1NC – UIL – SMALL BUSINESS

SMALL BUSINESS BILL TOP PRIORITY ON THE AGENDA BUT THE DEBATE IS EXTREMELY POLITICAL

ABC NEWS 9-8-2010

OBAMA TO ANNOUNCE INCENTIVES FOR BUSINESSES, KHAN AND JAFFE

When lawmakers return next week from their summer vacation, the first order of business for the Senate won’t be any of Obama’s latest proposals, but rather a $30 billion small business bill that has been stalled since June, evidence of the partisan gridlock in Congress.

“There’s a lot of politics in almost everything that happens in Washington right now,” said Todd McCracken, president of the National Small Business Association. “There’s plenty of blame to go around and the problem is, [in] the political system that we have right now, there are more incentives to fight and to put out proposals that are more symbolic than real … incentives to get things done.”

There is rising frustration among small business owners about the stalemate, and while it’s directed at both parties, it’s likely to hurt Democrats more in November, McCracken said.

Gene Owens, a small business owner in Pennsylvania, said there is doubt that proposals coming from Democrats or Republicans are genuine.

“The uncertainty is the most difficult thing about life right now as a business owner,” Owens said. “Most business owners see this as just politics. It’s just a lot of political jerry-rigging and it’s not addressing the real issue.”

• Infrastructure and Transportation Bill
• Tax Cut Extensions Bill
• Small Business Legislation

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• Disarmament
• United States Nuclear Policy
• Weaponitis
• Nuclearism
• Deterrence
• Non Proliferation Treaty
  

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Windsor, Professor, 2002

Philip, The Rationality and Ethics of Nuclear Deterrence, Strategic Thinking: An Introduction and Farewell, p. 156-

Whether seen in terms of the parody of the Master-Slave relationship or in terms of the inversion of Pascal’s bet, a decision to base security and value on a system of nuclear deterrence represents a form of existential suicide. For two reasons. The first is that human beings destroy themselves as human beings when they begin even to contemplate threatening the destruction of the human race in an attempt to ensure their survival or maintain their values. Survival itself, and the values that human societies hope to attach to it, lose all meaning in such a context. Second, deterrence condemns all human beings, not only those in the states endowed with nuclear weapons, to a permanent and indefinite fear of the future. Suppose it all goes wrong … Should we even have children …? However distant, the outside possibility becomes a near neighbor in the dreams and relationships of people. Sociological research is lacking, but it would not be surprising if a distinct correlation were to be found between the explosion of the drug culture and the maturing of the generation that grew up accustomed to the threat of the Bomb. Whether that is the case or not. the threat itself ensured that survival, instead of being a condition for the articulation of value, became itself the ultimate value—with the result that dialogue between cultures or about values was virtually excluded from the conduct of international relations. That, as indicated earlier, was the nature of detente. In conclusion, it seems extremely difficult to argue that the policy of nuclear deterrence can be either ethical or rational. If it were possible to show that it is rational, an ethical case might be conceivable. But it is not; and however many decent and well-intentioned men and women might argue that the nuclear threat is the best available ethical choice, the very nature of that threat ultimately destroys everything that is meant by the word “decency.”

OBAMA HAS A REAL CHANCE OF MOVING THE MIDDLE EAST PEACE TALKS FORWARD WHERE NOBODY ELSE COULD

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR 9-3-2010

MIDEAST PEACE TALKS, LAFRANCHI

The idea all along – from the second full day of his administration, when the president named former Sen. George Mitchell his special envoy for Middle East peace – had been to get the parties in the six-decade-old conflict back together and negotiating swiftly. Instead of leaving this Everest of US diplomacy for the end of Obama’s presidency, as the two previous chief executives had done in theirs, the goal was to show progress quickly and get an accord before the administration’s time ran out.

It didn’t quite work out that way. Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian lands, Hamas in Gaza, and an aggressive Iran progressing inexorably in its nuclear program all made for a tough diplomatic environment.

But many regional experts – and some old hands at difficult negotiations, including Mr. Mitchell – agree that the novelty of reaching for a Middle East peace accord early in an administration now stands out as a key reason why this time, despite tall impediments and deep skepticism, the talks might actually succeed.

‘Time ran out’ for other presidents

“President Obama is the only president in recent times, to my knowledge, to have established this as a high priority immediately upon taking office and to have acted immediately at that time,” Mitchell said Sept. 2 at the State Department, when asked by journalists why he thought this time was different.

“It’s very clear that at least in a couple of instances [in the past], time ran out…. This president, I believe, will succeed. But as [Obama] said” in relaunching the talks, “neither success nor failure is predetermined or guaranteed – but it isn’t going to be because time ran out at the end.”

Just getting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to Washington together was a big first step. But by the time Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wrapped up the first day of formal talks, the results were modest: The leaders agreed to meet again in their region Sept. 14-15 and to continue meeting every two weeks or so after that.

here.

Includes midterms and agenda evidence including hard to find Democrats uniqueness as well as economic stimulus, stem cell research, and more!

NO AGENDA ITEMS BETWEEN NOW AND NOVEMBER – CONGRESS IS DEADLOCKED

REUTERS 9-1-2010

OBAMA STRUGGLES WITH URGENT TASK OF FIXING ECONOMY, BOHAN

(Reuters) – President Barack Obama has declared fixing the U.S. economy his “central mission” but he has few tools to bring down nearly double-digit unemployment or jump-start the faltering recovery this year.

To get a quick fix, he would need a big initiative, but the president stands almost no chance of getting Congress to pass any substantial legislation in the few weeks left before the mid-term elections — a stretch of time he calls the campaign “silly season.”

Even if he could, it would be too late to help his Democratic party before Election Day on November 2.

“Between now and the time the Congress packs up for good to spend full-time on the fall campaign, the chances are between slim and none that any new significant economic legislation will pass,” said William Galston, a former domestic policy adviser to President Bill Clinton and now a scholar at the Brookings Institution think-tank.

Obama returned on Sunday from a 10-day vacation in Martha’s Vineyard to confront a batch of grim economic data and rising frustrations among Americans about the scarcity of jobs.

His week is jam-packed with foreign policy events, and he has scrambled to tell voters that the economy is his top concern.

Obama and his aides are discussing new measures they want to roll out quickly but the White House has suggested these will be “targeted” rather than a bold new package.

So that leaves the presidential bully pulpit as the main tool Obama must rely on to both convince voters and inspire confidence among businesses, consumers and investors.

But critics accuse him of fumbling that effort.

“This is a president who has lost control of his public message. It wanders unleashed from park to alley, stopping to sniff every cable news story along the way,” Michael Gerson, a former speech writer for President George W. Bush, wrote in the Washington Post on Wednesday.

Gerson said that instead of focusing on “jobs, jobs, jobs,” the White House has allowed the conversation to drift to subjects like immigration and a planned mosque near the site of the September 11 attacks in New York.

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START PAVES THE WAY TO REDUCTIONS WORLDWIDE AND PREVENT NUCLEAR CATASTROPHE

HUFFINGTON POST 4-27-2010

NEW START AND THE OBAMA NUCLEAR AGENDA, GARD

New START is also being criticized for not going much further in reducing not only deployed strategic warheads but also the number of warheads each side holds in reserve. Yet the treaty must be evaluated in the context of President Obama’s full nuclear agenda as outlined in his April 5, 2009 speech in Prague. Russia and the United States, between them, hold about 95% of the world’s nuclear weapons. Restoration of a stable and predictable U.S.-Russian nuclear relationship and further movement away from their dangerous cold war nuclear postures are important to obtain the cooperation of other states in the comprehensive nuclear agenda. Also, the President views New START as an interim step towards seeking to reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles of the other nuclear states, such as China, France, Great Britain, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea.

It is widely recognized that the worldwide nuclear non-proliferation arrangements embodied in a 1970’s treaty signed by most of the nations is eroding. Strong measures must be taken to prevent an increase in the number of states with nuclear arsenals, with the attendant increased dangers of their use and to decrease the likelihood of terrorists obtaining a nuclear bomb. The Administration’s nuclear policy study, released on April 6th, elevates the prevention of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism to the top priority on the U.S. policy agenda. The new policy is another important step in reducing the salience of nuclear weapons in U.S. security strategy by limiting the circumstances in which nuclear weapons would be employed.

At President Obama’s invitation more than forty heads of state or their representatives gathered in Washington, DC, on April 12th and 13th, with the goal of setting guidelines to prevent terrorists from stealing or buying the materials to make nuclear bombs. The summit focused on securing all worldwide fissile materials, useful in fashioning nuclear bombs, within four years.

New START is just that: a start. Despite the end of the U.S.-Soviet competition, the remaining 23,000 nuclear bombs across the globe present a clear and present danger to U.S. security. The President’s program to focus the world’s attention on this problem and to take serious steps to ameliorate this threat is critical to preventing nuclear catastrophes.