tv Viewpoint With Eliot Spitzer Current June 12, 2012 5:00pm-6:00pm PDT
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meet "meet the press." you have been a very naughty boy. you are the clown of the day, larry scrag. enjoy your wide stance. >> wherever the sec ends up putting you. viewpoint with elliott spiritser is next. [ ♪ theme music ♪ ] >> good evening. i am eliot spitzer. this is viewpoint. dueling lawsuits in florida, voter suppression or ensuring dem democracy. graphic evidence of the obama stimulus package actually worked. a democratic strategist warped the president risks an impossible. he embraces a clear vote for the future. we start tonight in florida. republican governor rick scott has launched a pre-election purge of non-citizens from the
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voting list. the justice department demanded an end for possible violation of the voting rights and national voter registration act but governor scott insisted it was legal andnesses. >> we know we have almost 100 individuals that have registered to vote that are non-u.s. citizens. over 50 of them have voted in earlier elections. i have an obligation to enforce the lauds of our land. you don't get to vote in florida if you are a non-u.s. citizens. >> florida is suing the department of home land security for access to a database to find more indelible voters. the justice department said it will ask a federal court to stop florida's percentage. it's been frozen by the county election supervisors of all parties who say they are concerned over the justice department's charges and that state data already used to remove voters was flawed. though republicans incest president obama's economic stimulus was not just flawed but a failure, new charts published by board of directors anier editor-in-chief henry blithe tell a different story, a good
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one for the president. key economic indicators, household net worth, the sum of all family assets private sector payrolls, retail sales and the 1%'s favorite number, corporate profits, all began to recover once the stimulus was in place. but is that a story the president can use to win reelection? democratic strategist james carville and a team of pollsters say he can't win middle class voters merely by looking back. and i quote, middle class voters know we are in a new normal where life is a struggle and convincing them that things are good enough for those who have found jobs is a fool's errand. they want to know the plans for making things better in a serious way. the democrats do expect some good news out of arizona tonight where a special election is underway to fill the seat once held by wounded congress woman gabby giffords. ron ball game baller is leading jesse kelly by 12 points. i am joined by ari burman,
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contributing writer with the national maxzine and the author of herding donkeys" and by mike pappentonio, president of the national trial lawyers association. mike, let me begin with you. if it is in fact the case as governor scott claims, that 50 people have been found not to be citizens, then will he not win not only the public relations battle when he goes out to florida and says, look, i got 50 non-citizens off of the voter list and ultimately once you win in court when he says, i, as a governor, i have got to do this? >> governor, what he has is a credibility problem. the moment scotts stepped into the governor's office, he had a monstrous beliefability problem because of the $1.7 billion federal fraud cases that the feds brought against him before he became governor. those chicken have come home to roost on this voter purge issue. he is not believable. low-information voters are
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having big problems with it. there is nobody who really believes that this is anything but a scale when they really analyze the facts. but beyond that, people who don't know all of the facts sense something is wrong. here is the reason today he stayed definitely that he found 50 names of illegal voters in this voter purge effort. but that started a governor from a list of 182,000 that he also told the florida public was the problem, and then when he was caught fabricating that story, journalists then looked into it, and when he said that really, the number was really only one,700, journalists looked into that, people like ari -- >> michael let me jump in here for a sect. i would to play judge when you are the head of the trial lawyers, i used to be in the courtroom. the problem i have and you know i don't like the purge. i think governor scott is doing this in a way that violates our sense of what the voting rights calls for the. nonetheless, he stands up in court or attorney general stands
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up and says wait a minute, judge, we found 50 people who shouldn't be there. we are not doing anything asking for anything. in the court of public opinion, he won't have a leg to stand on. >> he lost the public relations battle to begin with. so it's going to be hard to get the public back on his side when 2 to 1 they disapproved of what he was doing. this is a list of 2600 names that were all supposed to be non-citizens. he needs to have 100% success rate here so he says i will have 50 people who may or may not have voted. we don't know for a fact that they voted. >> that's what he is claiming, the people themselves are saying. we didn't vote. >> that's a very very small percentage of the total non-citizens that were supposed to on his list. >> the three of us, i think, will agree. and i have been there. the issue of voter fraud really is: are there occasional examples? of course, there are but it is diminmuss, diminmuss, diminmuss, not what merits the attention. even though one vote that shouldn't be cast shouldn't be
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there. it strikes me if you have 50 names, then going to have a more credible argument and say, look, something should be done. when does the justice department file its case and get an injunction? what happens next? >> well, i mean, they are full-tilt right now. perez, an assistant attorney general that understands. it's a matter of finding a judge to hear these facts and it's going to be shut down. i really don't believe that. i think what you have is a governor, governor scott working against the win. he knows he was working against the wind. what he doesn't seem to follow here, governor is that every day he does this, his favor ability ratings continue to fall. you know what? they found that those favorability rate falling directly related to this story. so i don't think that -- i think the dog is in a -- they have the high ground here they are in a perfect position. the doj wants them to move in a big way. i don't think it will get to the point of being federal marshalls down here because everybody is surrounding rick scott that has a brain right now is saying
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governor scott, you really really are messing up. you are way out of bounds. people have also figured out that there is more to the story. this is an effort to purge that 1% in this state just like they want to purge 1% in nine other states to have obama be a one-term president. >> we will get back to it. i hate to interrupt. there is a backdrop we are con shuns of to florida, 2000, to the hanging chad's, the fact that election, whatever you may have thought at the time, the record is clear that that was an election that was not counted properly. we will never know probably who really won that, the outcome there. but there is also a history in terms of voter purges in florida. ari, what is that history? >> well, as you mentioned, this is not happening in a vacuum. this is happening in florida, a state that wrong took 12,000 voters off of its roams. that was 22 times the margin of victory for george w. bush overall gore. that list was 41% of african-americans. we know african-americans supported gore over bush by 86
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points so that purge alone could have made the differences in the 2000 election. now, it's repeating itself in 2012. people are rightfully concerned any time you talk about florida purges, history will repeat itself. >> again, the issue we have to focus on is that there are answers to this that would remove this from the partisan context of a governor trying to punch the list fewer than 90 days. there are technological answers in terms of having a unified voter list that would be precise, accurate. it could be done, but there has been opposition primarily from the republicans in terms of having national legislation that would permit and indeed require that, something we should discuss more down the road. mike papantonio, national trial lawyers president and ring of fire host, thank you for your time tonight. >> thank you. >> ari stay with me as we talk strategy with a democratic strategist and former chief of staff, senator john manchun. the message that came out from james carville not surprising it was james. he is never one who hesitates to
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give advice. he said to the white house, it is time to reboot your campaign. you are not making an argument that is resonating with the middle classes. show some empathy. show that you understand things are bad and we need to turn the corner. how has the white house responded to this? >> my guess is probably not -- they are probably open to suggestionstion but i am not sure they are going to shift their strategy based on a carville memo. you know, i read the memo. it has, i think, some interesting thoughts. the maybe problem i have with it is this motionnotion that somehow the president can ignore, you know his record over the last four years and convince voters he deserves another four years. i don't think that is possible. if you look at the history of presidential ree elections, that has never happened. you have got to provide a ration a.m. and a justification for what you did while you were president and a vision, if you will, where you are going to take the country. you can't ignore -- you can't do one without the other. >> chris, i agree with you. if you saw the opening to the show, we put up a series of
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economic chapters. henry belonget somebody who i prosecuted in years back a business insider told me things are turned the corner. it seems the flaw in the white houses strategy is they are neither making the case affirmatively. we have turned the corner no way explaining what we will do to make things better proceed specifications expectative live. they are phonefocusing on bain and it's not sufficient without the other two pieces. ari how should they reinenforce this with the game plan going forward
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>> stephanie: 49 minutes after the hour. "the stephanie miller show"." >> announcer: it's "the stephanie miller show." [ ♪ music ♪ ] >> stephanie: 49 minutes after the hour. "the stephanie miller show"." >> announcer: it's "the stephanie miller show." [ ♪ music ♪ ] >> stephanie: 49 minutes after the hour. "the stephanie miller show"."
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>> announcer: it's "the stephanie miller show." [ ♪ music ♪ ] . >> tomorrow night, ahead tonight military suicides keep rising even as the wars weavenit down. state right here for mu viewpoint. >> stephanie: 49 minutes after the hour. "the stephanie miller show"." >> announcer: it's "the stephanie miller show." [ ♪ music ♪ ]
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show we can. they have given us our number of the day. $5.6 trillion. that's the budget surplus we would have had for the period 2002 to 2011 but for specific policies implemented by president bush. every year, the cbo estimates federal spending and revenues for the next decade based on then currentpoms with policies president clinton left in place, we would have had that huge surplus. instead, we have a $6.1 trillion deficit, a swing of $11.7 trillion. what happened? bush got his first tax cuts and when they didn't boost the economy be he pushed for more and he got them. then he waged two unfunded wars and let republicans abolish the pay as you go system that flourished under clinton. put all that together, a surplus of $56,000,000,000 became a deficit of $6.1 trillion: republicans want to dress it up. how will they do it? more tax cuts.
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go figure. when it doesn't work the first time, do it again. >> if you have an opinion, you better back it up. eliot spitzer takes on politics. >> science and republicans do not mix. >> now it's your turn at the only only online forum with a direct line to eliot spitzer. join debate now. >> disturbing new statistics released reveal in the first 155 days of this year, 154 active duty u.s. soldiers committed suicide. >> that's nearly one a day. as horrific as this number is, it is made worse by the haunting residesation that more soldiers have taken their lives in this year than lost them on the battlefield. the number of suesized represents an 18% increase over
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the same period last year. here to help explain it and understand these troubling statistics are john salts who served two tours and dr. stein zanakus with 28 years of active duty experience and a founder for the center of translational medicine. thank you both for your time. john, let me begin with you. make sense of this why you have been there on the field of battle. what do you think explains this uptick, this surge, this horrifying set of data? >> i was actually at a loss when i saw this article. we had done better. we are seeing more suicides, you know, since 2006 forward, mostly because of the. combat. >> what do you mean, the type of combat? >> there is no place to hide. last year, i was on a base got dumped 212 rockets a huge caliber of ammunition. if you thing i remember you are safe and you are not, it's a problem. you go on a convoy, about as long as it took me to get shot
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at. the type of combats you are facing, you never know when it appears. multiple tours. these carrot minds. then you have 1% serving. when you come back and you go out to the bar and meet some girls and ask if you killed somebody and your wife left you for another guy and your kid relationship with your children isn't strong any more because, you know, they have a stronger relationship with their mother or their father for that matter there is a huge adjustment to this. >> all of the things jon laid out are troubling difficult we need to deal with. do they explain why this war is fundamentally different than what we faced in other wars vietnam where the reintig teggration back into civil society was very difficult for veterans? what do you make of this uptick in the trend? >> i think that the uptick is, itself, an indicator. incredible stress that the whole force has been under after 10 years of war, and as we have seen before, these problems come
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to light after the fighting stops. so that the army marines, the military redeploys come back to garrison and no longer the kind of fighting frame of mind that they have been and these -- and these problems just come out. and particularly now when under the circumstances that mr. soltz explained, we are going to see, i think in the next year, unfortunately a lot more of this. >> do you think that people look at multiple doors, multiple years spent in iraq or afghanistan, do you think that is one of the links one of the causative factors you can look at to enterintervene and stop this this? >> absolutely. i think we need to recognize most of these suicides and incidents occur in young people under 30. they have come in. they have spent four or five, maybe more years. they have grown up in an
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environment of multiple deployments and during that time, a lot of these other issues of how they have families and close relationships and what they do with their kids, their children, i mean that's not been something that they have been able to learn about. and they have now got to adjust to it. so that's really hard for them. >> is the military responding appropriately? is it perhaps what i am about to do is a bit unfair but there was one quote jarring, in which you were quoted today from major general pittard: >> certainly not a sense of empathy, sympathy or an understanding this is a serious psychological problem where military and government need to invest resources. is this typical or is the military -- >> he is the commander.
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first army division, in iraq prior to that, a company commander in the gulf war. he has a good reputation. he said something completely stupid. look, i can tell you i work two sides of this fence. i work in politics and a member of the reserve. there is nothing worse for your commander to have a suicide. we have classes and video on this. the general at the top is not close to the soldiers that have these problems. you know, these ncos, younger officers. nobody wants this. but the fact is that this is a product of the war. okay? so you want to keep sending people to war all the time, you are never going to completely e raid indicate this issue. this is what this last thing says. to scare youerad indicate this issue. this is what this last thing says. to scare you. i came home six months ago. do you see anybody around you who served in iraq that i can go talk to? no. if you are on active duty, at least you have these piers who are in this relationships with you. guard and reservist we can't reefer people. we are going to see more sued
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suicides. the military is aware of this. >> that's why our numbers are lower. it's impossible to completely stop. the question is: how can we improve it. general pitard does not respect other leaders -- represent others. >> dr. zinakus, what do you see? you were at a senior level in the military, and your organization is higher arkansasayal, how is the organization responds to go this crisis? >> i don't think they have got a worked-out campaign plan. they understand it. it's described well, all of the factors that you have mentioned are recognized, but to have a campaign plan and a strategy that's going to come at it and particularly come at it in the next year as they go about reconstituting and resetting is just not there. and understanding that the military, the army and the marines are going to be even
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under more stress. they are going to be downsizing and they have got already 20,000 people who are pending medical evaluations and medical retirements. now, mr. soltz said something that is a very good insight. there is a gap. understandably there is a gap between the young soldier and the sergeant and the bratallion commander, the brigad commander and the generals. there is a gap in mentality, a gap in age. it's a gap in experiences, and i think it is really important to recognize that these are young people, have very fluid lives, dynamic lives, a lot going on with them, and they are just struggling with incredible stresses that are added to and complicated by the multiple deployments. >> yeah. no question. this is an issue we will continue to focus on. it is a tragedy.
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tv, the "bill press show." >> coming up, the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor but first, obama gift to cable news, lefty liberal martin sheen visits with steven colbert. when it doesn't fit anywhere else, we put it in the viewfinder. >> the great thing about president obama and the candidate, mitt romney is theirthey are creating jobs for cable talk show hosts who sit around all day trying to figure out what obama said and what mit romney should have said. god bless both of them because we wouldn't have a show right now if it wasn't for mitt or obama. >> why can't the president say i misspoke misspoke. >> i don't think he mis spoke. >> this isn't what a gaffe which i find to be laughable. this is what barack obama
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believes. he doesn't understand the economy. he doesn't understand the private sector. he wants the government to stimulate it. it hasn't worked. big debt. it just goes on and on. >> charlie sheen tiger woods mel gibson experienced epic falls from gauging when their ominous undercarriages were exposed. barack obama exposed his under karen with those two quarts "doing fine". >> he said the private sect is doing fine. is he really that out of touch? >> while speaking from the hot tub of his luxury yacht. mitt romney in touch with the common man. >> i think we can exceptional again. i expect ifnet mitt romney becomes president. >> the romney campaign released a two and a half minute internet admy greeting supporters. one thing it's criticized for is its lack of dye versety.
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>> this has to be deliberate. >> do you know how hard it is to compile three minutes of footage shot in america and not have any minority end up on camera? that takes a lot of skill. >> why are you such a lefty liberal? who inspired you? >> we are called to be a voice for the voiceless and be a presence for the marginal. so if you have the capabilities and, you know, you don't have to work full-time. you are required to be on the line and serve the common good. >> i should pepper spray you. >> martin sheen was president? a house divided between rich and poor cannot stand. that's viewpoint after the break.
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>> stephanie: 49 minutes after the hour. "the stephanie miller show"." >> announcer: it's "the stephanie miller show." sir... excuse me, excuse me... can i get you to sign off on the johnson case... ♪ we built this city! ♪ don't let food hang around. ♪ on rock & roll! ♪ [ orbit trumpet plays ] clean it up with orbit! [ ding! ] fabulous! for a good clean feeling... eat. drink. chew orbit. of sununu, you're wrong. mitt romney, you're wrong. we need more teachers, not fewer teachers and more cops and more firefighters that support our
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>> the haves continue to move further and further away from the have-nots. the fabric is being frayed by the fact social mobility more myth than reality. progressively worse over the past 30 years with the top 1% of americans now collecting over 20% of the nation's income and the top 5% controlling an amazing 72% of the nation's wealth. timothy noah has written a new book the great divergentions diverge he knew and what we can doll with this problem. he joins me now. you have studied this exhaustively. you collapse their research and distill it down.
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summarize for us what the factors are that have led to this growing crisis in our society. >> well, there are a couple of things. there is the 1% versus the 99%. and that really is driven by a number of factors you are quite familiar with. the fvensization of the economy the reduction of regulation of wall street, investment banks becoming going from partnerships to compressions, those sorts of things. in addition, they absolute run away -- the runaway nature of ceo ceo pay, losing all accountability to shareholders. >> that's the 1% versus the 99%. you have more settle change and that is a growing divide between people who have college or increasingly graduate degrees and people who don't, a skill-based gap and that's really attributable to two
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things, one is -- principalply to two things, i should say. one is the fall-off in high school graduation rates starting in the 1970s, graduate graduation rates leveled off, skill demands copped to clime as they had throughout the 20th sent re and the other factor is the decline of unions. the fact that, you know the number -- the percentage of people who belong to unions was -- approached 40% in the 1950s, now down to about 70% in the private sector. >> let's see. this being cable t.v., we normally ignore the more subtle argument and we will try to pretend we can deal with it. the education gap, there is a skill divide in our nation. those who have unique skills in the top either because they can go to wall street where the pay is out of proportion and some engineering capacity it that permits to get paid. those who don't have those skills fall into the wasteland where they are competing against
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a global labor force and we have no protection for wages and earnings. what can we do to overcome that? raise the minimum wage? educate more broadly? how do you confronts these divides? >> all they'vee three sound good to me. on education, we need to universalize preschool education. everybody i know sent their three-year-old to pre-school. only about a quarter of all four years old go to school every day. research has shown that those early years are crucial for education so at the start of the 20th sent re we had a high school movement. now we need to do the same thing for preschool. i would put government price controls, college tuition increases, which sounds very radical but president obama
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proposed something quite similar in the state of the union address. he put colleges and universities on notice that if they couldn't get these increases under control, the government would use leverage to make them do so. so those are two things you could do for education. in terms of labor, that's a more difficult task, but we need to find some way to repeal as much of the 1947 taft heartley law as is humanly possible. another interesting idea that's been put forth by the sent re foundation is to think about making the rights to organize a defined as a civil rights, pass ledge slayings that would apply civil rights law to the right to organize. that way, if somebody got fired for trying to join a union he could actually sue his employer. >> right. fassing idea. i have not seen that tested in the courts. that would be an innovative approach to this. one of the historical points you make in your book is that carl marx of all people obviously a sent sent re ago said the industrial revolution would lead to
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incredible divide in income distribution. that didn't happen, until about 1970, income, there was a convergence of income, only back in the neep 70s we began to see this. historically, why did we survive the industrial revolution and recently global trade and other factors have moved us this other way? >> it's baffling. you are right right. throughout much of the 20th sent re we saw nmos becoming more equal during the depression and world war ii, you could say those were extra o circumstances but in the post war years. now we have a different kind of economy than we had then. we also had strong unions thinly then and, you know, labor has declined around the world but it's declined a lot steeper here in the united states, and that's because the government policy has basically been anti-labor for at least a couple of decades and the 1947 law, the taft
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hartley law acted as kind of a slow-acting poison so that's had a profound impact. >> the role of lane has been diminished. unionization has failed and the percentage of the work force is union unionized is a shadow. all of that in the context of international trade that has made it harder for workers to compete against the onslaught of china, indonesia. and senior editor author of the great diverge he knew timothy noah. we will continue the conversation an essential subject we must thing about. executive power and the president's kill list. more ahead.
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he's certifiably insane! and just signs a deal for $100 million and people listen to that crap! i just can't believe it. 1-866-55-press. the airplanes are going to get from one part of the country to the other without any air traffic controllers. i mean this is ridiculous and mitt romney ought to know better. i stand with our public employees and cops and firefighters and their teachers? admitted that that look, we were able to keep a lot of the folks because of the stimulus. >> bill: absolutely. again, do you great work, judd. thank you. all of your colleagues at think progress. we'll see you again next and everyone likes 50% more cash -- well, except her. no! but, i'm about to change that.
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see the movie in theaters july 3rd. >> yjp morgan chase is on the board examining his bank and the chairman doesn't see the problem. but first, let's head out west to the war room with jennifer granholm. what do you have tonight, governor? >> eliot, i am obsessed with how the democrats can occupy the majority in congress especially with the republians engaging in what many are calling economic sabotage. of course its purpose fully obstructed every bill deigned to help the economy. we are going to talk to pundits and polsters and candidates tonight. we will look at the political technologies and applications to micro target voters in the effort to take back congress. we will have a somering as smorgasbord. >> a smorgasbord with an
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obsessed governor. i can't wait to watch that. more viewpoint coming up next. our conversation is with you the viewer because we're independent. >>here's how you can connect with "viewpoint with eliot spitzer." >>questions, of course, need to be answered. >>we will not settle for the easy answers. >> lee boweling jer, former dean of the university of michigan law school and the current chairman of the new york federal reserve bank board says it is, quote, foolish to say that jamie diamond's having a seat on the new york fed board creates an appearance of a conflict of interest. as they say on saturday night live in a special segment dedicated to statements that are really out of touch what have i -- what i have to say to lee
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is: really? it is not foolish to see an appearance of conflict of interest here indeed in addition to the appearance of conflict of interest, there is an actual conflict of interest. die mopped should not be on the full board, if you will stop. here is why. the oar of the new york fed picked the current if thepresident. he is perhaps the most important regulator of bangs like morgan chase. that is a conflict pure and simple. he sets. on the board. >> that's a conflict fewer and simple. dymon is lobbying to relax rules. >> that's a conflict, pure and simple. j.p. morgan chase has received special loans from the fed such as when it acquired bear stearns. >> that's a conflict fewer and simple. dymond's bank is under regulatory examination. >> that's a conflict, pure and simple. we do not put the ceos of the air land and the national transportation safety board for a reason. we do not put the ceos of
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pharmaceutical companies on the board of the fda for on reason. we should not put the ceos of banks on the board of the new york fed. lal edgier said the bank requires requires. first, the law should be changed. second, the law doesn't require that the bankers be the ceos of major entities and then the subject of regulatory examination by the fed. other bankers academics or retired are available. they would not have conflicts that jameie dymond brings with him. the entity hurt the most, the new york fed. the board creates actual and perceived conflicts. for the sake of the fed, dieymond should resign. >> that's my view.
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>> sitting in the oval office president obama is picking individuals to target for death. droughns are dispatched pursuant to presidential order killing terrorists and those nearby. is this an act of war justified by law or an overreach of executive power with no congressional or judicial oversight? joining me to talk about his "new york times" op-ed, the legal fob between war and peace. thank you for your time professor. >> thank you for having me. >> first explain to us this fundamental distinction you set out in your opinioned and law enforcement and what follows from that in terms of presidential power. >> william, those constitutional law and international law turn on the distinction between war
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and peace. the ledge the it macy need that distinction to work but it's been hard to figure out what the difference is. >> if this were deemed to be war, if we are at war with a nation, with a terrorist group then generally the consensus would be, i gather, it could have been a terrorist group against these vitas individuals. >> the united states has helped to create. i think the question becomes a pretty easy one, we are at war with those individuals, then targeting them looks like the kind of thing that's happened in war for a long time now. >> of course the did i say distinction you set out is: what is war? are we at war when we have this am orfus entity, a terrorist entity. is war now so expansionive virtually any power can acrete to the president is the issue you frame for us. >> that's the danger. it's hard to know how to interpret the authridesation of the uses of military force that congress en add in such a way as to not give the president this
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kind of daming russ power. >> as you point out in your op-eds. no judicial or congressional oversight. >> that's why the president picking the kill list as it's called struck many people as raising a funds mental issue about executive power. how do you think we will begin to define war contra where should we go with this? >> we are seeing developments on the ground that are beginning to provide solutions. ngos and the presses, shows like yours started to show line illuminate the problem, inside the administration of protests by my lawyers in the state department, justice department and pentagon to deal with these kind of things. we are starting to see the beginning of a legal system to handle this. it's all a brave new world. >> has taken us to a point that i think this is one of the moments where people stud up and said we have to think about this. when the president authorized a drone to kill a united states citizen who is overseas and the fact that the president would kill a unites states citizen
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gave people pause. can you think of any historical an log to that where this had been do? >> in the civil war, you know, almost 300,000 con fred rat soldiers died and everyone was on the view of alabama lincoln and lincoln administration. there is a pretty good precedent for that lincoln administration. you point out in the article, what war meant back then was a bit more clear. you had soldiers on the field of battle shooting at each other and there was a clarity of what was defined by the process of war. war is something moreai amorphous, doesn't have these reggid boundary lines theed and the president's president's line is more elastic. >> one of the things i have encountered in doing research on this question is virtually every yenration has had a crisis distinguishing war from peace, a crisis of its own. we seem to have had our share in the last 10 years or so. it's not actually new to our time. it's something lincoln dealt with. it's something that jefferson
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and washington dealt with. we had repeated experiences, trying to work out this kind of problem. the drones are just the latest. >> as you point out in the article, it really was one of those pieces i wanted to re-read because every time i read it there were new questions emerging. at the end of the article, you make the point, we will not be the nation with drones very shortly. we may have a technological advantage, be in a unique position to deploy this form of armament but when others have it, we will be more desirous of having a legal framework that interposes internationally about some boundaries of what can and cannot be done. >> more than 200 years we have used the law to engage the legitimacy of these kind of actions. we are going to lead the war on our side. >> that's why these developments are, i think trying to create a new legal regime. >> the other problem that emerges is to the extent war had been or historically had been combat between nation states and
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acted rationally wanting legal framework, when you are dealing with terrorist organizations that don't accept that first principal, does it apply? are we going to be the only ones to abide by it? >> one of the things we have used for a long time now international law and domestic constitutional law to do our allies and others, that we are on the same page with them that we can be -- we can cooperate with them. so enter narm law and the u.s. laws don't have to just be about reciprocity with the enemy. they are about speaking the same language as liberal peoples around the world. >> but very quickly, we only have a couple of seconds left when a terrorist organization gets a drone it can deploy
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