Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1NC
The social unit and condition of possibility for the expansion of
the welfare state is the citizen. Even if they criticize the trope
of the ideal citizen, they reproduce it at the basic level of
political focus turns case.
Edwards and Glover in 01 (Rosalind, Professor of Sociology at the
University of Southampton, and Judith, Reader in the School of Sociology and Social
Policy, University of Surrey Roehampton. Risk and Citizenship: Key Issues in Welfare.
Published by Routledge)
The traditional model for extensive or developed welfare states is an institutional
nationstate response to coping with unforeseen but broadly predictable consequences, based
on actuarial principles and collectively shared rights and responsibilities. It is
founded on a solidaristic state-centred response to the meeting of risks encountered
within a typical life course on the basis of broad social obligation as part of
citizenship, together with the creation of mutual security. The post-war British welfare state
developed in this way, to act to secure risk-free presents and futures through socially collective, state-centred
insurance and provision. The welfare risks facing citizens were identified on their behalfs by administrators
Beveridges five giants: Want, Squalor, Idleness, Ignorance and Diseaseas were the steps to be taken to protect
and secure welfare citizens on a universal basis from the uncertainties and insecurities inherent in the market. The
nature of risk was not part of day-to-day thinking and public debate. Rather, the emphasis was on needs and safety
net security. The state was the rational actor, pursuing full employment and calculating the redistribution of
resources to promote solidarity between social classes, and to meet the systematic and predictable order of
collectively insurable risks encountered by its citizens, whether attached to the labour market or outside. The latter
Mary Langan as attributed need (1998:265), and on passive acceptance of policymakers and professionals
Beveridges five giants hid the giants of Sexism and Racism, as well as other forms of discrimination on the basis of
marginalized groups benefited from the general improvements of welfare reforms, at the same time they
Collins (2001) for some kindred discussion of the ways that ideas of family and nation have shaped US welfare
citizenship.)
One should try to take seriously this formulation, which indissolubly links the
fate of the Rights of [the hu]Man with the fate of the modern nation-state in such a
way that the waning of the latter necessarily implies the obsolescence of the
former. Here the paradox is that precisely the figure that should have embodied human rights more than any
othernamely, the refugeemarked instead the radical crisis of the concept. The
conception of human rights based on the supposed existence of a human being as
such, Arendt tells us, proves to be untenable as soon as those who profess it find themselves confronted for the
first time with people who have really lost every quality and every specific relation except for the pure fact of being
the ambiguity of the very title of the 1789 Dclaration des droits de lhomme et du citoyen, in which it is unclear
whether the two terms are to name two distinct realities or whether they are to form, instead, a hendiadys in which
of all the originary figure for the inscription of natural naked life in the political-juridical order of the nation-state.
Naked life (the human being), which in antiquity belonged to God and in the
classical world was clearly distinct (as zoe) from political life (bios), comes to the
forefront in the management of the state and becomes, so to speak, its early foundation. Nationstate means a state that makes nativity or birth [nascita] (that is, naked human life)
the foundation of its own sovereignty. This is the meaning (and it is not even a hidden one) of the first
three articles of the 1789 Declaration: it is only because this declaration inscribed (in articles 1 and 2) the native
element in the heart of any political organization that it can firmly bind (in article 3) the principle of sovereignty to
The fiction
that is implicit here is that birth [nascita] comes into being immediately as nation,
so that there may not be any difference between the two moments. Rights, in other
words, are attributed to the human being only to the degree to which he or she is
the immediately vanishing presupposition (and, in fact, the presupposition that must never come to
light as such) of the citizen. If the refugee represents such a disquieting element in the
order of the nation-state, this is so primarily because, by breaking the identity
between the human and the citizen and that between nativity and nationality, it
brings the originary fiction of sovereignty to crisis . Single exceptions to such a principle, of
the nation (in conformity with its etymon, native [nato] originally meant simply birth [nascita]).
course, have always existed. What is new in our time is that growing sections of humankind are no longer
Inasmuch
as the refugee, an apparently marginal figure, unhinges the old trinity of statenation-territory, it deserves instead to be regarded as the central figure of our
political history. We should not forget that the first camps were built in Europe as
spaces for controlling refugees, and that the succession of internment camps
concentration campsextermination camps represents a perfectly real filiation . One
of the few rules the Nazis constantly obeyed throughout the course of the final solution was that Jews and
Gypsies could be sent to extermination camps only after having been fully
denationalized (that is, after they had been stripped of even that secondclass citizenship to which they had
been relegated after the Nuremberg Laws). When their rights are no longer the rights of the
citizen, that is when human beings are truly sacred, in the sense that this term used
to have in the Roman law of the archaic period: doomed to death. The concept of refugee
representable inside the nation-stateand this novelty threatens the very foundations of the latter.
must be resolutely separated from the concept of human rights, and the right of asylum (which in any case is by
now in the process of being drastically restricted in the legislation of the European states) must no longer be
considered as the conceptual category in which to inscribe the phenomenon of refugees. (One needs only to look at
Agnes Hellers recent Theses on the Right of Asylum to realize that this cannot but lead today to awkward
shall increasingly reach in the coming years, given the estimated twenty million immigrants from Central European
These noncitizens often have nationalities of origin, but, inasmuch as they prefer not to benefit from their own
demonstrate, through an increasing desertion of the codified instances of political participation, an evident
the nation-states find the courage to question the very principle of the
inscription of nativity as well as the trinity of state-nation-territory that is founded on that principle. It is not easy to
indicate right now the ways in which all this may concretely happen. One of the options taken into consideration for solving the
problem of Jerusalem is that it becamesimultaneously and without any territorial partitionthe capital of two different states.
leaders
alike embarked on state formation projects that were designed to encourage the
transfer of both subnational and transnational identities to the state, and, therefore,
to enhance the states legitimacy and domestic stability . State formation projects
were instrumental in producing new political identities, shrinking the salience of
transnational loyalties, and increasing the ability of state actors to act in a manner
that is consistent with sovereignty. State formation can occur through a myriad of
activities and processes, but figuring centrally in the comparative politics and the Middle Easter literatures
To rid them of that paradox and to better ensure their domestic survival, radical and conservative Arab
are material incentives, external threats, and the manipulation of symbols. First, although Arab leaders situated in
dependent economies might opt for etatist rather than market-oriented policies for economic reasons (i.e. late
alter an individuals political identity, is a costly strategy for most resource-poor states.
The development of welfare states can be seen as a process of the transition from
access to services and benefits entirely on the basis of class position and associated
resources to access to certain categories of services and benefits , for example health care,
on the basis of citizenship. While the scope and quality of social citizenship rights is one
of the key factors differentiating welfare regimes (Esping-Andersen, 1990), the concept of
citizenship in its various dimensions underpins all welfare states . However, the degree to
which the taken-for-granted conception of citizenship is equally encompassing of all members of society varies
across welfare state regimes and over time in particular regimes. Most contemporary discussions of citizenship
take as their source the essay Citizenship and Social Class presented by T.H. Marshall in 1949 (Marshall, [1949]
1964: 65-122). On the basis of British history, Marshall divided the development of citizenship into three states:
Civil citizenship, relating to liberty of the person and property rights, is dated from the eighteenth century
with the development of the judicial system and legal rights and
Citizenship rights are the core element of all welfare states and the rights approach
to citizenship derives from the liberal tradition. The development of the welfare
state can in large part be characterized as the development of social citizenship
rights, such as rights to health, education and social services. The range and quality
of social rights varies cross-nationally and welfare state analysis is focused to a
significant extent on the explanation of this variation. Differences across welfare
states reflect the political choices made in different countries in response to the
problems of reconciling production and distribution and the public and private
spheres. These choices are manifested not only in differences in the scope and
quality of social rights but in the divisions of responsibility for the provision of
benefits and services between the state, the market and the family .
reinforce ethnic and class divides within the immigrant population and the nation as a whole. At the
same time, the racial codewords and symbols embedded in public discourse concerning immigration provided white
native-born Americans a lens for understanding Americanism in an increasingly global world. This cultural
vocabulary for immigration signals the emergence of what Etienne Balibar has identified as a " new
racism
without races... whose dominant theme is not biological heredity but the
insurmountability of cultural differences."55 Once race was recast as "culture," and culture was
equated with social and class position, proponents of welfare reform could advocate
eliminating public entitlements for undeserving foreigners, while continuing to
celebrate the United States as a country of immigration and "individual opportunity." Just as
the current generation of urban blacks was denounced for abandoning the cultural and moral traditions of the old
the early-twentieth century as proof of contemporary urban decline. This distorted past was then used to condemn
The effectiveness
of this new discourse on immigration was evidenced in the liberal response to the
debate, as immigrant advocates and scholars insisted that immigrants had the same
cultural values (hard work, family, religion) as Americans or at least that some immigrants
contemporary blacks and immigrants for their lack of values, motivation, and responsibility.
had better values than others. Scholarly critiques of the Asian American "model minority" thesis, for instance,
nonetheless reinforced the moral distinction between the welfare poor and the working poor, noting that Asian
immigrants worked longer hours than native-born Americans and relied less on public assistance. Similarly,
scholarly and popular portraits of Latin American immigrants emphasized their high rates of labor participation and
differently in the work of sociologists like Min Zhou and Alejandro Portes, who turned to "segmented assimilation"
theory to explain growing economic and social inequalities between different immigrant groups, and across
immigrant generations.57 Inverting the logic of assimilation theory, these scholars credit the economic success of
certain immigrant groups in U.S. society, such as Cubans and Punjabi Sikhs, to the maintenance of tight-knit ethnic
communities and the retention of "traditional values" from their countries of origin, such as belief in hard work,
sacrifice, and family unity. In contrast, other immigrant groups, like Mexicans and Haitians, have assimilated into an
"inner-city minority culture" that is characterized by "an adversarial stance towards the white mainstream" and a
self-defeating cynicism about the possibility of upward social mobility.58 By embracing black "urban culture"which
Portes and Zhou identify with rap music, hip-hop dress, and defiance towards school officialsthe U.S.-born children
In this
theoretical paradigm, race is a self-destructive choice for new immigrants, a cultural
costume they can put on or take off at will . Echoing the logic of underclass theory, which conflates
class, race, and behavior, the literature on "segmented assimilation" lent credence to the idea
that it is the cultural values of poor people that create economic and social
inequality. What moved the debates concerning the underclass was the insistence that racism no longer
of Mexican and Haitian immigrants place limits on their own educational and economic mobility.
mattered. Echoing Wilson's postulation that racial discrimination was not primarily responsible for post-1960s black
proponents of welfare reform declared that the United States had moved
beyond its history of racism and now the problems of immigrant and native-born
people of color had to do with their own values . The success of welfare reform lay in politicians'
poverty,
abilities to foreground the problems with welfare recipients of color while denying that gendered assumptions or
racism had anything to do with their intentions. As President Clinton explained, "It's not racist for whites to assert
that the culture of welfare dependency, out-of-wedlock pregnancy and absent fatherhood cannot be broken by
social programs, unless there is first more personal responsibility."59 Indeed, when polled, nearly 60 percent of
white Americans answered that they believed that blacks on welfare "could get along if they tried" and that if
assistance for the poor. But when asked about welfare and those who receive it, only 23 percent said that the
assistance was too little.61 The racial histories behind these assumptions were palpable: welfare recipients were
lazy; welfare recipients had too many babies and too little work ethic; without proper control, welfare recipients
cheat the system and squander their benefits.62 But the cleverness of welfare reform was making the moral crisis
of welfare dependency seem so new, so urgent, and so post-racial as to avoid the historical parallels.
already documented on the way neoliberalism constructed and implemented a shift from a bureaucraticprofessional welfare regime to a managerialist one tightly controlled by the centralised state, but organisationally
dispersed through the creation of the three Ms markets, managers and mixed economies (see Hills, 1990; Clarke
and Newman, 1997). This shift was not unique to Britain, but has taken place in many Western industrialised
welfare states albeit coloured in different political hues. The hue of neoliberal politics within Britain constructed
major risks most centrally in terms of the accumulation needs of capital (a shift to flexible labour and a low wage
economy) and the moral risks to the nation. It did this through a populist political programme which redefined the
welfare state, not as a source of protection from risk, but as itself a major generator of risks of disincentives to
initiative, of welfare dependency, of an underclass, of inefficiency and expense in the public sector, and, thereby, of
loss of economic competitiveness in the outside world. Through neo-conservatism it sought to protect the nation
from these risks by asserting a moral and social order that reinforced traditional social relations of family and nation
in the pursuit of individual self-interest, family self-reliance, discipline and the transmission of British cultural
values. In terms of the social relations of welfare, its version of markets, managers and mixed economies
reconstituted the welfare subjects into two main opposing categories: the taxpayer/consumer and the welfare
dependant. The taxpayer/ consumer subject was constructed as responsible but overburdened, straining to exercise
choice in the welfare market. These new dividing lines resonated with gendered, racialised, aged and able-bodied
divisions, but in common with New Labour and the new social movements discussed below, one of the fundamental
breaks it made was to recreate the valid welfare subject as active, as possessing self-interested agency and
objectives: Work for those who can: security for those who cannot (HMSOa, 1998 p. iii). Paid work will enable or
empower the dutiless to enact the duties at the heart of the contract to be in paid work, to be independent, to
support the family, to save for retirement and not to defraud the taxpayer (ibid., p. 80). The third tier of welfare
subjects consists of those for whom paid work as the means of escaping poverty and dependence is not an option:
those who are retired or so sick or disabled, or so heavily engaged in caring activities, that they cannot realistically
support themselves (ibid., p. 23, my emphasis). For them dignity and security is promised (ibid., p. 19). The social
relations of the new welfare programme adds a further M to (quasi) markets, managers and mixed economies and
this is modern. A modern service, like its customers (who are at the centre not the end of service delivery) is
active in its efficiency, its support, its transparency, in tailoring its service to individual needs, in its use of
information technology to co-ordinate the different sectors; it will also reclaim and reshape an ethos of public
service (ibid., pp. 6, 7178, 81). New Labour aims to tackle three central problems or risks: inequality and social
exclusion; welfare dependency and disincentives to paid work; and benefit fraud. These are relatively low-level risks
compared with the post-war and New Right projects, but where the Green Paper is quiet on risks it is much more
assertive in terms of morality and values, and in the creation of a new moral order. Moral imperatives are tied into
financial imperatives through the central ethic of paid work. Where the principle of the market was central to the
is both a duty and a right). Parents in paid work (both mothers and fathers) provide a good role model for their
children and social networks for themselves (HMSOa, 1998, p. 58 ).
has constituted an alternative discourse on universalism and equality finds little reflection in policy documents.
Similarly, Tony Blairs Fabian pamphlet on The Third Way (Blair, 1998) reiterates the view that Human nature is cooperative as well as competitive, selfless as well as self-interested (ibid., p. 4) whilst also promoting equal worth
as one of four key values for a strong society. Equal worth is defined as the need for anti-discriminatory policies, the
value of a multiracial society, and the significance of rights-based campaigns, yet these are scarcely elaborated in
any of the priorities in the rest of the pamphlet. If it is only at a rhetorical level that New Labour recognises the
equal worth of all citizens, then what does the principle of equal worth mean in relation to welfare? And is the
conception of the welfare subject as both knightish and knavish a sufficient moral basis for understanding the
social risks for example, domestic violence, racial violence, forms of discrimination, child sexual abuse, lack of
autonomy, rights circumscribed according to sexual preference, environmental risks from pollution. The
identification of these risks emerged from claims against cultural and social injustices caught up in unequal
relations of power in society. These relations were refracted in welfare through the hierarchical relations between
providers and users, through the constitution of moral categories of desert and medical categories of physical,
mental and sexual invalidity, and through forms of restricted access to resources by marginalised social groups.
Thus, central to many of their demands has been the reconstitution of the welfare
subject as an active citizen participating in the democratic organisation of welfare
services.
The challenge for such states would be to divorce the principle of universal
entitlement from a monistic conception of normality, and combine universalism of
entitlement with a pluralism of delivery. In other words, such a project would build on
the extension of entitlements granted to immigrants since the 1970s by national courts invoking
basic liberal democratic principles. However, to cement such a project in the broader civil and
political society, it would be necessary to further divorce the idea of universal
entitlements from nativist conceptions of national belonging . Yet, it must be emphasized,
state.
such a project would have to include a fundamentally different type of economic regulation of post-Fordist
the central cause of the unraveling of the solidaristic wage regulation that was their cornerstone (Ryner 1994,
1998; Stephens 1996). Contemporary fiscal realities are such that public universal entitlements would not cover
life-risks. The result is a dualisation and fragmentation of social groups, between those who can insure themselves
privately and then demand lower taxes, and those that have to rely on means testing. Again, this brings us back to
The consequence is that there is a crucial link between the
migration and welfare state problematic and the co-ordinating centre of
disciplinary neo-liberalism-which in the European context means the present content of EMU-and
whether it would be possible to conceive of alternatives capable of realizing the
potential for a more egalitarian forms of post-Fordism. As long as the prevailing policy content
of the EMU is not challenged, the objective of integrating immigrants into an economically
sustainable social-citizenship state is very unlikely to be realized . The plan for EMU is, however,
embedded in a transnational institutional architecture that is a human artifact. This means-although it is beyond the
Modern sociopolitical theories have advanced several hypotheses concerning the determinants of the dynamics of citizenship laws,
on the basis of case studies and nonquantitative cross-country comparisons. The legal tradition established in a given country is
generally believed to exert a persistent effect on current legislation. The relevance of migration has also been investigated. In
According to some sociopolitical theories, the combination of these forces tends to induce convergence toward a mix of jus soli and
jus sanguinis provisions (that is, a mixed regime) for countries coming from different legal traditions (Weil 2001). For Europe,
Baubock et al. (2006) instead stress the presence of divergent trends that lean toward liberalization in some countries and toward
citizenship
rights determine the ability to enjoy welfare benefits, the shaping of nationality laws
has been associated with the nature of the welfare state, with a large government
representing a potential obstacle to the retention of jus soli (Joppke 1998). This argument,
restriction of access to citizenship in others. The influence of other economic forces is also recognized. Because
however, has to be weighed against the potential gain resulting from the acquisition of relatively young new citizens by countries
with expensive pension systems and in the midst of a demographic crisis.
to be relevant. The presence of a consolidated democracy is expected to lead to the adoption of jus soli, which is viewed as
treating aliens more equally. Stabilization of state borders should reduce the pressure to preserve a national identity through jus
sanguinis. Finally, an additional factor that has been the subject of debate is the influence of national character and culture. The
theory advanced by Brubaker (1992) focuses on France and Germany as having antagonistic kinds of nationhood, the former more
assimilationist and the latter more ethnocentric, which induce definitions of citizenship.
the pervasive stereotype of the welfare queen (a Black single mother producing
more children to acquire more cash assistance) was joined with another racially
constructed welfare cheat. Immigrant women and their children were supposedly
coming to this country specifically to obtain welfare benefits. Politicians and antiimmigrant advocates based their arguments to exclude immigrants from public
assistance on the idea that welfare, even more than jobs or family reunification, was the magnet
attracting immigrants to this country. By 1995 (a pre-election year), immigration and welfare reform had
solidified as an intertwined set of issues and of policy proposals. Representative E. Clay Shaw Jr. of Florida argued
that public benefits such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), food
stamps, and Medicaid should be denied to noncitizens. He argued that the denial of
benefits to immigrants would take away the attraction of coming to the United
States.Through such popularly recognized discourse of citizenship as the foundation of social, economic, and political
entitlement, immigrant reproduction took priority over economic production in the nativist discourse arguing for immigration reform.
The arguments that claimed that undocumented Latina/o immigrants were a drain
on the welfare system joined with another, considerable different, narrative of
immigrants and welfare abuse. In the included Asian stereotypes, specifically claims of high public assistance use
by noncitizens from Southeast Asia, and charges of fraudulent receipt by elderly immigrants from Asia of Supplemental Security
Income (SSI, cash assistance for the elderly, the disabled, and the blind living below the poverty level).
Welfare reform
and immigration reform became interconnected, as, in a massive overhaul, public assistance was
specifically revised, provision by provision, with different forms of citizenship requirements than
before. The move to deny public benefits to all or most noncitizens, including legal
permanent residents, moved beyond the scope of Californias Save our State
initiative.
institutionalization of power, nor even the monopolist of legitimate force, as some classic theory has it.
and demand their exclusion from the sphere of human values, civic rights and
moral obligations (Papastergiadis, 2006; Tyler, 2006). It is this process that we need to
interrogate, as Agamben urges us. He writes: It would be more honest and, above all, more useful to carefully
investigate[the] deployments of power by which human beings could be so completely deprived of their rights
that no act committed against them could appear any longer a crime (1998, p. 171). But how do liberal and
humanitarian discourses of citizenship education respond to such obvious cases of misrecognition and violation of
human rights?
The process of making a political other is a vicious cyclepeople like immigrants and the homeless become more and
more victimized, ending in domination.
Arnold in 04 (Kathleen Arnold is a faculty member of the department of Political Science at DePaul
University. Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity: The Uncanniness of Late Modernity, pgs. 75-77)
In essence,
not only
anxiety, and processes of externalization onto an Other or Others. These processes involve both
conscious and unconscious activity. Second, certain primitive or irrational processes can function in externalizing
unwanted or bad aspects of the self onto an Other or Others.
Other is not altogether a rational one, that is, not completely (if at all) reflective of reality and
involving emotions and reactions that are primitive or undeveloped. However, I am not subscribing to the black and
white analysis of the need for one common identity that necessitates one in-group and one outgroup (that is, the
notion that ethnic conflict and nationalism are natural and thus inevitable). In reality, every individual, even in the
during crises in
which national identity becomes important, people can forget their class oppositions
and their hostility will be externally directed . In this instance, intergroup formation reduces
complexity and anxiety and is therefore resistant to rational discourse.87 Yet, what this shows is the
instability of identity rather than its stability, which then calls into question any sort of
subjectivity (that is, unitary and fixed identity). Third, these processes reflect a constant engagement with an
same nation, has different affiliations that will compete with one another. Nevertheless,
Other, even when the Other remains Other. This is possible in that the Other or enemy, in more pathological
instances, is merely a return of the repressed and can only be seen for what it is when the in-group reclaims its
the construction of the poor or homeless Other goes far beyond the reality that is poverty and indeed, ascribes the
Political or economic
uncertainty can lead to predatory tendencies of the in-group and the victims
become even more victimized. Wolfenstein comments that although the United States, for example, is
qualities of an individual or groups situation to the person or people themselves.
not at the level that Nazi Germany was, there are some fascistic tendencies in behavior towards political Others.
the United States has a similar intergroup structure as that of Nazi Germany,
and the same processes of splitting, projection and disavowal through which the
devalued and dangerous other is created. 90 This is manifested along many lines:
geographical segregation, hysteria against immigrants and welfare recipients, and
That is,
in institutional domination, for example. In political life, uncertainty generates anxiety; anxiety activates
defensive tendencies. Thus, there is a tendency for people to revert to defenses rather than to engage situational
realities. . . .91 Hence, the treatment of the homeless, which is often manifested in a punitive fashion, comes from
aggressive drives. I will argue at the end of this chapter that this should not be viewed as an acceptable or salutary
political identity, the home/homeland is both an external and internal manifestation of self. Rather than arriving at
the conclusion that the homeless are then nonselves, it should be recognized that in reality, home is more than a
structure. For better or worse, it involves relationships, a daily path, and daily activities. Like the psychoanalytic
concept of self, the home is a locus of both security and also conflict and anxiety, some of which is manifest and
some of which is repressed. Through the mechanisms of repression, splitting, and projection on the part of the
the homeless and some immigrants are bearers of the uncanny, albeit in
different ways. Behind these mechanisms are primitive emotions and unconscious
fears of the political Other.
housed,
The immigrant is forced to either assimilate into the welfare state to become a
good citizen or marginalized by racial and neoliberal violence.
Arnold in 08
(Kathleen Arnold is a faculty member of the department of Political Science at DePaul University.
Americas New Working Class: Race, Gender, and Ethnicity in a Biopolitical Age, pgs. 217-219)
Mens work is often compred to womens work, in such a way that women are favored as ideal workers for
sweatshop, service work, and simple manufacturing tasks. For their part, men may turn to more informal conditions
such as day labor (this work is not limited to immigrants; a significant number of very poor American-born men
unauthorized immigrants. But to make this argument, one must separate the poor conceptually into working and
nonworking, responsible and irresponsible, housed and homeless, citizen and noncitizen, and so on. The truth is
poor individuals who work in low-tier positions pass in and out of employment,
on and off welfare, and are members of families with mixed citizenship or prisoner
status. While social scientists often need to categorize groups of people in order to conduct empirical research,
that
erroneous distinctions can be made between the hardcore (that is, unemployed) poor and the working-class poor.
For example, it might be assumed that members of the latter group are treated fairly by the police, are equal to all
before the law, and are viewed as citizens, even when the reality is that there is no clear distinction between them
and the hard-core poor. Moreover ,
is easier to see how the prerogative power of the war on Terror, the War on Drugs,
and the criminalization of the homeless affects all of these groups , even if to varying
degrees. When we combine all of this with the biological racism that is increasingly
popular among the political and academic elites, the backlash against feminism
(partly evident in the preference for allegedly docile group for low-tier positions),
and the blatant ignorance shown toward foreigners of color, the deployment of
prerogative domestically and the treatment of these individuals as biological life
seems less fantastic. To put it differently, my argument suggests a way of bridging the apparent gap
between the sovereign or warfare state on the one hand and the welfare or democratic state on the other: a gap
immigrants could be described as a more radical Other, because of cultural and religious
differences, among other things. Indigent, darker-skinned immigrants are often viewed as taking
jobs away from other Americans, usurping welfare benefits that they do not
deserve, and dividing society by creating linguistically and culturally separate enclaves. The public
response to this is to try to enforce English only policies in schools and on road signs, for example, or to
create citizens watch groups in California and Texas that will harass anyone who appears to
be foreign and non-European. Immigrants are often viewed as a threat to our cultural and
racial integrity and the concept of multiculturalism is interpreted as encouraging these divisions. This
threat is perceived as one to both national security and domestic unity , exacerbated after
the events of September 11, 2001. As these political Others fail to embody political economic
norms of identity, they face two similar reactions: either demands for assimilation or
criminalization. In the case of the homeless, they are either integrated into the welfare
system in order to become rehabilitated (an attempt to subsume the Other into the
Same) or subjected to arrests or police harassment. When this does not work, they are bused to
another city, forced out to urban campgrounds or simply compelled to move on. Similarly, immigrants are
expected to assimilate or become the object of suspicion. Deportation looms behind
either choice. Thus, the power matrix that these homeless people fall into is no longer democratic.
Rather, it reflects the exercise of prerogative power in that it is punitive and
disciplinary and ultimately treats these people not as citizens (the political
recognition of an individual as a human being) but as subhumans deprived of
political status. A narrow political identity and a conception of justice as order are the motivating factors
behind these punitive reactions and manifestations of power. In this way, the state of exceptionthe
exercise of prerogative power only in times of a national emergencybecomes the
rule.12 Capitalist logic and norms of identity determine these power relations and
exclusions. As Samuel Weber notes, Capitalism, like the Hegelian Dialectic, depends on the horizon of
Poor
appropriability, and hence, on the proper, the propriable (the realization of surplus-value as profit). Hence, there is
built-into Capitalism, and to Liberalism insofar as it is tied to Capitalism . . . a tendency to reduce or construe the
Other in terms of the Same or the Identical. But this argument works only if one realizes that the other is not
necessarily human: the realization of profit involves the reduction of exchange and substitution to a circulation with
The reduction of the other to the same is implied in the capitalisteconomical logic of profitability, hence of efficiency, and the treatment of others . . .
whether as immigrants or homeless is inseparable from this historically
predominant (empirical) context.13In this way, both types of homelessness suggest an undecidability
a determinate goal. . . .
in the political realm that cannot be accounted for in empirical studies. My approach, which looks at homelessness
as a political and economic circumstance, is founded on a political-theoretical treatment that allows for the
unmasking of these power relations. Given this critique and the economic context described, I explore
the link
disperse areas of land, peoples, and languages and thus, fundamental notions of
national homogeneity, a bounded territory, and the supreme importance of national
sovereignty. The establishment of these much more permanent boundaries separating and defining nationstates (especially since WWI) presupposes a notion of the proper, property, and a constitution of the political self. In
as nations become more exclusive about who crosses their borders and
who is considered a citizen, a fundamental violence is revealed . Rather than being an
outside incursion, this violence is instead a constitutive element. In this way, nationalism and capitalism
(within the nation-state) are complementary forces that construct the paradigms of
self and other (even as economic globalization and nationalism are antagonistic forces).
these processes,
local social service agencies and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Riding on the political
momentum of California's Proposition 187, the 1994 ballot initiative that barred undocumented immigrants from
welfare reform signals the emergence of a contemporary antiimmigrant agenda that differs markedly from other periods of nativism in U.S.
history. This shift represents new immigrants from Latin America and Asia not so much as threats to the work
most social services,5
force, as in previous decades, but increasingly as threats to the American civic and fiscal community.6 Yet, while
this "new nativism" deploys a racial-nationalist discourse, it ultimately furthers a neoliberal agenda in which the
state serves the interests of global capital by ensuring the availability and vulnerability of an increasingly foreign-
system provides us with an analytical lens through which to examine the role of the nation-state in the late-
integration. As the second most significant piece of legislation passed under the Clinton presidency, following the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994at a time when Ford cars and Sears clothing are
manufactured in maquiladora factories in Third World "free trade zones," when the most popular radio station in Los
Angeles is broadcast in Spanish, and when the gospel of free trade is continually used to undermine the power of
workers around the worldwelfare
(Dominguez I986; Miles I989; Gilroy I987; Williams I989, I99I; Hall i992; Gregory and Sanjek I994). Recently, however, scholars claim
though state policies, informed by sympathetic liberalism, combat the kind of crude, neofascist racism that characterized earlier
forms of discrimination in Britain (pp. I48-50). What Gilroy fails to mention, from his British vantage point, is how
U.S. racial
discourses, long interwoven with notions of cultural difference as in Patrick Moynihan's notion of
"black pathology," may have influenced the biological-cultural shift in discourses of marginal or
ineligible citizenship on the other side of the Atlantic. Thus thisrace-versus-culture construction of
exclusionary discourses is, albeit unintentionally, a red herring.Nevertheless, leading U.S. scholars such as Michael Omi and Howard
Winant (I986)continue to study the shifting constructions of racial politics without reference to normative performance or schemes
of cultural assessment. Gilroy cautions that "'race' is a political category that can accommodate various meanings which are in turn
become synonymous with being American, and more broadly these values are what the world associates
with Western civilization. There is, however, a regulatory aspect to neoliberalism whereby economics is extended
to cover all aspects of human behavior pertaining to citizenship. An important principle underlying liberal
democracy emphasizes balancing the provision of security against the productivity
of citizens. In other words, neoliberalism is an expression of the biopolitics of the
American state as well as setting the normative standards of good citizenship in
practice. In the postwar era, such thinking has given rise to a human-capital assessment of
citizens (Becker I965), weighing those who can pull themselves up by their bootstraps
against those who make claims on the welfare state. Increasingly, citizenship is defined
as the civic duty of individuals to reduce their burden on society and build up their
own human capital-to be "entrepreneurs" of themselves (Gordon I99I:43-45). Indeed, by the I96os liberal economics
had come to evaluate nonwhite groups according to their claims on or independence of the
state. Minorities who scaled the pinnacles of society often had to justify themselves in such entrepreneurial terms. A rather apt
example was the I99OS nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court of the United States, a move widely viewed as the
token appointment of an African American to the powerful white-dominated institution. In his confirmation hearings, Judge Thomas
The
can-do attitude is an inscription of ideal masculine citizenship; its legitimating
power was more than sufficient to overcome the ugly stain of sexual harassment that
painted himself as a deserving citizen who struggled out of a hardscrabble past by "pulling himself up by his bootstraps."
Within the framework of citizenship, care is easily associated with dependence . People
who depend on professional care as well as on informal caregivers, including women who care for their
families, who are dependent on the welfare state or their husbands, seldom meet
the standards for autonomy, independence, or self-development that have been
defined within the concept of citizenship. Why is it so difficult to accept that dependence is
the ultimate characteristic of every individual human being ? The answer probably lies in the
fact that the fundamental discourse on citizenship is connected to the "male"
discourse of the autonomous individual without involvements and tiesa virtual,
nonexistent human being. This discourse also underlies the feminist perspective on
autonomy: only the liberation from ties of dependence and caregiving work can give
women autonomy and citizenship status . Because this approach is not only invalid
(autonomy and citizenship should also be possible through care-giving and carereceiving), it is also impossible to strive for complete independence : every citizen is
dependent on someone else in one way or another. Therefore it is more fruitful to use an alternative perspective: all
women does not seem to be burdensome. Some dependence relations are not only more visible than others but
the issue of gender, formally excluded from the discourse of state theory, is
nevertheless present under the surface. State theory must deal with it somehow.
The result, as seen in the liberal account of citizenship, is likely to be that an implicit
sociology of gender becomes an important if unspoken part of theories of the
state. The same is true of Marxist state theory. The analysis of the state as an agency of class power is based on
a specific conception of class. This arises from a political economy that excludes domestic production, therefore
much of women's work, from calculation. At the same time, the concept of the state is based on a demarcation of
politics from "civil society" or from an "ideological instance." No prizes are offered for seeing the connection with
the public/private distinction, which is a major feature of patriarchal definitions of "women's place." In both
directions the Marxist theory of the state presupposes the gender division of labor and its cultural supports.8 So,
ironically, does neo-conservatism. The New Right envisions the state as a mindlessly expanding system of
bureaucratic control, which needs to be rolled back to liberate the entrepreneurs and redistribute wealth to "the
accounts of the state is brought to the surface by liberal feminism, a tradition of thought with a 200-year history
embracing Wollstonecraft and Mill in Britain, Stanton and Friedan in the United States. Liberal feminism took the
doctrine of "rights" seriously and turned it against the patriarchal model of citizenship. "Equal rights" is more than
a slogan, it is a wholly logical doctrine that is as effective against the "aristocracy of sex" as the doctrine of the
"rights of man" was against the aristocracy of property."' The concept of rights is connected with a particular
concept of the state. In this view the state is, or ought to be, a neutral arbiter between conflicting interests and a
guarantor of individual rights. The right to a voice in its proceedings is given by citizenship. Liberal feminism
adopts this view of the state, with one significant shift: it argues that empirically the state is not neutral in its
treatment of women. Liberal feminism, in effect, treats the state as an arbiter that has been captured by a
If women's
situation is defined as a case of imperfect citizenship, the answer is full citizenship .
particular group, men. This analysis leads directly to a strategy for redress: capture it back.
If men presently run the governments, armies, and bureaucracies, the solution is more access, packing more and
more women into the top levels of the state until balance is achieved. In its own territory this is a powerful and
sharp-edged analysis. It underpins what successes the women's movement has had in dealings with the liberal
state. The campaign for the suffrage itself was based on this analysis, as were the campaigns for married women's
property rights last century and for equal pay in this century. More recently, liberal feminist logic has led to
antidiscrimination laws, equal employment opportunity (EEO) programs, and an expanded recruitment of women
to the middle levels of political power. The themes of the United Nations Decade for Women (1975-85) broadly
followed liberal feminist notions of equal citizenship. Liberal feminism has developed enough leverage to receive
occasional endorsement from the political 513 leadership of the superpowers. Carter in his day endorsed the
ERA; while Gorbachev seeks to include liberal-feminist themes in perestroika: Today it is imperative for the
country to more actively involve women in the management of the economy, in cultural development and public
the liberal
feminist analysis is theoretically rootless to a striking degree. In a basic sense it
treats patriarchy as an accident, an imperfection that needs to be ironed out. It
understands men as a category overrepresented in the state structure. But it has
no way of explaining why that biological category should have a collective interest
needing to be defended. Therefore it has no way of accounting for men's resistance except as an
life. For this purpose women's councils have been set up throughout the country.' All that said,
expression of prejudice. Liberal feminists typically speak of "sexism" not of patriarchy, and accordingly seek to
change men's minds to cure the prejudice. The account of women's abstinence from the public realm is likewise
based on a description of attitudes, most often on the idea that women are socialized into traditional sex roles
Friedan, the most prominent figure in North American liberal feminism, finds the entry of women cadets into West
Point to train for military leadership a positive move - a judgment consistent with the politics of access but
horrendously at odds with recent feminist analyses of warfare. It is equally telling that Gorbachev goes on from the
passage just quoted to blame Soviet social difficulties on a breakdown of family life, and to emphasize the
question of "what we should do to make it possible for women to return to their purely womanly mission."12
Liberal feminism has brought to the surface the suppressed truth that the state is gendered, and has used
this truth to inspire a formidable and sustained politics of access. But it has not been able to grasp the
character of gender as an institutional and motivational system, nor to develop a
coherent analysis of the state apparatus or its links to a social context. The
underlying individualism of classic liberalism , as Z. Eisenstein argues, is at odds with the
social analysis required for the development of feminism. Only through a break with
liberal presuppositions can these antinomies be overcome. It is, indeed, in the more radical
feminisms of the 1970s and 1980s that a new concept of the state has emerged.
lesbian/gay
migrants still face substantial barriers, which reveal the enormous gap between
removing explicit discrimination from the law and ensuring that equal access can be
realized in practice. For example, the two most common ways to become a legal permanent resident (LPR)
are through direct family ties or sponsorship by an employer. But lesbian/gay relationshipsunlike
heterosexual ones are not recognized as a legitimate basis for acquiring LPR status . This
disparity was reinforced in 1996 by the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined
marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman for domestic and immigration
purposes. Thus, binational lesbian/gay couples must "rely on a wide variety of visas and artifices to keep them
In 1990, exclusion based on sexual orientation was finally removed from immigration law. But
together," including student, tourist, and work visas.9 But these are often difficult to getespecially for those
third country; still others engage in sham heterosexual marriages to get legalized. Thus, as South Asian lesbian
that all applicants for legal permanent residence must test negative for HIV. Although President Clinton pledged that
refugee visas, and adjustment to permanent resident status."12 The legislation further stated that as a matter of
exceptional circumstances.13 Finally, although lesbians and gays may no longer be explicitly excluded on sexuality
functioned as an isolated system, but instead was part of a broader federal immigration control regime that sought
to ensure a "proper" sexual and gender order, reproduction of white racial privilege, and exploitation of the poor.
The 1875 Page Law, which mandated the exclusion of Asian women who were thought to be coming to the United
States for "lewd and immoral" purposes, marked the beginning of this restrictive regime. Working-class Chinese
women were particularly affected by the law, since after its passage immigration officials generally presumed that
they were all entering the United States to work in the sex industry, and accordingly tried to exclude them.15 The
Page Law also provided the blueprint through which the U.S. immigration system became transformed into an
apparatus for regulating sexuality more generally, in relation to shifting gender, racial, ethnic, and class
anxieties.16 Following passage of the Page Law, restrictive immigration legislation multiplied. For instance, Chinese
exclusion became law in 1882, and by 1924 had been extended to prevent the entry of all Asians.17 Southern and
Eastern European arrivals were also significantly reduced after 1924 because of racial and cultural concerns. Class
restrictions multiplied, including bans on contract laborers and those deemed liable to become public charges. At
the same time,
structured U.S. immigration law. As a result, in the early decades of the twentieth century, women
who were not excluded on racial and class grounds faced growing difficulties
entering the United States unless they came under the protection of a male who
seemed "respectable" and could provide support.18 Immigration law also expanded the provisions against
women coming to the United States for prostitution, and added bans on polygamists and immoral women.19
immorality. When not barred for alleged immorality, they were often barred on racial or class grounds. Exemplifying
these restrictions was the 1920 Ladies Agreement, which ended the migration of Japanese brides joining husbands
in the United States because restrictionists claimed that these brides' childbearing rates threatened white
supremacy.22 Poor and working-class wives of all backgrounds were increasingly refused entry on the grounds that
they were "liable to become public charges," such as through bearing children in publicly funded hospitals.
civil rights litigation before the Supreme Court under Earl Warren and under Chief Justices Burger and Rehnquist,
the breakup of the African American liberal coalition, the storytelling response, and protest--explain the
development of critical race theory, its antecedents in the legal liberalism that enabled the civil rights movement,
attempts to bring the civil rights movement to the North had come to naught. Northern blacks had never
experienced legal segregation and discrimination; instead, they experienced it on an unofficial basis. Long-standing
housing discrimination relegated them to ghettos and their children to neighborhood schools inferior to those
attended by white children. Blacks from Watts to Newark had rioted against an unseen enemy: their lack of
economic opportunity, for which no Jim Crow institution could be blamed. African American intellectuals, in their
long-standing position as leaders and activists, tried to determine what the next strategies should be. Was the
movement over? Had the legal aspects of the movement done all it could do? Was the movement in the hands of a
federal government, seemingly pledged to eradicate the problems, stemming from decades of discrimination,
subservience and poverty? Should blacks rely upon group-based remedies such as affirmative action? What was the
Alt Homelessness
The alt is to embrace a politics of homelessness-this divorces
notions that citizenship is tied to the homeland and opens up
spaces for difference to thrive. Only with this sense of a
cosmopolitan citizen can we truly be at home-there wouldnt
be violence predicated off exclusion.
Arnold in 04
experience of in-betweenness is an
example of occupying and acting from this supplementary space. However, as Said
cautions, exile should not be fetishized in proposing alternative perspectives of homeland. Nonetheless, exile,
statelessness, and domestic homelessness can be used to measure the status of
democracy. Additionally, there is some merit in seeing beyond ones own borders : I have
within a nonpluralistic politics of difference.88 Edward Saids
given the name worldliness to this voice, by which I do not mean the jaded savoir-faire of the man about town, but
rather a knowing and unafraid attitude toward exploring the world we live in.89 To put it differently, Most
people are principally aware of one culture, one setting, one home; exiles are aware
of at least two, and this plurality of vision gives rise to an awareness of
simultaneous dimensions, an awareness thatto borrow a phrase from musicis contrapuntal.90 While
the notion of supplementary spaces or in-betweenness may appear overly abstract, these ideas suggest at least
groups should not wait for rights or spaces to be granted but organize
and demand their rights or create their own spaces. Nevertheless, this cannot happen
just anywhere but in a political context that is more open to debate, difference, and
responding to the demands of all groups . Second, as I have argued, home will only be
possible if we give up on the idea of a unified, rigid, and bounded notion of home.
The politicization of home and homelessness signals a political splitting between
normal/abnormal, rational/irrational, economically independent/dependent, and so
on that is radically signified in the perception of home as the repository for positive
attributes and homelessness, that of negative characteristics . Indeed, the fundamental
violence that is revealed in notions of property and the proper demonstrate the
connection between the political status of the homeless and stateless. If identity
and home(land) have been tied to one another inextricably, it is time to loosen this
relation. Rather than basing a politics on notions of national security and by
extension, uncertainty and instability, a politics that embraced lived, daily
experience as realistic would allow for greater inclusion, more flexibility in the
political process, an expanded notion of home and ultimately, a sort of political
homelessness. Altogether, a politics of homelessness, reflecting this openness to the
Other, would involve cosmopolitan values. Against the idea of a homogeneous universalism and
exclusivity, allowing the Other to exist as Other is a significant component of justice .
two things. First,
a citizenship that is more open and the possibility that dual citizenship
be more easily obtainable would permit a positive destabilization of the homeland
that would paradoxically allow more people to be at home. Finally, the charge that
Correspondingly,
cosmopolitanism involves rootlessness can be reversed where it is revealed that it is, in fact, the nation state that
Interest in utopian thinking is now being renewed in education (Lewis, 2007; Papastephanou, 2008); a detailed
working of the multiple notions and manifestations of edutopian thought is impossible here, for reasons of space.
exclusion be recast from their status as constitutive to beings who might be said to matter (p. 189). If, as
Agamben (1998) asserts, we have not managed yet to heal the fracture between zo and bios, then
immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers as abject figures offer education within
constitution of states and for the democratisation of continental and global institutions. The Human Rights Act
1998, which incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law, is one example of the ways in
which national institutions are voluntarily subjecting themselves to international standards. The setting up of an
International Criminal Court is an illustration of a new supra-national institution, created in the image of those
these in fact constitute democratisation, given that international institutions are invariably intergovernmental and
that it is un-elected non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that take the lead in trying to influence decisionmaking at a global level (Miller, 1999; Kymlicka, 2001). Despite these limitations and the lack of an institutional
we worked with identified strongly with their city and/or their local neighbourhood. Cosmopolitan citizenship does
Education for
cosmopolitan citizenship is about enabling learners to make connections between
their immediate contexts and the national and global contexts. It is not an add-on
but rather it encompasses citizenship learning as a whole. It implies a broader
understanding of national identity. It also requires recognition that British identity, for example, may be
experienced differently by different people. Cosmopolitan citizenship implies recognition of our
common humanity and a sense of solidarity with others. It is insufficient, however,
to feel and express a sense of solidarity with others elsewhere if we cannot
establish a sense of solidarity with others in our own communities, especially those
others whom we perceive to be different from ourselves . The challenge is to accept
shared responsibility for our common future and for solving our common problems.
It implies dialogue and peer collaboration to address differences of opinion, as illustrated in the
example of young peoples discussion about the position of asylum seekers. The young people in our
not mean asking individuals to reject their national citizenship or to accord it a lower status.
research demonstrated multiple and dynamic identities, embracing local, national and international perspectives.
critical task.
let us return once more to the Kantian notion of universal hospitality in order
to raise again the question concerning the origin of the strangers right to
hospitality and how this can be understood over against the groups right to assign
the terms (or statutes) that determine the very identity of the stranger as if from
the inside. As Kant argues, the strangers right to lay claim to the surface of the earth
stems from an original state in which no one had more right than another to a
particular part of the earth.14 As the earth became more peopled and territories were established,
particular rights were recognized by treaty and by colonization. However, according to Kant,
Finally,
it is the design of the great artist, nature (natura daedala rerum), to populate the entire globe and war becomes an
instrument to 28 distribute populations equally across its surface, even to the most uninhabitable and desolate
regions of the earth (deserts, oceans). Here, Kant resorts to a speculative myth concerning an original and even
primordial time when no one enjoyed the right to lay claim to any part of the earth, since everyone possessed the
law that Kant speaks of serves as the basis for the strangers right to hospitality: the
right to association (or society) and to communication (linguistically, but also
through travel). The precedence even transcendenceof this unwritten law can
easily be demonstrated by the fact that, despite its absolute claim to sovereignty
over its own borders and the right to enforce this claim by threats of violence or
power, or by the constant vigilance of its border police, all borders nevertheless
remain indefinitely open to communication with what lies outside, to the inevitable
intercourse with strangers and foreigners (even before these are determined as
guests or enemies). Here, we might pause to reflect that one of the underlying principles of
globalization has been the sheer increase in communications of all kinds, particularly the rapid and almost
instantaneous forms of intercourse such as the television, faxes, the internet, cellular and satellite transmissions).
These forms of communication can also be defined as pure spaces of communication and translation between
communities governed by pacts and, thus, as subject to international and civil laws that pertain to spaces outside
statutes concerning pact and hospitality are still in the process of being written. In response to this situation, of
the State has adopted what could be considered a nostalgic and reactive
assertion of its sovereignty over territorial borders that have been outmoded and
overrun by these new forms of communication and the future possibilities of society ,
course,
and by the reassertion of war as an archaic principle of state-power, which might be viewed as a fundamentalist
claim in the current geo-political context. (The problem of fundamentalism cannot only be relegated to religious and
cultural forces that resist modernization, but it can also be found in certain extreme factions of ideologies that
Today we could
regard the position of the United States, specifically its claim to guard and to
closely monitor the integrity of all its borders as stipulated in The Patriot Act, as
not only unfeasible in the current global contextas not only an open violation of
civil and international laws and of public human rights, and the strangers right to
society and hospitality, in particularbut as an offense against the ideas of world
citizenship and perpetual peace, if not, as Kant would say, against the very idea of Reason itself.
define the modern States own resistance to the weakening of territorial sovereignty.)
Econ DA
1NC
The tide has turned in favor of welfare restrictionsGOP
ensures no expansion now
Groden 15 (Claire, March 17,Republicans Want to Gut Our Most Effective
Welfare Program,Claire Groden is writer for New Republic,
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121316/republican-house-budget-proposalwould-cut-snap-food-stamps)
National enrollment in the SNAP program, which ballooned during the recession, has only just started to ebb as the
havent been fleshed out yet, the program is generally expected to give states a pre-determined chunk of funding
to pre-recession levels after the recession ends and then limit future growth to the
rate of inflation. Congress should also restore work requirements in the Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and apply them to other federal
welfare programs. Podcast: Listen to Katherine (Kiki) Bradley on slowing the growth of welfare. The
federal government runs over 70 different means-tested anti-poverty programs that
provide cash, food, housing, medical care, and social services to poor and lowincome persons. These means-tested programsincluding food stamps, public
housing, low-income energy assistance, and Medicaidpay the bills and meet the
physical needs of tens of millions of low-income families. However, these programs
do not help the recipients move from a position of dependence on the government
to being able to provide for themselves. Only one welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy
Families (TANF), promotes greater self-reliance. The reform that created TANF in the mid-1990s moved 2.8 million
families off the welfare rolls and into jobs so that they were providing for themselves. Regrettably, while the TANF
reform was successful, no other federal welfare programs have been reformed along similar lines. The TANF reform
As government spending on
means-tested welfare approaches $1 trillion per year, it is time to reboot the other
poverty programs to control costs and promote greater self-reliance. In addition,
efforts to rebuild marriage in low-income communities would improve the well-being
of children, parents, and communities. Reform should be based on five principles: Slowing the
growth of the welfare state. Unending government deficits are pushing the United States toward bankruptcy. The
U.S. simply cannot afford the massive increases in welfare spending planned
by President Barack Obama. Welfare spending is projected to cost taxpayers $10.3 trillion
over the next 10 years.[1] Congress needs to establish reasonable fiscal constraints
within the welfare system. Once the current recession ends, aggregate welfare
spending should be rolled back to pre-recession levels. After this rollback has been completed,
could serve as a partial model of reform for other programs for the poor.
IN THE aftermath of the G-20 summit, most observers seem to have missed perhaps the most crucial statement of
the entire event, made by United States President Barack Obama at his pre-conference meeting with British Prime
Minister Gordon Brown: 'The world has become accustomed to the US being a voracious consumer market, the
engine that drives a lot of economic growth worldwide,' he said. 'If there is going to be renewed growth, it just can't
be the US as the engine.' While superficially sensible, this view is deeply problematic. To begin with, it ignores the
the global economy has in fact been 'America-centred' for more than 60
years. Countries - China, Japan, Canada, Brazil, Korea, Mexico and so on - either sell to the US or
they sell to countries that sell to the US. This system has generally been advantageous for all
fact that
concerned. America gained certain historically unprecedented benefits, but the system also enabled participating
countries - first in Western Europe and Japan, and later, many in the Third World - to achieve undreamt-of
with the current crisis are critical not just domestically, but also to the entire world .
Consequently, it is a matter of global concern that the Obama administration seems to be following Japan's 'model'
from the 1990s: allowing major banks to avoid declaring massive losses openly and transparently, and so
perpetuating 'zombie' banks - technically alive but in reality dead. As analysts like Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz
and Paul Krugman have pointed out, the administration's unwillingness to confront US banks is the main reason why
they are continuing their increasingly inexplicable credit freeze, thus ravaging the American and global economies.
Team Obama seems reluctant to acknowledge the extent to which its policies at home are failing not just there but
many dollars to invest everywhere - whether in US Treasury bonds or in Africa - is precisely that it has structured its
for growth in China's domestic demand. But given its structure as an export-oriented economy, it is doubtful if even
a successful Chinese stimulus plan can pull the rest of the world along unless and until China can start selling again
to the US on a massive scale.
Finally, the key 'system' issue for China - or for the European Union - in
thinking about becoming the engine of the world economy - is monetary: What are the implications of having
your domestic currency become the global reserve currency? This is an extremely complex issue that the US has
struggled with, not always successfully, from 1959 to the present. Without going into detail, it can safely be said
that though having the US dollar as the world's medium of exchange has given the US some tremendous
advantages, it has also created huge problems, both for America and the global economic system. The Chinese
Nations in the same period). There is no reason to think that this would not be true in the twenty-first as much as in the
they would be if change would be steadier. In surveying those risks, the report stressed the likelihood that terrorism
and nonproliferation will remain priorities even as resource issues move up on the international agenda.
economic
diffusion of
technologies and scientific knowledge will place some of the worlds most
dangerous capabilities within their reach . Terrorist groups in 2025 will likely be a combination of
unemployment is reduced. For those terrorist groups that remain active in 2025, however, the
descendants of long established groups_inheriting organizational structures, command and control processes, and
training procedures necessary to conduct sophisticated attacks and newly emergent collections of the angry and
disenfranchised that become self-radicalized, particularly in the absence of economic outlets that would become
narrower in an economic downturn. The most dangerous casualty of any economically-induced drawdown of U.S.
military presence would almost certainly be the Middle East. Although Irans acquisition of nuclear weapons is not
inevitable, worries about a nuclear-armed Iran could lead states in the region to develop new security arrangements
with external powers, acquire additional weapons, and consider pursuing their own nuclear ambitions. It is not clear
that the type of stable deterrent relationship that existed between the great powers for most of the Cold War would
surveillance capabilities and mobile dual-capable Iranian missile systems also will produce inherent difficulties in
achieving reliable indications and warning of an impending nuclear attack. The lack of strategic depth in
neighboring states like Israel, short warning and missile flight times, and uncertainty of Iranian intentions
may
moves, but it also will create opportunities for multinational cooperation in protecting critical sea lanes. With water
UQ GOP
No support for welfare in the status quo--republicans
Covert 15 (Bryce, march 18, The Magical Thinking Behind The GOP Plan To Cut
Programs For The Poor, Bryce Covert is the Economic Policy Editor for ThinkProgress.
She was previously editor of the Roosevelt Institutes Next New Deal blog and a
senior communications officer.,
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/03/18/3634322/republican-budgets-blockgrants/)
House Republicans released a budget proposal that, among other things,
promises to reduce spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
(SNAP, or food stamps) and Medicaid by using a favorite budgeting gimmick that could
wind up cutting millions off from the support they need. Then on Wednesday,
Senate Republicans are expected to release a budget that would do something very
similar. The aim is to save the federal government money while still serving the
needs of the poor. Overall, the House budget purports to save $5.5 trillion in
spending while still ensur[ing] assistance is provided to those in need. But Republicans
On Tuesday,
plan to do this in part with something called block granting, which significantly changes the way programs are
But as past experience with block granting shows, the poor will suffer if these
programs are reformed this way. Currently, Medicaid and SNAP are cost-sharing
partnerships between states and the federal government. If need and enrollment increase for
funded.
these programs say, during a severe financial crisis where more families struggle to afford food and need food
education benefits -- all are made more difficult when Washington forgets the limits
of its own understanding and power ," Price's outline says. "When that happens, social and
safety net programs stop being a bridge to a more secure future and rather become
a barrier to success." Price's budget would cut food stamps and Medicaid in two
ways. As Ryan unsuccessfully proposed in previous years' budgets, the proposal released Tuesday would turn
funding for Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, informally known as food stamps, into
Price and Ryan modeled their proposals on the welfare reform of the
1990s, which used block-grant funding to prevent federal spending on the
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program -- the program most closely
associated with the term "welfare" -- from rising beyond a fixed amount.
"block grants." Both
combating the federal health-care law and engaged in intraparty squabbles over fiscal strategy. On Monday, Ryan
(R-Wis.), the House Budget Committee chairman, published an often stinging 204-page critique of the federal
governments anti-poverty policies, questioning the efficacy of dozens of initiatives and underscoring where
Republicans say consolidation or spending reductions are needed. There are nearly 100 programs at the federal
level that are meant to help, but they have actually created a poverty trap, Ryan said in an interview. There is no
coordination with these programs, and new ones are frequently being added without much consideration to how
Weve got to fix the situation, and this report is a first step
toward significant reform. Ryan said the report is a prelude to the House GOPs budget, which will
they affect other programs.
be unveiled later this month, and a preemptive rebuttal to the presidents budget, which will be released Tuesday.
outlines. Putting a comprehensive anti-poverty agenda alongside efforts to devise an alternative to the federal
health-care law is a GOP priority, he said. Lets have the debate, lets show where we stand, and then lets solve
the problems, Ryan said. Its
UQ Spending Decrease
Welfare spending has currently decreased
Luhby, 2012 [Tami, staff writer, Welfare Spending Cut in Half Since Reform,
CNN, http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/09/news/economy/welfare-reform/, Web.]
In the 16 years since
President Clinton and Congress overhauled the nation's welfare system, the number
of people receiving cash assistance has fallen by two-thirds. And public spending on
the program has dropped by more than half. Conservative lawmakers and policy analysts have
celebrated the reform, saying it has helped put people on the road to self-sufficiency
rather than government dependence. But advocates for low-income people contend that Temporary
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Today's welfare program is nothing like what it used to be.
Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which is what welfare turned into in 1996, does not adequately support the
payments per month is 4.6 million, down from 12.6 million. "Very few poor families are served," said Liz Schott, a
senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "It's really not a very broad program right now." The hot
button topic of welfare reform returned to the spotlight this week as Mitt Romney unveiled a presidential campaign
ad accusing President Obama of dismantling the work requirement that was central to the overhaul. But the
program at the heart of the current storm is only a shadow of the former welfare system. Previously, most of the
government dollars in the welfare program, which was then known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, was
distributed as cash. Now, only about one-third is. The rest of the TANF funds are used for a variety of purposes,
including child care, work subsidies, transportation, mental health services and family initiatives. The federal
funding portion, which is distributed to states as a block grant so it does not increase even if more people become
eligible, has been set at about $16 billion since TANF was created. States also kick in money, bringing the total to
about $33.3 billion in 2011. Also, each state sets its own eligibility rules, with some southern states restricting it to
people earning around 20% to 30% of the poverty level. The maximum time recipients can receive benefits is five
years under federal rules. Some states also establish additional criteria, such as requiring TANF applicants to
search for jobs for a month before applying.
downward trend is an
encouraging sign that the economic recovery is reaching struggling families," said
Kevin Concannon, undersecretary for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services, in a statement. "The best way to
reduce spending in the program is to continue improving the economy, connect recipients with job training and job
placement assistance, and raise the minimum wage so working families can afford to make ends meet." The
Congressional Budget Office predicts a continuation of the slow decrease from a high of 47 million in 2012 to 43
million in 2017 to 35 million in 2022.
in December 2012, when a record 47.78 million people got benefits ranging from $194 a month for one
person to $1,169 for a household of eight. Thirty-eight states saw a decline in food stamp
participation in February 2015 compared with the same month last year. The largest
declines were in Maine, Wyoming and Massachusetts, all of which saw double-digit reductions in the number of
people receiving food stamps. Maine saw a 14.5% decrease. Maine is one of 15 states that have re-instituted a limit
on food stamps for childless adults. The limit, which was imposed by the federal government during 1996 changes
to welfare law, was lifted during the recession for states that had high unemployment. It allows unemployed adults
to receive benefits for up to three months in a 36-month period. Rosenbaum says the limit will contribute to the
decline in people receiving food stamps.
Link Spending
Welfare is really expensivenew recipients would cost a lot
Meyer 14 (Ali, August 4, Americans Got $2 Trillion in Benefits from Federal
Government in 2013, Ali Meyer is a Multimedia Reporter with CNS News, covering
economic issues that expose government waste, fraud and abuse which have
appeared on outlets like the Drudge Report,
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-meyer/americans-got-2-trillion-benefitsfederal-government-2013)
The federal government paid $2,007,358,200,000 in benefits and entitlements in fiscal year 2013 from government
programs, according to data from the Bureau of the Fiscal Services Monthly Treasury Statement .
The treasury
statement summarizes the financial activities of the federal government, including
data on government receipts, outlays, and surplus and deficit totals. The September 2013
monthly treasury statement calculates these metrics for the entire fiscal year of 2013, which began on October 1,
government programs include Medicare, Social Security, railroad retirement, unemployment compensation,
workers compensation, Veterans compensation and Veterans educational assistance. In fiscal year 2013,
fiscal year 2013. This number encompasses all government spending, including things like defense, highway and
This
means that benefits, totaling $2,007,611,200,000, amounted to 58.1 percent of the
total spending.
transportation costs, public education, immigration services and government worker salaries, to name a few.
the total cost of federal and state means-tested welfare programs reached
$927 billion, an all-time high. Welfare spending has increased 16-fold since the
federal government began the War on Poverty in the 1960s and is projected only to increase.
In FY 2011,
Food stamps is one of the largest and fastest-growing means-tested welfare programs. Costs have doubled in
inflation-adjusted terms since 2008. In 2012, approximately 47 million Americans received food stamps every
month.Total
Committee, requested the report from the CRS, and GOP budget committee staffers crunched the numbers.
the CRS found that the federal government spends $745.84 billion on 83
programs that it identified as welfare programs . And "based on data from the Centers for
Specifically,
Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Oxford Handbook of State and Local Government Finance, budget
committee staff calculated at least an additional $283 billion in state contributions to those same federal programs,
for a total annual expenditure of $1.03 trillion," a report from the GOP members of the Senate Budget Committee
The $1.03 trillion figure doesn't include entitlement programs to which people
contribute like Social Security and Medicare, nor does it include government veteran
programs. No longer should we measure compassion by how much money the
government spends, but by how many people we help to rise out of poverty , says Sen.
Sessions in a statement. Welfare assistance should be seen as temporary whenever
possible, and the goal must be to help more of our fellow citizens attain gainful
employment and financial independence . The staff report notes that the federal
share of spending on these federal programs is up 32% since 2008, and now
says.
wrote Republicans on the committee, under ranking member Jeff Sessions. "The common feature of means-tested
assistance programs is that they are graduated based on a person's income and, in contrast to programs like Social
Spending for
NASA, education, and transportation totaled $797.4 billion, the committee reported,
adding, "The enormous sum spent on means-tested assistance is nearly five times
greater than the combined amount spent on NASA, education, and all federal
transportation projects over that time." Committee members said even the $3.7 trillion
figure is not the entire amount spent on poverty, "as states contribute more than $200 billion
Security or Medicare, they are a free benefit and not paid into by the recipient," they wrote.
each year to this federal nexus primarily in the form of free low-income healthcare."
the economy is so weak that people are going to the government for help. This is a stark repudiation of President
Obamas big-spending, spread the wealth around approach, because giving everyone a shot does not work
retirement, and many of them will be entirely dependent on Social Security and Medicare for their income and
We cannot continue on a
course of unlimited government spending when fewer and fewer taxpayers are
paying for that spending. That is the financial fact. But we also cannot sustain the
American Dream on this courseand that is a fact that is intensely personal for
every American.
health care. This dependency is a huge driver of future budget deficits.
shows the top most expensive programs are likely to grow (in terms of cost): And here's a breakdown of the
If one
were to try to account for projected spending of all welfare programs combined, the
cost would be about $12.7 trillion. "According to the Presidents budget plans for fiscal year 2013,
programs, and how much they'll cost over the next ten years, according to government projections:
means-tested welfare will not decline as the recession ends, but will continue to grow rapidly for the next decade.
tested welfare spending is more than sufficient to bring the income of every lower-income American to 200 percent
of the federal poverty level, roughly $44,000 per year for a family of four. (This calculation combines potential
welfare aid with non-welfare income currently received by the poor.)
Second, the future growth of means-tested welfare spending should be limited. In fiscal year 2011, total federal and
on Poverty in the mid-1960s, government has spent $19.8 trillion (in inflation-adjusted 2011 dollars) on meanstested welfare. By comparison, the combined cost of all the wars in American history from the Revolutionary War
increase in federal means-tested welfare spending during his first two years in office was two and a half times
total
government spending on means-tested welfare or aid to the poor was a record-high
$657 billion. By fiscal year 2011, total government spending on means-tested aid
had, as noted above, risen to $927 billion a 40% increase . And Obamas proposed budgets
greater than any previous increase in federal welfare spending in American history. In fiscal year 2007,
would have total annual means-tested welfare spending remain permanently at its present bloated level of 6% of
GDP over the next decade. Combined annual federal and state welfare spending will reach $1.56 trillion in 2022;
the state a few dollars anyway, bearing out one of Gov. Rick Scott's arguments for implementing it. But the low test
fail-rate undercuts another of his arguments: that people on welfare are more likely to use drugs. At Scott's urging,
the Legislature implemented the new requirement earlier this year that applicants for temporary cash assistance
pass a drug test before collecting any benefits. The law, which took effect July 1, requires applicants to pay for
their own drug tests. Those who test drug-free are reimbursed by the state, and those who fail cannot receive
benefits for a year. Having begun the drug testing in mid-July, the state Department of Children and Families is still
tabulating the results. But at least 1,000 welfare applicants took the drug tests through mid-August, according to
the department, which expects at least 1,500 applicants to take the tests monthly. So far, they say, about 2
percent of applicants are failing the test; another 2 percent are not completing the application process, for reasons
vary, however, since not all of the applicants denied benefits might have actually collected them for the full year.
Under certain circumstances, applicants who failed their drug test can reapply for benefits after six months. The
as-yet uncalculated cost of staff hours and other resources that DCF has had to spend on implementing the
program may wipe out most or all of the apparent savings, said Derek Newton, spokesman for the American Civil
Liberties Union of Florida. The program will grow costlier yet, he said, if it draws a legal challenge. The ACLU has
been threatening for months that it may challenge the constitutionality of the program; Tuesday, Newton said his
group is still weighing a lawsuit. DCF spokesman Joe Follick said that families and accountability are the main
focuses of the program. "The taxpayers deserve to know that the money they are spending is being used for its
intended purpose," he said. "In this case, with [temporary cash assistance], the purpose is to help families become
independent and self-sufficient. If a family receiving [cash assistance] includes someone who has a substance
abuse problem, the odds of that money being used for purposes other than helping that family increases." More
Scott has said publicly that people on welfare use drugs at a higher rate
than the general population. The 2 percent test fail rate seen by DCF, however, does not bear that out.
According to the 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Hea lth, performed by the U.S.
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services, 8.7 percent of the population nationally over age
12 uses illicit drugs. The rate was 6.3 percent for those ages 26 and up. A 2008 study by
than once,
the Office of National Drug Control Policy also showed that 8.13 percent of Floridians age 12 and up use illegal
drugs.
Link Inflation
Increasing Welfare Will cause widespread inflation
Ginsberg 05,
(Understanding Social Problems, Policies, and Programs, Leon H.
Ginsberg, Leon Ginsberg is a social work educator at Appalachian State University
in North Carolina. He was formerly Dean of Social Work at the University of South
Carolina and at West Virginia University. For ten years he was a social welfare and
education official in West Virginia. He holds the Ph.D in political science from the
University of Oklahoma. He has worked and taught or lectured in Colombia, India,
Mexico, and South Korea.)
Some people refer to the leverage effects as trickle-down economics:
provide money to the top earners in the economy, and they will invest it in new
production, purchases, and home construction, among other things; eventually
those funds wil trickle down to reach everyone else. Conversely, if you put
money in the base of the economy, such as assistance programs for
disadvantaged people, the money will eventually trickle up to the
wealthiest. Spending money simply adds to economic activity and wealth. They
continue Spending money on social welfare programs may have a very
positive relationship on the economy, through the multiplier effect. Spending too
much may cause inflation, which is often harmful to everyone because, no
matter how little or how much money they have , it is worth less than it
would have been there been less or no inflation.
administrations seeking to prolong their power embark upon massive spending and inflating in order to build a new
of expectations, new programs are demanded and more government spending is initiated. When social and
economic conditions grow even worse, the disappointments breed more radicalism, cynicism, nihilism, and above
all, bitter social and economic conflict. And all along, the enormous increase in government spending causes an
enormous increase of taxes, chronic budget deficits and rampant inflation. 5 The redistributive aspirations of the
voting public often induce their political representatives in Congress to authorize and appropriate even more money
than the President requests. Such programs as social security, medicare, antipoverty, housing, economic
development, aid to education, environmental improvement, and pay increases for civil servants are so popular that
few politicians dare to oppose them. The government influences personal incomes by virtually every budget
decision that is made. Certainly its grants, subsidies, and contributions to private individuals and organizations aim
to improve the material incomes of the beneficiaries. The loans and advances to private individuals and
organizations have the same objective. Our foreign aid program is redistributive in character as it reduces American
incomes in order to improve the material condition of foreign recipients.
The
benefits, health, labor and welfare expenditures, housing and community development, Federal
expenditures on education, and last, but not least, the social insurance and medicare programs directly affect the
incomes of both beneficiaries and taxpayers. As the benefits generally are not based on tax payment, but rather
more than the givers can give. Besides, charity through government redistribution is not real charity. Thomas
Jefferson once said, The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground. That is
what we see taking place through the governments embrace of moral hazard. Its clear that the politics of
government largesse and good policy (holding individuals and institutions responsible for their actions) dont always
Link Fraud
Welfare expansion leads to massive fraud
Cato 11 Tad DeHaven is a research analyst for the Spending and Budget
Initiative at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and the Cato Institute
Most Americans agree that waste, fraud, and abuse in government
programs is a problem. A recent poll of likely voters found that those
surveyed believe an average of 42 percent of every dollar spent by the
federal government is wasted. The same poll also found that 60 percent of those surveyed believe that
problems with the federal budget can be solved by simply eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. In fact, 40 percent strongly agreed
with this position.1 Although the belief that the governments budget problems can be solved by making bureaucracies simply run
more efficiently is erroneous, the American people are correct that Washington does a poor job of managing their money. We have
documented countless examples of waste at Catos website, www.DownsizingGovernment.org. And the newspapers seem to have
major source of problems for the federal budget. Attempting to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse is fine, but it wont solve our deficitspending problem. Policymakers on both sides of the aisle recognize that examples of waste, fraud, and abuse do not sit well with
the American people. Therefore, it is hard if not impossible to find a policymaker who doesnt tell his or her constituents that
theyll work to eliminate government waste. For example, previous House Speaker Nancy Pelosi instructed her committee chairs to
uncover waste, fraud, and abuse as part of an effort to ensure fiscal discipline for the long term. The House Republicans Pledge
Medicare to hundreds of more obscure programs that most people have never heard of. Administrators dont do enough to police
these massive transfers because people always tend not to spend other peoples money as carefully as they spend their own money.
And on the receiving end of programs, a vast number of people use the federal budget as a cookie jar to garner benefits to which
Hospitals rip
off taxpayers by double-billing Medicare and Medicaid. Criminal gangs loot subsidy
programs such as food stamps. Owners of nonprofit groups that are
supposed to aid the needy line their own pockets with taxpayer funds. For
decades, there have been efforts to end such abuses, but federal
programs are extremely complex and they deliver benefits to thousands or
millions of recipients. When it comes to waste, fraud and abuse, government programs are always chasing their
tail. In the private sector, businesses have a financial incentive to stop abuses before they happen. No such incentive
exists with government programs. Instead, government administrators
usually only uncover abuses after the fact, and often only after outside
auditors or the media have investigated. Small Scandal Administration The Small Business
they are not entitled.2 Families seek improper benefits through subsidies such as the school lunch program.
Administration is no stranger to waste, fraud, and abuse. Indeed, the SBA was created in 1953 after the demise of the Depression
era Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which lost support after allegations of influence peddling during the Truman administration.
President Dwight Eisenhower was against creating the SBA in principle, but he signed the legislation as a politically expedient move
that would counter criticisms that Republicans were beholden to big business. The SBAs problems started right away. In 1958,
Eisenhowers Budget Bureau warned that the SBA was an uncontrollable program, but both parties wanted to convey a message
that they supported the little fellow.3 Members of Congress enjoyed using the SBA to distribute money and favors to their
constituents. Members sometimes leaned on the agency to declare a particular business small or have a constituents competitor
declared not small. The 1960s and 1970s were marked by scandals and failures, including the reported use of SBA loans to
establish front companies for the mafia. By the mid-70s, the agency had earned the nickname Small Scandal Administration.4
The SBA has become one of the governments chief instruments for pursuing affirmative action, which has led to numerous
scandals. Successive administrations used the agency to direct lending and federal contracts to minority-owned firms. Although
stamping out discrimination is a laudable goal, the SBAs set-asides have bred corruption and abuse. For example, President Ronald
Reagan supported an expansion of SBA procurement set-asides for minority-owned firms. That decision contributed to the Wedtech
Scandal in which government officials knowingly assisted a corrupt defense contractor that had fraudulently obtained contracts
through SBA minority set-asides. More recently, the SBA has made headlines over abuses of its 8(a) program, which sets aside
federal contracts for minority-owned or other disadvantaged small businesses. Alaskan Native Corporations, which were created
by a federal law in 1971, were intended to settle longstanding land claims by Alaska natives and provide economic opportunities.
After Congress allowed the ANCs to participate in the 8(a) program in 1986, powerful Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens won them
additional contracting privileges. In the past couple of years, controversy has erupted over the ANCs ability to subcontract work out
to companies all over the country, including companies that are not small or disadvantaged. Because the 2009 stimulus bill
required recipients to publicly report subcontractors, researchers at ProPublica have been able to get a clearer idea of who is
benefitting from the ANC privileges: An analysis by ProPublica, drawing on detailed reports of federal stimulus projects, shows for
the first time that ANCs turned to subcontractors at twice the rate of all other federal contractors and significantly more often than
other small, minority-owned firms. And at least some of this work has gone to large firms General Electric, Kiewit and Lockheed
Martin the stimulus reports show, echoing government audits that have fueled the criticism of ANCs. Through September, ANCs
had won stimulus contracts worth $823 million for 742 projects, according to the most recent government data. More than 350
projects, or nearly half, rely on subcontractors to do at least some of the work. By comparison, all other stimulus contractors
subcontracted more than 5,600 of nearly 26,000 stimulus projects, or 22 percent. Other minority-owned firms hired subcontractors
on 33 percent of their projects.5 An investigation by the Washington Post found similar abuses with the ANCs and defense
contracts.6 Somewhat humorously, the SBA told the Post that it was the Pentagons responsibility to monitor the contracts, while the
Pentagon said the responsibility belonged to the SBA. Its a classic example of bureaucratic ineptitude and finger pointing. Its also a
good example of how well-intentioned programs invariably become corrupted as Washington insiders and well-connected special
interests game the system to their advantage. However, instead of trying to fix the problems these privileges foster, race-based
set-asides should be abolished altogether. And if policymakers want to make life easier for businesses of all races and sizes, they
should concentrate their efforts on eliminating burdensome taxes and regulations. Loan Guarantees The SBAs flagship 7(a) loan
guarantee program guarantees loans issued by private lenders for up to 85 percent of the loss in the event the applicant defaults on
the loan. As a result, lenders are more willing to lend money to riskier applicants because the SBA is ultimately responsible for the
bulk of any losses. To offset the costs of the SBAs loan programs to the taxpayer, the SBA charges lenders a guaranty fee and a
servicing fee for each loan approved and disbursed. The SBA is supposed to charge fees sufficient to require no annual
appropriations from Congress. However, this has not been the case and the program continues to rely on taxpayer subsidies. The
recent recession led to an increase in loan defaults, which forced the SBA to increase its purchases of defaulted guaranteed loans
from $1 billion in 2006 and 2007 to $3.9 billion in 2009 and $4.8 billion in 2010.7 In addition, Congress recently passed multiple
increases in loans subsidies at the Obama administrations behest in an attempt to goose small business lending. The purpose of the
7(a) program is to incentivize lenders to provide loans to small businesses that cannot obtain credit elsewhere.8 However, the law
defines credit elsewhere as the availability of credit from non-Federal sources on reasonable terms and conditions.9 This broad
definition renders false the notion that the SBA only benefits those who literally cannot obtain credit elsewhere. A recent
Government Accountability Office report found that a third of the lenders it sampled failed to consistently document that borrowers
met the credit elsewhere requirement or personal resources test.10 The GAO noted that for approximately 20 percent of lenders
that did provide documentation, the explanations they provided were generally not specific enough to reasonably support the
lenders conclusion that borrowers could not obtain credit elsewhere.11 Audits conducted by the SBAs Office of Inspector General
have identified high percentages of business loans to borrowers who were ineligible, lacked repayment ability, or did not provide
the required support for loan disbursement.12 The SBA outsources much of its loan decision-making to private lenders. According
to the inspector general, more than 68 percent of loan dollars guaranteed by SBA are made by lenders using delegated authorities
with limited oversight.13 Not surprisingly, the inspector general reports a long-standing problem with fraud in the 7(a) program: For
more than a decade, OIG investigations have revealed a pattern of fraud in the 7(a) business loan guaranty program by loan
packagers and other for-fee agents. Fraudulent schemes have involved hundreds of millions of dollars, yet SBA oversight of loan
agents has been limited, putting taxpayer dollars at risk.14 The inspector general has repeatedly found deficiencies in the SBAs
oversight of lenders, although it recently noted improvement. Ominously, the inspector general notes that high-risk lenders now
account for more than 80 percent of SBAs 7(a) outstanding portfolio.15 The share of guaranteed loans outstanding that the SBA is
responsible for currently amounts to over $70 billion. The inspector general also notes that the SBA has not aggressively pursued
recovery of improper payments.16 Worse, the SBA appears to be intentionally understating its improper payments problem. For
example, the SBA reported an improper payment rate in 2008 of 0.53 percent, but the inspector general found that it was actually
29 percent.17 Abolish the Small Business Administration The Government Accountability Office recently counted 80 economic
development programs at four agencies: the SBA, HUD, USDA, and Commerce.18 The SBA administers 19 of these 80 programs. The
government spends, the more taxpayer dollars will be wasted. Therefore, the best way to rein in waste and inefficiencies is to rein in
the size and scope of government. Economic development subsidies are not a proper role of the federal government. Indeed, what
policymakers innocuously refer to as economic development is just a form of central planning. In other words, policymakers are
substituting their decisions for market decisions on business lending and business investment. Attempts by policymakers to direct
economic activity through the use of subsidies and other privileges granted to particular interests and industries yield political
benefits, but they dont benefit the general public. For example, the recent housing collapse and economic downturn was a direct
result of distortions in the housing market fostered by government policies.20 In addition to the taxpayer costs, the following are
some of the problems associated with SBA-style economic development or corporate welfare: 1. Creates an Uneven Playing Field.
By aiding some businesses, corporate welfare puts other businesses at a disadvantage, which distorts markets. That distortion
causes resources to flow from higher-valued to lower-valued uses in the economy, which reduces the nations output. 2. Duplicates
Private Activities. Many federal programs duplicate activities that are routinely provided in private markets, such as insurance, loans,
and marketing. If such commercial-oriented activities are useful, then private markets should be able to perform them without
government help. 3. Harms Businesses and Consumers. Government support for some businesses damages other businesses and
consumers. For example, small businesses that dont receive a loan backed by the SBA are disadvantaged because they must
compete against a business that did receive government backing. 4. Picking Winners Is a Losing Game. Washington politicians are
no more clairvoyant about market trends and scientific breakthroughs than anyone else. Thus, when the government starts choosing
industries and technologies to subsidize, it often bets on the wrong horses at taxpayer expense. Note that businesses and venture
capital firms make many investments that turn sour as well, but their losses are private and not foisted involuntarily on other
people. 5. Fosters Corruption. Corporate welfare generates an unhealthy relationship between businesses and the government. As I
noted in my testimony, the SBA has a history of scandals that resulted from the government being too cozy with private interests.
Small Business Administration activities particularly its guaranteed loan programs display all of these undesirable qualities.
Another undesirable quality is the emergence of special-interests that work to protect their government-granted privileges.
Privileged interests have a strong incentive to build organized groups to lobby Congress to expand their benefits. These groups set
up camp near Capitol Hill to advocate their issues, and many policymakers become convinced of the merits of special interest
causes after hearing about them year after year. At the same time, average citizens do not have a strong incentive to battle against
particular subsidies because each program costs just a small part of their total tax bill. Besides, when average citizens do speak out
against particular programs, they are outgunned by the paid professionals who defend each program. These professionals are
experts at the complex features of programs, and they are skilled at generating media support for their causes. One technique they
use is to cloak the private interests of subsidy recipients in public interest clothing for example, when government-guaranteed
lenders speak of the value of the SBAs 7(a) program to the small business community while downplaying the programs value to
the lenders bottom lines.21 Another reason it is hard for average citizens to challenge special interest spending is that lobby
groups, Congress, and federal agencies rarely admit that any program is a failure or unnecessary. The people in these organizations
never admit failure because they become vested in the continued funding of programs since their careers, pride, and reputations
are on the line. They battle against any cuts to programs at a personal and emotional level. The National Association of Government
Guaranteed Lenders certainly isnt here today to tell the committee that the 7(a) program ought to be scrapped. It is interesting,
though, to note though that the bank lobby was opposed to the governments involvement in business lending back in the 1950s
when the SBA was created. The bank lobby eventually had a change of heart after the SBA shifted from directly lending to
businesses to guaranteeing loans issued by banks. Many of the problems with the SBA that have been discussed today have been
discussed for decades. There is only one way to eliminate those problems: abolish the Small Business Administration. The United
States grew to become the economic envy of the world with a small central government that largely left business development to
the private sector. The dramatic ascent of the American economy did not come about as a result of small business subsidies and
central planning of economic development from Washington. We should dispense with government favoritism to small businesses
and large businesses, and allow Americas entrepreneurs to compete on a level playing field to serve consumers, not plunder
taxpayers.
Lawmakers face a choice of either confronting the nations spending crisis head-on
by reforming entitlement and other structural spending or continuing to operate with their
heads in the sand, waiting for a spending and debt tsunami to wash over the nation
and drown economic growth. Research shows that reductions in government
spending free resources in the economy for investment and job creation, thus
spurring economic growth. For example, the CBO assessed three different deficit
scenarios and their impact on the economy: a $2 trillion increase in primary deficits,
a $2 trillion decrease in primary deficits, and a $4 trillion decrease in primary
deficits. The CBOs results show that any short-term boost in gross national product
(GNP)[13] from higher deficit spending in the short term would be more than offset
by the long-term reduction in economic growth from higher interest rates and a
crowding-out effect of private investment. Equally, any short-term dip in GNP from
additional deficit reduction would be followed by stronger economic growth over the
long term.[14] Government spending changes the composition of total demand,
such as by increasing consumption at the expense of investment. Poorly targeted
deficit spending would boost GNP in the short term, but leave less available for
productive investments in the future. Deficit spending shifts economic resources
from the future to the present, leaving younger generations with a larger tax burden
and fewer resources to invest. In reverse, lower government spending frees
economic resources for investment in the private sector, which improves consumer
wealth. In sum, additional government spending today harms economic growth in
the long term, while budget cuts today would enable the economy to grow much
faster tomorrow. The CBO scenario does not specify how deficit reduction would
be accomplishedwhether through entitlement reforms or by raising taxes.
However, the mechanism is important. If the President and Congress raised taxes
further, they would reduce the incentives to work, save, and invest, consequently
lowering economic growth. Higher taxes would also mean that fewer resources
would be available in the economy to build businesses and hire workers. Balancing
the budget with a massive tax increase rather than by limiting spending is a recipe
for economic stagnation. The long-term health of the economy depends less on a
balanced budget than on limiting the size and scope of the government. An indepth Heritage Foundation report reveals lessons from Europes exercise in
austerity. The authors reached the overwhelming conclusion that the method of
austerity matters: Increasing taxes was more damaging to the economy and less
effective in reducing deficits than spending cuts. Moreover, reducing spending
brings the added benefit of stronger economic growth over time.[15] In a paper
that analyzes the effects of fiscal policy on investment in 18 member countries for
the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Alberto Alesina and
other economists found that higher government spending is associated with less
business investment. However, when governments cut spending, private
investment surges.[16] More recent research by Alesina and others concluded that
a mild dip in GDP from spending reductions is a temporary effect that quickly gives
way to growth. As Salim Furth summarized the research, Alesina, Favero, and
Giavazzis results imply that the void left by decreased government spending is
filled within a year by increased investment and consumption, and the economy
continues growing.[17] Another factor warranting further research consideration is
that large deficit spending depresses growth by increasing uncertainty over a
countrys future fiscal health. Major U.S. credit rating agencies continue to stress
the need for additional deficit reduction over the long term. Moodys recently
emphasized that the U.S. economy has demonstrated a degree of resilience to
major reductions in the growth of government spending.[18] Lawmakers should
feel emboldened to enforce sequestration-level spending and slow the growth in
entitlement spending, thereby providing certainty on the U.S. fiscal course. Much
Larger Spending Cuts Needed Despite the hype about sequestration, federal
spending will grow rapidly over the next decade and will accelerate beyond the 10year budget window. In addition to enforcing sequestration, lawmakers should
reform entitlement and other structural spending to rein in spending and debt now
and not wait until a debt crisis forces severe austerity measures on Americans.
Putting the budget on a path to balance with spending cuts would spur economic
growth by reducing uncertainty and by freeing up resources for investment and job
creation. As the European crisis demonstrates, the option to make gradual changes
will expire, and Americans and the U.S. economy will suffer a self-inflicted wound
from unavoidable austerity measures if lawmakers continue to procrastinate the
inevitable.
at least to keep pace with the growth in the labor force to maintain current living standards, and must grow even
fasterto increase the amount of capital per workerto raise worker productivity and thus wages and salaries.
Government deficit spending and its associated debt subtracts from the amount of
private saving available for private investment, leading to slower economic growth .
Unlike what staunch believers of government spending for economic stimulus claim,
government stimulus spending does the opposite of growing the economy. Less
economic growth caused by high government spending and debt results in fewer
available jobs, lower wages and salaries, and fewer opportunities for career
advancement. Prolonged debt overhang in the United States, even at low interest
rates, would be a massive drag on economic growth, leading to significantly
reduced prosperity for Americans. In the words of Reinhart, Reinhart, and Rogoff: This debt-withoutdrama scenario is reminiscent for us of T. S. Eliots (1925) lines in The Hollow Men: This is the way the
world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper .[17] Europes Fiscal Crisis: Precursor for the United
States? Europe is experiencing an extended fiscal and economic crisis with no end in sight. In addition to adopting
many
countries in Europe have lived beyond their means for many years. Many racked up
massive government debts while benefiting from artificially low interest rates, as
the euro signaled to markets that all European debts were alike . The poster child for this
a common currency regime lacking most of the institutional trappings necessary for its survival,
behavior, of course, is Greece. Greece racked up a debt-to-GDP ratio of 145 percent in 2010 and 165 percent in
investors and other European taxpayers. Many other European countries also amassed public debts beyond 90
percent of their economiesfor instance Italy (100 percent) and Portugal (97 percent) in 2011and are now
these
countries also have a fiscal policy culprit in common: high levels of government
spending on entitlementsa fiscal situation by no means foreign to the U.S.
government.
undergoing wrenching austerity and prolonged recessions. In addition to disastrous currency policy,
harmful for those Americans on fixed incomes, such as the elderly who rely on Social Security checks, pensions, and
their own savings in retirement. By raising the cost of essential goods and services, like food and medical care,
current path of ever-higher sovereign debt and a risky Federal Reserve policy, both of which lack a credible crisis
higher inflation means that we have to get that much more out
of our job to stay even," says Dr. Walden, a professor in the Department of
Agricultural and Resource Economics. "In other words, if the inflation rate is 5 percent a year that
think one simple reason is
means youve got to get a 5 percent pay raise just to keep pace with rising costs. "From a business perspective,
inflation eats into business profits. It gives businesses a much more difficult time
adjusting, for example, to international competition, " he adds. "On the investment front,
inflation sort of clouds what we are getting from our investment returns. For example,
lets say you are earning 6 percent on an investment. If we had no inflation, that would be a very good return. But if
inflation is 5 percent, thats a very bad return, so you have to keep that in mind when you are looking at these
Among countries
that underwent trial by hyperinflation, the predominant answer was strong and
unilateral presidential initiatives. The cases of Brazil, Bolivia, and Argentina all show
how rapid economic deterioration may lead to a general outcry for decisive
intervention to stop the impending crisis. In transitions where a conflict-ridden and unstable
a country look to find the governing capacity that it needs to weather an economic crisis?
pluralism prevails, hindering the ability of organized actors to reach binding agreements, there are not many
candidates for the intervener's role beside the president. Things are different when economic emergency strikes a
country whose system of interest-group representation has been left relatively unshaken by democratization. In
this case, it is much more probable that the president's anti-inflationary initiatives will enjoy the active support of
established party and union leaders. The Economic Solidarity Stabilization Pact reached in Mexico in 1987--and
renewed since then--provides an example. It is ironic that the strategy of neocorporatist cooperation has been
more successful in Mexico, where the institutional system built around the ruling party and its affiliated unions has
so far been able to side-step the challenge of democratization. The shock programs that Latin America's new
democracies used to try to stabilize their economies included the Austral Plan in Argentina, the Cruzado Plan in
Brazil, and the Nueva Polftica Econ6mica in Bolivia. In each case, the decision-making process took the form of
presidential directives planned in secret by technocratic cabinets insulated from social and political pressures. The
measures set in motion also strengthened this policy style: In order to gain control over the crisis it faced, each
government resorted to shock policies whose efficacy depended upon the sudden altering of expectations that
typically results from rapid, sweeping actions and faits accomplis. ~ The frequency with which Latin America has
witnessed this kind of unilateral executive intervention indicates how difficult concertacidn is to achieve. As Juan
Carlos Portantiero has rightly observed, strategies of cooperation take for granted what in fact they presuppose:
the existence of a political center capable of organizing the concertacidn----or in other words, an effective public
and participation becomes relevant after, and not before, spiralling inflation has been brought to a halt and the
economy has been stabilized--that is, after, and not before, the government has regained control of key economic
variables and placed a firm hand on the helm of state.
As
federal debt has soared, so have concerns about Americas future. Used properly,
debt can safely finance private and government investment in productive capital to
support economic growth. But too much debt can ruin a family, a business, or a
nation. There is still time, though not much, for substantial and effective
course correction. Congress and the President will need a comprehensive approach to fixing the
federal debt is projected to increase another 50 percent over the next decade and then rise rapidly thereafter.
governments growing debt problem, such as is laid out in The Heritage Foundations Saving the American Dream
Washington can preserve Americas prosperity for the next generationif it acts
decisively and soon. Federal government debt has nearly doubled since President Barack Obama took
plan.
office. Recent progress toward reducing the annual budget deficit is welcome, yet federal debt is still projected to
increase 50 percent over the next decadeand then rise rapidly thereafterunder existing policies.[1] As federal
debt has soared, so have concerns about Americas future. Used properly, debt can safely finance private and
government investment in productive capital to support economic growth. But too much debt can ruin a family, a
Further, theory indicates and a growing body of research suggests a consistent relationship between high levels of
government debt relative to the size of the economy and abnormally high interest rates consistent with lower levels
of domestic investment. This relationship appears to be currently suspended due to extraordinary efforts in
monetary policy and extraordinary events in the global economy, but the traditional relationship between debt and
Traditional
interest rate and investment effects from high levels of government debt provide at
least corroborating support for another body of research suggesting a negative
causal relationship between high government debt ratios and low rates of economic
growth. The clear implication is that the recent surge in, and the current trajectory of,
federal debt pose a substantial threat to the economy and to federal finances. The
investment and interest rates will almost certainly resume as these efforts and events subside.
President and Congress should take every opportunity to enact reforms to the main drivers of federal budget
deficits, namely Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid spending, so these programs better serve their intended
beneficiaries at a cost that is affordable today and tomorrow. This is not a new call to action, but a call for urgency
as the ill consequences from rising debt may well soon unfold . The Consequences of Obamas
Debt-Based Fiscal Policies President Obamas high-debt policies will not only bequeath enormous financial burdens
to future generations of taxpayers in the form of high levels of interest expenseprojected by the Congressional
Budget Office to approach a trillion dollars annually by 2023but these policies will also significantly reduce
and innovation-driving research. Further, while both the Administration and the Congressional Budget Office
forecast interest rates eventually returning to more normal levels as the economy returns to full employment, the
forecasts appear to ignore the interest rate consequences of the recent and projected substantial increases in the
ratio of U.S. government debt to the size of the economy. The higher interest rates the literature suggests are likely
to follow from a high debt ratio are curiously missing from the governments economic forecasts, meaning the
Even greater
interest expenses and even slower economic growth and consequent slower
government revenue growth is a deeply troubling combination . Slower economic
growth, higher interest expense, fewer resources for other priorities these are the
legacies of President Obamas debt-based fiscal policies and of his and Congresss refusal to deal with
governments projected future annual interest expense is likely substantially understated.
long-standing fiscal and programmatic flaws in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Yet there are well-vetted,
bipartisan solutions to reduce the future burden of these programs materially, buying time for more thorough
reforms to ensure they achieve their policy objectives at affordable cost.[2] President Obama and Congress need to
cut spending across the budget to reduce current deficits, and they need to embark on a sustained program of
reforms to ensure that the nations entitlement programs are effective and sustainable.
massive deficits, soaring debt, and tepid support for reforms to render
Americas entitlement programs affordable pose a grave economic threat. The
threat is not theoretical; it is not suppositional. The threat is real and must be faced
squarely, and soon. The simple fact is that under current policy, America is on the verge of
becoming a country in declineeconomically stagnant and permanently debtbound.[24] Economic forecasts beyond the next few quarters, whether by government or private forecasters,
Obamas
tend to show the economy moving toward normal levels of production and employment over some reasonable
In addition to geopolitical tensions, Europe has yet to resolve its internal monetary contradictions surrounding the
euro. While European leaders have masterfully danced from crisis to crisis, they have yet to settle on policies
rendering the euro a viable currency or their economies strong, viable competitors internationally. At home,
the Federal Reserve has badly misjudged as it aggressively pursues its policy
of quantitative easing through extraordinary measures and will have to raise
interest rates quickly to prevent inflation. Or perhaps the recent extended period of high
perhaps
unemployment has degraded worker skills in ways only now implied, or perhaps business investment in new
facilities or research and development has been inadequate to sustain normal growth rates. The point is not that
current period of low interest rates despite rising debt is beguiling policymakers and the nation alike about the risks
stemming from Americas irresponsible fiscal policy, lulling them into complacency. Not merely the calm before the
almost certainly rise past the normal levels now forecast, the economy will sufferall largely due to the budget
deficits now being incurred and to the inaction so far to address the even greater, entitlement-driven deficits in the
years immediately ahead.
substantial and effective course correction. Congress, working with President Obama, can begin to
right the ship quickly with six well-vetted, bipartisan proposals, starting the process of reforming Social Security and
Medicare so they better serve their constituencies today while remaining affordable tomorrow.[25] Enacting all six
proposals, however, would still leave the task only partly completed. To finish the job, Congress and the President
will need a more comprehensive approach, such as is laid out in The Heritage Foundations Saving the American
There is still time, but not much, to ensure Americas prosperity for the
next generation.
Dream plan.[26]
mortgages, credit cards, consumer loans, and business loans. Higher interest rates on mortgages, car loans, and
other loans would make it more costly for families to borrow money. Families may then have to delay purchasing
their first home and other means of building financial security. For many Americans, the dream of starting a
and lower wages and salaries for workers. However, higher interest rates do not always materialize in countries
suffering a debt overhang. According to Reinhart, Reinhart, and Rogoff, in 11 of the 26 cases where public debt was
above 90 percent of GDP, real interest rates were either lower, or about the same, as during years of lower debt
Soaring debt matters for economic growth even when market actors are willing
to absorb it at low interest.[14] Interpreted another way, in more than half of debt overhang cases,
interest rates rose. In the case of the U.S., the Federal Reserves policy of repeated
quantitative easing has contributed to interest rates dropping to historical lows.
Interest rates will likely rise at some point over the next several years. The Congressional
ratios.
Budget Office predicts that interest costs on the debt will more than double before the end of the decade, rising
. Progressive social reforms, from the Civil Rights Act to the Clean Water Act,
tend to occur during times of prosperity and rising expectationsnot immiseration
and declining expectations. Both the environmental movement and the civil rights
movement emerged as a consequence of rising prosperity . It was the middle-class, young, and educated
by history
black Americans who were on the forefront of the civil rights movement. Poor blacks were active, but the movement was overwhelmingly led by educated,
middle-class intellectuals and community leaders (preachers prominent among them). This was also the case with the white supporters of the civil rights
Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (Walter Russell, The New
Republic, Only Makes You Stronger, 2/4, http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=571cbbb9-2887-4d81-854292e83915f5f8&p=2)
But, in many other countries where capitalism rubs people the wrong way, this is not the case. On either side
of the Atlantic, for example, the Latin world is often drawn to anti-capitalist movements and rulers on both the right
and the left. Russia, too, has never really taken to capitalism and liberal society--whether during the time of the
czars, the commissars, or the post-cold war leaders who so signally failed to build a stable, open system of liberal
democratic capitalism even as many former Warsaw Pact nations were making rapid transitions. Partly as a result of
these internal cultural pressures, and partly because, in much of the world,
an unwelcome interloper, imposed by foreign forces and shaped to fit foreign rather than
domestic interests and preferences, many countries are only half-heartedly capitalist. When crisis strikes,
they are quick to decide that capitalism is a failure and look for alternatives.
So far, such half-hearted experiments not only have failed to work; they have left
the societies that have tried them in a progressively worse position, farther behind
the front-runners as time goes by. Argentina has lost ground to Chile; Russian development has fallen farther
behind that of the Baltic states and Central Europe. Frequently, the crisis has weakened the power of the
merchants, industrialists, financiers, and professionals who want to develop a liberal capitalist society integrated
None of which means that we can just sit back and enjoy the recession. History may
suggest that financial crises actually help capitalist great powers maintain their
leads --but it has other, less reassuring messages as well. If financial crises have been a normal
part of life during the 300-year rise of the liberal capitalist system under the Anglophone
powers, so has war. The wars of the League of Augsburg and the Spanish Succession;
the Seven Years War; the American Revolution; the Napoleonic Wars; the two World
Wars; the cold war: The list of wars is almost as long as the list of financial crises.
Operationalizing Pro-Poor Growth StudyZambia, Indonesia, and Romaniathat exhibited little or no economic
growth over the study period (19902003) experienced increases in poverty.
to generate successful predictions and to improve the few predictions which are made is taken as an empiricafl act
about even the most applied economic theories.
support this empirical claim. Rosenberg certainly needs to provide evidence for
the ubiquitous predictive failure of applied economic theory. Such criticism is by
no means "well known" or "standard" in the literature on economic methodology. It is "standard to argue
that economic theories are insulated from direct falsification, that they are built on inadequate behavioral
foundation s, and that in their most abstract form they fail to yield predictions or even to systematically connect up
substantiael errros ooccur, such as the inability to predict the inflationary im pacto fthe OPEC i nduceds upply-sides
the models are improved so that failures of the same type are less likely to
reoccur.3 Rosenberg even goes so far as to argue that more predictively
successful alternatives currently exist (at least in the micro domain) and are neglected,
ostensibly because of an irrational professional attraction to intentional and extreme views of
hock,
human behavior. He tells us that even if a more predictive theory were available: "it is not likely to actually deflect
practicing economists from their intentional extreme research program . . . the reason is that they are not really
much interested in questions of empirical applicability at all. Otherwise some of the attractive nonintentional and/or
nonextremal approaches to economic behavior that are available would long ago have elicited more interest from
interests, labor unions, governments, and other organizations are also consumers of economic predictions. These
groups approach economic theory with the same nomological nonchalance as the corporate consumers. Of course,
environmental moralists that economics may provide far more value than they assume that economics may be more friend than foe. Economics may even provide environmental
moralists with a tool for promoting broader environmental ethics within society , as I
discuss in Part IV of this Article. Economic enthusiasts and ethical pragmatists should find this Article valuable for its
cataloguing of the ways in which economics can be used in the pursuit of environmental goals.
My
target audience, however, is the environmental moralist who is skeptical of, or
downright averse to, using economics to address environmental issues. Economics can play a variety of roles in
environmental policy. Some uses of economics may conflict with the ethical precepts of environmental moralists and perhaps
even threaten their strategic goals. [*177] In other contexts, however, economics may provide the
many decades from now due to current environmental protection measures). n3 Economics,
however, can be used for purposes other than normative evaluations of potential
environmental measures. A second use to which economics is frequently put, for
example, is as a diagnostic tool to determine why society is not achieving the desired
type and level of environmental protection (regardless of how the desired types and levels of protection are
determined). Garrett Hardin's famous discussion of the [*178] "tragedy of the commons" is a
good example of this diagnostic use of economics: when a common resource is free,
users enjoy all of the benefits of use but share the losses and thus tend to overutilize the
resource. n4 Used as a diagnostic tool, economics can help point to the reasons for, and thus the
most effective solutions to, a wide variety of environmental problems. Third, environmental
advocates can use economics as a strategic political tool to help overcome opposition to
environmental measures and increase the chances of successful adoption. Economic
concerns often generate opposition to environmental measures, and opponents
frequently cite economic concerns as a rationale for not enacting the measures.
Although proponents might view many of these economic concerns as normatively
irrelevant or misconceived, the concerns are nonetheless a political reality. Economic
analysis can sometimes disprove the basis for these concerns and thus hopefully
eliminate them as a source of political opposition. Studies of a particular measure, for example, may
demonstrate that the measure will not reduce employment as unions fear. In other cases, environmental proponents can use
economic analysis to find means of minimizing economic impacts on key political stakeholders while still achieving
environmental goals. Finally, economics can be used as a design tool to evaluate and devise
economic analysis can help determine the effect of various other regulatory alternatives
on technological innovation, compliance, and other relevant measures, and thus guide
policymakers. Most interestingly, psychological research suggests that, while some forms of economic incentives may
undermine altruistic behavior, other forms of economic rewards may actually sustain and encourage
ethical action.
the unemployment rate from exceeding 8 percent. In November, it topped 10 percent.[2] Undeterred by these
repeated stimulus failures, President Obama is calling for yet another stimulus bill.[3] There is every reason to
expect another round to fail as miserably as the past ones, and it would bury the nation deeper in debt. The
Stimulus Myth The economic theory behind the stimulus builds on the work of John Maynard Keynes eight decades
ago. It begins with the idea that an economic shock has left demand persistently and significantly below potential
supply. As people stop spending money, businesses pull back production, and the ensuing vicious circle of falling
demand and production shrinks the economy. Keynesians believe that government spending can make up this
shortfall in private demand. Their models assume that--in an underperforming economy--government spending
adds money to the economy, taxes remove money from the economy, and so the increase in the budget deficit
represents net new dollars injected. Therefore, it scarcely matters how the dollars are spent. Keynes is said to have
famously asserted that a government program that pays people to dig and refill ditches would provide new income
The
Keynesian argument also assumes that consumption spending adds to immediate
economic growth while savings do not. By this reasoning, unemployment benefits,
food stamps, and low-income tax rebates are among the most effective stimulus
policies because of their likelihood to be consumed rather than saved . Taking this
for those workers to spend and circulate through the economy, creating even more jobs and income.
analysis to its logical extreme, Mark Zandi of Economy.com has boiled down the government's influence on
America's broad and diverse $14 trillion economy into a simple menu of stimulus policy options, whereby Congress
can decide how much economic growth it wants and then pull the appropriate levers. Zandi asserts that for each
dollar of new government spending: temporary food stamps adds $1.73 to the economy, extended unemployment
benefits adds $1.63, increased infrastructure spending adds $1.59, and aid to state and local governments adds
$1.38.[4] Jointly, these figures imply that, in a recession, a typical dollar in new deficit spending expands the
Yet despite the historic 7 percent increase in GDP deficit spending over the previous year, the economy shrank by
2.3 percent in FY 2009.[6] To argue that deficits represent new money injected into the economy is to argue that
the economy would have contracted by 9.3 percent without this "infusion" of added deficit spending (or even more,
given the Keynesian multiplier effect that was supposed to further boost the impact). That is simply not plausible,
new spending with taxes, it is simply redistributing existing purchasing power (while decreasing incentives to
construction jobs. But Congress must first borrow that $1 billion from the private economy, which will then lose at
least as many jobs.[8] Highway spending simply transfers jobs and income from one part of the economy to
another. As Heritage Foundation economist Ronald Utt has explained, " The
other end will not raise the overall water level. Similarly, taking dollars
from one part of the economy and distributing it to another part of the
economy will not expand the economy. University of Chicago economist John Cochrane adds
that: First, if money is not going to be printed, it has to come from somewhere. If the
government borrows a dollar from you, that is a dollar that you do not spend, or that
you do not lend to a company to spend on new investment. Every dollar of
increased government spending must correspond to one less dollar of private
spending. Jobs created by stimulus spending are offset by jobs lost from the decline in private spending. We can
build roads instead of factories, but fiscal stimulus can't help us to build more of both. This form of "crowding out" is
just accounting, and doesn't rest on any perceptions or behavioral assumptions. Second, investment is "spending"
every bit as much as is consumption. Keynesian fiscal stimulus advocates want money spent on consumption, not
saved. They evaluate past stimulus programs by whether people who got stimulus money spent it on consumption
goods rather than save it. But the economy overall does not care if you buy a car, or if you lend money to a
company that buys a forklift.[12] Government spending can affect long-term economic growth, both up and down.
Economic growth is based on the growth of labor productivity and labor supply, which can be affected by how
governments directly and indirectly influence the use of an economy's resources. However, increasing the
economy's productivity rate--which often requires the application of new technology and resources-- can take many
years or even decades to materialize. It is not short-term stimulus.[13] In fact, large stimulus bills often reduce
long-term productivity by transferring resources from the more productive private sector to the less productive
stimulus bills
provide politicians with the political justification to grant tax dollars to favored
constituencies. By increasing the budget deficit, large stimulus bills eventually
contribute to higher interest rates while dropping even more debt on future
generations.
government. The government rarely receives good value for the dollars it spends. However,
discipline down the roadis also flawed. Here the issue is broken trust. The latest promises from economists and
opinion leaders about fiscal discipline in the future come on top of 50 years of lies, frauds, broken promises, and
disrespect for citizens exhibited by elected officials in the United States. The highlight reel would include Vietnam,
Watergate, Whitewater-Lewinsky, and Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Broken promises specifically related to
fiscal discipline are plentiful.
Case
accept that we cannot turn back the tide of technological change we are left with the option of trying to direct it
towards just outcomes: we call this approach positive cybercriticalism and place it alongside Fitzpatricks
cybercriticalism. Equally,
regard wide-ranging social change as particularly likely and, because of this, are
forced to consider alternative options available to us within the current sociopolitical environment and look towards issues of administrative techniqueso often overlooked in current
academic debateas much as to those of policy scope. In short, rather than calling for the creation of
a new and wide-ranging set of virtual rights we point merely to the need for a
greater understanding of the possible positive uses to which ICTs may be put. So, our
positive cybercriticalist agenda points to an alternative way forward for social policy in the information age, one
that confronts the contradictory characteristics of change, is prepared for negative developments, but looks to turn
ICT-related MNCs in the delivery of government services, not because of a belief in the intrinsic value of private
enterprise, but because, pragmatically, they are often the only source of expertise governments can draw upon if
they are to exploit the potential of ICT for improving service delivery. Above all, though ,
it means
embracing an increased role for the state in collecting, storing and acting
on information about its citizens, not because fears of a big brother
state are unfounded, but because the increasingly sophisticated,
segmented, surveilling, information-rich and, ultimately, socially
excluding, practices of the private sector need to be countered with
equally sophisticated, segmented, surveilling, information-rich and
socially including practices in the public sector. We realize that in calling for an increased
role for the state in surveilling our everyday lives, the positive cybercriticalist agenda challenges deeply held beliefs
In the personal
information society that we currently inhabit, the surveilling activities of private
corporations are all but impossible to avoid and the impacts of the super
panopticon, while subtle, Blackwell Publishing Ltd. are crucial in terms of
shaping, structuring and reinforcing social inequalities. Rather than seeking to turn
their back on modern technologiesand the techniques and traders that come with
themproponents of the welfare state need to accept that it is time to fight fire
with fire and embrace all that is best about the modern technology. Equally, this
means (re?)embracing the notion of the benevolent state, too; we do not believe
the future for the welfare state in the post-Fordist era need be one of diminishing
scope as the demand for segmented services undermines state-based provision
(Burrows and Loader ). Instead, social gains can be delivered by increased state
intervention into the informational dimension of our livesold-fashioned welfare
state paternalism can be revived in a post-Fordist form . This new paternalism would reflect the
about what it means to be free. However, we believe there is a need for a more realistic view.
key characteristics of the post-Fordist economy and be: contradictory (invading privacy to enhance rights);
technologically based (exploiting ICTs in order to increase the states ability to act on information about its citizens);
suggests: the possibility exists to make the digital society a progressive one . . . digital technology can be used in
pursuit of traditional social democratic goals . . . in pursuit, and not just in defence, of social equality . . . can be
used creatively to extend the range of opportunities available for active citizenship. It is the task of positive-realistic
cybercriticalism to seek out, articulate and develop these possibilities.
Tocqueville, the 19th-century French political scientist whose classic study of American democracy is still quoted
today, called the legal profession the last bastion of America's aristocracy, says Ian Millhiser, author of "Injustices:
Few institutions
have inflicted greater suffering on more Americans than the Supreme Court of the
United States. Ian Millhiser, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund "If you're a lawyer of
The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted."
the caliber that gets on the Supreme Court, you're probably very well off," Millhiser says. Tocqueville said leaders in
America's legal profession are instinctively suspicious of dramatic political change, Millhiser recounted in his book.
Tocqueville wrote that lawyers are "secretly opposed to the instincts of democracy" -- that their "superstitious
respect for what is old" is in opposition to democracy's "love of novelty; their narrow views, to its grandiose plans;
This
suspicion of democratic change has caused the court to be on the wrong side of
history numerous times, Millhiser writes. The Supreme Court issued decisions that
legitimized Jim Crow segregation, approved of the forced sterilization of a woman
against her will, forced Japanese-American citizens into internment camps during
World War II, and with its 2010 Citizens United v FEC decision, "gave billionaires a
far-reaching right to corrupt American democracy ." The Supreme Court has not
just ignored human misery; it's caused it, Millhiser says. "Few institutions have
inflicted greater suffering on more Americans than the Supreme Court of
the United States," wrote Millhiser, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund and a
their taste for formality, to its scorn for rules; their habit of proceeding slowly, to its impetuosity."
columnist for its political blog, ThinkProgress. Virtually all Supreme Court justices have been men, and critics say
the court has, at times, been blind to the rights of women. President Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day
O'Connor as the first woman to the nation's top court in 1981. The current Supreme Court includes three women.
The contemporary Supreme Court has determined that sexual discrimination is contrary to American values. But
paternalistic language still crept into one of the court's biggest decisions recently, says Emily Martin, vice president
and general counsel for the National Women's Law Center in Washington. In 2006, the court upheld a law that
banned a type of late-term abortion. In the court's majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that "some
women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained." Martin called it a
"disturbing analysis." "It played into a stereotype that the Supreme Court had rejected, the notion that you could
make laws that could restrict women's rights based on assumptions that you're protecting women from their
choices," Martin says.
damages incurred in an automobile accident would directly affect only the persons involved and perhaps their
immediate families. But the famous Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) decision has directly affected millions of people in
one way or another. In Gideon the Supreme Court held that states must provide an attorney for indigent defendants
in felony trials. Scores of people defendants, judges, lawyers, taxpayers have felt the effects of that judicial
policy. THE IMPACT OF HIGHER-COURT DECISIONS ON LOWER COURTS Appellate courts, notably the U.S. Supreme
Court, often are viewed as the most likely courts to be involved in policy making, while the trial courts are generally
significant degree, they are determined by environmental Blackwell Publishing Ltd. or geographic
factors meaning, in many cases,
segmentation that offers different levels of service and different interest rates to different types of customer. In a
recent presentation, the managing director of Barclaycard UK suggested a split between three market segments:
prime customers who have full-time employment, banking facilities and a good credit history; near prime customers
with a low incidence of arrears, no credit history and fulltime employment; and, sub-prime customers with a poor
credit history and who are unemployed or unbanked (Crook, no date). Piasecki et al. ( : ) suggest that
there is little profit available from sub-prime business and that cherry-picking is commonit matters little for
So, the
issue is not merely one of access, but of differential access, the panoptic sort
segmenting and grading the market, providing increasingly competitive
services for the better-off and increasingly expensive services for the less
well-off. The information and models underpinning these market segmentation
techniques may well be unjustor lead to socially unjust outcomesand new
virtual rights may be required to combat them. Digital redlining and financial
exclusion should certainly cause concern. However, it seems unlikely that the move
towards market segmentation will be reversed; indeed , (: ) suggests that
personal profiles are now the basic fuel on which the economy runs. Digitally
driven market segmentation is a core phenomenon of the post-Fordist economy,
and the practices that drive it are internationally widespread and entrenched
in business practice and might well be interpreted as the uncontrollable outcome
of the routinized use of ICTs within what Castells () has dubbed the network society.
As Lyon (: ) points out: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. no one agency is behind
this focused attention to our daily lives . . . [for] personal data, gleaned from
multifarious sources, is collected, sold and resold within the vast repositories of
database marketing. These polycentric surveillance flows are as much a part of the
so-called network society as the flows of finance capital or of mass media signals
that more frequently are considered as signs of the information age or postmodernity.
credit card companies to lose low-profit business but a great deal if they lose high-value customers.
OnedoesnotneedtoseekemploymentwiththePentagon,takepartincounterinsurgency,orworkfortheHumanTerrainSysteminordertoprovide
useful,evenifinvoluntary,supportforthenationalsecurity,intelligenceandmilitarygoalsoftheU.S.,oranyNATOstateforthatmatter.Infact,onedoesnotevenneedtobean
AmericananthropologistinordertoprovidetheU.S.militaryandintelligencewiththeinformationtheyseek. Oneneedstosimplyproduceusefulanthropology andnotbe
mindfuloftheconsequencesofhowitcanbeusedbyunintendedaudiences,noworinthefuture,tosupportagendasofwhichonemayhavelimited
awarenessandevenlessdesiretosupport.Withthisandmuchmoreinmind,myambitionistoseekthecreationofauselessanthropology,andwhile
somewouldsayIwasalwaysontherighttrackforachievingthat,Ithinkmoreofusneedtoshareagoalofproducing uselessresearch ,tomakeworthlesscontributions,andbyuselessI
meanuselesstopower,toempire,todomination,toregimesof scrutinyandinspectionoftheperiphery. Andnotjustuseless,but
eventoxicandrepulsivetothescientistsofconquestananthropologyofbothwithdrawalandresistance,freeoffalsedilemmasthatworktosupportbusinessasusual, willingtosetfiretothecrops
weplantedifitstopsthemfrombeingharvestedbythetyrant ,liberatingourselvesfrombeingourownbesthostages.Theideaistorefuse
furtherengagementwiththeinternationaltrafficin informationandknowledgethatsupportstheworkingsof
empire,capital,andthestate.InthispresentationIseektomakethreemainpoints.First,toindicatesomeofthewaysthatallofuscanbeevenunwillinglyusefulinsupportingU.S.militaryand
intelligenceinterests.Second,toreflectonthemeaningofusefulanthropology.Third,topointthewaytopossiblealternatives,thatcouldentailunthinkinganthropologyasweknowit.Withreferencetothefirstpoint,GeraldSider
madethepointthatatthismomentinhistorythereisnosuchthingasaninnocentanthropology(p.43).Weknownowthat
theU.S.militaryandintelligencearelookingforwaysof
incorporatingscholarsinproducingaglobalsurveillancenet.Onewayistobringsocialscientistsoncounterinsurgencyandpacificationmissions.AnotheristohavethemconductanalysisofstolenIraqidocuments(seehereand
here),ortoconductfieldworkinareasofemergingorpotentialthreatanddescribetheradicalizationprocessandwaysofcounteractingit,aspartofthePentagonsMinervaResearchInitiative,managedinpartnershipwiththe
NationalScienceFoundation.Anotheristo
combthroughopenaccesselectronicresources.Andyetanotherisjusttogeteverythingforfree,byscanning,copying,seizingany
orallelectronicdevicesorwrittenrecordsfromresearchersastheyentertheUnitedStateswhetherreturninghometotheU.S.,orjusttravelingthrough,U.S.BorderPatrolandCustomsagentscan:scanandholdlaptopsindefinitely;
theycanmakeelectroniccopiesofharddrives,flashdrives,cellphones,iPods,pagers,beepers,videoandaudiotapes;and,theycanseizepapers,documents,books,pamphlets,orevenlitter.ThisisalsotrueofCanadaandtheUK.
Openaccesspublishing,andpublishinginelectronicformatsthatarethusamenabletoautomatedharvesting,isacriticallyimportantwaythatethnographic
datacanbeusedbythenational
securitystatewithoutthewillingparticipationofresearchers.Intelligencedoesnothavetobesecrettobevaluable!saysthewebsiteoftheUniversityofMilitaryIntelligence,
regardingopenaccessresources,whichtakesustoIntelinkU,partoftheU.S.ArmysForeignMilitaryStudiesOffice,emergingfromtheOpenSourceInformationSystemwhichservestheUSintelligencecommunitywithopen
sourceintelligence.AmongIntelinkUssubscriptionsistheUniversityofNewMexicosLatinAmericaDatabase,aswellasEbscoHostDatabases.TheForeignMilitaryStudiesofficeisalsointheprocessofcreatingtheWorldBasic
InformationLibrary(WBIL),whichpromotestheconceptofdistancedrillingtellingusthat:About85%ofrequirementsintheintelligencebusinesscanbemetwithopensource,unclassifiedsources,andcanbeexploitedby
qualifiedmilitaryreservistsworkingbytelecommuting.TheWBILhasremotelylocatedreservistsfromallfourbranchesoftheservicedoingvirtualcollectionandproductionutilizingtheirhomePersonalComputers. Also,the
InformationOperationsAdvisoryTaskForcestatesthatithasarequirementtoprovideUSForces[in]Afghanistanwiththecapabilitytocollect,analyze,anddisseminateopensource(i.e.sociologicaloranthropological)
information.Withreferencetothesecondpointofthispresentation,thebasesforausefulanthropology,letusnotethatuseful,objective,neutral,andscientific,areonceagainthebuzzwordsforananthropologyalignedwithpower,
intheserviceofthenationalsecuritystate,whilerhetoricallyattemptingtomovethemilitarizationoftheacademybeyondthesphereofpolitics.Criticismispolitical;supportisscientific.Ifyouopposemilitaryobjectives,youare
biased;ifyouprovidepracticalknowledge,youareobjective,andobjectiveisgood,justlikemachinesaregood.Ontheotherhand,militaryinterestinanthropologyistoasignificantextenttheperhapsunintendedoutcomeof
anthropologyssuccessinmarketingitself.Thecompulsioninthisdiscipline,fromthetimebeforeitsinstitutionalizationinuniversities,hasbeentomarketitselftopowerasausefulscience,withvaluablecontributionstomake,later
Wewantedtheattentionofelites,
andnowwevegotit.Themilitaryisinterestedinbothcultureandethnography.InanarticleinNationalDefenseMagazine,wearetoldthatAdeeperunderstandingof
culturehasbecomeanofficialpartofMarineCorpsstrategy.Meanwhile,GeneralWilliamKIPWard,Commander,UnitedStatesAfricaCommand,saidthisaboutthe
boastingofthevitalimportanceofethnographyasanthropologysuniquecontribution,somuchsothatanthropologyandethnographyarewronglyequated.
PentagonsworkinAfrica:Alotofactivitygoesoninthecontinentthroughournongovernmentorganizations.Academiaisinvolved.WhenIwasinpreviousassignments,someonecametomeandwouldtalkabout,well,Ward,
youneedtogetaculturalanthropologistonyourteam.Isaid,what!Aculturalwhat?Anthropologist?Todowhat?Getoutofhere.Or,Ward,youneedtohavesomeonetohelpyouunderstandthehumandimension.Youneedsome
humanterrainanalysis.Isaid,what?Getoutofhere.Butitsimportant,andwheredothoseskills,talentsresideacademia.Butformoreacademicstobemoreuseful,theyneedtogetovercertaintwingesofmoral
Notservingimperialismis
routinelycalledretreatingfromtheworldbysome.MontgomeryMcFate,theanthropologyPhDwhohasbeenthemostprominentspokespersonfortheHumanTerrainSystem,
compunction.Inthemindsofthestateandmilitarysomeofushavealreadyrevertedtobeingatoolofimperialism,assumingwewereeveranythingelse.
wroteinamilitaryjournalthat,Overthepast30years,asaresultofanthropologistsindividualcareerchoicesandthetendencytowardreflexiveselfcriticismcontainedwithinthedisciplineitself,thedisciplinehasbecome
hermeticallysealedwithinitsIvoryTower.anthropologistsstillprefertostudytheexoticanduseless,inthewordsofA.L.Kroeber.TheretreattotheIvoryTowerisalsoaproductofthedeepisolationisttendencieswithinthe
discipline.(p.28)Shedoesntstopthere,unfortunately,shenotesthat,frequentlybackedupbyselfreflexiveneoMarxism,anthropologybeganabrutalprocessofselfflagellation,toadegreealmostunimaginabletoanyone
outsidethediscipline.Theturntowardpostmodernismwithinanthropologyexacerbatedthetendencytowardselfflagellation.(also)Thismovementawayfromdescriptiveethnographyhasproducedsomeoftheworstwriting
shemerelyechoessomeoftheconservativeandoftenoverwroughtbacklashwithinthedisciplineoverthistrendthatitimaginedtobepostmodern,whatever
thatis,apparentlybeingselfcriticalisevil. Withreferencetothethirdandfinalpointofthispresentation,lookingforalternatives andoptionstocooptation,
forlessusefulanthropologies,IwasinspiredbySidersideasabouthowapartisananthropology,donetohelpthevictimsofcurrentlyintensifyinginequalities,mightbegin,anditwouldbeginin
imaginable.(p.28)Inthisregard,
thedesignoffieldworkandinthecontextofunderstandingstruggle(p.44).Headvocatesagainstinterviews,againstaskingquestionsofsocalledinformants,andagainstanyformofrecordingdata.Askingquestions,henotes,isa
seeminglysimpleactthatopensourworktousebythosewhoseektodominateandcontrolthepeoplewestudy(p.45).Thereareotherwayswecanwork,hesays,lessopen,butnotimpervious,tosubsequentmanipulation.Other
optionsincludechoosingresearchprojectsthat,intheeyesofthenationalsecuritystate,areentirelyuseless,andtowriteuptheresultsinveryesotericlanguage,withampleselfcriticism.Anotheroptionisdotomoreresearchat
homeeithercollaboratingwithpersonswhoarenotthesubjectofeitheramoralpanicorsomehyperbolicnationalsecurityhysteria,or,producingcritiquesofthewayelitesexercisepowerandenforceinequalitiesandinjustices.
Anotheroptionisopensourceethnographydoneonline,tocollaboratewiththeproducersofonlineinformationofethnographicvalue,remixingitsothatitbecomesproblematictomilitaryexamination.Notpublishinginopenaccess
formatsisanotheroption,especiallyoncetheworkisnotfundedbyapublicagency,theargumentthatthepublichasarighttotheresearchitfundedvanishesintoirrelevance.Wecanalsoimagine
experimenting
withformsofresearchcommunicationthatdefyeasyunderstanding andconventionalrequirementsofthemilitaryplannersdatabase,suchasfictionalized
ethnographies;ethnographicpoetry;opensourcecinema(seeherealso);theatricalcoproductions,andsoforth.Whatwecannotdo,however,andpretendtobeinnocentaboutit,issimplytoleaveheretodayandcontinuetoconduct
businessasusual
to view them from this very broad per- spective. But that analysis can
easily become superficial and misleading, because it obfuscates the profoundly
different strategic and local dynamics of power in the two kinds of regimes. Clearly
the democratic welfare state is not only for- mally but also substantively quite
different from totalitarianism. Above all, again, it has nowhere developed the fateful,
radicalizing dynamic that characterized National Socialism (or for that matter Stalinism), the psychotic logic
that leads from economistic population management to mass murder. Again, there is always the potential for such a
example. And it is certainly fruitful
discursive regime to generate coercive policies. In those cases in which the regime of rights does not successfully produce "health,"
regime of democratic citizenship does appear, his- torically, to have imposed increasingly narrow limits on coercive policies, and to
have generated a "logic" or imperative of increasing liberalization. Despite lim- itations imposed by political context and the slow
pace of discursive change, I think this is the unmistakable message of the really very impressive waves of leg- 90 islative and
welfare reforms in the 1920s or the 1970s in Germany. Of course it is not yet clear whether this is an irreversible dynamic of such
systems. Nevertheless, such regimes are characterized by sufficient degrees of autonomy (and of the potential for its expansion) for
sufficient numbers of peo- ple that I think it becomes useful to conceive of them as productive of a strate- gic configuration of power
relations that might fruitfully be analyzed as a condition of "liberty," just as much as they are productive of constraint, oppres- sion,
or manipulation. At the very least, totalitarianism cannot be the sole ori- entation point for our understanding of biopolitics, the only
end point of the logic of social engineering. This notion is not at all at odds with the core of Foucauldian (and Peukertian) theory.
Democratic welfare states are regimes of power/knowledge no less than early twentieth-century totalitarian
states; these systems are not "opposites," in the sense that they are two alternative ways of organizing the same thing. But they
are two very different ways of organizing it. The concept "power" should not be read as a universal stifling
night of oppression, manipu- lation, and entrapment, in which all political and social orders are grey, are essentially or effectively
"the same." Power is a set of social relations, in which individuals and groups have varying degrees of autonomy and effective
subjec- tivity. And discourse is, as Foucault argued, "tactically polyvalent." Discursive elements (like the various elements of
biopolitics) can be combined in different ways to form parts of quite different strategies (like totalitarianism or the demo- cratic
welfare state); they cannot be assigned to one place in a structure, but rather circulate. The varying possible constellations of power
in modern soci- eties create "multiple modernities," modern societies with quite radically dif- 91 fering potentials.
No genocide impact
OKane 97 Prof Comparative Political Theory, U Keele, Rosemary, Modernity, the
Holocaust and politics, Economy and Society 26:1, p 58-9
Modern bureaucracy is not 'intrinsically capable of genocidal action' (Bauman 1989: 106).
Centralized state coercion has no natural move to terror. In the explanation of modern genocides it
is chosen policies which play the greatest part, whether in effecting bureaucratic secrecy, organizing forced labour, implementing a
system of terror, harnessing science and technology or introducing extermination policies, as means and as ends. As
Nazi
Germany and Stalin's USSR have shown, furthermore, those chosen policies of genocidal
government turned away from and not towards modernity. The choosing of policies, however, is not
independent of circumstances. An analysis of the history of each case plays an important part in explaining where and how
genocidal governments come to power and analysis of political institutions and structures also helps towards an understanding of
each with their own independent bureaucracies, exist in competition with state-controlled enterprises. In modern societies this
economic pluralism both promotes and is served by the open scientific method. By ignoring competition and the capacity for people
to move between organizations whether economic, political, scientific or social, Bauman overlooks crucial but also very 'ordinary
and common' attributes of truly modern societies. It is these very ordinary and common attributes of modernity which stand in the
way of modern genocides.
laissez-faire. The biggest puzzle, however, is the response to the crisis by Eurozone countries that have embraced market discipline
through austerity and, in so doing, have condemned themselves to slow or no growth. This is in contrast to the US, which has posted
better economic results, despite being torn between Republican fundamentalists advocating austerity and a more pragmatic
How do we explain the resilience of neoliberal economic ideas? Since the 1980s, why have such ideas not just survived but
continued to be dominant? Neo-liberalism entails belief in competitive markets enhanced by global free trade
leadership focused on growth. Our question, then, is:
and capital mobility, backed up by a pro-market, limited state that promotes labor market flexibility and seeks to reduce welfare
dependence while marketizing the provision of public goods. The watchwords for such neo-liberalism are liberalization, privatization,
deregulation, and delegation to non-majoritarian institutions such as independent regulatory agencies and central banks. The
touchstones highlight the importance of individual responsibility, the value of competition, and the centrality of market allocation.
The neo-liberal mantra presents the state as the perennial problem, the market as the solution - even today, despite the fact that
the crisis was caused by the markets, not the state.
no major shift in ideas, either back to the neo-Keynesianism that brought the postwar Golden Era or forward to
something new? How do we explain the fact that neo-liberalism continues to
permeate how people think and talk about state and market? We propose five
lines of analysis to explain such resilience: the flexibility of neo-liberalisms
core principles ; the gaps between neo-liberal rhetoric and reality; the
strength of neo-liberal discourse in debates; the power of interests in the
strategic use of ideas; and the force of institutions in the embedding of
neo-liberal ideas. First, the generality of neo-liberalisms core principles,
focused on competitive markets and a limited state, make it highly adaptable to changing
circumstances and needs . Thus, neo-liberalism has been able to move
from ideas focused on the rollback of the state to free up the markets in
the 1980s under conservative leaders to the rollout of the state to make
markets work more freely under progressives in the 1990s. It has also
been able to absorb
seemingly
an initial clash with social democratic ideas, through attempts at passive reduction of social spending and job protections, it
incorporated such ideas in programs that sought to make active use of the welfare state to promote market efficiency via active
the 1920s discourse of sound money reappearing in the 1970s as monetarism and in the late 2000s as sustainable debt. Second,
neo-liberalism often works only in the rhetoric, not in the reality of implementation. Notably, many neo-liberal policies such as
cutting public spending, reforming welfare, and reducing regulatory protection are difficult to implement and extremely unpopular
politically. This helps explain why promises to cut back the state for the most part turned out to be hollow, in particular as state
restructuring did not lead to a decrease in its size, nor did it necessarily reduce public spending. Deregulation, rather than getting
rid of the state, simply led to reregulation of a different kind. But rather than a weakness, this can be seen as a strength, since lack
neo-liberal
ideas have generally been more successful in policy debates and political
discourse, winning in the battle of ideas against weaker alternatives . In
of implementation can serve neo-liberal politicians also as a rallying cry, to call for more neo-liberalism. Third,
some cases, that strength may come from the seemingly common sense nature of neo-liberal arguments. For example, appeals to
the virtue of sound finances using the metaphor of the household economyextrapolating from the need to balance ones
household budget to the need to do the same for the state budgetmay resonate better with ordinary citizens than the Keynesian
counterintuitive proposition to spend more at a time of high deficits and debts. In other cases, neo-liberal success can be attributed
to the reframing of current problemssay, as a crisis of public debt rather than of the banks; to the narrativesabout public
profligacy being the problem, belt-tightening the solution; and to the mythsfor the Germans, that belt-tightening is the only way to
avoid the risks of hyperinflation of the early 1920s, thereby ignoring the risks of deflation and unemployment of the early 1930s that
led to the rise of Hitler. Equally importantly, it may be that neo-liberals are not so strong but their opponents are weak. Where, after
all, have the center-left parties been in all of this, in particular in Europe throughout the Eurozone crisis? Notably, only very recently
have European social democratic leaders called for growth, even as they continue to dole out austerity. Fourth,
powerful
of national state control. Moreover, in the EU, the successive pacts for stability in the Eurozone beginning with the Stability and
Growth Pact that consecrated the 1990s Maastricht criteria for monetary union and culminating with various pacts during the
Eurozone crisis ensure that neo-liberal ideas about fiscal consolidation will be difficult to reverse, regardless of their failure to solve
the crisis.
of the internet . . . both are too technologically deterministic and too simplistic. Indeed, as Norris and Armstrong ( : )
remainder of this paper we explore the potential for developing such a middle ground. In so doing, we effectively put Fitzpatricks
cybercriticalism to the test. Via case studies3 of the ways in which public and private organizations are employingor might employ
database technologies we explore the value of the virtual rights agenda and, concurrently, consider the possibilities for
developing an alternative agenda that might occupy a middle ground between what we currently have and what the cybercriticalist
agenda proposes. Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Case Study : Social Security Fraud Fitzpatricks concerns about the
use of ICTs to empower the state at the expense of the individual are most clearly and obviously illustrated with reference to fraud
taxpayer an estimated 149.5 million (DSS : ). While both Conservative and Labour
governments have shown a desire to be innovative in their use of ICTs, it is not unreasonable to suggest that it is in the area
of social security fraud that both have shown the greatest degree of successful
innovation. In particular, successive governments have shown a willingness to break down the legal barriers to data-matching.
While all intra-governmental data-sharing is restricted by a complicated mesh of measures, including the Human Rights Act,
the Data Protection Act, and case law, numerous specific legislative gateways have been passed through Parliament
exempting fraud detection, allowingfor examplethe Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise and private sector companies such
as banks, credit agencies and utility providers to pass information to the DWP, and for local authorities to do pretty much anything
they like providing it promotes economic well-being.4 Similarly, while joining-up information systems has generally proved difficult
within government, the DWP has provided something of a model with its Housing Benefit Matching Service (HBMS), which is run on
behalf of local authorities and detects discrepancies between data on Housing and Council Tax Benefits and national benefits
including Income Support, Job Seekers Allowance and Incapacity Benefit. Moreover, while departmental resources are often
jealously guarded within Whitehall, the DWP was so keen to encourage collaboration in this area that it installed special computer
terminals in local authorities (DSS : ).
third case studythe take-up of social security benefits. Substantial amounts of benefit remain unclaimed each
out more than otherssuggesting that there are particular groups who might most usefully be targeted by take-up
encouraging the further development of selective, meanstested benefits (including Working Families Tax Credit,
the then
Department of Social Security launched one of the most high-profile attempts to
combat low take-up. The campaign focused on Income Support for pensioners (the Minimum Income
Minimum Income Guarantee, Pension Credit) usually associated with low take-up. In May
GuaranteeMIG). The campaign ran between May and November , involving a mailshot to . million
households (DWP a: , figure ) and an associated television publicity campaign fronted by Dame Thora
Hird.
The campaign has been sold as a success story that drew on advanced datamatching techniques and the Pensions Minister claimed the campaign had produced
127,000 successful claims by November 2001 (McCartney, in Hansard, March , col. ). At the
time of the campaign there were 11.9 million pensioners in Great Britain (ONS : , table . ), of whom
1.6 million were already in receipt of the benefit at the start of the campaign (DWP e: , table ). Of
Estimates
shortly predating the campaign suggested there were between 390,000 and
770,000 (DWP : , table .) entitled nonrecipients; this means that for each one of these
the remaining 10.3 million pensioners, at least 1 in 4 were contacted as part of the campaign.
entitled non-claimants the Benefits Agency sent between 3.1 and 6.2 letters. Even if one assumes that the DWP
sent a letter to every single entitled non-recipient (an unlikely proposition) the message is clearthe vast majority
of those advised to claim by the campaign could never have been expected to have had entitlement to the benefit.
In short, there is a huge question mark over the efficiency of the campaign.
in positions such as clerks, secretaries, cleaning persons, salesmen, and waitresses. And, although it would be nice
to raise the wages of entry-level service workers, the government has no ability to do so. (Attempts to mandate
wage increases, such as increases in the minimum wage, primarily result in fewer such jobs.) It should be no
surprise, then, that, despite the work requirements put in place by the Nineties welfare reform, fewer than 42
percent of recipients are participating in broadly defined work activities. In some states, such as Missouri and
Massachusetts, less than one out of five welfare recipients are working. Moreover, work activity frequently means
not a job but only looking for work or participating in a job-training program. In fact, fewer than one-fifth of welfare
recipients are working in unsubsidized private-sector jobs. Of course, not every welfare recipient meets our profile,
and many who meet our profile do not receive all the benefits listed. (On the other hand, some receive even more.)
Still, what is undeniable is that for many recipients particularly the long-term dependents welfare pays
adults who do not work. Even part-time work makes a significant difference only 15 percent of part-time workers
are poor. And, while many anti-poverty activists decry low-wage jobs, even starting at a minimum-wage job can be
a springboard out of poverty in the long run.
XT: Opacity
Turns case Welfare surveillance operates through a process
of making recipients visible. They reproduce what they critique
at a deeper level.
Gilliom, 2001 (John, Overseers of the Poor: Surveillance, Resistance, and the
Limits of Privacy, University of Chicago Press: Chicago, December)*
In that the welfare administration demands that a client open her life to them in the form
of income verification, computer matches, home visits, and other tactics in what can only be called a full-scale
situation. They will use computer matching searches to cheek bank accounts, motor vehicle ownership, social
and, as a result, disempower them by closing off more and more of the secret places in which the power of the state
can be, at least temporarily, hidden from.
opacityingeneralispartofafarmorecomplex
structureofseenandunseen,seeingandnotseeing,thatdeterminestherelationsbetween"discoverer"and
"discovered.Inthefirstplace,thecolonizer'spowerobviouslydependstoalargeextentonsurveillance.[S]/Hecannotcontrol
what[s]/hecannotsee.26InLequatrimesicle,thenewlyarrivedslave"learnedrightfromthefirstdaythatthemasteronlyreallyexistedwhenhewaslookingatyou;
Theforestprovidedinvisibility,inotherwords,butisnolongeranadequatemetaphorforopacity;theconceptof
despitethepermanentfearandtheleadenhandthatseemedtokeepyouforeverdowninthemud;thatthemasterlostsomeofhispowerwhenhehadturnedhisbackonyou,asthoughhecould
commandonlybyimposingthefluxofhisgaze,whichdriedupassoonasheturnedawayfromyou"(79).But,astheimmediate,facetofacenatureofthisencounterimplies,themaster'spower
dependsalsoontheslaveseeingthatthemasterseeshim;thatis,thecolonizersexercisetheirdominationnotonlybyseeingbutbybeingseen,andbybeingseentobepowerful.And,sincethe
masterswereheavilyoutnumberedbytheslaves,itwastheindividualfigureofthemasterthathadtoinspirefearandobedience.AsFanonputsit,themasterhadtobeanexhibitionist:"The
settlerpitsbruteforceagainsttheweightofnumbers.Heisanexhibitionist.Hispreoccupationwithsecuritymakeshimremindthenative[colonis]outloudthattherehealoneismaster."The
extraordinaryostentationandvisualextravaganceofcoloniallife(inclothes,architecture,etc.)intheperiodofslaverywasastrategyofintimidation;asRogerToumsonwrites,"Thesystemof
terrorcallsforasystemofsumptuousextravagance."27Buttherelationshipbetweencolonialmasterandslaveisnotlimitedtoapurelyrationalexerciseofpower.Itiswidelyrecognized(since
JosephConrad'sTheHeartofDarkness,ifnotbefore)toincludealsoadimensionofunconsciousdesireandfear.Similarly,in"PoeticsandtheUnconscious"Glissantmakesitclearthatopacity
isnotsimplyapractical,rationalstrategyonthepartofthecolonized,butaconstituentoftheircollectiveunconscious(CD,159).Itisthusnotsurprisingthattheinterchangeabilityofthetwo
formsofpowerthatis,surveillanceandintimidation,seeingandbeingseenandtheeasewithwhichonecrossesoverintotheotherarealsoreminiscentofthereversibilityofthepsychicdrives
analyzedbySigmundFreud.Indeed,oneofFreud'smainexamplesistherelationbetweenvoyeurismandexhibitionism,thetwocloselyconnectedvariantsofthescopicdrive.Sightand
visibility,inthecolonialrelationship,relatetoadominationthatgoesbeyondconscious,rational concernsofimposing
oreludingcontrolandincludesastrongelementofunconsciousfantasy.Powerandpleasuremergetogether,inthewayoutlinedbyBhabhainhis
analysisof"thepeculiarvisibilityofthenatureofcolonialpower,"toresultinaformofexhibitionismthatexceedsthenarrowlypracticalaimofimposingcontrol.Significantly,itisthis
thecolonizedsubject's
desireforopacity.Thisdesireisprovokednotbythegaze
ofthemasterbutbytheexaggerated"transparent"visibility
ofhis[/her]presencenotthemasterasallseeing,butthemasterasseen:"TheonlysourceoflightultimatelywasthatofthetranscendentalpresenceoftheOther,ofhis
exhibitionism,ratherthanthecolonizer'spowersofsurveillance,ascommonsensemightdictate,thatisgivenin"PoeticsandtheUnconscious''asthereasonfor
Visibilitycolonizeroradministratorofhistransparencyfatallyproposedasamodel,becauseofwhichwehaveacquiredatasteforobscurity,andformetheneedtoseekout[opacity]"(CD,
Theoppressioninherentinthemaster'sgazeisrepeatedinthatofhistoricallylatertypesof
"discoverer,"suchastheethnologistsforwhomthecolonizedpeoplesaremerelyvisibleobjectsofknowledge.Butitis
161).28
significantthat,inhisdiscussionofthisrelationshipinL'intentionpotique,Glissantstatesthatthecolonialsubject'sdesireisnottoescapethemaster'sgaze,buttoparticipateinthescopic
exchangeonequalterms.Hewrites,"
Wehateethnography....Thedistrustthatwefeeltowarditisnotcausedbyourdispleasureatbeing
lookedat,butratherbyourobscureresentmentatnothavingourturnatseeing"(128,emphasisadded).Theproblemis,inotherwords,the
inequalityandlackofreciprocityoftherelation,inwhichthosewhoareseencannotthemselves"see"thosewhoseethem.Pursuingthe
psychoanalyticdimensionofthecolonialrelationshipthatis,itsimbrication,alongsidepoliticalandeconomicmotivations,inunconsciousfantasyanddesirerevealsafurthersenseinwhich
opacityresiststhedominationofthediscoverers.ThisdependsuponBhabha'sanalysisalreadysuggestedintheworkofFritzGracchusoftheraciststereotypeasfetish.Bhabhaarguesthatthe
stereotypeistheresultofacomplexunconsciousdynamic,whichderivesfromtheambivalenceattherootofallcolonialpower:bothcivilizingmissionandviolentsubjugation.Thus,the
stereotypeis"theprimarypointofsubjectificationincolonialdiscourse,forboththecolonizerandthecolonized."Henotestheirrational,compulsive,andeverrenewablequalityofracial
stereotypesandseesthemastheproductofthesamemechanismofdisavowalthatFreuddefinedinrelationtothesexualfetish.Thatis,justasthefetishisadefenseagainsttheanxietyaroused
bytheman'sknowledgeofsexualdifference,theracialstereotyperepresentsanattempttodisavowracialdifferenceinsofarasthisposesathreattothewhiteperson'sownsenseofidentity.
Bhabhaarguesthattheraciststereotypeinfactexiststoreduceracialothernessthatis,toreduceitspowertochallengethelegitimacyofthe"civilizingmission"bycontainingitinfixedand
controllableforms.Butthisfixityisneverfullyachieved,becausedisavowal,initsconstantoscillationbetweentwocontradictorybeliefs,alwaysreactivatestheknowledge,andhencethe
anxiety,thatitistryingtosuppress
The production of stereotypes is thus a never-ending process: "the process by which the metaphoric `masking' is inscribed on a lack
which must then be concealed, that gives the stereotype both its fixity and its Irish which must be told (compulsively) again and
afresh, and are differently gratifying and terrifying each time." The same instability inherent in disavowal accounts for the subject's
racist
stereotypes cover a wide range, "from the loyal servant to Satan," as Bhabha puts it, and are as often patronizingly
affectionate as they are overtly hostile. 29 The phantasmatic nature of the racist
stereotype, its ambivalence, and its compulsive, unstoppable dynamic mean that it
cannot be countered by logical argument or empirical experience or by simply
replacing a negative image with a positive one. (Thus, the Martinican Ren Mnil writes: "We are not `the
ambivalence toward the fetish, which according to Freud is as much an object of aggression as of love. Similarly,
opposite' of our colonial image, we are other than that image.") Nor is there any escape from it: Bhabha notes that the main
difference between sexual fetishism and the racial stereotype is that the former is secret while the latter, marked by skin color, is
opacity
provides the only possible mode of resistance to the stereotype. That is, it confronts the
stereotype's attempt to fix racial difference with a self-representation that cannot be
fixed because it is deliberately unintelligible . We have seen the results of this in Faulkner's opaque
totally visible. It is here that the strategy of opacity becomes relevant, because if Bhabha's analysis is correct, then
representation of the black characters in his novels where, moreover, Bhabha's claim regarding the fear of racial difference
this
opacity is terrifying, and it is impossible for America to wish to recognize it as its
own: it would be to admit to a fundamental barrier : to come face to face with one of the doors opening
onto savagery" (IP, 170). Opacity, then, transforms the status of the colonized subject's visibility
from a source of vulnerability the kind of vulnerability to which Fanon refers when he writes that "the black man has
no ontological resistance in the eyes of the white man" to the active production of a visible but
unreadable image.30 There is also another sense in which opacity, at least as far as Martinique is concerned, cannot be
generating the stereotype is closely echoed in Glissant's description of the effect of the countervailing opacity: "But
reduced to simple invisibility or concealment. In Le discours antillais Glissant makes an important distinction between those colonies
that have a "hinterland" and those that do not (CD, 102-4). In its literal, geographical sense, the absence of a hinterland in the tiny
island of Martinique made it more difficult for the slaves to escape and for the maroon communities to survive on the scale that they
did, for instance, in Jamaica or Haiti. But there is also no historical "hinterland" in Martinique or in any community whose population
was transported: that is, there is no indigenous culture into which the colonized people can retreat, as they could in colonial India or
opacity cannot mean simply hiding, because there is culturally as well as literally
nowhere to hide. Opacity therefore has to be produced as an unintelligible presence from
within the visible presence of the colonized . The most crucial dimension of this cultural hinterland is
Africa. In this situation,
language. In colonies where there were indigenous languages that the colonizers could not understand, these provided a "naturally"
opaque protection for the colonized. In the Caribbean, however, the only available language was Creole, and it was equally available
to both master and slave. It therefore became a question, for the slaves, of developing within the common language strategies for
nevertheless eluding the master's comprehension. They gradually formed a particular usage of Creole, which the master did not
understand but did not realize that he did not understand. 31 Camouflage is inherent in the basic structure of the language. An
emphasis on loudness and a jerky, accelerated delivery that appears to be meaningless or even nonsensical in fact serves to
communicate, secretly, the real meaning: "Creole is originally a kind of conspiracy that concealed itself by its public and open
The
relation to the Other here consists of outwitting him and protecting oneself from him by secrecy and
cunning Glissant lists "the ruses of creole" (DA, 235). Creole thus developed as a subversive language whose purpose from the
expression. . . . this form of nonsense . . . could conceal and reveal at the same time a hidden meaning" (CD, 124-25).
start was not simply to communicate but also to conceal its meanings, thereby turning the master's language against him. In this
sense it is a typical form of opacity.
T Boosters
programs are still very separate at the federal level (e.g., with separate financing sources,
legislative and executive oversight), their implementation has been significantly delegated to,
and integrated at, the retail levels. Implementation of most programs is highly
decentralized, with state and local (county) governments responsible for most
aspects of program execution. However, each program differs in the degree to which federal guidelines
govern implementation. With food stamps, for example, local governments implement the program under strict
uniform federal criteria governing eligibility and benefit calculations (Tables 4 and 5). In contrast, with the TANF
program which is financed through federal block grants in addition to state funding the determination of most of
to the states also results in a duplication of administrative costs that could have been avoided if the federal
would place on existing state automated information systems, the 1996 reforms directed the Secretary of HHS to
prepare a report on the status of state systems to support the requirements of the reforms and to identify options
for constructing a system capable of tracking recipients over time and across states. Congress also directed that
the report include a plan for building on the automated data processing systems of the States to establish a
national system, and estimates of the cost and the amount of time required to establish such a system. In its
December 1997 report to Congress,71 HHS identified five alternative architectures72 for meeting the participant
tracking requirements of the law. The USDA then followed up in 1999 with a study of the feasibility of these options
for constructing a national database to track participation in public assistance programs.73 This study concluded
that the development of an eligibility database architecture74 (one of the five options identified in the HHS report)
would be feasible and cost-effective if developed jointly for both TANF and the food stamps program. In fact, while
the development of such a system is likely to be costly (an estimated total five-year cost of some US$39 million),
the estimated benefits in recovered or avoided food stamps and TANF payments is likely to be higher (an estimated
US$72 million over five years). The GAO followed up with related recommendations in support of federal
coordination in automated systems. Despite the abundance of federal reports on the subject,
a national
stamps and TANF programs (separate ministries and funding streams); and (c) perhaps a lack of political will across
the states (e.g., entrenched interests for existing systems, reticence on behalf of some states to truly enforce time
upgrading the technologies and capacities of the systems used; and (b) expanding and improving the functions that
these systems perform.7
despite the significance of non- state actors and processes, It remams important to
identify the links, forms and sites of state action and inaction. We want to distance
our notion of moral regulation from one which suggests that the state is
disappearing or ceasing to be relevant. In our view, the state never ceases to be a
player, even when benched, ignored by some, or out-manoeuvred by
others. we are Influenced here by a body of socio-legal scholars that has under- taken and advanced this form
of inquiry and analysis.7 We will illustrate our critical engagement with the concept of
moral regulation with reference to the historical treatment of poor women on
welfare (see also Little, 1998). We focus in particular on the always precarious position of
such women within the overarching (apparently anachronistic) category of the 'deserving
poor', through the example of welfare legislation and policy, and the current preoccupation with welfare fraud. In
our view, state provision of social assist- ance to the poor was neither principally nor incidentally an expression of
benign state coercion or social control, although distinguished scholars in the field have worked within this
(e.g. Little, 1998). But, as we will illustrate later, moral regulation offers a partial, perhaps historically specific,
analysis of the operation of welfare law. Recent ex- perience of welfare law reform and preoccupation with welfare
fraud this redefinition, restructuring, harassment and disentitlement, coupled with the ever present threat of
potential activists of the overall impact of welfare racism on the nations poor .
Central to that educational process are information disseminating tactics that
challenge the highly racialized ideologies about poverty and racist images of poor
women of color. Of course, before information or knowledge can be disseminated, it must be gathered.
Research activities of various types are needed to collect information on welfare racist attitudes,
policies and practices that can serve as the basis for educational, legal, legislative
policy and social protest challenges. Racism-sensitive monitoring safeguards should be included in all
future public assistance legislation. Appropriate government agencies should also take racism-targeted actions to
insure that current public assistance policies do not violate existing laws against racial discrimination. To this end,
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (www.hhs.gov/ocr/taintro.htm) has released anti-discrimination
guidelines (Technical Assistance for Caseworkers on Civil Rights Laws and Welfare Reform) which include specific
examples of forbidden welfare racist policies and practices that can be made available to organizations concerned
about welfare rights. The Grass Roots Innovative Policy Program has placed on its website (www.arc.org/gripp) a
document called Putting Welfare Reform to the Test: A Guide to Uncovering Bias and Unfair Treatment in Local
Welfare Programs. That guide provides the information needed to document welfare racist practices. Antidiscrimination testers should be used in welfare offices to insure that these guidelines are followed. Legal
challenges to welfare racism are often inextricably intertwined with educational, legislative policy and social protest
card for political gain. Through national organizations like the National Welfare Rights Union (www.
nationalwru.wego.com) and through the grassroots-level actions of organizations like the Philadelphia-based
Kensington Welfare Rights Union (www.kwru.org), the political value of welfare racism can be diminished in direct
proportion to its increased political costs. The time to fight welfare racism is long overdue. The
public policy discourse has already begun in anticipation of the 2002 expiration of the Personal Responsibility and
Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. With PRWORAs expiration, the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families
program, which receives its authorization from that bill, will also end. Consequently, politicians must decide whether
to abolish, renew or replace TANF. We agree with the Womens Committee of 100, a distinguished group which
describes its members as feminist academics, professionals, and activists, that for poor people who require
government aid the best option is replacing TANF. Replacement of TANF is also the best option as part of a serious
simple affidavit of income and need) and by instituting simple and well-known criteria for levels of aid for recipients
throughout the nation. Such a measure, however, will not eliminate the racist attitudes that often drive poverty
policy-making and program implementation. As the National Welfare Rights Organization was well aware when it
income
maintenance component of such a remedy is unlikely to happen without effective
challenges to the widespread racist attitudes toward the poor and to anti-poverty
demanded a guaranteed minimum income during the Poor Peoples Campaign of the late 1960s, the
programs generated by the state, the media and other highly racialized institutions
of this society. In the meantime, while the poor must depend on public assistance,
welfare racist attitudes, policies and practices should be confronted through
appropriate racism-sensitive safeguards and racism-targeted interventions. By
combating welfare racism, we can remove a major roadblock from the path to
economic justice for all.
welfare mothers are so oppressed by the welfare bureaucracy that they are almost the inverse of the rights-
womens lives and serve as a starting point for changing societal expectations of womens potential and reality.150
The welfare rights movement reveals truths for both perspectives .151 Given the
entrenched nature of welfares privacy-stripping practices, a multi-faceted approach
is needed to enhance the privacy of poor women . Some important rights are already on the
books, such as the exemption for domestic violence victims within the child support enforcement program, and
Certainly, middle-class Americans would recoil in horror if the government put them through similar scrutiny as a
condition of receiving valuable governmental subsidies, such as tax deductions for mortgages and retirement plans,
clients need to make the case to welfare administrators that stripping welfare clients of their dignity is contrary to
the goals of selfsufficiency mandated by TANF. This symposium asks, Can You Hear Us Now? The idea of being heard
fodder for social control tactics that tout self-sufficiency while undermining actual
opportunities for independence. Moreover, feminism has not included poor women within the Us, that
is presumed in this question. Too often, the voices of poor women, including their perspectives
on how the intersectionality of gender, class, and race shapes their lives have
been muted in both second-wave and thirdwave feminism. Further, a third-wave feminist might rightly take
issue with the notion of an Us voicing a unified message. There is no monolithic feminist movement; we are
united only in our shared commitment to defeat inequality. At the same time, the multiplicity of feminist identities
should not become so splintering that we cannot find common grounds for a shared fight. Welfare mothers need
each other, as well as concerned feminists everywhere, to fight for economic justice and insulation from state
surveillance. Thus, this paper asks a different question, Can You Hear Us Fight For The Privacy and Dignity of All
Women?
Policy Boosters
and governments up to war. It runs downward too. Enloe suggests that changes in attitudes towards war and the
military may be the most important way to reverse womens oppression. The dilemma is that peace work focused
on justice brings to the peace movement energy, allies, and moral grounding, yet, in light of this books evidence,
always imply models and metaphors have much more persuasive power than models do, for models tend to be the
expectations of life, a condition in which more than half the human race lives, is 'like' a thug beating up the victim
and 'taking his money away from him in the street, or it is 'like' a conqueror stealing the land of the people and
The implication is that poverty and its associated ills are the fault of the
thug or the conqueror and the solution is to do away with thugs and conquerors. While there is some
truth in the metaphor, in the modern world at least there is not very muc h. Violence,
whether of the streets and the home, or of the guerilla, of the police, or of the armed forces, is a very different
phenomenon from poverty. The processes which create and sustain poverty are not at all like
the processes which create and sustain violence, although like everything else in
'the world, everything is somewhat related to everything else. There is a very real problem
of the structures which lead to violence, but unfortunately Galitung's metaphor of structural violence as
he has used it has diverted attention from this problem. Violence in the behavioral
sense, that is, somebody actually doing damage to somebody else and trying to make them worse off, is a
'threshold' phenomenon, rather like the boiling over of a pot. The temperature under a pot can rise for a
reducing them to slavery.
long time without its boiling over, but at some 'threshold boiling over will take place. The study of the structures
which underlie violence are a very important and much neglected part of peace research and indeed of social
science in general. Threshold phenomena like violence are difficult to study because they represent 'breaks' in the
systenm rather than uniformities. Violence, whether between persons or organizations, occurs when the 'strain' on
a system is too great for its 'strength'. The metaphor here is that violence is like what happens when we break a
piece of chalk. Strength and strain, however, especially in social systems, are so interwoven historically that it is
very difficult to separate them. The diminution of violence involves two possible strategies, or a mixture of the two;
one is Ithe increase in the strength of the system, 'the other is the diminution of the strain. The strength of systems
involves habit, culture, taboos, and sanctions, all these 'things which enable a system to stand lincreasing strain
without breaking down into violence. The strains on the system 'are largely dynamic in character, such as arms
races, mutually stimulated hostility, changes in relative economic position or political power, which are often hard
to identify. Conflicts of interest 'are only part 'of the strain on a system, and not always the most important part. It is
very hard for people ito know their interests, and misperceptions of 'interest take place mainly through the dynamic
processes, not through the structural ones. It is only perceptions of interest which affect people's behavior, not the
'real' interests, whatever these may be, and the gap between percepti'on and reality can be very large and resistant
what Galitung calls structural violence (which has been defined 'by one unkind
anything that Galitung doesn't like) was originally defined as any
unnecessarily low expectation of life, on that assumption that anybody who dies
before the allotted span has been killed, however unintentionally and unknowingly, by somebody else. The
concept has been expanded to include all 'the problems of poverty, destitution, deprivation,
and misery. These are enormously real and are a very high priority for research and action, but they belong
to systems which are only peripherally related to 'the structures whi'ch produce
to change. However,
commenltator as
violence.
This is not rto say that the cultures of violence and the cultures of poverty are not sometimes related,
though not all poverty cultures are cultures of violence, and certainly not all cultures of violence are poverty
the dynamics lof poverty and the success or failure to rise out of it are of a complexity
far beyond anything which the metaphor of structural violence can offer . While the
metaphor of structural violence performed a service in calling attention to a problem, it may have
d'one a disservice in preventing us from finding the answer .
cultures. But
Predictions
Predictions are more important than examining assumptions
Its THEIR burden to prove we should reject formal analysis,
standards of evidence, and probabilistic reasoning.
Michael Fitzsimmons, defence analyst at a Washington DC consulting firm, 2006
(The Problem of Uncertainty in Strategic Planning, Survival, Volume 48, Issue 4,
December, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via InformaWorld)
Uncertainty is not a new phenomenon for strategists. Clausewitz knew that 'many
intelligence reports in war are contradictory; even more are false, and most are uncertain'. In
coping with uncertainty, he believed that 'what one can reasonably ask of an officer is that he
should possess a standard of judgment, which he can gain only from knowledge of men and
affairs and from common sense. He should be guided by the laws of probability.'34 Granted,
one can certainly allow for epistemological debates about the best ways of gaining 'a
standard of judgment' from 'knowledge of men and affairs and from common sense'.
Scientific inquiry into the 'laws of probability' for any given strategic question may not
always be possible or appropriate. Certainly, analysis cannot and should not be
presumed to trump the intuition of decision-makers. Nevertheless, Clausewitz's
implication seems to be that the burden of proof in any debates about planning should
belong to the decision-maker who rejects formal analysis, standards of evidence and
probabilistic reasoning. Ultimately, though, the value of prediction in strategic planning
does not rest primarily in getting the correct answer, or even in the more feasible
objective of bounding the range of correct answers. Rather, prediction requires
decision-makers to expose, not only to others but to themselves, the beliefs they hold
regarding why a given event is likely or unlikely and why it would be important or
unimportant. Richard Neustadt and Ernest May highlight this useful property of
for example, if Shinseki and Wolfowitz had been made to assign probabilities to their
opposing expectations regarding post-war Iraq. Not only would they have had to work harder
to justify their views, they might have seen more clearly the substantial chance that they were
wrong and had to make greater efforts in their planning to prepare for that contingency.
Secondly, the very process of making the relevant factors of a decision explicit provides a
firm, or at least transparent, basis for making choices. Alternative courses of action can
be compared and assessed in like terms. Third, the transparency and discipline of the
process of arriving at the initial strategy should heighten the decision-maker's
sensitivity toward changes in the environment that would suggest the need for
adjustments to that strategy. In this way, prediction enhances rather than undermines
strategic flexibility. This defence of prediction does not imply that great stakes should be
gambled on narrow, singular predictions of the future. On the contrary, the central problem
of uncertainty in planning remains that any given prediction may simply be wrong.
Preparations for those eventualities must be made. Indeed, in many cases, relatively unlikely
outcomes could be enormously consequential, and therefore merit extensive preparation and
investment. In order to navigate this complexity, strategists must return to the distinction
between uncertainty and risk. While the complexity of the international security environment
may make it somewhat resistant to the type of probabilistic thinking associated with risk, a
risk-oriented approach seems to be the only viable model for national-security strategic
planning. The alternative approach, which categorically denies prediction, precludes strategy.
As Betts argues, Any assumption that some knowledge, whether intuitive or explicitly
formalized, provides guidance about what should be done is a presumption that there is
reason to believe the choice will produce a satisfactory outcome - that is, it is a prediction,
however rough it may be. If there is no hope of discerning and manipulating causes to
produce intended effects, analysts as well as politicians and generals should all quit and go
fishing.36 Unless they are willing to quit and go fishing, then, strategists must sharpen
their tools of risk assessment. Risk assessment comes in many varieties, but
identification of two key parameters is common to all of them: the consequences of a
harmful event or condition; and the likelihood of that harmful event or condition
occurring. With no perspective on likelihood, a strategist can have no firm perspective
on risk. With no firm perspective on risk, strategists cannot purposefully discriminate
among alternative choices. Without purposeful choice, there is no strategy. One of the
most widely read books in recent years on the complicated relationship between strategy and
uncertainty is Peter Schwartz's work on scenario-based planning, The Art of the Long View.
Schwartz warns against the hazards faced by leaders who have deterministic habits of mind,
or who deny the difficult implications of uncertainty for strategic planning. To overcome such
tendencies, he advocates the use of alternative future scenarios for the purposes of examining
alternative strategies. His view of scenarios is that their goal is not to predict the future, but
to sensitise leaders to the highly contingent nature of their decision-making.37 This
philosophy has taken root in the strategic-planning processes in the Pentagon and other parts
of the US government, and properly so. Examination of alternative futures and the
potential effects of surprise on current plans is essential. Appreciation of uncertainty
also has a number of organisational implications, many of which the national-security
establishment is trying to take to heart, such as encouraging multidisciplinary study and
training, enhancing information sharing, rewarding innovation, and placing a premium
on speed and versatility. The arguments advanced here seek to take nothing away from
these imperatives of planning and operating in an uncertain environment. But appreciation
of uncertainty carries hazards of its own. Questioning assumptions is critical, but
assumptions must be made in the end. Clausewitz's 'standard of judgment' for
discriminating among alternatives must be applied. Creative, unbounded speculation must
resolve to choice or else there will be no strategy. Recent history suggests that
Extinction O/W
Extinction comes first
Schell, 1982
(Jonathan, writer for the New Yorker and nuclear weapons expert,
For the generations that now have to decide whether or not to risk the future of the species, the implication of our
species unique place in the order of things is that while things in the life of mankind have worth,
we must
never raise that worth above the life of mankind and above our respect
for that lifes existence. To do this would be to make of our highest ideals so
many swords with which to destroy ourselves. To sum up the worth of our species
by reference to some particular standard, goal, or ideology, no matter
how elevated or noble it might be, would be to prepare the way for
extinction by closing down in thought and feeling the open-ended
possibilities for human development which extinction would close down in
fact. There is only one circumstance in which it might be possible to sum up the life
and achievement of the species, and that circumstance would be that it had already
died, but then, of course, there would be no one left to do the summing up. Only a
generation that believed itself to be in possession of final, absolute truth could ever
conclude that it had reason to put an end to human life, and only generations that recognized the limits to
their own wisdom and virtue would be likely to subordinate their interests and dreams to the as yet unformed
interests and undreamed dreams of the future generations, and let human life go on.
AT: Framing
If we win the counter-plan solves the case you vote negative
when faced with two choices its ethical to choose the one that
does the least damage.
Finnis 1980 (John, Prof of Law and Legal Philosophy, Natural Law and Natural
Rights, p 111-112, AD: 11/16/09) jl
The sixth requirement has obvious connections with the fifth, but introduces a new
range of problems for practical reason, problems which go to the heart of morality.
For this is the requirement that one bring about good in the world (in ones own life
and the lives of others) by actions that are efficient for their (reasonable)
purpose(s). One must not waste ones opportunities by using inefficient methods.
Ones actions should be judged by their effectiveness, by their fitness for their
purpose, by their utility, their consequences There is a wide range of contexts in
which it is possible and only reasonable to calculate, measure, compare, weigh, and
assess the consequences of alternative decisions. Where a choice must be made it
is reasonable to prefer human good to the good of animals. Where a choice must be
made it is reasonable to prefer basic human goods (such as life) to merely instrumental goods (such as property). Where damage is inevitable, it is reasonable to
prefer stunning to wounding, wounding to maiming, maiming to death: i.e. lesser
rather than greater damage to one-and-the-same basic good in one-and-the-same
instantiation. Where one way of participating in a human good includes both all the
good aspects and effects of its alternative, and more, it is reasonable to prefer that
way: a remedy that both relieves pain and heals is to be preferred to the one that
merely relieves pain. Where a person or a society has created a personal or social
hierarchy of practical norms and orientations, through reasonable choice of
commitments, one can in many cases reasonably measure the benefits and
disadvantages of alternatives. (Consider a man who ha decided to become a
scholar, or a society that has decided to go to war.) Where one is considering
objects or activities in which there is reasonably a market, the market provides a
common denominator (currency) and enables a comparison to be made of prices,
costs, and profits. Where there are alternative techniques or facilities for achieving
definite objectives, cost-benefit analysis will make possible a certain range of
reasonable comparisons between techniques or facilities. Over a wide range of
preferences and wants, it is reasonable for an individual or society to seek to
maximize the satisfaction of those preferences or wants.
A2 courts shield
Courts link to politicsObama has appointed two justices
Samuel, 2009 (Terence, Obama's Honeymoon Nears Its End, The American
Prospect, 5/29, http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?
article=obamas_honeymoon_nears_its_end)
This week, Barack Obama named his first nominee to the Supreme Court , then headed west to
Las Vegas and Los Angeles to raise money for Democrats in the 2010 midterms. Taken together, these two
seemingly disparate acts mark the end of a certain period of innocence in the Obama administration: The "blame
Bush" phase of the Obama administration is over, and the prolonged honeymoon that the president has enjoyed
with the country and the media will soon come to an end as well. Obama is no longer just the inheritor of Bush's
This is now his presidency in his own right. The chance to choose a Supreme
Court justice is such a sui generis exercise of executive power -- it so powerfully
underscores the vast and unique powers of a president -- that blame-shifting has
become a less effective political strategy, and less becoming as well. Obama's political maturation
mess.
will be hastened by the impending ideological fight that is now virtually a guarantee for Supreme Court
nominations. Old wounds will be opened, and old animosities will be triggered as the process moves along. Already
we see the effect in the polls. While Obama himself remains incredibly popular, only 47 percent of Americans think
his choice of Judge Sonia Sotomayor is an excellent or good choice for the Court, according to the latest Gallup poll.
The stimulus package scored better than that. The prospect of a new justice really seems to force people to
reconsider their culture warrior allegiances in the context of the party in power. This month, after news of Justice
David Souter's retirement, a Gallup poll showed that more Americans considered themselves against abortion rights
than in favor: 51 percent to 42 percent. Those number were almost exactly reversed a year ago when Bush was in
office and Obama was on the verge of wrapping up the Democratic nomination. "This is the first time a majority of
U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995," according to the
polling organization. Is this the same country that elected Obama? Yes, but with his overwhelmingly Democratic
Senate, the public may be sending preemptory signals that they are not interested in a huge swing on some of
these cultural issues that tend to explode during nomination hearings. Even though Obama will win the Sotomayor
fight, her confirmation is likely to leave him less popular in the end because it will involve contentious issues -questions of race and gender politics like affirmative action and abortion -- that he managed to avoid or at least
finesse through his campaign and during his presidency so far.
EDWARDS: So if the president is forced to sign a bill he doesn't like, he can turn it to
his advantage. ROBERTS: Absolutely. Look, one of the things that George Bush
learned while he was governor of Texas is that the person who actually signs the bill
gets the credit. And he's happy to spread the credit around. He's happy to say other
people are responsible for this, as well. And I'm sure you will see signing ceremonies
with the Democratic senators and the House members--John Dingell and Dr.
Norwood all around. But in the end, it's the person who is the executive, who's
sitting in the governor's office or the Oval Office that is associated with the good
things that happen and the bad things that happen, and he's well aware of that. So
he can try to mold the bill, but in the end he'll get the credit.
Other K Things
The Marxist theorisation of the state sheds considerable light on the contradictory
role of welfare provision under capitalism. The welfare system can be viewed as an
example of OConnors notion of social capital, whereby it reinforces the physical
reproduction of labour through healthcare, education and other social insurance
measures and services (Gough 1979, p. 52), and facilitates capital accumulation by
contributing to the management of the RAL (Grover 2003, p. 20). It can also be seen as a
social expense, as a means of maintaining social harmony and the legitimacy of
the state and capitalist social relations through the provision of payments to those
outside the labour market and by mandating particular behaviours (OConnor 1973, p.
7). Gough sums up the role of welfare provision in terms of reproducing labour power for the capitalist system.
He defines the welfare state as the use of state power to modify the reproduction of
labour power and to maintain the non-working population in capitalist societies
(original emphasis, 1979, p. 44-5). The need for state intervention into the reproduction of labour power is
fundamentally related to the unique, human quality of labour as a factor within the process of capital
accumulation. OConnor explains the special nature of labour power, drawing on Polanyis notion of fictitious
commodities: Labor-power is a make-believe commodity in the sense that it is not produced and reproduced for
sale on the market. Nor can it be separated from its owners, and thus it cannot circulate freely on the market
(1998, p. 144-5). However, the circuit of capital does not recognise the humanity of the commodity labour power,
Precisely
because capitals goal is surplus value and not the workers own need for
development, the workers own will must be subordinated to that of capital within
the capitalist labour process (2003, p. 91). Labour power is thus an essential input into
the circuit of capital, but one which is not reproduced within it like other
commodities (Gough 1979, p. 21). The vagaries of the capitalist system, driven by
competition between capitalists will not necessarily allow for the long term
reproduction of workers (Aumeeruddy, Lautier & Tortajada, cited in Jessop 1982, p. 92). In this way,
the long and short term reproduction of the commodity labour power must be
secured by a formally external institution, through social security provision (Gough
1979, p. 45). Welfare can also be seen to facilitate the incorporation and expulsion of
the RAL from the labour force. In Grovers words: One of the most important roles of
welfare policy is to maintain and regulate the reserve army to ensure that it has a
close relationship to labour markets so that it can fulfil its role in the management
of economic stability (2003, p. 19). Welfare policy links social security to the labour
market by managing those excluded from production and enforcing work oriented
behavioural patterns. Changes to the provision of welfare can be viewed as
conditioned by the fluctuations of the business cycle, in line with the demand for
labour and fluctuating profit rates. By managing and mobilising the RAL, welfare policy can effectively
viewing it instead as another factor of production (OConnor 2009, p. 85). Lebowitz explains:
promote increased competition for employment, assisting the depression of the cost of labour and aiding the
n21
don't hire you, or I fire you because you are trans." But do we believe that everything would be fair and right in the world of employment if not for this one
Even setting aside the fact that such laws do not seem to have
the effect of stopping people from firing or not hiring trans people, that such laws
are rarely enforced and members of our community rarely have access to legal
resources to seek enforcement, and that proving discrimination is almost
impossible, I worry about what critiques of the arrangements of working life we are
forfeiting when our main intervention in economic exploitation is gender identity
inclusive anti-discrimination laws. Many people in our communities are in the positions they are in economically for a range of
aberrant behavior of some employers?
reasons related to the racial wealth divide, histories of enslavement, colonization, and land theft in their communities of origin whose legacies continue
today to effect policies and practices. These include state laws and policies that criminalize the poor and mark people who have criminal convictions with
lifelong stigma, the lack of a social welfare system that provides a livable benefit, the joke of a minimum wage, the transition of our economy to a
contingent workforce with no job security or benefits, the exploitation of migrant laborers, the weakening of unionized labor, the erosion of public
The narrow demand of antidiscrimination legislation in employment seems to shore up the erasure of the
broader historical and contemporary structures that produce the growing wealth
divide we see in the U.S. that impacts trans people so severely . The production of images of
education, and other significant trends in capitalist and neoliberal economic arrangements.
hardworking, qualified, professional trans people who just want a chance at success mobilized to support these reforms contribute to mythologies about
employment that valorize self-sufficiency and individualism, pretend that the U.S. economy is a meritocracy where anyone hard-working can succeed, and
justify demonization and abandonment of poor people. n22 In this way, the narrow law-reform focus limits the reach of our politics and coopts our struggle,
law reform
strategies frequently end up strengthening the systems that they seek to change.
This dilemma is evident in the legal work that many of us do to change the welfare
system. Our work comes from an understanding that the welfare system is unfair
and arbitrary, people are frequently denied benefits illegally, the entire system is
under-funded, the benefits are not livable, the eligibility criteria are inappropriate,
and that the system operates to discipline labor and prevent broadscale
transformative change of our inherently exploitative economic arrangements. We fight
specific battles to oppose various cutbacks or punitive measures imposed on our clients with vigor. Yet, every time we fight some
particularly egregious policy and seek change, we are also legitimizing and
stabilizing the system overall. Of course, we must take any opportunity to struggle
for increased life chances for people trying to survive on welfare, but we also need a
broader strategy that addresses the fact that welfare always has been a system of
racialized and gendered social control and exploitation and we must envision
broader transformation. The homeless shelter system of New York City is another example where the co-optive dangers of reform
encouraging us to say something that props up our conditions of oppression rather than undermines them. Moreover,
n24
confront advocates. New York City's shelter system is discriminatory toward trans people and dangerous, punitive, and inadequate for all people without
housing in the city. Yet, I worked with the Sylvia Rivera Law Project and other organizations for years to force the city to create a policy that would prevent
we use law reform as a tool, and that responsible law reformers must consider in depth: are we strengthening and legitimizing a fundamentally oppressive
structure? When we engage in law reform we should balance the immediate reform objectives with a long-term vision of the work, and consider whether
An example of a law
reform project with a payoff that does not justify its system-strengthening effect is
hate crime legislation. As is often discussed, trans people are frequent targets of bias-motivated violence and murder. A conservative
the immediate payoffs for vulnerable people balance out against the detriment of system-strengthening.
n26
n27
estimate I have heard is that we are seven to ten more times likely to be murdered than people who are not trans. n28 Anyone who works in our
communities has known people who have been murdered; it is a common occurrence. The Sylvia Rivera Law Project is currently grieving the recent
murder of a member of our New York community. When these horrifying events occur, calls for hate crimes legislation are a common response. n29 The
motivation for hate crimes legislation in our community makes sense on an emotional level. Many people know that murdered trans people are often
considered "throw aways," that these murders are ignored by the media and police. n30 Often, these murders are not investigated or prosecuted, or people
found guilty of these murders receive unusually low punishments. n31 I have heard anecdotes about murderers of trans people being given the same
sentence that a person would receive for killing a dog. These concerns and experiences of violence, trauma, erasure, and abandonment lead many to call
for penalty enhancements, suggesting that increased punishment of people who murder trans people would mean that our lives were taken seriously and
valued publicly. However, recently an increasingly visible sector of trans people have been openly opposing hate crimes legislation. n32 Many have
suggested that investing in the criminal punishment system by expanding its punishing powers is the last thing trans people should be doing. These
hate crimes legislation has no payoff for trans people: it has never
been shown to prevent violence or have any deterrent value. n33 Instead, it
increases the resources of a system that we know targets and endangers trans
people, especially poor people and people of color. n34 This analysis warns us to not
allow our grief to be co-opted by law into increasing the power of a system that
perpetrates violence on our communities. This analysis asks us to move beyond a
punishment-focused perpetrator perspective and instead focus on directing
resources toward changes that enhance the lifespan of trans people, such as access
to healthcare and employment, police accountability, decarceration, and education.
advocates [*297] point out that
n35
The popularity of hate crimes legislation in trans legal reform gives us an opportunity to consider the limitations of the perpetrator perspective and the
problem of law co-opting anti-oppression frameworks to strengthen oppressive systems. An additional concept from Critical Race Theory that may be
useful in thinking about law's power to co-opt resistance struggles is the concept of "formal legal equality." Critical Race Theorists have used this term to
describe legal change that declares equality while actually offering little change in conditions of existence. n36 "Formal legal equality" strategies change
the named status of a group in the law, and create a veneer of fairness for the system or the institution in question. However, the effects of such changes
on disparity in life chances are often minimal. n37 The people who were most vulnerable to premature death under the system or institution before the
reform often remain the most vulnerable. The declaration of fairness and equality has been made, but those who fare the worst continue to fare the worst
n38
n39
n40
legal co-optation, and its connections to the stability of racialized class stratification, rears its head in even the most rudimentary questions of legal
practice. How often must social movement lawyers ask ourselves, "How do we find the perfect plaintiff?" The moments when lawyers decide that the face
of an issue must be someone both judges and the media can embrace (read: white, employed, citizen, able-bodied) are painful dividing moments for our
communities even though they frequently occur behind closed doors. They are moments when the terms ofinclusion and exclusion are set and where
racist, classist, xenophobic, and abelist standards are reproduced. Even the question "is this a winning case?" highlights these issues. Do we only fight
winning cases? In this system, and under these rules of law, whose oppression can be recognized? Who can prevail in court? Can people who experience
multiple vectors of oppression ever be those perfect, winning plaintiffs in this model of practice? These questions guide lawyers to articulate legal agendas
that are relevant to a very narrow swath of a given community, and certainly least relevant to those facing the most severe manifestations of oppression.
Law seems to push us toward these kinds of individualizing, divisive decisions that
ultimately undermine our anti-oppression goals, weaken solidarity within our
communities and across social movements, and restrict our vision until our victories
are actually thinly veiled defeats that strengthen oppressive systems .
Alt Booster
ONLY grassroots movements can solve the problems of status
quo welfare
Petras 12 [James Petras. The Great Transformation: From the Welfare State to the Imperial Police
State Global Research, July 14, 2012. Retired Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University in
Binghamton, New York and adjunct professor at Saint Mary's University author of more than 62 books published in
29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals]
US society is now split into two sectors: the winners linked to the expanding and
lucrative financial security complex embedded in the police state while the
losers, tied to the manufacturing welfare sector, are relegated to an increasingly
marginalized civil society. The police state purges dissidents who question the
Israel-First doctrine of the US security-military apparatus. The financial sector,
embedded in its own luxurious cocoon of private services, demands the total
gutting of public services directed toward the poor, working and middle classes. The
public treasury has been taken over in order to finance bank bailouts, imperial wars
and police state agencies while paying the bondholders of US debt. Social Security
is on target to be privatized. Pensions are to be reduced, delayed and self-financed.
Food stamps, access to affordable health care and unemployment support will be
slashed. The police state cannot pay for glitzy new repressive technologies, greater
policing, more intrusive surveillance, arrests and prisons while financing the existing
welfare state with its vast educational, health and human services and pension
benefits. In sum, there is no future for social welfare in the United States within its
powerful financial-imperial-police state system. Both major political parties nurture
this system, support serial wars, appeal to the financial elites and debate over the
size, scope and timing for further cuts in social welfare. The American social welfare
system was a product of an earlier phase of US capitalism where US global
industrial supremacy allowed for both military spending and welfare support and
where US military spending was constrained by the demands of the domestic socioeconomic sectors of manufacturing capital and labor. In an earlier phase Zionist
influence was based on wealthy individuals and their congressional lobby they
did not occupy key Federal policymaking positions setting the agendas for war in
the Middle East and domestic police state. Times have changed for the worse: a
police state, linked to militarism and perpetual imperial wars in the Middle East has
gained ascendancy and now impacts our everyday life. Underlying both the growth
of the police state and the erosion of the welfare state is the rise of an inter-locking
financial-security power elite, held together by a common ideology, unprecedented
private wealth and the relentless drive to monopolize the public treasury to the
detriment of the vast majority of Americans. A confrontation and full exposure of all
the self-serving propaganda, which undergirds the power elite is an essential first
step. The enormous budgets for imperial wars are the greatest threat to US welfare.
The police state erodes real public services and undermines social movements.
Finance capital pillages the public treasury demanding bailouts and subsidies for the
banks. Israeli Firsters, in key decision-making positions, serve the interests of a
foreign police state against the interests of the American people. The state of Israel
is the mirror opposite of what we Americans want for ourselves and our children: a
free and independent secular republic without colonial settlements, clerical racism,
and destructive self-serving militarism. Today the fight to restore the advances in
citizens welfare established through public programs of the recent past requires
that we transform an entire structure of power: true welfare reform requires a
revolutionary strategy and, above all, a grass-roots mass movement breaking
with the entrenched two party regime tied to the financial- imperial- internal
security system.