Tournament: Alta | Round: 4 | Opponent: Park City | Judge: idk
Harris 11. Sam Harris. "The Moral Landscape: How Science can Determine Human Values by Sam Harris: The Journal of Positive Psychology: Vol 6, No 3." Taylor andamp; Francis. 9-26-2011. Web. 9-28-2016. I believe that we will increasingly understand good and evil, right and wrong, in scientific terms, because moral concerns translate into facts about how our thoughts and behavioraffect the well-being of conscious creatures like ourselves. If there are facts to be known about the well-being of such creatures—and there are—then there must be right and wrong answers to moral questions. Students of philosophy will notice that this commits me to some form of moral realism (viz. moral claims can really be true or false) and some form of consequentialism (viz. the rightness of an act depends on how it impacts the well-being of conscious creatures). While moral realism and consequentialism have both come under pressure in philosophical circles, they have the virtue of corresponding to many of our intuitions about how the world works. Here is my (consequentialist) starting point: all questions of value (right and wrong, good and evil, etc.) depend upon the possibility of experiencing such value. Without potential consequences at the level of experience—happiness, suffering, joy, despair, etc. —all talk of value is empty. Therefore, to say that an act is morally necessary, or evil, or blameless, is to make (tacit) claims about its consequences in the lives of creatures (whether actual or potential).I am unaware of any interesting exception to this rule. Needless to say, if one is worried about pleasing God or His angels, this assumes that such invisible entities are conscious (in some sense) and cognizant of human behavior. It also generally assumes that it is possible to suffer their wrath or enjoy their approval, either in this world or the world to come. Even within
This puts my opponent in a double bind, either (a) we experience the value and it reduces to consequences, or (b) we don’t experience the value and it has no effect on us.
The government must resolve trade-offs between values, justify policies to the people, and actually improve states of affairs. Since the topic is about governmental action, we must use consequentialism.
Woller 97. Woller, Gary BYU Prof., "An Overview by Gary Woller", A Forum on the Role of Environmental Ethics, June 1997, pg. 10
Appeals to a priori moral principles, such as environmental preservation, also often fail
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though perhaps at times a necessary, basis for public policy in a democracy
Boutwell 79 ~J. Paul Boutwell (Special Agent, Legal Counsel Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation). "Qualified Immunity of Law Enforcement Officiais." FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. January 1979~
"Hundreds of Police Agencies Losing Insuranc13 Coverage," The Washington Post, October 26
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to establish a principle. This was done in Hill v. Rowland.
Patton 92 Patton, Alison "Endless Cycle of Abuse: Why 42 USC 1983 Is Ineffective in Deterring Police Brutality, The." (1992):
Even in the face of seemingly indisputable evidence, such as a videotape, an
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obstacles to convince a typical jury that a police officer used excessive force.
Gov agencies cover up corruption by telling people to file a civil suit, which is only a ruse of recourse – even with limited QI few cases will go to court, and almost none win
Higdon 10. Woodrow L. Higdon – Investigative Photo Journalist, March 2010, "PUBLIC-CORRUPTION-COVER-UP-THRU-CIVIL-LITIAGTION-ABUSE," No Publication, http://www.gtinewsphoto.com/PUBLIC-CORRUPTION-COVER-UP-THRU-CIVIL-LITIAGTION.html RS
The so called "Civil and Criminal Justice Systems" in the United States, are systems controlled by money, and the access that money buys. In general, the more money you have, the more "Justice" you can buy. Good attorneys cost a lot more, than bad attorneys. District Attorneys and public agencies, have unlimited public tax dollar finances, which provide unlimited legal resources, for both criminal and civil cases. In the case of District Attorneys, it also provides almost unlimited power, to manipulate and obstruct criminal and civil law, and the lives of the people involved. This is why a corrupt public agency, or District Attorney's office, like the San Diego District Attorney’s office, is so dangerous to the public welfare. It is also how many law enforcement agencies cover up public corruption, by obstructing the filing and investigation of citizen criminal complaints. This is done while knowing about citizens limitations in the civil legal system. Criminal investigations are blocked and citizens are pushed to hire a civil attorney, with the knowledge that very few can afford the cost of civil litigation. The few citizens that can afford to file a civil litigation, will quickly find that public agencies, and their employees, also have extensive protections from civil litigation, built into the legal system. These public entity civil litigation immunities were originally intended to protect the public agency for the financial benefit of the citizens. However, as time passed the public entities found the immunities could be used to protect tax dollar resources for the use of the public unions. Public agencies and DA's are well aware of these financial and legal advantages when they push citizens to drop criminal complaints, go away, and hire an attorney. It is also why "Civil Litigation", is one of the most effective public corruption cover up tools available to public agencies
Litigation is high now- limiting qualified immunity explodes the amount of cases, chilling police officers and increasing crime.
Rosen 05, Michael, Attorney in San Diego, JD Harvard Law, A Qualified Defense: In Support of the Doctrine of Qualified Immunity in Excessive Force Cases, With Some Suggestions for its Improvement, http://digitalcommons.law.ggu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1899andcontext=ggulrev
This effect dovetails with a growing tendency toward "depolicing" that has become prevalent
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delicate balance society seeks between forcefully fighting crime and respectfully treating all citizens.
DOJ studies prove that chilling the police causes a huge increase in homicides and crime – prefer empirics
Felton et al 16 Ryan, Lois Beckett, Jamiles Lartey, 'Ferguson Effect' is a plausible reason for spike in violent US crime, study says, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/15/ferguson-effect-homicide-rates-us-crime-study
A new justice department-funded study concludes that a version of the so-
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unarmed black citizens causes the police "to disengage from vigorous enforcement actions".
Limiting QI increases police brutality – the department ignores the problem, and abusers are rewarded, which only encourages brutality – that turns accountability
Armacost 4. Armacost, Barbara. "Organizational Culture and Police Misconduct." Professor of Law, Univrsity of Virginia School of Law. The George Washington Law Review, 2004.
Second-and quite surprising-many (perhaps most) police departments do not
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police departments promote problem officers, they are actually rewarding their aggressive conduct.
Schwartz 14 ~Joanna C. Schwartz, ~Assistant Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law~, "Police Indemnification," New York University Law Review, Vol. 89, 2014~
Studies have found that "the prospect of civil liability has a deterrent effect in
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is currently not influenced to any substantial extent by the threat of litigation.
6. Aff’s method of solvency is city payouts – those harm poor and minorities, turns case
City payouts harm the poor and minorities the most- causes mass structural violence
Phillip 15 Phillip, Abby Contributor, The Washington Post "Why the poor often pay for police misconduct with their pocketbooks." The Washington Post. June 03 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/06/03/why-the-poor-and-disadvantaged-often-pay-for-police-misconduct-with-their-pocketbooks/ VM
Floyd Dent, a black man from Inkster, Mich., was pulled over for a routine traffic stop in January when a white Inkster police officer dragged Dent out of his vehicle, put him in an apparent choke-hold, punched him repeatedly in the head and used a stun gun on him. That officer, William Melendez, was fired and is now on trial, charged with misconduct in office and mistreatment of a prisoner, after dashboard camera video of the incident became public. And now the residents of the small Michigan town will pay the cost for Melendez’s conduct — literally. Late last month, the city of Inkster settled a lawsuit with Dent for nearly $1.4 million. According to the Detroit Free Press, Inkster’s financial manager said the city would levy a tax on property owners to help cover the cost of compensating Dent. Inkster is a city of about 25,000 residents, according to the most recent Census figures, and the median income there is just $26,500. Seventy-three percent of Inkster’s residents are black, and nearly 40 percent of the people in the city live below the poverty line. ~Black motorist beaten by white Inkster officer will receive $1.4 million settlement~ There is a bitter irony to the situation, but it’s not unusual that the very people who are most beset by police violence are the ones who wind up paying for it with their pocketbooks. When victims or their families are paid out by cities and municipalities in excessive-force cases that are settled or tried, taxpayers pay every time, highlighting the direct relationship between the social and financial costs of police violence. In Chicago: $84 million in one year. Los Angeles: $54 million. Philadelphia: $40 million in cases brought since 2009. ~Fatal police shootings in 2015 approaching 400 nationwide~ In Inkster, the sum is small and deals with just one case. But for its residents, the reality will be unavoidable: The tax will amount to a $178.67 on a home valued at about $55,400, the Free Press estimates. "The price of this is enormous, and it probably is hardest on those who can least afford it and whose communities are most egregiously beset with the misconduct problems," noted Andy Shaw, president and CEO of the Better Government Association, which has studied the high financial and social costs of police misconduct in Chicago. ~U.S. cities pay out millions to settle police lawsuits~ In Chicago, police-related settlements over the last decade cost the city more than $500 million according to a study published by the group last year. Everyone pays the price, including renters who are likely to be least able to afford it. "They not only face the financial burden and the reduction of services, these dollars could have improved their schools could have given them more cops on the streets to improve ~and~ their neighborhoods," Shaw said. "Instead they were transfer payments to victims and victims’ attorneys." Shaw added: "It takes a terrible toll." In Inkster, residents are asking why they will now be forced to shoulder this burden. "It’s not our responsibility that there was mistakes made with the police department and the city," resident Juanita Davis told WDIV in Detroit. ~Thousands of people fatally shot by police, few prosecutions~ "It is absolutely true that the innocent citizens in Inkster shouldn’t have to put up with this, and they don’t have to," said Dan Korobkin, deputy legal director of the ACLU of Michigan. "They ought to demand of their city council people, of their mayor, of their police chief and police officers — all of whom are accountable to the public — that they police this city by respecting the people of the city and complying with basic principles of decency and the constitution. "This is really an opportunity for residents of Inkster and any other municipality to say to the officials that enough is enough." The true cost of police misconduct is rarely this clear. Piecemeal investigations have revealed astounding costs over a period of years. Critics have likened excessive lawsuits and settlements to a lottery for alleged victims. Often, the expensive legal settlements prompt calls for tort reform; some states have even capped judgments that can be paid out to victims. But not only do body cameras and dashboard cameras hold some promise of being a form of oversight that deters misconduct by officers; it also makes it clear when accusations of misconduct are justified, the ACLU’s Korobkin said. "The reasonable response to high settlement amounts is to stop violating people’s constitutional rights — to take greater care that police officers aren’t trained to just leave the legal issues up to the lawyers but rather are trained to take responsibility for their actions and not violate the civil rights and constitutional rights of the people that they serve," he said. "High settlement figures are a warning signs that something is not right within the department, it’s not a reason to complain about the constitution."
Higdon 10. Woodrow L. Higdon – Investigative Photo Journalist, March 2010, "PUBLIC-CORRUPTION-COVER-UP-THRU-CIVIL-LITIAGTION-ABUSE," No Publication, http://www.gtinewsphoto.com/PUBLIC-CORRUPTION-COVER-UP-THRU-CIVIL-LITIAGTION.html RS
The so called "Civil and Criminal Justice Systems" in the United States, are systems controlled by money, and the access that money buys. In general, the more money you have, the more "Justice" you can buy. Good attorneys cost a lot more, than bad attorneys. District Attorneys and public agencies, have unlimited public tax dollar finances, which provide unlimited legal resources, for both criminal and civil cases. In the case of District Attorneys, it also provides almost unlimited power, to manipulate and obstruct criminal and civil law, and the lives of the people involved. This is why a corrupt public agency, or District Attorney's office, like the San Diego The so called "Civil and Criminal Justice Systems" in the United States, are systems controlled by money, and the access that money buys. In general, the more money you have, the more "Justice" you can buy. Good attorneys cost a lot more, than bad attorneys. District Attorneys and public agencies, have unlimited public tax dollar finances, which provide unlimited legal resources, for both criminal and civil cases. In the case of District Attorneys, it also provides almost unlimited power, to manipulate and obstruct criminal and civil law, and the lives of the people involved. This is why a corrupt public agency, or District Attorney's office, like the San Diego District Attorney’s office, is so dangerous to the public welfare. It is also how many law enforcement agencies cover up public corruption, by obstructing the filing and investigation of citizen criminal complaints. This is done while knowing about citizens limitations in the civil legal system. Criminal investigations are blocked and citizens are pushed to hire a civil attorney, with the knowledge that very few can afford the cost of civil litigation. The few citizens that can afford to file a civil litigation, will quickly find that public agencies, and their employees, also have extensive protections from civil litigation, built into the legal system. These public entity civil litigation immunities were originally intended to protect the public agency for the financial benefit of the citizens. However, as time passed the public entities found the immunities could be used to protect tax dollar resources for the use of the public unions. Public agencies and DA's are well aware of these financial and legal advantages when they push citizens to drop criminal complaints, go away, and hire an attorney. It is also why "Civil Litigation", is one of the most effective public corruption cover up tools available to public agencies
This turns the aff – police violence is a direct result of cap. Aff fails to recognize that and re-entrenches cap, which turns the case.
Mitrani 14. Sam Mitrani Is An Associate Professor Of History At The College Of DuPage. He Earned His Phd From The University Of Illinois At Chicago In 2009 and His Book The Rise Of The Chicago Police Department: Class And Conflict, 1850-1894 Is Available From The University Of Illinois Press., 12-29-2014, "Stop Kidding Yourself: The Police Were Created to Control Working Class and Poor People," LAWCHA, http://lawcha.org/wordpress/2014/12/29/stop-kidding-police-created-control-working-class-poor-people/ RS
In most of the liberal discussions of the recent police killings of unarmed black men, there is an underlying assumption that the police are supposed to protect and serve the population. That is, after all, what they were created to do. If only the normal, decent relations between the police and the community could be re-established, this problem could be resolved. Poor people in general are more likely to be the victims of crime than anyone else, this reasoning goes, and in that way, they are in more need than anyone else of police protection. Maybe there are a few bad apples, but if only the police weren’t so racist, or didn’t carry out policies like stop-and-frisk, or weren’t so afraid of black people, or shot fewer unarmed men, they could function as a useful service that we all need. This liberal way of viewing the problem rests on a misunderstanding of origins of the police and what the they were created to do. The police were not created to protect and serve the population. They were not created to stop crime, at least not as most people understand it. And they were certainly not created to promote justice. They were created to protect the new form of wage-labor capitalism that emerged in the mid- to late-19th century from the threat posed by that system’s offspring, the working class. This is a blunt way of stating a nuanced truth, but sometimes nuance just serves to obfuscate. Before the 19th century, there were no police forces that we would recognize as such anywhere in the world. In the Northern United States, there was a system of elected constables and sheriffs, much more responsible to the population in a very direct way than the police are today. In the South, the closest thing to a police force was the slave patrols. Then, as Northern cities grew and filled with mostly immigrant wage workers who were physically and socially separated from the ruling class, the wealthy elite who ran the various municipal governments hired hundreds and then thousands of armed men to impose order on the new working class neighborhoods. Class conflict roiled late-19th century American cities like Chicago, which experienced major strikes and riots in 1867, 1877, 1886, and 1894. In each of these upheavals, the police attacked strikers with extreme violence, even if in 1877 and 1894 the U.S. Army played a bigger role in ultimately repressing the working class. In the aftermath of these movements, the police increasingly presented themselves as a thin blue line protecting civilization (by which they meant bourgeois civilization) from the disorder of the working class. This ideology of order that developed in the late 19th century echoes down to today—except that today, poor black and Latino people are the main threat, rather than immigrant workers. Of course, the ruling class did not get everything it wanted, and had to yield on many points to the immigrant workers it sought to control. This is why, for instance, municipal governments backed away from trying to stop Sunday drinking, and why they hired so many immigrant police officers, especially the Irish. But despite these concessions, businessmen organized themselves to make sure the police were increasingly isolated from democratic control, and established their own hierarchies, systems of governance, and rules of behavior. The police increasingly set themselves off from the population by donning uniforms; establishing their own rules for hiring, promotion and firing; working to build a unique esprit des corps and identifying themselves with order. And despite complaints about corruption and inefficiency, they gained more and more support from the ruling class, to the extent that in Chicago, for instance, businessmen donated money to buy the police rifles, artillery, Gatling guns, buildings, and money to establish a police pension out of their own pockets. There was a never a time when the big city police neutrally enforced "the law," or came anywhere close to that ideal.
All oppressed groups must unite behind resisting capitalism, as capitalism unites all oppression into a single near-omnipotent force. Overthrowing capitalism destroys the root of oppression.
McLaren 2, Distinguished Fellow – Critical Studies @ Chapman U and UCLA urban schooling prof, and Scatamburlo-D’Annibale, associate professor of Communication – U Windsor, ‘4
These seeds, we would argue, must be derived from the tree of radical political economy. For the vast majority of people today—people of all ‘racial classifications or identities, all genders and sexual orientations’—the common frame of reference arcing across ‘difference’, the ‘concerns and aspirations that are most widely shared are those that are rooted in the common experience of everyday life shaped and constrained by political economy’ (Reed, 2000, p. xxvii). While post-Marxist advocates of the politics of ‘difference’ suggest that such a stance is outdated, we would argue that the categories which they have employed to analyze ‘the social’ are now losing their usefulness, particularly in light of actual contemporary ‘social movements.’ All over the globe, there are large anti-capitalist movements afoot. In February 2002, chants of ‘Another World Is Possible’ became the theme of protests in Porto Allegre. It seems that those people struggling in the streets haven’t read about T.I.N.A., the end of grand narratives of emancipation, or the decentering of capitalism. It seems as though the struggle for basic survival and some semblance of human dignity in the mean streets of the dystopian metropoles doesn’t permit much time or opportunity to read the heady proclamations emanating from seminar rooms. As E. P. Thompson (1978, p. 11) once remarked, sometimes ‘experience walks in without knocking at the door, and announces deaths, crises of subsistence, trench warfare, unemployment, inflation, genocide.’ This, of course, does not mean that socialism will inevitably come about, yet a sense of its nascent promise animates current social movements. Indeed, noted historian Howard Zinn (2000, p. 20) recently pointed out that after years of single-issue organizing (i.e. the politics of difference), the WTO and other anti-corporate capitalist protests signaled a turning point in the ‘history of movements of recent decades,’ for it was the issue of ‘class’ that more than anything ‘bound everyone together.’ History, to paraphrase Thompson (1978, p. 25) doesn’t seem to be following Theory's script. Our vision is informed by Marx's historical materialism and his revolutionary socialist humanism, which must not be conflated with liberal humanism. For left politics and pedagogy, a socialist humanist vision remains crucial, whose fundamental features include the creative potential of people to challenge collectively the circumstances that they inherit. This variant of humanism seeks to give expression to the pain, sorrow and degradation of the oppressed, those who labor under the ominous and ghastly cloak of ‘globalized’ capital. It calls for the transformation of those conditions that have prevented the bulk of humankind from fulfilling its potential. It vests its hope for change in the development of critical consciousness and social agents who make history, although not always in conditions of their choosing. The political goal of socialist humanism is, however, ‘not a resting in difference’ but rather ‘the emancipation of difference at the level of human mutuality and reciprocity.’ This would be a step forward for the ‘discovery or creation of our real differences which can only in the end be explored in reciprocal ways’ (Eagleton, 1996, p. 120). Above all else, the enduring relevance of a radical socialist pedagogy and politics is the centrality it accords to the interrogation of capitalism. We can no longer afford to remain indifferent to the horror and savagery committed by capitalism’s barbaric machinations. We need to recognize that capitalist democracy is unrescuably contradictory in its own self-constitution. Capitalism and democracy cannot be translated into one another without profound efforts at manufacturing empty idealism. Committed Leftists must unrelentingly cultivate a democratic socialist vision that refuses to forget the ‘wretched of the earth,’ the children of the damned and the victims of the culture of silence—a task which requires more than abstruse convolutions and striking ironic poses in the agnostic arena of signifying practices. Leftists must illuminate the little shops of horror that lurk beneath ‘globalization’s’ shiny façade; they must challenge the true ‘evils’ that are manifest in the tentacles of global capitalism's reach. And, more than this, Leftists must search for the cracks in the edifice of globalized capitalism and shine light on those fissures that give birth to alternatives. Socialism today, undoubtedly, runs against the grain of received wisdom, but its vision of a vastly improved and freer arrangement of social relations beckons on the horizon. Its unwritten text is nascent in the present even as it exists among the fragments of history and the shards of distant memories. Its potential remains untapped and its promise needs to be redeemed.
