Debating Taboos

Bush and Obama: War Crimes or Lawful Wars?

admin — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 19:07:03 +0000

For Immediate Release: Nov. 3, 2011

Who: Ralph Nader; Center for Study of Responsive Law
When: Friday, November 18, 2011 at 12:30 p.m.
What: Bush/Obama: War Crimes or Lawful Wars?
Where: 1530 P St NW, Washington, DC – Carnegie Institution building
Contact: Katherine Raymond, 202-387-8030, kraymond@csrl.org

(Washington, D.C.) – On Friday, November 18, Ralph Nader and the Center for Study of Responsive Law will host a public debate on the subject: Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama’s actions: war crimes or lawful wars?

Debaters arguing for the proposition that Bush and Obama engaged in war crimes

Bruce Fein is an attorney and constitutional scholar, and has consulted foreign nations on matters ranging from constitutional revision to telecommunications and cable regulation, and human rights. He appears regularly on national and international television, cable, and radio programs as an expert in foreign affairs, terrorism, national security, and has testified over 200 times before Congressional committees. .

Lt. Colonel Tony Shaffer is a highly experienced U.S. Army intelligence officer, and is nationally known as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) for intelligence collection and policy, terrorism, data mining, situational awareness and adaptive/disruptive technologies. He is also a senior advisor to multiple organizations on terrorism and counterinsurgency issues and a member of the US Nuclear Strategy Forum.

Debaters arguing against the proposition that Bush and Obama engaged in war crimes

David B. Rivkin is a member of Baker & Hostetler Law Firm’s litigation, international and environmental groups and co-chairs the firm’s appellate and major motions team. He served in the White House Counsel’s office and the Department of Justice under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Prior to embarking on a legal career, Mr. Rivkin worked as a defense and foreign policy analyst, focusing on Soviet affairs, arms control, naval strategy and NATO-related issues, and served as a defense consultant to numerous government agencies and Washington think tanks.

Lee Casey a partner at Baker & Hostetler, focuses on federal environmental, constitutional and international law and Alien Tort Statute issues. He served in the Department of Justice under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He also advises clients on compliance issues under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), U.S. trade sanctions regimes, and federal ethics requirements. Mr. Casey’s practice includes federal, district and appellate court litigation, as well as matters before federal agencies. From 2004 through 2007 he served as a member of the United Nations Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.

Moderators
Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, is a nationally recognized legal scholar who has written extensively in areas ranging from constitutional law to legal theory to tort law. He has served as a consultant on homeland security and constitutional issues. He also is a nationally recognized legal commentator.

Stuart S. Taylor is a lawyer, author and freelance journalist focusing on legal and policy issues, a “National Journal” contributing editor, and a Brookings Institution nonresident fellow. He has written many columns on this issue and has co-authored a piece titled “Looking Forward, Not Backward: Refining American Interrogation Law” through the Brookings Institution.

The event is free and open to the public. Please join us and invite your colleagues and friends to attend. The Debating Taboos series brings public attention and analyses to “taboo” topics. This is the third debate in the series.

A complimentary light lunch will follow the event.

Transactions Tax Debate on C-SPAN

Editor — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 15:04:18 +0000

For those of you anxiously waiting the airing of the two debates on taboo topics, here is C-SPAN’s plan for airing them:

Monday 8/8 at 6pm on C-SPAN – Discussion of mandatory voting (from June 27)
Tuesday 8/9 at 6pm on C-SPAN – Discussion of securities transaction tax (From July 8 )

Check here to see more information on C-SPAN.org for the debate. And, in case you missed the first one, check out that debate here.

Debating Taboos – Securities Transaction Tax – bring it back or leave it out?

Editor — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 15:13:02 +0000

Debating Taboos:

Securities Transaction Tax: Bring it back or leave it out?

Friday, July 8, 2011, 11:30 a.m.1530 P St, NW, Washington, DC 20005

A financial transaction tax is a small tax placed on a specific type (or types) of financial transactions. The way it is often discussed is a small tax on each trade of stocks, derivatives, currency, and other financial instruments.

Moderator, Dean Baker – Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He’s worked as a consultant for the World Bank, the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress.

Moderator, Gus Sauter – George U. “Gus” Sauter is the chief investment officer of Vanguard Group. Sauter has been a trust investment officer with First Bancorp of Ohio (formerly The First National Bank of Ohio).

Robert Pollin, arguing for the tax – Professor at UMass (Amherst), Robert Pollin’s research centers on macroeconomics, conditions for low-wage workers in the U.S. and globally, the analysis of financial markets, and the economics of building a clean-energy economy in the U.S. Pollin’s main research center is the Political Economy Research Institute.

Jim Angel, arguing against the tax - Professor James “Jim” Angel at Georgetown University has worked at BARRA (now part of Morgan Stanley) where he developed equity risk models. He has also been chairman of the Nasdaq Economic Advisory Board and a member of the OTC Bulletin Board Advisory Committee. He currently serves on the Boards of Directors of the DirectEdge stock exchanges.

Ralph Nader’s intro to Mandatory Voting Debate

Editor — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 19:18:22 +0000

Good Day! My name is Ralph Nader. Today marks the first debate—Mandatory Voting: Patriotic or Undemocratic—in a forthcoming series of debates, sponsored by the Center for the Study of Responsive Law, on subjects rendered taboo in political, electoral and main media arenas of our country. The second debate will be on July 8, 2011 with the topic being a Wall Street securities transaction tax.

Information is the currency of democracy. Subjects that are treated as taboo contradict the open debate and discussion necessary to motivate the citizenry toward higher expectations for their society and themselves. That is what a deliberative, democratic society is about.

Anthropologists have documented taboos in all cultures. Whenever taboos’ on significant subjects are pierced the matter closed out by the taboo is opened up for examination and the possibility of change.

Very often in our society, taboos become entrenched controlling processes favoring the status quo and its related powers-that-be. The breaking of taboos in public arenas, for example, slavery’s abolition, women’s right to vote, and the regulation of misbehaving businesses allowing farmers and workers better livelihoods did lead to debate, attentiveness and change in the 19th century.

Similarly, in our time, taboos arising out of advertising and corporate political pressures regarding the dangers of tobacco use and stagnant motor vehicle safety design were broken in the nineteen sixties. Reforms followed that saved lives. Breaking taboos on politically challenging Jim Crow laws and discrimination against gays and lesbians has led to real advances in human rights.

But, in many areas, taboos remain secure in their service to varieties of concentrated power and wealth that cannot tolerate sunlight. Nearly every candidate for public office knows the taboo subjects which are not to publically asserted or even suggested for discussion. Off the table! Self-censorship is part of a politician’s body armor, especially inside a political party’s unforgiving hierarchy. One example—alternatives to the nation’s hard drug policies are off limits by the two major party platforms and their campaigning agendas.

Legislatures are rife with subjects the vast majority of lawmakers prefer to ignore. Until very recently, the two major parties for years took the vast military budget and many on-going, Soviet-era weapons systems as given and non-debatable. As is the GAO’s annual finding that it is unable to audit the Pentagon budget as a whole because its records are unauditable. Imagine the continuing waste of this taboo and its consequential societal harms.

In its turn the media often dittoheads the censorious behavior of the politicians by not asking the inconvenient questions. Note here the Sunday television network interview shows and their adroit choice of subjects, guests and questions and, more significant, the questions not asked.

For the first time before a national television audience (due to the presence of C-SPAN) the subject of mandatory voting is to be addressed in its many dimensions and consequences. We want a flexible debate format that encourages multiple back and forth responses on any single assertion, questions by the debaters to one another and questions from the audience submitted on cards. This will be a ninety minute event.

Now for the debaters! In support of mandatory voting is Norman Ornstein, a long-time scholar on Congressional and electoral subjects. His books and articles have led him to be widely quoted by media for his insights. His recent book The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track, co-authored with Thomas E. Mann, reflects his concern about the state of electoral politics. He writes a weekly column for Roll Call and is an election analyst for CBS News. He is a Resident Scholar with the American Enterprise Institute.

In opposition to mandatory voting is Fred Smith, who studied theoretical mathematics at Harvard’s graduate department until he realized that defending markets was his calling. He is the founder and president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market public policy group and international nongovernmental organization in Washington, D.C. Fred Smith also writes and lectures abundantly.

Knowledgeable moderators help make a debate move more precisely and substantively. Mark Green is such a moderator. He performs that function weekly by moderating a national radio program featuring Arianna Huffington and Mary Matalin. At Harvard Law School he edited the Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. As a public interest lawyer, an elected Public Advocate for New York City, author of 22 books, including the bestseller Who Runs Congress? (1972) and the more recent, jolting Losing Our Democracy (2006), Mark Green has been a frequent TV/radio commentator and op-ed contributor to leading newspapers.

It is with keen anticipation that I turn the proceedings over to Mark Green to start this first in a series of national debates on taboo topics.

Mandatory Voting: Patriotic or Undemocratic?

admin — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 17:40:20 +0000

Who: Ralph Nader; Center for Study of Responsive Law

When: June 27, 2011 at 11:30 a.m.

What: Mandatory voting debate

Where: 1530 P St NW, Washington DC 20005 – Carnegie Institution of Science

(Washington, D.C.) – On Monday, June 27, Ralph Nader and the Center for Study of Responsive Law will host a public debate on the pros and cons of mandatory voting.

Norman Ornstein will be arguing for mandatory voting. Norman Ornstein is a long-time scholar of Congress and politics. He writes a weekly column for Roll Call and is an election analyst for CBS News. He serves as co-director of the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project and participates in AEI’s Election Watch series.

Fred Smith will be arguing against mandatory voting. Smith is the founder and president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market public policy group and international NGO in Washington, DC. He addresses complex policy issues ranging from the environment to corporate governance and is a frequent guest on national TV and radio programs, as well as a prolific writer.

Mark Green will be the moderator. Green has been a public interest lawyer, an elected public official, author, and TV/radio commentator. An honors graduate of both Cornell University and Harvard Law School, he is the author or editor of 22 books, including “Losing our Democracy.”

The event is open to the public.

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