Center for Study of Responsive Law

Ralph Nader: Welcome and Introduction

How to counter impact of corporate control of the electoral process

• Bob Edgar – President, Common Cause
• Rob Richie – Executive Director, Fair Vote
  (143k pdf of presentation)
• Lou Dubose – Editor, The Washington Spectator
• Harvey Wasserman – Anti-Nuclear Activist
  (more information)
• Theresa Amato – Executive Director, Citizen Works

Holding corporations accountable for their crimes

• Russell Mokhiber – Editor, Corporate Crime Reporter
• Bill Black – Professor, University of Missouri School of Law – KC
• Patrick Burns – Director of Communications, Taxpayers Against Fraud
  (74k pdf)
• Kent Greenfield – Professor, Boston College Law School
  (25k pdf summary of remarks)
• Robert Weissman – President, Public Citizen
• Marco Simons – EarthRights

Protecting the “Commons” from the insatiable advocates of privatization

• Phineas Baxandall – Federal Tax and Budget Policy Analyst for US PIRG
  (Privatization and the Public Interest and Private Roads, Public Costs)
• David Morris – Vice President, Institute for Local Self-Reliance
• Wenonah Hauter – Executive Director, Food & Water Watch
• Jamie Love – Director, Knowledge Ecology International
• Margaret Flowers – Co-chair of MD Physicians for a National Health Program

Occupy the Future – Actions

• Christopher Hedges – TruthDig columnist
• Kevin Zeese – Organizer of the National Occupation of Washington, DC
• Dean Baker – Co-Director, Center for Economic and Policy Research
• Mary Bottari – Center for Media and Democracy
• Carl Mayer – Mayer Law Group

Creating new economic models and launching initiatives

• Gar Alperovitz – Professor of Political Economy, UMD
• Greg LeRoy – Executive Director, Good Jobs First
• Dimitra Doukas – Worked Over: The Corporate Sabotage of an American Community
  (71k pdf overview)
• Gayle McLaughlin – Mayor, Richmond CA
• Alexis Baden-Mayer – Political Director, Organic Consumers Association
  (more information)

Mobilizing for Sustained Action

• Ralph Nader – Consumer advocate
• Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman – Executive Director and Founder, SumOfUs
• Tom O’Brien – United Steelworkers
  (1.1MB pdf of presentation)
• Michael Gecan – Industrial Areas Foundation
• David Freeman – former head of TVA, SMUD and PASNY

Please join us for the “Control the Corporation” Conference, sponsored by Ralph Nader and the Center for Study of Responsive Law.

WHO: See the conference agenda.

WHERE: The Carnegie Institute of Washington,1530 P Street, NW Washington, DC 20005

WHEN: April 2, 2012, 8am – 5pm.

WHY: It is time to reclaim our democracy and our political economy.

The Agenda:

There is a broad consensus in our country that “corporations have too much power.”

Click here to purchase a copy of Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism

• Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism: Build It Together to Win
• By Ralph Nader ISBN: 978-­1-56751-406­‐3, paper,
• $14.95, 200 pages

Are you rightfully steamed? If so, please check at which of four levels of serious mutual commitment, you will give or raise $100 (or more if you wish) a year and devote 100 (or more if you wish) volunteer hours a year. Invite your own circle of friends, neighbors and co-workers to join you in pledging. Call them your “little republics” to start the drive for national recovery and transformation.

Yes, I pledge to contribute at least $100 and 100 volunteer hours for coordinated,fundamental corporate reforms and self-initiatory powers for the people to protect themselves, when I am directly informed to my satisfaction that:

Or you can download a copy of the Steamed Pledge Form and send a completed copy to:
Steamed
Center for Study of Responsive Law
P.O. Box 19367
Washington, DC 20036

For more information contact us at: steamed (at) csrl.org

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

(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.

U.S. Government Reactions to 9/11

Event date: Monday, September 12, 2011 (This event is free and open to the public.)

Time: 12:30- 2:00 pm

Place: Busboys & Poets, 2021 14th St NW; (14th and V St NW), Washington, D.C.

Ralph Nader and Busboys & Poets will host a thought-provoking roundtable discussion on Monday, September 12, 2011 looking at the tenth anniversary of 9/11 in a forthright way that promotes forward thinking.

Roundtable participants will include:

Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell and adjunct professor of government at William & Mary University;

Mike German, policy counsel on National Security, Immigration and Privacy at the ACLU and former FBI agent;

Bruce Fein, adjunct scholar with the American Enterprise Institute and former executive editor of World Intelligence Review; and

Ralph Nader, consumer advocate and people’s lawyer.

Nader recently suggested in a USA TODAY article that many Americans might want to pause to recognize – or unlearn – those reactions and overreactions to 9/11 that have gravely harmed our country and other regions abroad. He says we should do this so we don’t allow such serial blowbacks in the future.

Please join us for this stimulating presentation!
Busboys & Poets 2021 14th St NW, Washington, DC 20009

TIME Magazine just published its list of the “All-TIME 100 Best Nonfiction Books”

This is what TIME Magazine said: “Politics and war, science and sports, memoir and biography — there’s a great big world of nonfiction books out there just waiting to be read. We picked the 100 best and most influential written in English since 1923, the beginning of TIME … magazine”

Ralph Nader’s book Unsafe at Any Speed is number 21 on the list!

Unsafe at Any Speed was published in 1965. It is Ralph’s first book. And it was the book that launched the modern consumer movement.

Click here to purchase the beautiful hardcover commemorative edition of Unsafe at Any Speed – the American classic that saved hundreds of thousands of lives — autographed by Ralph for $100. You will get a wonderful book, and your $100 dollars will help the Center for Study of Responsive Law, the organization that Ralph founded to keep fighting to make corporations and our government more accountable.

On May 4th 2011, Ralph Nader appeared at the New York Public Library with two billionaires — Ted Turner and Peter Lewis.

Together they discussed philanthropy and Nader’s book — Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!

Tomorrow, Saturday July 16, 2011 at 8 am and again at 8 pm, the 90 minute event will be shown on C-Span 2.

It will also show Monday July 18 at 4 am and Saturday July 30 at 5:30 pm.

In the book, Nader asks the question:

“What if several of America’s wealthiest individuals decided it was time to work for the collective good — moving from charity to justice?”

Hope you get a chance to watch this event on your television or online at cspan.org

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.

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.”

Join Morgan Spurlock and Ralph Nader on Thursday, March 24th at 7:00pm
E Street Cinema
555 11th Street NW Washington, DC 20004
(entrance on E Street between 10th and 11th Street)

Special screening of the new film: POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold from acclaimed filmmaker Morgan Spurlock.

Admission: $20 to benefit the Center for Study of Responsive Law

Advance tickets are no longer available.
Tickets will be available at the door.
E Street Cinema
555 11th Street NW Washington, DC 20004
(entrance on E Street between 10th and 11th Street)
(202) 452-7672