The Advocates on WJUP

Climate Change: Publi Policy Failures-Prof .Howard Latin

Wednesday, October 3, 2012, at 12:00 am, I am hosting my show, The Advocates on WVOX- 1460 AM, my guest is Rutgers Professor Howard Latin, the author of Climate Change Failure: Why conventional mitigation approaches cannot succeed!  Professor Latin will discuss why our current policies regarding climate are not working.

Howard A. Latin is a Distinguished Professor of Law and Justice John J. Francis Scholar at Rutgers University School of Law in Newark, New Jersey. He joined the Rutgers faculty in 1976 after earning a B.A. from Brandeis and a J.D. from the Law School of the University of California at Berkeley, where he was the lead articles editor of the California Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif.

In his 37 years as a law professor, he has published many highly-regarded articles on environmental law, toxic substances, torts, and products liability. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Australia during 1992 and in South Africa during 1997, and he has traveled to more than 40 countries in the past three decades while conducting research on biodiversity conservation and climate change issues.  In addition to the Fulbright visits, Professor Latin has been a visiting professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and the UCLA School of Law; a visiting scholar at the Rockefeller Bellagio Study Center in Lake Como, Italy, the University of California Law School at Berkeley, and the Richardson School of Law of the University of Hawaii in Honolulu; and he was the Distinguished Environmental Law Visiting Scholar at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon.  Professor Latin is an elected member of the American Law Institute, and has served as a consultant on environmental law and product safety to several government agencies and public advocacy groups.

He has recently completed a book, Climate Change Policy Failures: Why Conventional Mitigation Approaches Cannot Succeed, that explains why current national and international mitigation programs would achieve too little greenhouse gas reductions over too long a period of time, and consequently would not be able to stabilize or curtail steadily increasing climate change risks. Professor Latin has also completed a long book chapter on climate change problems, "Framing Global Climate Change", in Climate Change: A Reader, William H. Rodgers, Jr., et al., eds. And he is now working on an article about India and its high probability of climate change disasters, while the nation must choose among alternative precautionary climate policies.

Professor Latin’s favorite recreational pastime is scuba diving with sharks and marine mammals, preferably hundreds at a time. He has been fortunate to combine his recreational interest in scuba diving with his professional interest in marine conservation issues around the world.

The War Against the New Deal- 80 Years of revisionism-Nick taylor

Wednesday, March 30, 2011, at 12:00 Noon, I am hosting my show, The Advocates on WVOX- 1460 AM , my guest Mr. Nick Taylor is the author of “American –Made, The Enduring Legacy of the WPA, When FDR put the Nation to Work.” Mr. Taylor appeared on The Advocates on July, 16, 2008, and December 17, 2008.

Mr. Taylor wrote an Op-Ed contribution that was published in the NY Times, “FDR Knew How to Spend Carefully,” Nick Taylor has written ten books of non-fiction, both solely and in collaboration, on a wide variety of subjects.  His history of the Works Progress Administration, American-Made - The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to Work, was published in 2008 to wide acclaim.

Taylor’s other subjects include tournament bass fishing, the Mafia, and life in a small church. His memoir, A Necessary End recounts a baby boomer’s growing concern and care for his parents in their final years.  His story of an intrepid Israeli’s journey into the German neo-Nazi underground, In Hitler’s Shadow, written with Yaron Svoray, was adapted as the HBO feature movie, The Infiltrator, starring Oliver Platt.  His account of a Mafia family in the government’s Witness Protection Program, Sins of the Father, is currently under a motion picture option.  Laser, published in 2009, tells the story of the laser’s true inventor and his thirty-year fight to win the patents that would make him rich.  And he worked with astronaut and Senator John Glenn on the bestselling, John Glenn: A Memoir.

His pro bono work includes four years as president of the Authors Guild, the oldest and largest organization of published writers in the United States, which advocates for authors’ rights.  He is a native of western North Carolina who today lives in Greenwich Village with his wife Barbara Nevins Taylor, who is an investigative reporter for Fox TV’s New York station Fox 5 and also teaches broadcast news writing at Brooklyn College.  

Nature's Call, How the CCC Changed America- Neil Maher

Wednesday, July 7, 2010, at 12:00 Noon, I am hosting my show, The Advocates on WVOX- 1460 AM, my guest is Neil M. Maher.                                                                     

Neil M. Maher is an associate professor in the Federated History Department at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University at Newark, where he teaches environmental history and political history.  He has published articles in academic journals including the Western Historical Quarterly, Environmental History, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, and edited a collection of essays by historians, scientists, and policy analysts titled New Jersey’s Environments: Past, Present, and Future (Rutgers University Press, 2006). He has recently published Nature’s New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement (Oxford University Press, 2008), which won the Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Book Award for the best monograph in conservation history.  He is currently researching and writing a book on the environmental history of the space race during the long 1960s.

Who Owns America, and the 47%- Jeff Madrick

On Wednesday, October 10, 2012 at 12:00 Noon, I will be hosting my show The Advocates on WVOX- 1460 AM, my guest is journalist and author Jeff Madrick, and we are going to discuss “Who owns America: and the forty-seven percent.”                             

Jeff Madrick is director of the Rediscovering Government Initiative at the Roosevelt Institute, and economics columnist for Harper's Magazine.  He ia also editor of Challenge Magazine, and a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, as well as a former economics columnist for The New York Times. He is visiting professor of humanities at The Cooper Union, and senior fellow at the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis, The New School.  His former book, The Case for Big Government (Princeton), was named one of two 2009 PEN Galbraith Non-Fiction Award Finalists.  His latest book is Age of Greed, The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970-Present,   published by Alfred A. Knopf. 

He is also the author of Taking America (Bantam, 1987), and The End of Affluence (Random House, 1995), both of which were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Taking America was chosen by Business Week as one of the ten best books of the year. His book, Why Economies Grow (Basic Books/Century Foundation, 2002), emphasized the need for active public investment and a broader understanding of the causes of growth than was popular in academia at the time.  He has written for many other publications over the years, including The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Institutional Investor, The Nation, American Prospect, The Boston Globe, Newsday, and the business, op-ed, and the Sunday magazine sections of The New York Times.  He is a regular blogger for The Huffington Post and The Daily Beast.

Madrick gives many speeches and makes frequent public appearances. He has appeared on Charlie Rose, The Lehrer News Hour, Now With Bill Moyers, Frontline, C-Span, Book Notes, CNN, CNBC, CBS, BBC, and NPR.  He has also served as a policy consultant and speech writer for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and other U.S. legislators. 

Madrick is a fellow of the World Policy Institute and the Century Foundation, and is a member of the board of The Center for Economic and Policy Research. 

From the 1970s to the 1990s, Madrick had several positions in journalism, including serving as Wall Street editor of Money Magazine, finance editor of Business Week Magazine and an NBC News reporter and commentator. His awards included an Emmy and a Page One Award.

Madrick was educated at New York University and Harvard University, and was a Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard.   He is married to Kim Baker and lives in New York City.

The Imperial Cruise and How it Shaped America's Pacific Strategy with James Bradley

Wednesday, June 23, 2010, at 12:00 Noon, I am hosting my show, The Advocates on WVOX- 1460 AM, my guest is author and speaker James Bradley.                            

James Bradley is the fourth child of Iwo Jima flag raiser, John "Doc" Bradley. Raised in Wisconsin, Bradley studied at the University of Notre Dame, Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan and graduated with a degree in

East Asian History from the University of Wisconsin. When he was thirteen years old he read an article by James Michener in Reader's Digest which I paraphrase: "When you're twenty-two and graduate from college, people will ask you, 'What do you want to do?' It's a good question, but you should answer it when you're thirty-five." Michener explained that his experiences wandering the globe as a young man later inspired his book on Afghanistan, Spain, Japan and other places.

When he was nineteen years old, he lived and studied in Tokyo for one year. I later brought my Japanese friends home to Wisconsin. My father, John Bradley, had helped raise an American flag on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima and had shot a Japanese soldier dead. John Bradley welcomed my friends to our home.

Bradley has vast experience writing and producing corporate films and corporate meetings; he has traveled the world, living and working in more than 40 countries for nearly a decade. Bradley has run companies in the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy. He has jumped out of airplanes at 15,000 feet, has scuba-dove in deep waters worldwide, trekked to Mount Everest's base camp and walked among lions in Africa. He is an avid reader of history, enjoys discovering exotic cuisine, cliff diving, golfing and snow skiing.

For the past ten years, the James Bradley Peace Foundation and Youth For Understanding have sent American students to live with families overseas. Perhaps in the future when we debate whether to fight it out or talk it out, one of these Americans might make a difference.

He remains a professional motivational speaker and he is the author of Flag of Our Fathers, Flyboys, and The Imperial Cruise. He divides his time between homes in New York's Westchester County, and Jamaica.

 

Preserving Social Security, the Legacy of Frances Perkins- Kirstin Downey and Dr. Chris Breiseth

On Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 12:00 Noon, I will be hosting my show The Advocates on WVOX- 1460 AM, my guests are Dr. Chris Breiseth and journalist, author and historian Kirstin Downey.              

Dr. Christopher N. Breiseth is the immediate past president and CEO of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, which is located at the FDR Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York. He served in that position from 2001 to 2008. He was president of Deep Springs College in California from 1980 to 1983 and of Wilkes University from 1984 to 2001. He earned his B.A. in history at UCLA, a Masters of Literature in Modern British History from Oxford and a Ph.D. in European History from Cornell. While at Cornell, he lived at the Telluride House, where Frances Perkins was a guest, for the last five years of her life, while she was teaching at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Together, Breiseth and Miss Perkins organized two seminars for house members, one with Henry A. Wallace, the other with James Farley. Following Miss Perkins's death in 1965, Breiseth wrote an article, "The Frances Perkins I Knew," which provides some of the material on Frances Perkins's life at Telluride House for Kirstin Downey's book, "The Woman Behind the New Deal." The article is available on line. He also served for a year and a half in 1967 and 1968 as Chief of Policy Guidance for the Community Action Program which was part of the Office of Economic Opportunity, President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. He is married to Jane Morhouse Breiseth and they have three daughters and two grandchildren.

Kirstin Downey recently completed a stint as the lead writer of the report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a New York Times bestseller. She wrote the book's first chapter, which detailed the many warnings that were issued to business executives and government officials about the looming problems in the mortgage market, but which were ignored. Ms. Downey is the author of "The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life and Legacy of Frances Perkins," which was published in 2009, and was named one of the best biographies of the year by the American Library Association, Library of Congress and the Los Angeles Times Book Review. She is currently at work on a biography of Queen Isabella, which will by published by Random House in 2013. Ms. Downey was a reporter for The Washington Post from 1988 to 2008, winning press association awards for her business and economic reporting. She shared in the 2008 Pulitzer Prize awarded to the Post staff for its coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings. In 2000, she was awarded a Nieman fellowship at Harvard University. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia with her husband Neil Warner Averitt and their five children.

 

Supreme Power-FDR and the Court- Jeff Shesol

Wednesday, April 14, 2010, at 12:00 Noon, I am hosting my show, The Advocates on WVOX- 1460 AM, my guest is Jeff Shesol, author of Supreme Power, and our subject is FDR, the Supreme Court and the battle over its re-organization in the 1930’s.

Jeff Shesol is a founding partner of West Wing Writers, a speechwriting and communications strategy firm, and is author of the forthcoming book, Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. The Supreme Court (March 2010). He is an accidental speechwriter. In 1997, President Clinton read “Mutual Contempt,” Jeff’s book on the Lyndon Johnson-Robert Kennedy feud, and invited Jeff to become a White House speechwriter. Jeff, at that point, had written exactly one political speech in his life: nearly a decade earlier, as a Capitol Hill intern, he had drafted a tribute to America’s nurses.                                    
 
During his three years at the White House, Jeff became the Deputy Chief of Presidential Speechwriting, a member of the senior staff, and took the lead in drafting the State of the Union Address, the President’s 2000 convention speech, and the Farewell Address. He covered a range of issues -- from global trade and economic development to information technology, the federal budget, and the arts. He also helped lead the President's team of humor writers — a team that produced the Clinton comedy video, “The Final Days.”

Before he became a speechwriter, Jeff wrote and drew a syndicated comic strip, “Thatch,” which appeared daily in more than 150 newspapers. His book, “Mutual Contempt," was a New York Times Notable Book and a Washington Post Critic’s Choice. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., called it “the most gripping political book of recent years.” Jeff continues to publish widely under his own byline, and appears frequently on television and radio.

A Rhodes Scholar, Jeff got his masters in history from Oxford University in 1993 and graduated from Brown University in 1991. He was the 2002 Anschutz Distinguished Fellow in American Studies at Princeton University, where he taught a course on the history of the presidential speech. Jeff lives in Washington with his wife Rebecca, and their two children. http://www.americanprogress.org/events/2010/04/supreme.html

Wild Bill Donovan -Lawyer, Patriot, the OSS- Douglas Waller

On Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 12:00 Noon, I will be hosting my show The Advocates on WVOX- 1460 AM, my guest is Douglas Waller, journalist and author of “Wild Bill Donovan, the Spymaster who created the OSS and Modern American Espionage.”                 

Douglas Waller is a veteran magazine correspondent, author and lecturer. In almost two decades as a Washington journalist, he has covered the Pentagon, Congress, the State Department, the White House and the CIA. From 1994 to 2007, Waller served in TIME Magazine’s Washington Bureau, first as a correspondent then as a senior correspondent. At TIME, Waller covered foreign affairs extensively as a diplomatic correspondent, traveling throughout Europe, Asia and the Middle East as well as in the Persian Gulf region. He has reported extensively in the past on Middle East peace negotiations and the wars in Iraq. He came to TIME in 1994 from Newsweek, where he reported on major military conflicts from the Gulf War to Somalia to Haiti. Waller began his journalism career with reporting stints at the Greensboro Record and the Charlotte News.  Before joining Newsweek in 1988, he served as a legislative assistant on the staffs of Senator William Proxmire and Representative Edward J. Markey. Waller is now a defense analyst for Bloomberg Government.

Waller’s new biography of General William “Wild Bill” Donovan, the World War II director of the Office of Strategic Services, is the eighth book he has authored or coauthored. Wild Bill Donovan was published in February 2011 by Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster. Waller’s other books include the national best seller, The Commandos:  The Inside Story of America's Secret Soldiers, which was published by Simon & Schuster in 1994, and Air Warriors: The Inside Story of the Making of a Navy Pilot, which was published by Simon & Schuster in 1998. His sixth book, BIG RED: The Three-Month Voyage Of A Trident Nuclear Submarine, was also a national best seller published by HarperCollins in 2001. In 2004 HarperCollins also published Waller’s critically acclaimed biography, A Question of Loyalty: Gen. Billy Mitchell and the Court-Martial that Gripped the Nation.

Born in Norfolk, Virginia, Doug Waller holds a B.A. in English from Wake Forest University and an M.A. in Urban Administration from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.  He is a former captain in the U.S. Army Reserve and lives in Annandale, Virginia.                                      

The Four Freedoms Foundation and Roosevelt Island - William vanden Heuval

Wednesday, June 23, 2010, at 12:00 Noon, I am hosting my show, The Advocates on WVOX- 1460 AM, my guest is diplomat, scholar, businessman and former Ambassador William vanden Heuval. Our subject is the Four Freedoms Foundation, FDR and the new memorial dedicated to him that will be erected on Roosevelt Island.                                                                                          

Throughout his distinguished career as a lawyer, diplomat, businessman, and scholar, Ambassador William J. vanden Heuvel has worked tirelessly to realize Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s ideals of social justice, human rights, and collaboration among nations.

Born in Rochester, New York, in 1930 of immigrant parents, William vanden Heuvel attended public schools and worked his way through university, graduating Deep Springs College, Cornell University and Cornell Law School where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Cornell Law Review. He began his career in public service as Executive Assistant to William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan during General Donovan’s ambassadorship to Thailand, and subsequently served as Counsel to New York State Governor Averell Harriman.

In 1964, as Assistant to U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, Mr. vanden Heuvel led the efforts to defeat local resistance to school desegregation in Prince Edward County, Virginia. A Supreme Court landmark secured the legacy of Brown vs. Board of Education and restored free public education to thousands of black children who had been without it since 1959 when the County closed its schools rather than desegregate them. The establishment of the Prince Edward County Free Schools System in 1963, for which Ambassador vanden Heuvel was singularly responsible, is considered a landmark in the civil rights struggle.

As Chairman of the New York City Board of Corrections in the early 1970s, he led a campaign to investigate and ameliorate conditions in the city’s overcrowded prison system and has had a lifelong involvement in the reform of the criminal justice system.

During the Carter Administration, Mr. vanden Heuvel was U.S. Permanent Representative to the European Office of the United Nations in Geneva and U.S. Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York. Ambassador vanden Heuvel has eloquently defended the UN’s mission and importance with leadership roles in the United Nations Association/USA and the World Federation of United Nations Associations. As Co-Chair of the Council of American Ambassadors, he has written reports on Israel and Cuba, and reported on the Northern Ireland Peace Process.

Ambassador vanden Heuvel has served since 1955 as a director of the International Rescue Committee, a non-profit agency assisting refugees from political persecution and violent conflict.  In 1956, he traveled to Hungary and Austria to aid refugees of the Hungarian Revolution.  As President of IRC, he later organized efforts on behalf of Cuban, Chinese, Angolan, and Eastern European refugees. He serves on the Advisory Board of the International League for Human Rights, and has pressed for the U.S. to play a greater role in the developing world. “If we are unable to identify our own well-being in strengthening the economic foundations of the developing world,” he wrote in 1981, “then we are doomed to pay a price that dollars alone will not begin to measure.”

Ambassador vanden Heuvel was a Senior Partner at the law firm of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, where he practiced international and corporate law.  He is currently Senior Counsel to the firm. He has held directorships in a number of public companies, among them the U.S. Banknote Corporation, Time Warner, Inc., and the North Aegean Petroleum company, and is currently Director of several prominent energy corporations. Since 1984 he has been a Senior Advisor to the investment banking firm Allen & Company.

As President of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute since 1984, and Chairman of the Board since 2000, Ambassador vanden Heuvel has presided over a range of academic conferences and initiatives relating to the Roosevelt Era, and helped to establish the Institute’s Roosevelt Study Centers in the Netherlands, Russia, and South Korea. With Ms. Anne Roosevelt, Ambassador Vanden Heuvel annually presents the prestigious FDR Four Freedoms Medals to outstanding individuals and organizations whose work embodies a commitment to the ideals that President Roosevelt expounded in his historic “Four Freedoms” address of 1941.

Ambassador vanden Heuvel has coauthored a biography of Robert F. Kennedy, and has written frequently on international affairs and the FDR legacy. In 2000 he edited a widely acclaimed book of essays examining current prospects for Russian political and democratic reforms, and he is Co-Editor, with historians Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and Douglas Brinkley, of the St. Martin’s Press Series on American Diplomatic History.

Ambassador vanden Heuvel currently lives in New York City with his wife, the former Melinda Fuller of Boston.  He has four children: Katrina and Wendy vanden Heuvel, Ashley von Perfall and John vanden Heuvel Pierce.

The Establishment Clause and Citizens United Against America-Peter Montgomery

Wednesday, May 4, 2011, at 12:00 Noon, I am hosting my show, The Advocates on WVOX- 1460 AM, my guest is Peter Montgomery, Vice-President of Communications for People of the American Way

Peter Montgomery oversees People For the American Way Foundation’s research and writing on the Religious Right, as well as our work to help progressives understand and more effectively communicate with important constituencies, particularly the reachable religious middle. Mr. Montgomery is a spokesperson for People For the American Way Foundation on a range of issues, such as the Supreme Court, the Religious Right political movement, religion and politics, LGBT rights, public education, and free speech. Before joining People For the American Way Foundation in 1994, Peter Montgomery was associate director of grassroots lobbying for Common Cause, where he planned and directed grassroots lobbying campaigns, volunteer recruitment, and media relations strategy. He wrote and edited for Common Cause Magazine, an award-winning journal featuring investigative reporting about the federal government.