong -- this is known as the so-called philosophy of constitutional colorblindness, based largely on Equal Protection Clause and Justice John Marshall Harlan's famous dissent in Plessey v. Ferguson where he declaimed: "[o]ur constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens." Such language appears to be a forceful reason to end affirmative action.

West Coast 2012November Update

Uniqueness – AT: Health Care Thumper

Health care has boosted court political capitalWilliam McGurn, 7-2-2012, “McGurn: Chief Justice Roberts Taxes Credibility,” WSJ, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240527 02304708604577502933866909916.html, da 11-1-2012Justice Scalia's dissent in Casey illuminates a political handicap imposed on conservatives by their own principles. Whereas the liberal belief in a living Constitution allows them to stretch its limits to justify almost any desired outcome, conservatives believe the Constitution imposes real limits. The chief justice's tax argument rankles because no one else in America is buying it: certainly not the conservative dissenters, who firmly reject it, nor the court liberals, who appear to have winked

because it gave them the outcome they wanted. The day after the ruling came down, this newspaper carried an article that explained Justice Roberts's decision this way: "By confounding charges that the court is too partisan, the chief justice might have earned sufficient political capital to move to the right during the next term, when the court will likely confront a host of hot-button issues, including affirmative action, gay marriage and the continued vitality of the Voting Rights Act." If earning "sufficient political capital" is simply a consequence of his ruling, Justice Roberts cannot be blamed. If it was the aim, however, and it led to his voting as chief justice in a way he would not have voted as an associate justice, he has raised rather than resolved questions about the integrity of the Roberts court.

The court viewed upholding Health Care as good for legitimacy – conserved capitalEric R. Claeys, Law Prof @ GMU, Summer 2011, “Obamacare and the Limits of Judicial Conservatism,” National Affairs, http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/obamacare-and-the-limits-of-judicial-conservatism, da 11-1-2012All the same, conservatives on the Supreme Court may worry about protecting the Court's political capital long after the public has forgotten about Obamacare. When Justice Scalia respects precedent, defers to Congress, or refrains from construing indeterminate text, he does so at least in part to preserve the Court's standing in relation to Congress and the president. In Lane, he found it "ill advised" for the Court "to adopt or adhere to constitutional rules that bring us into constant conflict with a coequal branch of Government." In the 1995 case Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, he indicated that he prefers "high walls and clear distinctions" in structural constitutional law because "low walls and vague distinctions will not be judicially defensible in the heat of interbranch conflict." Depending on how he reads the relevant precedents and the term "proper," Scalia (or Alito, or Roberts) may decide that the theory followed by Judges Hudson and Vinson yields walls too low and distinctions too vague. Even if a ruling against the mandate did not provoke a crisis or a political backlash from Obamacare supporters in the short term, these conservatives might worry about its effects on interdepartmental relations over the long term. Opponents of Obamacare may dislike this possibility, but it would be unreasonable for them to blame any judge who shows judicial restraint in relation to Obamacare. After all, even restrained conservatives have a far greater interest in conserving the Constitution than do the legislators and the president who enacted Obamacare. The most constructive thing opponents of Obamacare can do is to persuade the American people to elect more public officials who want to conserve the Constitution, too.

Court legitimacy is uniquely key to Fisher v TexasAllen Rostron, Law Prof @ UMKC, 2012, “Affirmative Action, Justice Kennedy, and the Virtues of the Middle Ground,” NW Law Rev. p. npOf course, the Supreme Court's task is to interpret the Constitution rather than to follow public opinion polls. And on some issues, it will not be possible to give each side half a loaf. But where the Court and the nation are closely divided and a reasonable middle ground does exist, there is surely some value in the Court reaching a result that roughly corresponds to the median of the American public's sentiments. Such a result at least lends legitimacy to the Court's decisions in the eyes of the public. Moreover, the need for legitimacy may be particularly great in Fisher, given that it will be decided a year after the Supreme Court's highly controversial ruling about the fate of the federal health care reform

West Coast 2012November Update

legislation. n36

West Coast 2012November Update

Link – Plan Costs Capital

Ruling on the aff costs capital and trades off with the court’s willingness to rule on Aff ActionTerri Jennings Peretti, Poly Sci Prof @ Santa Clara, 2001, In Defense of a Political Court, p. 152-153To the degree that a justice cares deeply about her policy goals, she will be quite attentive to the degree of support and opposition among interest groups and political leaders for those goals . she will be aware of the re sources (e.g., commitment, wealth, legitimacy) that the relevant interest groups possess who bear the burden of both carrying forward the appropriate litigation necessary for policy success and for pressuring the other branches for full and effective implementation. Only the policy-motivated justice will care about the willingness of

other government officials to comply with the Court’s decisions or carry them out effectively. And only the policy-motivated justice will care about avoiding the application of political sanc tions against the Court that might foreclose all future policy options.

This is particularly true in race casesTerri Jennings Peretti, Poly Sci Prof @ Santa Clara, 2001, In Defense of a Political Court, p. 152-153The school desegregation cases illustrate these points quite nicely. The Court could not pursue the goal of racial integration and racial equality until there was an organized and highly regarded interest group such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People willing and able to help. The Court further was required to

protect that group from political attack, as it did in NAACP v. Alabama’03 and NAACP v. Button.’04 Avoidance of other decisions that might harm its

desegregation efforts was also deemed necessary. Thus, the Court had legal doctrine available to void anti discrimination statutes, but refused to do so on two occasions.’05 (Murphy notes that one justice was said to remark upon leaving the conference discussion, “One bombshell at a time is enough.”’06) The Court additionally softened the blow by

adopting its “deliberate speed” implementation formula. Even so, the Court still needed the active cooperation of a broad range of government officials, in all branches and at all levels of government, in order to carry out its decisions effectively. Thus, significant progress in racial integration in the

southern schools did not in fact occur until Congress and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare decided to act. The Court further had to consider

whether the political opposition that it knew would ensue would be sufficient to result in sanctions against the Court, such as withdrawal of jurisdiction or impeachment.. These considerations arose only in the process of caring deeply about the policy goal at hand—racial equality in public education. They were not a by-product of caring only about the logical or precedential consistency of an opinion or of worrying only about deriving a decision from the Framers' intentions.

The court won’t challenge the government twice in a row – plan costs capitalErnest A. Young, Law Prof @ Texas, November 2004, “The Rehnquist Court’s Two Federalisms,” Texas Law Review, 83 Tex. L. Rev. 1, p. 1Many of these observations support the notion that the federal courts in general - and the Supreme Court in particular - have limited "institutional capital." Whether or not the national political branches are in fact inclined to keep the Court on a short leash after 1937, the Court seems to have drawn from

that decade the lesson that it should exercise self-restraint (in at least some contexts) rather than confront the political branches. Moreover, at least some of the mechanisms Congress and the President can use to check the Court capitalize on the Court's limited resources. The McNollgast model of political checks, for example, emphasizes the political branches' ability to expand the number of potentially noncomplying lower court judges or decrease the Supreme Court's resources for

reviewing lower court decisions as a means of forcing the Court to tolerate deviations from doctrines that the political branches oppose. n480 Those sorts of checks, in essence, force the Court to pick its battles more carefully. Finite institutional capital - and limits on judicial efficacy more generally - is important to

a study of judicial doctrine for two reasons. First, it suggests that courts must at least sometimes make choices between different lines of doctrinal development even if those lines are not inconsistent in principle; the necessity of choice arises simply from courts' inability to pursue too many avenues at once. I have argued in subpart II(A) that an autonomy-based model of federalism doctrine will generally be superior to a sovereignty-based model, but that discussion identified [*101] relatively few respects in which both models could not peacefully coexist. To the extent that judicial institutional capital is limited, however, coexistence in principle may give way to tradeoffs in practice. If the Court wishes - as it should - to pursue an autonomy-based strategy, it may need to back off on state sovereignty. n481

West Coast 2012November Update

Link – Court Capital = Zero Sum

Court capital is zero sum – political science studies proveAnke Grosskopf, Professor of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh, and Jeffrey Mondak, Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois, September 1998, Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 3, p. 635The existence of a strong link between basic values and diffuse support does not necessarily preclude a role for specific decisions, particularly when we seek to understand how support comes

to change over time (e.g., Caldeira and Gibson 1992: 658-61). We believe that any claim that the Supreme Court is fully immune to backlash against controversial decisions can be rejected on a prima facie level. First, consider the extreme case. Were the Supreme Court to make its occasional blockbusters-Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Texas v. Johnson, etc.-the norm by

routinely ruling on the thorniest social questions, we see it as implausible that such actions would bring no cumulative impact on how people view the Court. Second, the Supreme Court's typical mode of operation suggests that justices themselves view institutional support as an expendable political capital

(Choper 1980). That is, the Court recognizes its own political limitations, and thus justices pick their spots carefully when approaching potentially controversial cases. From this perspective, the apparent dominance of democratic values as a determinant of

institutional support (e.g., Caldeira and Gibson 1992) means not that the Court is insulated from backlash, but that strategic justices tread cautiously so as to keep backlash to a minimum. Consequently, how and where we examine whether public response to Supreme Court decisions affects institutional support may shape what answer we find.

Courts perception of wasting capital means they won’t make other controversial rulingsJeffrey Mondak, Poly Sci Chair @ Illinois, April 1991, “Substantive and Procedural Aspects of Supreme Court decisions as Determinants of Institutional Approval,” American Politics Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 2, p. 185The impact of the content of Supreme Court rulings has important ramifications for the future credibility of the Court. Because unpopular decisions exert negative influence on institutional approval, the Supreme Court would seem to be master of its own institutional fate. As Choper (1980) explains: The Court’s prestige

and authority is of a broad institutional nature, and when the Court expends its store of capital it tends to do so in a cumulative fashion... [I]f one or another of the Court’s rulings sparks a markedly hostile reaction, then the likelihood that subsequent judgements will be rejected is greatly increased. (P. 156) The substance of a majority of Court decisions does mirror the policy preferences of the American public (Marshall 1988,1989),

suggesting that the Court has been able to preserve its institutional credibility, whether deliberately or coincidentally,

by minimizing rulings likely to prompt hostile public reaction.

Court views their capital as finiteMichael Heise, Law Prof @ Case Western, 2000, “Preliminary Thoughts on the Virtues of Passive Dialogue,” Akron Law Review, 34 Akron L. Rev. 73, p. 86-87Professor Paul Tractenberg, long active in the New Jersey school finance litigation, n81 identifies institutional credibility

as an important practical concern for courts. Tractenberg is acutely aware of the institutional stakes involved in active judicial

participation, particularly within the school finance setting. On the one hand he reasons that an active judicial posture might provide political cover for reluctant legislators. After all, politically accountable legislators could point to the state supreme

court and suggest that the justices left them with little choice but to increase school spending. n82 Such a calculation, Professor

Tractenberg correctly notes, risks [*87] depleting the court's limited and valuable "political capital." n83 He goes on

to note that: There are only so many times that the court [the New Jersey Supreme Court] can be portrayed as the dictatorial villain forcing the State to do, in the name of a constitutional mandate, what a majority of its citizens

disfavor before judicial credibility is undermined. n84

West Coast 2012November Update

Link – Court Capital Is Finite

The court considers its capital to be finiteAnke Grosskopf Prof of PoliSci @ U Pitt, and Jeffery Mondak, Prof of PoliSci @ Florida State University, September 1998, "Do Attitudes Toward Specific Supreme Court Decisions Matter?: The Impact of Webster and Texas v. Johnson on Public Confidenct in the Supreme Court," Political Research Quarterly 51.3 The existence of a strong link between basic values and diffuse support does not necessarily preclude a role for specific decisions, particularly when we seek to understand how support comes to change over time (e.g., Caldeira and Gibson 1992: 658-61). We believe that any claim that the Supreme Court is fully immune to backlash against controversial decisions can be rejected on a prima facie level. First, consider the extreme case. Were the Supreme Court to make its occasional blockbusters- Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Texas v. Johnson, etc.- the norm by routinely ruling on the thorniest social questions, we see it as implausible that such actions would bring no cumulative impact on how people view the Court. Second, the Supreme Court’s typical mode of operation suggests that justices themselves view institutional support as an expendable political capital (Choper 1980). That is, the Court recognizes its own political limitations, and thus justices pick their spots carefully when approaching potentially

controversial cases. From this perspective, the apparent dominance of democratic values as a determinant of institutional support (e.g.,

Caldeira and Gibson 1992) means not that the Court is insulated from backlash, but that strategic justices tread cautiously so as to keep backlash to a minimum. Consequently, how and where we examine whether public response to Supreme Court decisions affects institutional support may shape what answer we find.

Loss of capital on the plan spills over to effect other casesDick Howard, Professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, 2001, Judicial Independence in the Age of Democracy, p. 104Justices may have to make tough decisions regarding the impact a judg ment will have on constitutionalism

and a nation’s constitutional culture. Often, judges in the region may have to choose between two evils: make the legally correct decision and face the prospect of no compliance, or make a decision that is not legally or constitutionally sound but saves in stitutional capital for another case . Judges in Central and’ Eastern Europe doubtless are aware of events in countries to their east, where political resistance to constitutional court decrees has often been a manifest problem. After having many presidential decrees annulled by the Constitutional Court of Belarus, the president announced he would not obey the rulings. Some situations have been even worse, resulting in a constitutional court being stripped of important powers. In Kazakhstan, the president was so angered by the Constitutional Court that, in his new constitution, he abolished the court and replaced it with a weak Constitutional Council that he chaired and controlled.56

Judicial capital is finite – one liberal ruling will force the Court to back off another in fear of backlashDavid Adamany, Prof of Law and Poli Sci @ Temple, Western Political Quarterly, Review of Judicial Review and the National Political Process, 1980In protecting individual rights, the Supreme Court is limited by the “fragile character” of judicial review. Judicial policies have periodically met with disobedience, reversal, retaliation, and noncompliance. Losers in the judicial arena mobilize more readily than do winners. Elected officials easily shift blame to the judiciary for their own policies. And public opinion studies show that popular support for the Court is thin, at best. Hence, “the people’s reverence and tolerance is not infinite and the Court’s public prestige and institutional capital is exhaustible.”

West Coast 2012November Update

Link – AT: Plan Builds Capital

Link outweighs link turn – good decisions don’t help proponentsBarry Friedman, Law Prof @ NYU, December 2005, “The Politics of Judicial Review,” Texas Law Review, 84 Tex. L. Rev. 257, p. 327-328The critical question thus becomes how deep the Court's diffuse support among the general public is; for if theory holds, this is

the leash on which the Court operates. Actually, a bungee cord might be a better analogy; for, in operation, the diffuse support hypothesis

suggests that the judiciary can stray a certain distance from public opinion but that ultimately it will be snapped back into line. n393 Testing the length and flexibility of the cord is hard to do, however. It may be that there is greater tolerance for judicial deviation in some directions, such as with regard to the First Amendment. n394 Although the Court's degree of freedom of movement around public opinion may

not be certain, positive scholars are fairly confident that one major determinant is information. The dynamics here are complex, but some

generalities may be possible. Both negative and positive reactions to the Court influence public opinion, but

negative reactions seem to be more intense and have a shorter half-life. n395 Perhaps it is for this reason that the

[*328] less people hear about the Court, the better for it. n396 As time passes, people develop a store of good feelings about the

Supreme Court, reflected in the Court's relatively strong performance in public mood indicators. n397 Commentators who have studied public opinion and the Court regularly advise it to keep a low profile. n398

Timeframe – quick decision of the plan ensures the linkWilliam Marshall, prof of law @ UNC, Fall 2002, 73 U. Colo. L. Rev. 1217, p. 1217It might also be argued that the judicial activism question is misguided because judicial activism is not inherently wrong. Rather, the proper inquiry should simply be whether a case was correctly decided - not whether it was activist. Although I agree that a determination of activism is not the same as a determination of merit (an activist decision is not necessarily wrong, a non-activist decision is not necessarily correct), the activism inquiry can shed light on the merits issue. A decision that overturns a federal law while ignoring precedent, text, history, and jurisdictional limitations would appropriately be subject to an activist critique regardless of result. In addition, one need not be completely in the camps of Alexander Bickel, Robert Nagel, Mark Tushnet, and others to recognize that there is value in judicial restraint. Court overreaching may negatively affect the political capital of the judiciary. Alexander M. Bickel, The Least Dangerous

Branch: The Supreme Court at the Bar of Politics (1962). Abrupt judicial action invalidating politically achieved results may undermine long-term support for the principles the decision was designed to achieve. Robert F. Nagel,

Constitutional Cultures: The Mentality and Consequences of Judicial Review (1989). Courts may well be less receptive to progressive social and economic action than are the political branches. Mark Tushnet, Taking the Constitution Away from the Courts (1999). Finally, the activism critique is important in that it sets rhetorical constraints on actions that might otherwise appear unbounded. The legitimacy of a particular decision cannot be completely appraised without evaluating the deciding court's methodology. Activism is a part of that inquiry.

The court agrees with our link – the plan trades offErnest A. Young, Prof of Law at UT Austin, November 2004, “The Rehnquist Court's Two Federalisms,” 83 Tex. L. Rev. 1, p. 1Whether or not Alexander Hamilton was right to call the judiciary the "least dangerous branch," n451 both contemporary theory and historical experience suggest that courts' ability to defy the national political branches is not unlimited. Those limits bear on federalism doctrine in at least three respects. First, they support, at least to some extent, the notion that

the judiciary has limited institutional capital. If that is true, then courts may not be able to pursue all possible doctrinal avenues at once and may, in consequence, have to choose among them. Second, these limits suggest

that courts should pursue certain kinds of doctrine. In particular, they support doctrine that advances the goal of state autonomy

without forcing direct confrontations by invalidating political branch actions. Finally, the limits on the judiciary's ability to confront the political branches ought to temper our expectations (or fears) of what judicial federalism doctrine can accomplish.

West Coast 2012November Update

Link – AT: Court Winners Win

Court decisions can’t build political capitalFrederick Schauer, Prof @ Harvard, 2004, 92 Calif. L. Rev. 1045, p. 1058-59Examples of the effects of judicial supremacy hardly occupy the entirety of constitutional law. As the proponents of popular constitutionalism properly claim, it is

simply not plausible to argue that all of the Supreme Court's decisions are counter-majoritarian, nor that the Court is unaware of the potential repercussions if a high percentage of its decisions diverges too dramatically from the popular or legislative will. Nevertheless, there is no indication that the Court uses its vast repository of political capital only to accumulate more political capital, and in many areas judicial supremacy has made not just a short-term difference, but a long-term difference as well. Perhaps most obvious is school prayer. For over forty years the Court has persisted in its view that organized prayer in public schools is impermissible under the Establishment Clause n59 despite the fact that public opinion is little more receptive to that view now than it was in 1962. n60 So too with flag burning, where the Court's decisions from the late 1960s n61 to the present have remained dramatically divergent from public and legislative opinion. n62 Or consider child pornography, where the Court's decision in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition n63 flew in the face of an overwhelming congressional majority approving the extension of existing child pornography laws to virtual child pornography. Similarly, in the regulation of "indecency," the Court has spent well over a decade repeatedly striking down acts of Congress that enjoyed overwhelming public and [*1059] congressional support. n64 Most dramatic of all, however, is criminal procedure, where the Supreme Court's decision in Dickerson v. United States, n65 invalidating a congressional attempt to overrule Miranda v. Arizona, n66 underscores the persistent gap in concern for defendants' rights between Congress and the public, on the one hand, and the Supreme Court, on the other.

Timeframe of our link outweighs – can only rebuild capital in the long termJack M. Balkin, Law Prof @ Yale, June 2001, Yale L. J, p. npIn any case, there is no doubt in my mind that the Supreme Court will eventually regain whatever trust and confidence among the American public that it lost in Bush v. Gore. The Supreme Court has often misbehaved and squandered its political capital foolishly. It has done some very unjust and wicked things in the course of its history, and yet people still

continue to respect and admire it. If the Court survived Dred Scott v. Sandford, it can certainly survive this. But that is a long-run estimate. The short run , which I see as the next four to five years, is somewhat different . Because people disagree about the fairness of the 2000

election, the Court's legitimacy is in play. In the short run, its legitimacy is dependent on the other branches of government in ways that it has not been for some time. How people feel about the Court will turn on how they feel about the Bush presidency, because the Court effectively put Bush in office. And how people feel about Bush depends on what the Congress does and how well Bush behaves. This is an interesting moment in American history precisely because the Court's legitimacy is much less in its own hands than it usually is.

Perception outweighs – judges will switch their votes if they think they’re losing capitalThomas E. Baker, Law Prof @ Florida Int’l, 2004, “A Primer on Supreme Court Procedures,” http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publishing/preview/publiced_preview_scprimer.authcheckdam.pdf, da 11-1-2012All documents and briefs are matters of public record. Oral arguments, conversational debates between the lawyers for the parties and the justices, are conducted in public. The decisions are announced in open court and then published. The only secret procedures are the justices’ conference — when the nine meet without any others present to discuss and vote on cases—and their confidential individual work in chambers. The justices are aided by their law clerks in the arduous task of preparing opinions: researching the law, checking the lower court record, studying briefs and legal authorities, and exchanging memoranda with each other to argue points of law and to suggest changes in drafts. Not infrequently, these back-and-forth discussions and negotiations can be extensive and can result in one or more of the justices rethinking an earlier vote, thus shifting the ultimate outcome 180 degrees in a closely decided case.

West Coast 2012November Update

Link – AT: Judges Aren’t Ideological

Judges are strategic – they don’t just decide the factsBarry Friedman, Law Prof @ NYU, December 2005, “The Politics of Judicial Review,” Texas Law Review, 84 Tex. L. Rev. 257, p. 257Virtually all positive scholars agree with attitudinalists that ideology plays an important role in the decision of cases, n84 though many positive [*274] scholars believe that ideological behavior is constrained by other institutional forces. According to these "strategic institutionalists," "It is quite evident that the Justices do not operate simply in a world of their own making, and therefore the contours of judicial institutions must be recognized and they must be situated within [a] larger political environment." n85 Strategic institutionalists believe that judges would like to impose their own policy preferences but that they also must take account of the preferences of "presidents, legislatures, interest groups, and lower courts." n86 "Strategic judges must calculate what others will do and adjust their behavior accordingly." n87

Judges act strategically – the attitudinal model is flawedBarry Friedman, Prof of Law @ NYU, 2005, “The Politics of Judicial Review,” Texas Law Review, 84 Tex. L. Rev. 257, ln1. The Attitudinal Model. - The central tenet of the attitudinal model is that the primary determinant of much judicial decisionmaking is the judge's own values. 75 Judges come onto the bench with a set of ideological dispositions and apply them in resolving cases. As the most notable proponents of the attitudinal model, Jeffrey Segal and Harold Spaeth, explain: "Simply put, Rehnquist votes the way he does because he is extremely conservative; Marshall voted the way he did because he is extremely liberal." 76 Although

methodologies vary, attitudinalists typically use a measure of judicial ideology and then rely on it to predict judicial votes. 77 Often, they also try to control for other factors that might influence [*273] the vote: everything from personal characteristics of the judge (such as race, gender, and prior occupation) 78 to law itself. Attitudinalists claim an enormous degree of success in their predictive endeavor, especially with regard to the Supreme Court. 79 "There is now surpassing empirical evidence in support of [the attitudinal model] of judicial decisionmaking." 80 Segal and Spaeth are able to predict over 70% of Supreme Court Justices' votes based on ideology, and sometimes they do quite a bit better. 81 "For Rehnquist, Blackmun, Brennan and Marshall, simply knowing that a case involves

search and seizure would lead to correct predictions of votes between 78% and 90% of the time." 82 Even in the lower courts, ideology turns out to be a significant determinant of judicial behavior. 83 Virtually all

positive scholars agree with attitudinalists that ideology plays an important role in the decision of cases , 84 though many positive [*274] scholars believe that ideological behavior is constrained by other institutional forces. According to these

"strategic institutionalists," "It is quite evident that the Justices do not operate simply in a world of their own making, and therefore the contours of judicial institutions must be

recognized and they must be situated within [a] larger political environment." 85 Strategic institutionalists believe that judges would like to impose their own policy preferences but that they also must take account of the preferences of "presidents, legislatures, interest groups, and lower courts." 86 "Strategic judges must calculate what others will do and adjust their behavior accordingly." 87

Best studies confirmForrest Maltzman, Poly Sci Prof @ GWU, 1999, Supreme Court Decision-Making, p. 43Perhaps the newest theoretical advance in the study of judicial decision-making is the application of a positive theory of institutions. Just as neoinstìtutionalism

has challenged traditional ways of thinking about legislatures and bureaucracies, so too has a new institutionalism come to challenge legal and

attitudinal approaches to the study of the Supreme Court. Indeed, many students of judicial politics now embrace an approach that recognizes

the role of both policy preferences and institutional constraints in shaping Court outcomes (Baum 1997; Epstein and Knight 1998; Wahibeck, Spriggs, and Maltzman 1998). This approach to the study of judicial decision-making has its roots, of course, in an old favorite of judicial process scholars, Walter

Murphy’s (1964) work on the strategic behavior of Supreme Court justices within institutional constraints.’ Reviving Murphy’s strategic approach of judicial decision-making, these new studies suggest that justices pursue their policy preferences subject to constraints both endogenous and exogenous to the Court. This strategic approach rejects two notions central to alternative views of Court dynamics: first, that justices are sufficiently constrained by legal precedent that their policy preferences have little influence over their actions on the bench, and second, that justices are “unconstrained” and thus they are free to pursue their policy goals. In contrast, strategic justices, in the words of Lee Epstein and Jack Knight, “realize that their ability to achieve their goals depends on a consideration of the preferences of others, of the choices they expect others to make, and of the institutional context in which they act” (1997:4).

West Coast 2012November Update

AT: Aff = 9-0

9-0 decisions cause backlash from congress – triggers our linkJoseph Ignagni, Prof of PoliSci @ UT-Arlington, and James Meernik, Prof of PoliSci @ UNT, 1994, “Explaining Congressional Attempts to Reverse Supreme Court Decisions,” Political Research Quarterly, 47.2, p. 266-367Court Unanimity. The degree of consensus on the Supreme Court also shapes in a sense, the degree of threat to Congress. The enormous weight that accompanies a unanimous Court ruling may very well pose a substantial threat to congressional power and the survival of the unconstitutional legislation. Interestingly, those who study legislative—judicial relations from the Court’s perspective have argued that unanimous rulings are more likely to prevail (Nage 1969. Henschen 1983). Marshall writes. “Unanimous decisions may carry more prestige than nonunanimous rulings. Indeed, when the justices expect their decisions to be challenged, they may even seek

unanimity to stave off anticipated attack (1989: 175). If in fact the Court does anticipate attacks, we would expect to find that unanimous rulings are often followed by a congressional response, for never is the power of Congress more directly threatened than when a united Court strikes down federal legislation. While there would appear to be a prima facie case to be made that divided Court rulings would be more likely to provoke a Congress that takes dissension as an invitation to attack, if, as our theory suggests, that

Congress is motivated by power considerations, unanimous Court rulings against federal law represent significant challenges to the

separation of powers. Therefore, we hypothesize that all unanimous Court decisions provide the Congress with added incentives to strike back at the judicial branch Supreme Court decisions were coded as either unanimous (1) or not unanimous (0). Thus: Hypothesis 5: Unanimous Supreme Court filings increase the probability of a congressional response.

Congress is more likely to backlash against 9-0 decisionsJoseph Ignagni, Prof of PoliSci @ UT-Arlington, and James Meernik, Prof of PoliSci @ UNT, 1994, “Explaining Congressional Attempts to Reverse Supreme Court Decisions,” Political Research Quarterly, 47.2, p. 266-367The age of the legislation the Court overturns and court unanimity both have a significant impact on the chances for congressional reversal and are statistically significant. The derivative at mean for the AGE OF LEGISLA TION variable is .006, which indicates that, for example, for every year that passes between the date of enactment and the year the Court strikes down the legislation, the probability of a congressional response decreases by .6 percent holding all other factors constant at their mean value, Thus, it would appear that the Congress is slightly less attached to legislation the members are unfamiliar with or feel no allegiance to or that has become

irrelevant with the passage of time. Congress, in effect, lets the matter rest with the Court decision. Interestingly, our results indicate that the commonly held belief among judicial scholars concerning the value of the Court presenting a unified front is unfounded . In fact,

from 1954 to 1990 the Congress was more likely to strike back if the decision was unanimous. The derivative

at mean statistic for this variable is 24 which indicates that when the Court is unanimous in overturning federal legislation, the probability of a congressional response increases by 24 percent when holding all other variables constant at their mean value In fact, in 48 percent of the cases where the Court verdict was unanimous, the decision was later reversed by the

Congress, while in only 17 percent of the cases where the verdict was nonunanimous was the decision overturned. These results would seem to show that this institutional defense mechanism does not deter the Congress. The variable measuring ideological conflict, however, is statistically insignificant. Unfortunately when ideological conflict must be measured at the institutional level, we cannot take into consideration contention between the Court and individual Congress members or groups. To determine if our measure was, in fact, partly to blame for our findings we also used the partisan division of Congress and ADA rankings on Congress to measure ideological conflict but still found no relationship.

Can’t control Kennedy – he switches votesCharles Lane, Prof @ Georgetown and Washington Post Supreme Court reporter, 7-2-2006, Washington Post, p. npKennedy, by contrast, has been known to brood or to switch his vote in the middle of a case -- though he is more inclined than O'Connor was to rule broadly once he comes to a conclusion. He is a passionate free-speech advocate, and has a consistent record of opposing

affirmative action. While O'Connor saw herself as a fact-oriented problem-solver, Lazarus says, Kennedy "views himself as a major intellectual force." More than some other justices, "Kennedy sees real values in conflict in the court's cases, and it's a question how you negotiate it , " said Neil Siegel, who served as a Supreme Court law clerk in the 2003-2004 term and now teaches at Duke University's law school. "Sometimes he does it well and skillfully, and sometimes he just can't make up his mind and the legal system gets stuck in a kind of vertigo."

West Coast 2012November Update

AT: Fisher v Texas Oral Arguments Already Happened

Supreme Court doesn’t make a decision immediately after oral arguments and switch votes frequentlyEncarta, 2006, MSNBC Encyclopedia, http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761574302_3/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States.html, da 11-1-2012Justices may take weeks or even months to complete their opinions, and votes may change during this period. The justices circulate drafts of the opinions and sometimes write memos to explain their views. Dissenting justices sometimes decide to go along with the majority, and justices initially in the majority may decide to support the dissenting view. In some cases enough justices change their votes that an opinion that began as the Court’s majority opinion becomes a dissenting opinion. Because the justices can and often do change their votes right up until the moment the decision is publicly announced, there is often a considerable amount of discussion and negotiation to shape the direction, tone, and analysis of the Court’s opinion.

Oral arguments don’t mean anything – decision is released laterThe Rock Hill Herald, 1-15-2006, “Local case may have national impact,” ACC, http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg03887.html, da 11-1-2012The U.S. Supreme Court decided last year to hear the case and will hear oral arguments Feb. 22. A ruling would come several weeks later . The sole issue the highest court in America will decide on is if Holmes was denied his Constitutional right to present a complete defense.

Justices switch votes all the timeKrista Enns, litigation associate in Winston & Strawn's, October 1998, Duke Law Journal, http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?48+Duke+L.+J.+111, da 11-1-2012In order to show that a Justice would have changed her mind if she had heard a different oral argument, Gerawan must show that a reasonable Justice considers oral arguments important. Ample historical evidence exists that suggests that Supreme Court Justices do not firmly decide cases prior to oral argument and that there are many vote switches between the time the Justices read the case briefs and the time the opinion is issued. 186 Gerawan can probably persuade the trial court that oral argument is important to the reasonable Justice. The preponderance of statements made by judges and Justices support the thesis that oral argument is important. 187 Even Justice Scalia, who referred to oral arguments as a "dog and pony show" before his appointment to the Court, has come to regard oral argument as an important part of the appellate process. 188 Consequently, Gerawan can probably establish the threshold for its effort to prove causation.

West Coast 2012November Update

Answers To Fisher v Texas Court Capital DA

West Coast 2012November Update

Yes Affirmative Action

Kennedy will save Affirmative Action now even if Texas policy gets struck downAllen Rostron, Law Prof @ UMKC, 2012, “Affirmative Action, Justice Kennedy, and the Virtues of the Middle Ground,” NW Law Rev. p. npWhile it thus seems likely that the University of Texas policy will be struck down, the larger question is whether Justice Kennedy will simply denounce the Texas approach or instead go further and join the Court's conservative quartet in putting a stop to affirmative action across the board. Based on Kennedy's opinions in previous cases, the answer would be no. Although repeatedly voting with the conservatives in affirmative action cases, Kennedy has always conspicuously avoided signing on to more sweeping denunciations of all government consideration of race.

Kennedy will decide a middle ground position nowAllen Rostron, Law Prof @ UMKC, 2012, “Affirmative Action, Justice Kennedy, and the Virtues of the Middle Ground,” NW Law Rev. p. npOf course, Justice Kennedy might make a surprising turn to the left or right in Fisher . He might decide that even though he dissented in Grutter, that precedent now has the weight of stare decisis behind it, and it would be better for the Court to stand pat and let the remaining time run on Justice O'Connor's 25-year clock. On the other hand, he might decide to eradicate affirmative action entirely, figuring that it is better to firmly shut the door to it rather than leave even a small

crack through which government officials will continually try to squeeze too much. But the most likely outcome is that Kennedy will once again arrive at a middle ground, refusing to put a complete stop to affirmative action, but insisting that government officials must finally realize that rigorous strict scrutiny really and truly will apply.

Kennedy will strike a middle ground nowAllen Rostron, Law Prof @ UMKC, 2012, “Affirmative Action, Justice Kennedy, and the Virtues of the Middle Ground,” NW Law Rev. p. npWhen the Supreme Court hears arguments this fall about the constitutionality of affirmative action policies at the University of Texas , n1 attention will be focused once again on Justice Anthony Kennedy. With the

rest of the Court split between a bloc of four reliably liberal jurists and an equally solid cadre of four conservatives, the spotlight regularly falls on Kennedy, the swing voter that each side in every closely divided and ideologically charged case desperately hopes to attract. Critics condemn Kennedy for having an unprincipled, capricious, and self-aggrandizing style of decision-making. n2 Though he is often decisive in the sense of casting the crucial vote that determines a case's outcome, his opinions can be maddeningly indecisive in the sense of failing to establish clear rules of law. Yet in Fisher v. University of Texas, Kennedy's irresolute nature may prove to be a blessing. By taking a middle-ground position that significantly sharpens judicial scrutiny of affirmative action programs but does not absolutely bar them, Kennedy can finesse the issue in a way that accommodates the American public's conflicted feelings about racial preferences, but simultaneously forces everyone to start thinking more seriously about how racial components of affirmative action can be phased out in a manner that will minimize disruption and bitterness.

West Coast 2012November Update

Aff Action Key Readiness

Affirmative action is key to military readinessTodd Nichols, 3-24-2003, “Don’t undo good done by affirmative action,” Seattle PI, http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Don-t-undo-good-done-by-affirmative-action-1110489.php, da 11-1-2012The Bush administration has decided to support the plaintiffs in this effort despite the fact that the federal government utilizes affirmative action at its own military academies and benefits from the practice at colleges and universities through the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC). The administration's position places in peril our military readiness as well as our nation's greatest civil rights success story.

Affirmative action is key to military readinessTodd Nichols, 3-24-2003, “Don’t undo good done by affirmative action,” Seattle PI, http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Don-t-undo-good-done-by-affirmative-action-1110489.php, da 11-1-2012Senior military officers are well aware that racial sensitivity and the credibility of its officer corps are vital to national security readiness. Enhancement of these qualities demands the inclusion of minority officers in sufficient numbers to affect their colleagues and to be visible to the enlisted ranks. The academies and ROTC programs based in universities around the country are the prime sources of officer candidates .

Affirmative action key to readinessTodd Nichols, 3-24-2003, “Don’t undo good done by affirmative action,” Seattle PI, http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Don-t-undo-good-done-by-affirmative-action-1110489.php, da 11-1-2012Twenty senior retired generals and admirals, including Gens. Norman Schwarzkopf, John Shalikashvili, Wesley Clark and Adm. William J. Crowe, are among those filing friend of the court briefs in support of the University of Michigan. They recognize that our armed forces have become and must remain a meritocracy where any person regardless of station in life can succeed. This success and growing equality of opportunity have made our military readiness unsurpassed. Affirmative action involving qualified candidates has, until now, been recognized as proper in achieving compelling interests. It can hardly be argued that national security is not a compelling national interest. The Supreme Court should not set the clock back on decades of progress by barring consideration of race among qualified candidates in admissions policies at institutions of higher education.

West Coast 2012November Update

Link Turn – Courts Winners Win

Controversial decisions boost court legitimacyDavid Law, Professor Poly Sci @ Washington, March 2009, “A Theory of Judicial Power and Judicial Review,” Georgetown Law Journal, 97 Geo. L.J. 723, p. 723Part IV of this Article discusses a counterintuitive implication of a coordination-based account of judicial power. Conventional wisdom suggests that courts secure compliance with their decisions by drawing upon their store of legitimacy, which is undermined by decisions that are unpopular, controversial, or lack intellectual integrity. n25 Part IV argues that precisely the opposite is true: an unpopular or unpersuasive decision can, in fact, enhance a court's power in future cases, as long as it is obeyed. Widespread compliance with a decision that is controversial, unpopular, or unpersuasive serves only to strengthen the widely held expectation that others comply with judicial decisions. This expectation, in turn, is self-fulfilling: those who expect others to comply with a court's decisions will find it strategically prudent to comply themselves, and the aggregate result will, in fact, be widespread compliance. Part IV illustrates these strategic insights--and the Supreme Court's apparent grasp of them--by contrasting [*734] Bush v. Gore n26 with Brown v. Board of Education n27 and Cooper v. Aaron. n28

Controversial decisions only help the courtDavid Law, Professor Poly Sci @ Washington, March 2009, “A Theory of Judicial Power and Judicial Review,” Georgetown Law Journal, 97 Geo. L.J. 723, p. 723Indeed, the reflexive avoidance of politically divisive or controversial cases--via the political question doctrine, the

acte de government doctrine, and the like n233 --might actually prove a counterproductive choice of strategy for a court keen to consolidate its power. This Article has argued that, contrary to conventional wisdom, controversial decisions have a tendency to enhance, rather than diminish, a court's power, as long as they

are obeyed. n234 Accordingly, a court that already commands obedience and expects more of the same, such as

the United States Supreme Court or the German Bundesverfassungsgericht, has little to fear and perhaps even something to gain from embracing controversy. By contrast, a court that lacks a similarly developed track record, such as a newly established constitutional court in an emerging democracy, faces greater risk that its decisions will be disobeyed and its reputation for obedience stillborn. Should it succeed in deciding such a case, however, it will engender expectations of future obedience that boost its power in subsequent cases. If those gains seem more than commensurate with the risks involved, adjudication becomes a prudent

gamble. A truly strategic court, as opposed to a merely timid one, will recognize that its political environment is characterized not merely by risks, but also by rewards: nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Capital doesn’t affect decisionmaking – our link turn is more likelyAnke Grosskopf, Poly Sci Prof @ Long Island and Jeffrey Mondak, Poly Sci Prof @ Illinois, September 1998, “Do attitudes toward specific supreme court decisions matter? The impact of Webster and Texas v Johnson on Public Confidence in the Supreme Court,” Political Research Quarterly, vol. 51, no 3, p. 633Some evidence supports our political capital perspective, but the empirical record remains unsatisfying. Tanenhaus and Murphy (1981) found that approval of Supreme Court rulings accounted for roughly 15 percent of the little variance in diffuse support they detected. However, due to the nine-year gap between the waves of

their panel survey, the authors could not attribute change in support to any specific court rulings. Caldeira (1986) showed that aggregate confidence in the Court varies in response to judicial actions such as support for defendants' rights, but Caldeira also could not trace this effect to specific decisions. Caldeira subsequently (1987) demonstrated that public response to Supreme Court decisions affected aggregate support for Franklin Roosevelt's court-packing plan. However, because the dependent variable was not support for the Court, these results speak only indirectly to the political capital thesis. Unlike survey-based research, laboratory experiments (Mondak 1991, 1992) provide direct support for the claim that attitudes toward decisions affect assessments of the Court. Unfortunately, the generalizability of such findings is uncertain due to the use of hypothetical scenarios, specialized research contexts, and nonrepresentative (i.e., college student) samples.

West Coast 2012November Update

No Link – No One Cares About Court

No one cares about the court – won’t notice the planNoah Feldman, law prof @ Harvard, 6-17-2012, “Supreme Court’s Super Mondays Don’t Serve Justice,” Bloomberg, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-17/supreme-court-s-super-mondays-don-t-serve-justice.html, da 11-1-2012The club of Supreme Court devotees (OK, junkies) likes to think of the first Monday in October as opening day, and the last Monday in June as game seven of the World Series. But many years, the series is a dud. Most of the cases are technical and unexciting, they enter the casebooks with little fanfare, and the public barely notices. This year will be the exception that proves the rule.

Individual rulings don’t call attention to the courtGregory Caldeira, Professor of Political Science @ Ohio State, December 1986, “Neither the Purse Nor the Sword: Dynamics of Public Confidence in the Supreme Court,” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 80, No. 4, p. 1209In previous work on support for institutions and leaders, scholars have demonstrated the crucial effects of discrete political events and circumstances on the rise and decline of public confidence. For example, Mueller (1973) persuasively argues that crises in foreign affairs result in "rallying-around-the-flag" and a subsequent increase in the popularity of the incumbent chief executive (cf. Parker, 1977). Unfortunately for the purposes of analysis, events normally associated with the Court seldom cause a splash of the dimensions of the Mayaguez incident or the Cuban missile crisis, Particular decisions sometimes do gain a fair amount of attention in the elite media of communications, but few single cases-with the exception of a bombshell such as Dred Scott-have sufficient weight to shift public attitudes one way or the other. Even if we could isolate a number of crises or landmark decisions, the polling organizations have not gathered data on support for the Court often enough to permit a precise reading on the influence of salient events.

The court is shielded from controversyGregory Caldeira, Poly Sci Prof @ Ohio States, June 1998, “On the Legitimacy of National High Courts” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 92, No. 2, p. 343The purpose of this research is to examine theories of diffuse support and institutional legitimacy by testing hypotheses about the interrelationships among the salience of courts, satisfaction with court outputs, and diffuse support for national high courts. Like our predecessors, we are constrained by essentially cross-sectional data; unlike them, we analyze mass attitudes toward high courts in eighteen countries. Because our sample includes many countries with newly formed high courts, our cross-sectional data support several longitudinal inferences, using the age of the judicial institution as an independent variable. We discover that the U.S. Supreme Court is not unique in the esteem in which it is held and, like other courts, it profits from a tendency of people to credit it for pleasing decisions but not to penalize it for displeasing ones. Generally, older courts more successfully link specific and diffuse support, most likely due to satisfying successive, nonoverlapping constituencies.

West Coast 2012November Update

No Link – No Court Spillover

Court capital doesn’t spillover between issuesMartin H. Redish, Law Prof @ Northwestern, and Elizabeth J. Cisar, Law Clerk, December 1991, “If Angels Were To Govern,” 41 Duke L.J. 449, p. 449Choper's assumption that the judiciary's institutional capital is transferable from structural cases to individual rights cases is no more credible. Common sense should tell us that the public's reaction to con- troversial individual rights cases-for example, cases concerning abor- tion,240 school prayer,241 busing,242 or criminal defendants' rights243- will be based largely, if not exclusively, on the basis of its feelings con- cerning those particular issues. It is unreasonable to assume that the public's acceptance or rejection of these individual rights rulings would somehow be affected by anything the Court says about wholly unrelated structural issues.

Court capital is irrelevant - decisions are based on ideologyFrank B. Cross, Law @ UT, and Blake J. Nelson, Poly Sci Prof @ Penn State, 2001, “Strategic Institutional Effects on Supreme Court Decisionmaking,” 95 Nw. U.L. Rev. 1437, p. 1437The normative political model, sometimes called the attitudinal model, contends that judges make decisions so as to advance their political or ideological [*1444] policy ends, without regard to either the demands of the normative legal model or the concerns of other institutions. n39 It is normative in that it assumes that judges are unconstrained and have single-peaked utility functions. In this model, judges decide so as to advance their ideological policy ends, without regard for the formal requirements of law (e.g., constraining precedents and text) and without concern for the reaction of external entities. The political model may find support in legal sources beyond the legal realists and the contemporary critical legal theorists. n40 Supreme Court Justices are commonly characterized as "liberal" or "conservative" - political terms describing the ideological import of their decisions. Significantly, this model of decisionmaking does not necessitate an extremely cynical view of judges, as the political model may reflect subconscious psychology and cognitive dissonance. n41 With the growth of clerk populations, it is easy for "the appellate judge to determine a result based on personal notions of fairness and right, and then to leave to the staff attorney the task of constructing reasons to support that result." n42

Best data supports our argumentFrank B. Cross, Law @ UT, and Blake J. Nelson, Poly Sci Prof @ Penn State, 2001, “Strategic Institutional Effects on Supreme Court Decisionmaking,” 95 Nw. U.L. Rev. 1437, p. 1437The political model can be descriptively accurate, even absent conscious judicial policymaking. In contrast to the normative legal model, considerable empirical data supports the claims of the political model of judicial decisionmaking. Many studies have already been described in the legal literature. n43 Some prominent judges have taken issue with these studies and raised some methodological challenges, n44 though the challenges are readily answered. n45 Perhaps [*1445] the most persuasive evidence can be found in a meta-analysis of studies on judicial decisionmaking conducted by Dan Pinello. n46 He identified 140 research papers that empirically analyzed judicial decisionmaking by party affiliation. A majority of these papers reported data in a manner that could be incorporated in his meta-analysis, and he found that virtually every study showed a positive association between judicial voting and judicial ideology. n47 The studies together contained over 222,000 judicial votes, and the judges' political party explained thirty-eight percent of the variance in their voting.

West Coast 2012November Update

Court Capital Resilient

Court capital is resilientAnke Grosskopf, Poly Sci Prof @ Long Island and Jeffrey Mondak, Poly Sci Prof @ Illinois, September 1998, “Do attitudes toward specific supreme court decisions matter? The impact of Webster and Texas v Johnson on Public Confidence in the Supreme Court,” Political Research Quarterly, vol. 51, no 3, p. 633Opinion about the Supreme Court may influence opinion about the Court's decisions, but is the opposite true? Viewed from the perspective of the Court's justices, it

would be preferable if public reaction to rulings did not shape subsequent levels of support for the Court. If opinion about the Court were fully determined by early political socialization and deeply rooted attachments to democratic values, then justices would be free to intervene in controversial policy questions without risk that doing so would expend political capital. Consistent with this perspective, a long tradition of scholarship argues that the Supreme Court is esteemed partly because it commands a bedrock of public support, or a reservoir of goodwill, which helps it to remain legitimate despite occasional critical reaction to unpopular rulings (Murphy and Tanenhaus 1968; Easton 1965, 1975; Caldeira 1986; Caldeira and Gibson 1992). The sources of this diffuse support are usually seen as rather stable and immune from short-term influences, implying that evaluations of specific decisions are of little or no broad importance. For instance, Caldeira and Gibson (1992) find that basic democratic values, not reactions to decisions, act as the strongest determinants of institutional support.

Individual decisions don’t affect capitalJames L. Gibson, Poly Sci Prof @ Wash. U, et al., April 2003, “Measuring Attitudes toward the United States Supreme Court,” American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 47, No. 2, p. 354Perhaps more important is the rather limited rela- tionship between performance evaluations and loyalty to the Supreme Court. These two types of attitudes are of course not entirely unrelated, but commitments to the Supreme Court are not largely a function of whether one is pleased with how it is doing its job. Even less influential are perceptions of decisions in individual cases. When people have developed a "running tally" about

an institution-a sort of historical summary of the good and bad things an institution has done-it is difficult for any given decision to have much incremental influence on that tally. Insti- tutional loyalty is valuable to the Court precisely because it is so weakly related to actions the Court takes at the moment.

Single decisions don’t matterMartin Redish, Law Prof @ Northwestern, Summer 1997, “Disciplining Congress: The Boundaries of Legislative Power” Federalist Society Symposium, 13 J. L. & Politics 585, p. 585The limited pie theory, associated with Professor Choper, n39 is that the Supreme Court has a limited pie of institutional capital, of institutional goodwill, and if it spends some of that on constitutional federalism, it will be deprived of its opportunity to use that for where it really is needed - individual rights. The reason institutional capital is really needed in individual rights is [*604] primarily that the states can protect themselves in the jungles of the political process, while individuals cannot. To that, my colleague Michael Perry and others have added what implicitly underlies this: that individual rights are simply more important than constitutional federalism. n40 I like to take the position that a true constitutional liberal should strongly believe in adherence to constitutional, not just political, limits on federalism, because federalism serves an important function as a buffer between the government and the individual. The whole idea, the genius of the structure set up by the Framers, was that the system of separation of powers, the system of federalism, and the system of individual rights would all interlock as different fail-safe mechanisms. If federalism and separation of powers are working properly as divisions of government power, tyranny would be prevented, and presumably the number of instances where individuals and government conflict over their rights would be reduced. The story that best illustrates how constitutional federalism can protect against tyranny is the story that I gather is true about Mussolini when he was given a copy of the National Recovery Act, which ultimately was held unconstitutional, and he looks at it and he says in Italian, "Ah, now

there's a dictator." And I think that illustrates how dangerous it is in terms of the values of our constitutional system to vest full power within the federal government. The limited pie theory, as a justification, makes no sense because it assumes a kind of fungibility of institutional capital that just doesn't comport with reality. How people feel about individual rights decisions will not be determined by whether the Supreme Court has said anything about constitutional federalism. Reactions to Roe v. Wade n41 or Miranda v. Arizona n42 are based on people's concerns about those decisions. What the Supreme Court says or doesn't say about constitutional federalism will have little, if any, effect on reactions to those decisions.

West Coast 2012November Update

Lame Duck Updates

West Coast 2012November Update

Hurricane Sandy Thumper

Hurricane prevents perception of plan – knocks out power and dominates news cycle Jonathan Allen, 10-28-2012, “Hurricane Sandy: 5 political questions,” Politico,http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/82987.html, da 11-1-2012Put simply: no one can watch TV if their power’s out. So, so much for inundating them with TV ads. That could mean a lot of wasted energy and misdirected money for Obama, Romney and outside groups in Virginia, Pennsylvania and perhaps other states. For candidates down the ballot, it could mean that their only ads of the cycle, held back to conserve money, won’t be seen at all. Romney’s campaign had already boasted of sitting on millions for a last-minute TV push. Obama’s campaign, too, said it had plenty of cash for a late air assault. But it’s not just the difficulty getting ads in front of viewers. “Frankenstorm” is pretty much all anyone in the affected areas is talking about right now, so it’s even hard for the candidates to get people’s attention.

Sandy outweighs the link – media won’t cover the plan Howard Kurtz, 10-28-2012, Daily Beast, “Hurricane Sandy Upends the Presidential Campaign”, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/28/hurricane-sandy-upends-the-presidential-campaign.html, da 11-1-2012Mitt Romney and Barack Obama have spent months meticulously planning the endgame of reaching enough wavering voters to eke out an Electoral College victory.¶ And now it could all be blown away by a monster storm. If Hurricane Sandy does anywhere near as much damage as forecasters are predicting, it will upend both presidential campaigns and leave millions of voters focused more on personal misery than politics.¶ Oh, and have I mentioned that the media love extreme weather?¶ The so-called Frankenstorm is expected to make landfall somewhere between Maryland and Rhode Island on Monday, but it is so broad—with tropical storm winds covering 450 miles—that it could wreak devastation along the Eastern Seaboard and as far inland as Ohio.

Media won’t cover the plan – they’re not even covering the electionHoward Kurtz, 10-28-2012, Daily Beast, “Hurricane Sandy Upends the Presidential Campaign”, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/28/hurricane-sandy-upends-the-presidential-campaign.html, da 11-1-2012The situation is reminiscent of the problem Romney faced on the eve of the Republican convention. While Hurricane Isaac turned out to be a bust, just dumping some rain on Tampa, Romney made the right decision in canceling the convention’s first night because the television coverage was all about the storm.¶ And that, from the campaigns’ point of view, is the killer potential of Sandy. We could be looking at days of saturation coverage on cable news and morning shows, all but obliterating the closing messages that Obama and Romney want to deliver. Even if you live in swing-state Colorado, far from the storm’s path, you’re going to see endless live shots of windswept correspondents in parks getting soaked.

West Coast 2012November Update

Yes Lame Duck Gridlock

Lame duck will be gridlockedDan Schnur, 10-25-2012, “The casualties of political gridlock”, Politico, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/82838.html, da 11-1-2012We’ve become accustomed to the fact that the American people don’t like Congress. But what happens when even Congress doesn’t like Congress anymore?¶ Answer: They go home.

Members of Congress are so fed up with gridlock, they are leaving the body in droves . In the past four years alone,

almost two dozen incumbents have thrown up their hands and decided not to seek reelection, a number that is unprecedented in modern political history. Over the past three decades, this rate of departure is almost double that which we

have seen over any other four-year period.¶ hese members, Democrats and Republicans alike, are not departing because they’ve lost reelection campaigns or because

they fear defeat at the hands of a better-funded or more popular opponent. They’re heading for the exits because they’re tired of the gridlock. These men and women came to Washington to solve problems. But in increasing numbers, they now recognize that in a bitterly divided, hyperpartisan Congress, that’s simply not going to happen.¶ Their frustration is understandable. Congress

has always welcomed strenuous philosophical debate and stark partisan disagreement. But the disagreements have become more intractable, and the incentives for cross-partisan cooperation are disappearing.¶ The departing legislators are not running from difficulties. They are still motivated to work to solve problems but have found that Congress simply isn’t the place to do it. As Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) points out, well-intentioned elected officials are

becoming yet another casualty of gridlock.¶ Measures of polarization show a more divided Congress now than at any point since the Civil War. That’s why respected members of Congress like Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Lieberman are all leaving after this year — they don’t think Congress is the best place to make a difference.

Nothing can solve gridlockMichael Riley, writer for New Jersey Press Media, 10-20-2012, “Is Congress capable of bridging the gap?”, http://www.courierpostonline.com/article/20121021/OPINION02/310210004/Is-Congress-capable-bridging-gap-, da 11-1-2012For many on the left, getting this country out of gridlock means re-electing President Barack Obama and gaining control

of both houses of Congress. For those on the right, the only way to get past the partisan bickering is to get Obama out of office and make sure conservatives gain the majority in the nation’s capital.¶ Others believe that something they call true “leadership” is needed to bring about a compromise.¶ Monmouth University political science professor Joe Patten believes that until we change the way we redraw election district maps, the chances for real progress are dim.¶ “When there is no competition, bad things happen,” Patten says. In too many election districts in this country,

there is no competition, with 95 percent of incumbents getting re-elected every time they run.¶ The problem, he says, is partisan, gerrymandered election districts, heavily weighted toward one political party. The consequence is primary voters nominate extreme candidates and an apathetic electorate votes for them.¶

“Over the last 20 or 30 years,” Patten says, “sophisticated computer models have made it easier than ever before to draw gerrymandered districts with more and more accuracy.” This almost guarantees no competition in the primary so that voting becomes an exercise in futility come November. This hold true at the municipal county and state levels in New Jersey as well, he says.¶ Needless to say, Patten’s solutions are long-term, in that both state

and federal election maps are drawn every 10 years following the U.S. Census.¶ Getting out of the partisan swamp where nothing ever gets done is possible, but it won’t happen overnight and certainly not in the aftermath of this upcoming election. There is no single silver bullet to end the nation’s political divisions.

Nothing will passBloomberg, 10-25-2012 “A Congress Too Polarized to Protect Itself,” http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-25/a-congress-too-polarized-to-protect-itself.html, da 11-1-2012The U.S. Congress is on an extended election hiatus, yet there has been no noticeable decline in its productivity. As polarization and legislative gridlock have worsened in recent years, the nation’s great legislative body has withered, losing not only popular support but the ability to exercise its constitutional powers.

West Coast 2012November Update

No Fiscal Cliff Deal

No fiscal cliff deal – partisanshipLori Montgomery, 10-25-2012, “’Fiscal cliff’ already hampering U.S. economy, report says,” Washington Post, www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/fiscal-cliff-already-hampering-us-economy-report-says/2012/10/25/45730250-1ecf-11e2-ba31-3083ca97c314_story.html, da 11-1-2012While concern about the cliff is rising, a consensus about how to handle it has been elusive . President

Obama and other Democrats have threatened to block action on the cliff unless the Bush-era tax cuts are allowed to expire on income of more than $250,000 a year. Republicans, including presidential candidate Mitt Romney, want to maintain current tax rates for another year to give Congress time to tackle more far-reaching reforms — a position supported by the manufacturing association.

Fiscal cliff deal won’t pass or have an impact – post-election partisanship and market adaptabilitySuzy Khimm, 10-26-2012, “What happens if we go over the fiscal cliff briefly,” Washington Post, www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/10/26/what-happens-if-we-go-over-the-fiscal-cliff-briefly/, da 11-1-2012But others are skeptical that Congress would be able to come together very quickly and resolve their differences very quickly. If we go over the cliff, “I’m not sure how you get anything done until after the inauguration,” said Michael Hanson, chief U.S. economist for Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Research, predicting that it would take until “late February or early March” to reach a resolution.¶ And by that point, significant damage would be done. ”It’s a messy process that could still damage the economy. It definitely increases the chance of having one quarter if not two of negative growth,” Hanson said. “There would be a sharp sell-off in

the equity market, in business and consumer confidence.”¶ That said, Hanson doesn’t expect the markets to start plummeting Jan. 2. If we go past the deadline, “Markets will probably be saying, ‘They played that branch of the game, it’s no big deal,’ ” he explained. “Probably it would take the first, maybe the second failed vote. That’s when in some sense all hell breaks loose.”

Fiscal Cliff deal won’t pass – no negotiations and gridlockJonathan Weisman, 10-23-2012 “Obama's Remark Aside, No Imminent Deal on 'Fiscal Cliff’,” NYT, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/obamas-remark-aside-no-imminent-deal-on-fiscal-cliff/?gwh=45420BA855EEC9E6FA97B6A1B2EDF220, da 11-1-2012President Obama set heads spinning on Capitol Hill when he declared on Monday night during the final presidential debate that sequestration — $1 trillion in across-the-board spending cuts over the next decade — “will not happen.”¶ But no one should conclude that a secret deal to resolve the problem is imminent. It is not.¶ Administration officials confirmed on Tuesday that the president was repeating conventional wisdom in Washington: a deal will be struck to head off cuts that would slice about 9.4 percent from most military programs and 8.2 percent from domestic programs,

beginning Jan. 2. But nothing will happen until after the election. ¶ Administration officials have been expressing that confidence for weeks, even as they say no real negotiations are happening. Congressional Republicans reacted to the president’s pronouncement as if he had jabbed them with a hot poker.¶ The staff of the House speaker, John A. Boehner, posted a missive on his Web page to drive home two points: that the across-the-board cuts were the president’s fault, and that only the House had actually done anything to prevent them .¶ “Neither have Senate Democrats. They won’t even debate

and vote on the House-passed bill,” said Don Seymour, a spokesman for Mr. Boehner. “Instead, Democrats have threatened to drive the country off the ‘fiscal cliff’ – which includes these devastating defense cuts – in their quest for a tax hike on small businesses. They’re pushing for tax hikes that will destroy more than 700,000 jobs but have taken no action at all to stop the sequester.”

West Coast 2012November Update

No Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity won’t pass – partisanshipAlex Wilhelm, 10-26-2012, “Secretary of Defense Panetta calls for lame duck action on cybersecurity,” TNW, thenextweb.com/us/2012/10/26/secretary-of-defense-panetta-calls-for-lame-duck-action-on-cybersecurity/, da 11-1-2012File this post in the ‘yeah, right’ category, please. Today The Hill reported that U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has called for action on cybersecurity legislation by Congress in its coming

lame duck session. He warned that a “destructive cyber-terrorist attack could virtually paralyze the nation.”¶ Here, I’ll say it: boo!¶ It was not the only item of progress that Panetta demanded, he also weighed in against looming potential cuts to the military’s budget. The Secretary will not get all that he wants.¶ Most certainly, the sequestration may be avoided, but that cybersecurity will see real progress before the next Congress is sworn in is a bit of a long thought to manage; it’s just not going to happen.¶ The critical differences between the two parties on how to effectively manage cybersecurity via legislation remain vast. To put a finer point on that, even when the Democrats bent over backwards (forwards?) on standards for critical infrastructure in the Senate, that bill failed.¶ Imagine trying to reconcile a damn thing with the House’s CISPA – a bill with a promised veto around its neck – it’s almost a laughable proposition. So where does this leave us? As you certainly imagined, no where, or at least exactly where we were, waiting to see if the President will enact an executive order on cybersecurity.¶ But given the closeness of the election, don’t hold your breath . In the meantime, whatever good making progress on this issue could bring remains far off.

Cybersecurity won’t pass – gridlockJennifer Martinez, 10-25-2012, “Cybersecurity legislation makes Panetta's lame duck to-do list,” The Hill, thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/264149-cybersecurity-legislation-makes-panettas-lame-duck-to-do-list, da 11-1-2012Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, Panetta noted that the "full agenda" he outlined requires bipartisan cooperation. But cybersecurity legislation faces long odds of moving this year: Congress has been gridlocked on the issue since Senate Republicans blocked a sweeping cybersecurity bill in August. ¶ During a speech in New York to the Business Executives for National Security conference earlier this month, Panetta warned that the cyber threat facing the United States "is a pre-9/11 moment" and that a "destructive cyber-terrorist attack could virtually paralyze the nation."¶ Days after Panetta's comments, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he wanted to take another shot at passing cybersecurity legislation this year and he plans to bring a bill to the

floor in November. While both parties want to get a bill done on cybersecurity, they still haven't reached a compromise on legislation after the Senate bill failed this summer. ¶ Chief on Panetta's congressional priority list is for lawmakers to come up with an alternative to the White House's sequestration plan, which would implement $500 billion in across-the-board defense cuts.

Republicans are blocking passage of cybersecurityEric Engleman, 10-26-2012, “Hacker Attack Warnings Don’t Budge Opposing Sides on Cyber Bill,” Business Week, www.businessweek.com/news/2012-10-26/hacker-attack-warnings-don-t-budge-opposing-sides-on-cyber-bill, da 11-1-2012Senate Republicans in August blocked a cybersecurity bill backed by Obama that would have set voluntary cybersecurity standards for privately-owned critical systems . The bill also would have encouraged companies and government to

share information on cyber threats.¶ Republicans and the Chamber of Commerce opposed the measure, saying standards would be a back door to government regulation of companies and wouldn’t keep pace with evolving threats in cyberspace.¶ Regulatory Approach¶ “Whether you want to call it light touch, voluntary, in its implementation we still believe it would be more of a regulatory approach,” Ann Beauchesne, the chamber’s vice president of national

security and emergency preparedness, said at the panel discussion. “We just don’t see that as the right tack to take.”¶ The chamber supports a measure focused solely on information sharing that passed the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in April, Beauchesne said. Minimum standards for cybersecurity should be developed by industry, not government, and should vary for different sectors, she said .

West Coast 2012November Update

No Farm Bill

Farm Bill won’t pass – no Republican leadershipGreg Noth, IR degree from Knox, 10-18-2012, “GOP Senate Candidate Blames Republican Leadership For Farm Bill Failure,” Think Progress, thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/10/18/1038491/gop-senate-candidate-blames-leadership-farm/, da 11-1-2012In an October 15 debate between North Dakota Senate candidates Republican Rep. Rick Berg and Democratic challenger Heidi Heitkamp, the failure of the House of Representatives to pass a farm bill was a central issue. Heitkamp called the lack of a new farm bill the “biggest

failure of this Congress.”¶ Though the Senate passed a farm bill with a big bipartisan majority, leadership in the Republican-controlled House did not even vote on one before adjourning in September. At the time, Berg told CNN he was “frustrated with the Republican leadership.” In Tuesday’s debate, Rep. Berg reiterated that point, calling House Republican leadership “a problem”:¶ We have a stonewall problem. I’ll agree. The House Republican leadership is a problem on the farm bill . ¶ Berg claimed Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) promised to bring the bill to the floor before the end of the year. But during an appearance in Iowa yesterday, Boehner “didn’t respond to questions about federal farm provisions that expired this month.”

No vote on the farm bill – Republicans are blocking – support is only rhetoricErik Wasson, writer for the Hill, 10-9-2012, “Romney blames Obama for Congress’s failure to pass new farm bill,” The Hill, thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/economy/261015-romney-blames-obama-for-failure-to-pass-farm-bill, da 11-1-2012Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), the top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, pushed back on Romney's attack and said House Republican leaders are the ones standing in the way of a farm bill.¶ "I think it's unfair and it shows a complete lack of

understanding of what's going on," Peterson said. "The problem is not between the House and the Senate, the problem is Majority Leader Cantor won't put the farm bill on the floor."¶ Peterson said Romney's new policy paper makes him "nervous" that Romney is not really with farmers on maintaining a safety net.¶ "What he says in there is just what is safe to say in front of the Club for Growth," he said. "There is trade and regulations but that's not really the farm bill."¶ Peterson said that Romney's running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), has been the "No. 1" opponent of a strong farm safety net and called for deeper cuts to agriculture in his budget proposals. ¶ Republicans are divided on farm subsidies contained in the five-year farm bill, a major reason the House has not voted on it.

No vote until 2013 on the farm billJennifer Shutt, writer for Del Marva News, 10-22-2012, “Farm Bill's fate concerns lawmakers,” Del Marva News, www.delmarvanow.com/article/20121022/WIC/310220007/?odyssey=tab|mostpopular|text|DATACENTER&nclick_check=1, da 11-1-2012The Farm Bill is a complex piece of legislation with many moving parts that has been temporarily authorized every five years.

It includes funding for crop insurance as well as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which is one of the reasons conservatives have said they are displeased with the bill in its current form.¶ “My major concern was that the house bill included way too much spending on food stamps going forward and didn’t require work requirements for food stamp recipients,” said Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md-1st. “In the form it was in, with the amount of spending it had on food stamps going forward, I don’t think I would have supported the bill.”¶ Harris said about $1 trillion, or nearly 80 percent of the farm bill, has been dedicated to funding food assistance programs throughout the United States. He said while there is a possibility the House would take up the farm bill before the new year, there has been discussion about holding it over until 2013 if Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney wins the election.

West Coast 2012November Update

No Closing Guantanamo

Zero chance of closing Gitmo – no alternativesJeremy Herb, 10-21-2012, “Obama faces long odds to close Guantanamo Bay if he tries again,” The Hill, thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/policy-and-strategy/263125-obama-faces-long-odds-to-close-gitmo-if-he-tries-again-, da 11-1-2012President Obama may still harbor ambitions to close Guantánamo Bay, but he faces a difficult path if he wins reelection and decides to pursue the goal in a second term .¶ Obama declaration last week on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” that he wants to close the military prison drew

applause from the young, liberal audience he hopes to will turn out for him on Election Day.¶ “There's some things that we haven't gotten done. I still want to close Guantánamo. We haven't been able to get that through Congress,” Obama said after Stewart asked about “trading ideals

for security.”¶ Congressional Republicans are skeptical the president was serious about a renewed attempt to close Gitmo. Rather, they suggest he was playing to his liberal supporters in the runup to the election .¶ “It’s something he’s saying to appeal to

his base,” Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) told The Hill in an interview.¶ Ayotte, who has been one of the most outspoken Republicans on detention issues, said there was little support in either Congress or

public opinion to close the facility and bring terrorists onto U.S. soil .¶ “There’s no way that [the administration’s efforts to close Guantánamo] are going to be greater than his first term ,” she said. “I don’t see this as something he’s suddenly going to be able to turn around .”

Obama won’t be able to gain enough support to close GitmoJeremy Herb, 10-21-2012, “Obama faces long odds to close Guantanamo Bay if he tries again,” The Hill, thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/policy-and-strategy/263125-obama-faces-long-odds-to-close-gitmo-if-he-tries-again-, da 11-1-2012House Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) said that bipartisan opposition prevented the administration from closing the prison when Democrats held majorities in both chambers of Congress .¶ “If he wants to try again, that is his choice,” McKeon, who has helped lead GOP efforts to block transfers of

Gitmo detainees in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), said in a statement to The Hill.¶ “I'd suggest that he precede the request with developing a comprehensible and consistent policy for detaining and interrogating terrorists,” McKeon added. “No one has ever argued that Guantanamo Bay is ideal, but before you talk about closing it you have to tell the country what you will replace it with.”¶ An Obama campaign official said that closing Guantánamo remains a priority for the president, and that he is committed to closing it in a second term.¶ The official noted that even

while Gitmo remains open, the Obama administration has reduced the detainee population. Mitt Romney supports keeping the prison open and increasing its size, the official said.¶ Democratic aides in Congress acknowledge it would be difficult to gain enough support to close the military prison while Republicans retain control of the House. But they say that

some traction has been made on the issue in the past year.¶ The annual NDAA has been the primary vehicle for Congress to restrict the transfer of detainees out of Guantánamo, as well as prevent funds from going to facilities on U.S. soil that would potentially house Gitmo detainees.¶

Democrats say the national interest — and resistance — that was sparked by the debate last year over indefinite detention was a turning point. The general public began questioning the U.S. detainee policies amid concerns about the possible detention of U.S. citizens.¶ Some libertarian-

leaning Republicans joined with Democrats to support rolling back U.S. detention rules.¶ “I think we’ve made progress,” said one House Democratic aide.¶ “I think you can see the winds could be changing, and hopefully next year we’ll be able to make more progress and help support

the president in his goal of shutting Gitmo.”¶ Still, most Republicans and some Democrats remain opposed .¶ Republicans slammed the Obama administration earlier this month after it

purchased Thomson Prison in Illinois, a site that has been mentioned as a possible location for Guantánamo detainees.¶ The administration insisted the prison purchase was unrelated to Guantánamo, but Republicans were not convinced.¶ “Obama Administration officials today

promised that Guantanamo terrorists will not be transferred to the Thomson prison, citing Congressional action prohibiting it,” House Homeland Security Chairman Pete King (R-N.Y.) said in a statement.¶ “I have trouble believing Obama Administration promises.”¶ Human-rights advocates who want Guantánamo closed expressed cautious optimism over the president’s statement on Thursday.

Obama won’t close Gitmo – nowhere to put the terroristsJeremy Herb, 10-21-2012, “Obama faces long odds to close Guantanamo Bay if he tries again,” The Hill, thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/policy-and-strategy/263125-obama-faces-long-odds-to-close-gitmo-if-he-tries-again-, da 11-1-2012Obama has not mentioned Guantánamo much on the campaign trail , instead focusing his national security statements on the killing of Osama bin Laden and the

end of the war in Iraq.¶ Andrea Prasow, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch, said that the administration’s failed attempts to close the prison have been disappointing. But she believes Obama remains serious and would try again in a second term.¶ “I don’t think he

wants to go down in history as man who promised to go close down Guantánamo and didn’t,” Prasow said.¶ Guantánamo opponents say there’s new reason for optimism, as a federal appeals court this week threw out a conviction from Gitmo’s military tribunals of bin Laden’s driver,

Salim Hamdan.¶ The court tossed the conviction against Hamdan because he was charged with a law created in 2006, and he committed the crime of providing material support to terrorists from 1996-2001.¶ Prasow said the ruling could throw into doubt future convictions at

Guantánamo’s military tribunals.¶ “This could very well be the pivotal piece with respect to how Congress and the current administration review what the long-term effect of having Guantánamo remain open will be,” said Vince Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional

Rights.¶ Even if there was a shift in Congress on military tribunals at Guantánamo, however, the question of moving detainees onto U.S. soil is perhaps the trickiest of all.¶ “It is a political reality, if they come to the U.S. they’re going to have to go into somebody’s congressional district, some senator’s state ,” said a Democratic aide who supports closing the prison. “So those are difficult issues.”

West Coast 2012November Update

Econ Thumper – Hurricane Sandy

S will cause a recession – we’re on the brinkMarkos Kaminis, 10-28-2012, “Hurricane Sandy – Catalyst For Recession,” Seeking Alpha, http://seekingalpha.com/article/957281-hurricane-sandy-catalyst-for-recession, da 11-1-2012Still, business will come to a halt generally for a day to a week or more across a vast and important region of the U.S. That means fewer hours billed by lawyers, less frozen yogurts sold at the local shop, land bound fishermen with empty nets, unfilled barbershop chairs, and

increased absenteeism across all business sectors. Thus, the net result should be a significant negative

impact to fourth quarter GDP, and perhaps a catalyst for recession, given the vulnerable state of the economy. The broader markets have not had an opportunity to price in this quickly developing event, and so the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY)

could take a hit next week as well, which strikes at the pockets of all Americans. Yes, Hurricane Sandy, potentially the storm of the century for the Northeast, could be a catalyst for recession .

Sandy will screw up the economy – worse than KatrinaDoyle Rice, 10-28-2012, “Damage from Hurricane Sandy could be catastrophic,” Cincinatti.Com, http://news.cincinnati.com/usatoday/article/1663863?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE%7Cs, da 11-1-2012Words like catastrophic, historic, life-threatening and even "worse than Katrina" are all being used to describe the ferocity of oncoming Hurricane Sandy, now forecast to make landfall late Monday night or early Tuesday morning somewhere along the New Jersey coast. However, forecasters warned people not to focus on the storm center. Howling winds extend hundreds of miles from the eye of Sandy and are starting to impact coastal regions already. The National Hurricane Center reported that tropical storm force winds (from 39-73 mph) extend out 520 miles in many directions from the center of Sandy. As of 2 p.m., the center of the storm was located about 575 miles due south of New York City, with sustained wind speeds of 75 mph, making it a Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity. Sandy was moving to the northeast at 14 mph. Since records of storm size began in 1988, no tropical storm or hurricane has been larger, reports meteorologist Jeff

Masters of the Weather Underground. About 60 million people are in the path of Sandy, AccuWeather meteorologist Alex Sosnowski says, and billions of dollars of damage are expected as the storm roars through. Top weather impacts: Storm surge: Ocean water pushed onshore by the hurricane will likely cause the most destruction. A storm surge of from 6 to 11 feet is forecast to swamp New York City, which could overtop the city's levees and flood the subway system. "It is possible areas from New Jersey to New York City and Long Island have some of their worst coastal flooding on record," Sosnowski says. High winds: Wild winds of up to 75 mph will likely knock out power to millions of people in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. "There is the potential for tens of thousands of trees to be downed and millions of utility customers could be without power," Sosnowski says. Masters reports that a power outage computer model run by Johns Hopkins University predicts that 10 million people will lose power from the storm. Rainfall: Rainfall amounts of 4 to 8 inches are expected over portions of the Mid-Atlantic States, including the Delmarva Peninsula, with isolated maximum amounts of 12 inches possible. The rain could lead to river flooding in Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania. Masters predicts that river flooding from Sandy will cause just under $1 billion in damage. Snowfall: Forecasters say that some spots in the mountains of West Virginia have the potential to receive up to 2 feet of

snow from the storm as rain from Sandy collides with cold air moving into the region. Overall: "I expect the total damage (including loss to the U.S. economy) to be worse than Katrina," says meteorologist Mike Smith of AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions. He reports that Sandy may cause more than $100 billion in damage.

Sandy will wreck the economy – past disasters put us on the brink nowReal Truth Magazine, 10-28-2012, “Hurricane Sandy: Another ‘100-year’ Storm?” http://realtruth.org/articles/121027-001.html, da 11-1-2012This is truly a Frankenstein scenario—a hybrid of weather badness that is now coming alive. “The latter scenario—the one that now appears most likely—would have many feet of ocean water funneled into New York Harbor over a period of up to 36 hours. Unlike Irene, which quickly transited New York City last year as a weakening tropical storm, Sandy may actually be in the process of strengthening when it makes landfall. “The result could prove incredibly damaging for coastal residents and critical infrastructure. Keep in mind that Irene was only inches away from flooding subway tunnels in Lower Manhattan. Storm-surge forecasts for this scenario haven’t been officially released yet, but six to 10 feet in the city is not out of the question in a worst-case scenario. “That result would put about 700,000 people’s homes underwater, according to a Climate Central interactive analysis. Add to that waves of 10 to 20 feet on ocean-facing shores, and an additional foot or so of tidal influence from the full moon, and we could be dealing with quite a mess on our hands.” States of emergency have already been declared for Virginia, Maryland, D.C., Pennsylvania, New York, Maine, New Jersey, and Connecticut. New Jersey also began coastal evacuations. “There will be school closures, travel will be messed up for days and

major airports will be closed,” Accuweather senior meteorologist Henry Margusity told the media outlet. “This could be a disaster

of biblical proportions —a multi-billion-dollar disaster .” Think about what such complications signify for a heavily populated coast with an already-struggling economy: planes cancelled mean tourism dollars lost, trains stopped result in people not being able to work, restaurants shuttered hit the pocketbooks of local businesspeople, flooded homes result in skyrocketing insurance payouts, and on and on it goes.