Re: Courts Should Insist That The Political Branches Do Their Jobs

April 16, 2008

Re: Courts Should Insist That The Political Branches Do Their Jobs
Carefully And Thoroughly, Instead of Shoddily.


As the last posting said would be the case, this essay is about an idea which, as far as I know, is quite novel. It is an idea which deals with when courts should rule on, and/or how they should decide, constitutional issues and some other issues. It is an idea whose ramifications, from the legalistic point of view, are virtually endless; I shall deal with none of them because they could occupy scores if not hundreds of pages and because, truth be told, it has been decades since I thought well of legalistics -- if I ever did. (I regard legalistics as merely conservatives’ way of stopping progress.) The legalistics can be plumbed by others if people choose to think well of the idea and to run with it.

It has been three decades since I stopped being a constitutional lawyer, and more than that since I gave up any hope of making a mark in that field (though I occasionally still read cases for other reasons and occasionally post about them). Yet even a long retired constitutional lawyer knows that there are various doctrines by which courts avoid ruling on constitutional issues. Courts will say, for example, that a case presents a “political question,” or that a plaintiff doesn’t have “standing” to bring a case, or that a case isn’t “ripe” for adjudication. The supposed rules governing these doctrines -- or the so-called “elements” of the doctrines -- are manipulated or sometimes even changed outright for short term reasons, often make little or no practical sense, and cause forests to be felled as law professors and other make their bones explaining, supporting or opposing them. Robert Bork has been a big exponent of them and, if I remember rightly, so has John Roberts. But when all is said and done, cases on doctrines such as these usually are nothing but an exercise in manipulation of doctrines and ideas in order to avoid ruling on issues.

Wouldn’t it be better if, instead of indulging phony baloney, courts were to focus on an overriding reality when deciding whether to rule on an issue? Wouldn’t it be better if they were to focus on whether the appropriate governmental body (or bodies) had given extensive consideration to the problem at hand when acting on it? The appropriate body would in some cases be Congress, in some cases state legislatures, in some cases administrative bodies or governors or the federal executive. When the appropriate body has truly considered a problem -- at least where that body is Congress or a federal agency, and sometimes when the other bodies are involved -- there will usually be pro and con bodies of knowledge, fact, history, anecdote, and even statistical compilations that have been worked up and will be available to aid judicial decisionmaking. It is often the absence of the pertinent information that presently causes courts to manipulate abstract, often insensible doctrines when they are deciding whether to rule on a problem. The situation would be far more satisfactory if courts were instead to focus on whether necessary information was created and considered in the legislative or administrative process and sufficiently supports the governmental action.

The idea that the appropriate decisionmaking bodies should have seriously considered a problem, should have amassed and considered facts, history, statistics, etc., has another application too. It is now notorious that Congress enacts laws that most or even all legislators have not read, that Congresspeople and their staffs did not write (the laws were written by the executive or by private lobbyists), that have sometimes been procedurally manipulated in Congress so that legislators will not even have a chance to read them, let alone absorb and consider what they say. The Patriot Act exemplified this -- Congressmen had no chance to read it or to know what was in it. But there unfortunately are many examples, sometimes entire laws and sometimes specific provisions of a law, as “outstandingly” exemplified by the Patriot Act, of legislation that injures civil liberties or property but receives little or no Congressional consideration and was not supported by facts or history. Rather than exercising their penchant for upholding a law by saying “Congress [supposedly] decided” this or that, or the (in reality undeterminable) “intent of Congress” supposedly was this or that, it would be better for courts to say they will strike down laws harming individuals or property that are supported by little or no detailed consideration in Congress, few or no facts there, little or no history, few or no statistics, and so forth.

Notably, the ramifications of the idea presented here are revolutionary in today’s climate but, ironically, would take us back to something the framers intended at the time of the Revolution. The framers were interested in having authorities exercise what they called “disinterested virtue.” “Disinterested virtue” required extensive consideration of the public good, of what would conduce to, and what would be opposed to, the public good. Our horridly partisan and generally stupid current politics often have very little to do with the public good. Extensive consideration by Congress, legislatures, agencies etc. of the facts, histories, statistics etc. relevant to a problem -- instead of these bodies not writing, not reading or not even knowing what is in a bill -- would almost surely conduce to better, wiser, more informed decisionmaking, conduce to a better effort to achieve the public good if not also to an increase in exercise of disinterested virtue. But courts do not insist that before they will hear and decide for the government on an issue concerning a law or regulation, the legislature or agency must have given careful consideration to it, must have considered much or all relevant information. To the contrary, rather than insist that Congress have considered pertinent information, courts dodgingly uphold Congress by claiming it might have thought this or that, or could have thought this or that, when in fact the courts have no idea what Congress thought, if anything, because Congress lacked information and in reality didn’t even consider the problem. For courts to insist that Congress or state legislatures or agencies or executives must have considered extensive relevant information before taking action would be for courts to tell them how to go about their business. This would be revolutionary.

Yet, it would be a deeply conservative -- and desirable -- revolution. When one reads the history of the founders -- the history of the Continental Congress that enacted the Declaration of Independence, or of the Constitutional Convention in the late 1780s, or of the ratification debates -- or when one reads The Federalist Papers, one can hardly avoid thinking that those people considered problems from every side before acting. They were, as said, believers in disinterested virtue as a means of reaching the public good. One can hardly imagine them approving what is going on today and what has been going on now for just over 200 years. (There are historians of the period, indeed, who think that the framers might have worried a lot less about what they were doing had they known what a miserable state their experiment would come to in our own time.) Today’s conservative frauds in the Executive, and their lackeys in Congress and the press, like to hearken back to the framers, yet employ knee jerk methodologies that are the very opposite of the framers’ careful methodologies. Liberals do the same. Between the two sides, our politics are a disaster. It surely couldn’t get worse -- it could only get better, maybe a lot better, maybe even salvationarily better -- if court were to insist that the other branches do their jobs with the care, consideration, and maximum possible information and debate with which the founders did theirs.*



R:\My Files\Blogspot\CourtsShouldInsistBranches.4.15.08.doc
* This posting represents the personal views of Lawrence R. Velvel. If you wish to comment on the post, on the general topic of the post, or on the comments of others, you can, if you wish, post your comment on my website, VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com. All comments, of course, represent the views of their writers, not the views of Lawrence R. Velvel or of the Massachusetts School of Law. If you wish your comment to remain private, you can email me at Velvel@mslaw.edu.

VelvelOnNationalAffairs is now available as a podcast. To subscribe please visit VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com, and click on the link on the top left corner of the page. The podcasts can also be found on iTunes or at www.lrvelvel.libsyn.com

In addition, one hour long television book shows, shown on Comcast, on which Dean Velvel, interviews an author, one hour long television panel shows, also shown on Comcast, on which other MSL personnel interview experts about important subjects, conferences on historical and other important subjects held at MSL, presentations by authors who discuss their books at MSL, a radio program (What The Media Won’t Tell You) which is heard on the World Radio Network (which is on Sirrus and other outlets in the U.S.), and an MSL journal of important issues called The Long Term View, can all be accessed on the internet, including by video and audio. For TV shows go to: www.mslaw.edu/about_tv.htm; for book talks go to: www.notedauthors.com; for conferences go to: www.mslawevents.com; for The Long Term View go to: www.mslaw.edu/about­_LTV.htm; and for the radio program go to: www.velvelonmedia.com.

Re: Two Relatively New Or Novel Ideas: Starting Today With The Question Of Prosecuting Guilty American Leaders For Torture.

April 14, 2008

Re: Two Relatively New Or Novel Ideas: Starting Today With The Question Of Prosecuting Guilty American Leaders For Torture.


Those who are not big deals know that ordinary folk often are not given credit for being the authors of ideas they either created or pushed early on. (Sometimes this even happens to big deals, like the inventors Nicholas Tesla and Elisha Gray.) My personal experience with this phenomenon goes back 40 years, when I was alone or virtually alone in writing of various matters relating to the Indo China war. Such matters included: the founders’ intent behind the declaration of war clause. The reversal of the constitutional and political systems occurring when the Executive takes us into war without Congressional authorization: now instead of a majority of each House having to authorize war and the President having to sign the war bill, it takes a majority in each house and a presidential signature to stop the President’s war, and it takes two-thirds in each house to override a veto, so that a mere one-third plus one in only one House can scuttle the bill -- an anticonstitutional fact that virtually destroys any political chance of stopping a presidential war. The correlative fact that Congress’ spending power is useless as a vehicle for stopping a war (though supporters of the Viet Nam war constantly invoked this Congressional power as supposedly justifying continuation of the war). The fact that the wording of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was a delegation to the president of Congress’ power to decide on war. The correlative fact that the Tonkin Resolution, however broadly it might have been worded, was not intended by Congress to be an authorization for a major war.

You will not find my work or name cited by the hordes of writers who later adopted these ideas with regard to either the Indo China war or later ones in which the ideas were relevant. Rather, you would have to go back 40 years to read my stuff -- and why in hell would anyone do that?

Well, so be it for ordinary people in this celebrity driven world. Nevertheless, in this posting and the next one this ordinary person shall again discuss new ideas in the hope that once again they may be picked up by others, by those who are celebrified, those who are read and listened to. The idea in the next posting, an idea which may be completely novel, deals with the question of when courts should strike down a law of Congress. The idea in this posting has begun to be bruited, especially because of ABC’s story (Jan Greenburg’s story, really) that people like Cheney, Powell, Rice, Ashcroft, Tenet, and Rumsfeld sat in the White House deciding what tortures should be applied to whom -- sort of like Lyndon Johnson sitting in the White House picking bombing targets. But though the idea has begun to be bruited, one fears it nonetheless will largely be ignored, with the consequence that in future we will face more disasters like Viet Nam and Iraq and like the entire situations -- the horrid, wide-ranging debacles -- surrounding those wars.

With regard to Greenburg’s story, anyone who wished to know -- instead of wishing to be blinded by naïveté or supposed patriotism -- has been aware for four years or so that the torture started at the top. The Administration and its lackeys in Congress, the media and the right wing public have tried to blame it on low level people in the army (or, though rarely, on general officers). They have likewise claimed that the torture memos produced by Yoo and others were done at the request of, and to protect, CIA field officers who were engaging in torture. This was all 99 percent bullshit. Of course low level military guys were abusing and torturing prisoners, and of course CIA field torturers wanted the memos for protection. But that stuff is not the real truth. The real truth is that torture was ordered from the top and the torture memos were meant to give legal cover to -- were meant to preclude criminal actions against -- the Bushes, Cheneys, Rices, Tenets, Rumsfelds, Ashcrofts, Addingtons, Haynes and Feiths who were committing serious crimes that could be punished by execution.

The same is the real story behind the 2006 bill taking away jurisdiction from American courts to hear cases involving these crimes. The Administration and its Congressional lackeys pretend this was done so that lower level people wouldn’t be punished for supposedly doing their duty (notwithstanding the Nuremberg principles). This claim too is 99 percent bullshit. Of course, lower level people wanted protection. But the real concern, the one you have never heard expressed, was to protect the Bushes, Cheneys, Addingtons, Rices, et. al. against possible prosecution.

As said here many times, these people and their ilk must be punished, must be tried and sent to the slammer or the gallows. American officials have committed moral treason, if not legal treason. Legally, they are certainly guilty of crimes so serious that execution is a possible penalty. If they are not sent to the slammer or the gallows, this country will never be safe from their traitorous ilk, just as, due to the absence of punishment for Johnson, Rusk, McNamara, Nixon, Kissinger, et. al., we were not safe from the current moral traitors, from the current criminals, after the Viet Nam debacle. (There is a reason why Germany and Japan have not had to worry about people like this for over 60 years. That reason is called the gallows (in 1945 and 1946).)

The only way this punishment can occur is if liberals and progressives start demanding prosecutions and start demanding that all Democratic candidates for any federal office begin saying that justice will have to be done -- and that the 2006 immunity law will therefore have to be repealed, if necessary -- because we’ve had so many criminals in government (in all three branches frankly, most assuredly including federal judges who played the role of the German judges of Nazi times), and begin recognizing that this kind of evil will surely continue until people go to the slammer or swing as Germans and Japanese did.

Then there is the question of who will investigate and prosecute, and what tribunal will hear the matter. The Department of Justice could investigate and prosecute, but it is so deeply involved in the crimes that this probably is not a good idea. A better idea might be a special prosecutor -- an idea now being bruited -- with all necessary investigative, subpoena and other powers and with unlimited time and money to do the job.

A third possibility is to turn over these people to an international tribunal of one kind or another. (That might not only be appropriate, it might also be a hoot because of Bush’s refusal to recognize the International Criminal Court.) There could well be a number of western countries -- nations that are certainly not our enemies -- that would be willing to try the individuals whose crimes have caused so much chaos, so much disaster, and so much despair for so many.*



R:\My Files\Blogspot\Blogltr.RelativeNewIdeas.doc
* This posting represents the personal views of Lawrence R. Velvel. If you wish to comment on the post, on the general topic of the post, or on the comments of others, you can, if you wish, post your comment on my website, VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com. All comments, of course, represent the views of their writers, not the views of Lawrence R. Velvel or of the Massachusetts School of Law. If you wish your comment to remain private, you can email me at Velvel@mslaw.edu.

VelvelOnNationalAffairs is now available as a podcast. To subscribe please visit VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com, and click on the link on the top left corner of the page. The podcasts can also be found on iTunes or at http://www.lrvelvel.libsyn.com/

In addition, one hour long television book shows, shown on Comcast, on which Dean Velvel, interviews an author, one hour long television panel shows, also shown on Comcast, on which other MSL personnel interview experts about important subjects, conferences on historical and other important subjects held at MSL, presentations by authors who discuss their books at MSL, a radio program (What The Media Won’t Tell You) which is heard on the World Radio Network (which is on Sirrus and other outlets in the U.S.), and an MSL journal of important issues called The Long Term View, can all be accessed on the internet, including by video and audio. For TV shows go to: www.mslaw.edu/about_tv.htm; for book talks go to: http://www.notedauthors.com/; for conferences go to: http://www.mslawevents.com/; for The Long Term View go to: http://www.mslaw.edu/about%1f_LTV.htm; and for the radio program go to: http://www.velvelonmedia.com/.

Re: There Is Little Charity In Wealthy Charitable Hospitals.

April 9, 2008

Re: There Is Little Charity In Wealthy Charitable Hospitals.


Last Sunday Ben Stein wrote on how and why executive pay has skyrocketed in the last 15 years. Among other things he pointed out that last year Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs made $54 million, though the firm’s stock is now down from $250 per share to $175 per share (or 37 percent). But Blankfein is a mere piker (my view, not Stein’s) compared to Steven Schwarzman of Blackstone. He made over $350 million last year, while the stock is now down 40 percent in the last half year. Nor is either of these guys any great shakes, I note, next to the hedge fund manager, whose name I forget, who made $1.75 billion last year or the year before.

Stein laments this kind of legalized evil, saying the sad fact is that “The nation has become, to some at the top, far more of a looting opportunity than a family.” Stein neglectfully forgot to mention, however, that the looters include the Clintons, who, though pikers next to Blankfein or Schwarzman, have done pretty well compared to you and me. During the interregnum between their presidency and their next, hoped-for presidency, they earned a cool $109 million. This is only two years of Blankfein, but maybe about 2,200 years of a normal guy. With regard to herself and her husband, Hillary was wrong when she once said the ’80s were all about getting as much as you can. For those two it has been the years after 2000.

Wondering how it has come to pass that America has become a looting opportunity, Stein says “I am not sure where this has come from -- maybe from media that glamorize wealth and high end consumption, maybe from poor moral training.” I would say he’s right on both counts. But he is overlooking yet another and very crucial factor: the Milton Friedman/Ronald Reagan dual monarchy. These two taught Americans that greed is great -- not merely good, but great -- and you should grab every buck you can. Screw the other guy. Who needs him? Grab all you can for yourself and be damned to your fellow man.

The combination of media glamorization, poor or nonexistent morality, and Friedman/Reagan philosophy is potent, even irresistible. When unlimited money-hunger pervades the profit making world, as it does, it will, like Gresham’s law positing that bad money drives out the good, soon drive out more decent principles in the nonprofit world too. As written here before, money hunger has now become symptomatic of college presidents. Now we also find, thanks to the news pages of the Wall Street Journal -- its excellent news pages, not its positively evil editorial pages and op ed articles -- that supposedly nonprofit hospitals -- i.e., supposedly charitable hospitals -- and their CEOs are marked by money hunger too. They too have signed on to the big money machine.

In a lengthy article on Friday, April 4th, the Journal discussed the fantastic sums now possessed by supposedly nonprofit, supposedly charitable hospitals -- one has “a treasure chest of $7.4 billion, more than many large, publicly traded companies -- and the large amounts of revenue they take in each year. “No fewer than 25 nonprofit hospitals or hospital systems now earn more than $250 million a year,” the Journal said.

Their CEO’s, of course, make a pile, far more than the greedy Gordon Gees who run universities. Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago seems to be the Journal’s poster boy for the article, and its CEO recently “received a $16.4 million payout.” (Yes folks, that’s 16.4 million in one year, as in approximately one-seventh of what Bill and Hillary have gotten so far in the seven plus years of the 2000s. But listen to how the 16.4 million was paid -- it’s a hoot. “The hospital says it paid him $5.45 million in salary, bonus and deferred compensation in its fiscal year ended August 31, 2006, and an additional $10.95 million when he retired the next day.” (Emphasis added.) The next day? The very next day? This guy got $5.45 million one day and more than doubled it a day later? Wow. That’s nice work if you can get it. If he could keep doubling up like that, on the 14th day he’d be paid more than Bill Gates is now worth, assuming Gates’ net worth has dropped from 100 billion to only about 50 billion. If Gates’ wealth hadn’t dropped in half (the poor thing) it would take Northwestern’s CEO a 15th day to catch him. Meanwhile, on the first 13 days, Northwestern’s CEO, under the doubling every day principle, would have been paid a total that almost equals what Gates is worth. And they talk about the power of compounding? Man, I prefer the power of doubling, as did Northwestern’s CEO.

But there is more to the situation than what you’ve read so far. One of the reasons supposedly charitable, supposedly nonprofit hospitals are amassing huge sums and paying CEOs amounts of compensation like three, four or five million per year or even more, is that the hospitals receive tax exemptions because they are providing charitable care -- free care or deeply discounted care -- for those who can’t pay. The problem, though, is that there’re not providing very much charitable care.

Northwestern, the poster boy example, located in the wealthiest area of Chicago, the so-called Gold Coast neighborhood next to Lake Michigan, is said by the Journal to be exempt from about 50 million in property and sales taxes -- not to mention that (like nonprofit universities) it is exempt from taxes on the gains on its cash and investments of $1.82 billion. (One supposedly nonprofit religious hospital, Ascension Health, reported cash and investments of $7.4 billion in 2007). But the percentage of charitable care Northwestern provides -- are you ready for this -- is “less than 2% of its revenues.” The less than two percent of revenues Northwestern spends on charitable care (or approximately $21 million spent on it) is but “a fraction of what it received in tax breaks.”

The huge tax breaks received by wealthy, supposedly charitable hospitals are raising eyebrows in Congress and elsewhere because of the dearth of true charitable care. The vast sums these institutions take in are going elsewhere than to such care. As is typical of tax free nonprofits of many types, they put their money into fabulous buildings -- a new Northwestern building sounds far more like a high class, very expensive hotel with doctors than a hospital – and, as always, large salaries for administrators. Then, to meet the requirement that they provide “community benefits,” “whose most important component is charitable care,” they put down items that you sometimes cannot believe. A horrid example of this is BJC Healthcare, which is headquartered in St. Louis and runs 14 hospitals in Missouri and Illinois. It claimed $1.8 billion in community benefits to various towns in 2004, but over one-half of that, or $937 million of it, was compensation paid its employees, including $1.8 million to its CEO, while only 35 million was charitable care. BJC said that producing jobs (and paying salaries, i.e. the compensation of its employees) has a beneficial impact on communities, so it is proper to call the salaries a community benefit.

Now it is true that there can be situations in which it is proper to call compensation to employees a benefit to the community, e.g., one would think that when a doctor treats an impecunious patient for free, the aliquot portion of the doctor’s salary could properly be thought a community benefit -- and would be covered by the amount of “charitable care,” so that BJC would seem to be double counting as well as engaging in evil accounting-slight-of-hand. But not every nickel of every salary can be a “community benefit” as the phrase is meant in the law or else all salaries everywhere, paid by any institution or person, could be a “community benefit” if the institution chose to call itself a nonprofit. This would self evidently be preposterous.

But it would have amazing ramifications. Think on it. If every nickel of every salary is a community benefit, then BJC was short changing the communities where it has facilities by paying its CEO “only” $1.8 million. It should have paid him $1.8 billion, not 1.8 million, so that the communities would have gotten about 3.6 billion in benefits, not $937 million. In fact, it should have paid its staff not a paltry $937 million in compensation but $10 billion in compensation, so that it would have provided the communities with about $14 billion, not 1.8 billion, in benefits.

But let us take this beyond hospitals. If compensation is always and everywhere a community benefit, then Bill Clinton is seriously harming schools, groups, etc. by charging only $250,000 per speech. If he were to charge them one million dollars per speech, he would multiply their benefits four times. Ten million would be even better – they would receive 40 times the benefit. Why not 100 million? -- that would be better still because it would be a multiplier of 400.

Perhaps we should not be surprised that the Journal says BJC “won’t count its payroll as a community benefit in the future because of new” IRS standards that “won’t require the hospitals to provide any minimum amount of charity care.” On the other hand -- won’t require any minimum amount of charity care? What is that all about? These are at least supposed to be charity hospitals, after all. Can these hospitals nonetheless provide no charity care since there will be no minimum amount required? (According to the Journal, there are charitable hospitals that are truly charitable. They treat the uninsured. Sometimes they pay millions in taxes of one kind or another. They are struggling financially. And, discussing two of them in the Chicago area, the Journal says their CEOs make just a bit more than $200,000 per year.)

The fat cat “charitable” hospitals, the ones with huge piles of cash, the ones who pay fortunes to their executives, have gotten to be fat cats by using certain strategies. Now that antitrust enforcement has been in the garbage can for 28 years, they have merged like crazy and thereby gotten power over prices. They charge list prices that are several times cost. They focus on expensive procedures. They engage in a form of arbitrage (which I always thought was illegal): they issue tax exempt bonds and use the bond proceeds to buy securities that pay more than the hospitals are paying in interest on the tax exempt bonds. They sell patients’ debts to tax collection companies -- who are great fun to deal with, right? They sue the poor, who can’t pay, for their last nickel or the equivalent. And -- just so you don’t forget -- who gets all the money? Well, lots of it goes to the administrators, just like in for profit health insurance companies and just as with university presidents. As the president of a true nonprofit hospital, and therefore a struggling nonprofit hospital, said to the Journal, “Nonprofit is a misnomer -- it’s nontaxable . . . . When you’re making hundreds of millions of dollars a year, how can you call yourself a not-for-profit?”

* * * * *

Last Saturday a great historian, Joseph Ellis, was at our law school for a four hour discussion of his terrific new book, American Creation. The subjects that came up included the extent to which the founders were simply head and shoulders above the politicians, and the body politic, of our own day, and whether, if there were a true national conversation on the subject (and a plebiscite, I guess), Americans would choose to continue or to drop the imperialistic foreign policy we have so long and so disastrously indulged. I think Joe Ellis may be more sanguine about some of these matters, and about America, than I am. When I read pieces like the Journal’s long article about the so-called nonprofit, charitable hospitals, or about the greed and misconduct that are everyday matters, or about the warmongering that is a common style of our national politics, or about the ever renewing history of the wealthy screwing over the poor, or when I hear or see the constant imbecility that passes for political discussion among the pols, in the mainstream media and on lots of blogs, it is very depressing. One wonders -- despairingly, to tell the truth -- whether we will ever have a decent society run on the private and public sides by honest, competent, fair minded people. One wonders whether many of us who think, write and hope about these things are nothing but naifs, hopeless idealists, wasters of time and energy who foolishly can’t stop themselves from hoping for what is impossible in this country in this time -- or ever?

The foregoing paragraph cries out for a stirring, hope inducing peroration, does it not? I have none to offer.*



* This posting represents the personal views of Lawrence R. Velvel. If you wish to comment on the post, on the general topic of the post, or on the comments of others, you can, if you wish, post your comment on my website, VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com. All comments, of course, represent the views of their writers, not the views of Lawrence R. Velvel or of the Massachusetts School of Law. If you wish your comment to remain private, you can email me at Velvel@mslaw.edu.

VelvelOnNationalAffairs is now available as a podcast. To subscribe please visit VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com, and click on the link on the top left corner of the page. The podcasts can also be found on iTunes or at www.lrvelvel.libsyn.com

In addition, one hour long television book shows, shown on Comcast, on which Dean Velvel, interviews an author, one hour long television panel shows, also shown on Comcast, on which other MSL personnel interview experts about important subjects, conferences on historical and other important subjects held at MSL, presentations by authors who discuss their books at MSL, a radio program (What The Media Won’t Tell You) which is heard on the World Radio Network (which is on Sirrus and other outlets in the U.S.), and an MSL journal of important issues called The Long Term View, can all be accessed on the internet, including by video and audio. For TV shows go to: www.mslaw.edu/about_tv.htm; for book talks go to: www.notedauthors.com; for conferences go to: www.mslawevents.com; for The Long Term View go to: www.mslaw.edu/about­_LTV.htm; and for the radio program go to: www.velvelonmedia.com.