Anthony Vasquez – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Tue, 28 Feb 2012 10:57:02 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://stanforddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-DailyIcon-CardinalRed.png?w=32 Anthony Vasquez – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Feingold criticizes Citizens United case https://stanforddaily.com/2012/02/28/feingold-criticizes-citizens-united/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/02/28/feingold-criticizes-citizens-united/#comments Tue, 28 Feb 2012 10:55:12 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1059743 Calling a Supreme Court decision “lawless” and warning of “corporate domination of our political process,” former Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) spoke Monday night about the dangers stemming from the recent removal of restrictions on financial contributions to political groups.

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Calling a Supreme Court decision “lawless” and warning of “corporate domination of our political process,” former Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) spoke Monday night about the dangers stemming from the recent removal of restrictions on financial contributions to political groups.

 

Feingold spoke out against the Jan. 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, arguing that it opened the door to increased corporate influence in politics.

 

“The decision issued by the court’s majority was essentially a lawless decision,” Feingold said, “not only because the substance of it gave corporations free reign over our political process — which is so fundamental to our democracy — but also because of its blatant disregard for the mores and traditions of the Supreme Court in handling difficult cases.”

Feingold criticizes Citizens United case
Former Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) warned of increasing corporate influence in the U.S. political process. (MEHMET INONU/ The Stanford Daily)

 

The 5-4 ruling lifted prior restrictions on corporate contributions to political groups. This includes donations to political action committees (PACs), which — though not directly associated with candidates or campaigns — can channel vast sums to political causes.

 

Feingold said that Americans must choose between a political system controlled by large corporations and one that has fair campaign finance regulations.

 

“The first path marks the beginning of the destruction of our campaign finance system and essentially permits corporate domination of our political process,” he said. “This dominance will include our most fundamental institutions: those that govern us, those that write and enforce our laws and regulations, those that oversee our economy and those that determine our relations with other countries, even our national security.”

 

Feingold identified the rise in the 1990s of “soft money” — the circumvention of limits on donations to candidates’ campaigns by donating large sums to issue-driven campaigns — as a critical juncture in campaign financing. He argued that laxer campaign finance regulations stem from changes in the electorate’s political involvement.

 

“Corporate-funded, right-leaning elements in this country were rocked by the power of the Internet and by mass personal involvement by average citizens,” he said. “The corporate powers in this country that want to dominate our political process saw the face of democracy and it terrified them.

 

“They were scared stiff that we had stopped the soft money flow, the leverage on which they relied to get both Republicans and, I’m sorry to say, too many Democrats, to ratify job-killing trade agreements, enact the Wall Street wish list of financial deregulations and pass the most fiscally irresponsible tax and budget policies in our lifetime,” Feingold added.

 

In response to the idea that in an age of super PACs candidates must join the fundraising race to effectively compete, Feingold urged the audience to consider the consequences of the concept. He stated his opposition to President Barack Obama’s decision to allow Cabinet members to fundraise for Priorities USA Action, a pro-Obama PAC.

 

“Think about what you’re doing,” Feingold argued. “Think about what you’re becoming. What’s the end if it’s going to be gazillionaires dominating the entire process?”

 

Audience members reflected on both Feingold’s message and candor.

 

“The fact that he’s no longer a senator allowed him to say a lot of things he wouldn’t regularly say,” said Tomer Perry, a graduate student in political science. “He was very critical of the Democrat and Republican parties, which is important.”

 

“I’m very concerned about the ongoing and strengthening movement of corporate personhood,” said Dave Mitchell ‘09.

 

Feingold will participate in a seminar today from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. in Tresidder Union. Joining him will be Joshua Cohen, Marta Sutton Weeks professor of ethics in society, and Stephen Ansolabehere, Harvard professor of government.

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U.S. Rep outlines online security bill https://stanforddaily.com/2012/01/17/member-of-congress-outlines-proposed-online-security-law/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/01/17/member-of-congress-outlines-proposed-online-security-law/#respond Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:45:17 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1054474 Last Friday, U.S. Representative Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) outlined the main points of a bill, which if signed into law would require the federal government and private companies to share information about online threats.

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U.S. Rep outlines online security bill
(AUBRIE LEE/The Stanford Daily)

Last Friday, U.S. Representative Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) outlined the main points of a bill, which if signed into law would require the federal government and private companies to share information about online threats.

 

Rogers, who is chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, along with Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini spoke with the media following an invitation-only panel discussion. The event, titled “Leveraging Private Sector Drive and Innovation to Improve U.S. Cybersecurity,” was organized by Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). In addition to Rogers and Otellini, members of the panel included Stanford Law Professor and CISAC co-director Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, Representative Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.), Vice President for Security Engineering at Google Eric Grosse, Oracle’s Chief Corporate Architect Edward Screven and Cisco’s Security Group Leader Chris Young.

 

House Bill H.R. 3523, called the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011, would require the Director of National Intelligence to create a way for the government to share information about online threats with private companies. The government would also be required to encourage private companies to share their own information with the national government. The bill, which awaits a house vote later this year, comes on the heels of reports of cyber hacking originating from outside the United States against U.S. government computers including the Pentagon’s.

 

“The intelligence community believes strongly that it’s just a matter of time before we have a catastrophic cyber attack,” Rogers said. “We have admired this problem for a very long time, and it is time to do something.”

 

Otellini said he supports the law because it is easy to carry out and will improve the online security environment, which also now includes cellular phones.

 

“It’s a great first step; it’s very implementable,” Otellini said. “It simply says: the government has information. They can share it with private industry privately. We can take advantage of that to improve our products and protect our customers.”

 

Rogers said the passage of this law would not allow for government officials to legally look for personal information.

 

“The language that we strengthened was to say that this information can only be used for national security purposes,” he added. ”Nobody can go phishing. You can’t have an IRS agent going in and saying, ‘Gee, we’d like to find out if somebody hasn’t been paying their taxes.’ All of that cannot happen.”

 

The bill would exempt legal action against companies that while sharing information disclose personal information. Doubts about the government’s ability to protect the information of private people remain. The American Civil Liberties Union expressed disapproval of the proposed law.

 

“An important challenge in the years ahead for the government is convincing the public that it can handle sensitive information such as what might be shared by private sector entities under a bill like this,” Cuellar wrote in an email to The Daily. “Courts, legislative oversight and internal auditors within the executive branch such as inspectors general could play an important role in that process.”

 

Cuellar remarked that policymakers around the world are becoming more interested in the issue of cybersecurity. This is one reason for CISAC’s increased involvement in this area of study.

 

“As with national security and criminal justice problems more broadly, the choices we make to secure cyberspace will have far-reaching effects on our lives,” Cuellar wrote. “Americans should recognize that the stakes here are partly about the safety and security of computer networks, but also about identity management and privacy, international cooperation and the role of the public sector.”

 

In addition to his visit to Stanford, Rogers said he planned to meet with the leaders of tech companies in the area. He declined to state which companies he intended to visit.

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Panel probes digital influence on Calif. govt https://stanforddaily.com/2011/10/28/panel-discusses-digital-influence-on-cali-govt/ https://stanforddaily.com/2011/10/28/panel-discusses-digital-influence-on-cali-govt/#respond Fri, 28 Oct 2011 09:15:18 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1051236 Joe Mathews, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, moderated a panel discussion on the future of e-government in California Wednesday evening.

The event, called “Zocalo in Palo Alto: Can Technology Save California’s Governments?,” was part of Zocalo Public Square’s series of public affairs fora which the organization hosts nationwide. The Stanford-based Bill Lane Center for the American West and the New America Foundation also helped host the event.

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Joe Mathews, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, moderated a panel discussion on the future of e-government in California Wednesday evening.

The event, called “Zocalo in Palo Alto: Can Technology Save California’s Governments?,” was part of Zocalo Public Square’s series of public affairs fora which the organization hosts nationwide. The Stanford-based Bill Lane Center for the American West and the New America Foundation also helped host the event.

Among the panelists was April Manatt, a consultant and lead author of a report on the status of local government work on electronic communications entitled “Hear us Now?: A California Survey of Digital Technology’s Role in Civic Engagement and Local Government.”

“Californians deserve — and should demand — a basic level of technology-driven service and engagement, just as they do with analog government services as emergency response and sanitation,” Manatt and her co-authors wrote in the report published this month.

The other panelists included Dakin Sloss ’12, executive director of California Common Sense; Greg Hermann, senior management analyst for the Southern Californian city of Carlsbad; Tim Bonnemann with San Jose-based Intellitics; and David B. Smith, executive director of the National Conference on Citizenship.

Sloss highlighted the increasing need for average people to be able to easily communicate with their elected leaders and suggested that there is currently no way for this to happen. His idea for more efficient governance entails the use of online technology to make budgetary and other information available to residents.

“My vision is that in 10 years government in real-time will be tracking everything it spends and everything that it’s bringing in, what outcomes that’s leading to and that that will be streaming in real-time onto servers that people outside of government and inside of government can slice and dice it however they want to see it,” he said.

Manatt, who served as a legislative assistant and held other positions in California’s government, said that most people in government do want to use technology to improve the way that local governments deliver information and provide services.

“Some people who’ve been in government for decades upon decades maybe don’t have access to some of the cutting-edge technology,” Manatt said.

Innovative ways that local governments are using technology to serve their people include the ability to schedule a jail visit by going to the Santa Clara County website or public kiosk. In another example, people can appear in court or request social services via a closed-circuit camera in Nevada County in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, a place where roads in winter are often treacherous. Residents in Santa Clarita can go online to ask police to check on a home while a resident is away.

Audience members offered a range of opinions on the event. Lis Ebbesen, a member of a Danish city council, attended the discussion, along with a handful of other Danish politicians visiting Stanford. She commented that her country is more developed when it comes to e-government.

“If you look at my municipality, you can go on Facebook and comment on everything we’re doing in our municipality, or you could ask the mayor ‘Why is there a hole in the road?’ or ‘Why is the kindergarten closed?’ and he will answer you directly,” she said.

Geoff McGhee, creative director for media and communications for the Lane Center for the American West was also among the audience members. He outlined the research questions of a current project jointly ran by the New America Foundation and Lane Center for the American West. The research will primarily focus on finding “small innovations that save money and make a difference and make government more accountable” at a grass-roots level.

Thad Kousser, professor of political science at UC-San Diego and director of the California Constitutional Reform Project at the Lane Center for the American West, commented on the consequences of overlooking certain groups as governments ramp up their use of online communications technology.

“What you don’t want to do is create a thing where only the people with iPhones are participating in democracy,” he said. ”What you worry about is if you do this badly and only reach a small segment of people who speak one language and can afford the top technology, you’re not going to get what you want.”

 

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Iranian political prisoner sheds light on sin, innocence https://stanforddaily.com/2011/10/18/iranian-political-prisoner-speaks-about-haunted-past/ https://stanforddaily.com/2011/10/18/iranian-political-prisoner-speaks-about-haunted-past/#respond Tue, 18 Oct 2011 09:15:51 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1050853 Shahla Talebi, assistant professor of religious studies at Arizona State University, spoke Monday evening about her time as a political prisoner in Iran and read from her book detailing her prison ordeal.

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Shahla Talebi, assistant professor of religious studies at Arizona State University, spoke Monday evening about her time as a political prisoner in Iran and read from her book detailing her prison ordeal.

Iranian political prisoner sheds light on sin, innocence
Shahla Talebi spoke Monday evening about her time as a political prisoner in Iran from 1977 to 1979 and from 1983 to 1992. (LUIS AGUILAR/ The Stanford Daily)

The talk, entitled “Revisiting Ghosts of Revolution: A Reading and a Reflection on Rekindled Memories of Imprisonment in Iran,” was part of the Iranian Studies Lecture Series.

Talebi read excerpts from her book, “Ghosts of Revolution: Rekindled Memories of Imprisonment in Iran,” and elaborated on what she has gained from her years in prison.

Talebi, who was born and raised in Iran, stressed the importance of having empathy for others and explained that once people lose the ability to empathize, they are living in a state of imprisonment, regardless of whether or not they are physically behind bars.

“The moment that today in our society we see our neighbors, we see people that go through life with excruciating humiliation every day, and we are okay with that, the doors are open for any other prison,” she said. “The prison is not just the walls that are created.”

Talebi’s pro-women’s rights and pro-labor activism landed her in prison, first for two years from 1977 to 1979 and then for nearly nine years from 1983 to 1992. She arrived in the United States in 1994 and earned an undergraduate degree in social-cultural anthropology from UC-Berkeley. In 2007 Talebi graduated from Columbia University with a doctorate in social-cultural anthropology.

Talebi’s readings from her tale of survival took the audience to scenes of torture and psychological despair. In one situation, guards beat her in front of her parents inside a visiting room. She was forced to witness the torture of her husband, also a political prisoner.

In another excerpt, she spoke about her childhood and explained how a group of boys tortured a dog through merciless beating.

Talebi also described prison guards forcing inmates to play the role of dogs and donkeys, with guards then riding the inmates.

“What I was trying to do is to say that these torturers had not fallen from any other planet, and neither were we these angelic human beings,” she said.

Iranian political prisoner sheds light on sin, innocence
(ERIC KOFMAN/ The Stanford Daily)

Talebi gave much attention to the power of the imagination and its role in allowing one to endure struggle.

“In prison you have your imagination,” she said. “So despite the walls, despite everything that you are dealing with, the torture, there are sometimes moments when you have your imagination that allows you to fly out of those narrow bars of the cell and allows you to go and hear the laughter and see people loving each other.”

Talebi touched on the “luxury” that women in prison in Iran had over men: having the company of children. She said that having the children of inmates nearby provided prisoners the opportunity to teach them about the outside world, to explain to them how plants grow, what a river is and the many different kinds of animals that live beyond the prison walls. She concluded her talk by emphasizing that every moment should be one of reflection, response and constant inquiry.

Several audience members said they felt it was enlightening to learn about Talebi’s story.

“It saddened me to hear her story,” said Farshid Boroumand, a member of the community who left Iran in 1979 after Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution. “It opens your eyes to the dark world of prison in third-world countries like Iran.”

For Hooshyar Naraghi, also a local resident, attending the talk gave him a new perspective on the complex relationships that develop in prison.

“For me, I always looked at torture in prison in a very academic way, especially with the situation in Guantanamo and all the things we have heard in the last 10 years,” he said. “But this was a different thing because now, to me, it’s a relationship between the torturer and the tortured.”

 

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Costa Rican president showcases plans for improved development https://stanforddaily.com/2011/05/18/costa-rican-president-showcases-plans-for-improved-development/ https://stanforddaily.com/2011/05/18/costa-rican-president-showcases-plans-for-improved-development/#respond Wed, 18 May 2011 09:05:04 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1048649 Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla discussed international trade, foreign investment, economic development and other issues at the Graduate School of Business (GSB) yesterday.

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Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla discussed international trade, foreign investment, economic development and other issues at the Graduate School of Business (GSB) yesterday.

Chinchilla, who grew up in a politically involved family, is the first female president of Costa Rica. She earned a master’s in public policy from Georgetown in 1989.

Costa Rican president showcases plans for improved development
Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla speaks at the GSB (Zack Hoberg/The Stanford Daily).

Her talk on Tuesday evening was part of the GSB’s “Global Speakers Series.” Chinchilla opened her speech by stating that her country has developed in a relatively peaceful and environmentally friendly way.

“We Costa Ricans have always believed in achieving prosperity through peace, freedom and the rule of law,” Chinchilla said. “That is a major national understanding and through history we have taken the decision to follow our beliefs.”

The country has not had a standing army since 1949. According to the CIA World Factbook, Costa Rica spends 0.6 percent of its GDP on defense.

Chinchilla toured the Bay Area in search of companies wishing to invest in her country. Costa Rica’s exports include bananas, coffee and beef, but it also has a growing high-tech sector. Chinchilla said she plans for her country to be competitive in this industry.

She hopes that Costa Rica will be Latin America’s first developed country and is a strong proponent of free trade.

“We are very well-integrated into the international economy,” she said. “Our products compete very well in the most important markets in the world. That is why instead of being afraid of continuing this path, we want to look for more opportunities.”

She stressed the importance of education, particularly English-language education. To ensure that Costa Rica becomes an internationally competitive player, Chinchilla wants all high school graduates to be fluent in English by 2017.

She also addressed China’s growing influence in Latin America.

“For Costa Rica, China means a very important opportunity,” she said. “We are in certain ways complimentary economies. We do not compete with them.”

Anabel Gonzalez, the country’s minister of foreign trade, amended this by adding “the United States is the most important trade and investment partner and has been so for a long time.”

“I believe it will remain so for a long time,” Gonzalez added.

Chinchilla also talked about her keys to personal success, noting the importance that having a strong moral compass bears in life.

“If you don’t believe in what you are doing it’s very hard to be successful,” she said. “If you have strong convictions and if you never leave that set of basic values, I think you are going to do very great.”

Business school students who attended the lecture were generally satisfied with what they heard.

“I think she has a very good grasp of what countries in Latin America need in order to be competitive and create jobs and solve some of the problems,” said Eduardo Hurtado MBA ’12.

Jon Elist MBA ’12 noted that emerging economies, such as China, will play a role in Latin America.

“Going forward we’re going to be seeing more and more Chinese influence in an area that traditionally has had strong relations with the U.S.,” Elist said.

Naama Stauber MBA ’12, was curious to know about how Costa Rica is working to solve problems related to the achievement gap between men and women.

“I would like to hear more about what exactly do they do to address this problem, specifically what do they do to support females,” she said.

Chinchilla’s advice to maintain one’s values whenever pursuing a goal impressed Stauber.

“I’m sure she wouldn’t be able to be at the place she’s at if she wasn’t a strong woman with strong opinions,” Stauber said.

“It’s amazing that the GSB is able to attract these high government figures from around the world,” Hurtado said. “I’m so happy to be here.”

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