Georgia Political Review: Fall 2019 by Georgia Political Review

LUCK of the DRAW FALL 2019

IN THIS ISSUE

VOL. XVII

G EO RGIA

5 6 7

8 14 16

21 22 24 26

B E TWEEN THE HEDGES

The Politics of Football Ticket Allocation

JOHNNY ISAKSON

A Look Inside the Legacy of Georgia's Senior Senator

COLLEGE HONOR SOC IETIES Accolade or Ponzi Scheme?

COV E R STORY: LUC K OF THE DRAW Hope, Zell, and Higher Education in Georgia

CLI M ATE CHANGE

It's Time for the Nuclear Option

THE DIVERSITY OF DISABIL ITY Inclusion on UGA's Campus

UNI T ED STATES

THE B IRTH OF THE GIF TED KID CANDIDATE How Gifted Education Influences Electoral Politics

HR I N GOVERNMENT

The Role of the Federal Government in the Age of Technology

CONS OLIDATING HOSPITAL CARE

How Market Concentration Affects Patient Costs

I T A I N 'T ME

War Taxes: What are They Good For?

THE DEATH OF THE THIRD PARTY DOC TRINE Privacy Law in the Wake of Carpenter v. United States

HE AV Y L IES THE GAVEL

Chief Justice Roberts' Decision Calculus as an Administrator of the Court

WORL D

27 28 29 30 32 34 35 36

MOR AL LAUNDE R I NG

Big Pharma Family Turns Bankruptcy to Profit

T H E DA R K A RTS

Covert Actions of the U.S., China, and Russia

I R AN O N THE E D G E

Impacts on US power abroad after Brexit

T H E BATTLE FOR A LG I E RS A Young Country with an Old Guard

T H RE ATS TO R EG I ONA L SECURITY IN L ATIN AMERICA The Revival of the FARC

D I SA PPE A R I NG G I R LS

Sex Selection and Female Infanticide in India

VI VA L A R E VOLUCI ÓN

Violent Protests and Anti-Establishment Movements in Chile

T H E BE S T VOTI NG SYS TEMS YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF Electoral Systems and Their Implications

CULTURE

38 39 40 42

CA P I TA LI S M A ND THE CLIMATE Redefining Environmental Justice

T H E NCA A’S FUM BLE ON STUDENT-ATHLETE EDUCATIO N Unjust Compensation Both Inside and Outside of the Classroom

RE P E ALI NG THE TA M PON TAX

Why Should Medical Necessities be Taxed as "Non-Essentials"?

T H E CAS HLE S S ECONOM Y

The Dominance of Electronic Payment Technology in China

GEORGIA POLITICAL REVIEW | 3

LETTER from the EDITOR Dear Reader, In today’s polarizing environment, it is often difficult to assess the pertinent information regarding today’s issues, much less the wide-ranging impact that these issues have and will have for generations afterwards. In a politically and culturally diverse society, it is imperative that news sources provide comprehensive, in-depth analysis of pressing political, cultural, and socioeconomic issues from unique perspectives. It is with these considerations in mind that the Georgia Political Review presents the 17th edition of our magazine. As a bipartisan, student-run publication funded, we seek to provide insightful commentary and analysis of local, state, national, and international issues. In this magazine, you will read outstanding examples of our writers’ perceptive analysis in articles occurring as far away as Chile, India, and Algeria and as close to home as the University of Georgia. No matter what article you stumble upon, we hope that you will not only find it enjoyable, but also come away with a better understanding of these complex issues that will impact us for the foreseeable future. As the product of innumerable hours editing, writing, and designing, it would be remiss not to recognize the hard work that our editorial board has conducted to produce this magazine. Senior Editor Branham Culpepper

managed our staff of assistant senior editors to ensure a streamlined editing process to publish quality articles in a timely manner for both our magazine and online website. Our managing editor, Angela Tsao, smoothly handled our internal affairs and publishing schedule. Emma Traynor, our chief layout editor, completely revamped and rebuilt our layout team this year to produce this visually stunning masterpiece. Additionally, the Georgia Political Review remains committed to being involved in our local community by providing educational forums on complex issues for the general public’s benefit. Nia Harris, our Operations Director, not only planned and executed a remarkable panel on women’s role in politics, but also organized and moderated the annual Great Debate between the College Republicans and the Young Democrats at the University of Georgia. Similarly, Robyn Anzulis, our business manager, expertly secured funding not only for the magazine, but also our events. Social Media Director, Jaaie Varshney coordinated our outreach efforts to advertise our events and articles. Of special note is Nathan Safir, one of our Assistant Senior Editors, who took on the responsibility of organizing our new web development team, which we formed to revitalize our website and enhance our visibility on the web. The Georgia Political

SEVENTEENTH EDITORIAL BOARD OF THE GEORGIA POLITICAL REVIEW

BUSINESS MANAGER Robyn Anzulis

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Christian Sullivan SENIOR EDITOR Branham Culpepper MANAGING EDITOR Angela Tsao OPERATIONS DIRECTOR Nia Harris LAYOUT & DESIGN EDITOR Emma Traynor ASSISTANT SENIOR EDITORS Emmett Allen Ian Allen Marshall Berton Rosa Brown Christy Chu Nathan Safir SOCIAL MEDIA & MARKETING Jaaie Varshney

LAYOUT STAFF Eshaan Agrawal Sophia DeLuca Namrata Kella Christopher Rosselot Emily Willard STAFF WRITERS Ayah Abdelwahab Mennah Abdelwahab Oisakhose Aghomo Matt Aldridge Emma Rose Bagwell Maeve Breathnach Mariah Cady Austin Cherry Sungmin Cho Austin Clark Catherine Cox Sam Driggers Chase Duncan Cameron Dunn Peyton Edelson William Golden Karan Noble Jacob Faaez Juneja

CHRISTIAN SULLIVAN Review is greatly indebted to these Editorial Board members and extremely grateful for all of the hard work they do to make this publication possible. We’re also extremely grateful to the School of Public and International Affairs for its unwavering support. And lastly, we thank you, reader, for continuing to read our articles online and in print over the years and look forward to providing more analysis for many years to come. Without further ado, welcome to the 17th Edition of the Georgia Political Review! Let’s get political,

Christian Sullivan Editor-in-Chief

Shi Ho Kim Aditya Krishnaswamy Vanisha Kudumuri John Evan Laughter Miriam Mohemkar Natalie Navarrete Priyanka Parikh Jessica Pasquarello Sydney Phillips John Radford Tarun Ramesh Aidan Rickaby Ashley Scott Emma Sovereign Emma Tucker Garrett Williams Generously supported by the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs Cover Photo: Peter/Adobe Stock Cover Design: Emma Traynor

Between the Hedges

The Politics of Student Football Ticket Allocation BY ROBYN ANZULIS

t’s Saturday in Athens. Red and black decorations adorn every building, home, and person. The unmistakable smell of hot dogs wafts from Myers Quad as tailgaters set up their tents. Children’s laughter permeates the humid air. Finally, the time has come, and the bright Southern sun shines over a mass of fans as they gather at the gates of Sanford Stadium for a weekly ritual: the playing of Georgia football. Sanford Stadium has stood boldly at the center of the University of Georgia’s (UGA) campus since 1929. After about $33 million in upgrades from 2000 to 2004, it can seat 92,746 people, making it the fifth-largest on-campus stadium in the United States. According to UGA’s student newspaper, the Red & Black, the student section is comprised of 16,000 seats, fitting a little over half of the University’s undergraduate population. The remaining seats go to higher paying fans who travel from around the state and nation to watch the games. As documented in a Student Government Association Resolution from May 24, 2018, top priority for student home game tickets goes to first-year undergraduate students, followed by tiered prioritization based on credit hours. As a result, some students do not receive tickets to every home football game. Additionally, students who cannot attend a game for which they received tickets must donate their nonrefundable tickets during a specified window of time before the game or they will receive a “strike.” Students who receive two strikes become ineligible for post-season tickets as well as tickets for the following year. While gameday typically goes smoothly in Athens, matchups against major opponents reveal the flaws of football ticket allocation procedures. Nowhere was this more evident than during the primetime clash between UGA and Notre Dame on September 21, 2019. Hundreds of thousands of people descended on Athens for gameday, requiring speedy preparations from the entire community. While work crews built the set of ESPN’s “College GameDay” on Myers Quad, UGA employees prepared 500 extra seats in Sanford Stadium, local businesses scrambled to get ready for the massive influx of customers, and students prepared for what many thought

would be one of the most exciting college football games they would ever witness. But by the time the coin had been tossed and both team were preparing for kickoff, the hype had transformed into dissatisfaction for a number of students. A UGA Athletic Association official acknowledged in an interview with the Red & Black that UGA had “failed” to provide a good gameday experience for many students, largely due to the fact that the Athletic Association allocated too few student tickets relative to the number of seats in the student section. The Red & Black reported that many students could not find seating at the lower levels of the stadium and were forced to move to the 300 or 600-level, where some alleged mistreatment by UGA police and Notre Dame fans. Many left the stadium, unable to watch the game or receive a refund. In its attempt to maximize profits, the UGA Athletic Association underestimated the number of students that would attend the game and ultimately failed to satisfy students. UGA is not the only major football school with controversial student ticket allocation procedures. Clemson University uses a point system based on credit hours and membership in the “I Pay Ten a Year” (IPTAY) Collegiate Club, an organization supporting student-athletes. 3,500 of the 10,500 student seats are reserved for IPTAY members. Students who do not have enough points to get a full season ticket package may apply for free single-game tickets, which also gives priority to IPTAY club members. Membership in IPTAY now costs $40 per year or $130 for four years, and season football tickets cost $175 to $280 dollars. In 2017, Clemson students and alumni began circulating a petition to lower the cost of student tickets and to stop prioritizing IPTAY members in ticket allocation. This came just one year after students protested and ultimately shut down a proposal to include a $350 athletic department fee in student fees. At Auburn University, ticket allocations depend on credit hours and penalty points. In 2017, much to the dismay of students, university officials disallowed ticket transfers and single ticket purchases. They argued that the former measure would prevent non-Auburn students from filling the student section and

that the latter measure would ensure that students are present at all games, not just the most significant ones. Like UGA, Auburn now has a nonrefundable ticket pool to which students who cannot attend games may return their tickets. However, unlike UGA, Auburn students must return their tickets almost a week in advance of gameday in order to avoid accumulating penalty points. Perhaps the most unique ticket allocation policy comes from the University of Alabama. Student football ticket packages are split according to class year and game preference. They are allocated according to points in the University’s Tide Loyalty Program. Students receive points for earning credit hours, attending home football games, staying until the fourth quarter of home football games, donating tickets by a designated date, or joining Crimson Chaos, a student organization dedicated to supporting Alabama athletics. While loyalty-based allocations are not without controversy, the most contestable aspect of the Tide Loyalty Program is that it uses an app to track students’ locations to determine if they have remained at the football game through the third quarter. Though the University claims that it only tracks students inside the stadium, privacy watchdogs remain concerned about a public university having the ability to locate its students, even if Alabama officials claim that it is just for loyalty points and post-season ticket prospects. With fraternity and sorority block seating, illegal ticket transfers, and penalty point appeals procedures, ticket allocation and usage policies are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the politics behind student experiences at college football games. But one observation is clear: university athletic associations’ policies seek to wins and revenue before student enjoyment of football games. In the case of the UGA versus Notre Dame game, this meant that many students did not have the opportunity to enjoy a game for which they had already paid. At other universities, this may mean increased fees, stringent ticket donation deadlines, or even the loss of privacy. Whether the team is between the hedges or in the depths of Death Valley, university ticket allocation policies often seem to suck the life out of the student section.

GEORGIA POLITICAL REVIEW | 5

JOHNNY

ISAKSON Civility and Kindness In Modern Politics

BY JOHN EVAN LAUGHTER

tanding in a long corridor inside the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., one might hear the familiar tapping of Senator Johnny Isakson’s cane as he makes his way down the hall. Patterned in red, white, and blue, the cane has become a trusted companion for Isakson over the past few years, especially since his 2015 announcement that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Notably, Isakson has surrounded himself with all kinds of companions over the course of his career. A gentleman by nature, Senator Isakson has not only made bipartisan friendships on Capitol Hill but also maintained them during the most vitriolic period of modern political history. His quiet presence and influence in the Capitol have had a profound impact on Georgians over the past fifteen years, and much of the credit goes to his ability to bring people together rather than drive them apart. In an era of politics where many elected officials would rather make headlines with their latest sound bite than have an informed discussion on real issues, Senator Isakson has separated himself from the pack by staying true to his convictions. No matter one’s politics, his retirement at the end of 2019 will reduce those willing to compromise on Capitol Hill by one. One of Isakson’s oft-quoted mantras is one he learned from his father: “The less you say, the more people listen.” Isakson may not show up in the national news as often as some of his more outspoken senatorial colleagues, but behind closed doors, his opinion is weighed heavily by other members when deciding their support for legislation. His quiet but confident methodology for decision-making has earned him the respect of legislators on both sides of the aisle. Upon his retirement announcement in August of 2019, dozens of senators turned to social media to deliver praise of Senator Isakson. After his announcement,

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) spoke highly of him, saying, “One of the many fine adjectives to describe Johnny Isakson is a word not used enough in the halls of Congress these days: kind.” On the Republican side, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-M.O.) called Isakson “the most respected senator on either side of the aisle.” His line of well-wishers included dozens of senators and public servants, with several opting to make speeches on the Senate floor in his honor. When it comes to Isakson’s areas of expertise, including Housing and Veterans’ Affairs, his relationships with his colleagues led many senators to defer to his judgment on how to vote on certain measures. It is not uncommon to hear, “If Johnny is on board, so am I.” One criticism of Isakson might be that he does not introduce the heaps of bills and resolutions often touted by louder members of the body. To this point Isakson will tell you “I don’t put my name on a lot of legislation, but I sure put my name on a lot of legislation that gets passed.” The senator says this to make the point that he does not believe in the posturing that often motivates members of Congress to write or sponsor legislation just for the sake of saying they did it. This “box-checking” mentality has long endured in Congress, as many legislators value being able to return to their home districts and tell their constituents about the laundry list of bills they’ve sponsored, as evidence of the hard work they are doing in Washington D.C. However, Isak-

son’s approach is no doubt more genuine and more effective. As Chairman of the Veteran’s Affairs Committee, Isakson helped pass 25 pieces of legislation in 2017 and 2018 alone, all of which were signed into law. By prioritizing issues that most people agree on, rather than those that are the most divisive, Isakson is able to overcome the characteristic stagnation of Congress and move the country forward. While “common sense” has become a cliché in the context of law-writing, there is no better way to describe Isakson’s approach to his role in the Senate. As a result, he leaves the Senate having played a role in tax reform, stronger support for veterans, decreasing healthcare costs, and countless other measures that have highlighted his time on Capitol Hill. Isakson’s leaving presents the impending question of who will replace him. Per Georgia law, Governor Brian Kemp will appoint a successor, who will then have to stand election in 2020 in order to finish out the rest of Isakson’s term, which concludes at the end of 2022. With Georgia’s junior Senator David Perdue up for reelection in 2020, Senator Isakson’s resignation has set the stage for a wild year in Georgia politics. With many Democrats eyeing Georgia as a potential battleground state there is every possibility that in the coming months the Empire State of the South will play host to a great deal of contention. Unfortunately, this situation is exactly the opposite of what Senator Isakson would want and seems a cruel product of a tremendous career. After years of building bridges and working for a culture of mutual respect on either side of the aisle, perhaps the 74-year-old senator from Marietta can do one final service for the people of Georgia. Perhaps his steadfast commitment to moving the country forward will in its own way etch his legacy of public service for the common good in stone. Perhaps his sincere friendships with his fellow members of the Senate will inspire his successor to take a similar tone. Perhaps his humility, and his choice to step down when the time had come, will remind a generation of Georgians that we are all human, and just because we disagree does not mean we are not all doing our best. To the rest of the country, and in Washington D.C., he is Senator Isakson, but to his many friends and the people of Georgia, he’s just Johnny.

“One of the many fine adjectives to describe Johnny Isakson is a word not used enough in the halls of Congress these days: kind.”

-Sen . Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)

GEORGIA

Honor Societies

More Business than Prestige? BY SAMUEL DRIGGERS

electively admitting students on the basis of scholastic endeavors and campus leadership, honor societies have long been part of secondary school and university life. Ideally, these organizations confer recognition for high achievement and stimulate further growth of student scholars and leaders. Yet, at the University of Georgia and across the country, student membership in honor societies has begun to decrease in worth. The increasing commonality of honor societies, their recent shift toward “honor marketing,” and their typical lack of emphasis on collegiate programming, at least in part, has spurred their decline. A Growing Number of Societies and Honorees According to most accounts, societies centering on the recognition of academic achievement and campus leadership have been commonplace since the late 1880s, proliferating rapidly across academic institutions since their promulgation. From 1900 to 1925, an average of two new honor societies were founded each year. Although the growth of honor societies since begun to wane, the so-called “elite” institutions are hardly rare. At the University of Georgia (UGA) alone, twenty-six honor societies are registered student organizations, each of which maintains its own standards for admission and boasts unique benefits of membership. Although honoring students for scholastic excellence is a noble cause, the proliferation of honor societies proves a cause for concern. Since honor societies derive prestige from their selectivity, commonplace membership offers little utility for students applying for university admission, scholarships, and jobs. In the words of the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an educational policy think tank, widespread membership in honor societies among students “cheapens their currency." The proliferation of academic honor societies has already rendered some societal memberships of little use. In a review of the National Honor Society, an apparently prestigious organization admitting secondary school students, The New York Times found that undergraduate admissions officers have begun to question the prestige and selectivity of the society as a direct result of its vast 700,000-strong membership. At the university level, this sort of honorary dilution seems to have taken place as well, with many qualified and less than qualified students receiving invitations to double-digit numbers of honor societies. Since most honor societies advertise nationwide recognition of superior academic excellence as one of their principal benefits to potential new

members, nonexclusive membership in honor societies would seem to defeat much of their purpose. The frequency of honor society memberships and initiation invitations has yielded a generation skeptical of their worth; HuffPost offers evidence that secondary school students increasingly perceive the National Honor Society, its mandatory service-hours, and its costly initiation fee as a waste of time and money. At the university-level, articles in The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal have highlighted the increasing denial of invitations – more than 50 percent of students at some schools – for membership in Phi Beta Kappa, widely recognized as the nation’s most prestigious honor society. The Business of Selling Honor The Association of College Honor Societies (ACHS), a coalition of 66 academic honor societies founded to certify honor societies of high standards, blames rising student disinterest in academic honor societies on predatory organizations that “call themselves honor societies … exist[ing] primarily to make a profit, rather than to create opportunities for the students they purport to serve." ACHS’s claims are not without basis; according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, low-standard societies and scams masquerading as legitimate honor societies have flourished in the Internet era. These societies and scams, often sharing similar names to legitimate honor societies, require only payment for admission and offer remarkably little to their students. Even with these societies and scams put aside, competition among legitimate honor societies for a generation of qualified, skeptical initiates has incited the uptake of marketing tactics more reminiscent of multi-level marketing schemes than exclusive academic societies. Reliant on new initiates for initiation fees and the sale of graduation regalia that fund operating expenses and philanthropic efforts, many honor societies – to include some ACHS members – have developed extreme recruitment strategies to ensure their continued operation. For the ACHS-member National Society of Collegiate Scholars, membership invitations boast paid endorsements by Fortune 500 CEOs, Maya Angelou, Ivy League presidents, and a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Former-ACHS petitioning member Golden Key International Honor Society’s leadership runs aggressive recruitment campaigns, threatening legal action against societies competing for initiates, paying commissions to society recruiters “selling” memberships, and allowing students unqualified for

admission into the organization. In an attempt to expand their member base, even prestigious societies such as Phi Beta Kappa are reaching out to less competitive colleges in search of new initiates, prompting some members to decry the weakening of “brand credibility." What path forward should honor societies take? Amidst the continual growth of legitimate and non-legitimate honor societies and the cheapening of the prestige they convey, it is no surprise that students of this century are less excited by the receipt of honor society invitations. Yet, increasingly distasteful marketing tactics are unlikely to bring academically excellent, leadership-bound initiates into the fold of honor societies. Rather, today’s promising honor society initiates – perhaps best stated by The Chronicle of Higher Education – are “savvy customers want[ing] more than a rite of passage and the occasional tepid lecture.” Rather than sacrificing prestige, admitting unqualified students, or deceptively marketing the honors they theoretically convey, honor societies ought to refocus their efforts on the maintenance of their own prestige, adherence to their standards, and expansion of notably lacking membership benefits. Rather than offering sponsored internship listings and graduate programs (National Society of Collegiate Scholars), academic honor societies could work to better connect alumni to students. Instead of considering bank offers to provide “members-only” credit cards (Phi Beta Kappa), honor societies could conserve revenues by trimming administrative and marketing costs. And, instead of allowing unqualified membership (Golden Key) or developing less competitive collegiate chapters (Phi Beta Kappa), honor societies could reach out to academically qualified minority communities historically underrepresented within the organizations. Only by returning to the ACHS’s stated purpose of honor societies – to “confer distinction for high achievement,” “stimulate and encourage mental development,” and “impose upon members high citizenship responsibilities” – will students begin to value the benefits of academic honor societies over their costs. Affiliation: The author of this article is a member of both local and national honor societies. Acknowledging potential benefits resulting from membership in honor societies, he stresses students assess the net-value of initiation invitations based on a careful, case-bycase analysis of costs and benefits associated with membership in local chapters and/or any associated national organizations.

GEORGIA POLITICAL REVIEW | 7

LUCK of the DRAW Hope, Zell, and Access to Higher Education in Georgia BY EMMA TUCKER

ew policies are as revered, criti- ly enacting the policy with which he had cized, and hotly contested on Geor- so closely identified his campaign. This gia college campuses as the HOPE required that the Georgia Assembly pass (Helping Outstanding Pupils Education- an amendment to the state constitution ally) Scholarship. Since its’ creation in establishing a state-run lottery and that 1992, this state-financed, merit-based the general public ratify the proposed scholarship has dramatically altered amendment in a referendum. Despite the profile of higher education across fierce opposition from religious leaders the state. By some metrics, the HOPE who warned against the spiritual evils of Scholarship has been an overwhelming encouraging gambling and public intersuccess, elevating the national stand- est groups who invoked the dangers of ing of Georgia’s universities, increasing gambling addictions, Miller was able to college enrollment, and keeping talent- pass the proposed amendment through ed students in-state. On the other hand, the legislature, but faced a 21-month gap it has also played a role in exacerbating before a referendum could be held to ratsocioeconomic and racial divides in access to Georgia’s top-tier universities and raised concerns about the proper allocation of educational funding. At the University of Georgia, where 98.2 percent of all incoming in-state freshmen receive HOPE funds, the perennial debate surrounding HOPE pits those students who praise the scholarship for making college more affordable against those who view it as a regressive tax that draws funds from lottery players and distributes them to upper middle-class families. In order to address these criticisms, which have plagued the scholarship since its inception, it is necessary to first recognize the political and historical context in which the HOPE Scholarship was conceived. In 1990, Lieutenant Governor Zell Miller was struggling to distinguish himself in a crowded gubernatorial race. His chief Democratic rivals were Andrew Young, the first black American ambassador to the United Nations and the Governor Zell B. Miller, the creator of outgoing mayor of Atlanta, and Roy Georgia's HOPE Scholarship in the 1990s Barnes, a highly-respected Georgia state senator who enjoyed steady support from white suburban voters. ify the amendment. During this interim The turning point in Miller’s campaign period, Miller expended much of his pocame when his advisors discovered litical capital in a failed effort to remove surprising public support among ru- the image of the Confederate flag from ral communities for a state-run lottery. the state flag, weakening his support Miller decided to couple this untapped among white voters and the political enthusiasm for a state lottery with his establishment. In the face of dwindling own passion for improving education support for a state-lottery and a crisis of and adopted a lottery for education as legitimacy, Miller needed to find a way his signature platform. On the campaign to make a lottery for education appeal trail, Miller touted the potential for this to the white, suburban electorate. This policy to provide sustained funding for urgency led to his September 1992 anGeorgia’s schools, moving Georgia out nouncement of a three-part education of the educational backwaters. This mes- program that would fund pre-kindergarsage resonated with both black and rural ten, technology advancements in K-12 white voters, propelling Miller to a slim schools, and the HOPE Scholarship. The victory in both the primary and general decision to incorporate a merit-based elections. college scholarship, which had not been Once in office, Governor Zell Miller part of the original campaign promise, faced the formidable challenge of actual- allowed Miller to make the lottery ap-

pealing to many of the white, affluent voters whose support he had lost during his attempt to change the state flag. The amendment passed the statewide referendum in November 1992 — albeit by fewer than 100,000 votes — and by the fall of 1993 the HOPE Scholarship was up and running. Within its first year, the Georgia lottery generated over $1.13 billion, far outpacing the $140 million in revenue estimated by Miller’s team. Faced with hundreds of millions of dollars in excess funds and no plan for allocation, Georgia lawmakers quickly scaled up the benefits and broadened the eligibility criteria for HOPE. They first raised the household income cap from $66,000 to $100,000, then eliminated it entirely. At the same time, they changed the scholarship from two years of funding to four, and they allowed students at private Georgia colleges to apply HOPE Scholarship funds toward their tuition costs. In this sense, the HOPE Scholarship as it currently exists began in 1995, with the elimination of the income cap, the expansion of coverage to all four years, and the switch to purely merit-based eligibility. Now, 25 years later, over $10 billion in financial aid has been distributed to 1.8 million Georgia students through the HOPE Scholarship, Georgia’s top research universities have soared in national rankings, and the HOPE model has served as the inspiration for similar lottery-funded programs in Florida, Tennessee, New Mexico, and West Virginia. However, the intended effects of HOPE have not been realized evenly across all sectors of society, as white, upper middle-class families have disproportionately benefited from the scholarship. This trend is especially apparent at the University of Georgia (UGA) and the Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia’s top public research institutions, where the median household incomes for students are $129,800 and $130,000, respectively. Determining the success of HOPE in absolute terms is therefore difficult, as any appraisal depends upon which outcomes are examined. An objective evaluation of the program’s success may be best achieved by measuring the results of the scholarship against its three stated goals: incentivizing high academic performance in high school and college, encouraging talented students to stay in-state, and addressing gaps in college enrollment along racial and socioeconomic lines.

GEORGIA

Objective 1: Incentivizing high academic performance When Zell Miller lobbied for the HOPE Scholarship ahead of its ratification, he often likened it to the G.I. Bill from which he himself had benefited. Later on in his career, he reasserted this claim, saying, “the HOPE Scholarship is based on the same simple premise as the G.I. Bill . . . if you give something, you get something.” This was the “HOPE Promise,” or the assurance offered to high school students that, as long as they maintained a 3.0 GPA throughout high school, they would receive free tuition at any public Georgia college. Though the HOPE Scholarship has undergone cuts in recent years and seen the introduction of the more competitive Zell Miller Scholarship due to the steep rise in the cost of attending college, the HOPE Promise largely lives on. And, by most metrics, Miller’s goal of encouraging students to work hard in high school has been successful; in the five years following HOPE implementation, average high school GPAs, SAT scores, and AP course enrollment numbers increased steadily. The direct impact of HOPE on academic performance is equally apparent among current college students, with a study by

Bugler and Henry finding that borderline HOPE recipients had higher GPAs, completed more credit hours, and had higher rates of college persistence than their borderline non-HOPE recipient counterparts. However, the scholarship’s effects on academic performance is not uniformly beneficial. The pressure to maintain a 3.0 GPA throughout college in order to retain

that the HOPE Scholarship decreased an individual student’s probability of completing a full course load in a given semester by 9.3 percent, translating to a one credit hour reduction in annual credits completed. Similarly, a study by Sjoquist and Winters analyzed merit scholarship programs across 27 different states and found that these scholarships significantly decreased the likelihood of a student’s earning a degree in a STEM field. This relationship has not been definitively established in Georgia, but a study by Dee and Johnson conducted soon after the implementation of HOPE found that students majoring in STEM disciplines were 21-51 percent more likely to lose their HOPE Scholarships than their peers in other fields. In an effort to address this issue, the Georgia Student Finance Commission implemented a STEM GPA provision in 2017, through which an additional weight of 0.5 will be added to grades of B, C, or D in approved STEM classes for purposes of calculating a student’s HOPE postsecondary GPA. Whether this policy change will significantly affect the proportion of students seeking STEM degrees remains to be seen.

“HOPE is not just a reward for hard work, it is an incentive to work hard,” - Zell Miller

Academic Requirements

HOPE eligibility has historically led some students to take fewer classes, withdraw from classes more frequently, and potentially choose less demanding majors. A 2008 study by Drs. Christopher Cornwell and David Mustard of the University of Georgia Department of Economics found

HOPE Scholarship

High School Graduate

3.0 HOPE GPA (including rigor requirements)

College Student in GA

3.0 HOPE GPA

Zell Miller Scholarship 3.7 HOPE GPA (including rigor requirements) AND EITHER: 1200 SAT (one sitting)

26 ACT (one sitting)

3.3 HOPE GPA

GEORGIA POLITICAL REVIEW | 11

Objective 2: Keeping talented students in-state Zell Miller often expressed concern over Georgia’s problem with “brain drain,” or the trend of highly qualified students opting to leave the state to attend college elsewhere. He hoped that the HOPE Scholarship would incentivize students to stay in Georgia, and, by extension, increase their odds of staying in-state after graduating from college and contributing to the state’s workforce. The effectiveness of merit scholarships in curtailing brain-drain is well established, with many studies establishing a causal relationship between the implementation of merit-based aid and an increased likelihood of targeted students attending instate colleges. Within Georgia, a 2006 study by Cornwell and Mustard confirmed this phenomenon, finding that, of the 7.0-7.9 percent enrollment increase in Georgia colleges after HOPE implementation, two-thirds can be attributed to students who otherwise

would have left the state for college. The effect of HOPE on student retention has been especially pronounced among the highest-performing high schoolers; between 1993 and 1998, the percentage of students scoring above a 1500 (out of 1600) on the SAT who stayed in state for college jumped from 23 percent to 76 percent. Among Georgia educators, there is not much debate over whether HOPE has attracted more high-caliber students and attenuated the state’s historic struggle with brain drain. “Did we keep outstanding students in Georgia for college?” asked Dr. Mustard in a recent interview, “Yes, absolutely, that’s the one thing that we do well.” The success of the HOPE Scholarship in retaining the state’s talented youth is reflected in the rise of Georgia’s universities on the national stage. In 1992, the year before HOPE was implemented, the average SAT

score of an incoming freshman at UGA was 1149 — now that number is 1365. Similarly, UGA’s acceptance rate has dropped from 78 percent in 1990 to 45 percent in 2019. Some may claim the increased competitiveness of UGA admissions is caused by a rise in the overall Georgia population, which increased from 6.5 million in 1990 to an estimated 10.6 million in 2019, a 63 percent increase. However, the number of spots in the incoming freshman class at UGA has actually increased by 78 percent since 1990, indicating that UGA’s increasing competitiveness cannot be explained away by merely citing the rise in Georgia’s population. Whether this has translated to more students staying in-state after college is less clear. On one hand, it seems reasonable to assume that students who attend Georgia institutions are more likely to remain in the state than students who leave Georgia for college, but it’s also possible that HOPE beneficiaries who graduate with minimal student debt are more inclined to go to more expensive, out-of-state graduate schools. The wider effects of HOPE on the Georgia labor force and economy also remain to be seen, as not much research has addressed this topic.

Graphs show HOPE disparities between race and socioeconomic status

Objective 3: Reducing disparities along racial and socioeconomic lines Despite its many successes, the HOPE Scholarship has long fallen short of achieving its third objective : reducing socioeconomic and racial disparities in access to higher education. The 1994 removal of the scholarship’s original $66,000 income cap signaled a shift in priority, moving from extending a bridge to low-income families to offering an incentive to wealthy, high-achieving students. Currently, only 30% of low-income students in the University System of Georgia receive the HOPE or Zell Scholarships, compared to 42% of middle or high-income students. This divide also manifests itself along racial lines: only 20% of black students and 36% of Hispanic students receive the HOPE or Zell Scholarship, compared to 45% of white students. At Georgia Tech and UGA, the shortcomings of HOPE in addressing racial disparities are especially pronounced; black Georgians make up 31% of the state’s population, yet black students account for only 7.8% of UGA’s class of 2022 and 7.6% of Georgia Tech’s student body. Affluent families are highly overrepresented at these institutions, with 59 of students at both UGA and Georgia Tech coming from families in the top 20% of households by income. Only 3.8% of all UGA students and 4.6% of Georgia Tech students come from the bottom 20% of households by income, indicating that the overall effect of HOPE has not been to increase upwards social mobility and college accessibility, but rather to subsidize education for those who likely could have attended college even without the scholarship. In the words of Dr. Cornwell, “It’s not that there are no effects on enrollment margin, but HOPE isn’t designed to do that. It’s not designed to open access, because the scholarship is only available to people who are already pretty good students, whose prospects for college-going are already pretty high.” The HOPE Scholarship has also come under fire in recent years due to criticisms of the lottery as a regressive tax, a

tax that takes a larger proportion of income from lower-income earners than from high-income earners. This allegation is well-supported by data, with a recent Bankrate survey finding that households earning less than $30,000 spent an average of $412 annually on lottery tickets, while those earning over $75,000 spent only $105. “The incidence of the lottery tax is pretty clear.” says Cornwell, “It [the HOPE Scholarship] is a strange policy from that perspective: taking from lottery players and giving to people in Alpharetta or Johns Creek.” Research has also supported the argument that receiving HOPE funds simply allows wealthier families to reallocate the funds they had saved for college, with another well-publicized study by Cornwell and Mustard finding that increased numbers of HOPE recipients corresponded to higher rates of car registrations in counties above the 75th percentile in per capita income. These cars that are indirectly funded through lottery tickets — colloquially known as “Hopemobiles” — offer a tangible representation of HOPE’s failings and lend credibility to those who consider it to be a regressive tax. However, the outlook from a diversity and inclusion standpoint is not entirely bleak — by some metrics, HOPE has made some progress toward its third goal. For example, college enrollment among black students in Georgia increased by 70% between 1993 and 2006. Part of this trend is likely due to the 1994 decision to enable students to apply HOPE funding to private colleges, removing some of the financial barriers for students attending the state’s seven private historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). HBCUs have also historically enjoyed high rates of HOPE Scholarship receipt; in

1998, every incoming in-state student at Spelman College had a HOPE Scholarship. Additionally, the decision in 2000 to make Pell Grants and HOPE Scholarships stackable, instead of dollar-for-dollar substitutes, allowed HOPE to benefit more low-income students. Despite these policy shifts, many advocates for educational reform have argued that the HOPE Scholarship could better serve Georgians by fundamentally restructuring its fund allocation and redirecting resources toward need-based aid. However, the concept of reintroducing an income cap or other means-test is a “political non-starter,” says Cornwell, adding that “It’s like any public policy — once you have a dedicated constituency, it’s very difficult to take that away.” The popularity of HOPE among middle and upper-class Georgians has rendered it immune to reform thus far, with no policy changes in sight. Critics and defenders alike cannot dispute the impact that the HOPE Scholarship has had on the state of Georgia. Zell Miller’s unprecedented investment in higher education has paid dividends for the state as a whole: elevating its universities, attracting talented students, and increasing its competitiveness on the national field. However, many students have been left behind, rendered ineligible as a result of broken educational systems that failed them long before the time came to fill out their FAFSA forms. As Georgia enters the new decade, 25 years after HOPE as we know it began, it may be time for lawmakers to reevaluate how to best distribute lottery funds to increase equity within higher education. Zell Miller once said, “I am committed to expanding the educational opportunities of all Georgians,” but there are many his signature scholarship has yet to reach.

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Nuclear Power’s Role in Our Energy Future, and Georgia’s Role in the Future of Nuclear Power BY EMMETT ALLEN

ithout a doubt, climate change is one of the most pressing environmental, political, and economic issues of our time. Since the late 19th century, the average surface temperature of the Earth has increased by 0.9 degrees Celsius. The rate of warming has accelerated greatly: a majority of the warming occurred in the past 35 years, and the five hottest years on record were in the past decade. Climate scientists generally agree that it is extremely likely that climate change has been the result of human behavior since the late 19th century, particularly with regards to the greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere. This man-made temperature increase has serious consequences: sea-levels are rising, glaciers are melting, ecosystems are collapsing due to temperature increases and greater ocean acidification, and extreme weather events like hurricanes are becoming more common. While these emissions come from a variety of sources, this article focuses on one particular culprit of increasing greenhouse gas emissions: electricity. Approximately one third of United States greenhouse gas emissions are associated with the production of electricity. 65% of those emissions are attributed to coal, and 33% to natural gas-- less than 2% of emissions come from other sources. While coal and natural gas account for 98%

of greenhouse gas emissions, they only produce around 62% of our electricity. The rest of our electricity comes from burning petroleum oil (1%), nuclear energy (19%), and renewable electricity (17%). Within the category of “renewable energy” are hydroelectric power, wind power, solar power, biomass, and geothermal. Most renewable energy is hydroelectric (7%) or wind (6%). A number of political leaders have called for an increased investment in renewable energy because of concerns over the effect that nonrenewable energy sources like natural gas and coal have in accelerating climate change. At the moment, climate change is a prominent topic of discussion in the Democratic presidential primary. However, in this debate, nuclear power has been overlooked by many of the candidates, as well as by many environmental activists in general. Senator Bernie Sanders, for example, has proposed banning nuclear energy in his proposal to address climate change. There is no denying that renewable energy sources are viable, but a policy approach that seeks to address the impact of electricity on climate change that does not include nuclear power is a misguided approach. Nuclear power has a distinct environmental advantage over the two primary energy providers in the United States, coal and natural gas. Unlike these other nonrenewable

N G

energy sources, nuclear power does not emit greenhouse gases directly into the atmosphere. While the production of nuclear power emits some carbon dioxide in the construction process, this nearly carbon-free resource can make a massive contribution to changing overall emissions.Despite producing 19.3% of electricity nationwide in 2018, nuclear power produced less than 1% of the carbon emissions. If implemented properly, nuclear power clearly has the potential to make a substantial impact in reducing U.S. emissions. However, there are a number of barriers to nuclear power becoming successful. The two primary barriers that nuclear power development faces are political opposition and the lack of an infrastructure for the storage of nuclear waste. Nuclear power has long been, and still is, an epicenter of controversy in debates about energy policy. Disasters such as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, a 1986 partial meltdown of a Russian nuclear reactor caused by negligent worker practices, and the Three Mile Island incident, a far less consequential 1979 nuclear plant failure in Pennsylvania, skewed American public opinion against nuclear power in the late 20th century. In 1988, around 60% of Americans opposed nuclear power, and only around 30% favored it. However, over the course of the four decades since Chernobyl, public opinion has shifted substantially. In a 2016 survey, 26% of people surveyed strongly favored nuclear energy, 42% somewhat favored it, and only 29% opposed it. In theory, the public is onboard with nuclear energy. However, there is only one nuclear plant currently under construction in the U.S. So why are nuclear projects so scarce in the United States? It turns out that while the public supports nuclear power, efforts to expand nuclear power are often faced with strong political opposition. The prime example of political opposition preventing nuclear development is Yucca Mountain located in Nevada. The Obama administration had planned to convert Yucca Mountain into a storage unit for nuclear waste in 2010. However, the Democratic Senate Majority Leader at the time, Nevada Senator Har-

E ry Reid, pushed Obama to cancel the program because of majority opposition from Nevada voters. Nuclear waste accumulates in the process of nuclear power generation. It is currently being stored in temporary sites across the country, which are not designed for long-term use. The Yucca Mountain bill’s failure to pass the Senate in 2010 is a letdown for nuclear energy supporters, as there is a clear need for a more permanent solution to nuclear waste accumulation across the country. If nuclear power is to progress, a long-term storage solution must be developed—-- whether that means following through with the Yucca Mountain storage facility or an alternative. Developing nuclear power sources is necessary if phasing out coal and natural gas because there are substantial gaps in what renewable energy can provide. Electricity travels at a rate of 186,000 miles per second down a typical wire, so when electricity is generated, it is used almost immediately. The electricity used to power a lightbulb in your house was created less than a second before it powered the bulb. For this reason, the limitation of renewable energy use is ultimately the storage of electricity. Energy must be stored on a large scale so that solar power providers can provide electricity at night and wind power providers can provide electricity when it is not windy. Unfortunately, broad-scale electrical storage is just not there yet. There is good reason to continue the push for renewables like solar and wind: they do not produce direct emissions, and some renewables are actually much cheaper than even the cheapest nonrenewable sources of energy. Ultimately, nuclear energy and renewable energy can go hand-in-hand in creating a low emissions electrical system. However, to claim that renewable energy alone can be a substitute for our current nonrenewable system is unrealistic. The state of Georgia is at the epicenter of the national debate about the efficacy of nuclear power. Just 20 miles outside of Waynesboro, Georgia, a modest city with a population of less than 6,000, is the site of the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant (Plant Vogtle). Right now, Plant Vogtle is the only nuclear power plant under construction in the United States, and for that reason, the future of American nuclear power is largely in Geor-

GEORGIA gia’s hands. So far, however, that responsibility has been managed terribly. The Plant Vogtle project dates back to 1970, when Georgia Power’s board of directors voted to create a four-unit nuclear power plant. They began planning the construction of Units 1 and 2, with a cost estimate of $660 million for both units. By 1974, Georgia Power had halted construction due to a lack of sufficient funding, but relaunched in 1977 with a new cost estimate of $2.7 billion. . By 1989, thirteen years after construction began, Unit 2 was completed at a full cost of $9.2 billion. Plant Voglte’s two nuclear units have a capacity of 3,625.6 megawatts each: that’s more electricity than twelve typical coal plants. $2 billion is generally considered to be a conservative estimate for the cost of constructing a 600 milliwatt (MW) capacity coal plant. So twelve coal plants, equivalent to Vogtle Units 1 and 2, would cost $24 billion, compared to Vogtle’s $9.2 billion cost. Additionally, based on 2008 estimates, all types of coal plants cost 20% more than nuclear plants per MW, so we would expect Vogtle to have lower operating costs than these theoretical twelve coal plants over time. Despite completing the project at a cost wildly beyond the initial budget, Plant Vogtle Units 1 and 2 seem like a bargain compared to coal power plants. With this in mind, it is easy to see why Georgia Power and the state government approved Units 3 and 4. However, this cost-saving measure would turn out to be a massive blunder. In 2009, the Georgia legislature approved a $100 annual surcharge for every Georgia Power customer to fund the plant’s construction. Construction began in 2013 with a budget of $14 billion and a 2016 deadline. Two years later, the project’s completion date had been delayed to 2019, the budget had been increased by $3 billion, and Georgia Power had to pay a $760 million settlement to Westinghouse, a partner in the project that sued them over the delays and cost increases. In March of 2017, Westinghouse filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In June, a Georgia commissioner proposed to the Georgia Public Service Commission that the $100 annual surcharge, which generated $500 million in annual revenue from Georgia Power customers, be removed. There was a strong case for the removal of the surcharge at this point: why would Georgia Power be allowed to continue to charge its customers in 2017, a full year over the charge amount that was originally approved by the government? However, no action was taken on the proposal by the Commission. By August of that year, Georgia Power’s parent Southern Company, which had largely taken over the project, revealed that the total cost of the Unit 3 and Unit 4 expansion was now $25 billion. Staggeringly, that’s more than the cost of building twelve coal power plants. Despite the past mistakes of Plant Vogtle, the construction project continues even now, two years after it reached a $25 billion price tag. On March 22nd of this year, Energy Secretary Rick Perry approved

approximately $3.7 billion of loans for Vogtle Units 3 and 4. This brings the total amount of loans the federal government has offered to the Plant Vogtle project to $12 billion. The best case scenario, which seems unlikely, is that construction is eventually completed and these loans are repaid over time with revenue generated from the plant. A more likely prediction: Southern Company will repay these loans by implementing a surcharge on Georgia Power customers. Nuclear power needs to be a major part of our energy future, and the complete failure of the parties responsible for the construction of Plant Vogtle to complete it on time or within budget is a discouraging roadblock towards that future. With the help of their friends in the public sector, Georgia Power and its parent Southern Company have dragged out this project, continuing to collect payment for construction while yielding no productive results for the people of Georgia. However, we cannot give up on nuclear power because of one failed project. The nuclear power technology we need to phase out natural gas and coal is there: we just need a government body or private company that can implement it effectively.

GEORGIA POLITICAL REVIEW | 15

The Diversity of Disability Why the Inclusion of Differently-Abled Individuals in Diversity Initiatives is So Important BY MENNAH ABDELWAHAB

alking under the Arch is a rite of passage celebrated by alumni of the University of Georgia (UGA) year after year. Yet, UGA has omitted mobility-impaired students from this tradition. Though a temporary ramp is placed there on graduation day, on all other days, the ramp is not present, making walking under the Arch impossible for returning disabled alums. Such an omission is not an isolated incident. Rather, it is a part of a wider issue of disregarding the experiences of differently-abled individuals when considering diversity. Within the past decade, society has increasingly placed importance on diversity, recognizing the benefit of having different perspectives at the table. However, this diversity is typically limited to sex, gender, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. Rarely does it consider the varying perspective that differently-abled individuals bring to the table. Such an act, however, opposes the very purpose of diversity. Dr. Rhoda Olkin, director of the Institution on Disability and Health Psychology at Alliant International University, explains that individuals with disabilities can be perceived as a minority because they “experience prejudice, stigma, discrimination, and oppression.” Furthermore, there is pressure on those with disabilities to assimilate to the actions of the majority, even if it is not possible. Individuals with disabilities also suffer from a severe lack of representation in mainstream media. Though representation has slightly improved, it is still lacking. A report from “Where We Are On TV” shows that only 2.1% of characters in 2018-2019 were disabled. Representation for any minority is vital. For individuals who identify as a minority, a lack of representation not only stifles imagination but can also influence a person’s sense of self-worth. The 1976 paper “Living with Television” by George Gerbner and Larry Gross explains, “Representation in the fictional world signifies social existence; absence means symbolic annihilation.” Symbolic annihilation makes viewers feel as if they do not exist as if society does not seem them. Just as activists push for more characters of color and of varying religions, ethnicities, and sexual orientations, they should also push for more characters with disabilities. Maysoon Zayid, a Palestinian-American actress and comedian with cerebral palsy, explained being rejected from roles because of her disability, saying “When I went to audition, people wouldn’t take me seriously. Sometimes I’d walk into the room, and they’d just say no… before I even introduced myself. People in TV did not look like me.” Zayid goes on to explain that a part of the negativity

she received from viewers while on “Countdown” was due to the audience being unfamiliar with seeing individuals with disabilities on mainstream news programing without their disability being relevant to the plotline. In other words, not only had society established her as not “normal” but had also limited her capacity for commentary to simply that of her disability. The audience could not get past her disability to see that she had important political commentary to offer, as she was diminished to her disability. As such, it is not only important to include individuals with disabilities but also to not make their disability the focal point of their performance. Ultimately, they should be able to carry out the role of any character as any differently-abled individual could carry out the profession of their choosing. Furthermore, the addition of disability within the premise of diversity would benefit both abled and differently-abled individuals. One of the major benefits of ensuring diversity in, for example, a college environment, is taking into consideration the varying experiences individuals can have across a common space. Individuals with physical disabilities, for instance, could bring to light how inaccessible certain locations are whilst individuals with intellectual disabilities could make others aware of the limited effectiveness of teaching conditions. Additionally, many students do not have the opportunity to interact with students with disabilities throughout their K-12 education. A report by the National Council on Disability found that many states segregated students from the general class population before even considering whether it is the best option for the disabled student. Though this does vary by zip code, according to the NCD report, if school systems began recognizing the importance of including both able and differently-abled individuals in the same space, both student populations would greatly benefit. Moreover, a Stanford University research study found that when people interact with individuals different from themselves, they drastically increase their capacity to live and work effectively in a diverse society. Considering that one in five Americans have a disability, understanding how to interact with those that are differently-abled would allow abled students to effectively communicate with a significant portion of the American population.

Without an emphasis on disability as diversity, however, the opportunity for such interactions is limited. This interpersonal communication can also be useful for differently-abled individuals’ employment perspectives. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in 2018, only 19.1% of differently-abled individuals were employed, compared to 65.9% of abled individuals. Even differently-abled individuals who have attained higher education are less likely to be employed as only 28.5% of such individuals with a bachelor’s degree or higher are employed, compared to 75.5% of abled individuals with similar qualifications. An explanation for such findings is provided by a study published in the Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation, which found that employers are unlikely to hire differently-abled individuals because they are unaware of disability and accommodation issues, concerned about potential costs, and fear legal liability. These fears can be quelled, however, if employers simply interacted with differently-abled individuals more regularly. Whether it be through school, college, or day-to-day interactions, the increased integration and inclusion of differently-abled individuals in mainstream society would allow employers to gain a more practical image of what such individuals are capable of. Introducing disability into the concept of diversity would also make employers more attuned to how they may discriminate against disabled individuals. By including differently-abled individuals in the discussion of diversity, society would be better suited to meet their needs and understand their unique experiences, while also enabling abled individuals with a better understanding of what living with a disability truly means.

GEORGIA POLITICAL REVIEW | 17

The Rise of the Gifted Kid Candidate How Gifted Education Influences Electoral Politics BY NATHAN SAFIR

iring in March of 2000, “The Simpsons” season eleven episode “Bart to the Future” offers a glimpse into the year 2030. In this future, Lisa Simpson becomes President of the United States following the unsuccessful term of the previous president, Donald Trump. The uncanny ability of “The Simpsons” to forecast the future has been well documented, with “Bart to the Future” among their most impressive predictions. Not only did “The Simpsons” capture Donald Trump’s ascension, but it also correctly predicts what the response to a Trump presidency would be. Lisa Simpson poses as a precocious, messianic figure, wielding her intellect to right the wrongs of her predecessor. This exact mythology exists in our culture today as the concept of “the gifted kid.” Several candidates in this year’s Democratic primary have branded themselves to fit this gifted kid archetype -- namely, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, and Andrew Yang. These candidates have all combined degrees of policy wonkishness with a general nerdiness to win over the hearts of voters (to varying degrees). They have also each put their own spin on the gifted kid persona. Warren’s tactic of unveiling lengthy policy proposals (see her slogan: “Warren has a plan for that”), combined with her background as a Harvard Law professor, assures her status as a gifted kid candidate. Buttigieg’s resume -- valedictorian, Harvard grad, Rhodes Scholar, U.S. Naval Reserve Officer, hometown mayor, etc. -- looks like a LinkedIn algorithm running for president. Coupled with his poised demeanor and references to Ulysses, Buttigieg possesses all the cultural signifiers to be a top-tier gifted kid candidate. Lastly, former entrepreneur and underdog of the group, Andrew Yang, advocates for imposing a sort of business logic onto federal government, evidenced by his campaign selling merch onto which solely the word “MATH,” short for “Make America Think Harder,” is printed. Yang has also promised to deliver the State of

the Union speech in Powerpoint. This crop of candidates has campaigned on using their legal, professional, or entrepreneurial proclivities to optimize government. The gifted kid archetype that has dominated the 2020 Democratic primaries is a stark contrast to the grander narratives of the 2016 primaries. The revolutionary potential of Bernie Sanders’ campaign and charges of conspiracy against the DNC and Clinton Foundation have been replaced, for better or for worse, by mere technocratic debate. Could it be that in the past few years, the mythology around gifted children has been revitalized to a degree at which it can shape our political reality? And perhaps more importantly, what does this mean for the future of our country? --Gifted and talented education began with Lewis Terman, the movement’s unofficial father. In 1916, Terman published the Stanford-Binet intelligence test. Five years later, Terman began what has remained the longest running study of gifted children. The Genetic Studies of Genius follows the lives of 1500 high-IQ children through adulthood and is supported by Stanford University to this day. In concurrence with this study has been the increasing implementation of gifted education programs in schools across the country. The most notable aspect of these programs are not the resources provided (which tend to just be logic puzzles and board games in many schools), but the delineation of giftedness in and of itself, the distinction of gifted individuals. Gifted education programs were considered a

beacon of hope, an investment in the future of the country. In the current cultural imagination, the aura around the gifted child has dimmed. “Gifted kid burnout” is a widely discussed phenomenon on the Internet, in which people who claim to have been formerly identified as gifted now find themselves discontent and mediocre. More bleakly, researchers in education have found that gifted programs tend to discriminate against students of color, some even comparing the situation to apartheid. Even Terman found in his study that obstacles in receiving an education or a lack of opportunity prohibited the high-IQ individuals he studied from fully expressing their intellects. Gifted youth, often considered the makers of the nation’s future, are plagued by the same structural problems we hoped they could solve. Yet, for some, the myth of the gifted kid remains pristine. For some, a Lisa Simpson must arrive to clean up after Donald Trump. Beyond the Democratic nominees, cultural artifacts from the past decade have affirmed our collective buy-in to the gifted kid mythology. The television program “The West Wing,” winning more Emmy awards than any show before “Game of Thrones,” is symbolic in this regard. The fictional president in “The West Wing,” Josiah Bartlett, is like a grown Lisa Simpson -- an impossibly brilliant Nobel Laureate in economics. The series’ plot revolves around glorifying bureaucracy and political compromise, such as when the Democratic president appoints a conservative judge to the Supreme Court. “The West Wing” represents the gifted kid fantasy of putting the smartest people in charge and

letting them govern uninhibited by ideology or the material effects of their actions. In a similar vein, Malcolm Gladwell has built a career as one of the most popular nonfiction writers of the past ten years by assuming the role of the gifted kid messiah. The general formula for one of Gladwell’s pieces is applying various and eclectic modes of thinking, ranging from Jesuit religious doctrine to cognitive psychology, to a current issue. The resulting solutions from this methodology fall all over the political spectrum. He has sided with those believing that large private universities should be forced to redistribute their endowments and with rightwing writers on issues of police brutality. Gladwell’s work, like “The West Wing,” seems to exist in a vacuum from which ideology or social structures are conspicuously absent -- only out-of-the-box thinking can provide solutions. These are only a handful of names among the countless gifted kids dominating this cultural milieu -- one could write even more about “Hamilton” writer Lin Manuel Miranda, “Vox” editor-in-chief Ezra Klein, or statistician-turned-pundit Nate Silver. The gifted kids have escaped the classroom and migrated to our writers’ rooms, media outlets, and televisions, turning society into logic puzzles on a global scale. Our fascination with the gifted kid permeates through not only cultural criticism, but also the realm of politics. In addition to the aforementioned presidential candidates, some of the most popular political commentators also exhibit this “gifted kid” quality. Ben Shapiro, by many measures the most popular political pundit in America, routinely calls his

opponents’ arguments “irrational” and asserts his arguments are based on “facts and logic”. Shapiro also matches the gifted kid archetype in his appearance, speaking quickly like a high school policy debater. Shapiro’s rise to stardom, much like the success of Warren, Buttigieg, and Yang, was in many ways a response to Donald Trump’s presidency (Shapiro has been one of the most vocal Trump critics among conservatives). Many critiques of President Trump are not directed at his policy, but at his general dishonesty, broad criticism of journalists and the media, and alleged cooperation with Russian disinformation campaigns. President Trump has served as a symbol for the increasing skepticism and complexity of information apparatuses, from traditional media (or “fake news”) to social media. The disorder of President Trump’s statements and the 2016 election, combined with the influx of information provided by the internet, produced a resurgence of the gifted kid mythos. This resurgence, however, has had consequences. Warren and her supporters revel in “having a plan for that,” but as evidenced by her rather moderate healthcare plan, Warren’s proposed policy often does not reflect her progressive rhetoric. Conversely, Buttigieg’s gifted kid demagougery hides his comparatively less detailed policy proposals, while Yang’s advocacy for mathematical supremacy obscures the structural causes of inequality. Political discourse has been dominated not by an urgency for material change, but a desire to make sense of our governmental and political institutions. Yet, the gifted kid fails to ask whether these insti-

tutions are worth making sense of. So how do we end the gifted kids’ dominance? Maybe the answer lies not in replacing the gifted kids, but in replacing the pedagogy at the foundation of gifted education. In a paper titled “Paradigm Shifts in Gifted Education,” C. Owen Lo and Marion Porath describe the changing philosophies underlying the gifted education movement. In Terman’s time, Lo and Porath write, the defining paradigm shift was the “demystification” of gifted individuals through positivism, the idea that IQ could be quantified and studied. But now, research at the cutting-edge of gifted education has shifted its focus from identification (i.e. who can be gifted) to transaction (how one can be gifted). Lo and Porath identify a “growing distaste for identifying a special population who would traditionally be served in a gifted program” and a “growing interest in making education gifted.” So what if the Harvard-educated writers of “The Simpsons” grew up under this conception of gifted education? What if instead of the myth of a messianic Lisa Simpson solving the world’s problems, our cultural fantasy centered on a world in which everyone’s capacity for brilliance was recognized? What if instead of technocratic quibbling, politicians were interested in bold, egalitarian change? Perhaps, if the “growing interest in making education gifted” is implemented in schools, this ideology will be propagated through the cultural and political spheres as well. But for now, the future may be in the hands of Elizabeth Warren, Andrew Yang, Pete Buttigieg, and the rest of the gifted kids.

GEORGIA POLITICAL REVIEW | 19

Digital Government Transformation The Role of the Federal Government in the BY ADITYA KRISHNASWAMY Age of Technology

lockchain, internet of things, big data, neural networks. Almost continuously, technology is advancing in front of our eyes, with the United States as the global leader in innovation. While the private sector has learned to harness the power of data and technology, the United States government is lightyears behind.

IT Modernization

The Department of Defense (DoD) still uses floppy disks. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) payment system, responsible for ~7% of the U.S. GDP, is running on legacy software written in COBOL, a programming language designed by the DoD in the 1950s. Our Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is run on JFK-era legacy technology, exposing the personal records of almost 750,000 people in 2015. Unfortunately, not the exceptions, these are a few examples of the countless ways the U.S. government is running on expired technology. The government’s failure to keep pace with the rate of technological innovation and inability to embrace IT modernization is cause for concern. Without failure, once a month, news outlets expose another unprecedented cyberattack on the U.S. Yet, the response to the failures of our current technological infrastructure is sluggish. In order for progress to be made on any front, technology must be a central part of the solution. Over the last 25 years, the U.S. government has spent over $1.5 trillion on federal IT. While the IT budget is huge, the spending is distributed across all agencies and is primarily going to the maintenance of antiquated IT. In fact, the General Accountability Office reported that in 2019 80% of federal IT spending has been on legacy systems that pose significant cybersecurity threats, rising costs, and efficiency and mission risk issues. Rather than continue to continue to hold together old systems with duct tape, IT modernization can cut the wasteful spending on the operations and maintenance of legacy software and can better serve the American people. While many have realized the necessity to address our lagging technological infrastructure, Congress only appropriated $250 million to IT modernization for 2018 and 2019. Out of a $90 billion annual IT budget, this drop in the bucket reveals a lack of seriousness. While appropriations are necessary, efforts at reform have been

focused on the budget, ignoring the necessity to look at this as an enterprise-wide issue. With every agency experiencing similar issues, innovative policies should emphasize interagency collaboration and consolidating purchasing and modernization efforts. While the Department of Defense may have the resources to update technology department-wide, the same capabilities are not feasible across the federal government. By consolidating experts in technological modernization, we can accelerate IT modernization by and prioritizing high-risk projects and providing the same access to resources across the federal government, drastically cutting unnecessary spending and emphasizing reuse and sharing across agencies. Not only does IT modernization address cybersecurity and unnecessary spending, but also allows greater access to advanced technologies. While the private sector uses big data and modern analytic techniques to achieve remarkable outcomes from marketing to security, public-sector agencies are behind. While many agencies discuss cloud-computing adoption and advanced analytics, without the proper IT infrastructure, these discussions remain meaningless. Many public sector agencies that have invested in IT modernization have achieved remarkable outcomes. In New York, advanced analytics are used to evaluate tax refund requests, saving $1.2 billion in improper refund requests over six years. IT modernization efforts in Texas have allowed for the consolidation of 75% of servers into a shared data center model. Through centralized technology, the state was able to drive efficiencies and interagency collaboration, improving delivery of service to citizens and reducing costs and risks. Building on the efforts several states and agencies have already engaged in, a fresh perspective and concerted effort is necessary to address the significant failures of our current system. Current federal IT spending and operations are unsustainable and pose significant risks; IT modernization is necessary to transform the federal government into the digital age.

A Need to Regulate

IT modernization confronts several issues posed by our current infrastructure but leave several issues unaddressed. The Information Age is characterized by a dramatic shift from traditional industry to an economy based on information. From Facebook to Uber, companies are profiting

off of an unprecedented access to data. Data is now the most precious resource on the planet. 89% of Facebook’s revenue is from digital advertisements. By capitalizing on a massive amount of personal data obtained from its user base, from gender to age to shopping preferences, Facebook offers companies an unparalleled opportunity to contact potential customers. More and more, companies are finding innovative ways to turn data into profit, but most customers indicate a lack of transparency about policies affecting users’ online rights. According to a study done by the Pew Research Center, 91% of Americans believe that they have lost control over their own personal data and 80% are concerned by the access to personal data companies have through social media. 64% believe that the government should do more to regulate and protect their data, but very little action has been taken. In health care, while HIPAA, the primary federal health privacy law, protects health information, the law only protects data collected by “covered entities,” healthcare providers and health plans. Contrary to popular belief, consumer-generated data does not fall under the purview of HIPAA, omitting data collected by data-gathering devices and applications, such as Fitbit. In fact, genomic testing data collected by companies such as 23andme and Ancestry. com are not regulated by HIPAA. HIPAA also does not restrict the use of de-identified data, especially important given the limitations of current approaches to data de-identification. In contrast to the recent General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union, U.S. lacks a comprehensive law to regulate data privacy. With a patchwork of local, state, and federal protections, significant issues and gaps still exist, such as health data privacy concerns unaddressed by HIPAA. It is up to the federal government to consolidate current data privacy efforts and create and implement consistent regulation. Data and technology have forever changed the world we live in. While data and technology offer remarkable opportunities to improve people’s standards of living and connect people in a new globalized community, it has come with a new slew of issues to address, from cybersecurity to privacy rights. The time has come for the United States government to take a serious look at our current processes and regulation and adapt to the digital age

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Consolidating Care: How Hospital Mergers Affect Patients Market concentration drives up patient costs with unequal effects on health outcomes BY TARUN RAMESH

n 2017, the United States spent over $10,000 on healthcare per person, exceeding the costs of any other OECD countries without experiencing significant benefits in patient outcomes. This is indicative of a broader increase in healthcare spending over the past decade, propelled by demographic changes and economic downturns â&#x20AC;&#x201D; factors that require greater dependence on social safety nets. High costs in the healthcare sector are driven by a multitude of causes including high uncompensated care costs or the costs of uninsured patients, monopolistic competition, and patent protections. In turn, these factors have contributed to higher prices for patients and consumers including upticks in pharmaceutical costs, insurance premiums, and the number of Medicaid dependents. Hospitals have also borne the costs of uncompensated care and low federal reimbursement rates, with the median operating margins â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a marker of financial viability â&#x20AC;&#x201D; falling below 0 percent. While the Affordable Care Act (ACA) reduced uncompensated care costs by extending health insurance to millions of previously underinsured and uninsured patients, hospital margins have continued to struggle, and some have reduced services or closed. States that have expanded Medicaid under the provisions of the ACA have found drastic increases in median operating margin. This response may be inadequate due to the heterogenous nature of Medicaid expansion. To deal with financial issues, solvent hospital systems have bought struggling hospitals or merged with other existing systems. In 2018 during the second fiscal quarter alone, there were 255 healthcare mergers and acquisition deals, up from 9.4 percent from the previous year. This horizontal consolidation of care has affected patients in a multitude of ways, including effects on health services provided, patient outcomes, and cost of care. The influence on services is clear; merged

systems can build upon staff, equipment, and infrastructure at both sites, handling a greater population of patients. On the other hand, effects on patient outcomes are less certain. A study on Medicare claims and national mortality rates found that surgical and treatment volume was inversely related to mortality; in fact, high-volume hospitals can have up to a 12 percent reduced mortality rate compared to low-volume hospitals. This highlights an important link in the patient outcome narrative, namely that mergers would increase the volume of specific surgeries. The impact of low-volume procedures are exacerbated at rural hospitals, where a combination of physician shortages and lower demand for services drive up mortality rates and post-surgical complications. This logic extends to non-surgical treatments as well. If physicians have greater exposure to a variety of cases, they tend to have more successful track records. While generally this is true, the volume effects tend to be more pronounced in niche and specialized treatments, not in the vast majority of cases. Furthermore, once a threshold volume is passed there is little impact on patient outcomes. Instead, a more robust referral system could streamline patient records and intake to specialized tertiary care facilities that are better equipped to handle complicated procedures. Further complicating the matter, larger hospital systems are often more centrally concentrated with a more rigid corporate hierarchy. The corporate nature of larger healthcare systems misaligns clinical outcomes with financial incentives, threatening patient safety. In this case, consolidation negatively affects patient groups due to a lack of physician sensitivity training, unfamiliar infrastructure, and new workflow. While most of these impact patient care in the short-term, growth in consolidation could perpetuate existing flaws. Market concentration has driven up patient costs without yielding better care.

Increased market share allows hospitals to better bargain with insurance companies, reducing overhead costs for the hospitals. While the savings offer benefits to the hospitals, they do not reach the consumer. Instead, insurance companies, which are now forced to pay higher rates for billed services, raise patient premiums as a result. The disproportionate billing power of larger hospitals also lead to further acquisitions of smaller hospitals, further compounding this effect. There are some positive effects on the community, including bolstering the domestic workforce and bringing physicians to the area. These effects have not been well-documented, but probably translate to higher salaries and better jobs in their immediate vicinity. Policy interventions should balance market concentration and access to care. Unfortunately, current regulations tend to support mergers and acquisitions as a method to improve access. Regulatory agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) often leave hospital consolidation alone, due to uncertainty of benefits and costs associated with mergers. This decision fails to acknowledge long-term repercussions of concentrated wealth. Instead, antitrust should prevent excess market power, while simultaneously allowing for the expansion of healthcare access. This can be done through financial support for devolved health care models, which allow for free-standing emergency rooms and greater emphasis on outpatient referrals to specialized care facilities. Transparency in hospital billing and pricing is also crucial to ensure that health policy decisions are centered around the patient, rather than what is financially expedient. Furthermore, it allows for comparisons of care, so that patients are well-informed before receiving a hospital bill. Consolidating care may be advantageous for hospitals, but a patient-centric approach ensures that costs are distributed equally

” e M Ain’t t I “ The Draft, War Taxes, and Accountability

BY IAN ALLEN

“F

ortunate Son” by Creedence Clearwater Revival is an anti-draft, anti-war anthem. “It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate one,” sings the band. It is the crowning jewel of public opposition to the Vietnam war, released in 1969 right alongside the very first American troop withdrawals from the conflict. Widespread, powerful protests and public disapproval motivated Richard Nixon to campaign on a promise to end conscription. Nixon won that campaign, and 1972 was the last year that Americans were drafted into military service. On the surface, an all-volunteer military is tantalizing. As Nixon explained during his 1968 campaign, the seemingly arbitrary selection process of the draft “cannot be squared with our whole concept of liberty, justice and equality under the law.” A system that takes away someone’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness at random does not seem to line up with America’s foundational ideals. The basic fact that most voters do not want to fight and die themselves made Nixon’s argument effective when presented to the masses. However, this fact is also a double-edged sword. The public pays for conflicts in terms of both money and lives. War exacts certain tolls, and citizens are ultimately responsible for cashing the check. The higher the cost of a conflict, the less the public will support it. In Immanuel Kant’s treatise on Perpetual Peace, he argues that democratic states inherently trend towards peace because voters are casualty- and cost-averse. In a democracy, where leaders’ jobs literally depend on public approval of their decisions, they must choose where to draw the line when it comes to instigating or prolonging wars. A central theme in American democracy, and in democracy as a whole, is accountability. The government’s actions are

supposed to be based on the will of the governed. Voters are expected to make choices out of self-interest and, by extension, interest in the nation’s general well-being. If citizens want something, they must be willing to sacrifice something else to achieve that goal. One must take a step back and observe the system of public accountability we have in place today. War taxes are nonexistent. The military is an all-volunteer force. When Congress or the Executive choose to go to war, or, more accurately, authorize the use of military force, there are no tangible repercussions for the average American. Those fighting for our country get hit with the fallout from these types of decisions, assuredly, but active duty service members account for less than half a percent of the US population. Even accounting for the friends and family members of these soldiers that are interested by association, this is an almost inadmissible subsection of the US electorate. When voters consider their options during an election, there is no real tether between the ballots they cast and the national security outcomes of their decisions. American citizens in the 21st century do not have a reasonable cause to worry they might be drafted, despite the continued existence of the Selective Service System. There is also no real foothold for war tax propositions in the current political climate in which peacetime taxes are at a near historic high. Unlike in times past, the vast majority of US voters post-draft and postwar taxes do not shoulder costs for electing hawkish leaders. Lt. Col. Paul Yingling argues for a return to citizen soldiers. Conscription demands more participation from citizens on national security decisions, as a draft puts more at stake for them personally. This requirement gives Congress significant moti-

vation to deliberate more than they would otherwise. It also further motivates them to assert some of the Executive oversights they are granted by the Constitution, many of which have fallen to the wayside over the last century. Only Congress can declare war, but in recent years, the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) has been used by the Executive to justify a wide variety of actions abroad in perpetuity since 2001. If prolonging conflict meant average citizens putting their own lives at risk, would Congress have repealed or modified the AUMF by now? Another argument that Yingling presents is that of morale. Though some would argue that volunteer soldiers would innately have more motivation to fight than drafted soldiers would, the current all-volunteer force demands that soldiers participate in a cycle of year-on, year-off deployments. This drains the soldiers both physically and mentally, eating away at their overall effectiveness on the battlefield. Conscription would ensure that the military expands to meet the needs of its commitments rather than overtaxing a smaller force. Yes, this would subsequently swell expenditures, but that is exactly the point. It incentivizes policymakers to make military action quick and efficient. America could avoid long, drawn-out conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan, the two longest and costliest wars in the nation’s history. Finally, Yingling points out that conscription would allow the military to better scrutinize candidates for military service, resulting in forces that are more skilled and better suited for national defense overall. The all-volunteer system relies heavily on bonus systems and lowered recruitment standards to fill ranks. The draft by definition circumnavigates the issue of low enlistment rates. Currently, The United States going to

NATIONAL war does not mean an increase in an individual citizen’s rate of taxation. In times past, it did. All the way up until the Korean War, the government did its best to employ a pay-as-you-go strategy. President Woodrow Wilson explained this idea at the beginning of the First World War: “Borrowing money is short-sighted finance.” Today, we spend, as a government, 35% of our GDP and only tax about 26% of our GDP. There is a massive spending deficit occurring that will not be directly felt by the voters supporting these practices in present day. The burden will fall to future generations. Although only about 15% of total federal expenditures go towards defense policy, meaning that it is not the main culprit in the deficit, it is a comparatively large portion of the budget against other earmarks. Furthermore, unlike social programs that make up the largest portion of the nation’s expenditures, military spending is not part of expansionary fiscal policy. The importance of these numbers lies in the aforementioned problem with accountability: if voters can’t feel the effects of the decisions they make, and that their elected officials subsequently make, the end result isn’t always pretty. Taking away certain Americans’ freedoms by forcing them to fight for their country makes the public’s stomach un-

derstandably turn. Nixon was banking on this when he included ending conscription in his 1968 platform, and it worked. It would be understandably infeasible for a candidate to run on the opposite platform in this day and age and win. Furthermore, the public has grown used to our “light footprint” in international conflict, and taxation has reached what is essentially a glass ceiling due to social expansion during the twentieth century. Pitching a war tax or conscription proposal to a voter base or from within Congress would likely be political poison. Despite this, it is worth noting the benefits of enforcing accountability via a conscription system. A draft and war taxes give voters a more direct stake in military decisions. Connected, worried voters give elected officials cause to further deliberate national security decisions, ensuring that America absolutely maximizes its costs and benefits. This, in the end, makes for the most efficient system of defense and government expenditures possible. The direct link of consequences to military action, combined with active, policy-based voter participation, would ensure that citizens are invested in military decisions, and Congress and the White House would promptly jump to fix problems rather than just shield the public from fallout.

Kant said that “war does not require of the ruler...the least sacrifice” if they choose to go to war, and therefore only a democracy could effectively be deterred by the looming threat of both mortal and fiscal expenditure. “[They] may, therefore, resolve on war as on a pleasure party for the most trivial reasons.” America as it stands lacks a veritable system of accountability between its people and its leaders in the realm of security policy. Decision-makers are utterly disconnected from the repercussions of their actions because their constituents are mostly disconnected from them as well. The reluctance of Congress or the American people to push for war taxes as a self-imposed disincentive for military action and the general repulsion towards forced military service are both understandable and likely permanent fixtures of our political system. It is simply imperative, however, that voters, who have been shielded from the national defense decision-making process for decades, take into account the facts at hand during or prior to conflicts. Though military action abroad might not seem costly to an individual, what does it cost the nation, other nations, and the international community as a whole? Most importantly, voters can’t let rulers play with security like a “pleasure party for the most trivial reasons.”

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Whittling Away at the Third-Party Doctrine Privacy law in the wake of Carpenter v. United States BY ANDREW ZACH

ith the advent of the modern cell phone, a wide range of tasks – once considered to be mundane or difficult – have been streamlined and more accessible. Phones operate much like Swiss Army knives, having features for nearly every problem imaginable. From video chat to home-management apps, they have infiltrated nearly every aspect of daily life in the 21st century. In the majority opinion from Riley v. California (2014), Chief Justice John Roberts even claimed that “modern cell phones…are now such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy.” The rapid influx in capabilities of modern technologies has made privacy protections regulating these vital elements of our lives incredibly complex. Riley exposed breaks in established doctrine, as our constitutional system contorts to fit modern-day technical realities. With the future of technological privacy-based jurisprudence looking increasingly uncertain, many in the legal community have the same question: How should we prioritize privacy concerns in a world of nearly infinite information? To fully understand the current status f constitutionally protected privacy, one needs to carefully examine the constitutional origins of privacy itself. The text of the Fourth Amendment, from which privacy law is born, reads “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” For many years, few of the Fourth

Amendment’s provisions were tested in court. This dormancy period came to an end in 1967, when the Supreme Court first defined technological privacy in the case Katz v. United States (1967). Charles Katz, a sports gambler, was wiretapped by the FBI without the use of a warrant while he used a public phonebooth. While Katz argued that his rights had been unjustifiably violated, the government argued that Katz had no guarantee of privacy in a public phonebooth. The Court ruled in a 7-1 decision that Katz’s conversations were subject to Fourth Amendment protection irrespective of location, and that, in the words of the majority opinion, “The Fourth Amendment protects people, not places.” However, the most important part of the Katz case comes from Justice John Marshall Harlan’s concurring opinion, where he articulated a two-part test to determine whether something is subject to Fourth Amendment protection. In his words, “there is a twofold requirement, first that a person have exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy and, second, that the expectation be one that society is prepared to recognized as ‘reasonable.’” This important doctrine became known as the ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’ test, and its subsequent adoption by the court marked the foundation of all technology-related privacy cases following it. However, it wasn’t until Smith v. Maryland (1979) that the Supreme Court truly began testing the limits of an individual’s electronic privacy. In 1976, Michael Lee Smith robbed a woman in Baltimore. The police, suspecting Smith, asked the telephone company to install a pen register, allowing the government to read numbers entered into Smith’s phone. In a 5-3 decision, the Court ruled that Smith had no legitimate expectation of privacy over numbers dialed, consistent with the reasonable

expectation of privacy test established in Katz, because he should have been aware that the phone company could store that information. Smith effectively established the ‘third-party doctrine’; by drawing a clear distinction between individual privacy rights and business records, the Court ruled that information voluntarily given to a third-party cannot be protected by the Fourth Amendment. For several decades following Smith, the third-party doctrine governed most interactions between technology and law enforcement. When it was proven that data had been given to private companies voluntarily, cases fell outside the scope of Fourth Amendment protection. However, the Court signaled potential future disagreement among justices in the wake of new 21st century technologies. The Court ruled twice unanimously that GPS tracking of a vehicle constitutes a search in United States v. Jones (2012) and that warrantless search of the digital contents of a cell phone was

NATIONAL unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment in Riley v. California (2014) . Despite the consensus reached by the Court, numerous concurring opinions in both cases demonstrated that similar concerns were beginning to form among justices from disparate judicial ideologies. In Jones, Justice Sonia Sotomayor expressed worry about overreach of police power using GPS, explaining that it could be used to document “trips to the psychiatrist, the plastic surgeon, the abortion clinic, the AIDS treatment center, the strip club, the criminal

defense attorney, the by-thehour motel, the union meeting, the mosque, synagogue or church, the gay bar and on and on.” And in Riley, Justice Samuel Alito made clear that “cell phones now in use are capable of storing and accessing a quantity of information, some highly personal, that no person would ever have had on his person in hard-copy form.” These concerns came to a head in 2018, when the Court heard Carpenter v. United States (2018). Between 2010 and 2011, a series of rob-

beries were committed at electronics stores in and around Detroit, Michigan. During the investigation, the FBI used the phone of one of the suspects to access Cell Site Location Information (CSLI) of petitioner Timothy Carpenter. This CSLI allows law enforcement to triangulate a user’s general location using cell towers and allowed the tracking of Carpenter’s movements within a few miles over the course of 127 days. The FBI was able to obtain Carpenter’s location information without the use of a warrant, raising the question of whether Carpenter was able to assert Fourth Amendment protection over his data. Many in the legal community watched closely as the Supreme Court argued Carpenter, predicting that, regardless of the outcome, it would be a watershed moment for privacy law. On June 22, 2018, in a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that the government had indeed conducted an unconstitutional search of Carpenter’s data. While the Fourth Amendment had previously focused on the protection of people, location was a key indicator of the subjective and objective privacy claims as articulated in Katz. For example, it would be outrageous to assume someone would receive the same level of Fourth Amendment protection on the street as they would in their private residence. However, in the majority opinion, Chief Justice Roberts argued that the traditional location-based analysis present in most privacy cases leading up to this point simply could not apply, given the bevy and reach of the information collected by the FBI. Instead, the opinion in Carpenter focused on the content of the information an individual is giving up, clarifying that a person has a “reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of their physical movements.” Chief Justice Roberts continued that the third-party doctrine could not apply to Carpenter given the technology present, plainly stating “[t]here is a world of difference between the limited types of personal information addressed in Smith… and the exhaustive chronicle of location information casually collected by wireless carriers today…” Carpenter provides a band-aid solution to the balancing of privacy concerns with police power. Nevertheless, this fairly nar-

row ruling represents a departure from traditional Fourth Amendment location-based analysis. Given the relative novelty of Carpenter, a lack of clear-cut standards for what constitutes a legitimate search may prove to be a significant hinderance to law-enforcement officials struggling to determine what searches are or are not constitutional, as Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas were quick to point this out in their individual dissents. These justices hearkened back to the clearer lines of distinction established with the third-party doctrine. The majority, on the other hand, justified the need for a more nuanced approach to the Fourth Amendment given the modern and mundane prevalence of data. They argue that an individual’s privacy concerns are being fundamentally changed by data in ways the framers could scarcely imagine and that interpretations which jeopardize these individual rights attack the spirit of the Fourth Amendment. While these two competing constitutional interpretations will likely remain at the forefront of this debate, a new third stream of thought is beginning to form. In an individual dissent, Justice Neil Gorsuch advocated a new interpretation of the Fourth Amendment that would entirely abandon the standards set forth in Katz. Justice Gorsuch argued that we should interpret the Fourth Amendment as property law, treating data with the same legal protection that we grant to a borrowed car or lent book. In line with this thinking, Justice Gorsuch agreed that an unconstitutional search was indeed conducted against Carpenter, while disagreeing with the constitutional approach of the majority. This radical new interpretation would certainly require an entire re-working of the Fourth Amendment. However, Justice Gorsuch’s suggestion presents new ways to handle data in an increasingly complex digital landscape. The future of privacy jurisprudence remains uncertain. As new technology becomes a fundamental part of our everyday lives, legal doctrine must shift to bear complicated privacy burdens. As novel uses of data beget novel judicial doctrines, the top legal craftsmen in the nation will have to frame a new legal construction fit for a post-Carpenter world.

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Chief Justice Roberts’ Decision Calculus as an Administrator of the Court BY CAMERON DUNN

decorated man ponders in his chambers, entangled in thoughts of jurisprudence, of ideology, of his own role, and of the men who have sat there before him. He is measured, he is constantly in the public eye, and he is the highest adjudicator in the country. Chief Justice John G. Roberts, throughout his 14 terms as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, has been faced with the same, unique problem. In a modern political climate filled with increased polarization, the Supreme Court has attempted to whisk itself away from public scrutiny, and in this effort, the Chief Justice has a pivotal role. As the Supreme Court does not have the powers of the purse or the sword like the other two branches of government, a large portion of their legitimacy arises from the public’s opinion of the institution itself. This sense of legitimacy allows the Court’s decisions to be accepted and respected amongst lawmakers, the executive branch, and the American public. This situation is unique among the powers of the American government, as the Court’s lack of enforcement capacity lends it to be at the whim of the merit of their own decisions. Since President Taft’s tenure as Chief Justice, the role has gained many responsibilities to better serve the needs of the Court as it marches into modernity. Currently, the U.S. Code dictates 80 additional statutes that the Chief Justice must perform that separates him from the duties of a normal judge. These responsibilities range from being the head of the Smithsonian Institute to issuing a year-end report at the end of each year to chairing the Judicial Conference of the United States. However, the most important of these roles is the power that the Chief Justice has in the decision crafting process. In the modern scheme of the Court, Roberts has used tact and poise in this sense to steer the Court and ensure that its legitimacy has been maintained across the years. In the political science literature, there is a school of thought centered around modeling judicial behavior focused on a justice’s decision-making calculus. Originally coined by political scientists Lee Epstein and Jack Knight in their 1998 book The Choices Justices Make, the two scholars apply economic theory to political processes by focusing upon a game theoretic analysis of how justices weigh their own ideological preferences against other more strategic considerations. While some judges may weigh their ideologies and principles in the configuration of their decision, Roberts has distinctive re-

y v a e e h t H s e i L

sponsibilities that his office requires in order to keep the Court in the positive eye of exogenous institutions. The chief justice has the power to assign the majority opinion to whichever justice he chooses, so long as he rests in the majority of the Court in that particular case. In many landmark decisions of recent note, Roberts has exercised this practice in a manner that is concurrent with the principles of Lee and Epstein’s theory focused on preferences, the rational-choice model of judicial decision-making. One may expect Roberts, a consistently conservative judge, to uphold these philosophies when acting as a justice on the Supreme Court. However, in some specific instances, his role as chief justice supersedes his own personal judicial ideology when under significant scrutiny in cases of great public concern. This deviance is most notably noticed in the National Federation of Independent Business v. Seleblius decision of 2012, in which the chief justice’s conservative colleagues chose to vote in dissent of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate provision on the grounds that it sought to penalize economic activity at the state level. However, the Chief Justice sided with the liberal justices on the grounds that the statute laid within the Necessary and Proper Clause’s ability to tax, and was therefore good law. The case was heavily reported in its progression through the American judicial system, and the Affordable Care Act itself was a hotly contested issue in political and social circles across the nation. Roberts may have deviated from his fellow conservatives on the basis that striking down the law split along conservative/liberal lines in a 5-4 decision would likely place the Court under the same type of scrutiny that it faced after the controversial ideology-based vote in Bush

l e v a g

v. Gore. By moving his ideology more towards the center and acting as a swing vote, Roberts satisfies his preference in keeping the Court as a body of government separate from political institutions. Conversely, Roberts may side with his conservative colleagues in a strategic manner. In the 2013 case that took the teeth out of the Voting Rights Act’s enforcement mechanism, Shelby County v. Holder, the Chief sided with his conservative colleagues and overturned a long-standing precedent. By asserting that the core precepts of the VRA that were affirmed in the 1963 Katzenbach decision were out-of-date, Roberts noted that the current burdens in voting rights must be justified by the current needs of the nation, deferring to Congress to seek resolution. Had Roberts chosen to side with the liberal Justices and uphold the precedent, a scathing dissent would have likely been written by Justices Scalia or Thomas, especially when noting that the latter of the two wrote a concurrence that jutted further from precedent. The strategic implication of Robert’s decision was that it allowed him to avoid not only the harshness of the probable dissent, but also allow for Congress to correct its mistakes rather than to declare the statute facially unconstitutional. In the Citizens United v. FEC case, Roberts evokes the late Justice Holmes in stating that “judging an act of congress is the gravest and most delicate duty that this Court is called upon to perform.” (558 US 08-205). As Chief, Roberts places great care on issues of constitutionality, and how the Court should choose to avoid constitutional questions when possible. His ability to make measured and strategic decisions while balancing his own ideological preferences guarantees Robert’s success as an administrator of the Court who ensures that, in the end, its legitimacy is secure in an era of volatility.

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Moral Laundering

Big Pharma Family turns Bankruptcy to Profit BY SOPHIA DELUCA

s the manufacturer of OxyContin, a narcotic commonly prescribed for pain relief that has since become the gateway to opioid addiction, Purdue Pharma is widely credited as the drug company that almost single-handedly kickstarted the opioid epidemic that currently claims an average of 130 lives everyday. This staggering loss of life has precipitated almost every state and 2000 U.S. cities and counties to sue Purdue Pharma. Amidst midst these lawsuits, the Sacklers, the family who founded and owned Purdue Pharma, continue to profit from these opioids even as Purdue Pharma declares Chapter 11 bankruptcy, yet again walking away with minimal damage to their personal fortune. On September 14, 2019, the company declared bankruptcy, claiming an inability to finance legal fees and settlements for over 2,600 federal and state lawsuits. Purdue claimed Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which allows for businesses to reorganize and restructure, while paying off the claims against them. Under this bankruptcy declaration, Purdue Pharma become a public benefit trust, a for-profit corporation that would commit to using all company profits to paying settlements, aiding communities plagued by the opioid epidemic, and funding research and development of medicines to treat addiction and overdoses. The Sackler family would also relinquish private ownership of Purdue under this agreement. Purdue’s bankruptcy declaration appears to be premeditated and intentional, intended to maximize profit and minimize harm to the company. After hiring Steve Miller, who is colloquially known in the business world as the “turn-around kid,” as a restructuring specialist several years ago, Purdue began working with a law firm specializing in bankruptcy. This specific model of declaring bankruptcy to save a company is not unprecedented. Purdue’s actions are modeled off of the Johns Manville Personal Injury Trust. Creating a similar trust allowed the bankrupt asbestos manufacturing company Johns Manville to pay settlements for those suffering from mesothelioma, an asbestos-caused cancer, without paying the legal fees for the thousands of lawsuits against them. Since its creation, the Johns Manville Personal Injury Trust has

settled 23,000 claims and paid out over $1.1 billion. Although it follows the same basic principle, Purdue Pharma’s settlement differs from this case in several key ways. The Purdue Pharma bankruptcy claim asks for the Sackler family to be protected from lawsuits for the next nine months, with the expectation that they will pay $3 billion out of their personal fortune over the next seven years. However, a New York judge ordered a pause in lawsuits, but only until November 6, 2019. In addition to this financial contribution, the Sacklers will also relinquish any ownership over the company, which brought in $790 billion from the sale of OxyContin over the past year. Upon closer look, these sacrifices are much less noble than they seem. Purdue currently has a patent over the sale of tamper-resistant OxyContin, a virtual monopoly on the production of opiates. This patent, however, will soon expire, allowing other companies to produce the drug, and diminishing the drug’s value on the open market. The imminent expiration of this patent and the subsequent decline in value of Purdue’s signature drug makes this a convenient time for the Sacklers to abandon Purdue. This fortuitous financial loss aside, the family will still give up $3 billion dollars of their personal fortune, less than a fourth of one of America’s wealthiest families’ $13 billion overall fortune. This number appears even more inconsequential in light of the accusation that the Sacklers moved around $13 billion of Purdue Pharma’s profits to personal accounts over the years through wire transfers and the use of Swiss bank accounts and property investments. The Washington Post reported that the $13 billion dollar estimate was found in the transcript of a deposition from one of Purdue’s business advisors. These wire transfers, and the knowledge of the Sackler’s astounding fortune, are the reasons that several states are refusing the proposed “bankruptcy settlement.” In the context of the size of their wealth and the consequences of their practices, the Sackler family’s $3 billion offer seems less like a meaningful contribution to fix an issue they had a large part in causing, and more like a desperate attempt at “moral laundering.” Forbes defines moral laundering as the act of wealthy individuals and companies making large donations and engaging in philanthropic efforts in order to preserve their moral standing in the public eye. Notwithstanding their promised $3 billion payout, the Sacklers have a history of moral laundering. According to Vox, the Sacklers have actually donated enough money to art museums, including the

Louvre, Smithsonian, and the Metropolitan Museum among others, that entire galleries have been named in honor of their family. Although these institutions are beginning to refuse these donations, these donations to prominent art museums are prime examples of the campaign of moral laundering the Sacklers have pursued to protect their public reputation. Despite the promise of reorganization, funds for research, and aid for communities suffering from addiction, Purdue Pharma’s declaration of bankruptcy seems to be yet another way for the Sackler family to engage in moral laundering. Under the current terms of the deal, the family stands to escape the threat of lawsuits until November 6, and relinquishing control of a company that stands to become far less profitable in the near future regardless, all because of a minimal payout relative to their wealth.

GEORGIA POLITICAL REVIEW | 27

The Dark Arts

A Comparative Analysis of the Covert Actions by the US, Russia, and China BY CHASE DUNCAN

n a dark night in the streets of Kiev, a Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation assassin quietly places a bomb under the Mercedes Benz of a Ukrainian colonel named Maksym Shapoval. Shapoval was a veteran of the ongoing Donbass War in Ukraine tasked with countering Russian hybrid warfare in the region, requiring him to combat Russian cyberwarfare, conventional warfare, guerilla warfare, and political warfare simultaneously. His work was critical to countering the kind of covert action he would soon fall prey to. Shapoval died instantly as the bomb detonated below his car, making him one of over a dozen victims of Russian assassinations. On the other side of the globe, a Chinese intelligence officer sits behind a desk and sends thousands of friend requests to former intelligence contractors on LinkedIn. At the computer adjacent, another officer creates tweets spreading disinformation about Hong Kong protests through over 1,000 bot accounts. These are just the latest volleys in the silent war across the Pacific Ocean—a war where the Chinese government has subsumed the very channels that neoliberalglobal capitalism created. In the halls of Washington, men and women in dark suits testify before the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) prior to the operation and present the President’s written finding (a document authorizing a covert action) before returning to Langley Falls, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to begin preparations for a decapitation strike against al-Qaeda. Their Special Activities Division (SAD) and Directorate of Operations (DO) begin preparations in tandem for a night raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound with the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU). Calls are made to the Joint Special Operations Command and the line between military and covert operations blurs. Covert action is an often misunderstood facet of states’ national security strategy. The images that come to mind are the dramatizations of Cold Warriors battling in the alleyways of the world. While that image was inaccurate during the Cold War, it is even more so in 2019. The Internet, globalization, mass media, counterterrorism, and institutional changes have created a landscape in which covert action is more overt but also less clearly defined. The three major actors in this realm are China, Russia, and the United States. As in other areas of foreign policy, these actors differ in institutions, interests, and methodologies

that bind their tactics in the strategic skullduggery of clandestine operations. First and foremost, the US is the only government with some semblance of federalist institutional oversight. On the subject, Dr. Loch Johnson, Regents Professor Emeritus at UGA’s School of Public and International Affairs, noted: “when it comes to intelligence oversight, these are alien words in both Russia and China—’overlook’ is more like it. The intel agencies in these dictatorships do what they want, as long as they are compatible with the objectives of the leadership in these two nations. The general order is to advance, respectively, Russian and Chinese global objectives.” This statement succinctly defines the most important structural differences in the intelligence communities of China, Russia, and the US. These authoritarian states simply do not view oversight as a value. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU), and the “private security agency” the Wagner Group (in fact a Russian paramilitary organization) all operate with unchecked executive authority to assassinate dissidents, recruit human intelligence (HUMINT) assets, and wreak havoc with disinformation and cyberintelligence. Likewise, state ownership of companies in China does little to incentivize limitation of covert action; in fact, it simply increases the amount of covers available to Chinese intelligence. The U.S. on the other hand, requires ante facto reporting, a presidential finding, and limits the use of certain covers determined to be taboo for intelligence operations. With regard to interests, these states are wildly different in terms of economic, cultural, and military hegemony. This alongside differing political systems and cultures creates a differing incentive structure for respective goals. That is to say, the “why” behind these actors’ secret actions varies massively. The U.S.’s covert action strategy is largely simpatico with its military interests and as such, when the Global War on Terror (GWoT) shifted military goals from Great Power foreign policy (foreign policy based on battling for hegemony) to counterterror, the DO opened a war on a thousand fronts. Covert action became not simply the acquisition of assets to duel for supremacy against Russia and China, but also a massive tool in support of American warfighters. Intelligence operations now provide intel that result in operations on terrorist targets, which in turn provide more intel. Conversely, Russian counterterror operations were already an organ in the Russian military owing

to Chechen separtist conflicts. This pre-established relationship allowed them to maintain a fairly consistent national security objective of destabilizing the EU and encroaching into former Warsaw Pact nations such as the attempted Russian coup d’etat in Montenegro before it joined NATO. China views covert action as a route for not only national security, but to achieve economic goals as well. The Chinese see covert action as akin to research and development. This way, covert action furthers the larger goal of expanding Chinese influence by increasing the efficiency of its forays into 5G and the One Road initiative. The tangling of business and espionage makes companies such as Huawei very suspect as the potential for intelligence gathering operations is massive. Though these goals are extremely policy-oriented, the acceptability of covert action methods to these states speaks to the culture and values of each as much as it does to their tactical acumen. All of these states engage in the recruitment of assets overseas. The United States’ policy in particular is mostly focused on the recruitment of foreign intelligence assets; however, drone strikes constitute a large part of the kinetic action the DO takes part in. These strikes are largely in hot zones for GWoT, as the US has, on balance, avoided meddling in the affairs of democracies (with Chile being largely an exception). This U.S. behavior displays a general respect for international norms that is lacking in Russia and China. This is understandable, as the system of international norms largely favors the Western world. While covert action remains shrouded in operational secrecy, its methodology is still symptomatic of the same institutions and interests these respective countries have in other areas. The United States’ covert action as of late is multifaceted, interwoven with its military, and mostly respectful to democracies. The Russian intelligence apparatus is extremely militarized, assassinates regularly, and uses myriad methods to disrupt the world order that constrains it. The Chinese state subtly uses the institutions of neoliberal globalization to benefit its economic development. Studying covert action is difficult when it is so heavily obscured by operational tradecraft, but gaining an understanding of the factors that constrain these countries clears the fog of public understanding. As more covert action comes to see the light of day, we must view these operations for what they are: foreign policy by secret means. Like all other foreign policy tools, they are affected by institutions, interests, and acceptable methods.

INTERNATIONAL

Escalating to De-escalate Are Iran and Saudi Arabia tensions on the brink of spilling over to dialogue? BY MIRIAM MOKHEMAR

he Islamic Republic of Iran had an important policy decision to make: continue upholding a deal that compels the international community to ease pressure or reestablish nuclear research aggravating a longstanding rivalry to re-exert its own influence. The Shia theocratic state chose the latter. Iran has attacked six oil tanks in the Strait of Hormuz, two of which belonged to Iran's longtime rival, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and one of which belonged to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Furthermore, Iran’s attacks destroyed an advanced United States drone, and demonstrated Iran’s readiness to escalate aggression. Iran is hedging against the joint American, Israeli, and Saudi “maximum pressure” campaign, including actions such as withdrawing from The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the Iran Nuclear Deal) and reinstated hefty economic sanctions against The Islamic Republic. What better way to attack this coalition than to refuel old tensions with a neighboring rival who is also a strong regional ally to the U.S., but is not a high profile nuclear state? Escalating conflict with Saudi Arabia was Iran’s best bet at hindering this campaign. In regard to the latest attack on Saudi oil fields, Chief Pentagon Spokesperson for the Department of Defense, Jonathan Hoffman, believes the Iranian attack poses an international problem because the sheer “number of airborne projectiles, was very sophisticated, coordinated” and the “dramatic impact on the global markets.” The air assault on the world’s largest crude oil processing plant and oil field forced Saudi Arabia to shut down at least half of its production operations, which triggered the largest spike in crude oil prices in decades, as well as renewed concerns of the potential for a broader conflict between Persian Gulf states that could exacerbate current civil wars in Syria, Yemen, Libya and other parts of the Middle East and North Africa region. The events in the Strait of Hormuz are pivotal in the ongoing tensions in the Middle East. According to the U.S. Energy and Information Administration, the Strait of Hormuz is “the world’s most important oil choke-

point” because of the large volumes of oil that flow through the waterway every day. Nearly every country with hefty decision-making power in the international economy is connected to oil or shipping coming out of the Gulf. Key players like Japan, China, South Korea, France, a n d Germany all rely on petroleum products, gas, and oil from the Persian Gulf, and shipping is the key bargaining chip for Iran in the standoff with the U.S. If shipping is threatened, the international community will have to take the U.S.-Iran spat, and its consequences, more seriously. Iran immediately got what it desired; Washington backpedaled on its aggression towards Tehran after President Trump stated he is open to talks with President Rouhani of Iran. The Islamic Republic has long sought to pull Saudi Arabia away from the United States - Israel alliance. Afshon Ostovar, an Iran expert at the Naval Postgraduate School, asserts that with recent lack of an American military response to the strikes on Saudi soil created the ideal opening for Iran to do just that. After Saudi Defense Ministry representative Col. Turki al-Maliki confirmed recovered drone and missile debris linked to Iranian technology, the Department of Defense released a statement that the Pentagon would deploy two hundred troops to Saudi Arabia, but refuse militarily retaliation against Iran for the oil field attacks. Saudi Arabia promptly sought its own solution to the conflict. The Prime Ministers of Iraq and Pakistan and officials from Kuwait and The United Arab Emirates have intervened on behalf of both states in an attempt to defuse tensions. According to the Global Security Review, Pakistan's Prime Minister, Imran Khan, spoke to Rouhani on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly to discuss steps to ease escalation between Riyadh and Tehran. The UAE held direct maritime security talks with Iran and has pulled back from the Yemeni civil conflict, in

which it supports the Hadi government along with the Saudis against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. In an Al-Jazeera interview, Ali Larijani, speaker of Iran’s Parliament, said, “Iran is open to starting a dialogue with Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region” and that dialogue between these two countries “could solve many of the region’s security and political problems.” Since the 1979 Iranian revolution, tensions between Sunnis and Shias deepened when Shia clerics took control of the country, offering support and giving hope to Shia populations in Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. While the new regime launched an aggressive foreign policy of exporting Iran-style theocratic uprising in the region, Saudi Arabia saw this as a threat to its heavy influence in the Middle East, and to the Saudi monarchy itself. While actions, such as the Saudi execution of the Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr in 2016, didn’t aid the jockeying theocracies, the root of the competition is motivated by a desire for regional influence not religion. Engaged in the struggle for power, the two states have used sectarianism to form easy political alliances and is why sectarianism has gotten as bad as it has in the Middle East. Sunni governments and rebels are more likely to turn to Saudi Arabia for help and in turn Shia groups turn to Iran. As conflicts progress, these sectarian molds intensify inviting Saudi and Iranian intervention, further polarizing countries on sectarian lines. If Saudi Arabia joins Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates in reaching out to Iran, it could undermine the Trump administration’s effort to build an international coalition that is containing the Iranians. However, the dialogue will have to overcome the Sunni-Shia sectarianism divide and years of power balancing in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and now Yemen, where both states have been stalemated in disastrous wars for over a decade. Iran has gotten the US president to rollback US policy by calling for talks and Saudi Arabia to open diplomatic channels for dialogue all because it started to escalate matters against international shipping. Tehran had made its points and should stop escalating tensions to pursue diplomacy instead.

GEORGIA POLITICAL REVIEW | 29

efl ika t u

a Sal

THE BATTLE

‘The Cogs in the Machine’

lgeria, the sleeping giant at the top of the African continent, is sometimes perceived as quiet and peaceful. Regime changes in Egypt and Tunisia, along with a slow-burning civil war in Libya, led some to believe that everything was stable in Algiers, but the kids aren’t alright. Protests have been raging since February, with people flooding the streets of Algiers demanding change. Longtime president Abdelaziz Bouteflika was pushed out of office, but his cronies in the government were not. Algeria now faces a difficult choice. Should the people simply elect a new leader, or should they completely reshape the government? It was not supposed to happen this way. After a decade-long civil war that left the Algerian people badly weathered, many thought that newly-elected President Abdelaziz Bouteflika signaled a beacon of peace for the future of the country. However, it became clear that the people were sold a dream. Once he came to power in 1999, he refused to leave, and it was not until widespread protests in response to his bid for a fifth term finally forced him to resign in April 2019. While these protests success-

Younes

fully removed Bouteflika from power, the year is almost over, and the protests have not stopped. Many of the Bouteflika-era officials are still in power and were even put in charge of transitioning the government. In fact, many of the president’s old cronies have become a sticking point in the process toward reforming the government. Karim Younes, the former speaker of the lower house of the legislature, has not been embraced by the people in the way that he had hoped he would be. Many in the streets are refusing to negotiate until more concessions are made and actual reforms begin. With socioeconomic problems that only seem to worsen, it is no surprise that frustration has reached a boiling point. While unemployment in the country is around 11.1 percent, youth unemployment sits at a staggering 26.4 percent. This is even more concerning given that nearly two thirds of Algeria’s 41 million people are under the age of 30. Additionally, corruption has squandered much of the country’s wealth. The country’s reserves have shrunk dramatically, and with steady drops in the price of oil, it will be hard to fill the coffers again. Youth unemployment, corruption and old lead-

VER

ership in a country where the average age is 27 have been important grievances that protestors have demanded be addressed. However, it seems that the government is unconcerned with these issues. At 82, Bouteflika is generations removed from nearly half of the Algerian demographic, yet he has somehow managed to hold on to power for more than two decades. After suffering from a crippling stroke seven years ago, Bouteflika stopped appearing in public, sending a framed photo of himself to state functions in his stead. This led to a growing distrust of him and calls for him to leave office and allow a younger, more capable leader to govern. Unfortunately, negative public opinion led Bouteflika to only tighten his grip on the country. In response to this unrest, Bouteflika’s government has arrested protesters such as Mouaffak Serdouk, who displayed a political sign outside of the soccer stadium in Algiers and was sentenced to a year in prison. Hundreds of “prisoners of conscience” began a hunger strike in early October, including 87-year-old Lakhdar Bouregaa, who was detained in June for contributing to the weakening of the army’s morale after criticizing one of Bouteflika’s

FOR ALGIERS

‘The Prisoners of Conscience’

SUS cronies, Ahmed Gaid Salah. At the beginning of October, police actually barred students from protesting in central Algiers. It does not seem as if the government is willing to meet the people halfway, and after decades of frustration, the people are refusing to back down. Even the arrest and sentencing of Bouteflika’s brother did little to placate them. The distrust of Bouteflika’s old government speaks to a much larger issue that often plagues countries in this region. While the leader often orchestrates much of the abuse and deception that hurts the people, they are just one cog in the machine. Authoritarian leaders often build extensive bureaucratic government systems full of people loyal to them and their objectives. In Algeria, the government’s reserves have plummeted from $179 billion to just under $80 billion since

the end of 2014. Someone has managed to steal everything that wasn’t nailed down, and now the people want their money back. It is difficult to anticipate what direction the protests will take, but we know from the Arab Spring that these protests can lead to a number of outcomes. Some countries experienced radical changes and the advent of a new democracy, while others delved into utter chaos. While a revolutionary spirit can motivate people to bring about change, there is no telling how government leaders will react to it. They can either step aside or fight tooth and nail to hold onto power. There is often a misconception that the people of the Middle East simply do not want democracy or cannot maintain it. The prevalence of dictators and monarchs is somehow conflated with an inability in the region to form fair, modern democracies. Some seem to believe that Israel is the only country in the region that wants to be a democracy. This could not be

“While the leader often orchestrates much of the abuse and deception that hurts the people, they are just one cog in the machine.”

further from the truth. Across the region, many have been fighting for decades for political change. Too often we equate the violent imagery of the Middle East seen on television with a proclivity for chaos when in fact, years of frustration have simply built up and exploded. They just happened to explode right next to each other. So what does this mean for Algeria? This is a question not enough people are asking, and nobody has the answer to. Their neighbor, Tunisia, managed to oust dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and is actively working to establish a new government. In the best possible circumstances, Algeria could follow this model. On the other hand, Syria has been unable to oust long-time dictator, Bashar Al-Assad, who inherited the country from his father Hafez. The country has been embroiled in a violent civil war which has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the largest humanitarian crisis in human history. Not as disastrous as Syria but not a successful as Tunisia sits the Egyptian revolution where the ousting of Hosni Mubarak, then the removal of Muslim Brotherhood favorite Mohamed Morsi for heavy handed Abdul Fatteh El-Sisi has left the many Egyptians feeling that they are right back where they started. While the people are on a path to democracy, it is not clear whether or not the government will come with them.

GEORGIA POLITICAL REVIEW | 31

Threats to Regional Security in Latin America The Revival of the FARC BY EMMA TRAYNOR

n August 2019, ex-members of las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), Colombia’s largest guerilla rebel group, whose name in English translates to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, announced a recall to arms against the Colombian government, in defiance of a three-year-old peace deal. Aside from being detrimental to peace in the region, the FARC’s resurgence has two potential implications for American national security and general global security. In 2009, Colombia produced an estimated 90 percent of total global cocaine exports, with North America and Western Europe as the main sources of demand; the FARC was responsible for 60 percent of Colombian cocaine that was exported to the U.S. that same year. A revival of the group’s criminal activity could cause U.S. cocaine imports to skyrocket, adding to the already record-high levels of cocaine production and, conversely, increasing the FARC’s funding. Additionally, Colombia’s proximity to Venezuela and disputed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s relationship with the FARC jeopardize U.S. efforts to depose Maduro. Developed as a Marxist-Leninist group in 1964, the FARC was created in response to deeply-rooted economic inequality in Colombia due, in part, to disproportionate land ownership. The FARC recruits men and women of all ages from largely rural areas. Organized into “blocs” based on their region with a “Secretariat” of about 12 members who lead operations, the FARC’s central activities include attacking Colombian security forces, setting

landmines, and blowing up oil pipelines, bridges, and other infrastructure. In the 1990s, the group became involved in Colombia’s extensive cocaine production in an effort to increase funding. They also secured funding through extortion and kidnappings for ransom, which they vowed to stop in a statement in February 2012. In 2008, 2010, and 2011, several leaders of the group were killed, and in 2016, estimates put the FARC forces at around 6,000 to 7,000, down from 16,000 in 2001. In 2016, after 52 years of violence, the Colombian government, the FARC, and other rebel groups signed a peace agreement, the Havana Peace Accords. As a result, the FARC disarmed and transitioned to a political party, the Revolutionary Alternative Common Force, which currently has 10 mandated seats in the Congress of Colombia. Despite being officially disbanded, an estimated 1,700 to 3,000 members of the FARC continue to commit crimes and acts of violence. In August 2019, Iván Márquez, the leader of the FARC negotiating team during peace talks and a representative in the Colombian Congress, announced his intention to return to guerrilla warfare. He invoked the universal right of people to rise up against oppression and blamed the government for failing to honor the terms of the peace agreement. This is a sentiment echoed by human rights groups and ex-FARC fighters who criticize Colombian president Iván Duque Márquez and former president Álvaro Uribe for failing to implement important aspects of the peace deal. Two-thirds of the Havana Peace Accords’ 578 provisions have been ignored under Duque’s government. Yet, many ex-guerrillas do not want to rearm. Members of the newer political wing of the FARC, including former guerrilla leader and now party leader Rodrigo Londoño (also known as Timochenko), have condemned Márquez’s decision and reaffirmed their commitment to peace. Other ex-combatants, many of whom live in reincorporation zones, value the peace that they achieved “after all

Left: Iván Márquez, former FARC commander who has returned to arms Right: Disputed President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela

the years fighting in the mountains.” They do point out, however, the hundreds of ex-FARC members who have been killed in the years since the Havana Accords and the governmental neglect that rural communities experience. President Duque claims that the FARC is using their ideology as a cover for criminal activity, calling them “narco-terrorists.” Former Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the 2016 peace negotiations, speculates that the leaders of the resurgence merely want to avoid extradition to the U.S. for their drug crimes. While Márquez has not been seen in a year, he and his fellow guerrillas are believed to be hiding in Venezuela. The FARC conflict in Colombia also has deeper implications for the current crisis in Venezuela. The U.S. State Department and the Colombian government have confirmed that disputed President Maduro of Venezuela has been allowing Colombian rebel groups to seek refuge in the Venezuelan Amazon, which the FARC uses as a staging ground for cocaine shipments from Colombia through Mexico and Brazil. Groups here receive arms in return, which are distributed to the FARC in southeastern Colombia. Not only does support from a neighboring government increase the FARC’s ability to regroup, Venezuela’s widespread access to guns grants Colombian rebel groups an advantage they do not have on their home soil. Additionally, the threat of increased violence on the already tumultuous Colombia-Venezuela border looms, as thousands of Venezuelan refugees pour in, putting innocent Colombians and Venezuelans at risk. Here, they face intense violence and personal danger as rebel groups, including the FARC, threaten, rape, and kill people in the rural areas where they operate, as well as recruit child soldiers. Policies regarding the revival of the FARC in Colombia should be closely linked with policy regarding Venezuela and Maduro’s regime. By controlling the negative influence the current Venezuelan administration has on the FARC, the rebel group’s power could be seriously diminished. Politically, several actions have been taken to stifle Maduro. In late September, Duque requested that international sanctions be placed on Maduro’s regime in order to halt Venezuelan support for the FARC and drug trafficking in the region. He also referenced the potential for the invocation of the successful Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, an agreement that classifies aggression toward one American state as aggression toward all American states. The U.S. has already

been levying sanctions on Venezuela since 2017, increasing them as the situation there has devolved. Meanwhile, Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó has been recognized as interim president by over 50 countries, including the United States. International bodies like the Organization of American States and the Inter-American Development Bank have accepted representatives from Guaidó’s administration rather than that of Maduro. While drug trafficking is a clear concern, the international community’s first priority should be ending the humanitarian crisis in Colombia and Venezuela. By stabilizing the region, drug trafficking and violence will decrease. The focus of U.S. foreign policy should primarily be on rural areas where the FARC is most active. U.S. economic aid, as well as a continued aid partnership with the United Nations will help Colombia carry out the tenets of its peace plan. In addition, progress markers should be implemented; if Colombia continues to neglect peace plan implementation, the U.S. and UN should consider targeted sanctions or another form of repercussions. Putting the peace plan into effect is crucial to both quell the concerns of FARC members who have rearmed and squelch avenues for dangerous and illegal activities. It is important that the U.S. exhaust all forms of peaceful action before resorting to violence. While an overthrow of the Maduro regime may be quick and effective, the U.S. has been criticized in the past for its covert and overt tampering in foreign affairs (i.e. the Iran-Contra Affair, the CIA’s support of the Polish labor union Solidarity, and the Secret War in Laos); if it is involved, dramatic action could backfire and discredit the U.S.’s attempts to help. By getting a handle on the unrest in Colombia and Venezuela, the FARC’s influence on regional security, the drug trade, and the peace process will diminish.

Disappearing Girls Sex Selection and Female Infanticide in India BY VANISHA KUDUMURI

150

million –– that’s how many girls will mysteriously “disappear” by 2035. Despite high rates of sex-selective abortion, female infanticide remains alarmingly prevalent in countries such as China and India, with annual death tolls of more than three million girls per year. Rectifying such a widespread yet overlooked issue demands that people consciously acknowledge the systemic roots of son preference. We must actively work towards educating ourselves about the ramifications of this genocide and institutionally prevent it from occurring. India, in particular, poses an interesting case study. While it boasts a general population of over 1.3 billion people, a 2011 nationwide census reveals a drastically skewed ratio of 933 females for every 1000 males. This imbalanced sex ratio can be attributed to cultural attitudes that have developed over centuries of patriarchal customs and traditions, making sons more economically, socially, religiously, and emotionally advantageous for the household. These societal values influence parents’ decisions regarding sex preferences for their children. Sons provide financial and emotional support for their parents in old age, perform important religious and death rituals, and defend the family. On the other hand, daughters financially deplete the household with dowries, discontinue the lineage by marrying into other families, and are generally perceived as a burden. Additionally, male relatives inherit accumulated property or wealth from their fathers, reinforcing a patrilineal society. Other factors such as the mother’s education and exposure to media also significantly contribute to the degree of son preference. Women with higher levels of schooling adopt more egalitarian views on the sex of their children, and the general education level of the community accelerates this effect. Similarly, mothers who regularly watch modern television or listen to the radio exhibit weaker son preference. On the other hand, factors such as wealth and economic development have little to no influence on desire for male children. Technological innovation also drives prenatal sex-selection by making sex detection and abortion more accessible. Not only has ultrasound technology improved dramatically, but blood tests can accurately

predict a fetus’ sex as early as seven weeks of gestation. Abortion, particularly for the middle and upper classes, grows increasingly affordable and safe. Thus, sex-selective abortion has never been easier. As a result of these societal biases and individual circumstances, India now has 50 million more men than women. This male surplus could have destabilizing effects on society, particularly in terms of violence. Communities with a significantly higher proportion of men also display higher rates of rape, child marriage, domestic violence, and sexual harassment. This only exacerbates the disadvantages of a daughter: parents in these risky communities must invest resources in protecting them, thereby making daughters further liabilities and skewing the sex ratio further. Current institutional efforts to address this issue fail to do so sufficiently. In 1994, a law prohibiting medical professionals from revealing the future sex of the baby to the pregnant mother was passed with the intention of discouraging sex-selective abortion. However, the government inconsistently enforces this law, and the black market offers widespread illegal ultrasound operators and sex detection tests. The Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961 also attempted to alleviate some of the financial burden of a daughter, but dowries have become so entrenched in society that families are expected to provide a dowry regardless of the law. This dissonance between progressive governmental reforms and traditional societal norms complicate potential institutional solutions to sex selection and female infanticide. Rather than punishing households for son preference, another angle of government policy tackles financially incentivizing households to have daughters via conditional cash transfer programs. A conditional cash transfer program requires beneficiaries to meet certain conditions in order to receive payments. The Dhanalakshmi Scheme, implemented in 2008, aimed to reduce sex selection and female infanticide by providing predetermined payments when daughters reach certain milestones in their life. Parents receive payments at birth registration, childhood immunizations, the completion of schooling, and if the girl remains unmarried until eighteen. The Modi administration launched a similar scheme, Beti Bachao

Beti Padhao, focusing primarily on the educational aspects. These programs succeeded in terms of improving female immunization and education rates, but lack of knowledge regarding these schemes in rural areas has limited effectiveness. Ultimately, the optimal solution to limit sex selection and female infanticide in India requires a radical cultural shift towards valuing daughters. To uproot years of systemic patriarchy, the government must stress educating women, whether it be educating mothers regarding the benefits of having a daughter or educating daughters to join the workforce and contribute financially to their families. Encouraging social, political, and economic equality of women proves crucial to resolving inherent biases, but inevitably, such comprehensive reforms will take time to implement and accept. These shifting attitudes are already visible: while nationwide sex ratios indicate otherwise, daughters still remain desirable. 87.2 percent of women want at least one daughter, and 51.5 percent of women want equal numbers of sons and daughters or have no preference. In general, families still prefer sons over daughters, but this ideological transition indicates the slow decline of traditional values and norms. It is important to acknowledge that progress is occurring in order to properly adjust discourse and potential solutions. Sex-selection and female infanticide finds its roots in patriarchy, which manifests itself internationally in different ways. While the United States has a relatively balanced sex ratio, women still experience sexual harassment, workplace discrimination, and a lack of political representation. Because this issue exists globally, international cooperation to foster social equality for women is the next step to dismantling patriarchy. If current trends continue, India still has a long way to go in terms of rebalancing the skewed sex ratio. Societal traditions and customs stubbornly resist institutional reform, even as the government imposes punitive measures and financial incentives to reduce sex-selective abortion and female infanticide. However, persistently improving access to education is sowing the seeds for a cultural shift. Perhaps one day well into the future, girls will no longer just “disappear.”

INTERNATIONAL

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u l vo e R Violent Protests and

Anti-establishment Movements in Chile

BY SYDNEY PHILLIPS

alls for anarchy, anti-establishment voting patterns, and a general sense of discontent with political structures are on the rise all over the world. Particularly in South and Central America, corruption and political scandal are ruining trust between citizens and government, sparking often-violent protests. The nation of Chile has faced extreme degrees of civil unrest since its foundation. True Chilean government began in 1810, with the country’s independence from Spain. The first governments took the form of oligarchies that ruled until the late 1880s. Then, between 1891 and 1920, an intense growth of the middle class motivated reformation of the political system. The working and middle classes began to create new political parties and formulate ideas that would advocate for the needs of lower- and middle-class citizens. The first Democratic party was founded in 1887 and led by Malaquías Concha. Marxist ideology also spread among the Chilean working class, and the Socialist party was created in 1901, which became known as the Communist Party by 1992. The nation of Chile oscillated between democracy and communism for decades, shifting to match public sentiment during global events such as the Cold War and World War II. Through it all, the Chilean population continued to expand while trade and production increased, but the working and middle classes still suffered under economic pressures and social inequality. Rising costs and stagnant wages continued to generate economic pressure for Chileans in 1964 with the presidency of Christian Democratic candidate, Eduardo Frie Montalva. Montalva instituted a series of reforms called “Revolution in Liberty,” which were intended to raise lower class incomes. Included in these reforms was a program of “Chileanization” in which the country took control of the majority of the shares of large

just a few of the allegations against Pinochet. As a result, Chile’s social climate became volatile with strikes, protests, and even acts of terrorism skyrocketing. Pinochet’spresidency marked the beginning of legitimate political dissent and mass demonstrations. Between 1980 and 2000, Chilean politics revolved solely around correcting the abuses of former President Pinochet. In the early 1980s, Pinochet was arrested in the United Kingdom at the request of Spain. Several years later, Pinochet was extradited to Chile, but the conflicting interests of the United States, Spain, and the United Kingdom motivated several human rights organizations to mediate the disputes. The last quarter of the 20th century was thus dedicated to investigating and prosecuting Pinochet and his accomplices. Though the government did its best to rectify some of the issues presented during Pinochet’s tenure, his legacy of corruption and fraud lingered far after his death. Moving into the early 21st century, several scandals erupted involving illegal campaign contributions to the Independent Democratic Union and family members of President Michelle Bachelete abusing their power to obtain millions of dollars in loans. By 2016, corruption investigations expanded to include hundreds of politicians and businessmen suspected of committing fraud. The discovery of this widespread corruption only fueled more public outcry. Youth-led protests such as the Penguin Revolution began as an attempt to advocate for political accountability and reform for Chile’s education system. The Chilean government allegedly tried to silence this dissent by removing separatists from positions of power. The murder of prominent activists like Macarena Valdés and Camilo Catrillanca by state-sponsored police forces is just one example of the violence believed to be provoked by the government. In October 2019, thousands of protestors took to the streets of Santiago to protest an increase in subway fares. This increase is indicative of the larger issue of increasing costs of living while wages and pensions remain stagnant. During the day, protests remain orderly and civil, but by night, fires erupt and violence ensues, causing President Sebastian Pinera to declare a state of emergency regularly. The citizens of Chile to this day continue to demand accountability and fight civil rights abuses that permeate the Chilean political landscape while the world looks on.

U.S. copper companies – copper being Chile’s principal resource at the time. Chileanization continued throughout Montalva’s presidency and into the next with President Salvador Allende. However, the Allende administration was cut short in 1973, when armed forces staged a coup d’état against President Allende and an oligarchy was reinstalled in his place. According to correspondence between Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State, and then President Nixon, the United States [in reference to the coup] “didn’t do it”, but we “helped them” by facilitating “conditions as great as possible”. By this, Kissinger meant that the United States created a climate of hostility in Chile and encouraged dissent against the government to help spur the coup. President Nixon had full knowledge of the attempted coup and allowed it to occur for several reasons. The coup was seen as protection of U.S. economic interests in Chile – more specifically the copper industry that Montalva was attempting to control. An even more pressing issue for the American government however, was containing the threat of communism in South America. The United States implemented a policy of containment beginning in 1940 and by the 1950’s and 60’s, a fear of the domino theory -- or belief that one country practicing communism would lead to the spread of communism in other nations -- led many Americans to support military intervention to combat communism. After the coup, Chile established an oligarchy with right-wing Augusto Pinochet Ugarte as dictator. It was originally believed to be the start of a peaceful transition, reinstating the original oligarchic system of Chile. However, the oligarchy, or junta, quickly fell apart when the nation’s standard of living plummeted and civil rights abuses came to light under Pinochet’s administration. Forced disappearances, torture, executions, and imprisonment were

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Alternative Votes Electoral Systems and their Implications BY ROSA BROWN

ritiques of the U.S. electoral system tend to center around the unique institution of the Electoral College and its role in Presidential elections, but this is not the whole story. Unlike many other advanced democracies, most U.S. elections operate in single-member districts through a “first-past-thepost” (FPTP) plurality voting system. In legislative elections, each voting district can only elect one candidate. To win, a candidate only needs to receive a plurality of the vote — more than any other candidate — rather than a majority. FPTP voting carries an advantage in its simplicity and intuition: ballots are easy to count, and winners and overall effects on legislature control can be quickly identified. However, the system also has some distinctive drawbacks. FPTP voting leaves elections particularly sensitive to vote splitting. Privileging winning by plurality produces a “spoiler” effect where a candidate with minority support can be elected if a majority of voters with similar views split their votes between competing candidates. Over time, first-past-thepost voting in single-member districts often precipitates the development of a rigid two party system, a phenomenon known as Duverger’s Law with a strong effect in the U.S. electoral system. Single-member districts also fail to provide proportional representation, since only one representative can be elected to a given seat. While this may be the Amer-

ican political norm, it is not the only way. Around the world, other voting systems encourage greater proportionality and prioritize different modes of representation, significantly influencing how governments and legislatures function. Majoritarian Systems In majoritarian electoral systems, a candidate must receive a majority of the votes to win. To achieve this result, some countries, like France, use a tworound system voting system. In the first round, voters cast their ballots for a single candidate. If no majority winner emerges after the votes are tallied, then the process eliminates candidates who received less than a certain share of the vote. A follow-up runoff election is held between the remaining candidates. While the two-round system increases the likelihood of obtaining a majority winner, it carries the disadvantage of requiring voters to cast ballots multiple times, and the inconvenience of another trip to the polls can often lead to lower voter turnout in the second round of voting. To overcome the logistic difficulties of the two-round system, other majoritarian systems use an “instant runoff” structure through ranked-choice voting. Instead of only selecting their most preferred candidate, voters numerically rank multiple candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives an immediate majority, the candidate who received the fewest votes is eliminated, and the ballots of those who voted for the last-place candidate are applied to their second choices. Each elimination simulates the effects of a runoff election, and the process repeats until one candidate acquires a majority. In 2016, Maine became the first U.S. state to adopt ranked-choice voting for its Congressional and gubernatorial

INTERNATIONAL elections, a move designed to promote more representative results and level the playing field for independent and third-party candidates. Going forward, Maine will be interesting to observe as an example of how ranked-choice voting could work in the United States, encouraging other states to adopt similar systems. In light of the approaching 2020 Democratic primary, Maine has also moved to adopt ranked-choice voting for Presidential primaries, and other states like Kansas are considering the same. In an election with a large candidate field like the 2020 primary, the adoption of ranked-choice voting would improve voters’ freedom to effectively narrow down their options and express preferences for multiple candidates. This would eliminate the need for purely “tactical” voting out of a fear of vote splitting, ensuring an eventual nomination agreeable, or at least tolerable, to the most voters possible. Party-List Proportional Representation Even a candidate with majority support still will not represent everyone, and the winner of a two-round or ranked-choice election may leave up to 49 percent of voters out in the cold. Recognizing this, other electoral systems go beyond concern for the majority, instead providing proportional representation that aims to reflect the attitudes and preferences of all voters. Proportional representation (PR) systems for legislative elections require a feature of legislature design that may seem unfamiliar to U.S. voters: voting districts send multiple representatives each. In a party-list PR system, voters do not select individual candidates. Instead, they cast their ballots for a political party. In turn, parties prepare lists of candidates for legislative seats. After an election, each party is allocated a proportional number of seats in the legislature based on the number of votes it received, and parties then fill these seats with the candidates from their lists. Party-list PR systems have several general advantages. Compared to single-member district systems, they are much less vulnerable to gerrymandering, especially when voting districts are large. The fact that list PR relies on voting for parties instead of individual candidates results in much less decision-making emphasis on personal qualities over policy positions, as opposed to the sometimes hyper-personalized negative campaigning of U.S. Congressional races. Party list systems can also provide a powerful tool for

improving fair representation of historically underrepresented groups. When assembling lists, parties can adopt requirements to strategically space minority or underrepresented candidates throughout the list, such as by requiring every second candidate be a woman. That way, it can be guaranteed about half of the seats in the legislature will go to women, a method of intentionally promoting diverse identity representation that can work much faster than waiting for societal attitudes to shift enough to allow for widespread election of candidates from historically underrepresented groups on an individual basis. Proportional representation eliminates the pressure toward a two-party system created by single-member districts, opening space for multiple parties that can better represent a range

While this may be the American political norm, it is not the only way. of ideologies and voter priorities. Since proportional representation rarely leads to one party winning an outright majority of seats, this usually means it is necessary to form multi-party coalitions to govern. The need for coalition governments can be both a strength and a weakness. At their best, coalitions encourage consensus and cooperation, moderating ideological positions and motivating a sufficiently large section of the legislature to be open to compromise in order to work together. However, this also means small, sometimes extreme parties can end up holding outsized influence. When a small party can dictate whether a potential coalition will be able to get a governing majority, the party can effectively hold the rest of the legislature hostage, leading to deadlock or government collapse. This potential pitfall of coalition governments brought about by a list PR system may be seen in the results of this year’s contentious Israeli elections, where failure to form a government after the April elections resulted from small parties’ unwillingness to form a coalition without significant policy concessions. Single Transferable Vote A final fascinating voting system to discuss is one that combines several ad-

vantageous elements of other systems. Single transferable vote (STV), notably used in Irish legislative elections, is a semi-proportional system that also allows for the kind of ranked preference used in instant runoff voting. It works in a similar way to ranked-choice, but instead of having single-member majority districts each send one representative to the legislative body, STV uses multi-member districts like proportional systems do. On election day, all candidates are listed on the ballot, and voters have the option of ranking their preferences for as many as they like. Each voting district chooses candidates for a group of seats, often three or five— like in party-list PR, this mechanism also helps prevent gerrymandering. The number of seats available and the number of votes cast determines the first bar a candidate must clear in order to be elected. Any candidate above the threshold automatically wins a seat. After that, the candidate who received the fewest votes is eliminated, and their ballots are transferred to the second choices of the voters who selected the eliminated candidate as their first choice. This elimination continues until all seats are filled. If necessary, votes for a candidate beyond the threshold necessary to win are also redistributed to the second preferences of those who cast the excess votes. This prevents penalizing voters who back popular candidates, and allows multiple candidates from the same party to win seats if the party is popular, as opposed to potentially splitting the vote and diluting their influence as they would in other systems. Single transferable vote is appealing in how it aims to offer voters the most satisfaction and representation possible. A greater degree of proportionality makes it more likely that at worst, voters will at least end up represented by candidates they can somewhat tolerate and at best, by multiple representatives they all like. While its multi-step voting mechanism may make STV appear overly complex and difficult for the average voter to understand, this potential drawback may be overcome through clear communication and education efforts. U.S. elections continue to be shaped by first-past-the-post voting and its problems, but as early efforts in Maine and Kansas show, interest in alternatives is growing. Studying other electoral systems around the globe offers a valuable shift in perspective, revealing new possibilities for what democracy can mean. We can learn what struggles, what succeeds, and hopefully, we can even bring some solutions home.

GEORGIA POLITICAL REVIEW | 37

Capitalism and the Climate Redefining Environmental Justice BY ANGELA TSAO

he climate strikes of September 2019’s Global Week for Future inspired a record seven million protestors worldwide to strike in demand of action against climate change. The partnership between the new American environmental movement and labor unions is revolutionary for its true intersectionality, reflecting hope for the grassroots “people-plus-planet” trend that has inspired American environmentalism since the original counter-cultural movement of the sixties. The national participation in an international movement demonstrates the power of global collaboration and speaks to a popular desire for American participation in international environmental convention. New-wave sustainability and an emphasis on environmental justice has empowered activism from diverse groups in a global playing field. Understanding the ecosystem inhabited by this new American wave of climate justice first requires an environmental history of the US: just as environmental degradation shook the European continent, the Americas appeared to the global West as a paradisiacal landmass of endless natural resources. The United States was born with an optimism as boundless as the open plains. That optimism persists, yet the plains have long since splintered into fencedoff fragments. The country’s capitalist foundation demands natural resources to fuel the industrial mode of production. Americans’ general attitude, too, has been one of denial about the limitations of the planet, with such researchers as Marion King Hubbert being derided entirely for predictions about peak oil or the finite reserves of fossil fuels. The “myth of superabundance” has transformed into one of “scientific supremacy,” where technological progress generates confidence that new fuels and new materials can and will be discovered. Indeed, that attitude has further entrenched itself in society through innovations like offshore drilling and hydraulic fracturing. However, the mounting environmental and social costs of energy production are poorly captured by market prices. Changing attitudes about the natural world have also required changing environmental practices. Dorceta Taylor characterizes three main paradigms chrono-

logically in the American environmental movement: an initial phase of Romantic Environmentalism, a shift into New Environmentalism, and finally the Environmental Justice paradigm of the post-Love Canal era. American Conservation began with top-down gentlemen’s agreements between upper-crust outdoorsmen and their politician buddies; green leaders in America, as well as the communities in which they worked, were overwhelmingly white and wealthy. With Romantic Environmentalism, transcendentalists sought outdoor havens as a retreat from dirty city life, emphasizing the nobility of nature. New Environmentalism’s popularity with the counterculture of the 1960s saw inspired activism and the momentum to demand centralized environmental legislation that continues to defend clean air and water to this day. It was finally the cases of Three Mile Island and Love Canal that wholly exposed the disparities in share of the environmental burden placed on low-income and minority populations. New understanding of environmental justice has democratized the movement to empower greater grassroots activism, and nowhere has this impact been more apparent than in the climate movement. Diversity in sustainability is vital. Within America, it is less common for people of color to attach partisan identification to climate change than for white voters to do so-- perhaps an understanding of environmental justice as a socioeconomic challenge lends appreciation for the shared burden placed on humans by climate change. However, the valuable perspective of people of color is all too often excluded from the leadership ranks of American environmentalism, which by and large remain washed in whiteness. Strikes and recent partnerships between labor and climate (consider the Ecosocialist Working Group of the Democratic Socialists of America) have expanded the inclusivity of the movement, and leadership diversity of color and gender alike has almost doubled since 2014. Conversely, the urgency of climate change has also heightened the eco-fascist overtures of America’s white environmentalism. There has been increased reactionary disdain for immigrants and refugees-- many of whom are increasingly forced to move, in part or in whole, by climate. A false dichotomy between the environment of

the developed Western world and the ‘global south’ encourages American holier-than-thou sentiment, even with a U.S. per-capita carbon emissions rate more than double that of China. Developed countries have been able to literally ship waste and recyclables abroad, disappearing accumulating heaps with the scribble of a pen. That’s the importance of global strikes and climate solidarity: awareness and a cultural demand for change must be nurtured in the United States. Despite efforts like the Basel Convention to regulate unjust redistribution of damage, global waste management-- and the capture of emissions reductions by recycling-- is inefficient because of this toxic waste colonialism. Perhaps more importantly, people believe that there is no problem because it is moved out of sight. In 2018, a Census Bureau Report found that 78 percent of U.S. plastic waste exports were sent to countries with waste mismanagement rates greater than five percent. Waste mismanagement leads to toxic fumes, misrepresented carbon savings, and pollution. Yet these exports were counted by industry and the EPA as recycled material, thus painting an illusion of superior environmental stewardship. In a similar way, it is easy to ignore climate change when the initial impacts disproportionately hurt lower-income countries who are less resilient to rising temperatures and sea levels. The affordance of American wealth is that even as an additional 250,000 people will die worldwide each year due to climate change starting from 2030, U.S. carbon emissions increased 3.4 percent in 2018. The 2019 climate strikes are powerful for their transcendence of boundaries, both demographic and geographical. Only with expanded inclusivity in the environmental movement can we approach a global problem with global goals.

CULTURE

The NCAA’s Fumble on Student-Athlete BY MARSHALL BERTON Education Unjust Compensation Both Inside and Outside of the Classroom *Author’s Note: This article was written prior to the NCAA’s unanimous vote allowing student athletes to profit off of their name, image and likeness by no later than January 2021. While this vote is a positive first step taken by the NCAA, states should still pass legislation ensuring that profiting off of name, image, and likeness is protected for student-athletes under law.

alifornia Governor Gavin Newsom made history in September when he signed the Fair Pay to Play Act, allowing college athletes to use their name, image, and likeness to endorse products in the state of California. The law, which will go into effect on January 1, 2023, challenges the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) long-held belief that the free education college athletes receive is just compensation for their athletic contributions. As more states consider introducing similar legislation, it is important to recognize that the free education that many schools claim to provide for their student-athletes is in fact not a real education. Big-time Division 1 college athletic programs force student athletes to choose from a reduced list of majors, admit student-athletes to universities they are otherwise unqualified to attend, and do not allocate enough time for students to study to achieve success in the classroom. A trend spotted in college athletics is major clustering, which occurs when student athletes are steered into majors perceived to be easy by coaches and other athletic staff. These majors tend to have student-athlete friendly faculty, who are more lenient with absences for competition, and may even extend assignment d e a d lines for athletes. In addition, the coursework assigned in these majors is significantly less difficult in comparison to other

majors on campus. Student-athletes are not able to major in subjects of interest if they take up too much time in relation to their athletic commitments. According to the Daily Orange, Syracuse University’s student-run newspaper, 19 percent of the Syracuse Football team, 21.4 percent of the Men’s Lacrosse Team, and 29.4 percent of the Women’s Basketball Team major in communication and rhetorical studies. The NCAA cannot claim to provide a well-rounded education if athletes have limited choices in what they are able to study. In addition, student-athletes are often admitted to schools they are barely qualified to attend academically, dooming them to fail. Academic criteria for student-athletes’ admission are far below those for other students. According to a 2008 study, the average SAT scores for college football and basketball players were about 200 points lower than the average college student. on a 2400 point scale. When colleges admit student-athletes to their university based solely off of athletic achievement, they capitalize on the labor of college athletes without providing them with a pathway to success. The academic standards for student-athletes are again lowered once they are enrolled in college. The University of Texas’ Football Twitter account bragged online that the team’s average GPA of 2.89 was the highest in team history. In comparison, the University of Texas’ average GPA for all undergraduate students is 3.33. Athletic programs should not be praised for simply graduating their players with C averages. Rather, they should expect their student-athletes to perform at the same level in the classroom as regular students. Although student-athletes should be held to the same standards as normal students, their schedules currently do not permit adequate time to study. NCAA football players devote approximately 4050 hours per week to football related activities during the regular season, in addition to attending classes. During the offseason, players still average 20 hours per week. On top of this work-

load, travel to away games is extremely time consuming, and sometimes requires players to miss class. When students are not in class or at practice, they have limited free time to study, do homework, or participate in other extracurricular activities. The lack of priority given to the education portion of a student athlete’s schedule shows that they are being exploited. Instead of hiding behind the veil of amateurism, the NCAA needs to admit that the current model of college athletics is nearly identical to professional sports. The NCAA now generates over one billion dollars in revenue annually. It is time for the NCAA to share some of this wealth with the students-athletes who create it. At minimum, student-athletes should be given the same opportunity as their fellow students to profit off of their name, image, and likeness through corporate sponsorships and endorsements. If the NCAA will not pay their athletes, then it at least needs to provide student-athletes with the opportunity to gain value out of their education. Perhaps Cardale Jones, former Quarterback of the Ohio State Buckeyes, highlighted the current problem best, when he wrote that he had gone to Ohio State to play football, not “to play school.” If the NCAA wants to claim that their student-athletes are justly compensated for their labor with a full-ride scholarship, then they need to guarantee that their players are gaining something meaningful out of their education.

Repealing the Tamp n Tax Why Should Medical Necessities be Taxed as “non-essentials”? BY JAAIE VARSHNEY

ou lock the door. You sit. You look down. It’s everywhere. You don’t have anything in your bookbag, and the box next to the sinks dispenses them for 25 cents. You don’t carry quarters. This scenario, perhaps painfully familiar to many menstruators, illustrates the monetization of a natural, biological process. Wherever period products are sold, they pose an unfair financial burden. This is not just limited to bathrooms. As of November 2019, 34 states tax menstrual hygiene products at the same rate as “non-essential” goods, whereas other hygiene products are granted tax exemptions. The sales tax imposed on period products is commonly referred to as the “tampon tax,” and it applies to menstrual hygiene products, like pads, tampons, and menstrual cups. It is not an additional tax levied on these items, but the tampon tax still poses and undue financial burden. The controversy surrounding the tampon tax becomes clearer when one considers what is not taxed at the same rate as female hygiene products, items considered basic necessities and thus subject to tax exemptions: condoms, chapstick, razors, and deodorant. No one can deny the usefulness of these items, but when the comparison must be made, are pads, tampons, and other menstrual products any less necessary? A lack of access to menstrual products leads to missed school and work, and, in extreme cases, can lead to health issues if unhygienic alternative methods to capture blood flow are used. Menstrual equity advocates contend that, in order to create a society where every individual can participate fully and equally, period products must be both available and accessible to those who need them. The origins of the tampon tax are nebulous. It was likely an oversight of the all-male state legislature when the tax code was first addressed. It has now evolved into an enduring discriminatory policy that has solidified the tax on menstrual products as the status quo for policymakers.

The sales tax in the state of Georgia is 4 percent, but the actual tax imposed on period products is always higher: local municipalities add their own rates on top of the state’s tax. For example, the combined sales tax rate in Athens-Clarke County is 8 percent. As shown in the picture below, the tax adds a 76 cent additional cost to a typical 9.49 dollar box of pads, despite the Food and Drug Administration’s classification of the products as medical devices. Saving a few dollars every couple of months on menstrual products may not seem like a significant portion of one’s income. However, poverty disproportionately affects women, and more specifical-

ly, women who menstruate. Sales tax is already a regressive tax– a tax rate that takes a larger portion of lower incomes than higher incomes. Thus, taxing essential items like menstrual products amounts to discrimination not just on the basis of sex, but on socioeconomic status as well. A study by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists found that 2 out of 3 low-income women find that they cannot afford period products at least once a year. This hardship is made even more difficult for low-income menstruators because federal assistance programs such as SNAP (commonly referred to as food stamps), Women, Infants, and

Children (WIC), and Medicaid cannot be used to purchase menstrual products. The enduring taxation on period products can be explained by reasons ranging from revenue earned by the tax to cultural stigma surrounding menstruation. The Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts estimates that the state receives $9 million of revenue annually from the tax imposed on period products. This sum accounts for a mere 0.03 percent of the yearly fiscal budget. Additionally, the disproportionately low percentage of female lawmakers in the Georgia General Assembly (30.5 percent) ensures that the voices of menstruators regarding issues of period product access are overpowered by those who do not menstruate. Studies have shown that women in political bodies prioritize issues of direct consequence to women: Democratic women sponsor bills related to women’s health at twice the rate of men in their party. Above all, the most subtle, but arguably the most impactful, reason for the lack of action until recently on the issue of menstrual equity is the culturally ingrained idea that discussion regarding menstruation should be kept to women. Specifically, that only mothers and their daughters, and maybe close friends, should talk about periods with each other, and that certainly men should not be involved in the conversation. The discomfort of topics like periods in public spaces translates to a lack of urgency in addressing, or worse, a conscious effort to work against, menstrual equity in political spheres. Recently, attempts have been made in Georgia to remove the tampon tax completely. The 2019 legislative session saw the introduction of House Bill 8 by State Rep. Debbie Buckner, which would grant tax exemptions to all widely used menstrual products. The bill only madeit to Second Reading, a step automatically taken after a bill is introduced in the Georgia House. Georgia lags well behind other states in the repeal of the tampon tax. New Jersey repealed its tampon tax back in 2005,

CULTURE and an academic study confirmed what many knew to be true: the tax break benefitted lower-income menstruators. In 2016, New York State passed a bill to exempt period products from sales tax after a lawsuit was filed that likened pads, tampons, and other menstrual hygiene products to bandages, gauze, and dressings (which are exempt from tax) by arguing that both act to stop blood flow. Despite Georgia’s politicians’ relatively sluggish approach to addressing the tampon tax, there is reason to be optimistic about the future of menstrual equity in the state. Coalitions such as Georgia STOMP (Stop Taxes on Menstrual Products) bring together different organizations with vested interests in women’s health to amend Georgia’s tax code to reflect the medical necessity of period products. Additionally, PERIOD., an organization dedicated to “lead[ing] the menstrual movement,” seeks to end period poverty and period stigma through service, education, and advocacy. PERIOD. has chapters in all 50 states (including several in Georgia) and estimates that the organization has provided period kits for over 700,000 periods nationally at the time of writing. These two organizations are notable for

Tampon Tax By State

No sales tax Tampon tax No tampon tax

their success in bringing periods into the political arena. While charities and other service-based organizations dedicated to serving low-income menstruators by providing period products to address one of the most pressing public health issues we face are doing commendable work, they only provide a short-term solution. If donating menstrual products to people in need is not accompanied by policy change, then lower-income menstruators will forever be reliant on charitable individu-

als to supply a necessity. To sustainably affect institutional and cultural change, legislative action must be taken to repeal the “non-essential” status of period products. Twelve states have accomplished exactly that. As the discourse surrounding periods begins to change from one that shames and marginalizes menstruation to one that accepts it as a biological process, more states will hopefully begin to pass legislation that classifies menstrual products as what they are: necessary medical devices.

The Dominance of Electronic Payment Technology in China BY GARRETT WILLIAMS

n recent decades, technology has regularly transformed the ways in which we interact with each other in society. Technology defines our relationships with others by assisting, regulating, or hindering interactions with them. Recently, new apps and services have begun to transform the way we pay for goods and services. With the proliferation of apps such as Venmo, Paypal, and CashApp, and services such as Apple Pay, electronic payment technology has substantially impacted the nature of economic exchanges in America. The most significant effect is that electronic payment technology opens up the world economy by allowing individuals across the world to participate in markets because digital payment transcends geographical limitations. Additionally, electronic payment services allow individuals to better track their expenses, exchange money faster, and avoid dealing with inconvenient currency denominations. Although many Americans are swapping their print money for new digital payment

services, they are still clinging onto debit and credit cards. It would be reasonable to assume that the United States leads the world in the adoption and usage of new technologies, but surprisingly, China is a massive trailblazer in the adoption of mobile payment apps. From 2012 to 2018, the total market share of mobile payments in China grew from 4.0 percent to 83.0 percent compared to non-mobile payment forms (Source 7). China’s widespread use of electronic payment is an interesting case study in the tradeoffs of switching to a cashless economy. However, in order to understand the rationale behind China’s acceptance of electronic payments technology, it is important to analyze the historical context. China has a deep history of authoritarian rule by highly centralized governments, most recently under the rule of the Communist Party of China. Initially a communist economy under the rule of Mao Zedong, China’s economic system today is a form of state-run or state-sponsored capitalism, defined as a market economy with many industries man-

aged or dominated by state-owned firms. Since initiating economic reforms in the late 1970s under Deng Xiaoping to privatize parts of its economy to cut inefficiency and spur economic development, China experienced the most rapid economic growth seen in modern history. Over 30 years of double-digit growth lifted 850 million people out of poverty (Source 5). Today, China is an economic powerhouse with the largest GDP in the world and the largest and fastest growing consumer middle class. China’s authoritarian rule extends to its relationship with its citizens. Because of China’s desire to effectively control its massive population, the government has several methods through which it exercises extreme surveillance on its people. As one of their ways to control the populace, the Chinese government has constructed a sprawling system of over 170 million surveillance cameras equipped with facial recognition and artificial intelligence to maintain social order (source 1). Their surveillance even extends beyond

CULTURE the physical world. In the digital sphere, China runs the world’s largest and most sophisticated online censorship operation, referred to as The Great Firewall. The Great Firewall arose in the early 2000s as a response to citizens’ engagement with Western ideas and the increased risk of citizens’ dissent and critique of the government. While China’s internet censorship expanded in the early 2000s, American tech giants such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook were rapidly growing. The result of this disconnect between the rapidly developing internet of the West and the restricted Internet within China is that Chinese companies have filled the void that Western companies couldn’t. Today, for every major app or technology company in the West, there is a company in China that offers a very similar or even identical service to consumers in China. Chinese citizens effectively live in a digital sphere independent of the rest of the world. The services offered are nearly identical, but China is able to exercise substantial control over domestic firms. Additionally, instead of each app performing one or two essential functions, most apps in China provide nearly every single service imaginable-- referred to as “super apps.” These super apps, namely Wechat and Alipay, are owned by the Chinese tech companies Tencent and Alibaba, respectively. Super apps seamlessly integrate social media, messaging, and mobile payment technology. Additionally, WeChat also offers mini-programs within the app that provide services akin to Western apps such as Uber, Bird, Grubhub, and Amazon. All of these services are connected to the same account, effectively linking nearly all of a user’s online activity to one central profile. Electronic payment technology is part of a booming industry known as financial technology, dubbed “FinTech” for short, a name that symbolizes increasingly interconnected relationship between technology and financial services. Major FinTech categories include money transfer & payments, savings and investments, and insurance (Source 3). China’s economy is now defined by mobile payment services, and the citizens’ adoption of revolutionary financial technology extends past just mobile payment. According to Ernest & Young’s 2019 Global FinTech Adoption Index, Chinese consumers have the highest adoption rate of financial technology services in the world at 87%, compared to just 47% in the United States (Source 3). The main difference between WeChat and Alipay versus American mobile payment services like Venmo and Apple Pay is that they aren’t restricted to peer-to-peer transactions; they’re almost universally accepted by vendors. Customers scan a Quick Response (QR) code at a vendor that accepts mobile payments, and the money is trans-

ferred instantaneously. WeChat and Alipay also allow users to pay for larger expenses such as rent and utility bills. The adoption of mobile payment is so widespread that even beggars in urban cores like Shanghai have scannable QR codes (source 2). Many Chinese men and women no longer carry wallets or purses; they just carry their phone. A leading explanation for China’s widespread adoption of mobile payment services is due to China’s rapid economic growth, allowing the country to effectively bypass transitional stages of technology. For instance, China effectively circumvented debit and credit card technology and went straight from physical currency to mobile payment technology. This possibly wouldn’t have happened if American companies like Visa and MasterCard were able to access the Chinese market. Although many domestic firms in China were created to replace American tech giants that weren’t able to access the market, there is not much competition in the debit and credit card industry. More than 90% of the market is controlled by the state-owned bank card UnionPay (Source 8). China opened the door for American card companies to apply for licenses to operate in the country in 2017, but the applications are still under government review, and are unlikely to go through any time soon given the ongoing trade dispute between China and the United States (Source 8). The Chinese government continues to protect its domestic firms through protectionist policies that prevent foreign competitors from gaining market share within the country. Due to China’s status as a developing economy since the early 2000s from the World Trade Organization, they have been able to continue protecting domestic firms through high regulation of foreign competition (Source 9). As domestic firms flourished in an economy alienated from the large technology companies of the west, the assumption of the international community was that China’s trade barriers and government aid to domestic firms would erode as seen in other industrialized nations. However, China never refrained f r o m sup-

porting its domestic firms, prompting the rise of trade disputes such as the current trade war between the United States and China. The rise of mobile payment technology poses a threat to the government’s once-unilateral control over the economy. China’s government knows the risk this poses all too well. Just a few years ago, China had a booming peer-to-peer lending industry with over $1 trillion yuan in capital flows. Over time, excess debt accumulated and created a bubble that the government sought to pop, but their efforts to correct the industry led to the collapse of hundreds of lenders (Source 4). Mobile payment technology is superior to other forms of payment in terms of speed and convenience, which means that the speed of capital flows increase. The higher volume and speed of capital flows coupled with the government’s lack of control over these flows may lead to higher price volatility in the near future. Overall, China is a case study of the effects of society switching to mobile payment technology. It is a story of a history of authoritarian rule and protectionist policies, unprecedented economic growth, the adoption of new technologies, and the relationship between a government and its citizens. Given China’s position as a global leader in FinTech, they stand on the precipice of innovation in the industry, but their global role will be limited if they continue their protectionist regulation and trade policies.

Citations in this issue PO LI T ICS OF FOOTBA LL ALLOCAT ION

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J O HNNY ISAKSON

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CO NSOL IDATING HOS PITAL CARE Birkmeyer, John D., Andrea E. Siewers, Emily V.A. Finlayson, and Therese A. Stukel. 2002. “Hospital Volume and Surgical Mortality in the United States.” The New England Journal of Medicine. 346: 1128-1137. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa012337 Colla, Carrie H., Valerie A. Lewis, Emily Tierney, and David B. Muhlestein. 2016. “Hospitals Participating in ACOs Tend to Be Large and Urban, Allowing Access to Capital and Data.” Health Affairs 35(3): 431-439. Emanuel, Ezekiel J. “Are Hospitals Becoming Obselte?” The New York Times, 25 February 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/25/opinion/hospitals-becoming-obsolete.html Gee, Emily and Ethan Gurwitz. “Provide Consolidation Drives Up Healthcare Costs: Policy Recommendations to Curb Abuses of Market Power and Protect Patients.” Center for American Progress, 5 December 2018. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/ healthcare/reports/2018/12/05/461780/provider-consolidation-drives-health-care-costs/ Guerin-Calvert, Margaret and Jen A. Maki. “Hospital Realignment: Mergers Offer Significant Patient and Community Benefits.” Center for Healthcare Economics and Policy, 23 January 2014. https://www.fticonsulting.com/~/media/Files/us-files/insights/reports/hospitalrealignment-mergers-offer-significant-patient-and-community-benefits.pdf LaPointe, Jacqueline. “Healthcare Mergers, Consolidation Increase Patient Safety Risks.” RevCycleIntelligence, 10 April 2018. https://revcycleintelligence.com/news/healthcaremergers-consolidation-increase-patient-safety-risks LaPointe, Jacqueline. “255 Healthcare Merger and Acquisitions Deals Announced in Q2 2018.” RevCycleIntelligence, 1 August 2018. https://revcycleintelligence.com/news/255healthcare-merger-and-acquisition-deals-announced-in-q2-2018 Loudenback, Tanza. “The average costs of healthcare in 21 different countries.” Business Insider, 7 March 2019. https://www.businessinsider.com/cost-of-healthcare-countriesranked-2019-3 Melnick, Glenn. “Blame Emergency Rooms for the Out-of-Control Cost of Health Care.” The New York Times, 5 September 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/ emergency-rooms-cost-insurance.html Ramesh, Tarun and Emily Gee. “Rural Hospital Closures Reduce Access to Emergency Care.” Center for American Progress, 9 September 2018. https://www.americanprogress.org/ issues/healthcare/reports/2019/09/09/474001/rural-hospital-closures-reduce-accessemergency-care/ Weaver, Christopher, Anna Wilde Matthews, and Tom McGinty. “New Risks at Rural Hospitals: Financial incentives are leading small facilities to perform more surgeries.” The Wall Street Journal, December 25, 2015. https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-risks-at-ruralhospitals-1451088096 Tsai, Thomas C. and Ashsish K. Jha. 2014. “Hospital Consolidation, Competition, and Quality: Is Bigger Necessarily Better?” Journal of American Medical Association, 312(1):29–30.

WAR TAXES

“Creedence Clearwater Revival DIscography.” telus.net. Accessed November 12, 2019. http:// www3.telus.net/60smusic/ccr.html “The Vietnam War | The Bitter End.” The History Place. Accessed November 12, 2019. https:// www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index-1969.html Weil, Martin. “Martin Anderson, GOP presidential advisor, proponent of ending the draft, dies at 78.” Washington Post. January 6, 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ martin-anderson-gop-presidential-adviser-proponent-of-ending-the-draft-dies-at78/2015/01/06/91f1e49c-9557-11e4-8005-1924ede3e54a_story.html Feaver, Peter D., and Christopher Gelpi. “A Look at … Casualty Aversion.” Washington Post. November 7, 1999. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-11/07/061r110799-idx.html Kant, Immanuel. “Perpetual Peace: a Philosophical Sketch.” 1795. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/ acad/intrel/kant/kant1.htm Kreps, Sarah. “To Stop Endless War, Raise Taxes.” Vox. June 18, 2018. https://www.vox.com/ the-big-idea/2018/6/18/17474368/war-taxes-iraq-afghanistan-history-accountabilitydemocracy “U.S. Military Demographics.” America’s Promise Alliance. 2010. https://www.americaspromise. org/us-military-demographics “U.S. and World Population Clock.” United States Census Bureau. Accessed November 12, 2019. https://www.census.gov/popclock/ Schuyler, Michael. “A Short History of Government Taxing and Spending in the United States.” Tax Foundation. February 19, 2014. https://taxfoundation.org/short-history-governmenttaxing-and-spending-united-states/ Yingling, Paul L. “The Founders’ Wisdom.” Armed Forces Journal. February 1, 2010. http:// armedforcesjournal.com/the-founders-wisdom/

D E ATH O F TH E TH I R D PA RTY D O CTR I N E

Carpenter v. United States. No. 16-402, 573 U.S. ___. (2018). Katz v. United States. 389 U.S. 347. (1967). Kerr, Orin S. “Implementing Carpenter” (December 14, 2018). The Digital Fourth Amendment (Oxford University Press), Forthcoming; USC Law Legal Studies Paper No. 18-29. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3301257 Riley v. California. 573 U.S. 13-132. (2014). United States v. Jones. 565 U.S. 400. (2012).

CH I E F J U S TI CE RO B E RTS

Bergara, Mario, et al. “Modeling Supreme Court Strategic Decision Making: The Congressional Constraint.” Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol. 28, no. 2, 2003, pp. 247–280. JSTOR, www.jstor. org/stable/3598652 Epstein, Lee, and Jack Knight. The Choices Judges Make. CQ Press, 1998. Epstein, Lee, and Stefanie A. Lindquist. The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Judicial Behavior. Oxford University Press, 2017. Segal, Jeffrey A. Judicial Behavior. Edited by Robert E Goodin, Oxford University Press, 2011.

TH E DA R K A RTS 113th Congress. “Publications.” Publications | Intelligence Committee, www.intelligence.senate. gov/publications/report-select-committee-intelligence-covering-period-january-5-2011january-3-2013. Epstein, Ethan, et al. “How China Infiltrated U.S. Classrooms.” POLITICO Magazine, 17 Jan. 2018, www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/16/how-china-infiltrated-usclassrooms-216327. Kramer, Mark. “Oversight of Russia's Intelligence and Security Agencies: The Need for and Prospects of Democratic Control.” PonarsEuarasia - Policy Memos, 11 Aug. 2014, www. ponarseurasia.org/memo/oversight-russias-intelligence-and-security-agencies-needand-prospects-democratic-control. Luhn, Alec. “Ukrainian Military Intelligence Officer Killed by Car Bomb in Kiev.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 27 June 2017, www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/27/ ukraine-colonel-maksim-shapoval-killed-car-bomb-kiev. Mattis, Peter. “A Guide to Chinese Intelligence Operations.” War on the Rocks, 18 Aug. 2015, warontherocks.com/2015/08/a-guide-to-chinese-intelligence-operations/. Ng, Nicole, and Eugene Rumer. “The West Fears Russia's Hybrid Warfare. They're Missing the Bigger Picture.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 3 July 2019, carnegieendowment.org/2019/07/03/west-fears-russia-s-hybrid-warfare.-they-remissing-bigger-picture-pub-79412. Prothero, Mitch. “A Secret Russian Assassination Squad Has Proven 'They Can Get to Anyone' in Europe but There's Just One Problem - They're Really Sloppy about It.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 9 Oct. 2019, www.businessinsider.com/gru-unit-29155-proves-they-canget-to-anyone-but-theyre-really-sloppy-about-it-2019-10. Walker, Shaun. “Alleged Russian Spies Sentenced to Jail over Montenegro 'Coup Plot'.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 9 May 2019, www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ may/09/montenegro-convicts-pro-russia-politicians-of-coup-plot. Wong, Edward. “How China Uses LinkedIn to Recruit Spies Abroad.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 27 Aug. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/world/asia/china-linkedinspies.html.

PURDUE PHARMA

“A History of Asbestos and the Manville Trust Fund.” The Washington Post. WP Company, 20 November 1990. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1990/11/20/ahistory-of-asbestos-and-the-manville-trust-fund/fb60ed34-2a94-4570-96489e2efb8167f0/. Hoffman, Jan, and Mary Williams Walsh. “Purdue Pharma, Maker of OxyContin, Files for Bankruptcy.” The New York Times, 16 September 2019. https://www.nytimes. com/2019/09/15/health/purdue-pharma-bankruptcy-opioids-settlement.html. Hoffower, Hillary. “The 28 Richest American Families, Ranked.” Business Insider, 31 July 2019. https://www.businessinsider.com/richest-billionaire-families-america-2018-7#20-thesackler-family-9. Mann, Brian. “Sackler Family Transferred Money To Swiss Bank Accounts, New York AG Says.” National Public Radio, 14 September 2019. https://www.npr.org/2019/09/14/760794331/ sackler-family-transferred-money-to-swiss-bank-accounts-new-york-ag-says. Piper, Kelsey. “The Sackler Family Made Their Fortune in Opioids - and Museums Are Rejecting Their Donations.”Vox, 15 May 2019. https://www.vox.com/futureperfect/2019/3/26/18282383/sackler-opioids-purdue-museums-donation. Renae Merle, Lenny Bernstein. “Purdue Pharma's Bankruptcy Plan Includes Special Protection for the Sackler Family Fortune.” The Washington Post. 19 September 2019. https://www. washingtonpost.com/business/2019/09/18/purdue-pharmas-bankruptcy-plan-includesspecial-protection-sackler-family-fortune/. “Understanding the Epidemic | Drug Overdose | CDC Injury Center.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Accessed October 22, 2019. https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/epidemic/index.html. Walsh, Mary Williams. “Judge Orders Pause in Opioid Litigation Against Purdue Pharma and Sacklers.” The New York Times, 11 October 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/11/ health/purdue-bankruptcy-opioids.html. Williams, Ollie. “Individuals And Companies Are Now Being Accused Of 'Moral Laundering'.” Forbes, 7 August 2019. https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverwilliams1/2019/08/07/ individuals-and-companies-are-now-being-accused-of-moral-laundering/#33fbec2b97cc. image: freepik.com

I R A N O N TH E E D G E

Al Jazeera News. (2019, October 1). Iran open to starting dialogue with Saudi Arabia: Speaker. BBC News. (2016, January 2). Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr: Saudi Arabia executes top Shia cleric. Gibbons-Neff, T. (2019, September 26). New U.S. Aid to Saudi Arabia Will Include 200 Troops. Kadam, T. (2019, October 25). Confidence Building Measures Needed Before the U.S. and Saudi Arabia Start a Dialogue With Iran. Macias, A. (2019, September 20). Attack on Saudi Arabian oil facilities was 'sophisticated' and had a 'dramatic impact on global markets,' Pentagon says. Turak, N. (2019, September 18). Drone and missile debris proves Iranian role in Aramco attack, Saudi defense ministry claims. U.S. Energy and Information Administration. (2019, June 20). The Strait of Hormuz is the world's most important oil transit chokepoint. Ward, A. (2019, June 21). Why Iran is fighting back against Trump's maximum pressure campaign.

A LG E R I A

“No Let-Up in Sight as Algeria’s Protest Movement Enters 7th Month.” Al Jazeera. August 23, 2019. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/08/sight-algeria-protest-movement-enters-7thmonth-190823175345760.html “Algeria Economy: Where Has All the Money Gone?” Al Jazeera. March 23, 2019. https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/countingthecost/2019/03/algeria-economy-money-190323072227306.html “Prisoners of Conscience in Algeria Go on Hunger Strike.” Asharq Al-Aswat. October 8, 2019. https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/1936126/prisoners-conscience-algeria-go-hunger-strike “What Will End the Protests in Algeria?” Al Jazeera. September 15, 2019. https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2019/09/protests-algeria-190915084431565.html “Algiers Police Prevent Weekly Student Demo for First Time.” Al Arabiya. October 8, 2019. https://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/north-africa/2019/10/08/Algiers-police-preventweekly-student-demo-for-first-time-.html

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T H E FARC

TA M P O N TA X

Felter, C., & Renwick, D. (2017, January 11). Colombia's Civil Conflict. Retrieved from https://www. cfr.org/backgrounder/colombias-civil-conflict. 1.3 the Global Cocaine Market. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.unodc.org/documents/wdr/ WDR_2010/1.3_The_globa_cocaine_market.pdf. Colombia coca production: US 'deeply concerned' by rise. (2019, January 3). Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-46743902. Profiles: Colombia's armed groups. (2013, August 29). Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/ news/world-latin-america-11400950. Who are the Farc? (2016, November 24). Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/worldlatin-america-36605769. MMP: Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). (n.d.). Retrieved from https://cisac.fsi. stanford.edu/mappingmilitants/profiles/revolutionary-armed-forces-colombia-farc#text_ block_17686. Written by Escrito por Juan Diego Posada -, por, W. by E., Posada, J. D., & Dalby, C. (2018, December 20). FARC Dissidents Growing Faster Than Colombia Can Count. Retrieved from https://www.insightcrime.org/news/brief/farc-dissidents-growing-faster-colombia-cancount/. Redacción. (2019, August 29). FARC: Iván Márquez, exjefe del equipo negociador de las FARC, anuncia que retoma la lucha armada en Colombia - BBC News Mundo. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-49509911. Guerrillas' return to arms in Colombia complicates U.S. policy in Latin America. (2019, September 5). Retrieved from https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-09-04/ guerrillas-return-to-arms-in-colombia-complicates-u-s-policy-in-latin-america. Redacción. (2019, August 29). El partido FARC se desmarca del regreso de Iván Márquez a la lucha armada en Colombia - BBC News Mundo. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/ mundo/noticias-america-latina-49509913. Almonacid, R. (2019, September 7). Mainstream FARC rebels reject call to arms. Retrieved from https://news.yahoo.com/mainstream-farc-rebels-reject-call-arms-020846484.html. Ex-FARC commanders launch political movement in a blow to Colombia's peace process. (2019, September 5). Retrieved from https://www.france24.com/en/20190905-colombias-farcrebels-launch-clandestine-political-movement. Ghitis, F. (2019, September 5). The 'New Chapter' for Colombia's FARC Guerrillas Is Not Quite What It Seems. Retrieved from https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/28165/thenew-chapter-for-colombia-s-farc-guerrillas-is-not-quite-what-it-seems. Balling, C. (2019, September 4). The FARC is back: Washington should beware. Retrieved from https://thehill.com/opinion/international/459924-the-farc-is-back-washington-shouldbeware. Amid Colombia rebel rearmament, U.S. sees support from Maduro: official. (2019, August 31). Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-usa/amidcolombia-rebel-rearmament-u-s-sees-support-from-maduro-official-idUSKCN1VL0FZ. InSight Crime. (2019, June 27). FARC in Venezuela. Retrieved from https://www.insightcrime.org/ venezuela-organized-crime-news/farc-in-venezuela/. Broner, T. & Pappier, J. (2019, August 28). The War at the Colombia-Venezuela Border. Retrieved from https://www.americasquarterly.org/content/war-colombia-venezuela-border. Hu, C. (2019, August 8). Child soldiers recruited from Venezuelan refugees: Report. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/08/americas/hfr-hrw-report-catacumbo-intl/index. html. Cobb, J. S. (2019, September 22). Colombia's Duque seeks international sanctions on Venezuela to protect region. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-colombia-politics/ colombias-duque-seeks-international-sanctions-on-venezuela-to-protect-regionidUSKBN1W700B. Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.oas.org/ juridico/english/treaties/b-29.html. U.S. Relations With Venezuela - United States Department of State. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-venezuela/. Image from: https://www.voanews.com/americas/colombian-farc-leader-ivan-marquezdeclines-take-senate-seat Image from https://www.voanews.com/americas/us-slaps-sanctions-five-venezuelanofficials#&gid=1&pid=1

Cotropia, Christopher A. and Kyle Rozema. 2018. “Who Benefits from Repealing Tampon Taxes: Empirical Evidence from New Jersey.” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 15(3): 620-647. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2999970 Edenfield, Christy. “Georgia HB 8: The Politics of Periods.” Connect Savannah, 13 February 2019. https://www.connectsavannah.com/savannah/georgia-hb-8-the-politics-of-periods/ Content?oid=11700987 Leins, Casey. “Georgia Lawmakers Fight to Remove State’s ‘Tampon’ Tax.” U.S. News and World Report, 20 February 2019. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/ articles/2019-02-20/georgia-lawmakers-fight-to-remove-states-tampon-tax Gallardo, Constanza and Stacey Vanek Smith. “‘Tampon Tax’ Repeal Benefits Women but Comes at a Cost to States.” National Public Radio, 15 March 2019. https://www.npr. org/2019/03/15/703687071/tampon-tax-repeal-benefits-women-but-comes-at-a-costto-states Georgia Legislature. House. Sales and use tax; certain menstrual products; create exemptions. HB 8. 155th Georgia General Assembly, 1st sess. Introduced in House January 15, 2019. http://www.legis.ga.gov/Legislation/en-US/display/20192020/HB/8 North, Anna. “Nevada just got rid of its “tampon tax:” Advocates argue that the sales tax on tampons and pads was unfair to women.” Vox, 7 November 2018. https://www.vox. com/2018/11/7/18056648/nevada-question-2-tampon-tax-results Recht, Hannah. “What Life Would Look Like Without the Tampon Tax.” Bloomberg, 20 October 2018. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tampon-cost/ “Women in State Legislatures for 2019.” National Conference of State Legislatures, 25 July 2019. http://www.ncsl.org/legislators-staff/legislators/womens-legislative-network/women-instate-legislatures-for-2019.aspx Zhou, Li. “12 charts that explain the record-breaking year women have had in politics: It’s the year of the women in more ways than one.” Vox, 6 November 2018. https://www.vox. com/2018/11/6/18019234/women-record-breaking-midterms

SEX SEL ECTION AND F E M ALE INFAN T IC IDE IN IN D I A

“Board of Governors start process to enhance name, image, and likeness opportunities.” NCAA, 29 October 2018. http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/news/boardgovernors-starts-process-enhance-name-image-and-likeness-opportunities Binder, Alan. “N.C.A.A. Athletes Could Be Paid Under New California Law.” The New York Times, 30 September 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/30/sports/college-athletes-paidcalifornia.html Doan, Laura. “Grade Inflation at UT? Professors discuss the cause of B+ as the new average.” The Daily Texan, 27 March 2019. https://www.dailytexanonline.com/2019/03/27/gradeinflation-at-ut-professors-discuss-the-cause-of-b-as-the-new-average Graham, Andrew and Sam Ogozalek. “Some SU athletes said they were forced into majors ‘they did not want,’ following national trend.” The Daily Orange, 14 February 2018. http:// dailyorange.com/2018/02/su-athletes-said-forced-majors-not-want-following-nationaltrend/ Gutting, Gary. “The Myth of the ‘Student Athlete’.” The New York Times, 15 March 2012. https:// opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/15/the-myth-of-the-student-athlete/?mtrref=und efined&gwh=55D34A5DDB814A6582BACED7915DAA0E&gwt=pay&assetType=PAYWALL Isidore, Chris. “Playing college sports: A long tough job.” CNN Business, 31 March 2014. https:// money.cnn.com/2014/03/31/news/companies/college-athletes-jobs/index.html Rovell, Darren. “NCAA tops $1 billion in revenue during 2016-2017 school year.” ESPN, 7 March 2018. https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/22678988/ncaa-tops-1-billionrevenue-first. Texas Football. Twitter Post. June 2, 2019, 6:56 AM. https://twitter.com/texasfootball/ status/1135183324505415680?lang=en Zocalo Public Square. “Why Student Athletes Continue to Fail.” Time Magazine, 20 April 2015. https://time.com/3827196/why-student-athletes-fail/

Bongaarts, J. and Guilmoto, C. Z. 2015. “How Many More Missing Women? Excess Female Mortality and Prenatal Sex Selection,” 1970–2050. Population and Development Review, 41: 241-269. doi:10.1111/j.1728-4457.2015.00046.x Brahme, Dhanashri, and Sanjay Kumar. December 2015. “Financial Incentives for Girls - What Works?” United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA, india.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pubpdf/UNFPA_PolicyBrief_07-04-20166pm.pdf. Kalantry, Sital. “How to Fix India's Sex-Selection Problem.” The New York Times, 27 July 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/opinion/how-to-fix-indias-sex-selection-problem.html. Pande, Rohini, and Anju Malhotra. 2006. “Son Preference and Daughter Neglect in India.” United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA, www.unfpa.org/resources/son-preference-anddaughter-neglect-india. “Sex Ratio.” 2011. Census of India: Sex Ratio, Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India. censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/India_at_glance/fsex.aspx. Trent, Katherine, et al. 2015. “The Consequences of India's Male Surplus for Women's Partnering and Sexual Experiences.” Journal of Family Issues, 2013, journals.sagepub.com/doi/ pdf/10.1177/0192513X13499760.

SELF D ESTRUCT IN 3, 2 , 1 Carmagnani, Marcello A., and Paul W. Drake. “Chile in the 21st Century.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. https://www.britannica.com/place/Chile/Chilein-the-21st-century. Freixas, Meritxell. “A 3 años de la muerte de Macarena Valdés: Nuevas pruebas podrían dar un vuelco a caso.” El Desconcierto, 21 August 2019. https://www.eldesconcierto. cl/2019/08/21/a-3-anos-de-la-muerte-de-macarena-valdes-nuevas-pruebas-podriandar-un-vuelco-al-caso/ Larsson, Naomi. “Chile protests: More than one million bring Santiago to a halt.” Al Jazeera, 26 October 2019. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/10/chile-protests-millionbring-santiago-halt-191025223542333.html?utm_source=website&utm_medium=article_ page&utm_campaign=read_more_links Long, Gideon. “Chile still split over Gen Augusto Pinochet legacy.” British Broadcasting Corporation, 9 September 2013. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latinamerica-24014501 Pach Jr., Chester J. 1982. “The Containment of U.S. Military Aid to Latin America, 1944-49.” Diplomatic History 6(3): 225-243. “‘That Chilean Guy May Have Some Problems’: The Downfall of Salvador Allende, JanuarySeptember 1973.” Office of the Historian, US Department of State. https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v21/ch5?start=31

BEST VOTING SYSTEMS YOU ' V E N E V E R H E ARD OF Darby, Luke. “Ranked Choice Voting for Presidential Elections Passes in Maine.” GQ, 19 June 2019. https://www.gq.com/story/ranked-choice-voting-maine Farrell, David M. Electoral Systems: A Comparative Introduction. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011. Hanna, John. “Kansas Democrats Are Planning Ranked-Choice Voting for Presidential Primary.” Public Broadcasting Service, 11 June 2019. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/ kansas-democrats-are-planning-ranked-choice-voting-for-presidential-primary Kershner, Isabel. “After Coalition Talks Crumble, Israel on Course for Another Election.” The New York Times, 29 May 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/29/world/middleeast/ israel-election-benjamin-netanyahu.html?action=click&module=inline&pgtype=Homepage Seelye, Katharine Q. “Maine Adopts Ranked-Choice Voting. What Is It, and How Will It Work.” The New York Times, 3 December 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/03/us/maineranked-choice-voting.html

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CAS H L E S S ECO N O M Y Bacchus, James, Simon Lester, and Huan Zhu. “Disciplining China’s Trade Practices at the WTO: How WTO Complaints Can Help China Make China More Market-Oriented.” Cato Institute, 15 November 2018. https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/disciplining-chinastrade-practices-wto-how-wto-complaints-can-help CBS This Morning. “The backlash against going cashless.” YouTube video, Posted [October 2019]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13H7c0QAU_4 Cho, Yusho. “China’s peer-to-peer lenders fight for survival.” Nikkei Asian Review, 18 February 2019. https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Business-trends/China-s-peer-to-peer-lendersfight-for-survival2 “Global Fintech Adoption Index 2019.” EY, 2019. https://assets.ey.com/content/dam/ey-sites/ ey-com/en_gl/topics/banking-and-capital-markets/ey-global-fintech-adoption-index.pdf Horowitz, Julia. “Why American credit card companies can’t break into China.” CNN Money, 3 August 2018. https://money.cnn.com/2018/08/03/news/companies/mastercard-visaamex-china/index.html Lewis, Ashley. “This Country Has the Most Security Cameras (Hint: It’s Not the U.S.).” Reader’s Digest, https://www.rd.com/culture/china-security-cameras/ “Payment methods in China: How China became a mobile-first nation.” Daxue Consulting. 10 May 2019. https://daxueconsulting.com/payment-methods-in-china/ Russan, Mary-Ann. “Beggars in China now accepting donations via mobile payments and QR codes.” International Business Times, 24 April 2017. https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/beggarschina-now-accepting-donations-via-mobile-payments-qr-codes-1618396 “The World Bank in China.” The World Bank. https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/china/ overview

GEORGIA POLITICAL REVIEW | 47

Georgia Political Review: Fall 2019

Articles inside

THE CASHLESS ECONOMY

REPEALING THE TAMPON TAX

THE NCAA’S FUMBLE ON STUDENT-ATHLETE EDUCATION

DISAPPEARING GIRLS

VIVA LA REVOLUCIÓN

THREATS TO REGIONAL SECURITY IN LATIN AMERICA

THE DARK ARTS

MORAL LAUNDERING

CAPITALISM AND THE CLIMATE

THE BATTLE FOR ALGIERS

IRAN ON THE EDGE