The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law - Symposium Re: Accountability After Citizens United - April 29th

The Brennan Center for Justice held a day-long symposium on Accountability After Citizens United at the Greene Space at WNYC in New York City on April 29th. The symposium explored the current debate between shareholders and corporate managers over corporate political spending, new strategies to promote accountability through regulatory pressure points, and the constitutional tensions between the rights of associations and the rights of individuals.


Opening remarks by Brennan Center Executive Director Michael Waldman and keynote address by Hon. Cynthia L. Bauerly, Chair of the Federal Election Commission.





Panel 1: Can Shareholders Save Democracy?

Moderated by Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, with panelists William T. Allen, John Coates, Robert Jackson, Jennifer Taub.





Lunchtime remarks by Charlie Kolb, Committee on Economic Development. Introduction by Wendy Weiser, Director of the Brennan Center's Democracy Program.





Panel 2: Regulatory Pressure Points: New Strategies for Accountability

Moderated by Mimi Marziani, with panelists Ellen Aprill, Marc Elias, Bruce Freed, Holly Schadler.





Panel 3: The First Amendment Rights of Associations and Individuals

Moderated by Mark Ladov, with panelists Frances Hill, Dale Ho, Glenn Magpantay, Daniel Ortiz, Tobias Wolff.





Closing remarks by Sanford Lewis, Strategic Counsel on Corporate Accountability.

Small Plane Lands On Queens Beach - Story by By WNYC Newsroom

A single-engine plane landed in the waters off Rockaway near JFK Airport Monday night — but all three aboard are safe.


NYPD emergency crews pulled the pilot and two passengers out of the plane, which went down in the surf near Beach 56th St. around 7 p.m. Monday. It was not clear what caused the plane to go down.


The plane took off from Farmingdale, Long Island, and was headed west, according to police. The destination was not known but officials said it was not believed to be headed to the airport.


The cause is under investigation.


With the Associated Press

Remembering Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire with Serf Maltese - wnyc radio

Serf Maltese shares memories of his grandmother and two aunts who were amung the 146 victims of the 1911.

Gillibrand's Fight: The War on Women - WNYC

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Today on the Brian Lehrer Show,Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) talked about the new White House report on the status of women and the potential impacts of the House Republicans' budget cuts.

New York's junior Sen. Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY) has criticized the Republican-proposed budget cuts as a masquerade for ideology that is unfair to women. She's called it a "misjudgment" of what the American people want.

She pointed to cuts to nonprofits that deal with health care for women as an example. These aren't just jabs at reproductive care, they're jabs at overall health care, she said.

I feel like it's much more of an all-out assault on women that is not just about reproductive rights. Apparently they don't believe that women's health care should be funded. Companies and organizations and not-for-profits like Planned Parenthood, that's their job. They outreach to at-risk women and deliver a full range of health care services to them, including mammograms and pre-cancer screenings and including prenatal care, so when the pregnant women needs help to make sure that the child she bears is healthy, they don't even want to fund that.

Sen. Gillibrand highlighted data in the White House's report on womenon the stubborn wage gap between women and men. The report found that women are more likely to be heads of households in single parent families than men and these women have the lowest family earnings among all family types.

So the statistics and studies show that when women earn less, it affects children. It's the number one indicator of how much that child will have opportunities for education or health care or to really reach their potential so it really hurts children when women earn less than their male counterparts for the very same work...For every dollar a man earns, a woman earns 78 cents on that dollar.

Sen. Gillibrand's big concern is women that aren't entering advancing fields, like math and science. Another finding in the White House report showed that even though women earn more bachelors degrees overall, they earn less than half of the degrees in math, physical science, engineering and computer science, and those numbers are on the decline.

There aren't enough women in the higher levels of most professions, including politics, Gillibrand said.

We have so few women who are running for office. We still only have 17 women in the United States Senate...those are terrible indicators. Women have to be involved because if they don't participate, decisions are going to be made about every aspect of their lives and they might not like what those decisions are.

Eric Rotbard's Electric Car - wnycradio

Think about it: a car you plug in at night, the same way you charge a cell phone. For decades, this has been the drawing-board dream of engineers and environmentalists. Now, electric cars are starting to actually appear on the roads...and this guy has one.