1AC

Contention 1: Inherency
The current structure of educational federalism is the KEY cause of educational
inequality that BLOCKS any reform efforts
Robinson 13 Professor, University of Richmond School of Law. Kimberly Jenkins Robinson, The High Cost of The Nation's Current
Framework for Education Federalism, 48 Wake Forest L. Rev. 287 (2013)
Education federalism in the United States traditionally embraces state and local authority over education and a restricted federal role.l Even as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 ("NCLB")2 expanded and transformed the federal

praise the nation's longstanding approach to

role in education, the tradition of state and local control over education influenced key provisions within the statute.3 Some

education federalism-which this Article defines as an emphasis on state and local control over education and a limited
federal role-for its ability to foster local control of education, encourage experimentation, and promote a robust competition for excellence in education. 4 This approach to education federalism also is
praised for how it enables local communities to respond to local needs and promotes accountability.5 The current structure of education federalism resembles the relationship between the national and state
governments, and like that relationship, it seeks to capitalize on an array of viewpoints and methods regarding the most effective approaches to education. 6 Although the nation's current approach to education federalism

undoubtedly generates some benefits, it also tolerates substantial inequitable disparities in educational opportunity both within and between
states. 7 The reality of local control of education for many communities means the ability to control inadequate resources that provide many students substandard

educational opportunities. s The opportunity divide in American education continues to relegate far too many poor and

minority schoolchildren to substandard educational opportunities.9 These communities are left behind in the competition for educational
excellence.lO In addition, highpoverty schools, particularly those within urban school districts, regularly yield the worst academic outcomes.H These disparities in educational opportunity hinder schools

from fulfilling some of their essential national and institutional goals. Schools serve indispensable public functions within a democratic society: they prepare students to engage in the
nation's political system in an intelligent and effective manner and transmit the fundamental societal values that a democratic government requires. 12 The nation also relies on its public schools as the principal institutional

Americans depend on
guarantor of equal opportunity within American society by serving as a mechanism to ensure that children are not hindered in attaining their dreams by their life circumstances,13

schools to address the societal challenges created by social and economic inequality rather than creating the extensive social
welfare networks that many industrialized countries have implemented.l4 The disparities in educational opportunity that relegate many poor and minority students to substandard schooling have hindered the ability of schools to

serve these functions. Indeed, rather than solve these challenges, low graduation rates and substandard schools cost the United States billions of
dollars each year in lost tax and income revenues, higher health care costs, food stamps, and welfare and housing assistance, to name a few of the costs.l5 This Article will show the consistent ways that the
current understanding of education federalism within the United States has hindered three of the major reform efforts to promote a more equitable
distribution of educational opportunity: school desegregation, school finance litigation, and, most recently, NCLB. In exploring how education federalism has
undermined these efforts, this Article adds to the understanding of other scholars who have critiqued these reformsl6 and examined why the nation has failed to guarantee equal educational opportunity. 17 For example,

scholars have argued that the failure to undertake earnest efforts to achieve equal educational
opportunity is caused by a variety of factors, including the lack of political will to accomplish this goal the domination of suburban influences over education politics, and the
failure of the United States to create a social welfare system that addresses the social and economic barriers that impede the achievement of many poor and minority students.1s In a past work, I also explored some of the reasons
that these efforts have failed to ensure equal educational opportunity,19 In light of this literature, education federalism undoubtedly is not the only factor that has influenced the nation's inability to ensure equal educational

opportunity.Nevertheless, it is important to understand the consistent ways in which education federalism has contributed to the
ineffectiveness of efforts to ensure equal educational opportunity as scholars propose new avenues to achieve this paramount goal. In addition, in
both past and future work, I argue that the nation should consider embracing a new framework for education federalism that would enable the
nation to more effectively achieve its goals for public schools.2o Understanding how education federalism has hindered past reforms is an essential part of exploring how education federalism should be reshaped.
 Plan
PLAN: The United States federal government should substantially increase its funding
and regulation of elementary and secondary education in the United States to
promote equal access to educational opportunity
 Contention 2: Federalism
The federal role in education is expanding haphazardly with no cooperative basis
Robinson 15 Kimberely Jenkins Professor of Law, University of Richmond School of Law. Kimberly Jenkins Robinson, Disrupting
Education Federalism, 92 Wash. U. L. Rev. 959 (2015). Available at: http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_lawreview/vol92/iss4/7

My theory for reconstructing education federalism envisions the federal, state, and local governments joining
together in a shoulder-toshoulder partnership to build an education system in which all schoolchildren
receive equal access to an excellent education. By establishing the federal government as the final guarantor of equal
educational opportunity, it offers innovative ways to empower and incentivize state and local
governments to close opportunity and achievement gaps. It would require the federal government both to demand much from state and local governments and give much to them. My theory is particularly timely
because it is offered at a time when the nation has already begun to embrace a historic expansion of the federal role in education.341 A substantial federal role in education is

likely to continue because it generally enjoys bipartisan support as well as support from the business community, civil rights groups, and many other
Americans.342 Although support for federal involvement in education has been growing, the United States has

lacked a theory for how this role should evolve.343 Several scholars and the Equity and Excellence Commission have offered a variety of proposals for how the federal role in
education should be strengthened to advance equal educational opportunity.344 I offer a theory of education federalism that could guide implementation of

such proposals by analyzing how the nation should improve upon the strengths of federal education
policymaking and identifying critical missing components of an effective reform movement. Disrupting the nations longstanding approach to
education federalism and reconstructing it in ways that support the nations education goals will be essential to successful
education reform. Federal education law and policy built upon my theory would restructure education
federalism in ways that support closing opportunity gaps. Closing these gaps is essential to closing achievement gaps and thereby enabling all children to enjoy
the possibilities of the American dream. Research reveals that closing achievement gaps would both greatly increase the nations

economic growth and lead to future economic strength and competitiveness of the U.S. economy.345 As the United States continues to search for new ways to expand educational
opportunity and improve educational quality, my theory offers some pioneering ideas for moving our national dialogue away from educational paralysis and toward educational excellence

Federal leadership for equal access creates a NET beneficial model of COOPERATIVE
federalism
Robinson 15 Kimberely Jenkins Professor of Law, University of Richmond School of Law. Kimberly Jenkins Robinson, Disrupting
Education Federalism, 92 Wash. U. L. Rev. 959 (2015). Available at: http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_lawreview/vol92/iss4/7

when the Supreme Court and Congress limited reforms to advance equal
In addition, this Article also briefly highlights that

educational opportunity, they harkened back to an extinct model of dual federalism and failed to acknowledge that, since the
New Deal, the nation has moved to the increasing jurisdictional partnerships that are oftentimes labeled cooperative federalism.21 In this way, this Article engages some of

the federalism scholarship. Furthermore, this Article notes that one possible explanation for some of the Court's decisions is that the Court may be claiming that federalism

prevents it from acting when the Court lacks the will or an interest in ensuring that equal educational
opportunity becomes a reality for all schoolchildren. Although it would be impossible to confirm if this explanation is accurate, this Article identifies the evidence that suggests that this behavior
by the Court may be occurring. After noting this possibility, this Article then takes the Court at its word that education federalism is driving its decisions while exploring the ramifications of the Court's decisions for equal educational
opportunity.

This cooperative model enables checkerboard federalism that constrains arbitrary

executive power
Bulman_Pozen 16 * Associate Professor, Columbia Law School. EXECUTIVE FEDERALISM COMES TO AMERICA Jessica Bulman-
Pozen* Forthcoming 102 VA. L. REV. (June 2016)
As I have suggested, executive federalism grows out of the political polarization of our times. Hyperpolarized parties gridlock Congress and push federal authority to the executive branch, but they also create strong links across the
state-federal divide.165 These links may enable something like party government through state-federal cooperation among copartisans, enhancing the ability of the federal executive and certain states to act. At the same time,

the state-federal connection amplifies opportunities for partisan resistance and contestation. If state and federal
executives seek each other out because of partisan affinity, their collaborations tend also to bring in other states with opposing positions. The

most basic way executive federalism has negotiated these distinct possibilities is by allowing for differentiation within federal policy across states. For instance, waivers
under the ACA have fostered Democratic states implementation of the Act while permitting departures from federal policy in certain Republican states.166 States that have legalized marijuana have succeeded in making the
federal Controlled Substances Act a nullity with respect to most marijuana offenses within their borders, but the CSA remains operative in states that continue to criminalize marijuana. The EPAs Clean Power Plan, which provides
different emissions reduction targets for each state and allows for state flexibility in meeting these targets, is a more deliberately designed state-differentiated federal policy. 167 The agency appears to be proposing a compromise
given sharp ideological disagreement about climate change regulation. Most notably, it has chosen to measure state capacity to reduce emissions in part based on states own policy decisions. RGGI participants and California have
already shown that they are willing to defy the expectations of collective action federalism and create environmental benefits on which other actors may free-ride.168 The federal executive branch capitalizes on this commitment
by asking those states to contribute disproportionately to a national endeavor. Having taken the initiative on their own, these states are now instructed to continue to do so as a matter of federal law. Meanwhile, the EPAs decision
to ask less of other statesand its more general granting of flexibility to states to choose how to reach the established targetsmust be in part an attempt to pacify opposition in coal-reliant, Republican jurisdictions.169 Although
the proposal has hardly appeased all such constituencies,170 it may be helping the EPA establish collaborative relationships with state regulators.171 If the Plan survives legal challenges, we can expect this state differentiation to
yield diverse approaches to emissions regulation within a single federal law. Although relatively novel in the United States, state-differentiated federal policy of this sort has analogues abroad.172 In a variety of federations with

stronger traditions of executive federalism, federal policy is often developed in a nonuniform fashion.173 In Canada, for example, negotiations can yield
significant policy variation across the provinces and different degrees of provincial and federal responsibility, sometimes called checkerboard federalism.174 In the European Union, states often
work toward shared objectives at varied speeds, or subgroups of states pursue shared policies without full EU participation.175 This practice of differentiated integration or variable-speed federalism allows groups of states to
create EU policy in the absence of consensus. Sometimes the differentiation is simply a matter of timing: with multi-speed integration, a subgroup of states realizes a common policy faster than other states, but all states
ultimately participate. In other instances, differentiation may be long-lasting or permanent: with variable-geometry integration, only certain states participate in a common project, while a la carte integration permits states to
adopt particular aspects of policies.176 These various forms of differentiated integration have led commentators to observe that there is not one Europe, but rather many Europes, depending on the policy field in question.177 In
the EU, Canada, and several other federations, differentiated integration or related forms of checkerboard policymaking arise principally because of strong state sovereignty and consensus rules. Demanding full participation by all

state-differentiated federal policy

member states would foreclose the pursuit of certain policies or water down obligations for all participants.178 As with executive federalism generally,

arises from distinct circumstances in the United States. The federal government has legal authority to mandate nationwide policy and to override conflicting state views in the
absence of unanimity. Indeed, it was designed to facilitate collective governance without consensus rules.179 But polarization makes the political realities of American governance more closely resemble those in federations with

; states therefore become necessary engines

weaker central governments and stronger subunit autonomy. Frequently, Washington cannot act even when it is legally authorized to do so

of national policymaking, yet states are also polarized, so national policy cannot be made by the fifty states working collectively. Instead, the federal executive branch
and the states seek out one another to push forward particular objectives. In response to political polarization, then, the United States is
groping its way toward checkerboard federalism or differentiated integration.180 As this account suggests, state-differentiated federal policy is not likely to be embraced as a first-best governance strategy; some would prefer
uniform policy set by the federal government, while others would prefer more devolution to the states.181 As an initial matter, however, it is worth noting that these preferences likely depend on the partisan composition of each
government, rather than something about state versus federal authority as such.182 The same Democrats who today favor federal policy solutions championed state authority during George W. Bushs presidency, and the same
Republicans who today disparage federal overreach were eager to preempt state experimentation when Bush was president. The instability of such preferences means that state-differentiated federal policy may deny everyone

there is a strong case for

their preferred policymaking forum at any given moment but better satisfy preferences over time as the partisan makeup of various institutions shifts. More generally,

state-differentiated federal policy as compared to the alternatives that emerge from a gridlocked Congress. In contrast to unilateral federal
executive action, state participation builds contestation into federal policy; it diminishes the specter of
unchecked authoritarianism that haunts exercises of executive power.183 It also incorporates values traditionally associated with federalism, such as diversity
and experimentation, into federal policy.184 In contrast to pure devolution to the states, however, this approach acknowledges the need for national responses to certain problems. It underscores the possibility of, and the
responsibility of working toward, national cohesion even in the face of disagreement.185

INTERACTION is the crucial internal link to executive check, so DUAL federalism fails
Bulman_Pozen 16 * Associate Professor, Columbia Law School. EXECUTIVE FEDERALISM COMES TO AMERICA Jessica Bulman-
Pozen* Forthcoming 102 VA. L. REV. (June 2016)

While the empirics are uncertain, we might nonetheless predict that certain forms of differentiation are more likely to yield integration over time, or even simply to propose certain forms of
differentiation as more attractive than others. In particular, the parameters of differentiated integration might vary among states that are part of a longstanding union and those that are still
experimenting with union formation. For the former, we should be particularly concerned about full state opt-outs from national policy. This is in part for the practical reason that opt-outs

if national action is responding to collective action problems, state

may damage the prospect of national policymaking; as I have noted,

opt-outs may vitiate participation altogether. Although partial concessions to oppositional states might also mean some states are contributing
disproportionately to a collective endeavoras in the Clean Power Planthe fact of universal participation should mitigate a sucker effect for those states carrying the greatest burden.191

should seek differentiation that forces political interaction among those who
More deeply, even in polarized times, we

disagree about policy choices.192 Allowing states to opt out of national policymaking altogether short-circuits such
interaction, and the integrative possibilities of even contestatory forms of engagement. In judging the state-
differentiated national policies produced by executive federalism, then, we should consider whether both states and the federal government alike are participating in some form in national

In contrast to a system of opt-ins and opt-outs, diversified participation may have salutary implications for
policymaking.

democratic representation, as I discuss below.193 It may also create new opportunities for negotiation and compromise that
reshape partisan dynamics, as I now address.

Executive power now leads to transactional dealmaking specifically debt

renegotiation
Solomon and Zaring 17 The Dealmaking State: Executive Power in the Trump Administration UC Berkeley Public Law Research
Paper No. 2921407 49 Pages Posted: 23 Feb 2017 Steven Davidoff Solomon University of California, Berkeley - School of Law; University of
California, Berkeley - Berkeley Center for Law, Business and the Economy David T. Zaring University of Pennsylvania - Legal Studies Department
Date Written: February 21, 2017
The government responded to the financial crisis by using corporate mergers to solve regulatory problems in order to act quickly to stem financial calamity.1 But what if deals became a principal mechanism for the promulgated of
government policy, overseen by an executive who promises to be the dealmaker in chief?2 In this article, we analyze dealmaking as an ordinary policymaking tool, and, identify some useful constraints on the practice. We do so
because the deals are not going away, even though the emergency is over. With a deal-making president in the White House an entrepreneur who co-wrote a book titled The Art Of The Deal, who uses the language of deals to
describe his approach to policy, and who has identified a number of ways the private sector can be utilized to meet his goals the state looks set for an expansion of dealmaking as an ordinary governance strategy. 3 In particular,
the new administration has vowed to use deals with private companies to advance public policy.4 Even before being inaugurated, President Trump entered bargaining on a number of issues, designed to cut deals with companies to
keep jobs in the United States.5 The last time the government pivoted towards dealmaking to realize policymaking objectives was during the financial crisis. Those deals were a form of necessary regulatory arbitrage by
government, which is constrained by, among other things, notice and comment obligations, compensation requirements for takings, and principles of shareholder democracy that shield investors from public or private oppression.6
The financial crisis deals served as a means to evade these core values, even if they were done with attention to what the law required.7 hat crisis response and attention to the law did not mean that regulation by deal lacked
controversy. Solving regulatory problems through deals creates government-endorsed winners and losers.8 It is replete with novel process questions and costs, which in some ways are antithetical to the administrative state. And it

The administration has announced that it will use deals to pursue

is justified mostly with reference to the need, in an emergency, for energetic action.

its policy objectives in two principal ways, and acted through other mechanisms that imply that its governing ethos will be transactional. First, a
dealmaking president can pursue economic policy though deals with particular manufacturers, conditioned on the
onshoring of jobs. One of the first economic announcements made by then President-Elect Trump was a deal made to keep an air conditioning firm from moving jobs to Mexico.9 Local tax breaks were exchanged for a promise not
to move the jobs the effort was characterized in the press a deal he brokered to keep American jobs in the U.S.10 Such dealmaking might encompass broader measures such as promises not to retaliate against certain
companies in exchange for steps taken to keep or locate jobs in the United States. 11 Second, a deal-making approach to governance will implement programs through shared ownership contracts with private parties rather than

through government programs.12 The new president has indicated his hat crisis response and attention to the law did not mean that regulation by deal lacked controversy. Solving regulatory
problems through deals creates government-endorsed winners and losers.8 It is replete with novel process questions and costs, which
in some ways are antithetical to the administrative state. And it is justified mostly with reference to the need, in an emergency, for energetic action. The administration has

announced that it will use deals to pursue its policy objectives in two principal ways, and acted through other mechanisms that imply that its governing ethos will be transactional. First, a dealmaking

president can pursue economic policy though deals with particular manufacturers, conditioned on the onshoring of jobs. One of
the first economic announcements made by then President-Elect Trump was a deal made to keep an air conditioning firm from moving jobs to Mexico.9 Local tax breaks were exchanged for a promise not to move the jobs the
effort was characterized in the press a deal he brokered to keep American jobs in the U.S.10 Such dealmaking might encompass broader measures such as promises not to retaliate against certain companies in exchange for steps
taken to keep or locate jobs in the United States. 11 Second, a deal-making approach to governance will implement programs through shared ownership contracts with private parties rather than through government programs.12
The new president has indicated his partnerships to meet their missions.18 Finally, approaching the task of governing through a dealmaking lens could affect even those government programs that can be implemented without

deals with the private sector. Using deals to do the work of government can become a state of mind one where foreign policy, for example, is
conceived as a set of deals the Iran Deal19 the China Deal,20 and a free trade deal with Mexico that the president has characterized as the worst deal ever.21 The government could be staffed with dealmakers, and

Dealmaking could even be deployed to reduce the deficit the president

dealmaking experience might be deemed a plus for questions of agency leadership.22

has mused about renegotiating the terms of the countrys sovereign debt which would also represent a deal a negotiated workout with creditors, instead of
the more arms length transactions represented by the selling of government debt on licensed exchanges.23 We see two implications for regulation by deal; one for administrative procedure, and a second for the separation of

dealmaking in the service of government policy is a way to comply with the law and yet get around its
powers. Procedurally,

most onerous terms and process requirements.24 It is a way to manage legality by enacting policy through unorthodox channels.25 In this sense it is both consistent with the rule of law, at least to some
degree, and a challenge to it. The implications of a widespread embrace of transactions as tools to make government policy will accordingly depend on ones comfort with the administrative state as it currently exists. For those
who believe that the administrative state has ossified the ability of the government to make policy, administration by deal is a remedy an alternative to a notice and comment process that that is slow and a protracted
government contracting process.26 Of course, bureaucracy and burdens can rear their heads in different contexts, such as through the terms of contracts, as those who do deals with the government to assure that jobs are

onshored are discovering.27 As a constitutional matter, dealmaking privileges an executive model of governance. We would not argue, as some have, that the
executive is or should be unbounded when making deals.28 But it is fair to say that Congress cannot administer by deal and that the courts are unlikely to be able to review deals. They do not create widespread injury that permit
an array of plaintiffs to contest the legality of the deal.29 Scholars of varying persuasions have argued that governance is either normatively or descriptively best located in the hands of a powerful executive. Elena Kagan famously
argued that administration centered in the presidency was attractive because of the coordinative powers and democratic legitimacy of the White House.30 Adrian Vermeule and Eric Posner posited that unfettered presidential
action was an inevitable consequence of emergencies, and implicitly suggested that this was a good thing.31 Governance by presidential deal is the logical endpoint of this sort of pro-presidentialist scholarship. In our view, it has

using deals to
always been better to ensure the importance of the institutional constraints imposed by the law. Descriptively, legal constraints drive the implementation of deals, and normatively,

routinely evade government process affects core values and often lowers the quality of governance.32 It threatens to unbalance the
separation of powers More as well. specifically, governance by deal allows the executive to act quickly and decisively in emergencies and can tailor actions to the needed conduct. The downside is
a lack of broader participation, and hence a higher chance that the policy incorrectly represents the will of the people in a democratic regime. Acting through legislation means broader consensus but higher transaction costs as the
legislative process puts brakes on policy actions.33 In most areas of domestic law and outside emergencies, we have traditionally accepted the higher transaction costs, but government by deal upsets this balance. We also think
that the government has found legal constraints limiting even when doing deals in emergencies, and we generally welcome those constraints. If a president is going to make deals an important mechanism of policymaking, there is

no doubt that he can do so. But governance through dealmaking outside a financial crisis ought to be constrained in a few ways if it is to become an ordinary tool
of policymaking, rather than an extraordinary option. Deals should be publicly disclosed, so that they can be scrutinized by the citizenry. They should be executed slowly, rather than quickly, to avoid some of the problems of
overhasty mergers and acquisitions and private equity style deals that have bedeviled the governments response to the financial crisis. They should only be permitted when reasonable interpretations of governing law would
permit them. And after the deal is done, due process, and perhaps also the Takings Clause, requires that those adversely affected by the deal receive a day in court.

Uncheked TRUMPISM tanks the economy through corruption and innovation stall
Davis 3/2/17 https://harpers.org/blog/2017/03/dealmaker-in-chief/ Owen Davis is a New York-based writer who explores school
politics and education reform. He designs curriculum for the alternative children's magazine IndyKids.
Throughout his campaign, Trump criticized the U.S. government for making bad deals. To him, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, NAFTA, the Iran nuclear deal, and the Paris climate agreement are all examples of inept negotiations
carried out by career politicians in Washington. I do deals. Its what I do, he told a crowd of supporters in October, pledging to fight for working-class Americans. Of course, the executive who builds a new plant in the Rust Belt
expects something in return. When the manufacturer Carrier agreed in November to keep seven hundred and thirty jobs that had originally been slated to move to Mexico, the company won tax incentives and a vague promise of
lighter regulations. Carriers tax break, $7 million over a decade, didnt come close to recompensing the company for the $65 million it had hoped to save by sending jobs to Mexico. But other incentives were at play. Carriers
parent company, United Technologies, can now rest assured that its government contracts, worth more than $5 billion a year, are safe from Trumps whims. And though political goodwill cant be tabulated on a balance sheet,
Carriers executives can count themselves on the right side of Trumps ledger of friends and enemies. I was born at night but not last night, United CEO Greg Hayes said after the deal. I also know that about 10 percent of our

revenue comes from the U.S. government. History has shown that direct interventions like these tend to produce corruption without broader
economic gains. Researchers who study authoritarian regimes, where such tactics are common, say that targeting individual companies causes industries to focus less on innovating and more on currying favor.
Pleasing the president becomes the fastest path to profits, and businesses race to take advantage. One study that looked at forty-eight countries over a period of thirty-five years, from 1950 to 1985, found that corporate profits
tend to rise during a shift to autocracy. CIA-backed coups toppling foreign leaders throughout the mid-twentieth century provide the most dramatic examples of this phenomenon. For instance, after the 1973 coup that installed
Augusto Pinochet as ruler of Chile, the countrys two major banking conglomerates, nicknamed the piranhas by international investors, grew at an unprecedented clip. As Pinochet enacted sweeping market reforms, the holding
companies Vial and Cruzat-Larrain rapidly consolidated their grip on Chilean business, together controlling fully half of the total assets on Chiles public stock exchange by 1978. It didnt hurt that the two conglomerates maintained

As corporate profits boomed, inequality spiked

close ties with functionaries in Chiles central bank and budget office. Meanwhile, the economy as a whole crumbled:

and average wages fell, not to return to their 1970 levels until 1992. For decades, presidents have largely respected what post-war business leaders called the right to manage, letting individual
companies operate without direct interference. Americas last dealmaker in chief was Richard Nixon, who, like Trump, pursued an unabashedly transactional mode of politics where economic outcomes were subordinate to political
ambitions. In May 1971, for example, Nixon found himself in need of funds for his upcoming re-election campaign. One of his targets was the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation (I.T.T.), which was seeking to merge
with Hartford Fire Insurance in what would be the largest corporate tie-up in memory. Does I.T.T. have money? Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman can be heard asking on Nixons secret tapes. Oh God yes, Nixon replied. Thats part
of this ball game. The I.T.T.-Hartford merger had already been flagged by Nixons justice department, which opposed the deal on the grounds that it would increase market concentration and allow I.T.T. to give its subsidiaries
favorable insurance rates at the expense of consumers. But Nixon said he would force the department to drop its antitrust action if the company paid up. He told his aides to cut a deal with I.T.T. and leaned hard on Richard
McLaren, a meddlesome antitrust regulator, to allow the merger. If its not understood, McClarens ass is to be out of there within one hour, Nixon said. The I.T.T. thingstay the hell out of it. Two months later, the merger
went ahead as I.T.T. quietly pledged $400,000 to the 1972 Republican National Convention. After Nixon was impeached, Congress enacted a raft of rules to prevent Nixon-style horsetrading, including disclosure requirements that
opened government meetings to the public. Corporate America, ever agile, responded by building a subtler system of cocktail hours, revolving-door hires, and the soft corruption of limitless political spending. Lobbyists regularly
wine and dine congressional aides, who return the favor by running industry-friendly legislation up the flagpole. Successive rollbacks of political spending limits, Citizens United being the most famous, have allowed corporate
interests to fund massive communications efforts pushing their agendas. That system has been effective at giving business a huge advantage. Researchers recently found, for instance, that Americans pay about twice what Germans

Trump could preside over a

do for cell-phone service because our telecommunications firms wield such extensive market power and political connections. Many economists worry that

fundamental realignment of government-business relations and usher in an era of naked corruption.

Matthew Mitchell of the Mercatus Center explained that when leaders direct punishment toward selective companies, Youre really just inviting firms to ingratiate themselves to

policy makers. Take antitrust regulation, an area of policy where candidate Trump made occasional anti-monopoly rumblings. So far, Trump has only expressed concern over monopolies that involve his political
enemies. He has condemned Amazon, whose chief executive Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post, and opposed the merger of AT&T and Time Warner, which owns the cable-news network CNN. Analysts have mused that Trump
may make the deal contingent on Time Warner dropping CNN. The message is clear: show loyalty to Trump and reap the rewards. That may explain why markets have stayed strong even while the media gives Trump credit for
bodyslamming big companies, as one Post columnist put it. Corporations know that the presidents demands are publicity stunts that will be accompanied by tax cuts, deregulation, and direct access to the levers of government.
Wall Street has tried to persuade the public that those policies will accelerate economic growth. But a University of Chicago survey of prominent academics found that while 62 percent agreed that Trumps policies would increase
corporate profits, only 16 percent predicted quicker economic growth that would benefit the average American. Daron Acemoglu, an economic historian at MIT who took part in the survey, condensed his thoughts into a tweet-

length summary: [Trumps plans], he wrote, are much more likely to be disastrous for the economy.

Debt dealmaking incinerates the global economy

Yglesias 5/6/16 https://www.vox.com/2016/5/6/11607464/trump-haircut-default-debt Matthew Yglesias is an American blogger and
journalist who writes about economics and politics from a liberal / progressive perspective

In an interview Thursday on CNBC, Donald Trump broke with tired clichs about the evils of federal debt accumulation. "I am the king of debt," he said. "I love debt. I love playing
with it." But he replaced fearmongering about debt with an even more alarming notion a bankruptcy of the United States federal government that would incinerate the

world economy. "I would borrow, knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal," Trump said. "And if the economy was good, it was good.
So therefore, you can't lose." With his statement, Trump not only revealed a dangerous ignorance about the operation of the national monetary system and the global economic

order, but also offered a brilliant case study in the profound risks of attempting to apply the logic of a private

business enterprise to the task of running the United States of America. Trump's business logic makes sense Trump is a businessman, and in terms of thinking like a
businessman his idea makes sense. The interest rate that investors currently charge the United States in order to borrow money is very low. A smart business strategy under those
circumstances would be to borrow a bunch of money and undertake a bunch of big investment projects that are somewhat risky but judged to possibly have a huge payoff. You now have two
possible scenarios. In one scenario, the investments work out and you make a ton of money. In that case, you can easily pay back the loan and everyone wins. In another scenario, the
investments don't work out and you don't make much money. In that case, you objectively can't pay back the loan. You either work out a deal with the people you owe money to in which they
accept less than 100 percent of what you owe them (this is called a "haircut") or else you go to bankruptcy court and a judge will force them to accept less than 100 percent. This is how

Applying
businesspeople think especially those who work in capital-intensive industries like real estate. And for good reason. This is the right way to run a real estate company.

this idea to the United States would destroy the economy The United States of America, however, is not a real estate development
company. If a real estate company defaults on its debts and its creditors lose money, that's their problem. If a bank fails as a result, then it's the FDIC's responsibility to clean it up. The

government doesn't work like that. Right now, people andcompanies all around the world treat US government bonds as the least
risky financial asset in the universe. If the government defaults and banks fail as a result, the government needs to clean up the mess. And if risk-free federal
bonds turn out to be risky, then every other financial asset becomes riskier. The interest rate charged on state and
local government debt, on corporate debt, and on home loans will spike. Savings will evaporate, and liquidity will vanish as everyone tries to
hold on to their cash until they can figure out what's going on. Every assessment of risk in the financial system is based on the idea that the least risky thing is lending money to the federal
government. If that turns out to be much riskier than previously thought, then everything else becomes much riskier too. Business investment will collapse, state and local finances will be
crushed, and shockwaves will emanate to a whole range of foreign countries that borrow dollars. Remember 2008, when the markets went from thinking housing debt was low-risk to thinking
it was high-risk, and a global financial crisis was the result? This would be like that, but much worse US government debt is the very foundation of low-risk investments. What's especially
troubling about Trump's proposal is that there is genuinely no conceivable circumstance under which this kind of default would be necessary. The debt of the federal government consists
entirely of obligations to pay US dollars to various individuals and institutions. US dollars are, conveniently, something the US government can create instantly and in infinite quantities at any
time. Of course, it might be undesirable to finance debts by printing money rather than raising taxes or cutting spending. In particular, that kind of money printing could lead to inflation, and

destroying the
even though inflation is very low right now there's no guarantee that it will always be low. But a little bit of inflation is always going to be strictly preferable to

whole American economy, especially because a debt default would cause a crash in the value of the dollar and
spark inflation anyway.

Economic decline causes war miscalc, resource wars and political instability
Royal 10 - Jedediah Royal, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of Defense,
2010, Economic Integration, Economic Signaling and the Problem of Economic Crises, Economics of
War and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political Perspectives, ed. Goldsmith and Brauer, p. 213-215

Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may increase the likelihood of external conflict. Political science literature has contributed a
moderate degree of attention to the impact of economic decline and the security and defence behaviour of interdependent slates. Research in this vein has been considered at systemic,

on the systemic level. Pollins (2008) advances Modelski and Thompson's (19%) work on leadership cycle
dyadic and national levels. Several notable contributions follow. First,

theory, finding that rhythms in the global economy are associated with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power
and the often bloody transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next. As such, exogenous shocks such as
economic crises could usher in a redistribution of relative power (sec also Gilpin. 1981) that leads to uncertainty
about power balances, increasing the risk of miscalculation (Fearon, 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain redistribution of power could
lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a rising power may seek to challenge a declining power (Werner, 1999). Separately. Pollins (1996) also shows that global economic cycles
combined with parallel leadership cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and small powers, although he suggests that the causes and connections between global
economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown. Second, on a dyadic level. Copeland's (1996. 2000) theory of trade expectations suggests that 'future expectation of trade' is a
significant variable in understanding economic conditions and security behaviour of states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific benefits from trade so long as they

if the expectations of future trade decline, particularly for difficult lo replace items such as energy
have an optimistic view of future trade relations. However,

states will be inclined to use force to gain access to those resources. Crises
resources, [lie likelihood for conflict increases. as

could potentially be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on its own or because il triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states.4 Third, others
have considered the link between economic decline and external armed conflict at a national level. Blomberg and Hess (2002) find a strong correlation between internal conflict and external

, The linkages between internal and external conflict and

conflict, particularly during periods of economic downturn. They write

prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing. Economic conflict tends to spawn internal conflict, which
in turn returns the favour. Moreover, the presence of a recession tends to amplify the extent to which international
and external conflicts self-reinforce each other. (Blomberg & I less. 2002. p. 89) Economic decline has also been linked
with an increase in the likelihood of terrorism (Blomberg. Hess. & Wccrapana. 2004). which has the capacity to spill
across borders and lead to external tensions. Furthermore, crises generally reduce the popularity of a silting government. "Diversionary theory' suggests
that, when facing unpopularity arising from economic decline, sitting governments have increased incentives

to fabricate external military conflicts to create a 'rally around the flag' effect. Wang (1996), DcRoucn (1995), and Blomberg.
Mess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing that economic decline and use of force are at least indirectly correlated. Gelpi (1997), Miller (1999), and Kisangani and Pickering

that the tendency towards diversionary tactics are greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic
(2009) suggest

weak
leaders are generally more susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic support. DcRoucn (2000) has provided evidence showing that periods of

economic performance in the United States, and thus weak Presidential popularity, are statistically linked to an
increase in the use of force. In summary, recent economic scholarship positively correlates economic integration with an increase in the frequency of economic crises,
whereas political science scholarship links economic decline with external conflict at systemic, dyadic and national levels.5 This implied connection between integration, crises and armed
conflict has not featured prominently in the economic-security debate and deserves more attention. This observation is not contradictory to other perspectives that link economic

studies tend to focus on

interdependence with a decrease in the likelihood of external conflict, such as those mentioned in the first paragraph of this chapter. Those

dyadic interdependence instead of global interdependence and do not specifically consider the
occurrence of and conditions created by economic crises. As such, the view presented here should be
considered ancillary to those views.
 Contention 3: Authoritarian Populism
Deep inequities are driving resurgent right wing populism acting institutionally on
equity is the best counter
Lister and Hunt 12/12/16 http://www.just-fair.co.uk/single-post/2016/12/12/To-combat-right-wing-populism-we-need-to-
reclaim-human-rights Paul Hunt is a UN independent human rights expert (1999-2008) and Professor at the Human Rights Centre, Essex
University. Ruth Lister is a Labour peer and Emeritus Professor, Loughborough University and Chair Compass Management Committee.

Farage, Trump, Le Pen and their fellow travellers gain strength

Human rights are central to understanding and arresting the rise in right-wing populism.

from the poverty, inequality and unfairness experienced by millions of working and middle class
families. Their experience is sometimes laced with prejudice and intolerance. This perfect human rights storm demands an urgent human rights response. But, if this response is to succeed, human rights need to be
refreshed for modern times and understood as important to us all. This week marks the fiftieth anniversary of the worlds two most important international human rights treaties the International Covenants on Civil and Political
Rights, and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. All British governments since 1966 have signed up to these legally binding Covenants. Their anniversary is the occasion to reclaim and renew human rights for the post-Brexit era.
The history of the twin Covenants highlights their contemporary relevance. Amid the ruins of the Second World War, governments grasped that human rights are needed as safeguards, not only against authoritarianism, but also
against the causes of authoritarianism. Remembering the 1920s and 30s, they understood that financial crisis, poverty and widening inequality provided fertile ground for the right-wing populism which led to war. So, in 1945,
governments made the promotion of human rights one of the four key objectives of the new UN. Out of this historic commitment grew the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and the Covenants in 1966. One of the
Covenants protects civil and political rights, such as freedom of speech, which are designed as bulwarks against authoritarianism. The other enshrines economic, social and cultural rights, such as an adequate standard of living,

in the modern era of

affordable housing, food, education, an equitable health system and workers rights, which are designed to eliminate the economic and social causes of authoritarianism. But

globalisation and economic neoliberalism, governments forgot history and their obligation to take all
reasonable measures to deliver economic, social and cultural rights for everyone. For millions of families, governments failed to
provide the conditions for decent work, a reasonable standard of living and affordable homes. Poverty, inequality and a sense of injustice deepened. This

neglect a neglect of human rights contributed to Brexit and Trumps presidential success. Of all the rights in the twin Covenants, social rights were and
remain the most overlooked. Take the UK, for example. Civil and political rights are protected by the Human Rights Act which the government wishes to replace with a British Bill of Rights.
Powerful forces in the legal profession and elsewhere will rightly rally to the Acts defence if the government moves against it. Economic rights better known as workers rights have been seriously eroded in recent decades and
must be strengthened. Despite all the obstacles put in their way, trade unions protect workers rights, just as GMB did in last months landmark case against Uber. When confronted with Islamophobic and other hate crimes, many
well-established organisations, including faith groups, call for cultural rights, non-discrimination and equality to be respected. All these human rights are and must continue to be protected by their defenders. But what about
social rights? Although successive polls show considerable public support for the idea of social rights, they are largely invisible in the UK. No major interest group consistently comes to their defence. Who knows there is a right to
an adequate standard of living so that nobody should have to rely upon a foodbank? Or a right to education, including access to skills training? Or a right to health protection, including effective measures against child obesity? Or a
right to social security based on respect not sanctions? Or a right to affordable housing? Of course, strategies for these social rights are not going to be implemented overnight. The Covenant is realistic. It requires social rights to be
realised over a reasonable period of time, as a national priority, accompanied by accountability arrangements to make sure promises are kept. UN committees are dismayed at how the social rights of those living in poverty, and the

just managing, have been drastically weakened in recent years. Social rights establish a culture, not of entitlement, but of accountability.
These left behind rights are especially vital to left behind individuals and communities. Twenty-five years ago, the content of social rights was not clear, but now their main features are taking shape, enabling them to play multiple
roles. They not only establish the values for a fair society, such as equality, freedom and decent living standards, they also provide a detailed guide for policy makers, including in the Brexit negotiations. They position us all as

empowered rights-holders, not clients or supplicants. In the post Brexit era, human rights practice needs strengthening. Equal attention must be devoted to all rights social
rights must no longer be neglected. Although the conventional view is that human rights place obligations on governments alone, they must also be understood as placing obligations on other bodies wielding enormous public
power in our globalised world, such as corporations. Social rights must be shaped by the left behind, not the privileged and powerful. They have to be popular and participatory. Human rights have to strike a fairer, healthier
balance between individualism and the public good, without ever permitting the individual to become a victim of any collective. Crucially, it must be recognised that human rights are relevant to the lives of everyone and a selective

human rights approach diminishes people and rights. For the time being, right-wing populism is in the ascendancy. But it is not too late for individuals,
communities, civil society and progressive political parties to organise around renewed human rights, including social rights. There is no better time to do this than on the fiftieth anniversary of the twin Covenants.

Solutions to inequality are CRITICAL revolutionary efforts in the current climate

devolve into FASCISM not LIBERATION
Crossland 7/21/16 https://curiouscivilian.com/fascism-income-inequalitys-best-friend-forever-f83f74a1c38d Ken is a writer from
New York City. He's also the founder of the Curious Civilian

its the siren call of fascism, which has slowly crept back into the global political landscape, especially among first-world nations. While many of us with a foggy
If all of this sounds familiar,

Why on earth would people still

recollection of high school social studies think of fascism is a relic of the early 20th century, its come roaring back since the end of the Great Recession.

toy with fascism? Oh right, the economy. Fascism appears when were at our most desperate, and its message sings the loudest to
people who are at the end of their ropes. It scratches the itch of nationalism and isolationism, an evolutionary response when we feel like were losing something. Its a
retreat into the past, and a regression into what we think is familiar and, quite possibly safer. In the heat of the moment, the main appeal of fascism is that its comforting. It gives us a reason for why things went wrong, and offers
a solutionand a culpritregardless of how dangerous its conclusions could be. Lets do a visualization exercise: If youre struggling right now, and finding work under President Barack Obama has been incredibly difficult, the
promise of modest social improvement (like the kind Hillary Clinton espouses) wont dampen your fears. Its stuff that looks sensible on paper, but your needs are much more immediate, and patience wont save your house from
foreclosure, or pay off that massive credit card bill. With these optics in mind, which candidates sales pitch sounds better? Candidate A: I want to keep moving forward, gradually shifting our country to a more level playing field

where everyone gets a fair shake. Its going to be very difficult, and will take many years, but its the only reasonable path to equality in our nation. Candidate B: Lets burn this motherfucker
to the ground! Ive got a truck full of kerosine! When the deck is stacked against you, which do you think you would choose? People think the deck is stacked against them
because it is. So lets return to the 2016 Democratic primary. An obscure, 74-year-old senator from Vermont got crowds of 10,000-plus people to attend his rallies as he improbably ran for president, seriously challenging Hillary
Clinton, a well-financed, and incredibly well-known political figure for the partys nomination. His message? The system is completely against you, and we need to do something about it, NOW. Well start a goddamn political
revolution if we have to. The reason Sanderss message hit so hard with people? Because he was right. Income inequality is by far the largest problem the world is facing, and it either causes or augments many other issues that
loom heavily on the global stage. Racism? One racial/ethnic group has vastly more money and resources than another. Might that financial disparity create a skewed perception of worth along racial lines? Sexism? Historically,
women have had little opportunity for ownership, and despite recent progress, they still make 77-cents on the dollar compared to their male counterparts. How can women be thought of as true equals, when society places such a
low market value on their abilities? Environmental protection? Why do you think elected officials vote against reversing global warming, dooming 99% of the worlds population. Because people with a lot of money tell them to.
War? Do you think people followed Adolph Hitler into battle because things were spiffy in Germany, or because it cost a wheelbarrow full of marks to buy a loaf of bread? Healthcare? As you might expect, people with more money
and easier access to medical care live a heck of a lot longer than those who dont. How much money you have directly influences your qualityand lengthof health. Education? Wealthy citizens have easier roads to quality
education, and are rarely saddled with any post-graduation debt, giving them a leg up once they hit the real world. Not only that, but its been proven time and time again that better education directly correlates with future
financial success. Eliminating income inequality? Try controlling how wide it is, first. In order to have a functioning capitalist system, wealth gaps are inevitable. Capitalism, by its very definition, is an economic system that relies on
private ownership and exists to generate profit. As the world contains a finite amount of resources, there will always be individuals who end up acquiring more of it, whether it be land, oil, or any other sellable commodity. What

What truly matters to most people is

makes our society stable is when the illusion of income inequality starts to disappear. Lets be bluntmost people wont and cant be rich.

something a little different: Standard of living. Income inequality is strangepeople are more than willing to overlook it as long as their quality of life remains unchanged.
When your rent/mortgage is paid on a decent house or apartment, your retirement is funded, your kids are able to go to college, you can afford to take vacations, or you just happen to have a little extra spending cash, youll look
the other way while wealthy raiders are trying to buy and sell anything that isnt nailed down. You can rationalize their greediness, because it doesnt, in your view, effect your day-to-day life. Its people running up the score in a

game youre not playing. This ultimately becomes the main problem. Enough is never really enough for various rich individuals. Unless the government steps in and hits the
pause button, wealthy people will keep working the system until it completely breaks down. This is why
we face such catastrophes when business is de-regulated. It becomes a spiraling death cycle: Lots of money is made in a capitalist nation. The rich get richer. The lower classes get a little more
comfortable. The rich want to get vastly richer, and use their influence to de-regulate the economy, saying, Hey man, if we make more, the lower classes will get some, too. The lower class dont

really get a raise, as de-regulation allows the rich to overreach, squeezing the lower classes with no one to stop them. The economy collapses. The rich remain rich, the lower class gets poorer. The lower class
gets furious, and vote heavily against the establishment because they rightfully blame the government for selling them out. The anti-establishment is incompetent and ruins things furtherfor the poor. Lower class

people turn on each other, causing political chaos, rampant racism, and nationalism. The rich fear the uprising, so they allow
themselves to be regulated again, lest revolution hurts their profits. The nation returns to prosperity. Rinse, repeat. Go left, progressive! Luckily for us, the tide might be turning. Regardless of what you thought of Senator Bernie
Sanders (and those who follow me know Ive had sharp criticisms of him), he had the fortitude to make income inequality the biggest issue of his campaign, and to his credit, he never went off-message. He put a specific, damning
label on the creeping dread many Americans have been feeling for decades, and he was able to turn that discontent into something more tangiblevotes. He got millions of Americans to use their voices at the ballot box to reject
income inequality, and to outright question if there was something deeply wrong with how America was doing business. His messaging was so effective that he got Hillary Clinton to basically move her entire platform (and
consequentially, the entire Democratic Party) farther left, getting her to agree that, yeah, the issue of wealth distribution was no fad, and it desperately needs to be addressed. Heres what his campaign helped change: Income
inequality is now a permanent plank of the Democratic and progressive agenda. The rhetoric of Occupy Wall Street worked. One-percent is now officially part of the American lexicon, and people are demanding, more and more,
that the rich pay up. People are starting to ask questions about how their representatives are financially backed. The vote has become increasingly more powerful. Hillary Clinton was seriously challenged by an unknown socialist,
who got a whopping 13 million votesthe same as Donald Trump, who won his nomination. And yes, that brings us to The Donald. Like any serious problem facing a nation (and in this case, the world at large), there are usually

Trump, like Bernie Sanders,

two prevailing thoughts on what to do about it. The first? Genuinely trying to tackle the problem either through legislation or grassroots activism. The other? Totally exploiting it. Donald

understands very well that theres a lot of anger and resentment coming from people who were left behind in
the changing economy. To his credit, Sanders was looking to convert that ire into a political revolutionor at least get people started in the right direction. Trump, well, Trump doesnt have any real
plans beyond obtaining the presidency. But Trump is no dummy. If he has one skill thats better than almost anyone on the planet, its his ability to read a room. While the news media blanches over a Trump speech littered with
lies and overt racism, the people at his rallies feel like hes speaking their language. They feel truly heard and valued. Think about this for a moment: Donald Trump is the son of a rich guy. He's always been rich. He literally has no

He personifies all of our

idea what its like to be poor. Hes actively hurt the poor with his businesses. Yet hes beloved by the oppressed. Why? Trump is fluent in the language of dumb, unfiltered anger.

worst, irrational thinking, especially the garbage that runs through out heads when we think no one is around. Weve all done it. Youre irritated, dont quite have all the facts, and you want to blame
something or someone to mitigate the pain. Thats Trump. Hes digging right into everyones lizard brain with sentiments that feel truein the momentto anyone whos been severely pissed off. And boy does he know it. Like
aspiring despots of years past, hes doing it because it works. To many of his supporters, it makes him authentic. Two choices America only really has two options this November, and its not even between Hillary Clinton or Donald
Trump. Its between doing something marginally constructive with the system we have, or setting everything on fire. Donald Trump offers very little to American progress. Hes angry. Youre angry. But what has anger, when acted
upon, ever gotten you? A moment of sweet relief followed by what? Almost always, regret. Lets not, however, marginalize whats going on in the United States. Weve blown the social contract apart, and its caused a pair of
deadly consequences: intense anxiety from economic insecurity, and poverty that engulfs a worrisome percentage of our citizens. This is unconscionable when you realizetheres no actual reason this needed to happen.
Humanity has gotten to a point where weve somehow allowed the bounties of the planet to be hoarded by a small cadre of wealthy people, when in reality, all of us need a piece for our survival. Thats really the operative word
heresurvival. Arriving at tomorrow with a feeling of stability, to many, is a reasonable measure of successand its barely a lot to ask. But when every activity of your day is a constant reminder of your financial peril, isnt it
natural that youd freak out? This isnt radical thinking, either. It makes sense on a practical level. The United States has the highest GDP in the world. Why on earth are we on the edge of electing a fascist when we have so many
resources available to alleviate poverty? Thats the hard question we need to be asking. The United States is in dire need of self-reflection. How can we really continue a path where only some people control the wealth, and the

rest are left twisting in the wind? At what point do we decide that a common standard living is more than just a nice idea,
that its integral to having a stable, peaceful society? Everything hinges on it: Our relationships to each other across race, gender,

class. The strength of our communities. Whether or not we engage in war. Our public safety (crime, police relations, etc.). The mental well-
being of our citizens. This is why fascism is banging down our door . Weve lost our understanding of what, exactly, needs to happen at the base level of a functioning

societythat everyone needs at least some reasonable shot at having a normal life. Were watching a generally sensible population become

angry, violent, and wilfully ignorant. Were witnessing a deep class separation in our republic, and its grown so large that were seriously considering an
authoritarian to be our next leader. Something has to give. The only question, is what.

Global authoritarian waves creates multiple extinction scenarios the immediacy of

the crisis demands prioritizing workable OUTCOMES over IDEOLOGICAL debates
Morris 17
http://greens2017.org/sites/default/files/Green%20Action%20in%20the%20Age%20of%20Trump%2C%20Erdogan%2C%20Putin%20and%20Rig
ht-wing%20Populism.pdf David Morris Director of the Public Good Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance David Morris is co-founder of
the Minneapolis, Portland and Washington,D.C.-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance. He is the author of several books, including The New City
States; We Must Make Haste Slowly: the Process of Revolution in Chile; and, Seeing the Light: Regaining Control of our Electrical System.
Its now 2017, but it feels more and more like 1932, the year when Adolf Hitler skilfully used the fear and anger generated by the Reichstag fire to gain complete control over all the levers of power in the German state. Do we
stand at the brink of a similar eventor one even greater in scope? Was the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election a crucial tipping point in world history? Are freedom and democracy throughout the world evaporating before our
eyes? Has a chain of events been set in motion that seriously threatens all life on this planet with extinction? Is there anything at all that we members of the Global Green community can do to help stop it? I believe that

the answer to all of these questions is yes. With Trump in the White House, the global drift towards 21st century fascism is on the verge of
becoming a flood. Had things gone the way most people predicted last November and Hillary Clinton been elected, there may well have been more coddling of big business than most of us would have
liked, but at least we could have counted on the United States to continue supporting the basic concept of liberal democracy. Instead, the most powerful nation in the world is now led by an incompetent, childish narcissistic
blowhard who is either in the pocket of Vladimir Putin or perhaps worse simply shares his love of militaristic ultra-nationalism and autocratic kleptocracy. At the same time, with Trump and his crew in charge, it isnt hard

plausible scenarios that would lead to the real possibility of nuclear war, global financial chaos or
to think of

runaway climate change. Suppose, for example, that Putin really does have damning kompromat on Trump and feels free to make an incursion of some sort into one of the Baltic states, but
internal U.S. politics force Trump into a firm response. Putin then threatens to spill the worst of the dirt and Trump, being Trump, says something to the effect of, Do that and Im nuking the Kremlin! Could we count on our
two self-styled alpha male leaders to sensibly back down - or might their escalating chest-thumping lead in the end to an actual exchange of missiles? Or what would happen if Russian forces down Israeli jets trying to
degrade Syrian air defences? Or Chinese and U.S. forces face off over one of the artificial islands in the South China Sea? Or North Korea starts to deploy nuclear-armed ICBMs capable of hitting the mainland United States? Can
we really rely on Trump to make the kind of calm, well-considered decisions needed to defuse crises such as these? Trumps belligerent America first trade policies and his desire to destroy even the minimal regulations put
on financial institutions after the 2008 crisis could also easily throw a monkey wrench into the fragile world economic system and lead to global chaos and untold suffering for the most vulnerable. As we members of the
Global Green movement are perhaps more aware than anyone, however, the greatest danger brought by Trump may well be in the area of climate change. Suppose for a moment that Trump actually succeeds within the
framework he has put forward. The U.S. would experience an economic boom with significant reindustrialization and the return of millions of jobs in fields such as production and mining. A key component of this would be a
massive increase in the extraction of oil, gas and coal. With sanctions removed, Russia, too, would likely be part of this boom and there is little doubt that new U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of Exxon-
Mobil, would be all too happy to help Putin actualize their earlier plan to bring massive oil drilling to the arctic. Instead of at long last a serious effort to start addressing climate change based on the Paris accords, a Trump-
Putin alliance is likely to bring full-speed movement in the wrong direction. Deniers such as Trump are fond of saying that the science of climate change has not been settled, by which they mean that opinion ranges from the
whole thing being a hoax at one extreme, to the IPCC warnings at the other. This is, of course, nonsense. The actual debate among real climate scientists ranges more from the IPCC predictions of catastrophe by the end of the

that a sudden release of arctic methane may well lead to a mass

century being the most conservative view to those who hold

extinction of us and most other plant and animal species within our lifetime occupying the other end of the opinion spectrum. Take
your pick war, economic ruin or climate catastrophe if the runaway freight train of global authoritarianism is not derailed

soon, the results are likely to be dire. And we havent even touched on issues such as LGBT, immigrant and womens rights, freedom of speech and assembly, racial prejudice and
economic inequality. In a separate article, written in December and also posted on this site, I suggested that the installation of Donald Trump was not something that occurred either suddenly or in a vacuum. Rather, it was the
result of what might be called a longterm, multi-faceted, slow-motion coup detat. This was a very well-funded and organized project on which the right wing in the United States has been working tirelessly for decades, but in
this election cycle there seemed to be something new. That is, of course, the involvement of - and likely collusion with - the intelligence services of a hostile foreign power. Digging a little deeper, however, we find evidence
that elements of the U.S. Christian right have been in close contact with their Russian counterparts for years, and many of them have come to view Vladimir Putin as some sort of heroic defender of their version of (white)
Christian culture. For example, well-known American right-winger Pat Buchanan wrote in 2014, In the culture war for the future of mankind, Putin is planting Russias flag firmly on the side of traditional Christianity. While
these revelations might not come as much of a surprise to our Green Party friends in France, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia and the former Soviet republics, who have faced years of electoral interference from Putins Russia, it is
still shocking to see the extent to which the current push for ring-wing authoritarianism seems to have become some sort of coordinated international movement. In the face of such a juggernaut, what can we the members
of the Global Green movement badly funded and relatively small in numbers as we are do to help stem the tide and return the world to some sort of sanity? The answer is quite a bit. Professor Timothy Snyder of Yale
University is a historian who specializes in the study of how Germany and other 20th century democracies descended into fascism. He sees many parallels between the 1930s and now, but says that we have one huge

advantage we have seen this movie before. We know how authoritarians try to undermine and replace democratic institutions and we know
how important it is to actively oppose these efforts. In the professors words, Today, we are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to totalitarianism in the twentieth century. But when the political order
seems imperilled, our advantage is that we can learn from their experience to resist the advance of tyranny. In a recent book, Dr Snyder offered twenty practical suggestions for how to do this, including: Do not obey in
advance. Defend institutions. Beware the one-party state. Believe in truth. Investigate. Learn from peers in other countries. and Be as courageous as you can. Excellent advice all, but let me add a few that might,

stopping the disastrous

in my humble opinion at least, apply especially well to members of the Global Green movement. Support progressive alliances At this critical point in the world,

march of global authoritarianism is far more important than any personal attachment we might have to
pet causes or progressive purity. Each national and local party should think long and hard about when we should fight elections with all our might under our own bannersand when we
should be willing to offer our support to candidates from other parties who might not meet our standards in some areas, but who are honestly committed to an anti-authoritarian agenda. Our numbers might not be huge, but
we can bring a lot of moral authority to the table, especially in areas related to the climate and the environment and social justice.

The immediacy of right wing populism demands prioritizing material and concrete
strategies above the elevation of ideals
Keenan and El-Enany 12/2/16 http://criticallegalthinking.com/2016/12/02/beware-ivory-dwellings-left-political-purity-face-
fascism/ Nadine El-Enany and Sarah Keenan are Lecturers in Law, Birkbeck Law School, University of London

For some time we have been witnessing the rise of racist nationalism and fascism in many parts of the world. In Europe and North America, significant elements of both the Brexit
and Trump campaigns propagated explicitly racist ideals, albeit to varying degrees. Whether you understand Brexit and Trump as having triumphed despite or because of the racism that dominated both campaigns, the reality is

have legitimised white supremacy in alarming ways. Despite the increasing rise in racist violence and rhetoric, some on the Left
that these victories

are reluctant to acknowledge the severity of this political development, in part because of a preference to perceive the
Brexit and Trump victories as anti-establishment movements/the end of neoliberalism/expressions of the legitimate grievances of the white working
class/a more honest face to an already racist and violent liberal order. As the racist horrors of the EU referendum unfolded, from widespread fear-mongering linking EU migration to ISIS, to the brutal murder of pro-Remain MP Jo
Cox by a white supremacist a week before the vote, some Leftists continued to advocate for a leave vote. In the wake of the Leave victory, many Lexiters encouraged people to unite and work together in what they see as a

moment of opportunity for dramatic change. A few months later, despite Trumps campaign having been endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan, and his victory
unleashing a wave of violence by emboldened and gleeful white supremacists, some on the Left cautiously welcomed his election as a shakeup of the

status quo, a development preferable to a Clinton presidency because of its potential to force a new political mobilisation on the Left. No doubt these positions are well-meaning,

driven by a concern to end the structural violence of neoliberal capitalism and a commitment to radically transforming societies through a
fairer distribution of material resources. But there are dangers to prioritising political ideals and goals at whatever cost. If the

rise of racist nationalism and fascism are to be countered, political purity is a luxury the Left cannot afford. This is
especially so in relation to law, which is often the last chance of protection for the most vulnerable in society. In a recent commentary
on the High Court judgment in the case of Miller v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, Paul OConnell and Nimer Sultany, concerned to highlight the popular grievance at the base of Brexit, put forward an argument
on what it means to adopt a critical stance vis--vis constitutional developments and judgments. The case was decided in favour of Miller, the High Court ruling that Theresa May, as head of the executive branch of government,
cannot trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, the process for exiting the EU, without the consent of Parliament. The judgment was met with unbridled rage from some corners, with the the litigant, Gina Miller bombarded with rape
and death threats, and the High Court judges described as enemies of the people on the front page of The Daily Mail. OConnell and Sultany argue that legal scholars who have defended the judgment on the basis that it
concerned a purely legal matter are failing to be sufficiently critical. For them, taking a critical stance on the Miller decision requires acknowledging that it was political and not merely a matter of legal interpretation. They insist
that judicial decision-making is anti-democratic, and particularly so in this instance because, as they see it, the judgment goes against a majoritarian choice and hinders the implementation of the Brexit vote, a result born out of a
participatory exercise in democracy. OConnell and Sultanys position begs the question of who is represented in the purportedly participatory democratic process of referenda? The EU referendum was explicitly exclusive of those
who would be made most vulnerable to harm and insecurity by its result. In particular, EU migrants and people with insecure immigration statuses were not permitted to vote. The referendum debate was eclipsed by the topic of
migration, with the Brexit campaign unrelenting in its scapegoating of migrants, calling on voters to take back control of our borders. Since the referendum, racist hate crime is up by 16% across the country and peaked at a 58%
increase in the week following the vote. Just weeks after the referendum, Arkadiusz Jwik was beaten to death in Essex, having reportedly been attacked for speaking Polish in the street. While referenda may give majorities a
vote, they can be dangerous, undemocratic exercises entailing people voting on whether their neighbours should be deported. Along with the undemocratic nature of the EU referendum, the danger of OConnell and Sultanys
critique of judicial power is its upshot: the bolstering of executive power. In a structurally racist, sexist and elitist society, of course any exercise of judicial power is necessarily political. But to argue for the enhancement of
executive power as an alternative, or even to entertain it as a byproduct of limiting judicial power, is dangerous. Executive government is a far cry from government by the people. It is a privilege to be in a position to criticise
judicial power, but for people at the hard end of executive decisions, judicial review can be all that stands between them and the brute force of state power. What of the migrant with an insecure status subject to a deportation
order by the Home Secretary, her only hope a judicial review of that decision whereby a judge might stay the deportation? Judicial review is also the final avenue for prisoners appealing parole decisions and pensioners challenging
reductions in their rent assistance. To argue that a critical stance requires a rejection of judicial power in favour of majoritarian decision-making is dangerous if the upshot is the strengthening of executive power, and betrays an

In an imperfect world, one imbued with structures which expose

absence of consideration of the position of the most marginalised in society.

racialised people, women and non-binary people to violence and premature death, a critical praxis must
have survival of the most vulnerable at the core of its strategy. Those who are privileged enough to not
be at risk of new levels of violence whatever the outcome of a majoritarian process, must adopt the position that ensures the least violence for
the most vulnerable. Critical race feminists have much to teach us in this regard. The failure or unwillingness of some on the Left to meaningfully engage with critical race feminist theory and strategy
when this work is urgently needed is not only dangerous, but reveals a profound lack of understanding of the structural production and effects of racism. Critical scholars and activists have put much intellectual effort into

failure not only replicates and reproduces structures which make invisible the work of feminist and race scholars, but has
developing structural understandings of class, but many have failed to do the same for race. This

also facilitated the accommodation of left, critical political positions that bolster rather than challenge
the reality of a burgeoning far-right movement which is endangering the lives of racialised minorities. Having
to fight for survival in a structurally violent world requires being strategic in relation to law. Recalling the words of Mari
Matsuda is helpful here: There are times to stand outside the courtroom door and say this procedure is a farce, the legal system is corrupt, justice will never prevail in this

land as long as privilege rules in the courtroom. There are times to stand in the courtroom and say, this is a nation of laws, laws

recognising fundamental values of rights, equality and personhood. Sometimes, as Angela Davis did, there is a need to make both speeches

in one day.1 Acknowledging and vigilantly imbibing this in ones politics and strategy is what it means to engage with the work of critical race feminists, not by occasionally citing Audre Lorde. Some responses to Brexit
and Trump have made it apparent that the Left has its own bespoke ivory dwellings. These are places of privilege from which arguments and

strategies are espoused that bear the marks of ignorance of the lived experiences of the most
disenfranchised in society. Calls for solidarity are premature without a rebuilding of trust on the Left. Those who have been willing to prioritise political ideals and goals
over the immanent physical safety of racialised people cannot then call for union and solidarity, not without first accepting they
were wrong to do so. Trust can only emerge through a collective and unwavering commitment to a strategy which has survival for the most vulnerable in our societies at its core. Without this commitment, urgently needed

solidarity cannot emerge. Without solidarity, there can be no lasting, transformative, progressive political change.

The right wing resurgence means we cant abandon electoral and mainstream politics
EVEN THOUGH liberalism is contingent and the system is flawed
Read 11/22/16 http://www.philosophersmag.com/index.php/reflections/147-richard-rorty-and-how-postmodernism-helped-elect-
trump UPERT READ IS READER IN PHILOSOPHY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA.

This article is about how Richard Rorty, the late American Neo-Pragmatist philosopher, foresaw the coming of Donald Trump. It tells of
the Richard Rorty I knew, an acerbic critic both of traditional philosophy and of the new brand of literary theory and of postmodern fashions
that swept the academic world and the cultural milieu more generally, in the later years of his life. Rortys name has suddenly become
something of an internet sensation, with the rediscovery of his lovely little book of the late 90s: Achieving our country: Leftist thought in
twentieth century America. Specifically, what has been rediscovered is his prescience in worrying that the promotion of cultural
politics above real politics, and a growing sense on the part of the working class that they have been stiffed by globalisation and
neoliberalism, would combine in many of them abandoning the Left for a nasty populist Right - realpolitik in the harshest
sense of the term. This rediscovery has in the last few days been featured in the media in the U.K. and U.S.: see for example this useful article in
the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/19/donald-trump-us-election-prediction-richard-rorty . I was fortunate
enough to have had Richard Rorty (1932-2007) as one of my teachers. Rorty had a significant influence on me, in terms of cementing the
critique of philosophical foundationalism (the baleful influence of philosophies such as Cartesianism) but without, as so many postmodern
thinkers did, undermining faith in traditional electoral politics. Rorty
was deeply worried by the widespread but in his view
fundamentally-mistaken equation between the questioning of traditional philosophys quest for
certainty on the one hand and the assumption of a truly post-truth politics on the other. For Rorty, raising
philosophical questions about theories of truth (which he did, as did Derrida or Baudrillard or Lyotard) by no means
equated to putting a question-mark in front of ordinary politics altogether (and on this point Rorty was antagonistic
to most of the followers of these French thinkers). Our whole culture and civilisation has features which probabilify a tendency toward a notion
that we live in post-truth times. Chief among these is consumerism, which makes it seem as though ones opinions are ones own; that one
can buy whatever subjective truth one wants. The problem with postmodernism is arguably that it legitimates this kind of tendency, rather
than challenging it. But Rorty
would probably distinguish between being post-Truth - post-metaphysical-theories-of-
truth - and being post-truth - post-truth altogether. He would approve of the former (like the French apostles of post-modernism)
but disapprove of the latter. He once remarked to me that it was fine even to call the Correspondence Theory of Truth
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correspondence_theory_of_truth ) - the classic boldest metaphysical theory of Truth - true provided that one
recognised that all one was then doing was praising an un-cash-able metaphor. He thought that, really, philosophical
theories were
in most cases just metaphors pretending that they were more than mere metaphors. Rorty was all in favour of being
post-Truth, but solidly against being post-truth. Thats the crucial difference between him on the one hand and the relativist or subjectivist
philosophies of our time (and Donald Trump) on the other. Rorty believed that the
need for real social reform, for the tackling of
inequality, and for the reining in of out-of-control financial etc. elites was
not in the least undermined by giving up on
excessively ambitious philosophical aims. He thought that the Enlightenment was on balance a philosophical
failure - but that it was a political success that badly needed defending. In other words: he thought that the philosophies of Kant
and the other philosophical heroes of the Enlightenment over-reached, positing a kind of knowledge of Reality that was unattainable or
absurd - but that the political values that emerged from these philosophies (of defending civil liberties, of resisting arbitrary
religious authority, and of democracy), ought to be of enduring importance. I studied with Rorty at the School of Criticism
and Theory at Dartmouth, in the summer of 1992. Most of those in the class with me (a mix of professors and grad students) were not
philosophers; most were from Literature Departments. The atmosphere in the class was often not at all pleasant; only a handful of us were
interested in defending or even constructive criticism of Rortys ideas. And some defence they needed: because most of those in the class were
extremely hostile to Rortys defence of anything like the traditional Left, and to his deep questioning of where the obsession with cultural
politics was leading the English-speaking world. I remember one incident particularly vividly. One of the students (a young, smart Literary
Theory Prof) quizzed Rorty about his attitude to Judith Butlers (brilliantly clever) work (which we were studying in the class) on gender and
performativity. Didnt he (Rorty) think that it was of value for academics to bring out the radical potential of undermining traditional norms as
to the nature of gender? Rorty responded thus, with a strong sense of irony and a hangdog look: Yes; perhaps you are right; perhaps in the
current state of our society the most effective subversive thing a male professor can do in the classroom is: once in a while to wear a dress.
What Rorty meant was: if this is true, then it reflects somewhat badly on us and on the potential of our profession and of our culture more
generally. For what would be missing from a society where that was the acme of radicalism was a sense of what needed critiquing and changing
in that society that would speak to the needs of the ordinary mass of people coping with the aftermath of 12 years of Republican cuts, of
extreme levels of economic inequality, and so forth. Yes; critiquing the idea of gender itself and exploring gender's performative aspects is a
valuable thing to do. But the quest to be ever-more 'subversive' in this way misses the real radicalism: which would
be (for example) changing our intellectual and practical priorities in such a way that the ideas of (for example) a Bernie Sanders got taken much
more seriously...because he got put into the Oval Office... A question of real interest and importance to the general public, now, is: how do
we remain solid about politics, true to sentiments on the doorstep, true to a basic sense of our inhabiting a shared
reality, serious about changing the world for the better (or at least: stopping it from uncontrollably sliding into a worse and worse situation,
vis a vis politics, democracy, inequality, climate, and more) how do we do all this in a culture where we are more than ever
suspicious that what we are told may be untrue, and more than ever suspicious about what it means for something to be
true. Rorty offers a possible way forward, vis a vis this crucial question. I once asked Dick Rorty whether he would contemplate
going into electoral politics himself. He answered strongly in the negative. It wasnt his role at all, it wasnt his forte, he said to me. His role was
that of the public intellectual, trying to get people who were willing to think about politics to think about how the aim of politics needed to
change, and how it needed to stay the same. Perhaps if there had been just a little more such thinking, the Free World wouldnt now be led
by a man whose post-truth rantings should make some postmodernists more than a little ashamed of themselves.

Critical responses to the right wing resurgence feed it prioritize SOLVENCY above
DIAGNOSTIC argument
Claudio 7-1, (assistant professor of development studies and southeast Asian studies at the Ateneo de Manila University, Intellectuals
have ushered the world into a dangerous age of political nihilism, qz.com/721914/intellectuals-have-ushered-the-world-into-a-dangerous-age-
of-political-nihilism/)
On the surface, it would seem that intellectuals have nothing to do with the rise of global illiberalism. The
movements powering Brexit, Donald Trump and Third-World strongmen like Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte
all gleefully reject books, history and higher education in favor of railing against common enemies like
outsiders and globalization. And youll find few Trump supporters among the largely left-wing American
professoriate. Yet intellectuals are accountable for the rise of these movementsalbeit indirectly.
Professors have offered stringent criticisms of neoliberal society. But they have failed to offer the public viable
alternatives. In this way, they have promoted a political nihilism that has set the stage for new movements that
reject liberal democratic principles of tolerance and institutional reform. Intellectuals have a long history of critiquing liberalism,
which relies on a philosophy of individual rights and (relatively) free markets. Beginning in the 19th century, according to historian Francois Furet, left-wing
thinkers began to arrive at a consensus that modern liberal democracy was threatening society with dissolution because it atomized individuals, made them
indifferent to public interest, weakened authority, and encouraged class hatred. For most of the 20th century, anti-liberal intellectuals were able to come up with
alternatives. Jean-Paul Sartre famously defended the Soviet Union even when it became clear that Joseph Stalin was a mass murderer. French, American, Indian,
and Filipino university radicals were hopelessly enamored of Mao Zedongs Cultural Revolution in the 1970s. The collapse of Communism changed all this. Some

leftist intellectuals began to find hope in small revolutionary guerrillas in the Third World, like Mexicos Subcomandante
Marcos. Others fell back on pure critique. Academics are now mostly gadflies who rarely offer strategies for

political change. Those who do forward alternatives propose ones so vague or divorced from reality that
they might as well be proposing nothing. (The Duke University professor of romance studies Michael Hardt, for example, thinks the evils of
modern globalization are so pernicious that only worldwide love is the answer.) Such thinking promotes political hopelessness. It

rejects gradual change as cosmetic, while patronizing those who think otherwise. This nihilism easily
spreads from the classroom and academic journals to op-ed pages to Zuccotti Park, and eventually to the public
at large. For academic nihilists, the shorthand for the worlds evils is neoliberalism. The term is used to refer to a free market ideology that forced
globalization on people by reducing the power of governments. The more the term is used, however, the more it becomes a vague designation for all global
drudgery. Democratic politics in the age of neoliberalism, according to Harvard anthropologists Jean and John Comaroff, is something of a pyramid scheme: the
more it is indulged, the more it is required. They argue that our belief that we can use laws and constitutional processes to defend
our rights is a form of fetishism that is ultimately chimerical. For the University of Chicago literary theorist Lauren
Berlant, the democratic pursuit of happiness amid neoliberalism is nothing but cruel optimism. The materialist things that
people desire are actually an obstacle to your flourishing, she writes. According to this logic, we are
trapped by our own ideologies. It is this logic that allows left-wing thinkers to implicitly side with British
nativists in their condemnation of the EU. The radical website Counterpunch, for example, describes the EU as a
neoliberal prison. It also views liberals seeking to reform the EU as coopted by the right wing and its goalsfrom
the subversion of progressive economic ideals to neoliberalism, to the enthusiastic embrace of neoconservative doctrine. Across the Atlantic, Trump

supporters are singing a similar tune. Speaking to a black, gay, college-educated Trump supporter, Samantha
Bee was told: Weve had these disasters in neoconservatism and neoliberalism and I think that he [Trump] is
an alternative to both those paths. The academic nihilists and the Trumpists are in agreement about a key issue:
The system is fundamentally broken, and liberals who believe in working patiently toward change are
weak. For the Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos, indifference is the the hallmark of political liberalism. Since liberals balance different
interests and rights, Santos writes, they have no permanent friends or foes. He proposes that the world needs to revive the friend/foe dichotomy. And in a
profane way, it has: modern political movements pit Americans against Muslims, Britain against Europe, a dictatorial government against criminals. Unfortunately,
academic anti-liberalism is not confined to the West. The Cornell political scientist Benedict Anderson once described liberal
democracy in the Philippines as a Cacique Democracy, dominated by feudal landlords and capitalist families. In this system, meaningful reform is difficult, since
the countrys political system is like a well-run casino, where tables are rigged in favor of oligarch bosses. Having
a nihilist streak myself, I once
echoed Anderson when I chastised Filipino nationalists for projecting hope onto spaces within an elite
democracy. Like Anderson, I offered no alternative. The alternative arrived recently in the guise of the Duterte, the new
president of the Philippines. Like Anderson and me, Duterte complained about the impossibility of real
change in a democracy dominated by elites and oligarchs. But unlike us, he proposed a way out: a strong
political leader who was willing to kill to save the country from criminals and corrupt politicians. The spread of global
illiberalism is unlikely to end soon. As this crisis unfolds, we will need intellectuals who use their intellects
for more than simple negationprofessors like the late New York University historian Tony Judt, who argued that European-style social
democracy could save global democracy. Failing
that, we need academics who acknowledge that liberal democracy,
though slow and imperfect, enables a bare minimum of tolerance in a world beset by xenophobia and
hatred. For although academics have the luxury of imagining a completely different world, the rest of
us have to figure out what to do with the one we have.
 Contention 4: Solvency
The aff solves through a system of FLEXIBLE targets that spur state action without
stifling innovation
Robinson 16 Kimberely Jenkins Professor of Law, University of Richmond School of Law. 27 Stan. L. & Pol'y Rev. 201 2016 No QUICK Fix FOR EQUITY AND
EXCELLENCE: THE VIRTUES OF INCREMENTAL SHIFTS IN EDUCATION FEDERALISM

In designing any federal mandate to influence state education funding, the federal government should draw upon lessons from state funding case law and reforms. For instance, federal
mandates should not demand perfect equality for all students because such a standard is quite difficult to maintain.2 10 Instead, substantial equality should be deemed adequate21' although

that standard should not be used as a gateway for ever-widening disparities. In addition,the federal government also should follow the lead of states by
focusing more attention on equal access to an excellent education than equal outcomes because states possess a
greater ability to influence access rather than outcomes .212 Even if a federal mandate were adopted, states must retain flexibility to reform their

funding systems in ways that address their primary shortcomings. Undoubtedly, states will initially struggle to redesign their systems in ways that ensure equal access to an
excellent education, just as numerous states repeatedly failed to meet their state constitutional obligations when courts ordered them to conform the systems to those obligations.2 1 3

The Federal government should follow the lead of state courts that have provided legislatures flexibility to design remedies in response
to court decisions without allowing them to circumvent constitutional obligations. The Kansas Supreme Court recently noted that the Kansas legislature had a
variety of options to cure the constitutional deficiencies that it had identified and reaffirmed that it was the legislature's prerogative-not the court's-to choose appropriate reforms . 2 14
Flexibility in designing reforms of state funding systems is important for several reasons. Different performance standards will lead to disparate funding systems when those systems are linked
to ensuring that students achieve the state performance standards. 215 Even given the substantial number of states that have adopted the common core standards, 21 6 the continued
divergence in standards, goals, implementation approaches, assessments, and political economies may encourage states to adopt a variety of disparate funding systems. Flexibility also enables

states to take care in designing systems that address their shortcomings while also avoiding unintended adverse impacts. 21 7States should be permitted to
determine the funding system that best serves the citizens of the state as well as the national interest in ensuring equal access to an excellent education.
However, retaining flexibility for states should not be used as a shield that prevents federal accountability for the
funding systems needed for equitable and excellent schools, just as the NCLB requirement of state-determined "challenging" academic standards was used by some

states as a means to establish academic standards that were not demanding. 2 8 As a result, once a federal mandate is enacted , the federal government will need

to retain some influence over state funding systems to ensure that reforms are passed, funded, and
implemented, just as state courts have needed to retain jurisdiction over school funding systems to ensure that states take action consistent with the guiding principles in court
opinions. 2 9 Retaining this influence ensures that the federal government will remain vigilant in its efforts to guide the states
toward more equitable and excellent funding systems. 220

Only federal action can solve unique symbolic, historic, expertise, and leadership
make leadership indispensable EVEN THOUGH states retain flexibility
Robinson 15 Kimberely Jenkins Professor of Law, University of Richmond School of Law. Kimberly Jenkins Robinson, Disrupting
Education Federalism, 92 Wash. U. L. Rev. 959 (2015). Available at: http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_lawreview/vol92/iss4/7

Establishing the Federal Government as the Final Guarantor of Equal Access to an Excellent Education by Strengthening the Relationship Between Federal Influence and

Responsibility By enacting federal legislation and initiatives that embrace each of the elements discussed above, the federal
government would reestablish itself as the final guarantor of equal access to an excellent education.251
Historically, equal educational opportunity served as one of the principle rationales for federal
involvement in education.252 The federal government has played a critical role in assisting vulnerable groups when the states have failed to act in the national interest.253 Yet, an
increasing focus on standards and accountability shifted federal attention away from issues of educational equity, while federal reforms unsuccessfully attempted to ensure a quality education

for all schoolchildren.254 Although the federal government consistently should aim to maintain excellence, it also needs to reassert itself as the final guarantor of equal
educational opportunity because the current failure of the federal government to fulfill this role is one of the critical missing elements of the education reform agenda. In making this
recommendation, I join with other scholars, such as Michael Rebell and now-California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu, whose proposals call upon the federal government to guarantee

the federal government is likely to be the only level of government to

some form of equal educational opportunity.255 History suggests that

engage in the leadership and substantial redistribution of resources that equal access to an excellent
education will require.256 Local politics oftentimes hinders substantial efforts to redistribute resources.257 Thus, it is
unsurprising that it took federal legislation to initiate numerous past reform efforts that addressed disparities in educational opportunity, such as those that assist disadvantaged students,258

The federal government possesses an unparalleled ability to mobilize national, state,

girls and women,259 and disabled children.260

and local reform when the United States confronts an educational crisis.261 Therefore, my call for a stronger federal role in
education would build upon the historical federal role in advancing educational equity and the superior ability of
the federal government to accomplish a redistribution of educational opportunity. By focusing its attention on the policymaking areas identified in Parts II.A through E
above, the federal government would shoulder the primary burden for a national effort to ensure equal access to an excellent education. This primary federal burden would be carried

through a multifaceted approach in which each policymaking area would support and reinforce the
others and draw upon federal strengths in education policymaking. At the same time, federal leadership would
incentivize the states to engage in a collaborative partnership with the federal government to achieve this goal. States would
retain substantial control over education as they choose among a wide array of reforms while facing compelling incentives to join in
this national effort.