Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
2
EXT. FUNDING INCREASES JOBS.............................................................................................. 72
EXT. JOB CREATION K2 ECONOMY...........................................................................................74
IMPACT EXT. ECONOMY......................................................................................................... 75
SOLVENCY........................................................................................................ 76
EXT. DIRECT FUNDING KEY.................................................................................................... 77
EXT. EXISTING FUNDING SOLVE..........................................................................................81
EXT. COSTS 69 BILLION....................................................................................................... 83
ADD-ONS........................................................................................................ 84
TRAFFIC DEATHS ADD-ON........................................................................................................ 85
2AC ANSWERS................................................................................................. 86
***STATES CP 2AC***........................................................................................................... 87
***CONSULT NATIVES CP 2AC***.............................................................................................88
***POLITICS DA 2AC***......................................................................................................... 89
Non UQ Increased Fed Role......................................................................................... 90
Non UQ Link................................................................................................................... 93
Link Turn - Helping Natives Popular...............................................................................95
Link Turn GOP supports Helping Natives......................................................................97
Link Answer AT Media Spin.......................................................................................98
Win-Win for Dems & GOP............................................................................................. 100
***SPENDING DA 2AC***..................................................................................................... 101
TURN - Low income help is key to economy.................................................................102
TURN - Social service spending ky 2 econ....................................................................103
2AC.............................................................................................................................. 104
2AC Frontline: Budget Disadvantage....................................................................................105
1AR.............................................................................................................................. 109
No Axn on Debt Limit: 1AR................................................................................................ 110
Infrastructure Key: 1AR..................................................................................................... 111
Food Prices Defense: 1AR.................................................................................................. 112
Dollar Drop Defense: 1AR.................................................................................................. 113
Heg Defense: 1AR............................................................................................................ 114
Terrorism Defense: 1AR..................................................................................................... 115
Econ Defense............................................................................................................... 116
Econ Defense: 2AC........................................................................................................... 117
Econ Resilient: 1AR.......................................................................................................... 119
Doesnt Cause War: 1AR.................................................................................................... 120
Aff Thumpers............................................................................................................. 122
Aff Econ Down........................................................................................................... 123
Aff No link.................................................................................................................. 124
Aff Link Turn Keynes............................................................................................... 125
Aff AT: Debt Ceiling.................................................................................................... 126
Aff Obama Loses....................................................................................................... 127
Aff Warming D........................................................................................................... 128
Aff CTBT D................................................................................................................. 130
Aff Econ D.................................................................................................................. 131
***DE-DEVELOPMENT DA 2AC***..........................................................................................133
***NATIVE AMERICAN LANGUAGE K 2AC***.............................................................................134
***TRIBE K 2AC***............................................................................................................. 139
***CONTROL K 2AC***........................................................................................................ 142
***BIOPOWER K 2AC***...................................................................................................... 143
***ONTOLOGY K 2AC***...................................................................................................... 147
*** COMPASSION FATIGUE K 2AC***.......................................................................................150
***NIETZSCHE K 2AC***...................................................................................................... 151
1AC
Contentions
Contention 1: Inherency
A. Native American communities suffer from inadequate
transportation infrastructure, mainly caused by a lapse in adequate
funding and that faulty infrastructure results in massive
unemployment, economic inability, and falling living conditions for
Natives.
National Congress of American Indians 12, Credit: National Congress of American
Indians. Transportation Indian Country Budget Request FY 13 http://www.ncai.org/resources/ncai-publications/indiancountry-budget-request/fy2013/FY2013_Budget_Transportation.pdf
public safety, education, health care, and housing, and generate jobs through economic development. These worthy
Even solid tribal roads and bridges fall into disrepair and require
costly reconstruction years before the end of their design life due to a lack
of more cost-effective maintenance funding. Under any assessment, tribal
transportation programs remain severely underfunded and the
construction and maintenance funding backlog will only get worse without
significant funding increases during the next highway reauthorization period.
programs.
Lives are lost in Northern California on roads as well that are not maintain and safety
7
issues are not addressed. Services are over one or two hours away to medical facilities. We need
understanding and help as well. We need your commitment to work with us, to protect the tribal transportation
gains made in the last seven years. And we continue to address the critical issues across the Indian lands, both
unmet
transportation needs have been discussed, the 69 billion unmet
transportation, infrastructure need in Indian country while the IRR
program receives 450 million per year. Through SAFETEA-LU funding, increases to the Indian
large and small land-based tribes. We understand that. As the committee is well aware of the
Reservation Roads program and program enhancements, tribes have been able to build lasting improvements that
110 tribes. Tribal - tribal governments have learned to maximize IRR dollars. I'm sorry that Senator Hoeven is not
here because we have had to go into our local communities where there had been no money. The California's
Unratified Treaties, checkerboarded the lands, county and state roads do bisect our reservations, that the lands
were taken. We have no control over that but we still have the duty to provide for safe communities for our tribal
There's
nearly one quarter of Native Americans live in poverty compared to a
national average of 11.6 percent. And in Trinidad Rancheria, we are located on a remote north
post coastline, and we've struggled for some time with the loss of jobs in the logging
members and families. I'll - I'll - you know the economic indicators we've all talked about that.
and forest products industry and commercial fishing industry. With the Recovery Act, we were able to develop
capacity and deliver projects. We have a North Coast Tribal Transportation Commission that is home to 11 tribes and
my full testimony talks about what those tribes have accomplished. A joint Yurok tribal, Humboldt County project
utilizing multiple funding sources including Recovery Act funding. I can go on and on, one of the - the major projects
we've been working on is the regional marine facility up here for Trinidad Rancheria that promotes the economy and
- and we're driving piles (ph) as we speak. By working together, tribal programs are leveraging their internal
capacity and by coordinating with state and regional agencies, we are able to leverage our funding resources and
planned projects that are mutually beneficial. Separately, we cannot be effective. Together, we crossover and
leverage our funds, save lives, create jobs, and improve our communities. On the
North Coast, the - the tribal transportation commission has provided technical support to all of the tribes in our
region.
I have four specific ways I'm recommending to improve and build upon the
success in SAFETEA-LU which are increased funding for tribal transportation,
authorizing direct access to a broader range of federal-funded program, to
maximize the federal investment and reduce bureaucratic red tape. There's
way to save dollars and - and streamlining the federal investment and also streamlining the environmental review
and permitting process. On behalf of the Trinidad Rancheria, the Northern California Tribal Chairman's Association,
the California tribes, and my Hoopa family, we thank the committee for this opportunity to provide testimony. We
look forward to the committee's continued effort to build upon these successes in the coming transportation reauthorization and for your dedication Senator Akaka and - and your fellow committee members to improve the lives
of tribal people. May God bless you. May God bless the tribal nation and may God bless America.
Contention 2: Solvency
A. Getting money into the hands of Native American community
leaders is key to effective solvency
Hoeven 11, SEN. JOHN HOEVEN, R-N.D. Sen. daniel K. akaka holds a hearing on transportation
infrastructure for native americans. (2011, Sep 16). Political Transcript Wire, pp. n/a. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/890315998?accountid=14793
HOEVEN: I know one of the points that - that you're gonna make, and I would like to emphasize this as well Mr.
them most effectively is exactly what you and I talked about last week when I was home. And I know you'll be here
talking about today and I hope Mr. Chairman, you have the opportunity to hear more from Chairman Murphy but
we have to make sure those dollars get to the local leaders like Chairman Murphy,
so that they can use them for best effect on the reservation. And so as we have -
as we have challenges with dollars and of course we have so many miles of road and - and in areas that are - are
not heavily populated in our - in our case, we also have energy impacts where we have a lot of traffic, big trucks
running on these roads that, that puts ruts in them and - and can - and can make them more dangerous both from a
think there maybe some ways we can work on that. I look forward to working with you on it and Chairman Murphy I
hope, you know, as you have time to present more testimony that, that you were able to go into that a little bit. I
think it's a very good idea. It's an idea that you brought to me and I - I very much agree with and wanna help you to
do all we can in that regard and it's certainly true in transportation, it's true in other area too, health services and
so forth but certainly transportation, if we can get those dollars to the local level and then to - following up on the
question I asked to earlier panel, leverage those dollars. Like for example, where you been able to bring in local gas
tax dollars and work with the state and the counties to leverage those dollars, I think you've really been a leather
there and I hope we can do more of those things. Thank you for being here Chairman Murphy. Thank you to all the
panel members for being here. Mr. Chairman, thank you for - for letting me present for just a minute. Thank you.
direct funding,
followed by job creation and road maintenance and briefly ending with the Navajo Nation's
great concerns with question 10 of 25 CFR part 170 regarding the definition of Indian reservation roads. The Navajo
Nation has gone to great measures over the years to create a sophisticated level of government and ensure quality
public service for the Navajo people and everyone who may be guests on Navajo land. As a people and a nation, we
continue to grow and progress, continually looking forward to the emerging global economy to pave the path for the
sophisticated and quality public service. There is no reason we should not have the ability to apply for all the same
funding as any state in the union. Allowing the Navajo Nation access to direct funding will allow for greater
oversight in planning. and management.
9
utilized will rest in the hands of the Navajo Nation, allowing for more service to be provided
in the areas not of interest to any particular state government. My division is
tasked with the construction and maintenance of roads. Many of these roads are the only access
to our people may have for public service and basic human necessities. Yet
today, we find ourselves at the mercy of other departments of
transportation. This is an issue that clearly needs to be addressed through
legislation, so that the Navajo Nation and other tribal nations can begin to acquire
direct access to transportation funding.
10
Advantages
11
can you spend federal funds in a way that creates jobs and also spurs new development in the private sector that
while (ph) on the subject of jobs -- that jobs in tribal transportation provide training and skill development for our
tribal members in the transportation construction and planning fields (ph) but many tribes have the capacity today
to hire architects, engineers and planners to help us develop those systems that we need. Some tribes do not but
the fact is many tribes are engaged in that activity as we speak. We need more support for the Tribal Technical
Assistance Program which is the only technical assistance program that provides -- that provides education and
training to tribal governments or transportation road projects. Training and education is important to assist in
building of viable transportation workforce. Last week, President Obama proposed the American Jobs Act to
establish a National Infrastructure Bank. We'd like to have our own tribal infrastructure bank. This would increase
the -- the ability of tribes to obtain funding for a broad range of infrastructure projects especially when federal
it's critical
to realize that tribal communities offer unique innovations that can make
significant contributions to the policy debate regarding the economy.
spending is becoming more limited. In closing, as we move forward in addressing these challenges,
National Congress of American Indians looks forward to partnering with the committee to ensure the tribes are
included in developing and paving a way for tribal transportation. Thank you very much.
12
HARLEM, MONT. Sen. daniel K. akaka holds a hearing on transportation infrastructure for native americans.
(2011, Sep 16). Political Transcript Wire, pp. n/a. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/890315998?
accountid=14793
The time for action is long past due. Native Americans were the very last
to be granted the right to vote, and were therefore too long treated as
second-class citizens. Now there are those who seek to treat Native
American governments as second-class sovereigns. They seek to accomplish this by
not availing them of the same tools for self-reliance and recognition afforded to state and local governments. The
issue of poverty is an integral first step. Poverty is both the cause and the
consequence of all the ills visited upon Native Americans. Failure to
address poverty causes deprivation and hardship in these communities
today, and robs the next generation of any opportunity to succeed and
thrive tomorrow. The invisibility, silence, and neglect must end. As Presidentelect Barack Obama ascends to the White House, now is the significant moment to address the many problems
Native Americans endure, including systemic poverty.
13
One very significant toxic threat to
Native Americans comes from governmental and commercial hazardous
waste sitings. Because of the severe poverty and extraordinary vulnerability of Native
American tribes, their lands have been targeted by the U.S. government and the large
corporations as permanent areas for much of the poisonous industrial byproducts of the dominant society. "Hoping to take advantage of the
devastating chronic unemployment, pervasive poverty and sovereign
status of Indian Nations", according to Bradley Angel, writing for the international environmental
organization Green- peace, "the waste disposal industry and the U.S. government
have embarked on an all-out effort to site incinerators, landfills, nuclear
waste storage facilities and similar polluting industries on Tribal land" (Angel 1991,
reckless disregard for the lives of Native Americans.1
1). In fact, so enthusiastic is the United States government to dump its most dangerous waste from "the nation's
110 commercial nuclear power plants" (ibid., 16) on the nation's "565 federally recognized tribes" (Aug 1993, 9)
that it "has solicited every Indian Tribe , offering millions of dollars if the tribe would host a nuclear waste
facility" (Angel 1991, 15; emphasis added). Given the fact that Native Americans tend to be so materially poor, the
file an application for a U.S. Energy Department grant "to study the feasibility of building a temporary [sic] storage
facility for 15,000 metric tons of highly radioactive spent fuel" (Ak- wesasne Notes 1992, 11). Other Indian tribes,
including the Sac, Fox, Yakima, Choctaw, Lower Brule Sioux, Eastern Shawnee, Ponca, Caddo, and the Skull Valley
Band of Goshute, have since applied for the$100,000 exploratory grants as well (Angel 1991, 16-17). Indeed, since
so many reservations are without major sources of outside revenue, it is not surprising that some tribes have
considered proposals to host toxic waste repositories on their reservations. Native Americans, like all other
victimized ethnic groups, are not passive populations in the face of destruction from imperialism and paternalism.
Rather, they are active agents in the making of their own history. Nearly a century and a half ago, the radical
philosopher and political economist Karl Marx realized that people "make their own history, but they do not make it
just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances
directly found, given and transmitted from the past" (Marx 1978, 595). Therefore, tribal governments considering or
planning waste facilities", asserts Margaret Crow of California Indian Legal Services, "do so for a number of reasons"
(Crow 1994, 598). First, lacking exploitable subterranean natural resources, some tribal governments have sought
to employ the land itself as a resource in an attempt to fetch a financial return. Second, since many reservations
are rural and remote, other lucrative business opportunities are rarely, if ever, available to them. Third, some
reservations are sparsely populated and therefore have surplus land for business activities. And fourth, by
establishing waste facilities some tribes would be able to resolve their reservations' own waste disposal problems
while simultaneously raising much-needed revenue. As a result, "[a] small number of tribes across the country are
actively pursuing commercial hazardous and solid waste facilities"; however, "[t]he risk and benefit analysis
performed by most tribes has led to decisions not to engage in commercial waste management" (ibid.). Indeed,
Crow reports that by "the end of 1992, there were no commercial waste facilities operating on any Indian
reservations" (ibid.), although the example of the Campo Band of Mission Indians provides an interesting and
illuminating exception to the trend. The Campo Band undertook a "proactive approach to siting a commercial solid
waste landfill and recycling facility near San Diego, California. The Band informed and educated the native
community, developed an environmental regulatory infrastructure, solicited companies, required that the applicant
company pay for the Band's financial advisors, lawyers, and solid waste industry consultants, and ultimately
negotiated a favorable contract" (Haner 1994, 106). Even these extraordinary measures, however, are not enough
to protect the tribal land and indigenous people from toxic exposure. Unfortunately, it is a sad but true fact that
"virtually every landfill leaks, and every incinerator emits hundreds of toxic chemicals into the air, land and water "
(Angel 1991, 3). The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency concedes that even if the . . . protective systems work
14
One of the most enduring and abhorrent problems of the world is genocide, which is neither particular to a specific
Prohibition of
genocide and affirmation of its opposite, the value of life, are an eternal ethical
verity, one whose practical implications necessarily outweigh possible
theoretical objections and as such should lift it above prevailing ideologies
or politics. Genocide concerns and potentially effects all people. People make up a legal
race, class, or nation, nor is it rooted in any one, ethnocentric view of the world.
system, according to Kelsen. Politics is the expression of conflict among competing groups. Those in power give the
political system its character, i.e. the state. The state, according to Kelsen, is nothing but the combined will of all its
people. This abstract concept of the state may at first glance appear meaningless, because in reality not all people
universal concern.
are walking in bloody footsteps that trace back across centuries, oceans, forests and
plains to the leveled villages, shattered corpses, and stolen resources of those who
Roosevelt acknowledged as Americas original inhabitants. Racist imperial carnage and
its denial, like charity, begin at home. Those who deny the crimes of the past are
likely to repeat their offenses in the future as long as they retain the
means and motive to do so. It is folly, however, for any nation to think that it can stand above the judgments of history, uniquely free of terrible
consequences for what Ward Churchill calls imperial arrogance and criminality.
federal government is targeting Western Shoshone Indian land at Yucca Mountain in Nevada for the permanent
national dump.
15
communities in this shameful way makes atomic waste the smallpox
blanket of the nuclear age," Kamps said.
possible victim (and which man is not himself an outsider relative to someone else?). Racism illustrates, in sum,
the inevitable negativity of the condition of the dominated; that is, it illuminates in a certain sense the entire human
condition. The anti-racist struggle, difficult though it is, and always in question, is nevertheless one of the prologue
to the ultimate passage from animality to humanity. In that sense, we cannot fail to rise to the racist challenge.
However, it remains true that one's moral conduct only emerges from a choice; one has to want it. It is a choice
among other choices, and always debatable in its foundations and its consequences. Let us say, broadly speaking,
that the choice to conduct oneself morally is the condition for the establishment of a human order, for which racism
is the very negation. This is almost a redundancy. One cannot found a moral order, let alone a legislative order, on
racism, because racism signifies the exclusion of the other, and his or her subjection to violence and domination.
From an ethical point of view, if one can deploy a little religious language, racism is "the truly capital sin." 22 It is not
an accident that almost all of humanity's spiritual traditions counsel respect for the weak, for orphans, widows, or
strangers. It is not just a question of theoretical morality and disinterested commandments. Such unanimity in the
safeguarding of the other suggests the real utility of such sentiments. All things considered, we have an interest in
[end page 164] banishing injustice, because injustice engenders violence and death. Of course, this is debatable.
There are those who think that if one is strong enough, the assault on and oppression of others is permissible. But
no one is ever sure of remaining the strongest. One day, perhaps, the roles will be reversed. All unjust society
contains within itself the seeds of its own death. It is probably smarter to treat others with respect so that they
treat you with respect. "Recall," says the Bible, "that you were once a stranger in Egypt," which means both that
you ought to respect the stranger because you were a stranger yourself and that you risk becoming one again
someday. It is an ethical and a practical appeal--indeed, it is a contract, however implicit it might be. In short,
the refusal of racism is the condition for all theoretical and practical
morality. Because, in the end, the ethical choice commands the political
choice, a just society must be a society accepted by all. If this contractual
principle is not accepted, then only conflict, violence, and destruction will
be our lot. If it is accepted, we can hope someday to live in peace. True, it
is a wager, but the stakes are irresistible.
16
Advantage 2: Self-Determination
A. Lack of investment hurts self-determination perpetuating the
cycle of poverty
Keohane 06, [Jeff R. Keohane specializes in federal Indian law and land use and environmental law in the
San Francisco office of Holland & Knight LLP. He previously practiced federal Indian law in the Office of General
Counsel of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Human Rights, Spring 2006, Vol. 33, No. 2, pp.9-12.
http://www.abanet.org/irr/hr/spring06/keohane.html.
Therefore, the checkerboard nature of reservation ownership renders the scope of tribal and nontribal government
preventable diseases many times higher than the general population, the federal government spends half as much
per Indian Health Service beneficiary as it does per Medicaid beneficiary or federal prisoner and a third as much as
Yet, unlike states, tribes are limited in the taxes they can raise because of legal restrictions and still-low levels of
indigenous people should be "in the driver's seat". The only way
indigenous people can become economically independent and free of the
welfare hook is to be "in the driver's seat" through self-government,
Dr Begay says
according to two native-American academics who will address a conference beginning today in Canberra.
American Indian
nations "are building sustainable, self-determined economies and are
breaking away from a much wider picture of indigenous poverty." The key
lesson from 15 years of research into why some do better than others was "the central
importance of self-governance" he said. "We can't find a single case of
sustainable economic development on indigenous lands in the US in which
someone other than the indigenous nation is in the driver's seat. " However, the
Professor Stephen Cornell, a founder and co-director of the Harvard project, said several
chief executive of the Lumbu Indigenous Community Foundation, Darren Godwell, claimed Australia's state
governments were being rewarded for keeping indigenous organisations disadvantaged. "They're trying to hide
17
where they're spending that money, or they're trying to underspend it so they can re-appropriate it for other issues
that they have," he told a National Press Club lunch.
the right to
self-determination is in itself a human right, and in many of those states that recognize it
as such, the quest to improve their global status becomes an overriding goal
that may temporarily subsume other rights. Other states see the imposition of unilateral
rate status to which they see themselves consigned by wealthy imperialists. In a very real sense,
economic sanctions as an attempt by the United States to impose its will upon them in violation of their human
it is
unacceptable to say that the invasion of one aspect of freedom is of no
import because there have been invasions of so many other aspects. That
road leads to chaos, tyranny, despotism, and the end of all human
aspiration . Ask Solzhenitsyn. Ask Milovan Djilas. In sum, if one believes in freedom as a supreme value and
the Proper ordering; principle for any society aiming to maximize spiritual and material welfare, then every
invasion of freedom must be emphatically identified and resisted with
undying spirit.
to bear in mind David Hume's observation: " It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." Thus,
In the name of survival, all manner of social and political evils have been
committed against the rights of individuals, including the right to life.
The purported threat of Communist domination has for over two decades fueled the drive of militarists for everlarger defense budgets, no matter what the cost to other social needs. During World War II, native JapaneseAmericans were herded, without due process of law, to detention camps. This policy was later upheld by the
Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States (1944) in the general context that a threat to national security can
justify acts otherwise blatantly unjustifiable. The survival of the Aryan race was one of the official legitimations
18
of Nazism. Under the banner of survival, the government of South Africa imposes a ruthless apartheid, heedless
of the most elementary human rights. The Vietnamese war has seen one of the greatest of the many absurdities
tolerated in the name of survival: the destruction of villages in order to save them. But it is not only in a political
setting that survival has been evoked as a final and unarguable value. The main rationale B. F. Skinner offers in
Beyond Freedom and Dignity for the controlled and conditioned society is the need for survival. For Jacques
Monod, in Chance and Necessity, survival requires that we overthrow almost every known religious, ethical and
political system. In genetics, the survival of the gene pool has been put forward as sufficient grounds for a
forceful prohibition of bearers of offensive genetic traits from marrying and bearing children. Some have even
suggested that we do the cause of survival no good by our misguided medical efforts to find means by which
those suffering from such common genetically based diseases as diabetes can live a normal life, and thus
procreate even more diabetics. In the field of population and environment, one can do no better than to cite Paul
Ehrlich, whose works have shown a high dedication to survival, and in its holy name a willingness to
contemplate governmentally enforced abortions and a denial of food to surviving populations of nations which
have not enacted population-control policies. For all these reasons it is possible to counterpoise over against the
point goes deeper than that. It is directed even at a legitimate concern for survival, when that concern is
allowed to reach an intensity which would ignore, suppress or destroy other fundamental human rights and
need for survival is basic to man, and if survival is the precondition for any and all human achievements, and if
no other rights make much sense without the premise of a right to lifethen how will it be possible to honor and
act upon the need for survival without, in the process, destroying everything in human beings which makes
19
Consumer confidence fell last week to the lowest level in almost four months
and more people than forecast filed claims for unemployment benefits, showing a
lack of progress in the job market is rattling Americans . The Bloomberg Consumer
Comfort Index dropped in the week ended May 13 to minus 43.6, a level associated with recessions or their
aftermaths, from minus 40.4 in the previous period. Jobless applications were unchanged at 370,000 in the week
Diminishing employment
gains, falling stock prices and the prospect of government gridlock over the budget heading into the November
presidential election may continue to hurt household sentiment . The lack of a
ended May 12, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington
high of minus 31.4 in the week ended April 15. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan sentiment gauge
reached a similar four-year high with this months preliminary reading, led by gains among upper-income
Americans, a report on May 11 showed. The groups final reading is due May 25. Readings lower than minus 40 for
the Bloomberg index are correlated with severe economic discontent, according to Gary Langer, president of
Langer Research Associates LLC in New York, which compiles the index for Bloomberg. The gauge has averaged
minus 15.3 since its inception in December 1985. All three of the Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Indexs
components declined last week, todays report showed. The gauge of personal finances fell to minus 12.9, the
fourth straight drop and the weakest reading since November, from minus 11.2 in the prior week. A measure of
whether consumers consider it a good or bad time to buy decreased to minus 48.2, a three-month low, from minus
45.8. Americans views on the state of the economy fell to a 10-week low of minus 69.6 from minus 64.2.
Customers Struggling I do not feel like the economy has come back, James Reid-Anderson, chairman and chief
executive officer of Grand Prairie, Texas-based theme-park operator Six Flags Entertainment Corp., said during a
May 16 investor conference. Every week there is a different story. One week were up. Next week were down, but
there isnt that confidence yet that the economy is back. Were assuming that our guests might be struggling
from 379,750. Survey Week Last week included the 12th of the month, which coincides with the period the Labor
Department uses in its survey of employers to calculate monthly payroll growth. The employment report for May
will be released on June 1. The four-week average for this months survey week was little changed from the 375,500
20
depressed the index of leading indicators. The Conference Boards gauge of the outlook for
the next three to six months decreased 0.1 percent after a 0.3 percent gain in March, the New York-based group
said today. The economy is in a midst of a soft patch, but I dont think its going to be anything worse than that,
Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moodys Analytics Inc. in West Chester, Pennsylvania, said before the report.
Economic growth this quarter will come right around where it came in last quarter. Slower Growth The economy
grew at a 2.2 percent annual pace in the first three months of 2012, down from 3 percent the prior quarter. The rate
of growth from April to June will probably be the same as last quarter, according to the median estimate of
economists surveyed by Bloomberg from May 4 to May 9. A report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
8.5 in the previous month. Economists forecast the gauge would rise to 10, according to the median estimate in a
Bloomberg survey. Readings less than zero signal contraction in the area covering eastern Pennsylvania, southern
New Jersey and Delaware. The report was at odds with other regional data. Manufacturing in the New York area
expanded at a faster pace in May, a report this week from the New York Fed showed. Were
in a choppy
said Sean Incremona, a senior economist at 4Cast Inc. in New York, who had the
momentum. Government gridlock may hold back growth. Washington policy makers remain at a standoff
over the debt ceiling after President Barack Obama met with House Speaker John Boehner yesterday. Their impasse
raises the prospect of an election-year showdown on the federal debt.
employment in the short run, and increase growth and debt sustainability in the medium and long run. Such
spending would reduce (not increase) the ratio of debt to GDP. Thus, the objection that the U.S. should not engage
high return investments is just wrong. Studies of the average returns on government spending on investments in
national point of view, investments in these areas make sense, even if the government fails to make the
investments with the absolute highest returns. Second, the many variants of the argument that the fiscal
multiplier is small typically rest on the assumption that as government spending increases, some category of
private expenditure will decline to offset this increase. 1 Certainly, when the economy is at full employment and
21
capital is being fully utilized, GDP cannot increase. Hence, under the circumstances, the multiplier must be zero. But
todays economic conditions of significant and persistent resource underutilization have not been experienced since
policy is another reason why multipliers may be markedly larger now than they were in some earlier situations of
excess capacity. In these cases, monetary authorities, excessively fearful of inflation, responded to deficit spending
by raising interest rates and constraining credit availability, thus dampening private spending. But such an outcome
is not inevitable; it is a result of policies, often guided by mistaken economic theories. In any case, such an outcome
is irrelevant today. This is because the Federal Reserve is committed to an unprecedented policy of maintaining
near-zero interest rates through at least the end of 2014, while at the same time encouraging government
spending. With interest rates at record lows and the Federal Reserve committed to keeping them there, crowding
out of private investment simply will not occur. On the contrary, as I have noted, public investment for instance,
Such public
spending crowds in private investment, increasing the multiplier . Sometimes
in better infrastructureis more likely to increase the returns to private investment.
economists claim that consumers, worried about future tax liabilities in the wake of government spending, would
contract their spending. However, the applicability of this notion (referred to as Ricardian equivalence) is
contradicted by the fact that when George W. Bush lowered taxes and massively increased the deficit, savings
plummeted to zero. But even if one believed in the applicability of Ricardian equivalence in todays economy,
government spending on investments that increase future growth and improve the debt-toGDP ratio would induce
rational to spend more today. Consumption would also be crowded in by such government expenditures, not
crowded out. Indeed, if consumers had rational expectations, the multiplier would increase even more in a longlived downturn like the current one. The reason is that some of the money that is saved this year will be spent next
year, or the year after, or the year after thatperiods in which the economy is still well-below capacity. This
assume a short-lived downturn and yield a shor run fiscal multiplier of around 1.5). Even in the current period, fiscal
policy results in greater output increases because investment and consumption is crowded in, because: (a) the
Federal Reserve is unlikely either to increase interest rates or reduce credit availability; (b) public investments are
likely to increase the returns to private investments; and (c) rational consumers/ taxpayers may recognize that
future tax liabilities will decline and that future incomes will rise as a result of these measures.
Tribal
Tribes
must be empowered to build their programs in a way that makes tribal
members safer, brings jobs, and economic development to native
communities and allows tribal governments to work in partnership with state and local governments. This
tribal transportation programs be part of any surface transportation reauthorization by the Congress.
last part, working with state and local government, is crucial. The roads in native community serve the whole
22
Improvements to the tribal roads benefit
everyone and investments in infrastructure bring jobs and economic
development opportunities to tribal and non-tribal members alike. In May, this
community and not just the tribal members.
committee held a tribal transportation round table which was attended by over 65 tribal leaders, transportation
planners, and congressional staff. We will use the information obtained at that round table along with this hearing
record to write a tribal transportation bill. So, I encourage any of you that are here today, and any other interested
parties, to submit written testimony for the record with recommendations. The hearing record will remain open for
two weeks from today. And now, I would I would like to call on Sen. Johanns for the opening remarks he may have.
Thank you.
global
chaos followed hard on economic collapse. The mere fact that parliaments across the globe, from
America to Japan, are unable to make responsible, economically sound recovery plans suggests that they do not
know what to do and are simply hoping for the least disruption. Equally worrisome is the adoption of more statist
economic programs around the globe, and the concurrent decline of trust in free-market systems. The threat of
instability is a pressing concern. China, until last year the world's fastest growing economy, just reported that 20
million migrant laborers lost their jobs. Even in the flush times of recent years, China faced upward of 70,000 labor
A sustained downturn poses grave and possibly immediate threats to
Chinese internal stability. The regime in Beijing may be faced with a choice of repressing its own
uprisings a year.
people or diverting their energies outward, leading to conflict with China's neighbors. Russia, an oil state completely
dependent on energy sales, has had to put down riots in its Far East as well as in downtown Moscow. Vladimir
Putin's rule has been predicated on squeezing civil liberties while providing economic largesse. If that devil's
face increasing risk and the threat of internal or possibly external conflict. As Japan's exports have plummeted by
nearly 50%, one-third of the country's prefectures have passed emergency economic stabilization plans. Hundreds
of thousands of temporary employees hired during the first part of this decade are being laid off. Spain's
unemployment rate is expected to climb to nearly 20% by the end of 2010; Spanish unions are already protesting
the lack of jobs, and the specter of violence, as occurred in the 1980s, is haunting the country. Meanwhile, in
Greece, workers have already taken to the streets.
Europe
as a whole
increasing tensions between native citizens and immigrants, largely from poorer Muslim nations, who have
increased the labor pool in the past several decades. Spain has absorbed five million immigrants since 1999, while
nearly 9% of Germany's residents have foreign citizenship, including almost 2 million Turks. The xenophobic labor
23
Inherency
24
Tribal
Transportation: Paving the Way For Jobs, Infrastructure, and Safety in
Native Communities. And I must tell you that we are very timely on this hearing in
Washington and would like to really move on it. Investment and transportation
and infrastructure projects are critical to bringing economic development
opportunities to state and local jurisdictions across the country. Nowhere
is this more evident than in an Indian country. As you can see from the chart we have
The committee will come to order. Aloha and welcome to the Committee's oversight hearing on
here, the Indian Reservation Roads Program has grown significantly since the last transportation bill was enacted,
The
transportation needs of tribes have grown along with the program. Current backlog to
bring the road inventory to adequate conditions is approximately $69
billion. One in every four BIA bridges is structurally deficient. An annual
fatality rate on Indian Reservation Roads continues to be three times the
national average. These are the roads that native children rely on to get
to school, that emergency respondents must navigate, and that tribal and
local employees drive to get to and from work. The president proposed, American Job Act,
going from approximately 63,000 road miles in 2005 to nearly 144,000 road miles today.
has a strong emphasis on investments for highway projects, transit, highway safety, and other TransStation related
activities. It is critical that tribal transportation programs be part of any surface transportation reauthorization by
governments. This last part, working with state and local government, is crucial. The roads in native community
leaders, transportation planners, and congressional staff. We will use the information obtained at that round table
along with this hearing record to write a tribal transportation bill. So, I encourage any of you that are here today,
and any other interested parties, to submit written testimony for the record with recommendations. The hearing
record will remain open for two weeks from today. And now, I would I would like to call on Sen. Johanns for the
opening remarks he may have. Thank you.
Native American roads are lacking basic tech that is common day on
state roads
Baxter 11, JOHN BAXTER, ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR, TRANSPORTATION DEPARTMENT,
OFFICE OF FEDERAL LANDS HIGHWAY Sen. daniel K. akaka holds a hearing on transportation infrastructure
for native americans. (2011, Sep 16). Political Transcript Wire, pp. n/a. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/890315998?accountid=14793
BAXTER: Thank you. We have been very aggressive in the safety area in Indian country. We applied (ph) as
comprehensive approach. We call it the 4E approach to safety. We look at the engineering and countermeasures.
We look at enforcement. We look at education. And we look at emergency services and we need to make progress
in all four of those areas. We work very closely with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on
behavioral programs such as belt usage and DUI enforcement. In Indian country, alcohol usage is about the national
average 48 percent versus 32 percent and percentage of unoccupied or unrestrained (ph) occupants is 75 percent
versus 55 percent. We have some areas that we really need to make some improvements and -- and focus our
25
On the infrastructure side, there are a number of proven
technologies and proven strategies that we use on all of our roads across
the country. Certainly, the use of rumble strips and a guardrail treatments
and roundabouts, the way we approach and design intersections,
adequate shoulders. All these things are basic safety measures that we
can take and so we've been very aggressive in that area. We do have a Tribal Safety
resources.
Planning Steering Committee which is represented by a number of federal agencies, as well as a number of tribal
leaders who are around the country. This past summer they developed a Tribal Safety Plan which identifies a
number of these strategies such as the summits and plans, road safety audits are a very important tool because
oftentimes in Indian country we don't have adequate data to support the analysis of highway crashes, and so we
use multidisciplinary teams to look at this areas, corridors and roads and make determinations based on safety
issues as to what improvements are deemed to made and so that's very important as well.
Sen. daniel K. akaka holds a hearing on transportation infrastructure for native americans.
(2011, Sep 16). Political Transcript Wire, pp. n/a. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/890315998?
accountid=14793
appreciate Chairman Akaka. He's been very aggressive on all of the -- the issues across Native nations and -- and
this tribal transportation is important one and once again is -- is bringing into the forefront. Thank you very much.
Nearly a
quarter of the
More than 66 percent of the entire Indian reservation roads system, which includes 82,000 miles of
roads, are unimproved earth and gravel, they said. The BIA spends less than
$500 in maintenance per mile each year, a fraction of the $4,000 to $5,000 per
mile spent each year on maintenance of state roads, Dorgan and tribal witnesses said.
Gidner said the administration gives BIA a target budget each year and that road maintenance must compete with
all the other Indian Country priorities. He said some tribes have a "woefully insufficient" police presence, so law
enforcement wins out over roads in the competition for funding. "If I have to choose between suggesting more
money for social workers to get children out of houses where they're being sexually abused, versus more road
maintenance, I'll go with the children every time," Gidner said.
26
road maintenance have been flat or declining,
leaders from across the country also testified, praising changes that have already been
said
government red tape and lack of funding have prevented them from
making all the improvements they need. Pete Red Tomahawk of the Standing Rock Sioux
insufficient." Four tribal
made in federal law and outlining efforts they are making to take on responsibility for the roads. But they all
Tribe described many successful efforts by tribes to improve roads on their lands and expressed thanks for
chairman of the Indian Reservation Roads Program Coordinating Committee, asked for at least $150 million annually
for road maintenance programs. He also encouraged Congress to make tribes eligible for other national highway
safety programs, streamline the funding award process and carry out other reforms. Tester asked Baxter why the
mortality rate on reservation roads is four times the national average. Baxter said the condition of roads, speeding,
pedestrians near roads and long emergency response times in rural areas are all factors, along with lower seat belt
use and higher rates of fatality from driving under the influence in Indian Country. Seat belt usage is 55 percent in
Indian Country compared with 81 percent nationally, he said.
27
three key areas where our agency has been working to address the transportation challenges in Indian country.
the past two years to focus on this issue and bring safety partners together. Two additional state-based summits, as
well as another national travel safety summit are planned for the near future. The agency also continues to
a safe route to
school program which benefit tribes, as well as states and are aimed at
reducing traffic fatalities and injuries on public roads to the
implementation of infrastructure improvements. FHWA also supports tribes to
implement SAFETEA-LU programs such as the highway safety improvement program and
outreaching capacity building programs. We maintain seven Tribal -- Tribal Technical Assistance Program Centers to
provide a variety of training and professional development programs, as well as technical publications and training
materials related to transportation planning, safety, the environment, infrastructure design, construction and
SAFETEA-LU funding for tribal communities by providing an additional $310 million for the Indian Reservation Roads
program. Much of the Indian Reservation Roads portion of the Recovery Act has been dedicated to improving roads,
to provide critical links between tribal residences and vital community services such as workplaces, schools and
health care facilities. In July of this year, Secretary LaHood announced the availability of $527 million in funding for
a third round of the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery or TIGER grant program. This
importance of this program to the tribes, DOT will hold a webinar tomorrow actually to provide outreach and
education to the tribes on the application process, and such outreach will continue through the application process
safety and conditions of transportation system serving Indian lands and Alaska Native villagers. And Chairman
Akaka, again, thank you for the opportunity to testify, and I'll be pleased to answer any questions that you may
have or other members. Thank you.
28
the President of the United States gave an urgent message about the
lagging economy, the need to create jobs, to put people to work and to
rebuild decaying roads and bridges. On behalf of the Department of the Interior, we have a
duty to carry this out for in Indian communities. Now, the piece of background, I wanna
give the baseline. We have around 145,000 roads in Indian -- in Indian communities,
31,000 of those are BIA, Bureau of Indian Affairs roads, that's about 22 percent and 20,000 of those are
unpaved (ph) which means that two-thirds of the BIA roads are automatically
considered inadequate for BIA standards. We need investment in our -- our road
systems. If we invest in our road systems, we can create jobs and safer
communities. Since 1982 under the IRR program, the Department of Interior along with Department of
Last week,
Transportation we have invested over $6 billion in -- into infrastructure within Indian communities. Another good
example of our investment into -- in Indian communities is ARRA. Under ARRA about 6500 jobs were created in
Indian communities, that was over 800 projects, you know, estimated to be around $440 million into these projects,
and we had an obligation (inaudible) on behalf of the Department of Interior of 99.9 percent and 90 percent of
from NCAI from Chairman Murphy, from Standing Rock. We look forward to working together with them, and we also
look forward to working together with state, counties and local entities. And especially we look forward to working
together with this committee on any SAFETEA-LU reauthorization where we can offer specific recommendations to
29
30
Amid touted economic recovery at the federal government level, Indian country remains underwater in
terms of sustainable growth in all but a few isolated pockets of capital markets within the United
States and Canada. Turtle Island and all of its natural resources remain a viable alternative to main
street business models, many of which have not taken hold for both obvious and not-so-obvious reasons.
Tribal unemployment is staggering their data doesnt take this into account
Bender, 6/11/12 columnist for News From Indian Country (Albert, Native Americans left out of economic recovery, as always, Peoples
World, http://peoplesworld.org/native-americans-left-out-of-economic-recovery-as-always-2/ SW)
Up until the past few weeks, there
for white America, but there will still be three times the unemployment rate for blacks and Hispanics." But that statistic can look good, considering that
the Native American unemployment rate would be 10x greater than the white jobless rate . Indeed, as
is well known in Native circles, on reservations across the nation the unemployment for Native Americans
routinely ranges from 80-90 percent - and this has been the economic situation for generations. For urban
Native Americans, the jobless rate averages around 48 percent. In general, Indian Country is in a permanent depression
even when the national economy is on the upswing. But once again it seems the economy was just
having another false start, as in the last couple of years, and now appears at the edge of falling
off the economic cliff. I cannot but take wry satisfaction in a failing recovery, a recovery that bypasses Native American misery. The above
quoted statistics of Native unemployment are years old because reservations in particular and urban Native Americans in general, incredibly,
have been purposely excluded from government employment data since 2005 . To cite a not atypical
example, South Dakota has nine reservations, with unemployment ranging from a "low" of 12
percent on one smaller reservation to 89 percent on the largest reservation . These figures were last compiled
in 2005. South Dakota's overall unemployment rate is 4.7 percent, exclusive of reservations. Native
American joblessness is so high, it is off the charts. It is so staggering and is not compiled because to do so would be an additional
stunning moral indictment of U.S. government treatment of Native Americans. The last absurd excuse given by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for not
collecting American Indian employment data was that there was no money in the government budget for such compilation.
What
America is experiencing today has been the story of Native peoples for decades. Tribal nations
are familiar with the work required to overcome economic conditions that are stark and longrunning, the remnants of broken treaties, land expropriation, and federal policies of forced
removal and assimilation. In the face of such challenges, Native peoples have utilized the promise of self-determination to build the
Over the past few years, Americans everywhere have endured some of the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression.
foundation for a prosperous future. Native peoples, who inhabited their ancestral homelands in North America for 10,000 years before contact, have
contributed immensely to the American story. Tribes are Americas oldest governments and make up one of the three sovereigns recognized in the US
Constitution, alongside states and the federal government. Although tribes have, at times, faced relentless political oppression and paternalism, they
are rising from harsh economic conditions to contribute to a prosperous American tomorrow. Even before the Self-Determination Era, American
Indians and Alaska Natives have shown commitment to the mutual success of tribal nations and the United States. These FY 2013 budget
recommendations represent necessary elements for a strong economic foundation in Indian Country. For instance, education is fundamental to longterm economic opportunities.
31
industry must be ramped up; although tribal lands contain a vast amount of the nations
conventional and renewable energy resources, tribal governments face an array of challenges in
developing those energy resources. All of these investments hold immense promise to contribute to regional economies, which
serves to strengthen the American economy and build a better future for all Americans. The United States is facing serious fiscal
challenges caused largely by the imbalance between revenues and rising costs in the health care
system. Over the next decade, federal budget deficits are projected to grow primarily due to the
economic downturn, the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, and war spending. Decision-makers in Congress and the Administration are focused on
the goal of reducing deficits sufficiently to stabilize the debt relative to the size of the economy. Last year, Congress passed the Budget Control Act of
2011, which includes binding limits on annual appropriations that reduce projected funding for discretionary programs by about $1 trillion through
2021. Under these caps, discretionary spending will shrink from about 9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2011 to 6.2 percent in 2021, well
below the 8.7 percent average over the past 40 years. Indian
Congress and the Administration consider ways to address the deficit, tribal leaders urge them to sustain funding for human programs as a central part
of the trust responsibility.
32
Funding for the deferred IRR road and bridge projects provides a targeted, timely and proven
means of stimulating the National economy. There are 900 new road and bridge construction
projects throughout the IRR Program ready to proceed to construction in nearly all regions of the country. The plans,
specifications, estimates, and all environmental and cultural preservation requirements are completed, or nearly completed, and approved for each
of these new projects. Besides creating over 11,000 new jobs, funding these new projects will provide
Tribal government
Federal investment in government infrastructure as a more long-lasting and beneficial means of stimulating the
National economy. These funds do not risk being sent overseas in the form of stock dividends or wasted on trivial
purchases. More tangible and long-lasting benefits are realized in the form of infrastructure and traffic safety
33
Keel 11, JEFFERSON KEEL, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL CONGRESS OF AMERICAN INDIANS Sen.
daniel K. akaka holds a hearing on transportation infrastructure for native americans. (2011, Sep 16). Political
Transcript Wire, pp. n/a. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/890315998?accountid=14793
KEEL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon committee. My name is Jefferson Keel. I'm the lieutenant governor
of the Chickasaw nation and the president of the National Congress of American Indians. I'm honored to be here
today. I wanna thank you, Mr. Chairman and Senators for holding this -- this hearing. This is an extremely important
hearing and the topic is something that -- that is not new to us. In fact, I've testified before this committee on -- on
other occasions even regarding this -- this topic, and in the past, we provided the committee with the national tribal
can you spend federal funds in a way that creates jobs and also spurs new development in the private sector that
while (ph) on the subject of jobs -- that jobs in tribal transportation provide training and skill development for our
tribal members in the transportation construction and planning fields (ph) but many tribes have the capacity today
to hire architects, engineers and planners to help us develop those systems that we need. Some tribes do not but
the fact is many tribes are engaged in that activity as we speak. We need more support for the Tribal Technical
Assistance Program which is the only technical assistance program that provides -- that provides education and
training to tribal governments or transportation road projects. Training and education is important to assist in
building of viable transportation workforce. Last week, President Obama proposed the American Jobs Act to
establish a National Infrastructure Bank. We'd like to have our own tribal infrastructure bank. This would increase
the -- the ability of tribes to obtain funding for a broad range of infrastructure projects especially when federal
it's critical
to realize that tribal communities offer unique innovations that can make
significant contributions to the policy debate regarding the economy.
spending is becoming more limited. In closing, as we move forward in addressing these challenges,
National Congress of American Indians looks forward to partnering with the committee to ensure the tribes are
included in developing and paving a way for tribal transportation. Thank you very much.
34
Native Americans of
are very isolated so having a tribal transit system
comes very handy for a lot of people who get in the jobs, school, many
college student sees these tribal transit systems, students, elderly and it
just opens to the public and it saves people a lot of money plus it is
directly tied into economic development as well. So, we'd like to continue our tribal
sustainability and livability concepts at the DOT has -- has adopted as well because
course some of the areas we live
transit program. The streamlining we have some suggestions and are back into our streamlining funding --some
direct funding is needed for some of the programs. With that Mr. Chairman, you my have written testimony, and I'm
answering the questions if you have them. Thank you.
September, TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH CIRCULAR Number E-C039, Conference on Transportation Improvements: Experiences Among Tribal,
Local, State, and Federal Governments, http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/circulars/ec039.pdf SW)
For me, the
backbone for development is transportation systems , resources, and labor. You have to have all
real backbone for everything is the transportation system. Many tribes are lucky: they have
a system that is useable. Other tribes maybe have some of their needs met, although probably most do not. If you have the worlds most
beautiful tourist resort spot in the world, it is not going to do you a lot of good if you cannot get a
road to it or if you have tribal allotments scattered over a 1,000 mi 2 . If you cannot dig the roads and get anyone to
work, that will not help you. Roads are critical. This is where the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21)
comes in. Most tribes are still relatively undeveloped, so most tribes still do not have their infrastructure in
place. We have a real opportunity as tribes to do things right. The tribes really need to spend some time figuring out what they want. I was raised
these ingredients, but the
with everyone saying, We need more jobs, we need more businesses, and we need to make more money. I have spent most of my life doing that, and I
know how to do that. I have started multimillion-dollar businesses. We have these things going, and we are figuring out how to do those things, but we
need to step back and ask, Where is this all taking us? Where do we really want to go? I do not think that we have done enough of that kind of thing;
at least our tribe has not.
Funding for Native American infrastructure would create a short term stimulus
and immediately boost jobs development would also improve currently
detrimental road infrastructure
National Congress of American Indians 8 (The oldest, largest and most representative American Indian and Alaska
Native organization serving the interests of tribal governments and communities, December 17, Indian Country Economic Recovery Plan,
http://www.nativecontractors.org/media/pdf/NCAI_Economic_Stimulus_Proposal.pdf)
Tribal governments and the Native American communities they support should be included as
eligible recipients for transportation new construction and maintenance. Inclusion would create
a large number of immediate jobs, contracting opportunities, and related procurement. Funding
would also help to save lives by improving road safety among a population with the highest
transportation accident rates. iii According to BIA officials, tribal communities have an unmet immediate
need of well over $258 million in maintenance funding for roads and bridges and $310 million
in unmet new roads and bridges projects. These projects will immediately over 21,500 jobs and
will inject a much-needed stimulus into the Native American economy. The Tribal Transit Grant Program
has been highly successful in its early years. However, the funding awarded has not met the transit needs for tribal
35
communities. Funding for transit projects not only creates immediate jobs and contracting
opportunities, but will also improve citizen participation in the economic system. According to the
Federal Transit Administration (FTA), applicants for FY2006 and FY2008 a total of $66 million was requested with $30 million funded. We are
requesting the $36 million in unfunded need for tribal transit.
Funding for Native American energy development would solve the energy crisis
and create a stimulus the federal government is key
National Congress of American Indians 8 (The oldest, largest and most representative American Indian and Alaska
Native organization serving the interests of tribal governments and communities, December 17, Indian Country Economic Recovery Plan,
http://www.nativecontractors.org/media/pdf/NCAI_Economic_Stimulus_Proposal.pdf)
Renewable Energy Development - The U.S Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that the
should be included as eligible recipients for funds under this Act, and in light of
the historical omission, be provided a 10% set-aside to be reconsidered at the end of 5 years.
This funding is critical for the development of tribal ordinances that result in energy efficiency.
Native American land consolidation would provide necessary economic
stimulation for reservations
National Congress of American Indians 8 (The oldest, largest and most representative American Indian and Alaska
Native organization serving the interests of tribal governments and communities, December 17, Indian Country Economic Recovery Plan,
http://www.nativecontractors.org/media/pdf/NCAI_Economic_Stimulus_Proposal.pdf)
The Bureau of Indian Affairs has proposed very significant funding for the Indian Land Consolidation Program to stimulate reservation economies, and
NCAI strongly agrees with this proposal. Although it is not a traditional infrastructure program, it is even more fundamental to stimulating reservation
Over 5 million acres of Indian owned land is locked up in unproductive status because
the ownership of each tract is divided among dozens, hundreds, or thousands of owners. Economic
activity on these lands has become impossible because of the inability to gain the consent of the owners. Consolidation of these tracts
into tribal ownership results in immediate economic gains by putting the land into productive
use largely in timber and agricultural production, but also in creating new opportunities for
commercial development and tribal government construction. The Indian Land Consolidation
economies.
36
Program has both short-term and long-term beneficial impacts on the economy, on the tribes,
and on the federal government. First, the Program is able to purchase lands and disburse funds
within a six week timeframe. The average payment to each Indian landowner is approximately $3000, which, because of low income
levels, quickly goes into circulation in reservation and surrounding economies . Second, the consolidated lands are
immediately available for agriculture, timber sales, and other activities that produce jobs and
income on the reservations. The importance of job creation on reservations cannot be
overstated. Third, the Program is leveraged. The last four years of experience have shown
surprisingly high rates of return on consolidated lands, and this income is under a lien and returned into the program
for consolidation of more lands. Fourth, there is no programwhich will do more to solve the long-term trust management problems at the Department
of Interior. Land consolidation is critical for addressing trust management problems created by fractionation. Over 4 million ownership interests in
130,000 tracts of land have created a title, management, and accounting nightmare for the federal government and enormous difficulties for Indian
land owners in putting land to economic use. Land
To begin
addressing land consolidation, we are requesting $400 million in immediate funding, 10% of the
overall need.
infrastructure of reservation economies. The Bureau of Indian Affairs has estimated the consolidation program at $700 billion.
37
The time for action is long past due. Native Americans were the very
last to be granted the right to vote, and were therefore too long treated
as second-class citizens. Now there are those who seek to treat Native
American governments as second-class sovereigns. They seek to accomplish this by
not availing them of the same tools for self-reliance and recognition afforded to state and local governments.
The issue of poverty is an integral first step. Poverty is both the cause
and the consequence of all the ills visited upon Native Americans.
Failure to address poverty causes deprivation and hardship in these
communities today, and robs the next generation of any opportunity to
succeed and thrive tomorrow. The invisibility, silence, and neglect must
end. As President-elect Barack Obama ascends to the White House, now is the significant moment to address
the many problems Native Americans endure, including systemic poverty.
38
Because the Native American gaming industry has grown to encompass 220 tribes,
377 facilities, and more than $16 billion per year in revenue, a perception exists that Indians
have been given everything they need and that federal handouts are no
longer necessary. This perception is inaccurate on several levels. First, it
ignores the federal trust obligation discussed earlier in this report. Second, it
overstates the magnitude and impact of gaming profits. A report prepared for the
American Indian Program Council provides a clearer picture of the impact of casinos in Indian Country: Only half of
all tribes have casinos. Thirty-nine casinos produced the majority of casino-generated income. More specifically,
39 percent of casinos accounted for 66 percent of revenue. Casinos in five states, with more than half the total
Native American population, accounted for less than 3 percent of all casino revenue. Casinos in three states, with
only 3 percent of the Native American population, accounted for more than 44 percent of all casino revenue.
39
40
One very significant toxic threat to Native Americans comes from governmental
and commercial hazardous waste sittings. Because of the severe poverty and
extraordinary vulnerability of Native American tribes, their lands have
been targeted by the U.S. government and the large corporations as
permanent areas for much of the poisonous industrial by-products of the
dominant society. "Hoping to take advantage of the devastating chronic
unemployment, pervasive poverty and sovereign status of Indian Nations",
according to Bradley Angel, writing for the international environmental organization Greenpeace, "the waste
disposal industry and the U.S. government have embarked on an all-out
effort to site incinerators, landfills, nuclear waste storage facilities and
similar polluting industries on Tribal land"
became the first tribe (or state) to file an application for a U.S. Energy Department grant "to study the feasibility of
building a temporary [sic] storage facility for 15,000 metric tons of highly radioactive spent fuel" (Akwesasne Notes
1992, 11). Other Indian tribes, including the Sac, Fox, Yakima, Choctaw, Lower Brule Sioux, Eastern Shawnee, Ponca,
Caddo, and the Skull Valley Band of Goshute, have since applied for the $100,000 exploratory grants as well (Angel
Rather, they are active agents in the making of their own history. Nearly a century and a half ago, the radical
philosopher and political economist Karl Marx realized that people "make their own history, but they do not make it
just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances
directly found, given and transmitted from the past" (Marx 1978, 595). Therefore, "tribal governments considering
or planning waste facilities", asserts Margaret Crow of California Indian Legal Services, "do so for a number of
rural and remote, other lucrative business opportunities are rarely, if ever, available to them. Third, some
reservations are sparsely populated and therefore have surplus land for business activities. And fourth, by
establishing waste facilities some tribes would be able to resolve their reservations' own waste disposal problems
while simultaneously raising much-needed revenue.
41
First, toxic waste poses a severe health and safety risk. Some chemical
agents cause leukemia and other cancers; others may lead to organ
ailments, asthma, and other dysfunctions; and yet others may lead to
birth defects such as anencephaly. Toxic waste accomplishes these tragic consequences through
direct exposure, through the contamination of the air, land, and water, and through the bioaccumulation of toxins in
both plants and animals. And because of what Ben Chavis in 1987 termed "environmental racism," people of color
economic-development group, says Native Americans have a responsibility to consider any legitimate means of
providing jobs and economic security for themselves. ''Greenpeace and other groups are trying to define what is
right and wrong for the tribes," Tano says. 'Who are these people telling Indians what to do?"
42
Prohibition of
genocide and affirmation of its opposite, the value of life, are an eternal ethical
verity, one whose practical implications necessarily outweigh possible
theoretical objections and as such should lift it above prevailing ideologies
or politics. Genocide concerns and potentially effects all people. People make up a legal
race, class, or nation, nor is it rooted in any one, ethnocentric view of the world.
system, according to Kelsen. Politics is the expression of conflict among competing groups. Those in power give the
political system its character, i.e. the state. The state, according to Kelsen, is nothing but the combined will of all its
people. This abstract concept of the state may at first glance appear meaningless, because in reality not all people
universal concern.
are walking in bloody footsteps that trace back across centuries, oceans, forests and
plains to the leveled villages, shattered corpses, and stolen resources of those who
Roosevelt acknowledged as Americas original inhabitants. Racist imperial carnage and
its denial, like charity, begin at home. Those who deny the crimes of the past are
likely to repeat their offenses in the future as long as they retain the
means and motive to do so. It is folly, however, for any nation to think that it can stand above the judgments of history, uniquely free of terrible
consequences for what Ward Churchill calls imperial arrogance and criminality.
43
more subtle than military aggression, yet no less deadly . . . Water is life" (February 1980, in Collins Bay Action
and forced onto reservations . . . [Native Americans are] poisoned on the job. Or poisoned in the home . . . Or forced
This is a history of
systematic exploitation and indigenous resistance, spanning from the
1940s to present. As the Indigenous Environmental Network writes, the nuclear industry
has waged an undeclared war against our Indigenous peoples and Pacific
Islanders that has poisoned our communities worldwide. For more than 50
years, the legacy of the nuclear chain, from exploration to the dumping of
radioactive waste has been proven, through documentation, to be genocide and
effects of nuclear technologies on indigenous peoples and their lands.
44
ethnocide and a deadly enemy of Indigenous peoples United States
federal law and nuclear policy has not protected Indigenous peoples, and in fact has been created
to allow the nuclear industry to continue operations at the expense of our
land, territory, health, and traditional way of life This disproportionate toxic burdencalled environmental racism- has culminated in the current attempts to dump much of the nations nuclear waste in
From an
indigenous perspective, the material consequences of nuclear colonialism
have affected the vitality of indigenous peoples . This can be seen clearly in both uranium
the homelands of the Indigenous peoples of the Great Basin region of the United States.
mining and nuclear testing. Uranium mining is inextricably linked with indigenous peoples. According to LaDuke,
some 70 percent of the worlds uranium originates from Native Communities
the Native Americans of the American West; the native population of the Marshall Islands; and the ethnic Kazahks of
Kazakhstan. n5 These groups, who appear to share few characteristics, have several things in common. For
example,each has had little in the way of capital or political power; each is located far from major command and
population centers; and each is of predominantly different race or ethnicity from decision-makers. n6Additionally,
each community relies on the bounty of their ancestral lands for food and medicine. n7 They work the land and feed
their families with the fruits of their labors. n8 This "living off the land" aspect is rarely taken into account in
assessments of the health effects of environmental contamination, so what may be considered an "acceptable"
level of contaminate for non-indigenous communities merely living in the contaminated zone will be multiplied
substantially for an indigenous person gathering the majority of his or her food, water, and medicine from the
contaminated area. This circumstance does not fit neatly into any particular category of environmental injustice,
but may be described as a special case of distributive justice, or amplified disparate impact. Themes of procedural
due process are also implicated, as
the fact. Neither the Western Native Americans, nor the Marshall Islanders, nor the Kazakhs have been offered
any benefits designed to offset their sacrifices. Native Americans and Marshall Islanders from impacted
areas do not make up a significant proportion of the holders of high-paying technical positions at the Department of
Energy (DOE) or Department of Defense (DOD). n11 Local Kazakhs were not [*31] hired to manage the Soviet
nuclear test site. n12 Instead, their homes were deemed "national sacrifice zones," as
some have referred to highly contaminated sites. n13 It is implied in the term and supported by the documented
n15The governments of each of the indigenous populations described have engaged in different forms of
disinformation campaigns to hide the truth about the nature of their activities and the hazards to the affected
communities' health. The United States continues to deny wrongdoing, and the government of the current Russian
Federation cannot be held responsible for the duplicitous actions of the defunct Soviet administration. n16
two
The
45
countless indigenous communities committed in the name of national
security.
46
raised by genocide, taken as the illegal act par excellance, are not confined to the nexus of agent and victim. Those
directly involved in a given instance of genocide will always form a minority, so to speak. The majority to the event
will be formed by the contemporary bystanders. Such bystanders are individuals; in their private and professional
lives, they will belong to a vast score of groups and collectives, some informal and closely knit, others formal and
every
contemporary citizen cognizant of a specific ongoing instance of genocide,
regardless of where in the world, counts as a bystander. Bystanders in this
loose sense are cognizant, through TV, radio, newspapers, and other publicly available sources of
information, of ongoing genocide somewhere in the world, but they are not - by profession or formal
appointment involved in it. Theirs is a passive role, that of onlookers, although what starts out as a
detached as far as personal and emotional involvement are concerned. In the loose sense intended here,
passive stance may, upon decision, convert into active engagement in the events at hand. I shall label this category
passive bystanders. This group should be distinguished from bystanders by formal appointment: the latter
bystanders have been professionally Engaged as a third party to the interaction between the two parties directly
involved in acts of genocide. The stance of this third party to an ongoing conflict, even one with genocidal
implications, is in principle often seen as one of impartiality and neutrality, typically highlighted by a determined
refusal to take sides. This manner of principled non-involvement is frequently viewed as highly meritorious
(Vetlesen, 1998). A case in point would be UN personnel deployed to monitor a ceasefire between warring parties,
or (as was their task in Bosnia) to see to it that the civilians within a UN declared safe area are effectively
guaranteed peace and security, as set down in the mandate to establish such areas. By virtue of their assigned
physical presence on the scene and the specific tasks given to them, such (groups of) bystanders may be referred
to as bystanders by assignment. What does it mean to be a contemporary bystander? To begin with, let us consider
this question not from the expected view- point that of the bystander - but from the two viewpoints provided by
frustrate the perpetrators goal of eliminating the targeted group, that said, we immediately need to differentiate
among the different categories of bystanders introduced above. It is obvious that the more knowledgeable and
other wise resourceful the bystander, the more the perpetrator will have reason to fear that the potential for such
resistance will translate into action, meaning a more or less direct intervention by military or other means. Deemed
bystander possesses a potential to cease being a mere onlooker to the events unfolding. Outrage at what comes to
pass may prompt the judgement that this simply must be stopped and translate into action promoting that aim.
But is not halting genocide first and foremost a task, indeed a duty, for the victims themselves? The answer is
simple: The sheer fact that genocide is happening shows that the targeted group has not proved itself able to
potential of resistance, for the victims they may represent the only source of hope left. In ethical terms, this is
borne out in the notion of responsibility of Immanuel Levinas (1991), according to which responsibility grows bigger
the weaker its addressee. Of course, agents of genocide may be caught more or less in delicto flagrante. But in the
age of television - with CNN being able to film and even interview doers as well as victims on the spot, and
47
broadcast live to the entire television-watching world (such as was the case in the concentration camp Omarska in
Bosnia in August 1992) (see Gutman, 1993) physical co-presence to the event at hand is almost rendered
superfluous. One need not have been there in order to have known what happened, The same holds for the impact
of the day-to-day reporting From the ground by newspaper journalists of indisputable reputation. In order to be
knowledgeable about ongoing genocide, it suffices to watch the television news or read the front pages of a daily
notion of agent responsibility following from it - in order to gel a better grasp of the moral issues involved in being a
bystander to genocide, whether passive or active. I never forget', says Paul Ricoeur in Oneself as Another, 'to
speak of humans as acting and suffering, The moral problem', he continues, is grafted onto the recognition of this
essential dissymmetry between the one who acts and the one who undergoes, culminating in the violence of the
powerful agent.' To be the 'sufferer' of a given action in Ricoeur's sense need not be negative; either 'the sufferer
appears as the beneficiary of esteem or as the victim of disesteem, depending on whether the agent proves to be
someone who distributes rewards or punishments'. Since there is to every action an agent and a sufferer (in the
sense given), action is interaction, its structure is interpersonal (Ricoeur. 1992:145). But this is not the whole
picture. Actions are also omitted, endured, neglected, and the like; and Ricoeur takes these phenomena to remind
us that on the level of interaction, just as on that of subjective understanding, not acting is still acting: neglecting,
forgetting to do something, is also letting things be done by someone else, sometimes to the point of criminality.
(Ricoeur, 1992:157) Ricoeur's systematic objective is to extend the theory of action from acting to suffering beings;
again and again he emphasizes that 'every action has its agents and its patients' (1992; 157). Ricoeur's proposed
extension certainly sounds plausible. Regrettably, his proposal stops halfway. The vital insight articulated, albeit not
responsibility, guilt, and shame on the part of the inactive bystander, by which I mean the bystander who decides
to remain inactive. In the view I am advancing, the theory of action is satisfactorily extended only when it is
recognized that the structure of action is triadic, not dyadic. It takes two to act, we are tempted to say no more
and no less. But is an action really the exclusive possession a private affair between the two parties
immediately affected as agent and sufferer? For one thing, the repercussions of a particular piece of action are
bound to reach far beyond the immediate dyadic setting. As Hannah Arendt (1958) famously observed, to act is to
initiate, to make a new beginning in the world, to set in motion - and open-endedly so. Only the start of a specific
action allows precise localization in space and time, besides our attributing it to a particular agent, as her property
and no one elses. But, as for the repercussions, they evade being traced in any definite manner, to any final and
definitive endpoint.
48
social death, producing a consequent meaninglessness
of one's life and even of its termination.
death (when it does that) but
49
running out of time in which to finally come to grips with this fact for antinuclear activism is and has always been in
finding ways to sever nuclear weapons and reactors from their roots. This means, first and foremost, that nonIndians cast off the blinders which have led them to the sort of narrow "not in my back yard" sensibility voiced by
Barry Commoner and his erstwhile vice presidential running mate, LaDonna Harris (a Comanche and founding
member of CERT).
50
there are clear ethical issues involved when the U.S. government
contracts with Indian nations that lack the infrastructure to handle
dangerous wastes in a safe and environmentally sound manner. Delegates at the Third Annual
However,
Indigenous Environmental Council Network Gathering (held in Cello Village, Oregon, on June 6,1992) adopted a
resolution of No nuclear waste on Indian lands.
Colonialism and
oppression operate at a personal, psychological, and cultural level , as well as
in the realms of political and economic structures. The children of dysfunctional, abusive
parents grow up in a capricious world of arbitrary punishment , humiliation, and
powerlessness. They suffer from insecurity, low self-esteem, and a loss of trust in others.
Colonialism is the abuse of an entire civilization for generations. It
creates a culture of mistrust, defensiveness, and "self-rejection ." The effect is
If there is a fundamental cause of American Indian isolationism, it is 500 years of abuse.
greatest on women, who already are suffering from patriarchal domination in some cultures, and in others, are
which not only pursued an aggressive and intrusive policy of cultural assimilation for more than a century, but also
has preserved a particularly self-confident cultural arrogance to this day, denying Indians the recognition that they
need to begin healing themselves.
The negative effects of cultural abuse are proportional to the thoroughness
51
of the oppressor, leaving people with a cruel choice between being
victimized as "inferior" Indians or as second-class whites . In either case, much more
was lost than cultural knowledge. Also lost was confidence in the possibility of genuine
self-determination.
52
federal government is targeting Western Shoshone Indian land at Yucca Mountain in Nevada for the permanent
the refusal of racism is the condition for all theoretical and practical
morality. Because, in the end, the ethical choice commands the political
choice, a just society must be a society accepted by all. If this contractual
principle is not accepted, then only conflict, violence, and destruction will
be our lot. If it is accepted, we can hope someday to live in peace. True, it
53
is a wager, but the stakes are irresistible.
54
.
The constraints imposed on people by subservience, powerlessness, and
poverty are inhuman and unjust; but the effects of uncontrolled power,
privilege, and greed that are the marks of our white prison inevitably destroy
white people as well. To dismantle racism is to tear down walls. The walls of racism can be
dismantled. We are not condemned to an inexorable fate, but are offered the vision and the possibility of freedom . Brick by brick, stone
by stone, the prison of individual, institutional, and cultural racism can be
destroyed. It is an organizing task that can be accomplished. You and I are urgently called to join the efforts
of those who know it is time to tear down, once and for all the walls of
racism. The walls of racism must be dismantled. Facing up to these realities offers new possibilities,
but refusing to face them threatens yet greater dangers. The results of
centuries of national and worldwide colonial conquest and racial domination,
of military buildups and violent aggression, of over-consumption and
environmental destruction may be reaching a point of no return. The
moment of self-destruction seems to be drawing ever more near, nationally
and globally. A small and predominantly white minority of the global population derives its power and privilege from the sufferings of the vast majority of peoples of
color. For the sake of the world and ourselves, we dare not allow it to continue.
communities of color and white communities from each other, as well as divide communities of color from each other. In our separate prisons we are all shut off from each other
55
destruction from pollutants that know no geopolitical boundaries. We need to do this because pollutants are not
respectful of international boundaries; it does little good if one country practices sound environmental protection
while its neighbors fail to do so. Countries of the world are intricately linked together in ways not clear 50 years
ago; they find themselves victims of environmental destruction even though the causes of that destruction
originated in another part of the world. Acid rain, global warming, depletion of the ozone layer, nuclear accidents
like the one at Chernobyl, make all countries vulnerable to environmental destruction. The cooperative relations
forged after World War II are now obsolete. New cooperative relations need to be agreed upon cooperative
Economic development is linked to pollution prevention even though the market fails to include the true cost of
pollution in its pricing of products and services; it fails to place a value on the destruction of plant and animal
species. To date, most industrialized nations, the high polluters, have had an incentive to pollute because they did
not incur the cost of producing goods and services in a nonpolluting manner. The world will have to pay for the true
cost of production and to practice prudent stewardship of our natural resources if we are to sustain ourselves on
this planet. We cannot expect Third World countries to participate in debt-for-nature swaps as a means for saving
the rainforest or as a means for the reduction of greenhouse gases, while a considerable amount of such gases
come from industrial nations and from fossil fuel consumption. Like disease, population growth is politically,
economically, and structurally determined. Due to inadequate income maintenance programs and social security,
families in developing countries are more apt to have large families not only to ensure the survival of children
within the first five years, but to work the fields and care for the elderly. As development increases, so do education,
health, and birth control. In his chapter, Buttel states that ecological development and substantial debt forgiveness
would be more significant in alleviating Third World environmental degradation (or population problems) than
ratification of any UNCED biodiversity or forest conventions. Because population control programs fail to address
the structural characteristics of poverty, such programs for developing countries have been for the most part
dismal failures. Growth and development along ecological lines have a better chance of controlling population
growth in developing countries than the best population control programs to date. Although population control is
important, we often focus a considerable amount of our attention on population problems of developing countries.
Yet there are more people per square mile in Western Europe than in most developing countries. During his/her
lifetime an American child causes 35 times the environmental damage of an Indian child and 280 times that of a
Haitian child (Boggs, 1993: 1). The addiction to consumerism of highly industrialized countries has to be seen as a
major culprit, and thus must be balanced against the benefits of population control in Third World countries.
We cannot
ignore world poverty; it is intricately linked to environmental protection . If
Worldwide environmental protection is only one part of the complex problems we face today.
this is the case, then how do we deal with world poverty? How do we bring about lasting peace in the world? Clearly
we can no longer afford a South Africa as it was once organized, or ethnic cleansing by Serbian nationalists. These
types of conflicts bankrupt us morally and destroy our connectedness with one another as a world community. Yet,
we may be headed on a course where the politically induced famine, poverty, and chaos of Somalia today will
become commonplace and world peace more difficult, particularly if the European Common Market, Japan, and the
Growing
poverty will lead only to more world disequilibrium to wars and famine as
United States trade primarily among themselves, leaving Third World countries to fend for themselves.
countries become more aggressive and cross international borders for resources to ward off widespread hunger and
rampant unemployment. To tackle these problems requires a quantum leap in global cooperation and commitment
of the highest magnitude; it requires development of an international tax, levied through the United nations or
some other international body, so that the world community can become more involved in helping to deal with
issues of environmental protection, poverty, and peace. Since the market system has been bold and flexible
enough to meet changing conditions, so too must
56
respond to the rapid changes that reverberate throughout the world.
If they
fail to change, then we will surely meet the fate of the dinosaur. The Soviet Union gave up a system that was
unworkable in exchange for another one. Although it has not been easy, individual countries of the former Soviet
Union have the potential of reemerging looking very different and stronger. Or they could emerge looking very
different and weaker. They could become societies that are both socially and environmentally destructive or they
can become societies where people have decent jobs, places to live, educational opportunities for all citizens, and
sustainable social structures that are safe and nurturing. Although North Americans are experiencing economic and
social discomforts, we too will have to change, or we may find ourselves engulfed by political and economic forces
beyond our control. In 1994, the out-sweeping of Democrats from national offices may be symptomatic of deeper
and more fundamental problems. If the mean-spirited behavior that characterized the 1994 election is carried over
into the governance of the country, this may only fan the flames of discontent. We may be embarking upon a long
struggle over ideology, culture, and the very heart and soul of the country. But despite all the political turmoil, we
must take risks and try out new ideas ideas never dreamed of before and ideas we thought were impossible to
implement. To implement these ideas we must overcome institutional inertia in order to enhance intentional
change. We need to give up tradition and business as usual. To view the future as a challenge and as an
opportunity to make the world a better place,
economic risks.
The question is not growth, but what kind of growth, and where it will take place. For
example, we can maintain current levels of productivity or become even more productive if we farm organically.
Because of ideological conflicts, it is hard for us to view the Cuban experience with an unjaundiced eye; but we ask
you to place political differences aside and pay attention to the lyrics of organic farming and not to the music of
Communism. In other words, we must get beyond political differences and ideological conflicts; we must find
success stories of healing the planet no matter where they exist be they in Communist or non-Communist
countries, developed or underdeveloped countries. We must ascertain what lessons can be learned from them, and
examine how they would benefit the world community. In most instances, we will have to chart a new course.
Continued use of certain technologies and chemicals that are incompatible with the ecosystem will take us down
ourselves in a house divided where the gap between the young and the old has widened. During the 1980s, there
were few visions of healing the country. In the 1990s, despite the catastrophic economic and environmental results
of the 1980s, and despite the conservative takeover of both houses of Congress, we must look for glimmers of
hope. We must stand by what we think is right and defend our position with passion. And at times we need to slow
down and reflect and do a lot of soul searching in order to redirect ourselves, if need be. We must chart out a new
course of defining who we are as a people, by redefining our relationship with government, with nature, with one
another, and where we want to be as a nation. We need to find a way of expressing this definition of ourselves to
one another. Undeniably we are a nation of different ethnic groups and races, and of multiple interest groups, and if
we cannot live in peace and in harmony with ourselves and with nature it bodes ominously for future world
sound environmental policies can be compatible with good business practices and quality of life, we may have to
jettison the moral argument of environmental protection in favor of the self-interest argument, thereby
demonstrating that the survival of business enterprises is intricately tied to good stewardship of natural resources
and environmental protection. Too often we forget that short-sightedness can propel us down a narrow path, where
we are unable to see the long-term effects of our actions. The ideas and policies discussed in this book are ways of
getting ourselves back on track. The ideas presented here will hopefully provide substantive material for discourse.
These policies are not carved in stone, nor are they meant to be for every city, suburb, or rural area. Municipalities
or rural areas should have flexibility in dealing with their site-specific problems. Yet we need to extend our concern
about local sustainability beyond geopolitical boundaries, because dumping in Third World countries or in the
atmosphere today will surely haunt the world tomorrow. Ideas presented here may irritate some and dismay others,
but we need to make some drastic changes in our lifestyles and institutions in order to foster environmental justice.
Many of the policy ideas mentioned in this book have been around for some time, but they have not been
implemented. The struggle for environmental justice emerging from the people of color and low-income
Environmental
justice provides opportunities for those most affected by environmental
degradation and poverty to make policies to save not only themselves from differential
impact of environmental hazards, but to save those responsible for the lions share of the planets
destruction. This struggle emerging from the environmental experience of oppressed people brings forth a
communities may provide the necessary political impulse to make these policies a reality.
new consciousness a new consciousness shaped by immediate demands for certainty and solution. It is a struggle
to make a true connection between humanity and nature. This struggle to resolve environmental problems may
57
force the nation to alter its priorities; it may force the nation to address issues of environmental justice and, by
doing so, it may ultimately result in a cleaner and healthier environment for all of us. Although we may never
eliminate all toxic materials from the production cycle, we should at least have that as a goal.
58
Environmental justice
affirms the sacredness of Mother Earth, ecological unity and the interdependence of
all species, and the right to be free from ecological destruction . . . .
Environmental justice calls for universal protection from extraction, production and
disposal of toxic/hazardous wastes and poisons that threaten the
fundamental right to clean air, land, water and food . . . . Environmental justice affirms
the following are particularly striking in their parallels to Almanacs positionings:
the fundamental right to political, economic, cultural and environmental self-determination to all peoples . . . .
Environmental justice affirms the need for an urban and rural ecology to clean up and rebuild our cities and rural
areas in balance with nature, honoring the cultural integrity of all our communities, and providing fair access for all
threads together in a critique of toxicity, militarism, and economic exploitation; like the manifesto, it calls for
recognition of species interdependence, cultural independence, and the self-determination of peoples modeled on
indigenous communities rooted in intimate relation with the land. As environmental justice critics have long noted,
dominant cultures have argued that the lands of indigenous peoples are underdeveloped and empty (terra nullius)
expropriation of Native lands by guns and disease in the sixteenth century to the toxic colonialism of the twentyfirst century imposed on, for example, the Shoshone people, whose resistance to the dumping of nuclear waste on
their non-waste lands Valerie Kuletz brilliantly chronicled. The euphemisms may change (national sacrifice zones
the waste- or
wasted-lands seem inevitably to coincide with the boundaries of Indian
reservations (and the ghettos and barrios of others outside the sacred circle of whiteness). What remains the
of the recent past in the US are now being displaced by national security rhetoric),5 but
same is who is making the sacrifice (or being sacrificed) and who is making the decisions. As Native activist and
former vice-presidential candidate Winona LaDuke trenchantly notes: What happened when the best scientific
minds and policy analysts in the world spent 20 years examining every possible way to deal with problem of nuclear
waste? They decided the solution was to ship the radioactive stuff thousands of miles from all over the country and
dump it on an Indian reservation. (LaDuke is referring to Yucca Mountain, Nevada, a sacred site of the Shoshone
people, chosen as the main nuclear waste site of the military-industrial-scientific-governmental colonizers.).
sacrificial destruction, committed in the name of the need to radically materialize all the possibilities opened up by
a given social and political reality over which it is supposed to have total power. This is how it was in colonialism,
with the genocide of indigenous peoples, and the African slaves. This is how it was in the period of imperialist
59
struggles, which caused millions of deaths in two world wars and many other colonial wars. This is how it was under
Stalinism, with the Gulag, and under Nazism, with the Holocaust. And now today, this is how it is in neoliberalism,
with the collective sacrifice of the periphery and even the semiperiphery of the world system. With the war against
Iraq, it is fitting to ask whether what is in progress is a new genocidal and sacrificial illusion, and what its scope
might be. It is above all appropriate to ask if the new illusion will not herald the radicalization and the ultimate
Sacrificial
genocide arises from a totalitarian illusion manifested in the belief that
there are no alternatives to the present-day reality, and that the problems and
perversion of the Western illusion: destroying all of humanity in the illusion of saving it.
difficulties confronting it arise from failing to take its logic of development to ultimate consequences. If there is
unemployment, hunger and death in the Third World, this is not the result of market failures; instead, it is the
outcome of market laws not having been fully applied. If there is terrorism, this is not due to the violence of the
conditions that generate it; it is due, rather, to the fact that total violence has not been employed to physically
notion of the end of history. During the last hundred years, the West has experienced three versions of this logic,
and, therefore, seen three versions of the end of history: Stalinism, with its logic of insuperable efficiency of the
plan; Nazism, with its logic of racial superiority; and neoliberalism, with its logic of insuperable efficiency of the
market. The first two periods involved the destruction of democracy. The last one trivializes democracy, disarming it
in the face of social actors sufficiently powerful to be able to privatize the state and international institutions in their
favor. I have described this situation as a combination of political democracy and social fascism. One current
manifestation of this combination resides in the fact that intensely strong public opinion, worldwide, against the war
is found to be incapable of halting the war machine set in motion by supposedly democratic rulers. At all these
moments, a death drive, a catastrophic heroism, predominates, the idea of a looming collective suicide, only
preventable by the massive destruction of the other. Paradoxically, the broader the definition of the other and the
efficacy of its destruction, the more likely collective suicide becomes. In its sacrificial genocide version,
neoliberalism is a mixture of market radicalization, neoconservatism and Christian fundamentalism .
Its death
drive takes a number of forms, from the idea of "discardable populations" ,
referring to citizens of the Third World not capable of being exploited as workers and consumers , to the
concept of "collateral damage", to refer to the deaths, as a result of war, of thousands of innocent
civilians. The last, catastrophic heroism, is quite clear on two facts: according to reliable calculations by the NonGovernmental Organization MEDACT, in London, between 48 and 260 thousand civilians will die during the war and
in the three months after (this is without there being civil war or a nuclear attack); the war will cost 100 billion
dollars, enough to pay the health costs of the world's poorest countries for four years. Is it possible to fight this
death drive? We must bear in mind that, historically, sacrificial destruction has always been linked to the economic
pillage of natural resources and the labor force, to the imperial design of radically changing the terms of economic,
social, political and cultural exchanges in the face of falling efficiency rates postulated by the maximalist logic of
and when they are in decline, repeatedly go through times of primitive accumulation,
60
The possibility that low doses of radiation may have beneficial effects (a
phenomenon often referred to as hormesis) has been the subject of considerable debate.
Evidence for hormetic effects was reviewed, with emphasis on material
published since the 1990 BEIR V study on the health effects of exposure to
low levels of ionizing radiation. Although examples of apparent stimulatory or
protective effects can be found in cellular and animal biology, the
preponderance of available experimental information does not support the contention
that low levels of ionizing radiation have a beneficial effect. The mechanism of any
such possible effect remains obscure. At this time, the assumption that any stimulatory
hormetic effects from low doses of ionizing radiation will have a significant
health benefit to humans that exceeds potential detrimental effects from
radiation exposure at the same dose is unwarranted.
radiation can cause DNA damage that eventually leads to cancers. However, more
research is needed to determine whether low doses of radiation may also cause other health problems, such as
heart disease and stroke, which are now seen with high doses of low-LET radiation. The study committee defined
low doses as those ranging from nearly zero to about 100 millisievert (mSv) -- units that measure radiation energy
deposited in living tissue. The radiation dose from a chest X-ray is about 0.1 mSv. In the United States, people are
The committee's
report develops the most up-to-date and comprehensive risk estimates for
cancer and other health effects from exposure to low-level ionizing
radiation. In general, the report supports previously reported risk estimates for solid cancer and leukemia, but
exposed on average to about 3 mSv of natural "background" radiation annually.
the availability of new and more extensive data have strengthened confidence in these estimates. Specifically, the
committee's thorough review of available biological and biophysical data supports a "linear, no threshold" (LNT) risk
researchers have argued that the LNT model exaggerates adverse health effects, while others have said that it
"The
scientific research base shows that there is no threshold of exposure
below which low levels of ionizing radiation can be demonstrated to be
harmless or beneficial," said committee chair Richard R. Monson, associate dean for professional
underestimates the harm. The preponderance of evidence supports the LNT model, this new report says.
education and professor of epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston. "The health risks particularly
the development of solid cancers in organs rise proportionally with exposure. At low doses of radiation, the risk of
inducing solid cancers is very small. As the overall lifetime exposure increases, so does the risk." The report is the
seventh in a series on the biological effects of ionizing radiation.
61
tribal nations should push economic development not just for jobs, but to
secure and protect their tribal sovereignty, the former chief of the Cherokee Nation said
Oklahoma's
Tuesday. Speaking at the state's annual Sovereignty Symposium at the Skirvin Hilton Hotel, former Chief Chad
true value of economic development was tribal sovereignty and selfdetermination. "Over the decades, we've seen treaties, 23 of them, which were supposed to
protect our rights," Smith said. "Step by step, the federal government has taken
those rights away." And because of this interference, Smith said, the culture of tribal
nations is being jeopardized. Smith, who served three terms as principal chief of the Cherokees,
urged tribal representatives to make economic development a priority. " Economic development
gives tribes the ability to protect their sovereignty ," he said. Once known as Indian
Smith said the
Territory, Oklahoma is home to 39 federally recognized Indian tribes. Records show that three Oklahoma cities,
Tulsa, Norman and Oklahoma City, are listed among the top five cities in the nation with the highest percentage of
Interior. The United States, the agency said, is home to more than 237,000 Native American businesses that
generate almost $35 billion in revenue. And those same businesses employ more than 115,000 workers. "Economic
development is one of the most important things a tribe can do, said Robert J. Miller, a professor of law at Lewis &
Clark Law School. "If
a tribal member can't find a job that pays a living wage, how
are they going to support themselves?" Miller said. "How will we make it into the next 1,000
years?" For too long, he said, tribal leaders and even tribal members, themselves, have recoiled from the word
capitalism. "Indian culture is not opposed to economic development," he said. "But there are native people who
62
cities, of all civilization? Are they doomed to rise, flourish, and then fall back into the earth from which they came?
Whether we take an optimistic view or a pessimistic one, it seems clear that we stand now at the conclusion of a
great age of human history. This ten-thousand-year episode seems to be coming to an end, winding down. For
now, it appears that civilization has won out over all other ways of life. Civilized people have defeated
the
civilization seems to be in
In its quest
for dominance, civilization chewed up the forest, leeched the soil, stripped the plains, clogged the rivers,
mined the mountains, polluted the oceans, and fouled the air. In the process of progress, civilization
destroyed one species of plant and animal after another. Propelled by the gospel of
more vulnerable than ever to enemies from within. It has become a victim of its own success.
agriculture, civilization moved forcefully across the globe, but it soon began to die of exhaustion, leaving millions of
Just
as it seems to have completed its victory over tribal people, the nationstate has begun to dissolve. Breaking apart into ethnic chunks and cultural enclaves, the number of
humans to starve. Some of the oldest places in the agricultural world became some of the first to collapse.
states has multiplied in the twentieth century to the point that the concept of a nation-state itself starts to
deteriorate. The nation-state absorbed the remaining tribal people but has proven incapable of incorporating them
fully into the national society as equal members. The state swallowed them up but could not digest them. The
state could destroy the old languages and cultures, and it easily divided and even relocated whole nations. But the
state proved far less effective at incorporating the detribalized people into the new national culture. Even though
the state expanded across the frontier, it could not make the frontier disappear. The frontier moved into the urban
areas with the detribalized masses of defeated nations, emancipated slaves, and exploited laborers. After ten
thousand years of struggle, humans may have been left with a Pyrrhic victory whose cost may be much greater
than its benefits. Now that the victory has been won, we stoop under the burdensome costs and damages to a
world that we may not be able to heal or repair. Unable to cope with the rapidly changing natural, social, and
cultural environment that civilization made, we see the collapse of the social institutions of the city and the state
that brought us this far. The cities and institutions of civilization have now become social dinosaurs. Even though
we may look back with pride over the last ten thousand years of evolution and cite the massive number of humans
63
and the ability of human society and the city to feed and care for all of them, one major fluctuation in the world
might easily end all of that. The civilization we have built stretches like a delicate and fragile membrane on this
Armageddon. During the twentieth century, civilization experience a number of major scares, a series of warning
shots. Civilization proved capable of waging world war on itself. Toward that end,
we developed nuclear energy and came close to provoking a nuclear holocaust, and we may well do so yet. When
we survived World War I, then World War II, and finally the nuclear threat of the Cold War, we felt safe. When
catastrophe did not follow the warning, we felt relief, as though the danger had passed, but danger still approaches
us. Civilization experienced several super plagues ranging from the devastating world influenza epidemic early in
the century to AIDS at the close of the century. These may be only weak harbingers of the epidemics and plagues
to come. Even as life expectancy in most countries has continued to climb throughout the twentieth century,
diseases from cancer to syphilis have grown stronger and more deadly. If war or new plagues do not bring down
civilization, it might easily collapse as a result of environmental degradation and the disruption of productive
agricultural lands. If the great collapse comes, it might well come from something that we do not yet suspect.
Perhaps war, disease, famine, and environmental degradation will be only parts of the process and not the causes.
need to find ways to allow other people to walk in two worlds, or perhaps even to walk in four or five worlds at once.
We cannot go backwards in history and change one hour or one moment, but we do have the power to change the
Tibetans of China, the Lacandon of Mexico, the Tuareg of Mali, the Aleuts of Alaska, the Ainu of Japan, the Maori of
New Zealand, the Aymara of Bolivia, and the millions of other ethnic groups around the world deserve the same
human rights and cultural dignity as suburbanites in Los Angeles, bureaucrats in London, bankers in Paris, reporters
in Atlanta, marketing executives in Vancouver, artists in Berlin, surfers in Sydney, or industrialists in Tokyo. In
recent centuries, Western civilization has played the leading role on the stage of human history. We should not
mistake this one act for the whole drama of human history, nor should we assume that the present act is the final
We
must recognize the value of all people not merely out of nostalgic sentiment for the oppressed
one just because it is before us at the moment. Much came before us, and much remains yet to be enacted.
or merely to keep them like exhibits in a nature park. We must recognize their rights and value because we may
need the combined knowledge of all cultures if we are to overcome the problems that now threaten to overwhelm
us. At first glance, the Aleuts who hunt seals on isolated islands in the Bering Sea may seem like unimportant
actors on the world stage of today, but their ancestors once played a vital role in human survival of the Ice Age.
The Quechua woman sitting in the dusty market of Cochamba may seem backward and insignificant, but her
Because we do not
know the problems that lie ahead of us, we do not know which set of
human skills or which cultural perspective we will need. The coming age of human
ancestors led the way into an agricultural revolution from which we still benefit.
history threatens to be one of cultural conflicts between and within countries, conflicts that rip cities apart. If we
continue down the same path that we now tread, the problems visible today in Tibet or Mexico may seem trifling
some alien civilization will stare at our ruined cities and wonder why we disappeared.
64
moral imperative. It is past time to begin addressing this fundamental issue: human rights and the ability of human
beings to discover ways to live together in plural societies. We want At the Threshold to help foster that process in
communities throughout the United Sates. We invite your involvement, your ideas, and your time. What must be
done? What is our role at the local level? How can we cause governments and business, schools and churches and
community organizations to advance human rights, protect and conserve fragile resources, and address the
conditions that condemn too many to choose between environmental degradation and endless poverty? The job will
not be easy, nor will it be accomplished overnight, but this is the time to act Indian organizations are stronger and
better organized than ever, indigenous peoples themselves are defining and leading movements for their rights.
They are also looking to first-world activities as allies and partners in a new alliance. Cross cultural collaboration will
join more familiar forms of political action, even if centuries of colonialism and ensuing powerlessness have left a
legacy of distrust and poverty that complicates this alliance.
65
The contributing factors to gang behavior across Indian Country are myriad. Certainly the
social issues many tribal communities face continue to be a causative or contributing factor to some
degree, in terms of substance abuse, unemployment, poverty, high drop-out rates and the
relative lack of social, cultural, and recreational resources in many tribal
communities. Although many of these same social issues are faced by juveniles and young adults in other
parts of the country, the lack of resources to deal with these problems in Indian
Country tends to exacerbate the situation and perpetuate destructive
behavior such as gang activity.
Pull effects present in the ethnographic data that might have contributed
to gang delinquency included the combined forces of machismo and
patriarchy, the desire of young people to be a part of a gang mystique,
and the desire to share in the perceived power of the gangall of which
served as a strong magnet for youth. The pull was especially strong on
youths who perceived their access to legitimate sources of power to be
blocked by economic or educational marginalization. The identification of
gang membership with components of what it means to be a man might
be a further attraction, given the pressures and demands of the streets.
administration, military lobbyists persuaded politicians to spend more money on defense by showing them upright models of Soviet and American missiles, in which the Soviet missiles
were larger, although it was known that the larger missiles were technically inferior. The phallic shape of these missiles makes the sexual connotation of this competition in missile size
66
Self-Determination Adv.
horsecock
67
entities upon whom international human rights instruments confer the rights of peoples. An important first step in
the U.S. commitment to protecting and promoting the rights of peoples would be for the U.S. Senate to ratify
without delay the Convention on the Rights of Children (CRC), and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). This should not be too hard to accomplish regarding a treaty like the CRC
given that, as Professor Koh points out, the U.S. government "actually complies in most respects" with the
standards that emerged after the Second World War in the wake of the dissolution of colonial empires. n223 Two
international instruments relating to the rights of indigenous peoples are Convention No. 169 Concerning
Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, adopted by the International Labor Organization (ILO), a
the UN, in 1989; n224 and the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
generally protects indigenous lands and sets out
measures to improve the health, education, and employment [*458] of indigenous
peoples. The U.S. has not ratified the Convention. The DDRIP guarantees the rights of
specialized agency of
indigenous peoples to determine for themselves in many issue-areas, including culture and language, education,
health, housing, employment, land and resources, environment and development, intellectual and cultural property,
and the capacity of indigenous peoples to conduct treaties and agreements with governments. n226 Going back in
U.S. history, African Americans have viewed themselves as a distinct political (sub)culture. n227 Malcolm X
conceived and advocated the concept of a Black nation within the United States. n228 Before Malcolm X, in 1951,
the Civil Rights Congress filed a petition before the United Nations, significantly titled We Charge Genocide,
accusing the United States government of genocide because of its mistreatment of African Americans. n229 A most
recent (re)formulation of this concept of black nationality is by the political scientist Robert T. Stark who, in the
context of a criticism of deracialization strategies, commented that, "black politics is a group struggle for racespecific empowerment in order to exercise some degree of independence and self-determination. If campaign
behavior is a predictor of governance style and behavior, then deracialization is an anathema to the essence of
black politics." n230 A nationality group, even more so than African Americans, considered an indigenous
population within the U.S. and the focus of the rest of the analysis on this topic, are Native Americans.
The
to maintain
control over their territories and governance of their own affairs." n232 Yet,
going back to the very formation of this country, the U.S. government has
impeded and continues to impede through removal, killing, and or forced
assimilation, the right of Native Americans to determine for themselves.
indigenous, n231 specifically "rights to their culture, language and forms of worship[,] and
n233 Violations of Indian human rights in the U.S. include taking Indian lands by the federal government without
due process or compensation in an attempt to accelerate the assimilation of tribes through the elimination of their
land base, federally-approved destruction of Indian sacred sites critical to Indian cultural life, federally-approved
destruction and contamination of natural resources that Indians depend upon for food and water, continuing judicial
attacks on the right of Indian governments to manage their own territories and peoples, n234 and systematic
68
erasure of Indian cultural identity. n235 A judicial decision laying the foundation for contemporary violation of Indian
human rights is Tee-Hit-Ton Indians v. the United States, n236 in which the Supreme Court ruled that the U.S.
government has the authority to seize Indian lands without compensation. It was this decision - and the failure to
overturn it during the ensuing decades - that led Native Americans to seek recourse in international human rights
laws and mechanisms for resolution of their land and natural resource claims against the U.S. government. n237
69
that's very critical because for us to be able to that as an agency whether Federal Highways or BIA would be very
difficult and the provisions are there within the law, and so for that reason, it was very important to make sure that
it was understood that bringing this type of activities into central office in terms of the actual work of the expert
Senate
Indian Affairs Committee Hearing; Oversight Hearing on Tribal Priorities in the Fiscal Year 2010 Budget.
Congressional Documents and Publications. March 12, 2009. p. Lexis.
NCAI appreciates the opportunity to provide testimony to the Indian Affairs Committee on the FY 2010 budget. The
The
recommendations in this FY 2010 Indian Country budget request are based
on honoring the mutual promises between American Indian and Alaska Native tribal governments and the
United States through the federal trust relationship. The recommendations are also
founded on the hope and promise of self-determination: federal
investment in tribal sovereignty and self-determination is not only fair and just,
but it is an investment to close historic disparities in well-being through
the most successful federal Indian policy in U.S. history. We look forward to working
budget of the United States either does or does not support the self-determination of tribes.
with Congress to strengthen tribal governments, improve Indian communities, and ensure the federal trust
responsibilities to Indian tribes are honored in the appropriations process.
70
A hallmark of self-determination is giving people the opportunity to control a fixed sum of dollars,
using these resources to determine which services and supports they will purchase from whom and
under what circumstances. Michigan's Initiative to promote self-determination for persons with developmental
disabilities is part of a national project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Michigan is one of 18 states
participating, having been awarded $397,000 in 1996 to support the project over a three-year period. The initiative
is being implemented at four local project sites: Washtenaw Community Mental Health Services Provider (CMHSP);
Midland-Gladwin CMHSP; Detroit-Wayne CMH Agency through Wayne Community Living Services, Inc.; and a
partnership between the Allegan and Van Buren CMHSPs. Each of these local sites has been developing its approach
to self-determination for almost 18 months. People with developmental disabilities are designing agreements with
these community mental health agencies, whereby they have access to an individual budget. This budget is
developed based upon their individual plan of services and supports. Using their individual budget, participants may
choose to purchase some, all or none of the services/supports which they previously received. For example, a
person may choose to hire a provider agency to provide in-home supports, or, they may choose to use the services
of a fiscal intermediary to handle funds and then be the employer of the people hired to provide personal
assistance. They may choose to use the usual means of transportation arranged by their mental health agency, or
they may use funding allotted within their individual budget to purchase transportation from some other individual
Self-determination is about choice and control. It is about giving over decisionmaking authority to people with disabilities, with support of their family and friends. It is about freedom.
Self-determination asserts that a person should not have to lose their freedom because they require
support from the public sector. Michigan's managed care plan for services/supports for persons with
or organization.
developmental disabilities requires each local CMHSP to make consumer-managed and directed services and
supports available. Self-determination is at the core of consumer-managed services and supports. Selfdetermination in Michigan is central to the transition to a managed care service system for persons with
developmental disabilities. Michigan is expanding the Self-Determination Initiative in 1998 to include four
additional "affiliate" sites as local projects. These are: Pathways (Alger, Luce, Marquette and Escanaba counties);
Kalamazoo CMHSP; Monroe CMH Authority, and Oakland CMHSP.
streamline the process and eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy by reducing the role of the Bureau of Indian Affairs
in the process, Rahall said in a statement. In addition, because it allows Indian tribes to use their transportation
funds in the best manner to meet the needs of their citizens, my amendment will increase the efficiency and
agreements directly with tribes to perform the transportation duties that would be performed by the BIA. However
of contention to tribal leaders these agreements are not self-governance agreements subject to the terms of the
ISDEAA, so tribes do not always have the protections offered under that law. Native
America
71
desperately needs economic development and jobs, Rahall added. Given the
proven success of the tribal self-governance program, there is no better
way to enhance transportation funds to create jobs in Indian country than
by extending self-governance to the Department of Transportation. The
amendment cleared a hurdle on February 2 when it was adopted during the markup of H.R. 7 by the U.S. House
Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, on which Rahall serves as the ranking Democrat. Before passage,
Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, spoke in favor of the amendment, and no one on the committee raised any problems
with it. The final bill, including the tribal provisions, was reported out of the committee on February 3. But then,
like so many times before in the current session of Congress, a game of political football began, this time
Far-right conservatives
began saying that the overall $260 billion bill was too expensive, while
Democrats and some moderate Republicans raised concerns that it would
cut funding for public transportation, bike paths, and pedestrians. Speaker of
endangering the self-governance good that was within the reach of tribes.
the House John Boehner was soon uncertain on whether he could get the 218 votes needed to get the bill passed.
Will it pass? For the good of the country, I sure hope so,
In accordance with
Federal policies promoting Indian self-determination, the Department of
Transportation shall have, within the office of the Secretary, a Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tribal
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tribal Government Affairs. (1) Establishment.
Government Affairs appointed by the President to plan, coordinate, and implement the Department of
coordinate tribal
transportation programs and activities in all offices and administrations of
the Department and to be a participant in any negotiated rulemaking
relating to, or having an impact on, projects, programs, or funding associated
with the tribal transportation program.
Transportation policy and programs serving Indian tribes and tribal organizations and to
72
Ext. US Modeled
The US has set a precedent for ethnic external self-determination,
and this trend will continue if nothing changes. Kosovo proves
Bose 08, (Sumantra, Kosovo to Kashmir: the Self-Determination Dilemma, May 22,
http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/kosovo-to-kashmir-autonomy-secession-and-democracy. professor of
international and comparative politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science, EKC)
The recognition of Kosovo as sovereign by some of the wealthiest and most prominent
states in the international system, including its sole superpower, is (as was the recognition of Slovenia
and Croatia in early 1992) a validation of an ethno-nationalist claim to selfdetermination based on the will of the majority ethnos. Two crucial factors here are
the overwhelming extent of this majority (it is doubtful that the Ahtisaari proposal could have been floated if
Albanians were a 67% majority of Kosovo's people, as they were in 1961 according to the Yugoslav census of that
year, rather than the 90% majority of today); and the unanimous and adamant insistence of that huge majority on
the maximal version of self-determination. President Bush's praise of the Kosovo Albanian leadership's "embrace of
multi-ethnicity as a principle of good governance" in his letter to Kosovo's president endorsing the declaration of
Multi-ethnicity as a principle of
governance was extinguished across the region of the former Yugoslavia more than fifteen years
ago. In this respect, the European commission's statement after the disturbances in the Serb-dominated part of
independence, puts no more than a poor gloss on this reality.
the northern Kosovo town of Mitrovica on 17 March 2008, a month after the declaration - "Violence is unacceptable.
All parties should work together to build a multi-ethnic Kosovo based on the rule of law and respect for democracy"
- can be read as an expression either of naivete or evasion. Condemning the Serbs of northern Kosovo who attacked
border-posts between Kosovo and Serbia manned by international personnel, or protested in Mitrovica, for trying to
recognition) and the empirical (which depends on the capacity of the state's authorities to control and administer its
territory). Both aspects are political battlegrounds in the Kosovo controversy. The world is divided on the juridical
issue, and there is a minority group of dissenters even among the EU states. Belgrade's rejection of the 17 February
2008 declaration in Pristina is a crucial factor reinforcing the divide. Within the last decade, East Timor's
internationally supervised independence (1999-2002) was made possible by Indonesia's acquiescence to that
process. Three decades ago, Pakistan's recognition of Bangladesh's sovereignty - given in February 1974, just two
years after the end of armed hostilities, once Pakistan received guarantees about the repatriation of its 90,000
prisoners of war from the December 1971 conflict - paved the way to Bangladesh's membership of the United
Nations in September 1974. As long as Serbia continues to declare Kosovo a renegade province, on the lines of
China's position vis--vis Taiwan, the juridical issue cannot be settled. The juridical dispute is, of course, closely
intertwined with the empirical dimension - the existence of the Serb-populated area in northern Kosovo, and the
enclaves dotted across the rest of Kosovo in which two-thirds of Kosovo's Serbs reside. It is possible that this
tangled skein of conflicts can be constructively addressed only through renewed regional and international
concurrently, considerable alarm in capitals where such state-seeking movements are a long-term headache, from
Ottawa and Madrid to Delhi and Beijing (see Fred Halliday, "Tibet, Palestine, and the politics of failure", 9 May 2008).
But both the excitement and the alarm are unwarranted.
American Indian tribal leaders could play a pivotal international role as the
voice of conscience, reason, and generosity within the United States itself,
not only with respect to the fate of other indigenous peoples, but the fate
of the planet, too. Instead, they continue to be preoccupied with domestic
issues, competing with one another for larger shares of federal program
73
dollars and-bigger bingo halls. Global consciousness, which was central to aboriginal religion and philosophy,
has collapsed into competitive capitalism. II. DECOLONIZATION WITHOUT COMMITMENT Apart from their potential
role as American citizens and voters in restraining the immature political excesses of non-Indian Americans abroad,
power from the colonizer. Little serious thought is given to the problem of what to do with power once it is obtained.
A vacuum lies at the end of nearly every revolution which quickly fills with borrowed slogans and ideas. There is
some truth in Ambrose Bierce's observation, nearly a century ago, that revolution is "an abrupt change in the form
of misgovernment."51 Indigenous peoples everywhere like to believe that the critical difference, in their case, is
culture. Traditional cultures, which are diametrically opposed to the competitive individualism and insatiable
appetite of industrialized societies, supposedly will insulate leaders from the corrupting influences of power and
the "demonstration effect" of Western prosperity. But Africa's leaders made the same arguments a generation ago
when they launched the idea of "African socialism," the beautiful dream behind which a number of oppressive
antimaterialism, and traditionalism is stronger here than anywhere else. But is this rhetoric meaningful, or is it
merely rhetoric? To what extent have American Indian tribal governments achieved the ideals of community
responsibility and ecological stewardship so often expressed in public debates?
Are they truly decolonized at
Because of its role as the one surviving super-power at the end of the Cold
War, with the financial leverage to determine the future of the United
Nations, the US has inordinate control over the way the Draft Declaration
is being worded and what exactly the document will imply as policy. The
United States intends that its own model for treatment of indigenous peoples
should be emulated by other states, and therefore that the Draft
Declaration should reflect the order of US Indian Law. The agenda is not merely to
define a simple moral order; more important, the US is attempting to create a broader,
more encompassing hegemony that minimizes the possibility that
indigenous peoples might actually be protagonists of their own
destinies.The rationale behind US policy is quite apparently that, as the biggest stakeholder in
the world economic system, it believes it has the right to limit the number
of nations that can achieve independent statehood. Each new state that comes into the
system taxes the managerial resources of the system, because each one expects to increase its political and
economic power. Each new state demands the perquisites that correspond to becoming truly independent, to be
treated as a legitimate "people" in control of its own destiny, thus demonstrating to non-state actors like indigenous
peoples that self-determination might also be within their reach. Each new state must be kept at least marginally
satisfied in economic rewards, in order to be kept from returning to the socialist competition that has been
74
***Colonialism Scenario***
1. U.S. self-determination policies are modeled by other countries
encouraging global accommodation of indigenous rights and an end
of colonialism
Morris 99, Associate professor of political science at the University of Colorado, Denver, 1999, (Glenn T.,
International Law and Politics: Toward a Right to Self-Determination for Indigenous Peoples,
http://cwis.org/fwdp/International/int.txt)
Although this chapter has implications for the status of all indigenous peoples, its concentration is primarily within
the United States. This is because, in several ways ,
Colonialism and
oppression operate at a personal, psychological, and cultural level , as well as
in the realms of political and economic structures. The children of dysfunctional, abusive
parents grow up in a capricious world of arbitrary punishment , humiliation, and
powerlessness. They suffer from insecurity, low self-esteem, and a loss of trust in others.
Colonialism is the abuse of an entire civilization for generations. It
creates a culture of mistrust, defensiveness, and "self-rejection ." The effect is
If there is a fundamental cause of American Indian isolationism, it is 500 years of abuse.
greatest on women, who already are suffering from patriarchal domination in some cultures, and in others, are
which not only pursued an aggressive and intrusive policy of cultural assimilation for more than a century, but also
has preserved a particularly self-confident cultural arrogance to this day, denying Indians the recognition that they
need to begin healing themselves.
The negative effects of cultural abuse are proportional to the thoroughness
75
76
For indigenous peoples, selfdetermination--which is enshrined in Article 3 of the Draft Declaration--has been justified in
terms of cultural identity, vulnerability, and history, justifications which are discussed
in more detail below. The claim to self-determination is grounded in the status of
indigenous peoples as peoples and the fact that they live under "internal
colonialism," a process "structurally indistinguishable from classic
colonialism" for which the remedy "has always been self-determination ." 79
What further rights are justified by the right to self-determination is [End Page 1033] disputed. Howard Berman
argues that the Draft Declaration neither grants nor forecloses the possibility of political independence. He notes,
however, that while some indigenous peoples have defined their rights in terms of external self-determination, [f]or
the most part . . . indigenous participants have taken a functional approach to self-determination without proposing
as the right to
control their institutions, territories, resources, social orders and cultures
without external domination or interference, and the right to establish
their relationships with the dominant society . . . on the basis of consent .
a particular formula for its ultimate implementation. They have posed self-determination
Control and consent are the principal concepts underlying this approach. 80 The terms of the Draft Declaration
emphasize such consent and control, providing, for example, that indigenous peoples have the right to participate
in the state's political processes as well as to develop their own decision making institutions, that states shall obtain
the free and informed consent of indigenous peoples before implementing measures that affect them, and that
indigenous peoples have the right to control their lands, their intellectual and cultural property, and the
membership of their communities. 81 Moreover, indigenous people, "as a specific form of exercising their right to
self-determination," have the right to autonomy or self-government in a variety of areas, such as internal and local
77
the right to
self-determination is in itself a human right, and in many of those states that recognize it
as such, the quest to improve their global status becomes an overriding goal
that may temporarily subsume other rights. Other states see the imposition of unilateral
rate status to which they see themselves consigned by wealthy imperialists. In a very real sense,
economic sanctions as an attempt by the United States to impose its will upon them in violation of their human
it is
unacceptable to say that the invasion of one aspect of freedom is of no
import because there have been invasions of so many other aspects. That
road leads to chaos, tyranny, despotism, and the end of all human
aspiration . Ask Solzhenitsyn. Ask Milovan Djilas. In sum, if one believes in freedom as a supreme value and
the Proper ordering; principle for any society aiming to maximize spiritual and material welfare, then every
invasion of freedom must be emphatically identified and resisted with
undying spirit.
to bear in mind David Hume's observation: " It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." Thus,
In the name of survival, all manner of social and political evils have been
committed against the rights of individuals, including the right to life.
The purported threat of Communist domination has for over two decades fueled the drive of militarists for everlarger defense budgets, no matter what the cost to other social needs. During World War II, native JapaneseAmericans were herded, without due process of law, to detention camps. This policy was later upheld by the
Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States (1944) in the general context that a threat to national security can
justify acts otherwise blatantly unjustifiable. The survival of the Aryan race was one of the official legitimations
78
of Nazism. Under the banner of survival, the government of South Africa imposes a ruthless apartheid, heedless
of the most elementary human rights. The Vietnamese war has seen one of the greatest of the many absurdities
tolerated in the name of survival: the destruction of villages in order to save them. But it is not only in a political
setting that survival has been evoked as a final and unarguable value. The main rationale B. F. Skinner offers in
Beyond Freedom and Dignity for the controlled and conditioned society is the need for survival. For Jacques
Monod, in Chance and Necessity, survival requires that we overthrow almost every known religious, ethical and
political system. In genetics, the survival of the gene pool has been put forward as sufficient grounds for a
forceful prohibition of bearers of offensive genetic traits from marrying and bearing children. Some have even
suggested that we do the cause of survival no good by our misguided medical efforts to find means by which
those suffering from such common genetically based diseases as diabetes can live a normal life, and thus
procreate even more diabetics. In the field of population and environment, one can do no better than to cite Paul
Ehrlich, whose works have shown a high dedication to survival, and in its holy name a willingness to
contemplate governmentally enforced abortions and a denial of food to surviving populations of nations which
have not enacted population-control policies. For all these reasons it is possible to counterpoise over against the
point goes deeper than that. It is directed even at a legitimate concern for survival, when that concern is
allowed to reach an intensity which would ignore, suppress or destroy other fundamental human rights and
need for survival is basic to man, and if survival is the precondition for any and all human achievements, and if
no other rights make much sense without the premise of a right to lifethen how will it be possible to honor and
act upon the need for survival without, in the process, destroying everything in human beings which makes
79
self-determination is
merely a tool through which decolonization of geographically distinct
territories can occur. External self-determination means decolonization via
the salt-water thesis and necessitates statehood; internal self-determination means
freedom from foreign influence, most notably after decolonization has
been achieved. Indigenous peoples, who do not live in dependant territories or colonies, are thus excluded
from self-determination. 24 Hannum also argues that the United Nations focus on independence has
encouraged state governments to equate all claims for self-determination
with independence and secession. Making this link in domestic negotiations may inhibit the
determination fairs under the definitions offered thus far. For Hurst Hannum,
resolution of claims that are not as wholly incompatible as they may first appear.25 Given this tendency, Hannum
argues that as indigenous peoples argue for rights, they should use other, less emotionally volatile terms, such as
self-governance. True
Indigenous peoples
seeking recognition of their right to self-determination fare better under
Umozurikes vision of internal self-determination, but his particular use of terms like state, nations,
would permit action infringing on the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the state.
and peoples muddles the application of this limited right of self-determination, roughly paralleling what Neuberger
calls small self-determination. Nations for Umozurike seem to be states and externally dependant territories,
states are non-dependant political units, and peoples are minorities within states.27 How then do the rights of
peoples and nations differ? Indigenous peoples would most likely be excluded from external self-determination and
could find themselves with only a minimum of internal self-determination depend ing on the definitions given to
these terms. The highly contested definition of self-determination, minorities, and peoples contributes to the
confusion. The meanings attached to some terms, however, pose a real problem for indigenous peoples, especially
because the international community has not recognized the peoplehood of what the UN refers to as indigenous
populations. Gudmunder Alfredsson, a human rights scholar at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and
Humanitarian Law, offers five possible meanings for self-determination: 28 1. the right of a people to determine its
international status, including the right to independence, sometimes referred to as external self-determination; 2.
the right of a state population to determine the form of government and to participate in government, sometimes
extended to include democratization or majority rule and sometimes called internal self-determination; 3. the right
of a state to territorial integrity and non-violation of its boundaries, and to govern its internal affairs without
external interference; 4. the right of a minority within or even across state lines to be free from non-discrimination,
but possibly the right to cultural, educational, social and economic autonomy for the preservation of group
identities. land added to this list of special rights; and 5. the right of a state, especially claimed by the developing
countries, to cultural, social and economic development. The examples of what self-determination can mean and
[has] been used to mean offered by Alfredsson do not sufficiently address the reality of peoples and nations within
states. Alfredsson appears to equate people with external self-determination, state populations with internal selfdetermination, states with protection of territorial integrity, and minority populations within oracross state lines
The reasons Alfredsson offers for this denial that are similar to those offered by the other scholars: the territorial
integrity and sovereignty of the states that run international forums and dictate their laws cannot be violated.
80
Human rights are a critical source of legitimacy and soft power (power
only
legitimate state in the modern world is the liberal democratic state that "
along with being "properly elected," also "protects a wide range of internationallyrecognized human rights." n82 In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 2001, the U.S. needs
the "moral authority" that comes with obedience to internationallyrecognized human rights to preserve its hegemony. n83 As Professor Henkin reminds
[*430]
not based on display of sheer military strength). n81 Informed assessments affirm that " the
us, international human rights laws and institutions became necessary because national laws and institutions are
never fully effective. n84 As he explains, The purpose of international concern with human rights is to make
national rights effective under national laws and through national institutions. The purpose of international law
relating to human rights and of international human rights institutions is to make national human rights law and
if national
laws and institutions were fully effective - there would be no need for
international human rights laws and institutions. Since we do not live in
an ideal world where national laws and institutions are fully effective, the
U.S., like any other country, must abide by international human rights
standards.
institutions effective instruments for securing and ensuring human rights. In an ideal world -
81
granting Kosovo independence would set off a disastrous chain reaction of demands for the same prize from
Etzioni as one such writer. But instead of debating Etzioni, Nanda evades the answer dismissing Etzionis ideas that
it may be argued that this hypothesis remains untested and lacks validity. So he changes the focus of the paper
to study the mechanism under which all these claims can be peacefully pursued and resolved. Eric Kolodner takes
determination creates problems, because external self-determination is much more difficult to achieve both
82
83
the President of the United States gave an urgent message about the
lagging economy, the need to create jobs, to put people to work and to
rebuild decaying roads and bridges. On behalf of the Department of the Interior, we have a
duty to carry this out for in Indian communities. Now, the piece of background, I wanna
Last week,
give the baseline. We have around 145,000 roads in Indian -- in Indian communities, 31,000 of those are BIA,
Bureau of Indian Affairs roads, that's about 22 percent and 20,000 of those are unpaved (ph) which means that twothirds of the BIA roads are automatically considered inadequate for BIA standards. We need investment in our -- our
Transportation we have invested over $6 billion in -- into infrastructure within Indian communities. Another good
example of our investment into -- in Indian communities is ARRA. Under ARRA about 6500 jobs were created in
Indian communities, that was over 800 projects, you know, estimated to be around $440 million into these projects,
and we had an obligation (inaudible) on behalf of the Department of Interior of 99.9 percent and 90 percent of
ambulance drivers, school buses, every day traffic and to add on -- on top of this -- this past few years in Indian
country have been some of the worst with floods, rains, snow and natural disasters in Indian country. These national
disasters emphasize the need for safe roads within Indian communities. Mr. Baxter just testified that the annual
fatality rate on Indian Reservation Roads is more than twice the national average. So, what all these facts add up to
is that we have a big job to do. We have a big job to invest in infrastructure which will lead to jobs and safety. Now,
this is not just a responsibility of the Department of Interior. It's not just a responsibility of the Department of
Transportation. This is a responsibility of the Federal Government and Indian tribes. We
look forward to working together with Mr. Jefferson Keel from NCAI from Chairman Murphy, from Standing Rock. We
look forward to working together with them, and we also look forward to working together with state, counties and
local entities. And especially we look forward to working together with this committee on any SAFETEA-LU
reauthorization where we can offer specific recommendations to this committee to make sure this happen because
in the Indian country right now, tribal individuals need employment. Tribal
companies need to be put to work. Tribal communities are waiting for
infrastructure development. Roads and bridges are there that need to be repaired. There are
projects in the Southwest Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains in Alaska that needs to be completed. We need
to provide job opportunities and safe roads for Indian people. Thank you.
84
sustainable economic development that's something that is very important to
Indian communities and as this committee is aware unemployment is high in many
tribal communities creating a sustaining jobs or significant issue for travelers and for our nation.
Transportation infrastructure is critical in addressing these issues because
everyone wants to create jobs, but the question is what's the best investment? How
can you spend federal funds in a way that creates jobs and also spurs new development in the private sector that
multiplier effects with new investments from business, better accessibility to markets and more
employment,
the productivity of land, capital and labor increases with improvements in transportation.
Indian country gets more out of every transportation dollar because so much of what we do is infrastructure
development. When we pave the dirt road or building new bridge, there are immediate and profound effects on the
economy on the businesses and on the lives of the very people that we are -- represent. But while (ph) on the
subject of jobs -- that jobs in tribal transportation provide training and skill development for our tribal members in
the transportation construction and planning fields (ph) but many tribes have the capacity today to hire architects,
engineers and planners to help us develop those systems that we need. Some tribes do not but the fact is many
tribes are engaged in that activity as we speak. We need more support for the Tribal Technical Assistance Program
which is the only technical assistance program that provides -- that provides education and training to tribal
governments or transportation road projects. Training and education is important to assist in building of viable
transportation workforce. Last week, President Obama proposed the American Jobs Act to establish a National
Infrastructure Bank. We'd like to have our own tribal infrastructure bank. This would increase the -- the ability of
tribes to obtain funding for a broad range of infrastructure projects especially when federal spending is becoming
American Indians looks forward to partnering with the committee to ensure the tribes are included in developing
and paving a way for tribal transportation. Thank you very much.
Political leaders and financial experts emphasized job creation and the
environment during a roundtable discussion Monday in Denver on transportation issues,
but they noted that new projects face financial hurdles. Proposals included improving
freight and transit rail systems, connecting rural areas to services such as health care and investing in green
bridge collapse in August 2007 that killed 13 people. We have to play offense and defense at the same time,
Rybak said. It should not be forgotten that [the bridge collapse] was not an act of God it was a failure of man.
In 2005, an American Society of Civil Engineers report estimated that $1.6 trillion in funding was needed over a
five-year period to fix maintenance shortcomings such as the ones that caused the Minnesota bridge collapse.
While all agreed on the types of initiatives that are needed, panelists did not find consensus on funding sources.
They all expressed the need for a private-public partnership, but the question of where to raise federal funding
caused anxiety among the elected officials. One key issue was that the current system for infrastructure funding,
implemented in the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, relies on gas taxes for revenue. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.)
called any attempt by Congress to raise the gas tax dead on arrival. But Gov. Ed Rendell (D-Pa.) said that with or
without the gas tax something had to be done to bridge the funding gap, noting that the $1.6 trillion cited by the
ASCE report would only cover maintenance, not new projects. When I became governor I had to raise $2.4 billion
in taxes, Rendell said. When re-election came around people arent stupid one incumbent lost and she voted
against the tax increase. This is the time we have to challenge the American people. Folks, you get what you pay
85
The first priority of the country should be a return to full employment. The
underemployment of labor is a massive waste and, more than anything else, jeopardizes our
countrys future, as the skills of our young get wasted and alienation grows. As the work of Jayadev5 as
well as the IMF6 convincingly shows, austerity in America will almost surely weaken
growth. Moreover, as the work of Ferguson and Johnson7 shows, we should view with suspicion the claim (e.g.
by Rogoff and Reinhardt) that exceeding a certain a debt-to-GDP ratio will trigger a crash. Even if this notion were
countries of Europe, there is no risk that we will not pay what we owe. To put it bluntly, we promise to repay dollars,
consistent with my earlier conclusion that this debate is not about the size of the deficit, but about the size of the
government and the progressivity of the tax system.
86
may
external conflict. Political science literature has contributed a moderate degree of attention to the impact of
economic decline and the security and defense behavior of interdependent states. Research in this vein has been
considered at systemic, dyadic and national levels. Several notable contributions follow. First, on the systemic
level, Pollins (2008) advances Modelski and Thompsons (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding that
rhythms in the global economy are associated with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often bloody
economic crisis
could usher in a redistribution of relative power (see 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
transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next. As such, exogenous shocks such as
declining power (Werner, 1999). Seperately, 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, Copelands (1996, 2000) theory of trade expectations suggests that future
expectation of trade is a significant variable in understanding economic conditions and security behaviours of
states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific benefits from trade so long as they have an
optimistic view of future trade relations, However, if the expectations of future trade decline, particularly for difficult
to replace items such as energy resources, the likelihood for conflict increases, as states will be inclined to use force
to gain access to those resources. Crisis could potentially be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on
its own or because it triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states. 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 conflict, particularly during periods of economic downturn. They
write, The linkages between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing.
(1995), and Blomberg, Hess, 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 (2009) suggest
that the tendency towards diversionary tactics are greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the
fact that democratic leaders are generally more susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic
correlated 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. This implied
connection between integration, crisis 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
interdependence with a decrease in the likelihood of external conflict such as those mentioned in the first
paragraph of this chapter.
87
Solvency
88
"Roads in Indian Country are not safe," testified Tribal Chairman Charles W. Murphy of the
Standing Rock Sioux Tribe before the US Committee on Indian Affairs on Thursday during the "Transportation: Paving
the Way for Jobs, Infrastructure, and Safety in Native Communities" hearing. That message was heard over and over
by those who made testimony. "Many
nationally. By contrast, in Indian Country, the number of fatal crashes has increased 52.5 percent during the same
time period. One positive note to come out the Senate hearing was the fact that some 6,500 construction jobs were
created from the American Recovery Act, commonly referred to as the Economic Stimulus Package. Even with the
going into the community, our headquarters at Fort Yates, North Dakota. Fort Yates is a community that takes care
within Standing Rock because that reservation is so large that we have to use snowplows in the winter time to take
the ambulance out to bring our people into the hospital into Fort Yates, where sometimes this maybe a round trip of
89
our reservations and also create more jobs within our reservation. We have
again - we have dialysis people that we have to worry about, not only in summer time but the winter time. Like I
stated earlier, if that road should wash out, we would have been - and Bismarck would not be able to take those 64
people that were on dialysis too. So we - there was no way for us to get him off this island. So with that Mr.
Chairman, I - I have written testimony and I support what was said earlier about direct funding to tribes. I - I and we
need more infrastructure on the reservation. Thank you.
tribes. For the past six years, the Council of Large Land Based Tribes has been attempting to correct the
misinterpretation and misapplication by the BIA and the Federal Highway Administration of the enacted regulation
of the Indian Roads Program as contained in 25 CFR 170. This misinterpretation and misapplication manifests itself
as the uncontrolled implementation of the road inventory update process which is used to generate formula shares
for all tribes. Because of this uncontrolled implementation of the inventory update process, that part of the
inventory which generates formula share amounts for the land based tribes has been reduced from 72 to 76
percent in 2006 to less than 20 percent in 2011 and is declining at an alarming rate. Mr. Chairman, I ask you to
the problems identified above are as a result of a negotiated rule making process. First of all, that process was
the
BIA took those recommendations and on their own, arbitrarily and unilaterally made changes before they
were finalized and placed in the Federal Register. The impact of those changes resulted in
reducing the funding allocations as much as 60 percent to land based
tribes by allowing some tribes to indiscriminately add state, county roads, and proposed roads into their IRR
inventory without justification. Roads on - on Indian reservations are considered federal
roads due to the fact that Indian reservations are considered federal lands
and the federal government is responsible for constructing and
maintaining these roads. State and county roads are not considered federal roads and
they have separate funding sources and should not be siphoning off critical funding
meant for Indian Reservations. To allow the diversion of funds away from
Land Based Reservation to continue is a travesty and land based Tribes
will never be able to reduce the tragic statistics that are discussed in previous testimony
flawed but as importantly it must be noted that after the rule making committee issued its recommendations,
and testimony that I will be submitting in a written presentations. Allowing State and County roads into the IRR
system simply to generate funding is siphoning off critical road construction funding for tribes whose only source of
funding is the IRR program. Based on the above, the Wind River tribes have identified several items that must be
incorporated into a new reauthorization bill in order to make 25 CFR 170 a usable rule. Replace the Tribal
Transportation Allocation Methodology, TTAM. The Tribal Transportation Allocation Methodology, TTAM, as contained
in 25 CFR 170, has been so misconstrued by BIA TTAM that it favors only those direct service tribes whose trust
lands are surrounded by high volume state and county roads and has resulted in pitting Tribes against Tribes. The
most fair and equitable solution to this problem is for the secretary of the Interior to suspend 25 CFR 170 until it can
be corrected to reflect the actual intent of Congress.
90
Chaco 11,
Job creation is an integral part of the Navajo's current agenda, just as it is across
the entire nation. Unlike the majority of the country, Navajo and other rural or large
land-based tribes have a unique problem. Tribal member access to job
opportunities because of inadequate roadways. For 2011, the Navajo Nation used ARRA
funding for eight separate road projects on the Navajo Nation including Western Agency,
Eastern Agency, Fort Defiance, and Shiprock. All funding was used within the allotted timeframe and to date all
people in accessing employment opportunities, receiving all forms of public service and obtaining basic human
Once the roads are built, the question for the Navajo
is "how do we maintain them"? Currently, the transportation
funding received by the Navajo Nation is never specifically for road maintenance,
meaning that the roads can be built but not maintained. This is a major
obstacle for the Navajo Nation. Unlike, state governments that have an - an array methods for generating
revenue to assist in road maintenance, the Navajo Nation is not so fortunate. This is a problem that is
unique - not only is the problem unique in Navajo, but is a reality across Indian country. And stems
necessities, it is only half the battle.
Nation and all tribes,
from systematic inequalities in taxation - taxation methods and economic development. Until the underlying issues
are addressed, discretionary
maintenance. Mr. Chairman it is - it is common - it is common knowledge throughout Indian country that
there is a growing great concern over the definition of Indian reservation road for transportation funding pursposes,
specifically proposed and access roads as described in 25 CFR Part 170. While I will not go into great length on this
issue, I will state that the Navajo Nation does firmly believe that the roads which are continuously and
systematically maintained by the state and county governments, should be excluded from the definition of true
Separate funding based on total number of BIA and tribal road miles and bridges for the road maintenance and
there must be legislation addressing the definition of Indian reservation roads under 25 CFR Part 170. I would like to
thank you, Mr. Chairman Akaka and other esteemed members of the committee for the inviting me here to speak.
The Navajo Nation understands that this is a difficult economy, many hard decisions have to be made that will
91
It
took over a year to get funding flowing in and all of these gentlemen are exactly correct. The
biggest need is that direct access for immediate emergency funds to come in to the reservation. Currently,
we have to wait for the Federal Highway representative to make it to the
reservation, sometimes that takes months. Then we have to wait for the partnership with
HOSTLER: Senator Akaka, I managed over two emergencies in the Hoopa tribe for approximately three years.
the Federal Highway representative and the regional road engineer, that also takes weeks at times. Then we have
of funding and again Mr. Chaca just mentioned the BIA maintenance money. If the roads have not been maintained
properly for any reason, whether its lack of funds or lack of time, those roads are not eligible because they - they
say if the maintenance would have been done, those roads would be eligible and those assessments can move
I didn't have funding to manage 300 miles of roads on the Hoopa tribe, I
was only funded at 11 percent of need, then I could not - I was not eligible for those roads to
be reimburse for emergencies through URPA. So, there's a series of things that need to be
corrected in the coordination with the agencies and that direct access to
the tribe. Thank you.
forward. If - if
good working relationship with the State Department of Transportation and those tribes do a very good job of -- of
managing those programs and working in partnership with them. There are some tribes who do not and do not
enjoy that -- that same level of cooperation. So, I hope that answers your question
roads, the bridges that are structurally deficient. It affects not only the
safety or our ability to attract businesses to our communities but as a fact
of the matter is that many of our people depending on -- depend on those
roads and some of our citizens don't have adequate transportation to get to
and from work. So, the needs there are multiplied by the fact that -- that when a bridge or road
washes out, for instance, we have a natural disaster, we don't have the funding to -- to
because of the
92
repair those roads in a timely manner those needs then are exacerbated. So, the -- the
need cannot be understated. I'd like to point out also that last week the President proposed in the -in the American Jobs Act the establishment of a National Infrastructure Bank. We believe that a tribal
infrastructure bank would -- would work thereby giving the tribes the ability
to leverage dollars that -- that we received. You know, we were proposed of the $10 million
which is relatively small in terms of -- of -- of a bank but for Indian country would be
significant and that we can take that and -- and leverage those dollars and
make some -- some improvements -- necessary improvements that we have.
maintain or
93
the unfortunate thing is, with the - with - as Mr. Red Tomahawk can attest, is we get
in order to get the money, you have to spend your existing IRR,
reservation roads money. So that doesn't let you build many projects that
you had plan for in the years ahead to get your money back and put those
- those funds back into the system. So, it really hinders, a double whammy sort to speak on
your road projects. So, we're very limited in projects we could perform this
year because we do not have the allocation or the funds available. And with
the present system of funding has been - been dribbled out to us in appropriations in
a segment process that really defeats our long-term process of being able to
complete our projects. And that's a real hindrance. Mr. Chairman? Thank you.
the damages but
the money but
Even though some money is flowing, it is still not even close to the
amount needed to solve this dilemma
National Congress of American Indians 12, Credit: National Congress of American
Indians. Transportation Indian Country Budget Request FY 13 http://www.ncai.org/resources/ncai-publications/indiancountry-budget-request/fy2013/FY2013_Budget_Transportation.pdf
94
These projects will immediately create over 21,500 jobs and will
inject a much-needed stimulus into the Native American economy. The
Tribal Transit Grant Program has been highly successful in its early years.
However, the funding awarded has not met the transit needs for tribal
communities. Funding for transit projects not only creates immediate jobs
and contracting opportunities, but will also improve citizen participation in
the economic system. According to the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), applicants for FY2006 and
projects.
FY2008 a total of $66 million was requested with $30 million funded. We are requesting the $36 million in unfunded
need for tribal transit.
95
27 percent of
bridges within Indian Reservation Roads programs are classified as deficient
and the current backlog to bring all Indian Reservation Roads to adequate
condition is $69 billion. How would you say the state of the roads and bridges in Indian country
FRANKEN: Yup. That's what I thought. Huh. Mr. Baxter in your testimony you say that
compares to those in the rest of the United States? BAXTER: As far as the percentage of deficient bridges compared
to the states, for example on the state side, there's 24 percent deficient bridges, for local government it's 27
percent deficient bridges which is about the same overall number as the tribal bridges. The biggest difference is the
number -- the percentage that are structurally deficient. On the state side of the 24 percent, 97.9 percent are
structurally deficient. For the local percentage, 27 percent, 15 percent of that is structurally deficient. But in Indian
96
Add-Ons
97
Funding new IRR road and bridge projects protects the health and safety of
everyone traveling through Tribal communities. The leading cause of
death among Tribal members is motor vehicle accidents, and the fourth-leading cause is
pedestrian accidents. The high rates of both pedestrian and auto fatalities have
been increasing over the past several years as Tribal populations grow and
tourism brings increased travelers to Tribal communities. The average number of
fatal automobile crashes on Indian reservations from 1975-1979 was just
under 187 per year, while the average number for 1998-2002 increased
29.5 percent to 239 per year. The terrible state of many IRR roads and
bridges, too few traffic control devices, and too few traffic lights all
contribute to the high rate of death through pedestrian- and auto-related
accidents.
98
2AC Answers
99
***States CP 2AC***
Only the federal government has authority over Indian affairs
Suagee 98, Dean B Suagee, lawyer specializing in Native American law and environmental law, May 19,
1998, Renewable Energy in Indian Country: Options for Tribal Governments, Renewable Energy in Indian Country,
Issue Brief 10, Lexis
100
101
***Politics DA 2AC***
102
Obama is committed to
strengthening and building on the nation-to-nation relationship between the United
States and tribal nations, Teehee said. The fall conference will give tribal leaders an
opportunity to assist the president in developing an agenda for Indian country. A
member of the Cherokee Nation, she has a sturdy resume of experience as an advocate for Indian country during her student years and in
her work in Washington. She received a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Okla.,
and a Juris Doctor from the University of Iowa College of Law. While in law school, Teehee was honored with the Bureau of National
Affairs Award and served in leadership positions in the National Native American Law Student Association and the Iowa Native
American Law Student Association. Teehee worked for the Democratic National Committee as deputy director of Native American
Outreach for the committees first Indian desk. She also has held various positions with the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, including
law clerk in the Division of Law and Justice. She served as director of Native American outreach for the Presidential Inaugural
Committee for President Clintons second inauguration. Since January 1998, Teehee has been senior adviser to Congressman Dale
Kildee, D-Mich., co-chair of the House of Representatives Native American Caucus. President Obama has made an excellent choice in
Kim Teehee. I have worked with Kim for over a decade, and I have always found her to be a thoughtful, dedicated and passionate
advocate for our Native American population, Kildee said. The
103
Later this year, Attorney General Eric Holder will convene a Tribal Nations Listening
Conference to confer with tribal leaders on how to address the chronic problems of
public safety in Indian country and other important issues affecting tribal
communities, Perrelli said. A series of regional summits to seek tribal representatives input in setting the agenda will be held
before the conference. Among the issues to be discussed are law enforcement policy and
personnel; communications and consultation; grants and technical assistance;
detention facilities; federal prosecution in Indian country; tribal court development;
domestic violence; drug courts and substance abuse; federal litigation involving
tribes; and civil rights. No locations or dates have been announced.
104
Non UQ Link
The Link is non-unique Government giving money to Indian Country now
Capriccioso 09 [Rob Capriccioso, More stimulus funds designated toward Indian housing, 6-26-09 Staff Writer @ Indian Country
Today. http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/politics/49178652.html]
WASHINGTON, D.C. -
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has announced that IHS will release
$500 million allocated for improvements in Indian health as part of the stimulus act.
These Recovery Act funds will provide critical assistance to American Indian and Alaska Native communities, said newly-appointed
IHS Director Yvette Roubideaux, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. These funds
105
because of his history working on their issues as a past chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.
106
107
real problem for the moment is the lack of quality, objectivity and journalistic
integrity CNN has shown in covering the Obama administration, the same lack of
quality we saw from all media outlets during George Bush's presidency, and a lack of quality that can be
seen as directly responsible for many of the disasters Bush brought about, since had the
press taken a more responsible role in covering Bush's failures and reported honestly about them,
starting with his failures regarding 911 there is a good chance many of Bush's disasters would not have occurred
since he wouldn't have had the political capital to carry them out. CNN has shown, as
they did with Bush, a distinct willingness to go into the tank for Obama and completely
abdicate any journalistic responsibility to the truth. During the AIG bonus scandal when it was discovered that Obama
knew about the bonuses being paid in advance and even gave the go ahead to pay them, CNN heaped most of the blame on
Chris Dodd who, at White House urging, put in the loophole that allowed the bonuses to be paid.
108
109
110
***Spending DA 2AC***
111
09, a consultant in policy communications. Benefits Will Jump Start Economic Recovery January 29, 2009
http://povertyandpolicy.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/benefits-will-jump-start-economic-recovery/
The Coalition on Human Needs has done us all a great service. It has issued a summary of the
provisions in the House economic recovery package that will benefit low-income
people and others at immediate risk of hardship. Anyone whos tried to read the legislationor even the
Appropriations Committees summaryknows how useful this is. CHN also identifies shortcomings in the package, including the short
shrift given to affordable housing. No funding for additional housing vouchers, despite the rising tide of homelessness. No funding to
support the construction of new affordable housing, despite the job creation potential. To me, these are glaring gaps. However, CHNs
most important message is that
Economic Policy
Institute has crunched the numbers another way. Its analysis for CHN shows that the food stamp provisions
in the House package will save or create about 185,000 jobs. Think grocery store clerks, drivers for
distribution companies, workers in food processing plants, etc. Experts, including Zandi and the Congressional Budget Office, say that
tax cuts are a less effective economic stimulus. CBO is particularly unenthusiastic about reductions in the corporate tax rate. As it says,
businesses will not spend more money on labor or produce more just because they have more after-tax income. They
need
increased consumer demand. And thats what the proposed food stamps increase and
other measures targeted to low-income people will deliver. Nevertheless, Congressional Republicans
want less spending and more tax relief in the economic recovery package. And on the House side, they clearly wont budge. Not a single
Republican voted in favor of the package the House passed yesterday. Now, theres a reasonable argument to be made for paring down
the spending part to focus it more on jump starting the economy and perhaps also for expanding the tax part. But substituting tax relief
for the major measures CHN endorses should be a non-starter. Fortunately, it looks as if it will be.
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add 0.1pc to
a recent study from the University of California San Diego, which suggests that government spending
programs can be very useful in revitalizing the economy. In a year-old study now being updated to
reflect the ongoing economic crisis, UCSD economist Valerie Ramey took a look at government spending programs from the
Eisenhower era through the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Her conclusion: For
create
jobs and stir economic growth, which is the point of the bill. To assuage some critics and to fulfill Obama's
campaign promises the bill also includes $275 billion in tax cuts, including reductions to the alternative minimum tax, income taxes
and corporate taxes. But several studies last week agreed with Ramey's findings at UCSD :
spending creates GDP both directly, by putting idle resources to work, and indirectly,
since those businesses and workers receiving extra income will then be able to spend more, he
said. Transfers to state and local governments would generate $1.40 for every $1 spent, he said, partly by preventing further
job losses.
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2AC
114
115
No Link - Public-Private partnerships cover funding & start up for investments
Lane 11 (Petra Todorovich, director of America 2050, a national urban planning initiative, assistant visiting professor at the Pratt Institute Graduate Center for
Planning and the Environment and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Eno Transportation Foundation, Masters in City and Regional Planning from the
Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University; Daniel Schned, associate planner for America 2050 at Regional Plan Association part-time
lecturer at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public; and Robert Lane, senior fellow for urban design at Regional Plan Association and a founding
principal of Plan & Process LLP. Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, High-Speed Rail: International Lessons for U.S. Policy Makers,
September 2011, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Policy Focus Report)
Public-private partnerships (sometimes referred to as P3s) generally constitute any arrangement between a
government sponsor and a private sector entity in which the private entity provides one or more stages of the project
delivery processdesigning, building, operating, owning or leasing, maintaining, and nancing parts of the
infrastructure. These partnerships offer the benet of exibility to suit the specic needs of the public sector while
encouraging different models of private involvement and investment (Geddes 2011). Public-private partnerships
are considered an especially attractive solution for nancing infrastructure projects . For example, the Florida
Department of Transportation was already in the process of nding a private partner to design, build, operate,
maintain, and nance the states high-speed rail line before the project was cancelled in February 2011 (Haddad
2010).
Infrastructure failing now and will crush the economy - minimal investment is needed aff solvency
outweighs the link
CEG 11 (Construction Equipment Guide, American Society of Civil Engineers Releases U.S. Economy, Family
Budgets Report, 11-28-11, http://www.constructionequipmentguide.com/American-Society-of-Civil-EngineersReleases-US-Economy-Family-Budgets-Report/17267/)
American Businesses and Workers Will Suffer The report shows that failing infrastructure will drive the cost of
doing business up by adding $430 billion to transportation costs in the next decade. It will cost firms more to ship
goods, and the raw materials they buy will cost more due to increased transportation costs. Productivity across the
business sector also will tumble. Those increased costs will cause businesses to underperform by $240 billion over
the next decade, which will drive the prices of goods up. As a result, U.S. exports will fall by $28 billion, including
79 of 93 tradable commodities. Ten sectors of the U.S. economy account for more than half of this unprecedented
loss in export value among them key technology sectors like machinery, medical devices, communications
equipment, which produces much of this countrys innovations. America also would lose jobs in high-value sectors
as business income goes down. Almost 877,000 jobs would be lost by 2020, primarily in the high-value,
professional, business and medical sectors which are vital to Americas knowledge-based service economy, the
report said. Ultimately, Americans will get paid less . While the economy would lose jobs, those who are able to
find work will find their paychecks cut. The cost to businesses will reduce the productivity and competitiveness of
American firms relative to global competitors significantly. By 2020, American families will lose more than $7,000
because of the ripple effects that will occur throughout the economy, said Steven Landau of the EDR Group.
Business will have to divert increasing portions of earned income to pay for transportation delays and vehicle
repairs, draining money that would otherwise be invested in innovation and expansion . Families Will Have a
Lower Standard of Living. A lack of investment in transportation infrastructure would inflict a double whammy on
American families who would see their household incomes fall by $60 a month by 2020, while having to spend $30
per month more for goods. The total cost to families would exact about $10,600 per family between now and 2020,
equal to $1,600 per year on household budgets. Modest Investment Needed The report estimates that in order to
bring the nations surface transportation infrastructure up to tolerable levels, policymakers would need to invest
approximately $1.7 trillion between now and 2020 in the nations highways and transit systems. The United States is
currently on track to spend a portion of that $877 billion during the same timeframe. The infrastructure
funding gap equals $846 billion over 9 years or $94 billion per year. Small investments in infrastructure , equal to
about 60 percent of what Americans spend on fast food each year, would: Protect 1.1 million jobs Save
Americans nearly two billion hours in travel time each year and Deliver an average of $1,060 to each family, and
Protect $2,600 in GDP for every man, woman and child in the United States The report, the first of four scheduled
by the society, examined the countrys surface transportation infrastructure. Future reports will examine the state of
the nations infrastructure as it relates to water and, wastewater delivery and treatment; energy transmission; and
airports and marine ports.
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Deficit spending will not cause US collapse, job creation outweighs the economic impact
Stiglitz 12 (Joseph E. Stiglitz, University Professor at Columbia University, and a Nobel laureate in Economics,
Stimulating the Economy in an Era of Debt and Deficit, The Economists Voice
http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/ev March, 2012)
The first priority of the country should be a return to full employment . The underemployment of labor is a massive
waste and, more than anything else, jeopardizes our countrys future, as the skills of our young get wasted and
alienation grows. As the work of Jayadev5 as well as the IMF6 convincingly shows, austerity in America will almost
surely weaken growth . Moreover, as the work of Ferguson and Johnson7 shows, we should view with suspicion the
claim (e.g. by Rogoff and Reinhardt) that exceeding a certain a debt-to-GDP ratio will trigger a crash. Even if this
notion were true on average, the U.S. is not an average country. It is a reserve currency country , with markets
responding to global instabilityeven when caused by the U.S.by lowering interest rates. The U.S. has managed
even bigger deficits. Unlike the countries of Europe, there is no risk that we will not pay what we owe. To put it
bluntly, we promise to repay dollars, and we control the printing presses. But a focus on the ratio of debt-to-GDP is
simply economic nonsense . No one would judge a firm by looking at its debt alone. Anyone claiming economic
expertise would want to look at the balance sheetassets as well as liabilities. Borrowing to invest is different from
borrowing for consumption. The failure of the deficit hawks to realize this is consistent with my earlier conclusion
that this debate is not about the size of the deficit, but about the size of the government and the progressivity of the
tax system.
-- No impact to food prices the poorest are insulated from global markets
Paarlberg 8 (Robert, Professor of Political Science Wellesley College, It's Not the Price that Causes Hunger,
The International Herald Tribune, 4-23, Lexis)
International prices of rice, wheat and corn have risen sharply, setting off violent urban protests in roughly a dozen countries in Asia, Africa and
Latin America. But is this a ''world food crisis?'' It is certainly a troubling instance of price instability in international commodity markets, leading
to social unrest among urban food-buyers. But we must be careful not to equate high crop prices with hunger around the world.
Most of the world's hungry people do not use international food markets, and most of those who use these markets
are not hungry. International food markets, like international markets for everything else, are used primarily by the prosperous
and secure, not the poor and vulnerable. In world corn markets, the biggest importer by far is Japan. Next comes the European Union. Next
comes South Korea. Citizens in these countries are not underfed. In the poor countries of Asia, rice is the most important staple , yet most Asian
countries import very little rice. As recently as March , India was keeping imported rice out of the country by imposing a 70 percent duty. Data on
the actual incidence of malnutrition reveal that the regions of the world where people are most hungry, in South Asia and SubSaharan Africa, are those that depend least on imports from the world market. Hunger is caused in these countries not by high
international food prices, but by local conditions, especially rural poverty linked to low productivity in farming. When
international prices are go up, the disposable income of some import-dependent urban dwellers is squeezed. But most of the
actual hunger takes place in the villages and in the countryside , and it persists even when international prices are low .
When hunger is measured as a balanced index of calorie deficiency, prevalence of underweight children and mortality rates for children under
five, we find that South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa in 2007 had hunger levels two times as high as in the developing countries of East Asia, four
times as high as in Latin America, North Africa or the Middle East, and five times as high as in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The poor in
South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are hungry even though their connections to high-priced international food markets are quite weak. In the
poorest developing countries of Asia, where nearly 400 million people are hungry, international grain prices are hardly a factor, since imports
supply only 4 percent of total consumption - even when world prices are low. Similarly in sub-Saharan Africa, only about 16 percent of grain
supplies have recently been imported, going mostly into the more prosperous cities rather than the impoverished countryside, with part arriving in
the form of donated food aid rather than commercial purchases at world prices. The region in Africa that depends on world markets most heavily
is North Africa, where 50 percent of grain supplies are imported. Yet food consumption in North Africa is so high (average per capita energy
consumption there is about 3,000 calories per day, comparable to most rich countries) that increased import prices may cause economic stress for
urban consumers (and perhaps even street demonstrations) but little real hunger. Import dependence is also high in Latin America (50 percent for
some countries) but again high world prices will not mean large numbers of hungry people, because per capita GDP in this region is five times
higher than in sub-Saharan Africa. There is a severe food crisis among the poor in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, but it does
not come from high world prices. Even in 2005 in sub-Saharan Africa, a year of low international crop prices, 23 out of 37 countries in the
region consumed less than their nutritional requirements. Africa's food crisis grows primarily out of the low productivity, year in
and year out, of the 60 percent of all Africans who plant crops and graze animals for a living. The average African smallholder farmer is a woman
who has no improved seeds, no nitrogen fertilizers, no irrigation and no veterinary medicine for her animals. Her crop yields are only one third as
high as in the developing countries of Asia, and her average income is only $1 a day.
-- Lack of infrastructure and distribution networks cause famine not high prices
Khosla 7 (Vinod, Founder Sun Microsystems and Khosla Ventures, Food versus Fuel or the Salve for Africa?,
http://www.khoslaventures.com/presentations/FOODvFUEL.pdf)
117
Despite its misplaced pessimism about corn-ethanol, the excerpted section does note that the advent of cellulosic
ethanol would mitigate the purported prices rises; as production capacity for cellulosic ethanol ramps up, it will be
competitive, even without further improvements in technology. Cellulosic ethanol will act as price-ceiling on corn
ethanol, much as corn ethanol can do for oil today. Nonetheless, the pessimism that the worlds poor starve because
we dont produce enough food is absurd. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) notes that there is more
food per-capita today than ever before the lack of infrastructure, income, and distribution networks are the real
causes of hunger, and not corn prices (indeed, the U.S exports just 17% of its corn production, and the majority of
even this exported crop is used for livestock feed). Instead of rebelling against corn ethanol, the developing world
(and Africa in particular) has been pushing the western world for agricultural subsidy reductions in the West, noting
that their farmers cannot compete (and earn income) against such heavily discounted products. Critics conjure up
images of starving children as innocent byproducts of corn ethanol; meanwhile, the EU actually pays farmers not to
grow food (and thus to reduce supply). The (subsidized) low prices of agricultural products like corn have made
foreign farmers in poor countries uneconomic producers. According to the New York Times (Aug 18, 2007),
CARE, the big global charity, had decided to stop selling subsidized American farm products in poor African
countries because the program was inefficient and undercut local farmers. Corn ethanol, by helping make corn
more economic to grow and hence reducing corn subsidies, is actually helping the poor.
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1AR
119
120
121
122
123
124
attackers suggests that the terrorists are either not trying very hard or are far less clever and capable than usually
depicted. Policymakers and the public at large should keep in mind the words of Glenn Carle, a 23 year veteran of the
CIA who served as deputy national intelligence officer for transnational threats: "We must see jihadists for the small, lethal,
disjointed and miserable opponents that they are." Al Qaeda "has only a handful of individuals capable of planning, organizing and
leading a terrorist operation," Carle notes, and "its capabilities are far inferior to its desires."
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Econ Defense
126
127
A sharp slowdown in the U.S. economy in 2007 is unlikely to drag the rest of the global economy down with it,
according to a research report by Merrill Lynchs (NYSE: MER) global economic team. The good news is that there
are strong sources of growth outside the U.S. that should prove resilient to a consumer-led U.S. slowdown. Merrill
Lynch economists expect U.S. GDP growth to slow to 1.9 percent in 2007 from 3.4 percent in 2006, but non-U.S.
growth to decline by only half a percent (5.2 percent versus 5.7 percent). Behind this decoupling is higher non-U.S.
domestic demand, a rise in intraregional trade and supportive macroeconomic policies in many of the worlds
economies. Although some countries appear very vulnerable to a U.S. slowdown, one in five is actually on course
for faster GDP growth in 2007. Asia, Japan and India appear well placed to decouple from the United States, though
Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore are more likely to be impacted. European countries could feel the pinch, but
rising domestic demand in the core countries should help the region weather the storm much better than in previous
U.S. downturns. In the Americas, Canada will probably be hit, but Brazil is set to decouple.
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129
--No resources
Duedney 91 (Daniel, Hewlett Fellow in Science, Technology, and Society Princeton University, Environment and
Security: Muddled Thinking?, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, April)
Poverty wars. In a second scenario, declining living standards first cause internal turmoil, then war. If groups at all
levels of affluence protect their standard of living by pushing deprivation on other groups, class war and revolutionary upheavals could result.
Faced with these pressures, liberal democracy and free market systems could increasingly be replaced by authoritarian systems capable of
maintaining minimum order.9 If authoritarian regimes are more war-prone because they lack democratic control, and if revolutionary regimes are
war-prone because of their ideological fervor and isolation, then the world is likely to become more violent. The record of previous depressions
supports the proposition that widespread economic stagnation and unmet economic expectations contribute to international conflict. Although
initially compelling, this scenario has major flaws. One is that it is arguably based on unsound economic theory. Wealth is
formed not so much by the availability of cheap natural resources as by capital formation through savings and more efficient production. Many
resource-poor countries, like Japan, are very wealthy, while many countries with more extensive resources are poor. Environmental constraints
require an end to economic growth based on growing use of raw materials, but not necessarily an end to growth in the production of goods and
services. In addition, economic decline does not necessarily produce conflict. How societies respond to economic
decline may largely depend upon the rate at which such declines occur. And as people get poorer, they may become
less willing to spend scarce resources for military forces. As Bernard Brodie observed about the modern era, The
predisposing factors to military aggression are full bellies, not empty ones. The experience of economic
depressions over the last two centuries may be irrelevant, because such depressions were characterized by under-utilized
production capacity and falling resource prices. In the 1930s increased military spending stimulated economies, but if economic growth is
retarded by environmental constraints, military spending will exacerbate the problem.
-- No timeframe
Russett 83 (Bruce, Dean Acheson Professor of International Relations and Political Science Yale University,
Prosperity and Peace: Presidential Address, International Studies Quarterly, 27(4), p. 384)
The optimism argument seems strained to me, but elements of Blaineys former thesis, about the need to mobilize
resources before war can be begun, are more plausible, especially in the 20th century. Modern wars are fought by
complex organizations, with complex and expensive weapons. It takes time to design and build the weapons that
military commanders will require, and it takes time to train the troops who must use them. Large bureaucracies must
plan and obtain some consensus on those plans; and even in a dictatorship the populace in general must be prepared,
with clear images of who are their enemies and of the cause that will justify war with them. In short, preparations for
war take time. Just how long a lag we should expect to find between an economic downturn and subsequent war
130
initiation is unclear. But surely it will be more than a year or two, and war may well occur only after the economy
is recovering.
131
Aff Thumpers
Infrastructure bill thumps the DA
Wasson 5/12 (Erik, The Hill, "Hoeven predicts highway bill by June 30, with
Keystone included," http://thehill.com/blogs/transportationreport/infrastructure/227021-hoeven-predicts-highway-bill-by-june-30-withkeystone-in,)
Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) predicts that the House and Senate will agree on a long-term surface
transportation bill by June 30, when current funding runs out. The member of a House-Senate highway bill
conference committee also said signs point to a provision mandating the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
approve the controversial Keystone XL pipeline being included in the bill. The State Department this year rejected
the oil pipeline running from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico after Congress tried to force it to make a decision. The
stated reason was not enough time to consider the pipeline's merits. I
Two senior Democrat leaders, Reps. James Clyburn (S.C.) and John Larson (Conn.), approved of the measure.
Hoeven said that even if gas prices drop, pressure will remain on the White House to follow an all of the above
energy strategy that includes Keystone.
132
increase in economic activity will boost state and local tax revenue
and end the already slowing cycle of public sector layoffs. Re-employment
in the construction, durable goods, and related transportation and warehousing functions will
bolster income and push up spending on nondurables, restaurants, leisure and hospitality, and
This
all the rest. Happy days, in other words, will be here again.
This is indeed what recovery will look like when it comes. But theres very
little evidence that the process has started.
For one, every downward tick in the unemployment rate that weve seen
over the past two years (i.e., since the unemployment rate peaked at 10.1 percent in Oct. 2009) has
not represented somebody getting a job (and hence able to move towards independence and
spending). Rather, its represented somebody dropping out (or choosing not to enter)
the labor force. And even over the past year (since Nov. 2010), fully two-thirds of the decline in the
unemployment rate was driven by a shrinking labor force and not by employment growth.
The best chart to show that a robust multiplier-accelerator process has yet to begin remains the difference between
The
free-fall of this ratio that was the Great Recession has stopped, but so has the
upward progress of the early part of the recovery (when, by the way, there was an
actual and potential GDP. The size of this gap is the progress that is being made (or not) towards recovery.
actual boost to the recovery being provided by fiscal support, instead of the drag that will constitute the next year).
Until one sees a rapid upward movement in the gap between actual and
133
potential GDP (and, actually, until one sees this movement driven by improvements in actual rather than a
deterioration in potential GDP), it seems awfully premature to think that a positive,
self-reinforcing cumulative causation has set in or can be banked on for
the coming year.
134
Aff No link
No compromise until after election plan doesnt matter
Pianin 5/16 (Eric, The Fiscal Times, "Boehner to Dems: We Wont Blink First on Debt
Deal," http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2012/05/16/Boehner-to-Dems-WeWont-Blink-First-on-Debt-Deal.aspx#page1)
A FINGER IN THE DIKE More likely, Congress will pass a number of stopgap measures to extend temporarily the tax
cuts and possibly blunt the full impact of the automatic spending cuts on the Pentagon and some domestic
programs in a lame-duck session immediately after the election. The Republicans, of course, have their eye on
winning back control of the White House and Senate, and are unlikely to try to negotiate another Grand Bargain of
deficit reduction and tax reform until after they know just how much power they will wield beginning in January .
I
dont think you will see a permanent resolution in a lame duck session , Ryan explained.
Im not sure thats the appropriate place to do that. I think this election will largely be debated
and fought and discussed over how to solve this problem. The people who win the
election will have the obligation and mandate of the country to implement that
solution. But I think in the lame duck you will see something to make sure we dont
have a train wreck.
135
consideration in the structure of the stimulus and even President Obama has acknowledged that there is no such
existed) with most of it spent on transfer payments to individuals or states. Never mind, the Keynesians told us;
transferring cash from bond buyers to those more inclined to spend it would create a virtuous circle of higher
spending that would somehow lead to sustained growth. And now, with the release of the recent GDP report, we
find the flaw in this tripartite ponzi scheme. Having failed so miserably in the targeting and timeliness, our
the fastest
way back to black ink for this nation is job creation. Conservatives have cried over and
over again that government doesn't really create jobs, but they know full well that government
investment in projects that require private companies to hire creates jobs . Simple
investment in infrastructure and alternative energy would begin the ball rolling the
business without the responsibility of the American society. I have stated over and over again that
other direction. And I don't mean a package of incentives coupled with a package of tax cuts, which only ends up
costing us more revenue.
These estimates reflect the impact of sequestration on total nonfarm payroll employment at the end of each fiscal
year. They assume a fiscal multiplier of 1.4 for general government spending, which is Moodys Analytics most
recent public estimate of the government spending multiplier. While we use the same multiplier for all cuts, wed
guess that these likely slightly overstate the adverse economic impact resulting from defense spending cuts and
understate job losses from domestic spending cuts. Budgetary programs for lower-income households in
the discretionary budgetsuch as housing assistance and the special supplemental food program for women,
infants, and children (WIC)as well as
multipliers. And to the extent that cuts to spending by the Department of Defense come from capitalintensive weapons acquisitions rather than reductions in personnel strength, the impact on employment would be
any cuts in the near-term (unless they are ploughed into more spending somewhere
are going to constitute a drag on the still-weak recovery. Cutting government
milder. Regardless,
else)
136
spending reduces aggregate demand and worsens joblessness while the
economy is running well below-potential output. Conservatives selective
Keynesianismwhich pops up in their advocacy for defense spending and tax cuts, among other priorities
applies to the rest of government spending and the national income and product
accounts, too.
137
he's
now trying to downplay his threat, saying "the only ones who are talking about
drama or brinkmanship are my Democrat colleagues across the aisle." Hmmm.... Let's look
at what he told the President one more time. "I'm not going to allow a debt ceiling
increase without doing something serious about the debt." No, no promise of drama and
Boehner seems so surprised at not being heralded as the conquering hero by his fellow Republicans, that
brinksmanship in that statement. Good luck walking this one back, Boehner.
138
The topline number shows Romney leading The One 4643 among registered voters (a very low number for an incumbent), but the internals hold even better
morsels: (1) Romney leads among women by two points . This is a dramatic turnaround from even a
latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
few weeks ago, when the Left was singing the dopey "war on women" refrain from every rooftop. I guess it didn't
really stick. Think Progress' Judd Legum tweeted that if Romney wins women in the fall, his margin of victory overall
the Obamacons who were bamboozled in 2008 aren't feeling especially forgiving this time 'round. Incidentally, who
are those ten percent of Democrats who back Romney? Probably folks from places like West Virginia, and other
will be roughly the same as it was four years ago. Color me skeptical; the last presidential election was a perfect
before the fall, but at the moment, Obama's "evolution" is hurting him. One in four voters report that Obama's call
makes them less likely to support him in November, and only 38 percent support gay marriage overall. (Support for
at least civil unions is significantly broader). Perhaps most damaging for Obama on this item is the cynicism with
which people view his motives for changing his views. Yowza:
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140
Aff Warming D
Wont cause extinction
NIPCC 11. Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change. Surviving the unprecedented climate
and in some cases thrived (Svenning and Condit, 2008)." But they report that those who mention these things are
often "placed in the 'climate-change denier' category," although the purpose for pointing out these facts is simply
to present "a sound scientific basis for understanding biotic responses to the magnitudes and rates of climate
change predicted for the future through using the vast data resource that we can exploit in fossil records." Going on
CO2
concentrations increased up to 1200 ppm, temperatures in mid- to high-latitudes
increased by greater than 4C within 60 years, and sea levels rose by up to 3 m higher than present,"
to do just that, Willis et al. focus on "intervals in time in the fossil record when atmospheric
describing studies of past biotic responses that indicate "the scale and impact of the magnitude and rate of such
such evidence we urge some caution in assuming broad-scale extinctions of species will occur due solely to climate
changes of the magnitude and rate predicted for the next century," reiterating that " the
fossil record
indicates remarkable biotic resilience to wide amplitude fluctuations in climate."
Western media outlet has covered the report, which prompted British based sci-tech website The Register to
commission a translation of the document. Section one highlights the fact that Global Warming has ceased, noting
since 2001, the increase in global temperatures has halted, despite a continuing
increase in CO2 emissions. The report then states that the recent warming the planet has experienced is
that
primarily a recovery from the so called "Little Ice Age" that occurred from around 1400 through to 1800, and is part
of a natural cycle. The researchers also conclude that global warming and the halting of the temperature rise are
related to solar activity, a notion previously dismissed by the IPCC. "The hypothesis that the majority of global
141
warming can be ascribed to the Greenhouse Effect is mistaken." the reports introduction states. Kanya Kusano,
Program Director and Group Leader for the Earth Simulator at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science &
Technology (JAMSTEC) reiterates this point: "[The IPCC's] conclusion that from now on atmospheric temperatures
are likely to show a continuous, monotonic increase, should be perceived as an unprovable hypothesis," Shunichi
Akasofu, head of the International Arctic Research Center in Alaska, cites historical data to challenge the claim that
very recent temperatures represent an anomaly: "We should be cautious, IPCCs theory that atmospheric
temperature has risen since 2000 in correspondence with CO2 is nothing but a hypothesis. " "Before anyone
noticed, this hypothesis has been substituted for truth The opinion that great disaster will really happen must be
broken." Akasofu concludes. The key passages of the translated report can be found here. The conclusions within
the report dovetail with those of hundreds of Western scientists, who have been derided and even compared with
holocaust deniers for challenging the so called "consensus" on global warming. The total lack of exposure that this
major report has received is another example of how skewed coverage of
hypotheses. This serves the agenda to deliberately whip up mass hysteria on behalf of
governments who are all too eager to introduce draconian taxation and control measures that wont do anything to
combat any form of warming, whether you believe it to be natural or man-made.
142
Aff CTBT D
No impact to the CTBT multiple warrants
Perry et al 9 (William J, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, is the Michael and
Barbara Berberian Professor at Stanford University, Americas Strategic Posture The
Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United
States, http://media.usip.org/reports/strat_posture_report.pdf.)
First, there is no demonstrated linkage between the absence of U.S. testing and nonproliferation. Indeed, South Africa and several other countries gave up nuclear
weapons when the United States was testing , while India, Pakistan and North Korea
proceeded with nuclear weapons programs after we ceased . Ratification would not
dampen North Koreas or Irans nuclear progra ms, and the CTBT would not prevent
other countries from developing basic nuclear weapons because testing is
unnecessary. Second, the United States would follow the letter of CTBT restrictions, although the treaty is
unlikely ever to take effect. Entry into force would require many other countries to sign and ratify, including North
Korea, Iran, Pakistan, India, China, Israel, and Egyptthe probability of which is near zero. Consequently, the U.S.
produce nuclear yield. However, other countries with different interpretations could conduct tests with hundreds of
tons of nuclear yieldallowing them to develop or advance nuclear capabilities with low-yield, enhanced radiation,
and electro-magnetic-pulse. Apparently Russia and possibly China are conducting low yield tests. This is quite
serious because Russian and Chinese doctrine highlights tactical nuclear warfighting. With no agreed definition, U.S.
relative understanding of these capabilities would fall further behind over time and undermine our capability to
Academy of Sciences concluded that underground nuclear explosions with yields up to 1 or 2 kilotons may be
hidden. Consequently, even a zero-yield CTBT could not prevent countries from testing to develop new nuclear
warfighting capabilities or improve existing capabilities. Fifth, the CTBTs on-site verification provisions cannot fix
these problems. Instead, they seem designed to preclude the possibility of inspections by requiring the approval of
30 members of the Executive Council when only 10 of its 51 members would be from North America and Western
Europe. Worse yet, the CTBT allows each country to declare numerous sites with a total of 50 square kilometers out
of bounds to on-site inspection. Sixth, maintaining a safe, reliable nuclear stockpile in the absence of testing entails
real technical risks that cannot be eliminated by even the most sophisticated science-based program because full
validation of these programs is likely to require testing over time. With nuclear arms reductions our confidence in
each weapon becomes paramount, but CTBT ratification would foreclose means to that confidence. In short, under
the CTBT, opponents could make improvements in their nuclear capabilities while U.S. ratification would preclude
the testing that could help preserve the U.S. capability to deter them. Given these serious problems and very
dubious benefits, the CTBT should not be ratified.
143
Aff Econ D
No econ impact
Ferguson 6 (Niall, Professor of History Harvard University, Foreign Affairs, 85(5), September / October, Lexis)
Nor can economic crises explain the bloodshed. What may be the most familiar causal chain in
modern historiography links the Great Depression to the rise of fascism and the outbreak of World War II. But that
144
145
***De-Development DA 2AC***
146
Indians" derives from the colonizers' world-view and is therefore not the
real name of anyone. It is a name given to people by outsiders, not by themselves. Why should we use any
name given to a people by someone other than themselves? 2 On the other hand, why
shouldn't we use it? Almost everybody in the world knows the name and to whom it
refers. It is commonly used by many Indigenous Peoples in the United States, even
today. It is the legal definition of these Peoples in United States law. Some people get
upset about "American Indian" because of its association with Columbus. There is an
equally serious dilemma with the use of "Native American," which came into vogue
as part of a concern for "political correctness." The latter was an effort to acknowledge ethnic diversity in
the United States while insisting on an over-arching American unity. Groups became identified as hyphen-American. Thus, AfricanAmerican, Irish-American, Italian-American, and so on. For the original inhabitants of the land, the "correct" term became NativeAmerican. The word "native" has a generic meaning, referring to anyone or anything that is at home in its place of origin. "Native" also
has a pejorative meaning in English colonization, as in "The natives are restless tonight." From an English perspective (and, after all, we
are talking about English words), "native" carries the connotation of "primitive," which itself has both a generic definition, meaning
"first" or "primary," and a pejorative use, meaning "backward" or "ignorant." And, as we have seen, "American" derives from that other
Italian. So "Native
147
<CONTINUED>
If we want to be fully authentic in every instance, we will have to inquire into the
language of each People to find the name they call themselves. It may not be surprising to find that
the deepest real names are often a word for "people" or for the homeland or for some differentiating characteristic of the people as seen
148
Indian and Native American essentially synonyms, in the same way that the terms black
and African American are often used interchangeably? Or is using the term American Indian instead of Native
American the equivalent of using Negro instead of blackoffensive and anachronistic? Is the insistence on using Native American
to the exclusion of all other terms a sign of being doctrinaire? Culture Wars While these were once raging
questions in the culture wars, they have now happily sorted themselves out. Over the years, the people whom
these words are meant to represent have made their preference clear: the majority of
American Indians/Native Americans believe it is acceptable to use either term, or
both. Many have also suggested leaving such general terms behind in favor of specific tribal designations. As the publisher and editor
of The Navajo Times, the largest Native Americanowned weekly newspaper, puts it, "I . . . would rather be known as, 'Tom Arviso Jr., a
member of the Navajo tribe,' instead of 'Arviso, a Native American or American Indian.' This gives an authentic description of my
heritage, rather than lumping me into a whole race of people."
The continued use of Indian proves that attempted changes in terminology fail, AND
there are numerous appellations for indigenous people, favoring one term over the other is
arbitrary.
Brunner, 2007 (Borgna, Editorial Director, Information Please, American Indian versus Native American: A once-heated issue has
sorted itself out, http://www.infoplease.com/spot/aihmterms.html, Accessed 7/12/08)
Peaceful Coexistence As The American Heritage Book of English Usage points out, "the
acceptance of Native
American has not brought about the demise of Indian. Unlike Negro, which was quickly stigmatized
once black became preferred, Indian never fell out of favor with a large segment of the American
population." Now almost every style and usage guide describes these terms as
synonyms that can be used interchangeably. In recent decades, other terms have also
come into use, including Amerindian, indigenous people, and Native, expanding the
vocabulary for referring to indigenous people of the United States rather than
circumscribing it. Many people will no doubt favor one appellation over another
and will have strong reasons for doing sobut such choices are (or should be) no
longer accompanied by a sense of righteousness that one term is superior to the other.
This simply isn't true.
149
you don't know the specific tribe simply use the term which you are most
comfortable using. The worst that can happen is that someone might correct you and
open the door for a thoughtful debate on the subject of political correctness and its
impact on ethnic identity. What matters in the long run is not which term is used but
the intention with which it is used.
150
When you cant refer to a specific tribe, either term is acceptablethe label is not as
important as the context.
Berry 08 (Christina, Whats in a Name? Indians and Political Correctness,
In the end, the term you choose to use (as an Indian or non-Indian) is your own
personal choice. Very few Indians that I know care either way. The recommended
method is to refer to a person by their tribe, if that information is known. The reason is that
the Native peoples of North America are incredibly diverse. It would be like referring both a Romanian and an Irishman as European. It's
true that they are both from Europe but their people have very different histories, cultures, and languages. The same is true of Indians.
The Cherokee are vastly different from the Lakota, the Dine, the Kiowa, and the Cree, but they are all labeled Native American. So
whenever possible an Indian would prefer to be called a Cherokee or a Lakota or whichever tribe they belong to. This shows respect
because not only are you sensitive to the fact that the terms Indian, American Indian, and Native American are an over simplification of
a diverse ethnicity, but you also show that you listened when they told what tribe they belonged to.When
You notice I use the term American Indian rather than Native American or Native
indigenous people or Amerindian when referring to my people. There has been some controversy
about such terms, and frankly, at this point. I find it absurd. Primarily it seems that
American Indian is being rejected as European in origin-which is true. But all the
above terms are European in origin; the only non-European way is to speak of
Lakota-or, more precisely, of Oglala, Brule, etc.-and of the Dineh, the Miccousukee, and all the rest of the
several hundred correct tribal names.
151
***Tribe K 2AC***
Tribe is a legal term in the U.S.even if it is problematic in other contexts, it is necessary
in this instance, because it is how indigenous nations are statutorily designated.
Tolerance.org, Accessed 08
(Essay adapted from Talking About Tribe: Moving From Stereotypes to Analysis, originally
published by Africa Policy Information Center in 97. Principal author is Chris Lowe, an Africa Historian,
http://www.tolerance.org/teach/printar.jsp?p=0&ar=213&pi=ttm, Accessed 7/12/08)
Under U.S. law, "tribe" is a bureaucratic term. For a community of Native Americans
to gain access to programs, and to enforce rights due to them under treaties and laws,
they must be recognized as a tribe. This is comparable to unincorporated areas' applying for municipal status under
state laws. Away from the law, Native Americans often prefer the words "nation" or
"people" over "tribe."
No Alternative: Tribe will continue to be used by historians, ethnologists, and Native
Americansit cant be eliminated from the lexicon.
Miller, 2006 (Mark Edwin, Assistant Professor of History @ Southern Utah University Forgotten Tribes: Unrecognized Indians and the
Federal Acknowledgement Process, pp. 10-11)
In spite of the hopelessly muddled issues involved, most scholarly definitions of the
concept of an Indian tribe do include common elements. There is a loose agreement on the criteria the
BIA uses to recognize tribes as well if not a consensus on exactly how to measure and quantify them. Most concerned parties believe
that groups claiming to be tribes must have some qualities that distinguish them from other and that they use to distinguish themselves
Scholars of ethnicity
generally hold that tribes are groups with a territory, community, and political
organization; many definitions also include common culture, language, genealogy,
and identity. In general, many in the anthropological profession believe the term connoted an ethnic group in contrast to the
from outsiders. In other words, there has to be a thing in being, in order to acknowledge it.
central state that had some loosely defined political structure and group norms that controlled and integrated group behavior. Therefore,
152
153
<CONTINUED>
Churchill chooses not to divulge the fact that Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary lists a
definition for the word "peoples" that has as much "animalistic emphasis" as
Churchill's comparably obscure definition for the word "tribe." This omission is especially
noteworthy because Churchill admits that he in fact consulted this very same dictionary-Webster's Ninth-in order to "cross-reference the
'old' definitions obtained [in the 1949 Webster's] with those in newer iterations of the same dictionary, to see whether there have been
changes" (pp. 332-333). According to a definition in Webster's Ninth suppressed by Churchill, "peoples" may be defined as "lower
animals usu. of a specified kind or situation... 'squirrels and chipmunks: the little furry [peoples].'" In addition, Webster's Third New
International Dictionary of the English Language calls to mind yet another amusing "nonhuman" meaning for the word "peoples."
According to this particular Webster's (not concededly referenced by Churchill), the word "peoples" may denote "supernatural beings
that are thought of as similar to humans in many respects... 'kobolds, trolls, and such [peoples] are not to be trusted.'" Thus, it appears
that Churchill's
pedantic argument against the word "tribe" rests not on any objective
analysis of dictionary definitions at all, but rather on a highly manipulative process of
selectively disclosing those definitions that would appear consistent with Churchill's
antitribal thesis, while carefully concealing those definitions that would seem to
contradict that thesis. So much for the manifest silliness of competing (and, in
Churchill's case, cheating) in a game of Trivial Pursuit with "definitive" dictionaries
to ascertain by what name Indian tribes will be permitted to identify themselves. But
beyond all the tedious game-playing and semantic trickery in "Naming Our Destiny," there
remains unresolved a very serious implied question: By what mechanism does an
abstraction like "Indian self-determination" get transformed into real
selfempowerment for Indian people? As demonstrated in this essay, Ward Churchill expends a great deal
of effort in Indians Are Us? espousing the counter-intuitive thesis that Indian tribes
themselves are an obstacle in the struggle for Indian self-empowerment, and should
be aggressively disavowed and devalued, therefore, in all political discussions bearing
on Indian self-determination. Of course, the very fact that Churchill strives to "prove"
his case against Indian tribes by falsifying the historical record, misstating the views
of fellow scholars, issuing distorted versions of public documents, and shrewdly
manipulating language is enough to dissuade any sensible reader from taking
Churchill's anti-tribal propaganda seriously. Still, the goal of clarifying and affirming the integral role of
Indian tribes in the dynamic of Indian selfempowerment is extremely important and challenging -- much more so than is the relatively
easier task of dismissing Ward Churchill's obfuscation of this profound topic.
154
***Control K 2AC***
The Trust doctrine is distinct from plenary powerits not based in control, but an
affirmative obligation to protect Native American sovereignty.
Wood, 1994 (Mary Christina, University of Oregon Assistant Law Professor,
doctrine and plenary power should have no place in the context of challenges to agency action because it is well settled that agencies do
not have plenary power over tribes. Courts have allowed only Congress that authority. n148
The trust doctrine is essential to protect tribal natural resources it should be delinked
from its past associations with plenary power.
Wood, 1994 (Mary Christina, University of Oregon Assistant Law Professor,
The trust responsibility remains a focal point for tribes in their efforts to gain federal
protection of native lands and resources. For example, over the past few years the Columbia River Basin tribes
that have treaty rights to harvest salmon have urged federal agencies to fulfill their trust responsibility by restoring salmon populations,
controlling water pollution, and conserving water in streams. n153 The trust responsibility is gaining renewed attention in the Clinton
administration as well. In an historic meeting on April 29, 1994, with over 300 tribal leaders, the President made a pledge to fulfill his
trust responsibility. n154 Several agencies within the executive branch are now developing trust policies to guide their actions affecting
tribes. n155 But despite
155
***Biopower K 2AC***
THE PERM SOLVES- ONLY COMBINING ACTION WITH THOUGHT PREVENTS
TYRANNIES
papastephanou 5 (marianna, philosophy professor at the university of cyprus, can subjectivity be salvaged?, common knowledge
11.1 (2005) 136-159, project muse)
Among the most decisive factors, in my view, for conclusions of this sort is how, after
156
Unconditional Hospitality Solves All Of The Bad Aspects Of Biopower- The Sovereign Isnt
A Power To Take Control Of Us, But We Embrace The Idea That The Other Is The
Sovereign Over Us- This Fosters An Ethic Of Compassion
damai 5 (Puspa, english professor at tribhuvan university, nepal, messianic-city: ruins, refuge and hospitality in derrida, discourse 27.2&3
(2005) 68-94, project muse)
All of these constraints that condition Derrida's unconditional hospitality eventually bear on the question of sovereignty, and I claim that
Derrida's project of the city of refuge fails to theorize the other of sovereignty, for it is
already conditioned by the sovereignty of the other. By the other of sovereignty I do
not mean, as if following a path paved by Foucault in Society Must Be Defended, that "we have
to bypass or get around the problem of sovereignty" (27). Bypassing sovereignty would
be impossible, as Derrida cautions in Rouges, because evading it would threaten "the
classical principles of freedom and self-determination" (158). Derrida indeed handles
the question of sovereignty with more subtlety than does Foucault with the latter's
impatient bypassing. Against the classical conceptualization of sovereignty as expressed so volubly and indivisibly, for
instance, in the Leviathan, where Hobbes argues that whether sovereignty resides in one as in monarchy, or in many as in autocracy, or
in all as in democracy, sovereignty requires that they must have it entirely (123), or in Bodin's On Sovereignty where sovereignty is
defined as an absolute and perpetual power of the prince that cannot be transferred in any other ways than as an unconditional gift (8 ),
Derrida maintains that sovereignty should remain at once indivisible yet to be shared.
Nevertheless, the question persists as to the nature of this sharing (partage), for it is also the unconditional gift of
sovereignty that constitutes the law of the unconditional in Derrida; and the whole
deconstruction of the classical notion of sovereignty seems merely to reverse the order of
the sovereign. Instead of claiming the sovereignty of the self, or ipseity, Derrida seems to
revert it to the sovereignty of the other. The circular wheel of sovereignty that receives
a measured pounding in the first chapter of Rougeswhere Derrida adroitly exposes the
circularity of sovereignty as "a rounding off" by the self, or as a turn (tours) around the
self (12)only comes full circle in order to reaffirm the unicity of the heart of the city.
Derrida's project of the city in general and, in particular, that of the city of refuge, which he sketches out in his address to the
International Parliament of Writers in Strasbourg in 1996 (later [End Page 71] published in On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness), is a
pertinent site for pursuing this reversal because these projects seemagainst his express wish not to put forward any plan or proposition,
and to strictly maintain "the essential poverty of [his] work" ("Hospitality" 74)to chart out an ambitious plan for a network of cities of
asylum for victims of state persecution. The Cities of Asylum network, established under the auspices of the International Parliament of
Writers, of which Derrida was a founding member and vice president, is not a utopic vision. As we are informed by Christian Salmon in
the first issue of the Parliament's Journal, Autodafe, the Parliament convened in haste after the assassination of Tahar Djaout in Algeria
in 1993, and Salman Rushdie and Wole Soyinka were its first two presidents. And from the moment of its creation, it has been involved
in setting up a network of Asylum Cities that offer refuge to writers and artists threatened by fundamentalist and totalitarian regimes.
"Five years after its creation," Salmon continues, "there are thirty cities in this network" including Barcelona, Frankfurt, Salzburg, and
Venice (13). In his address to the Parliament, Derrida
<CONTINUED>
157
<CONTINUED>
Derrida, on the contrary, seeks to dissociate the City from the State in order to bring the
former out of the shadow of the monopolistic sovereignty of the latter, and to endow
the city with more autonomy and sovereignty. Another event of this shared
sovereignty occurs in Derrida's interrogation of the classical notion of the sovereign
being who decides on the exception, as formulated by Carl Schmitt in Political Theology (5). Against the secularized
theological and ontological legacy of sovereignty of which Schmitt is only one of the heirs, Derrida maintains that a
decision, if such a thing is possible, cannot and should not be made by me; rather it is
always the other [End Page 72] who decides, leaving me, the subject, in the wake to bear
responsibility for his decision ("Hospitality" 67). In other words, the event of decision embodies a
sharedor, to use Derrida's favorite term, spectralsovereignty which is divided between the
other and myself, and in which the other, who overwhelms me, is not a presence but
an apparition. Thus, by conceptualizing the city as a threshold between two forms of the
polis, or between the norm and the decision, Derrida conjures a site in which
sovereignty implies a decision that exceeds the economy of one's ipseity or an experience of the
haunting of the other beyond the exchanges of intersubjectivity . On the basis of his concept of the
shared sovereignty of the city, Derrida succeeds in envisioning a new cosmopolitics beyond the
sovereignty of nation-states and even beyond the discourse of world-government or
its analogies in the form of world-cities or globalicities, to which even the most serious
discussions on cosmopolitanism are confined. Even though Saskia Sassen, one of the most cited exponents of
global cities, thinks that global cities are command points in the organization of a world economy (4), her project nonetheless does not
seek to dissociate cities from the neocolonial politics of the wealthy nations. It is important to remember, as Spivak reminds us, "why
Kabulbehind it Gaza, Karachi, Ulan Bator and bien d'autres encorecannot emerge as global cities" (74).
158
Foucaultian ethics underestimates the continuing role of death and memory work in
constituting ethical practice. Though concerned at times to analyze executions,
murders, and genocides, Foucault rarely speaks about death, possibly because death
has by and large been appropriated by ethical philosophy and religion. By contrast, as is well
known, Foucault's work from Discipline and Punish onward is centrally concerned with
life as a conduit of modern governmental projects. In his analysis of biopower, Foucault
shows that, contrary to Nietzsche's predictions about the increasing influence of life-denying slave moralities, modern societies have
come to be governed increasingly through projects that do not perhaps affirm life in the Nietzschean manner, but certainly seek to
maximize it, aligning our own desire to be alive and healthy with governmental projects of all sorts, from population policies to the
enlightened hedonism of contemporary sexual regimes. In an important but seldom cited article, Judith Butler
has analyzed
the shortcomings of the influential notion of biopower (as developed primarily in The History of
Sexuality, vol. 1) in ways that parallel Derrida's critique of Marx's unilateral emphasis on
life against death: Foucault's historical account can perhaps be read as only a wishful
construction: death is effectively expelled from Western modernity, cast behind it as a
historical possibility, surpassed or cast outside it as a non- Western phenomenon. Can
these exclusions hold? To what extent does his characterization of later modernity
require and institute an [*669] exclusion of the threat of death? It seems clear that
Foucault must tell a phantasmatic history in order to keep modernity and productive
power free of death and full of sex. (Butler 1993, 85) Butler argues that AIDS and current instances of ethnic
cleansing, of wars and famines taking place in Europe as well as outside it, demand that Foucaultian work pay more attention to the
persistence of the rather ancient forms of power associated with death. Linking Butler's critique to the earlier discussion of the disavowal
of death, it could be argued that Foucault's
159
***Ontology K 2AC***
BEING-FOR-THE-OTHER IS A QUESTION THAT PRECEDES BEING-FOR-THESELF. IN RECOGNITION OF HUMAN SAMENESS, AND IN THE FACE OF THE
SUFFERING OF THE OTHER, THE MOST PRIMORDIAL AND IMPORTANT
OBLIGATION WE HAVE IS TO THEM, NOT OUR SELF
Simmons 99, Bethany College, Department of History and Political Science William, The Third: Levinas theoretical move from anarchical ethics to the realm of justice and politics Philosophy Social Criticism, 25; 83
How is it possible to break the stranglehold of ontology? How can transcendence be rediscovered in the
Western tradition? How can Levinas claim that ethics and not ontology deserves to be labeled first philosophy? According to Levinas,
the face-to-face relationship with the other person, the Other, is beyond the grasp of
ontology. The face cannot be totalized because it expresses infinitude. In other words,
the ego can never totally know the Other. In fact, the Other exists prior to the subject
and ontology: the Other comes from the immemorial past. How can Levinas reject the Cartesian
hypothesis and claim that the relationship with the Other is primary? How can the relationship with the Other precede my being? How
can the Other be an-archical? In Totality and Infinity, Levinas develops his an-archical ethics by reviving the Platonic distinction
between need and eros or desire.6 A need
160
rather the I is, by its very position, responsibility through and through.9 This primordial, an-archical responsibility is concrete, infinite,
and asymmetrical.
161
The distinction between the saying and the said is best understood in juxtaposition to
traditional theories of expression. In the traditional view, language originates with the
speaker. The speaker intends to speak, formulates thoughts into words, then expresses them. The ego is preeminent.
Levinas, on the other hand, emphasizes the role of the addressee. The focus is thus shifted
from the ego to the Other. The activity of speaking robs the subject of its central position; it is the depositing of a subject
without refuge. The speaking subject is no longer by and for itself; it is for the other.17 The
traditional view of expression emphasizes the content of the communication, the said. In the realm of the said, the
speaker assigns meanings to objects and ideas. It is a process of identification, a kerygmatics, a
designating, a process of labeling a this as that.18 This is the realm of totality and autonomy, a tradition in which
intelligibility derives from the assembling of terms united in a system for a locutor that states an apophansis. . . . Here the subject is
origin, initiative, freedom, present.19 The
saying, on the
other hand, is the impossibility of the dispersion of time to assemble itself in the present, the
insurmountable diachrony of time, a beyond the said.21 The saying comes from a time
before the time of Being, and is thus irreducible to ontology. It is the past that was never
present. While the said emphasizes the autonomous position of the ego, the saying tears the ego from its lair. In the saying, the
ego is more than just exposed to the Other, it is assigned to the Other. Assignation supplants
identification. The one assigned has to open to the point of separating itself from its own inwardness, adhering to esse; it must be disinterestedness.22 The saying is a de-posing or de-situating of the ego. Thus,
162
***Nietzsche K 2AC***
PITY IS A NATURAL AND BIOLOGICAL HUMAN EMOTION THE ALTERNATIVE
IS FUTILE. PLUS, PITY IS THE DRIVING FORCE BEHIND AN ETHIC TO THE
OTHER THE IMPACT IS THE CASE
Nuyen 2k (professor of philosophy at the University of Queensland
is not to say that the concern for the Other and for Hecuba and
for my brother and is a selfish one and having to do only with relieving my own pain. This is
not the experiential characteristic of pity and which is the exact opposite. The concern is genuinely for the Other. The
fact that the motivational force originates from within oneself does not render the resulting actions egoistic. As Bishop Butler has
pointed out and personal
163