nomination hearings, in their entirety, are available to watch online, anytime, at c-span. org. >> in light of the upcoming midterm elections, pictures of is a new elected member of congress. we asked this year's competitors, what is your -- and why? make it 5 to 6 minute video on what is your position on this issue. don't be afraid to take risks with your documentary, be bold. amongst the $100,000 in cash prizes, is a 5000-dollar grand prize. videos must be submitted by january 20th, 2023. visit our website at studentcam.org for more information and step-by-step guide. >> hello, welcome to another edition of at home with the roosevelts. i'm paul sparrow, director of the presidential library in hyde park, new york. we are recording this session on september 17th, which is constitution day. what better way to celebrate constitution day than talking about the supreme court. with two outstanding experts on the subject, no president had a more significant impact on the supreme court than fdr. he appointed eight justices during his administration, some of whom help change american democracy for the better. he got to the point that no supreme court justices during his first term, which was a point of extreme frustration for him. we will talk about that a little bit later. the role of the supreme court has changed over the years. today it certainly plays a central war in our political process. but make no mistake, the court has always been important. joining me today is professor john barrett professor of law at the st. john's university, and fellow of the robert h. jackson fellow. he is the writer of the jackson list, a popular email newsletter and website. and editor of jackson's acclaimed 2003 posthumous book, quote that man. an insider portrait of franklin d. roosevelt. the last new deal insider memoir. also with us today ralph blumenthal distinguished lecturer from baruch college in new york, a former new york times reporter, continues to be a contributor to the times and other publications. author of five books, including the believer about the harvard psychologist john mack who investigated ufos an alien encounters. he actually has a very direct connection with fdr, we will talk about that in a minute. we will start with professor barrett, give us a little bit of your background specifically with your work on justice robert jackson. >> thank you, paul for this opportunity, and really the privilege to be at the roosevelt library at homestead in every sense except actual. the path that led me to all of this was really being a lawyer in washington at first. i worked with the department of justice in different federal investigations for about seven years. i then became a law professor. among my areas public life, public figures, legal ethics and constitutional law. sort of a converging on the supreme court and the people on the core. robert jackson in particular. someone who was in roosevelt's cabinet as attorney general. was confirmed by the senate in five different jobs in a very short run of years. he became a big project. for our topic it matter that jackson was a named assistant attorney general in 1937, principal witness defending the president court backing plan, and then the solicitor general who over the next two years argued in defense of new deal laws constitutionality before the supreme court. it is the jackson path that brought me into this roosevelt world and the court performance the tide in. >> jackson was of course part of the nuremberg trials, we can talk about that separately. professor blumenthal, give us a little bit about your background both as a reporter and working at the library collection. one of the key members of fdr's administration. >> thank you paul. i really appreciate being on with you and john. i am a distinguished lecturer at baruch college as you mentioned. in that capacity we supervise our archives collection in the newman library, among which we have a collection of the papers on lutha halle gilles the third, as a member of the committee that really reorganize the executive branch for fdr. that came up right in the middle of the court packing fight. that is interesting. i also was on the new york times for 45 years. one of my happiest stories, actually, was being up at the roosevelt hohman library to do a story on top cottage in 2001 when it was renovated. also, i have written a lot about the holocaust, and of course robert jackson's role as prosecutor at nuremberg. it is a very sterling episode the prosecution of these nazi criminals. anyway, i should say, i came into the subject from a book called 168 days, which is a virtual diary of the court packing controversy, co-written by turner caliber, co-editor at the new york times when i started there. -- it is a wonderful account, not completely unbiased and we can discuss, of the day today struggles back and forth over the court packing controversy. it is a privilege to be here. >> cloud to have you here. for those of you don't know, tom cottage is a home that fdr bill in hyde park here. in the 1930s, he planned to move into and live in after he left the presidency. one of the first designed houses in america that was made to accommodate handicap person, with a wheelchair. there's no thresholds on the door. the doors and windows have lovers. i'm really is an architectural marvel. it is only open part of the time. it is part of the national park service collection of properties appear. they have eleanor home on south hill, the top cottage, the vanderbilt mansion. quick plug, anyone coming up to the hudson valley make sure you stop here and visit in. back to this subject at hand. let's talk about fdr's court packing scheme. john, set the scene. what were the circumstances that made fdr so frustrated with the court? and what he did he try to do to change it? >> i think you have to go back a little bit before his presidency and remember that we are in the great depression the stock market crashed in the fall of 1929, coincidentally during that term president herbert hoover had three supreme court appointment opportunities. he made great appointments, no denying that. it is the luck of the draw if the president gets vacancies. president trump got three, president hoover got three. president roosevelt elected in 1932, inaugurated in 33, and that first, term he got zero. as you mentioned paul. he had a super majority in both the house and the senate. there was an attack on legislation in the problems of japan -- the torpid voluntourism of the hoover air was replaced by the new deal. the new deal ran into a supreme court roadblock. in the course of that four-year term, not only did roosevelt have no chance to appoint justices but the nine who were there struck down major reform relief laws. here's a quick laundry list. national recovery act. the railroad retirement act. section three of the national recovery act. the fraser lumpy act. the tax component of the agricultural adjustment act. there were poll conservation act. the amendment to the bankruptcy law, and a state new york minimum wage law that was a state level counterpart progressive level. roosevelt was the popular, powerful, democratically response of president. the supreme court was a tremendous obstacle. reelected overwhelmingly in 1936, he decided to use his political capital on his supreme court problem. >> what did he do? what was his strategy? what was he trying to accomplish here. >> well, he took it very personally. actually, he had this dream that the supreme would cooperate with him in getting his programs going. now, maybe john can help me understand, and our listeners, whether roosevelt was being disingenuous or if he really believes the separation of powers did not apply to him. the idea that and he came up with the idea to appoint six new justices and then cooperate with them and he would cooperate. to get his program through it is insane to our way of thinking today. >> it is a mystery to me how much he believes that he could really merge these two branches of government. what happened is, he was really smarting under these rejections. although the court overturning of the nra actually probably helped him in retrospect, because it was so unpopular. he was resolved! it was really unlike him with his perfect temperament and his great sense of timing, his wonderful way of reading the country, he kind of lost it! he decided to put all of his chips on this plan to change the court. there were several, there were four actual proposals given to him by home or cummings, his attorney general. one with a constitutional amendment, which would be very difficult. one was statutory to change the jurisdiction of the court. they were various levels of tinkering. the last one was to add the provision that whenever a justice reached 70, he or she -- while he in those days, no she. he would have to step down. or roosevelt could appoint somebody to take his place. that was his plan. he somehow got convinced that this was doable. as john said, he had this wonderful supermajority. he coasted in with 27,000 votes, a huge majority in 1936. he had every reason to think that the country was just waiting. labor was on his side, liberals were on his side, that this would be welcome. of course, it was not! >> a little context here. the 1936 presidential election, as you mentioned, was the largest electoral landslide in american political history. i always think that fdr had extraordinary political instincts. they got him to where he was. elected and then reelected in a wheelchair is simply incredible on every level! during one of the darkest times in american history. i would also like to point out that he made the three biggest mistakes of his entire political career i think during that period after that landslide victory. he decided to pack the court, he decided he would primary the conservative southern democrats who are holding up legislation in congress, and he cut the budget, leading to the rose recession of 1937. as you said he lost it. he was so enthralling with his own success in popularity that he tried to do things that were way off path of with the american people wanted. john, talk a little bit about what's the reaction was when he put this forward. even his own party had trouble supporting him in this court packing scheme. >> yeah, the constitution does not prescribe a size for this supreme court. it is a creature of statute. originally it was six and went down to five, it's oscillated around in the 19th century. since the 1870s we have had a nine member court. it's now been 60 years of the country being used to nine as if it is etched in marble. that is a visceral reaction trying to grow the court in 15 with one fell swoop of trying to fill it with like-minded and -- it was somehow un-american even though it is an unconstitutional. it opened up some of the fault lines in the democratic party. there were old barons who were the committee chairman's. there were southern segregationist to a part of this coalition that roosevelt was trying to hold together. the court and the target was not such a publicly notoriously evil institution. especially the way that roosevelt spun it out. he claimed in the announcement that the justices were so far behind on their work. there was a pile of unaddressed certiorari petitions. which was jargon and just not true. he also claimed that these aging justices no longer had the fastball. that was a hard thing to claim about louis brandeis, the oldest of the bunch! that's been sort of hit a wall of hostility. it immediately became controversial. roosevelt did try to recalibrate. robert jackson was one of the people who told him, you need to start telling the truth about this! it's not about age it's not about backlog it is about interpretations that particularly be for most conservative justices have poured into their constitution. they have read state powers to protect our welfare and use their police powers must to restrictively. it is about the core putting its political preferences in place of the proper understanding of the constitution. democracy can and should respond by appointing more straight shooters. i would even say more conservative justices in terms of constitutional interpretation as opposed to these four horsemen radicals. >> if i could just jump in here, it wasn't dead in the water from the beginning. it might've seem like it would be because vice president garner came out of the meeting where the news was sprung on him holding his nose and going like this. he had a shot a good shot at getting this through. because of all the reasons we mentioned. his popularity, the election landslide, et cetera. through a series of almost biblical, greek, whatever you want to call them, missteps, he succeeded in sabotaging himself. even though it was not a popular thing to change the third branch of government, it could've been done. had it been handled differently. it is not just self sabotage. there are external events. a couple of things that happened in that 30 30 or 40 days. announcing the plan in february, early march the senate hearings are happening. the supreme court justices sent a letter to the chairman of the committee that says we are current on our work. they blow up that cover story. then the supreme court in mid march starts to hand down decisions upholding new deal laws. all of a sudden the supreme court problem is receding. a statement imam wages upheld. the national liberal nation is upheld. social security is argued that spring. in may it's constitutional is upheld. that confluence of events made it really much less necessary to do something dramatic. >> of course that changes one of the decisions that led to one of the great catchphrases of supreme court history. a switch in nine states time. >> as roosevelt as i said in my notes, he would not take yes for an answer. the courts went out of their way, enough if they decide the decisions in order to placate him. that was a good question. was it done with design. did they see the lie in reliving need to uphold the good new deal programs. for whatever reason the court gave him what he wanted. basically, i don't know if you want to use this image but it dug his grave for him and he jumped in. he didn't have to. it really is amazing how he missed all the signals and just plowed ahead. he was determined to remake that court. put up to six that would carry through his programs. it is just astounding. it is still a political mystery. the turner callan's book that i reference, he and else up interviewed everybody but the president. we don't know, i don't know maybe john knows. in roosevelt's own riding and what has come out in his papers about what his thinking was about this. why he wouldn't take yes for an answer. >> he was much too careful to leave a paper trail on anything! [laughs] >> we have a question from the audience, i hope i pronounce this way. camilla -- how do we know that core packing was unpopular? outside of the conservative voice of the court? did average americans in the 1930s have a strong opinion on the court? >> the two strong constituencies of roosevelt, farmers and labor, and liberals -- they all turned against a pretty quickly! he lost his natural constituency. it was not popular from the beginning. it is interesting. he thought, roosevelt thought it might be. which is why he embarked on it! he started losing his natural allies from the beginning. am i right on that, john? >> no, i think that's correct. look at the mailbags. some of which is archive there. >> we have millions of letters! >> you can measure, page by page, the public reaction. a lot of it is very critical. look at the congressional committee votes. ultimately the congressional committee reports. it rejects the first version of the proposed bill. and the urgency is receding in the springtime, the presidency does pull back. it was a second version that expands the courts buy two seats that he well would have one had that been pushed through to a vote. he kind of had to deal with the senate majority leader, senator robinson from arkansas, who would get that over the finish line. roosevelt had frankly promised him a supreme court appointment, one of those two seats. he was making nice, a jefferson island picnic with all the members of congress early that summer. robinson drop dead right after the fourth of july. at that point, one more development justice band of inter announced he was resigning. roosevelt finally felt he had a vacancy to fill! at that point, just none of it was worth any more trouble. we live with nine, you can see the dominoes. black is appointed in august, read the next year. both felix in a dog with the next year. frank murphy the next year. robert jackson and james burns the next year. these eight roosevelt appointees just one after another in the wings, starting in the summer of 37. >> there were so many opportunities for him to compromise. not so much cummings, who was a true believer as his attorney general, but others came to him, repeatedly, with offers. wheeler, montana -- with offers to compromise. he just wouldn't have it! he was dead set on moving ahead. he wouldn't even recognize the reality of what was happening. his own allies were coming to him with stories about what's going on out there. how he was losing, you know, support -- constituencies. he was very bull headed in that. it is extraordinary. the sense of timing that we credit him with, the exquisite sensitivity to political wins. he just was dead set on this. >> there is a little colonel in this that i think is maybe an explanation of that. home are cummings, the attorney general, was really the harassment and the proponent in this. part of the problem on the supreme court was justice james make reynolds. he was one of the four horsemen. he was a wilson appointee. he had been in the wilson administration with fdr. as attorney general, mick reynolds had drafted, in effect, a court packing plan. when cummings found that in told it to roosevelt they both thought it was such an incredibly wonderful car mixing to take on mcreynolds with this proposal. i think they got too attached to the idea. that held their enthusiasm in february, march, and into the springtime finally before recalibration started. >> we have another question from my wife, what's determines what's level of justices are on the court? does congress have the power to change that number? could they change it down? as you said earlier, it's been five, it's been seven. you know, is that? >> it is entirely a statutory manner. it is an axe judiciary act, if you will. to create a supreme court seat, if one became vacant and could've all-ish one. i do not think a law can abolish a sitting justice. the constitution protects against that. also in older history and in recent history we have seen that the senate has the power to sit on a nomination. that happened under president under president andrew johnson, it happened under president obama for a stretch in 2016. >> also congress has the power to limit the jurisdiction of the court. it can say that the court would need a supermajority to overrule any decisions. thank can tinker with the mandate of the court in so many different ways. we think that is somehow protected in the constitution but it is not. congress could not only change the number of justices but reorganize their responsibilities. >> i want to go back to something that john was talking about which was this string starting in the second term of the administration going forward, disappointment of eight justices. i will ask you both into question, like who is your favorite child. of the a, who do you think was the most significant employment that he made, in terms of both changing the core and changing america? >> john, point to you first. >> i have a bias but i think it is well founded, in favor of robert jackson. i think he was such a special, incredible talent. a beautiful probably the best rider in the courts history. a case by case jurist. he did not pigeonhole easily. it turned out to be quite a fractious court. this rose about court that began in the late 30s and lived on to the late 50s. jackson was kind of more on the conservative side, but in the middle if you will. a much more a case of time person. he was the exception in the japanese american exclusion cases. and of talent jackson is the person. in terms of significance, i may be hugo black because he broke the ice. that really started the flow. and of course black served until 1971, a long and distinguished career. perhaps overcoming the stigma of having been a ku klux klan member, not coming out just after he was appointed to the court, undeniably. he chartered and egalitarian path of our constitutional law. by the late 1940s, he really had becoming the leading liberties justice. he was that, for most of his career, i think he is also very important. i have two children, i don't pick save a children. i look at these justices and think, really, that is an all-star team! quite a talented roster with almost no exceptions. >> who do you put your money on, ralph? >> i would say black also. it's interesting that rose about claimed him. he probably was blindsided. he didn't really do his homework i'm black and his klain membership, although it did end up pretty irrelevant based on the direction that he took on the court. it's also interesting that there was this deal to appoint joe robinson to the vacancy after advantage retired. robinson, of course, was carrying the president water off through the court packing case. he with the senate majority leader who literally worked himself to death and die before he could be appointed to the court. roosevelt turned on him. he was afraid as a southerner he wouldn't carry through his liberal agenda. he left robinson hanging. really a very sad episode in history. robinson, i found out, his best friend was bernard baroque, i didn't know that. -- >> there is a college named after him isn't there? >> well, that's where i work. baruch college, but rookie of course being a famous financial adviser to fdr. it is strange just the way things turned that whole thing could've been settled long before it went down to defeat. if the plan had been carried through rose about would've appointed robinson to compromise and maybe a 0. 2 justices not go for the full six. as i keep coming back to this he was adamant that he was going to have his way or the highway. >> all i have two more quick comments about the appointees. i want to flag felix frankfurter he was of course brilliant and his career i think most closely to the judicial restraint model that actually the court packing model is about that our country should be made by our elective representatives it is the supreme court's job to get out of the way of a national government. and stake a vermont have ample powers in our system. so frankfurter it's sort of a through line. also just a charming in fascinating character. the other person that i think we all forget is that roosevelt elevated harlan fixed gellin to be a republican a coolidge appointee to the court, in the 1920s. roosevelt did that in the summer of 1941 as a sort of bipartisan non political move. that is a lost are. that was a great thing for the president to do. >> he was a member of the liberal minority, wasn't he? >> that's correct, he was not one of the four horsemen. >> interestingly, frankfurter actually oppose the court packing plan, right? >> in his private heart, he held his powder and did not do anything publicly. >> roosevelt became very frustrated with frankfurter. we are going to go back in time for a minute and then we are going to come up to the present day. i want to go back to talk about why the supreme court has this power to determine what is constitutional law and what is not. it goes back to the very founding days of the early 1800s with the rather extraordinary legal case of lamar barry versus madison. let's talk about this and why this it laid the foundation of why the supreme court gets the final say >> was that to me well ma barry versus madison except the supreme court to rule on all legal battles in the government. it is not in the constitution they took on that power later on it was deemed worthwhile in terms of bounced power without that the court would have been a really weak sister to the other two branches it is an interesting example of how the founding fathers hadn't thought of that once the court came up with it everyone said this is a good idea, the court should have that power! it became ingrained in our system. we can't think of what it would be like without it so it really is a great example of how the constitution is a living document it just added this element and never had in the beginning. everybody said, that's a good idea. >> there is in marbury a sort of logic that gets them to the power to engage in judicial review. the court has to decide cases, it decides cases that arrived under the constitution. sometimes a provision of the constitution might be in conflict with a statute. -- the answer is the constitution defeats a statute. the court strikes down a unconstitutional statute in the context of a case. the power of judicial review though is different than that answer becoming the authoritative last word. >> right. >> judicial review becoming a judicial supremacy. i think that process is something that we also to wrestle with. with the court packing plane was pushing back on was judicial supremacy being asserted over a new deal laws in the early 1930s. robert jackson wrote a whole book about this called the struggle for judicial supremacy, published just as he became attorney general in the 1940s. historically in the supreme court it became institution that inflated itself as big as it could get away with, as we would let it get up -- and marbury was the start. they left that road to big. other times we push back. a 1937 court packing issue is one. judicial for by individual justices is another. proposals for court reform today, obviously, would be in that vein. >> so we have got some good questions coming in now. please, if you have a question just put it in the chat. joanne morris wants know what argument was given for increasing the court from 6 to 9 in the first place? when and who did this? did they face similar opposition? that's a great question. >> it was not in one fell swoop. generally it relates to the structure and creation of the lower federal courts. as the number of circuit court grew, a corresponding supreme court justice because of the circuit riding responsibilities, it largely explains the early growth oscillation. those circuit panels were injustice visiting in riding and joining the circuit court activity. i think bennett is workload driven. there is more and more cases coming within the jurisdiction of the court, i'm sure the supreme court was communicating to the congress that they could use another guy up here! laws grow the size of the court. that is what largely got off to nine. >> a lot of political and more workload? >> i think structural for the judiciary and workload. the political moment is more in the civil war non-filling vacancies. the legal tender case was pending before the supreme court and basically congress let the court shrink rather than that andrew jackson grow the core in the wrong direction, that might have threatened reconstruction. >> one of the original proposals for reform in the court along with the packing west to designate different districts for each of the justices, right? they would come from nine different parts of the country and all that. they would be limiting roosevelt, trying to think of two people. wasn't robinson from one place? arkansas or something? somebody came from the same place as another justice, he had to be ruled out. that was one of the ideas to trying to get the justices picked from different parts of the country. we have a question from princess michelle, your highness, do you have any information on how president fdr celebrated the american holiday thanksgiving. my mom and dad were born here during his term of service in the usa. my mom was born in the american holiday thanksgiving. i can answer a little bit of this. for many years, fdr would celebrate thanksgiving in palm springs, georgia, after the rehabilitation center for polio that he created down there. he bought an old rundown spa and created the world's lead polio research center. he will go down there every thanksgiving in spend time with the patients in the mid 1920s, he first got polio he went there for quite a while when he first became president. as president he went down there and he could drop his act. he could let people know that he was crippled, handicapped, he could swim in the pool with them. they called him doc roosevelt. it was a tradition that really meant a great deal to him. good question. >> that image from photographs was the first thing that came to mind when i heard the question. the other thing i know but not in detail is that the date of thanksgiving, that particular thursday was standardized under roosevelt. so it made it more of a national holiday, a fixed date. >> it was standardized because because it created a controversy. retail industry asked him to move it up earlier so they had a longer period between thanksgiving and christmas for people to buy things. he moved it, there was such an outcry about it that he had to move back and solidify that date forever. >> you mentioned polio, we should not let -- >> we lost ralph for a second. technical wizardry. >> and i'm back? are you back? >> yes. >> has that, is that better? is that all right? so, this is the 100th anniversary of fdr's polio in 1921 that of course made him a great leader that he was. he gave him the empathy, they gave him the strength the power to overcome adversity all these things that abandon him during the court packing thing. the embassy, his wisdom, the only thing he had left with his strength. he had that in access, maybe too much in this case. it is interesting that this is that important anniversary. which history could've been different. he may never have developed into the later he was if he hadn't had that adversity to battle against. >> i absolutely believe that. we have a great question which has come in from christopher d.. was jane hampered's appointment roosevelt's way of paying him back for not taking him on as vice president? a little political history here as well as a court history. certainly a interesting character. threatening to run against brazil as well. any comments on that? >> i'm not sure how explicit that was. it's 1941, after 1940 has occurred and it's over and done. i'm not sure what's said under burns would have gone to a third term president. they obviously had a fine relationship. roosevelt had a high regard for his talent. not only because he put him on the court, and a year later when burns hated the job anyway, roosevelt pulled him out of the court and into the white house and had him manage the economy during the war. i think lawrence was and executive branch manager or legislator way ahead of being a judge. >> right. do you agree with that, ralph? >> all will defer to john here. much more of an expert than i am. the people who end up being with the president on this court packing thing the ones who are against him it was really loyal group, tommy cochrane, others who stood with him at a time when so many other people were abandoning him. wheeler, and connally and others. garner, of course! so, it is interesting that he had a small circle of people. and jackson! you know, jackson was one of the people that really stood by the president, right john? that is right. in many more, the one that was never published in his lifetime, i had the luck to find the manuscript and these families support to publish it. in four pages, he tells his experience with court packing. he recounts going over to the president, to the white house, for a meeting with the inner team in february when this has been announced. it is off to a bumpy start. jackson is telling the president, before you go fishing, before you head out of washington, you need to have another crack at explaining this. a pile of unaddressed certiaries -- is not during the day. roosevelt, according to jackson, positive, that is a terrible explanation, isn't it. they went into a fireside chat and started to tell the truth. it was more of a political process that had a chance thereafter. >> we have a lot of questions coming in. we want to jump over to a question from camilla about the connection between justices and political perspectives. the question is, did the 1930s justices have the similar controversies or is this a modern development in terms of over political connections outside of the court system? we will start with you, ralph, on that one. >> i would tell you that the book, 168 days, opened my eyes to the poison atmosphere in washington. i had a new deal as the program that everyone subscribed to and sailed through that roosevelt saved the country. then you look back and we think that our time is full of internalized, strive, and political poison. what went on back then, it is amazing. the court, i do not know how much the court itself took part in that. we do not know. the book itself does not know what went on behind closed doors. we still don't know. certainly all around the court, the atmosphere in washington at those days was murderous. in that sense, nothing has changed. >> if i am understanding the question, if she's asking about supreme court appointments, where there poisonous fights in that context? generally, no. roosevelt had a big majority in the senate. he could get his appointees confirmed. that is a fundemental difference between his time in our time. the one that did not have hard sailing but an ugly whispering campaign around it from the bad side with the nomination of frankfurt in 39 and the antisemitic reaction to that. frankly, the hold -- the whole nomination -- was roosevelt not giving a about antisemitism. he flicked his chin at adolf hitler by putting america's leading lawyer and prominent american and you on the supreme court. >> also, the senatorial courtesy in those days was very strong. when and if roosevelt nominated a senator like hugo black, that immediately sailed through because it is courtesy. i do not know if we still have that today. >> it seems highly unlikely. there is a sense that many people have today, taking the people that are not history buffs, that this contentious nature of the supreme court's new. it is a new phenomenon. it used to be that they would just sit in their robes and the supreme court would hand out things. everything was fine. have you heard about brown versus board of education? it is an interesting thing to look at because of the connection that it has to the roosevelt court. it is perhaps there was no decision in the american history that has had more significant consequences on the way that millions of americans would. talk about how this came about and why it was such a revolutionary decision. it took them out of traditional roles. let's start with john. >> that is a huge question. in the starting point is obviously the creation of this country as a slave country with our constitution ducking that moral con destruct as the price of ratifying a unity of slave states and previous states and a race through the 19th century, the civil war, the minutes after the civil war. this is fundamental historic reality and our permanent challenge. it is our deepest sin. we won world war ii with a segregated army fighting against racial supremacy siri opponents. that all came home and had to get settled out. the dissonance of not, nazism, impaired pull japan, and going home to being a separate country. this is what the w cpa attacks. it is what's a court full of roosevelt appointees would still. frankfort, jackson, black, douglas, they are the heart of the court. they begin to deal with this in the late 1940s. they are the leading edge. for them, this is not at all a hard question and morally, or personally. in various ways, it is a challenging legal question. the guys who wrote the 14th amendment or segregationists. frankly, jimmy burns, who we are talking about at this point is the governor of south carolina. he is a segregationist. the supreme court, with owen williams leadership and -- in a series of decisions, worked its way to give meaning to the equal protection clause. >> i think it is our finest moment in constitutional history. >> and you could not draw a clear vision between the congress and the court at that time. congress was controlled by saint southerners by the majority system. groups like aggregations, powerful chairmen, people who roosevelt had dealt with all throughout his administration's yet here we have a supreme court that is taking a radically different approach to equality, and you shape of americans acai. if i get it in up to congress we never want to segregated the schools. >> i find it an interesting book and to the other cases that came up during the roosevelt demonstration where this idea of protections of american i. d. ills were thrown out the window. i have to wonder what those conversations were like. as you pointed, out jackson is the dissenting voice in the non judicial sense. the case stressed the court in a way that forced it to make a decision. you are in the midst of this war and you have this fear gripping the country. how did this decision come down? why did they not acknowledge the constitutional rights of american citizens who have to have japanese ancestors? >> they did and they did not. the court decides these series of japanese american in a slow walk. the curfew cases not get decide until 43. internment cases do not get decided until late 44. at this point, the war in the pacific is far offshore approach approaching japan. this is through the island hopping carnage that we were winning. imperative of national security is gone by that time. the majority fictionalizes at the time when the president of the army decided that we had a security decision. -- national security is a real thing. it is a vital thing. it's also something that can be held as a crutch. the supreme court was beaten down by the claim of national security. >> and you only have to look at this climate in this country after 9/11 to see how inflamed the society can be by the pearl harbor attack, 9/11 attacks, and more recently, all the statues that were passed around militarizing the police. they were invading our privacy, monitoring the muslim community, the patriot act, so we do not have to look back that far to understand the mentality of the country after pearl harbor. look what happened after 9/11. >> i think it is interesting that the supreme court played eight key role in whether these muslim ban, travel bans, were constitutional. they found themselves in the middle does a political firestorm as it has for so many cases when president biden was elected after supreme justice being appointed by trump, there was this movement that he should pack the court. walk us through, we will start with you john, what this would've been? how can this even happen in today's political environment? well with this process look like today? >> they are not votes, she's not the political priority. the meaning is exactly would proposed in 1837 there is no basis to think that the ordinary process was manipulated both in 2016 and in 2020. after the death of justice scalia and -- these two were being consequential appointments that distorted something that should have naturally been the other way. president biden, i think, probably, wants to spend no political capital. he began a commission that was started by brilliant academics who have been talking, and studying, writing. there are a range of proposals ranging from statues to constitutional amendments to retirement schemes and rotations that would depoliticize the court that could be talking without a constitutional amendment. in other words, justices for good behavior, which is interpreted to mean for life. this doesn't necessarily mean we have the right sit on supreme court cases. this is until one expires. it can be structured that they move into service court or become a senior bench in the recusal or something. they want to give it to be justices. in the meantime, it would be a vacancy that would be created. let's say every president in a four-year term got two appointments, that would be a much more regular thing. that might take some of the political venom out of this process. of course, it would take a statute. it might be challenged. it is ironic to see how the supreme court would be asked in deciding them. after we got past that he would take some number of years before we were in the new regime of orderly and less politicized supreme court opponents. it's a very hard question. >> also, when roosevelt came up with this court plan, it was immediately seized upon that one of the justices -- not cardoza. anyway, he was great and really popular. now because people are living longer, that age does not seem to old anymore. secondly, look at the differences between biden and fdr. biden is much more careful, not as sure footed in a political animal or good politically as roosevelt. biden did not come off a 27 million vote landslide, 27 million vote landslide that fdr did in 36. they are different people. roosevelt is very headstrong on this issue. biden is not committed to this issue, from what i can see. the latest refusal of the court to delve into the texas abortion law really threw a new element into the debate. a lot of you are thinking that biden is not going to invest his prestige on this issue. now this is of all issues is very valuable. it caused a lot of decisions like that by the court and they may move this panel to come up with something. we've got a couple of questions that have come in that are not strictly related to the court. i will try to answer a couple of them. princess michelle asked again who was franklin roosevelt friends with from the monarchy and government from the united kingdom. very famously he invited the king in queen of england to come to america in 1939. americans say, hopefully realize that they didn't particularly like the british monarchy. a matter of fact i had a very low popularity ratings. the previous king had advocated because he married an american. there was a real sense that the english monarchy did not want anything to do. roosevelt knew that we had to solidify a relationship with them. the war was coming! he knew the war was coming. he knew that britain would be a critical ally. he invites the king and queen, they have a big fancy dinner in washington. they come up here to hyde park, fdr famously has the hot dog picnic up at the cottage. where he serves hot dogs to the king and queen. they feared other things to. i think you talk a little bit about that ralph in your article. >> i think they tried to serve some sort of a foodie cocktail to winston churchill who spat it out. [laughs] absolutely, that was a famous episode. roosevelt saw the need to cultivate closer relations with england. it very well could have lost the war once and for all for the west. he had this wonderful relationship with churchill, of course. i think roosevelt addressed him as, i forget -- by a navy title. >> he was the former naval person. >> former naval person, right. >> they started the correspondence when he was still the first corner of the admiralty before he became prime minister. in that case he would refer to him as a naval person. president of the united states is not supposed to be talking to the british navy. he later referred to him as the former naval person. >> i spent the pandemic reading all six volumes of churchill forward to history. it's the only good thing that came out of the pandemic. >> we have another quick question, we are running out of time here. question from andrew smith, i appreciate the importance of the supreme court stuff. i wonder if you have planned to have another conversation on fdr subjects in the future. first of all we've been doing this for a year and a half. each week or two we do a new program. we did the education specialist or the curator, they are all available on our youtube page. our facebook videos. we have done everything with fdr's relationship with different presidents such as eisenhower or johnson, the great depression, the yalta conference, there is a lot of material there. we had to start -- i think we've done 75 of these conversations with authors and historians. please we have lots of content! we will continue to do this, hopefully someday as the pandemic eases we will go back to doing live programs. at which point we will continue the live streams and records them and put them on our youtube that we have a collection of this content. this is going to be the last question. it is a really good one. it's from joanne moore. isn't a lifetime appointment isn't supposed to be a way to avoid politicization and justices feeling beholden to a certain president or political viewpoint? >> lifetime appointment. ralph, we'll start with you? john after. that was the -- that was the idea, it refers to federal judges below the supreme court and the core. it is a wonderful mechanism for insulating them from the day-to-day political pressures. a used to be the fbi director had something similar, a tenured term that isolated ham. i think it worked well historically. i think it could be very difficult to take that away. i defer to johnson fatigued here. >> now, i agree completely. it is valuable insulation. the question is, how much do you need? lifetimes today can be very long things. if there is a way to permit a justice to serve out beyond the politics of his or her appointed moment that is desirable in insulates them. i don't think that needs to be 30, 40, or 50 years. although due to heart disease robert jackson died at age 62 after serving only four years on the court. one of those he was a wall being a prosecutor at nuremberg. one can make his or her mark doing great service on the supreme court without needing many many decades. also if we are not trying to play forever, we might not prioritize appointing ever younger people. perhaps we will get more of the career wisdom and experience more senior people. 68 70-year-old people, including people who have held high public office
>> if you are enjoying american history tv, and sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen to receive the weekly schedule, like lectures in history, the presidency and more. sign up for the newsletter today and be sure to watch american history tv every saturday or anytime online at c-span.org slash history. >> hello. welcome to another addition of at home with the roosevelts. i am paul sparrow, the denver rector -- and we are recording this session on september 17th, which is constitution day. what better way to celebrate constitution day than to talk about the supreme court? with two outstanding experts on the subject. no president had a more significant impact on the supreme court than fdr. he appointed eight justices during his administration, some of whom helped change american democracy for the better. he got to a point -- which was a point of extreme frustration for him and we will get around to talking to that. the role of the supreme court changed over the years and certainly today, it plays a central role in our political process, but make no mistake, the court has always been political. joining me today is -- professor of law at st. john's university and the -- he has the biographer of justice jackson -- and editor of jackson's acclaimed 2003 posthumous book, quote, that man, and insiders portrait of franklin d. roosevelt, the last new deal -- also today, i distinguished lecture -- former new york times reporter and continues to be a periodic contributor to the times and other -- he's the author of five books, including the believer, about the harvard psychologist -- but he actually has a very direct connection to fdr and his administration and we'll talk about that in a minute. we will start with professor barrett. give us a little bit of your background and specifically, your work on justice robert jackson. >> thank you for this opportunity and for the chance to be -- the path that led me to all of this was really being a lawyer in washington at first. i worked at the department of justice for about seven years and then became a law professor among my areas, public life, public figures, legal ethics and constitutional law and sort of a converging on the supreme court and the people on the court. and robert jackson in particular was someone who was in roosevelt's cabin and his attorney general, was confirmed by the senate through roosevelts appointments to five separate jobs in a very short run of years. he came on a big project. and for our topic, it matters that jackson was an assistant attorney general in 1937. a principal witness defending the presidents court backing plan and then the solicitor general, who over the next two years, argued in defense of new deal laws, constitutionality before the supreme court, so it is the jackson path that brought me into this roosevelt world and court reform as a topic. >> jackson was also part of the nuremberg trials. we can talk about that separately. professor blumenthal, give us a little bit about your background both as a reporter and working at the library collection. one of the key members of fdr's administration. >> thank you paul. i really appreciate being on with you and john. i am a distinguished lecturer at baruch college as you mentioned. in that capacity we supervise our archives collection in the newman library, among which we have a collection of the papers on looser halle gilles the third, as a member of the committee that really reorganize the executive branch for fdr. that came up right in the middle of the court packing fight. that is interesting. i also was on the new york times for 45 years. one of my happiest stories, actually, was being up at the roosevelt hohman library to do a story on top cottage in 2001 when it was renovated. also, i have written a lot about the holocaust, and of course robert jackson's role as prosecutor at nuremberg. it is a very sterling episode the prosecution of these nazi criminals. anyway, i should say, i came into the subject from a book called 168 days, which is a virtual diary of the court packing controversy, co-written by turner caliber, co-editor at the new york times when i started there. -- it is a wonderful account, not completely unbiased and we can discuss, of the day today struggles back and forth over the court packing controversy. it is a privilege to be here. >> cloud to have you here. for those of you don't know, tom cottage is a home that fdr bill in hyde park here. in the 1930s, he planned to move into and live and after he left the presidency. one of the fully design houses in america that was made to accommodate handicap person, with a wheelchair. there's no thresholds on the door. the doors and windows have lovers. i'm really is an architectural marvel. it is only open part of the time. it is part of the national park service collection of properties appear. they have eleanor home on south hill, the top cottage, the vanderbilt mansion. quick plug, anyone coming up to the hudson valley make sure you stop here and visit in. back to this subject at hand. let's talk about fdr's court packing scheme. john, set the scene. what were the circumstances that made fdr so frustrated with the court. when he is done, why did he -- and what he did he try to do to change? >> i think you have to go back a little bit before his presidency and remember that we are in the great depression the stock market crashed in the fall of 1929, coincidentally during that term president herbert hoover had three supreme court appointment opportunities. he made great appointments, no denying that. it is the luck of the draw if the president gets vacancies. president trump got three, president hoover got three. president roosevelt in 1932, inaugurated and 33, and that first four-year term he got zero. as you mentioned paul. he had a super majority in both the house and the senate. there was an attack on legislation in the problems of japan -- the torpid voluntourism of the hoover air was replaced by the new deal. the new deal ran into a supreme court roadblock. in the course of that four-year term, not only did roosevelt have no chance to appoint justices but the nine who were there struck down major reform relief laws. here's a quick laundry list. national recovery act. the railroad retirement act. section three of the national recovery act. the fraser lumpy act. the tax component of the agricultural adjustment act. there were poll conservation act. the amendment to the bankruptcy law, and a state new york minimum wage law that was a state level counterpart progressive level. roosevelt was the popular, powerful, democratically response of president. the supreme court was a tremendous obstacle. reelected overwhelmingly in 1936, he decided to use his political capital on his supreme court problem. >> what did he do? what was his strategy? what was he trying to accomplish here. >> well, he took it very personally. actually, he had this dream that the supreme would cooperate with him in getting his programs going. now, maybe john can help me understand, and our listeners, whether roosevelt was being disingenuous or if he really believes the separation of powers did not apply to him. the idea that and he came up with the idea to appoint six new justices and then cooperate with them and he would cooperate. to get his program through it is insane to our way of thinking today. >> it is a mystery to me how much he believes that he could really merge these two branches of government. what happened is, he was really smarting under these rejections. although the court overturning of the nra actually probably helped him in retrospect, because it was so unpopular. he was resolved! it was really unlike him with his perfect temperament and his great sense of timing, his wonderful way of reading the country, he kind of lost it! he decided to put all of his chips on this plan to change the core. there were several, there were four actual proposals given to him by home or cummings, his attorney general. one with a constitutional amendment, which would be very difficult. one was statutory to change the jurisdiction of the court. they were various levels of tinkering. the last one was to add the provision that whenever a justice reach 70, he or she -- while he in those days, now she. he would have to step down. or roosevelt could appoint somebody to take his place. that was his plan. he somehow got convinced that this was doable. as john said, he had this wonderful supermajority. he coasted in with 27,000 votes, a huge majority in 1936. he had every reason to think that the country was just waiting. labor was on his side, liberals were on his side, that this would be welcome. of course, it was not! >> a little context here. the 1936 presidential election, as you mentioned, was the largest electoral landslide in american political history. i always think that fdr had extraordinary political instincts. they got him to where he was. elected and then reelected in a wheelchair is simply incredible on every level! during one of the darkest times in american history. i would also like to point out that he made the three biggest mistakes of his entire political career i think during that period after that landslide victory. he decided to pack the court, he decided he would primary the conservative southern democrats who are holding up legislation in congress, and he cut the budget, leading to the rose about recession of 1937. as you said he lost it. he was so enthralling with his own success in popularity that he tried to do things that were way off path of with the american people wanted. john, talk a little bit about what's the reaction was when he put this forward. even his own party had trouble supporting him in this court packing scheme. >> yeah, the constitution does not prescribe a size for this is cream court. it is a creature of statute. originally it was six and went down to five, it's oscillated around in the 19th century. since the 1870s we have had a nine member court. it's now been 60 years of the country being used to nine as if it is etched in marvel. that is they -- trying to grow the court in 15 with one fell swoop of trying to fill it with like-minded and -- it was somehow un-american even though it is an unconstitutional. it opened up some of the fault lines in the democratic party. there were old barons who were the committee chairman's. there were southern segregationist to a part of this coalition that roosevelt was trying to hold together. the court and the target was not such a publicly notoriously evil institution. especially the way that roosevelt spun it out. he claimed in the announcement that the justices were so far behind on their work. there was a pile of unaddressed certiorari petitions. which was jargon in just not true. he also claim that these aging justices no longer had the fastball. that was a hard thing to claim about louis brandeis, the oldest of the bunch! that's been sort of hit a wall of hostility. it immediately became controversial. roosevelt did try to recalibrate. robert jackson was one of the people who told him, you need to start telling the truth about this! it's not about age it's not about backlog it is about interpretations that particularly be for most conservative justices have porn into their constitution. >> they have red state powers to protect our welfare and use their police powers must to restrictively. it is about the core putting its political preferences in place of the proper understanding of the constitution. democracy can and should respond by appointing more straight shooters. i would even say more conservative justices in terms of constitutional -- as opposed to these four horsemen radicals. >> if i could just jump in here, it wasn't dead in the water from the beginning. it might've seem like it would be because vice president garner came out of the meeting where the news was sprung on him holding his nose and going like this. he had a shot a good shot at getting this through. because of all the reasons we mentioned. his popularity, the election landslide, et cetera. through a series of almost biblical, greek, whatever you want to call them, missteps, he succeeded in sabotaging himself. even though it was not a popular thing to change the third branch of government, it could've been done. had it been handled differently. it is not just self sabotage. there are external events. a couple of things that happened in that 30 30 or 40 days. announcing the plan in february, early march the senate hearings are happening. the supreme court justices sent a letter to the chairman of the committee that says we are current on our work. they blow up that cover story. then the supreme court in mid march starts to hand down decisions upholding new deal laws. all of a sudden the supreme court problem is receding. a statement imam wages upheld. the national liberal nation is upheld. social security is argued that spring. in may it's constitutional is upheld. that confluence of events made it really much less necessary to do something dramatic. >> of course that changes one of the decisions that led to one of the great catchphrases of supreme court history. a switch in nine states time. >> as roosevelt other said in my notes, he would not take yes for an answer. the courts went out of their way, enough if they decide the decisions in order to placate him. that was a good question. was it done with design. did they see the lie in reliving need to uphold the good new deal programs. for whatever reason the court gave him what he wanted. basically, i don't know if you want to use this image but it dug his grave for him and he jumped in. he didn't have to. it really is amazing how he missed all the signals and just plowed ahead. he was determined to remake that court. put up to six that would carry through his programs. it is just astounding. it is still a political mystery. the turner callan's book that i reference, he and else up interviewed everybody but the president. we don't know, i don't know maybe john knows. in roosevelt's own riding and what has come out in his papers about what his thinking was about this. why he wouldn't take yes for an answer. >> he was much too careful to leave a paper trail on anything! [laughs] >> we have a question from the audience, i hope i pronounce this way. camilla -- how do we know that core packing was unpopular? outside of the conservative voice of the court? did average americans in the 1930s have a strong opinion on the court? >> the two strong constituencies of roosevelt, farmers and labor, and liberals -- they all turned against a pretty quickly! he lost his natural constituency. it was not popular from the beginning. it is interesting. he thought, roosevelt thought it might be. which is why he embarked on a! he started losing his natural allies from the beginning. am i right on that, john? >> no, i think that's correct. look at the mailbags. some of which is archive there. >> we have millions of letters! >> you can measure, page by page, the public reaction. a lot of it is very critical. look at the congressional committee votes. ultimately the congressional committee reports. it rejects the first version of the proposed bill. and the urgency is receding in the springtime, the presidency does pull back. it was a second version that expands the courts buy two seats that he well would have one had that been pushed through to a vote. he kind of had to deal with the senate majority leader, senator robinson from arkansas, who would get that over the finish line. roosevelt had frankly promised him a supreme court appointment, one of those two seats. he was making nice, a jefferson island picnic with all the members of congress early that summer. robinson drop dead right after the fourth of july. at that point, one more development justice band of inter announced he was resigning. roosevelt finally felt he had a vacancy to fill! at that point, just none of it was worth any more trouble. we live with nine, you can see the dominoes. black is appointed in august, read the next year. both felix in a dog with the next year. frank murphy the next year. robert jackson and james burns the next year. these eight roosevelt appointees just one after another in the wings, starting in the summer of 37. >> there were so many opportunities for him to compromise. not so much cummings, who was a true believer as his attorney general, but others came to him, repeatedly, with offers. wheeler, montana -- with offers to compromise. he just wouldn't have it! he was dead set on moving ahead. he wouldn't even recognize the reality of what was happening. his own allies were coming to him with stories about what's going on out there. how he was losing, you know, support -- constituencies. he was very bull headed in that. it is extraordinary. the sense of timing that we credit him with, the exquisite sensitivity to political wins. he just was dead set on this. >> there is a little colonel in this that i think is maybe an explanation of that. home are cummings, the attorney general, was really the harassment and the proponent in this. part of the problem on the supreme court was justice james make reynolds. he was one of the four horsemen. he was a wilson appointee. he had been in the wilson administration with fdr. as attorney general, mick reynolds had drafted, in effect, a court packing plan. when cummings found that in told it to roosevelt they both thought it was such an incredibly wonderful car mixing to take on mick reynolds. i think they got too attached to the idea. that held their enthusiasm in february, march, and into the springtime finally before recalibration started. >> we have another question from my wife, what's determines what's level of justices are on the court? does congress have the power to change that number? could they change it down? as you said earlier, it's been five, it's been seven. you know, is that? >> it is entirely a statutory manner. it is an axe judiciary act, if you will. to create a supreme court seat, if one became vacant and could've all-ish one. i do not think a law can abolish a sitting justice. the constitution protects against that. also in older history and in recent history we have seen that the senate has the power to sit on a nomination. that happened under president under president andrew johnson, it happened under president obama for a stretch in 2016. >> also congress has the power to limit the jurisdiction of the court. it can say that the court would need a supermajority to overrule any decisions. thank can tinker with the mandate of the court in so many different ways. we think that is somehow protected in the constitution but it is not. congress could not only change the number of justices but reorganize their responsibilities. >> i want to go back to something that john was talking about which was this string starting in the second term of the administration going forward, disappointment of eight justices. i will ask you both into question, like who is your favorite child. of the a, who do you think was the most significant employment that he made, in terms of both changing the core and changing america? >> john, point to you first. >> i have a bias but i think it is well founded, in favor of robert jackson. i think he was such a special, incredible talent. a beautiful probably the best rider in the courts history. a case by case jurist. he did not pigeonhole easily. it turned out to be quite a fractious court. this rose about court that began in the late 30s and lived on to the late 50s. jackson was kind of more on the conservative side, but in the middle if you will. a much more a case of time person. he was the exception in the japanese american exclusion cases. and of talent jackson is the person. in terms of significance, i may be hugo black because he broke the ice. that really started the flow. and of course black served until 1971, a long and distinguished career. perhaps overcoming the stigma of having been a ku klux klan member, not coming out just after he was appointed to the court, undeniably. he chartered and egalitarian path of our constitutional law. by the late 1940s, he really had becoming the leading liberties justice. he was that, for most of his career, i think he is also very important. i have two children, i don't pick save a children. i look at these justices and think, really, that is an all-star team! quite a talented roster with almost no exceptions. >> who do you put your money on, ralph? >> i would say black also. it's interesting that rose about claimed him. he probably was blindsided. he didn't really do his homework i'm black and his klain membership, although it did end up pretty irrelevant based on the direction that he took on the court. it's also interesting that there was this deal to appoint joe robinson to the vacancy after advantage retired. robinson, of course, was carrying the president water off through the court packing case. he with the senate majority leader who literally worked himself to death and die before he could be appointed to the court. roosevelt turned on him. he was afraid as a southerner he wouldn't carry through his liberal agenda. he left robinson hanging. really a very sad episode in history. robinson, i found out, his best friend was bernard baroque, i didn't know that. -- >> there is a college named after him isn't there? >> well, that's where i work. baruch college, but rookie of course being a famous financial adviser to fdr. it is strange just the way things turned that whole thing could've been settled long before it went down to defeat. if the plan had been carried through rose about would've appointed robinson to compromise and maybe a 0. 2 justices not go for the full six. as i keep coming back to this he was adamant that he was going to have his way or the highway. >> all i have two more quick comments about the appointees. i want to flag felix frankfurter he was of course brilliant and his career i think most closely to the judicial restraint model that actually the court packing model is about that our country should be made by our elective representatives it is the supreme court's job to get out of the way of a national government. and stake a vermont have ample powers in our system. so frankfurter it's sort of a through line. also just a charming in fascinating character. the other person that i think we all forget is that roosevelt elevated harlan fixed gellin to be a republican a coolidge appointee to the court, in the 1920s. roosevelt did that in the summer of 1941 as a sort of bipartisan non political move. that is a lost are. that was a great thing for the president to do. >> he was a member of the liberal minority, wasn't he? >> that's correct, he was not one of the four horsemen. >> interestingly, frankfurter actually oppose the court packing plant, right? >> in his private heart, he held his powder and did not do anything publicly. >> roosevelt became very frustrated with frankfurter. we are going to go back in time for a minute and then we are going to come up to the present day. i want to go back to talk about why the supreme court has this power to determine what is constitutional law and what is not. it goes back to the very founding days of the early 1800s with the rather extraordinary legal case of lamar barry versus madison. let's talk about this and why this it laid the foundation of why the supreme court gets the final say >> was that to me well ma barry versus madison except the supreme court to rule on all legal battles in the government. it is not in the constitution they took on that power later on it was deemed worthwhile in terms of bounced power without that the court would have been a really weak sister to the other two branches it is an interesting example of how the founding fathers hadn't thought of that once the court came up with it everyone said this is a good idea, the court should have that power! it became ingrained in our system. we can't think of what it would be like without it so it really is a great example of how the constitution is a living document it just added this element and never had in the beginning. everybody said, that's a good idea. >> there is in marbury a sort of logic that gets them to the power to engage in judicial review. the court has to decide cases, it decides cases that arrived under the constitution. sometimes a provision of the constitution might be in conflict with a statute. -- the answer is the constitution defeats a statute. the court strikes down a unconstitutional statute in the context of a case. the power of judicial review though is different than that answer becoming the authoritative last word. >> right. >> judicial review becoming a judicial supremacy. i think that process is something that we also to wrestle with. with the court packing plane was pushing back on was judicial supremacy being asserted over a new deal laws in the early 1930s. robert jackson wrote a whole book about this called the struggle for judicial supremacy, published just as he became attorney general in the 1940s. historically in the supreme court it became institution that inflated itself as big as it could get away with, as we would let it get up -- and marbury was the start. they left that road to big. other times we push back. a 1937 court packing issue is one. judicial for by individual justices is another. proposals for court reform today, obviously, would be in that vein. >> so we've have got some good questions coming in now. please, if you have a question just put it in the chat. joanne morris wants know what's argument was given for increasing the court from 6 to 9 in the first place? when and who did this? did they face similar opposition? that's a great question. >> it was not in one fell swoop. generally it relates to the structure and creation of the lower federal courts. as the number of circuit court grew, a corresponding supreme court justice because of the circuit riding responsibilities, it largely explains the early growth vacillation. those circuit panels were injustice visiting in riding and joining the circuit court activity. i think bennett is workload driven. there is more and more cases coming within the jurisdiction of the court, i'm sure the supreme court was communicating to the congress that they could use another guy up here! laws grow the size of the court. that is what largely got off to nine. >> a lot of political and more workload? >> i think structural for the judiciary and workload. the political moment is more in the civil war non-filling vacancies. the legal tender case was pending before the supreme court and basically congress let the court shrink rather than that andrew jackson grow the core in the wrong direction, that might have threatened reconstruction. >> one of the original proposals for reform in the court along with the packing west to designate different districts for each of the justices, right? they would come from nine different parts of the country and all that. they would be limiting roosevelt, trying to think of two people. wasn't robinson from one place? arkansas or something? somebody came from another justice, he had to be ruled out. that was one of the ideas to trying to get the justices picked from different parts of the country. we have a question from princess michelle, your highness, do you have any information on how president fdr celebrated the american holiday thanksgiving. my mom and dad were born here during his term of service in the day. my mom was born in the american holiday thanksgiving. i can answer a little bit of this. for many years, fdr would celebrate thanksgiving in palm springs, georgia, after the rehabilitation center for polio that he created down there. he bought an old rundown stall and created the world's lead polio research center. he will go down there every thinks giving in spend time with the patients in the mid 1920s, he first got polio he went there for quite a while when he first became president. as president he went down there and he could drop his act. he could let people know that he was crippled, handicapped, he could swim in the pool with them. they called him doc roosevelt. it was a tradition that really meant a great deal to him. good question. >> that image from photographs was the first thing that came to mind when i heard the question. the other thing i know but not in detail is that the date of thanksgiving, that particular thursday was standardized on the roosevelt. so it made him more of a national holiday, a fixed date. >> it was standardized because he created a controversy. retail industry asked him to move it up earlier so they had a longer period between thanksgiving and christmas for people to buy things. he moved to, there was such an outcry about it that he had to move back and solidify that date forever. >> you mentioned polio, we should not let -- >> we lost ralph for a second. technical wizardry. >> and i'm back? are you back? >> yes. >> has that, is that better? is that all right? so, this is the 100th anniversary -- that of course made him a great leader that he was. he gave him the empathy, they gave him the strength the power to overcome adversity all these things that abandon him during the court packing thing. the embassy, his wisdom, the only thing he had left with his strength. he had that in access, maybe too much in this case. it is interesting that this is that important anniversary. which history could've been different. he may never have developed into the later he was if he hadn't had that adversity to battle against. >> i absolutely believe that. we have a great question which has come in from christopher d. go. was jane hampered's appointment roosevelt's way of paying him back for not taking him on as vice president? a little political history here as well as a court history. certainly a interesting character. threatening to run against brazil as well. any comments on that? >> i'm not sure how explicit that was. it's 1941, after 1940 has occurred and it's over and done. i'm not sure what's said under burns would have gone to a third term president. they obviously had a fine relationship. roosevelt had a high regard for his talent. not only because he put him on the court, and a year later when burns hated the job anyway, roosevelt pulled him out of the court and into the white house and had him manage the economy during the war. i think lawrence was and executive branch manager or legislator way ahead of being a judge. >> right. do you agree with that, ralph? >> all will defer to john here. much more of an expert than i am. the people who end up being with the president on this court packing thing the ones who are against him it was really loyal group, tommy cochrane, others who stood with him at a time when so many other people were abandoning him. wheeler, and connally and others. garner, of course! so, it is interesting that he had a small circle of people. and jackson! you know, jackson was one of the people that really stood by the president, right john? that is right. in many more, the one that was never published in his lifetime, i had the luck to find the manuscript and these families support to publish it. in four pages, he tells his experience with court packing. he recounts going over to the president, to the white house, for a meeting with the inner team in february when this has been announced. it is off to a bumpy start. jackson is telling the president, before you go fishing, before you head out of washington, you need to have another crack at explaining this. a pile of an addressed so special -- is not during the day. roosevelt, according to jackson, positive, that is a terrible explanation, isn't it. they went into a fireside chat and started to tell the truth. it was more of a political process that had a chance thereafter. >> we have a lot of questions coming in. we want to jump over to a question from camilla about the connection between justices and political perspectives. the question is, does the 1930s that justices have the same controversies or is this a modern development in terms of over political connections outside of the court system? we will start with you, ralph, on that one. >> i would tell you that the book, 168 days, opened my eyes to the poison atmosphere in washington. i had a new deal as the program that everyone subscribe to and sailed through that roosevelt saved the country. then you look back and we think that our time is full of internal us, strive, and political poison. what went on back then, it is amazing. the court, i do not know how much the court itself took part in that. we do not know. the book itself does not know what went on behind closed doors. we still don't know. certainly all around the court, the atmosphere in washington at those days was murderous. in that sense, nothing has changed. >> if i am understanding the question, if she's asking about supreme court appointments, where their poisonous fights in that context? generally, no. roosevelt had a big majority in the senate. he could get his appointees confirmed. that isn't a point mental difference between his time in our time. the one that did not have hard sailing but an ugly whispering campaign around it from the band side with the nomination of frankfurt in 39 and the antisemitic reaction to that. frankly, the hold -- the whole reserve. -- was roosevelt not giving a about antisemitism. he flicked his chin at adolf hitler by putting america's leading lawyer and prominent american and you on the supreme court. >> also, the senatorial courtesy in those days was very strong. when and if roosevelt nominated a senator like hugo black, that immediately sailed through because it is courtesy. i do not know if we still have that today. >> it seems highly unlikely. there is a sense that many people have today, taking the people that are not history buffs, that this contentious nature of the supreme court's new. it is a new phenomenon. it used to be that they would just sit in their robes and the supreme court would hand out things. everything was fine. have you heard about brown versus board of education? it is an interesting thing to look at because of the connection that it has to the roosevelt court. it is perhaps there was no decision in the american history that has had more significant consequences on the way that millions of americans would. talk about how this came about and why it was such a revolutionary decision. it took them out of traditional roles. let's start with john. >> that is a huge question. in the starting point is obviously the creation of this country as a slave country with our constitution ducking that moral con destruct as the price of ratifying a unity of slave states and previous states and a race through the 19th century, the civil war, the minutes after the civil war. this is fundamental historic reality and our permanent challenge. it is our deepest sin. we won world war ii with a segregated army fighting against racial supremacy siri opponents. that all came home and had to get settled out. the dissonance of not, nazism, impaired pull japan, and going home to being a separate country. this is what the w cpa attacks. it is what's a court full of roosevelt appointees would still. frankfort, jackson, black, douglas, they are the heart of the court. they begin to deal with this in the late 1940s. they are the leading edge. for them, this is not at all a hard question and morally, or personally. in various ways, it is a challenging legal question. the guys who wrote the 14th amendment or segregationists. frankly, jimmy burns, who we are talking about at this point is the governor of south carolina. he is a segregationist. the supreme court, with owen williams leadership and -- in a series of decisions, worked its way to give meaning to the equal protection clause. >> i think it is our finest moment in constitutional history. >> and you could not draw a clear vision between the congress and the court at that time. congress was controlled by saint southerners by the majority system. groups like aggregations, powerful chairmen, people who roosevelt had dealt with all throughout his administration's yet here we have a supreme court that is taking a radically different approach to equality, and you shape of americans acai. if i get it in up to congress we never want to segregated the schools. >> i find it an interesting book and to the other cases that came up during the roosevelt demonstration where this idea of protections of american i. d. ills were thrown out the window. i have to wonder what those conversations were like. as you pointed, out jackson is the dissenting voice in the non judicial sense. the case stressed the court in a way that forced it to make a decision. you are in the midst of this war and you have this fear gripping the country. how did this decision come down? why did they not acknowledge the constitutional rights of american citizens who have to have japanese ancestors? >> they did and they did not. the court decides these series of japanese american in a slow walk. the curfew cases not get decide until 43. internment cases do not get decided until late 44. at this point, the war in the pacific is far offshore approach approaching japan. this is through the island hopping carnage that we were winning. imperative of national security is gone by that time. the majority fictionalizes at the time when the president of the army decided that we had a security decision. -- national security is a real thing. it is a vital thing. it's also something that can be held as a crutch. the supreme court was beaten down by the claim of national security. >> and you only have to look at this climate in this country after 9/11 to see how inflamed the new society can blaine be by the pearl harbor attack, 9/11 attacks, and more recently, all the statues that were passed around militarizing the police. they were invading our privacy, monitoring the muslim community, the patriot act, so we do not have to look back that far to understand the mentality of the country after pearl harbor. look what happened after 9/11. >> i think it is interesting that the supreme court played eight key role in whether these muslim ban, travel bans, were constitutional. they found themselves in the middle does a political firestorm as it has for so many cases when president biden was elected after supreme justice being appointed by trump, there was this movement that he should pack the court. walk us through, we will start with you john, what this would've been? how can this even happen in today's political environment? well with this process look like today? >> they are not votes, she's not the prideful party. the meaning is exactly would proposed in 1837 there is no basis to think that the ordinary process was manipulated both in 2016 and in 2020. is that the justice of scalia and -- >> these two were being consequential appointments that distorted something that should have naturally been the other way. president biden, i think, probably, wants to spend no color capital. he began a commission that was started by brilliant academics who have been talking, a studying, writing. there are a range of proposals ranging from statues to constitutional amendments to retirement schemes and retirements that would declutter the court that could be talking without a constitutional amendment. in other words, justices for good behavior, which is interpreted to mean for life. this doesn't necessarily mean we have the right sit on supreme court cases. this is until one expires. it can be structured that they move into service court or become a senior bench in the recusal or something. they want to give it to be justices. in the meantime, it would be a vacancy that would be created. let's say every president in a four-year term got two appointments, that would be a much more regular thing. that might take some of the political venom out of this process. of course, it would take a statute. it might be challenge. it is ironic to see how the supreme court would be asked in deciding them. after we got past that he would take some number of years before we were in the new regime of orderly and less politicized supreme court opponents. it's a very hard question. >> also, when roosevelt came up with this court plan, it was immediately,, seized upon that one of the justices -- now cardoza. anyway, he was great and really popular. not because people are living longer, that age does not seem to old anymore. secondly, look at the differences between biden and fdr. biden is much more careful, not as sure footed in a political animal or good politically as roosevelt. biden did not come off 27 vote a landslide, 27 million vote landslide that fdr did in 36. they are different people. roosevelt is very headstrong on this issue. biden is not committed to this issue, from what i can see. the latest refusal of the court to dive into the texas abortion law really through a new element into the debate. a lot of you are thinking that biden is not going to invest his prestige on this issue. now this is of all issues is very valuable. it caused a lot of a couple more decisions like that by the court and they may move this panel to come up with something. we've got a couple of questions that have come in that are not strictly related to the court. i will try to answer a couple of them. princess michelle asked again who was franklin roosevelt friends with from the monarchy and government from the united kingdom. very famously he invited the king in queen of england to come to america in 1939. america's hopefully realize that they didn't particularly like the british monarchy. a matter of fact i had a very low popularity ratings. the previous king had advocated because he married an american. there was a real sense that the english monarchy did not want anything to do. roosevelt knew that we had to solidify a relationship with them. the war was coming! he knew the war was coming. he knew that britain would be a critical ally. he invites the king and queen, they have a big fancy dinner in washington. the come up here to hyde park, fdr famously has the hot dog picnic up and talk cottage. where he serves hot dogs to the king and queen. they feared other things to. i think you talk a little bit about that ralph in your article. >> i think they tried to serve some sort of a foodie cocktail to winston churchill who spat it out. [laughs] absolutely, that was a famous episode. roosevelt saw the need to cultivate closer relations with england. it very well could have lost the war once and for all from the west. he had this wonderful relationship with churchill, of course. i think roosevelt addressed him as, i forget -- by a navy title. >> he was the former naval person. >> former naval person, right. >> they started the correspondence when he was still the first corner of the admiralty before he became prime minister. in that case he would refer to him as a naval person. president of the united states is not supposed to be talking to the british navy. he later referred to him as the former naval person. >> i spent the pandemic reading all six volumes of churchill forward to history. it's the only good thing that came out of the pandemic. >> we have another quick question, we are running out of time here. question from andrew smith, i appreciate the importance of the supreme court stuff. i wonder if you have planned to have another conversation on fdr subjects in the future. first of all we've been doing this for a year and a half. each week or two we do a new program. we did the education specialist are the curator, they are all available on our youtube page. our facebook videos. we have done everything with fdr's relationship with different president such as eisenhower or johnson, the great depression, the yalta conference, there is a lot of material there. we had to start -- i think we've done 75 of these conversations with authors and historians. please we have lots of content! we will continue to do this, hopefully someday as the pandemic eases we will go back to doing live programs. at which point we will continue the live streams and records them and put them on our youtube that we have a collection of this content. this is going to be the last question. it is a really good one. it's from joanne moore it's. is it a lifetime appointment isn't supposed to be a way to avoid politicization and justices feeling beholden to a certain president or political viewpoint? >> lifetime appointment. ralph, we'll start with? you john after. that was the -- that was the idea, it refers to federal judges below the supreme court and the core. it is a wonderful mechanism for insulating them from the day-to-day political pressures. a used to be the fbi director had something similar, a tenured term that isolated ham. i think it worked well historically. i think it could be very difficult to take that away. i defer to johnson fatigued here. >> now, i agree completely. it is valuable insulation. the question is, how much do you need? lifetimes today can be very long things. if there is a way to permit a justice to serve out beyond the politics of his or her appointed moment that is desirable in insulates them. i don't think that needs to be 30, 40, or 50 years. although due to heart disease robert jackson died at age 62 after serving only four years on the court. one of those he was a wall being a prosecutor at nuremberg. one can make hitter or mark doing great service on the supreme court without needing many many decades. also if we are not trying to play forever, we might not prioritize appointing ever younger people. perhaps we will get more of the career wisdom and experience more senior people. 68 70-year-old people, including people who have held high public offices they are not viable supreme court candidates they. i think that is a terrible loss. >> right. ralph, john, thank you very much. great conversation! i think we all know that u.s. constitution there are three branches of government. they just did a survey that less than 30% of americans can name off three branch of the government. the executive branch, which is the president. which is the legislative branch of congress, the judicial branch which is a supreme court. they are supposed to be three equal branches yet none of them feel the others live up to their potential. on that note i wa
nixon's media image, or person to person diplomacy, under work to get more women into government roles, and on to the supreme court. exploring the american story. watch american history tv saturdays, on c-span two. and find a full schedule on your program guide, or watch online anytime. at c-span dot org slash history. >> hello. welcome to another edition of at home with the roosevelts. i'm paul sparrow, the director of the franklin roosevelt presidential library museum. we're recording this session on september 17th, which is constitution day. what better way to celebrate constitution day than to talk about the supreme court? with two outstanding experts on the subject. no president had a more significant impact -- than fdr. he appointed eight justices during his administration. some of them helped change american democracy for the better. >> -- during his first term, which is a point of extreme frustration. we'll talk about that later. the role of the supreme court has changed over the years. secondly, today, it plays a central role in our political process. make no mistake, the court has always been political. joining me today is john q -- professor of law at st. john's university, and elizabeth -- raab de h. jackson center. he's the biographer of justice jackson and discovering editor of jackson's posthumous book called that man, an insider's portrait of franklin d. roosevelt the last insider mark also with us today, ralph blumenthal, lecturer at -- collagen new york. a former new york times reporter, and he continues to be a contributing reporting. he's the author of five books, including the believer, about the harvard psychiatrist john knabb. but he actually has a very direct connection to fdr and his administration. we'll talk about that in a minute. we'll start with professor -- give us a little bit of your background in regards to the supreme court, and specifically your work on justice robert jackson. . >> sure thank, you paul, for this opportunity, and the privilege to be at the roosevelt library and homestead and every sense except actual. the path that led me to all of this was really being a lawyer in washington. and first, i worked in the department of justice and different federal investigations for about seven years, and then i became a law professor among my areas. public life, public figures, legal ethics and constitutional law. and sort of a converging on the supreme court, and the people in the court. and robert jackson, and particular, someone who was in roosevelt's cabinet and his attorney general was confirmed by the senate for roosevelt appointments to five separate dot jobs and a very short run of years. it became my big project. and for our topic, it matters that jackson was an assistant to attorney general in 1937. our principal witness defending the presidents court packing plan, and then a solicitor general who over the next two years, argued in defense of new deal laws, constitutionality before the supreme court so, it's the jackson pact that brought me into this roosevelt wild, and court packing, court reform as a topic. >> jackson was also, of course, part of the norm berg trials. we'll talk about that separately. give us a little bit about your background, both as a reporter, and -- libraries collection. one of the key members of fdr's administration. >> thank, you paul i really appreciate being on with you. and john, i am a distinguished lecturer from a group of colleges. in that capacity, i supervise our arc knives collection. among, which we have -- who was a member of the brown committee who manage the executive branch for fdr. that came up right in the middle of the court packing fight so that's interesting. i also was on the new york times for 45 years, and one of my happiest stories was being up at the roosevelt hohman library to do a story on -- in 2001, when it was renovated. and also, i've written a lot about the holocaust, and of course the prosecutor nuremberg is a very startling episode in the prosecution of nazi criminals. and i should say that i came into this subject there a book at -- killed 168 days, which is a virtual diary of the court packing controversy by turner catholic, which was the manager of the new york times when i started there, and 1964. it's a wonderful account, not completely unbiased, of the day today struggles back and forth over the court packing controversy it's >> cloud to have you here. for a privilege to be here. >> those of you don't know, tom cottage is a home that fdr bill in hyde park here. in the 1930s, he planned to move into and live and after he left the presidency. one of the fully design houses in america that was made to accommodate handicap person, with a wheelchair. there's no thresholds on the door. the doors and windows have lovers. i'm really is an architectural marvel. it is only open part of the time. it is part of the national park service collection of properties appear. they have eleanor home on south hill, the top cottage, the vanderbilt mansion. quick plug, anyone coming up to the hudson valley make sure you stop here and visit in. back to this subject at hand. let's talk about fdr's court packing scheme. john, set the scene. what were the circumstances that made fdr so frustrated with the court. when he is done, why did he -- and what he did he try to do to change? >> i think you have to go back a little bit before his presidency and remember that we are in the great depression the stock market crashed in the fall of 1929, coincidentally during that term president herbert hoover had three supreme court appointment opportunities. he made great appointments, no denying that. it is the luck of the draw if the president gets vacancies. president trump got three, president hoover got three. president roosevelt in 1932, inaugurated and 33, and that first four-year term he got zero. as you mentioned paul. he had a super majority in both the house and the senate. there was an attack on legislation in the problems of japan -- the torpid voluntourism of the hoover air was replaced by the new deal. the new deal ran into a supreme court roadblock. in the course of that four-year term, not only did roosevelt have no chance to appoint justices but the nine who were there struck down major reform relief laws. here's a quick laundry list. national recovery act. the railroad retirement act. section three of the national recovery act. the fraser lumpy act. the tax component of the agricultural adjustment act. there were poll conservation act. the amendment to the bankruptcy law, and a state new york minimum wage law that was a state level counterpart progressive level. roosevelt was the popular, powerful, democratically response of president. the supreme court was a tremendous obstacle. reelected overwhelmingly in 1936, he decided to use his political capital on his supreme court problem. >> what did he do? what was his strategy? what was he trying to accomplish here. >> well, he took it very personally. actually, he had this dream that the supreme would cooperate with him in getting his programs going. now, maybe john can help me understand, and our listeners, whether roosevelt was being disingenuous or if he really believes the separation of powers did not apply to him. the idea that and he came up with the idea to appoint six new justices and then cooperate with them and he would cooperate. to get his program through it is insane to our way of thinking today. >> it is a mystery to me how much he believes that he could really merge these two branches of government. what happened is, he was really smarting under these rejections. although the court overturning of the nra actually probably helped him in retrospect, because it was so unpopular. he was resolved! it was really unlike him with his perfect temperament and his great sense of timing, his wonderful way of reading the country, he kind of lost it! he decided to put all of his chips on this plan to change the core. there were several, there were four actual proposals given to him by home or cummings, his attorney general. one with a constitutional amendment, which would be very difficult. one was statutory to change the jurisdiction of the court. they were various levels of tinkering. the last one was to add the provision that whenever a justice reach 70, he or she -- while he in those days, now she. he would have to step down. or roosevelt could appoint somebody to take his place. that was his plan. he somehow got convinced that this was doable. as john said, he had this wonderful supermajority. he coasted in with 27,000 votes, a huge majority in 1936. he had every reason to think that the country was just waiting. labor was on his side, liberals were on his side, that this would be welcome. of course, it was not! >> a little context here. the 1936 presidential election, as you mentioned, was the largest electoral landslide in american political history. i always think that fdr had extraordinary political instincts. they got him to where he was. elected and then reelected in a wheelchair is simply incredible on every level! during one of the darkest times in american history. i would also like to point out that he made the three biggest mistakes of his entire political career i think during that period after that landslide victory. he decided to pack the court, he decided he would primary the conservative southern democrats who are holding up legislation in congress, and he cut the budget, leading to the rose about recession of 1937. as you said he lost it. he was so enthralling with his own success in popularity that he tried to do things that were way off path of with the american people wanted. john, talk a little bit about what's the reaction was when he put this forward. even his own party had trouble supporting him in this court packing scheme. >> yeah, the constitution does not prescribe a size for this is cream court. it is a creature of statute. originally it was six and went down to five, it's oscillated around in the 19th century. since the 1870s we have had a nine member court. it's now been 60 years of the country being used to nine as if it is etched in marvel. that is they -- trying to grow the court in 15 with one fell swoop of trying to fill it with like-minded and -- it was somehow un-american even though it is an unconstitutional. it opened up some of the fault lines in the democratic party. there were old barons who were the committee chairman's. there were southern segregationist to a part of this coalition that roosevelt was trying to hold together. the court and the target was not such a publicly notoriously evil institution. especially the way that roosevelt spun it out. he claimed in the announcement that the justices were so far behind on their work. there was a pile of unaddressed certiorari petitions. which was jargon in just not true. he also claim that these aging justices no longer had the fastball. that was a hard thing to claim about louis brandeis, the oldest of the bunch! that's been sort of hit a wall of hostility. it immediately became controversial. roosevelt did try to recalibrate. robert jackson was one of the people who told him, you need to start telling the truth about this! it's not about age it's not about backlog it is about interpretations that particularly be for most conservative justices have porn into their constitution. >> they have red state powers to protect our welfare and use their police powers must to restrictively. it is about the core putting its political preferences in place of the proper understanding of the constitution. democracy can and should respond by appointing more straight shooters. i would even say more conservative justices in terms of constitutional -- as opposed to these four horsemen radicals. >> if i could just jump in here, it wasn't dead in the water from the beginning. it might've seem like it would be because vice president garner came out of the meeting where the news was sprung on him holding his nose and going like this. he had a shot a good shot at getting this through. because of all the reasons we mentioned. his popularity, the election landslide, et cetera. through a series of almost biblical, greek, whatever you want to call them, missteps, he succeeded in sabotaging himself. even though it was not a popular thing to change the third branch of government, it could've been done. had it been handled differently. it is not just self sabotage. there are external events. a couple of things that happened in that 30 30 or 40 days. announcing the plan in february, early march the senate hearings are happening. the supreme court justices sent a letter to the chairman of the committee that says we are current on our work. they blow up that cover story. then the supreme court in mid march starts to hand down decisions upholding new deal laws. all of a sudden the supreme court problem is receding. a statement imam wages upheld. the national liberal nation is upheld. social security is argued that spring. in may it's constitutional is upheld. that confluence of events made it really much less necessary to do something dramatic. >> of course that changes one of the decisions that led to one of the great catchphrases of supreme court history. a switch in nine states time. >> as roosevelt other said in my notes, he would not take yes for an answer. the courts went out of their way, enough if they decide the decisions in order to placate him. that was a good question. was it done with design. did they see the lie in reliving need to uphold the good new deal programs. for whatever reason the court gave him what he wanted. basically, i don't know if you want to use this image but it dug his grave for him and he jumped in. he didn't have to. it really is amazing how he missed all the signals and just plowed ahead. he was determined to remake that court. put up to six that would carry through his programs. it is just astounding. it is still a political mystery. the turner callan's book that i reference, he and else up interviewed everybody but the president. we don't know, i don't know maybe john knows. in roosevelt's own riding and what has come out in his papers about what his thinking was about this. why he wouldn't take yes for an answer. >> he was much too careful to leave a paper trail on anything! [laughs] >> we have a question from the audience, i hope i pronounce this way. camilla -- how do we know that core packing was unpopular? outside of the conservative voice of the court? did average americans in the 1930s have a strong opinion on the court? >> the two strong constituencies of roosevelt, farmers and labor, and liberals -- they all turned against a pretty quickly! he lost his natural constituency. it was not popular from the beginning. it is interesting. he thought, roosevelt thought it might be. which is why he embarked on a! he started losing his natural allies from the beginning. am i right on that, john? >> no, i think that's correct. look at the mailbags. some of which is archive there. >> we have millions of letters! >> you can measure, page by page, the public reaction. a lot of it is very critical. look at the congressional committee votes. ultimately the congressional committee reports. it rejects the first version of the proposed bill. and the urgency is receding in the springtime, the presidency does pull back. it was a second version that expands the courts buy two seats that he well would have one had that been pushed through to a vote. he kind of had to deal with the senate majority leader, senator robinson from arkansas, who would get that over the finish line. roosevelt had frankly promised him a supreme court appointment, one of those two seats. he was making nice, a jefferson island picnic with all the members of congress early that summer. robinson drop dead right after the fourth of july. at that point, one more development justice band of inter announced he was resigning. roosevelt finally felt he had a vacancy to fill! at that point, just none of it was worth any more trouble. we live with nine, you can see the dominoes. black is appointed in august, read the next year. both felix in a dog with the next year. frank murphy the next year. robert jackson and james burns the next year. these eight roosevelt appointees just one after another in the wings, starting in the summer of 37. >> there were so many opportunities for him to compromise. not so much cummings, who was a true believer as his attorney general, but others came to him, repeatedly, with offers. wheeler, montana -- with offers to compromise. he just wouldn't have it! he was dead set on moving ahead. he wouldn't even recognize the reality of what was happening. his own allies were coming to him with stories about what's going on out there. how he was losing, you know, support -- constituencies. he was very bull headed in that. it is extraordinary. the sense of timing that we credit him with, the exquisite sensitivity to political wins. he just was dead set on this. >> there is a little colonel in this that i think is maybe an explanation of that. homer cummings, the attorney general, was really the draftsman and the proponent in this. part of the problem on the supreme court was justice james make reynolds. he was one of the four horsemen. he was a wilson appointee. he had been in the wilson administration with fdr. as attorney general, mick reynolds had drafted, in effect, a court packing plan. when cummings found that and told it to roosevelt, they both thought it was such an incredibly wonderful karmic thing to take on mick reynolds. i think they got too attached to the idea. that held their enthusiasm in february, march, and into the springtime finally before recalibration started. >> we have another question from my wife, what determines what's level of justices are on the court? does congress have the power to change that number? could they change it down? as you said earlier, it's been five, it's been seven. you know, is that? >> it is entirely a statutory manner. it is an axe judiciary act, if you will. to create a supreme court seat, if one became vacant it could abolish one. i do not think a law can abolish a sitting justice. the constitution protects against that. also in older history and in recent history we have seen that the senate has the power to sit on a nomination. that happened under president andrew johnson, it happened under president obama for a stretch in 2016. >> also congress has the power to limit the jurisdiction of the court. it can say that the court would need a supermajority to overrule any decisions. they can tinker with the mandate of the court in so many different ways. we think that is somehow protected in the constitution but it is not. congress could not only change the number of justices but reorganize their responsibilities. >> i want to go back to something that john was talking about which was this string starting in the second term of the administration going forward, with the appointment of eight justices. i will ask you both into question, like who is your favorite child. of the -- who do you think was the most significant employment that he made, in terms of both changing the core and changing america? >> john, point to you first. >> i have a bias but i think it is well founded, in favor of robert jackson. i think he was such a special, incredible talent. a beautiful probably the best rider in the courts history. a case by case jurist. he did not pigeonhole easily. it turned out to be quite a fractious court. this rose about court that began in the late 30s and lived on to the late 50s. jackson was kind of more on the conservative side, but in the middle if you will. a much more a case of time person. he was at the center of the japanese american exclusion cases. and of talent jackson is the person. in terms of significance, i think maybe hugo black because he broke the ice. that really started the flow. and of course black served until 1971, a long and distinguished career. perhaps to overcome the stigma of having been a ku klux klan member, not coming out just after he was appointed to the court, undeniably. he chartered an egalitarian path of our constitutional law. by the late 1940s, he really was becoming the leading liberties justice. he was that, for most of his career, i think he is also very important. i have two children, i don't pick favorite children. i look at these justices and think, really, that is an all-star team! quite a talented roster with almost no exceptions. >> who do you put your money on, ralph? >> i would say black also. it's interesting that roosevelt claimed him. he probably was blindsided. he didn't really do his homework on black and his klain membership, although it did end up pretty irrelevant based on the direction that he took on the court. it's also interesting that there was this deal to appoint joe robinson to the vacancy after -- retired. robinson, of course, was carrying the president water off through the court packing case. he with the senate majority leader who literally worked himself to death and die before he could be appointed to the court. roosevelt turned on him. he was afraid as a southerner he wouldn't carry through his liberal agenda. he left robinson hanging. really a very sad episode in history. robinson, i found out, his best friend was bernard baroque, i didn't know that. -- >> there is a college named after him isn't there? >> well, that's where i work. baruch college, baruch of course being a famous financial adviser to fdr. it is strange just the way things turned that whole thing could've been settled long before it went down to defeat. if the plan had been carried through roosevelt would've appointed robinson to compromise and maybe a 0. 2 justices not go for the full six. as i keep coming back to this, he was adamant that he was going to have his way or the highway. >> paul, i have two more quick comments about the appointees. i want to flag felix frankfurter. he was of course brilliant and his career i think most closely to the judicial restraint model that actually the court packing model is about, that our country should be made by our elective representatives it is the supreme court's job to get out of the way of a national government. and state governments have ample powers in our system. so frankfurter it's sort of a through line. also just a charming in fascinating character. the other person that i think we all forget is that roosevelt elevated harlan -- to be a republican a coolidge appointee to the court, in the 1920s. roosevelt did that in the summer of 1941 as a sort of bipartisan non political move. that is a lost art. that was a great thing for the president to do. >> he was a member of the liberal minority, wasn't he? >> that's correct, he was not one of the four horsemen. >> interestingly, frankfurter actually opposed the court packing plan, right? >> in his private heart, he held his powder and did not do anything publicly. >> roosevelt became very frustrated with frankfurter. we are going to go back in time for a minute and then we are going to come up to the present day. i want to go back to talk about why the supreme court has this power to determine what is constitutional law and what is not. it goes back to the very founding days of the early 1800s with the rather extraordinary legal case of lamar barry versus madison. let's talk about this and why this laid the foundation of why the supreme court gets the final say. >> was that to me? well -- versus madison except the supreme court to rule on all legal battles in the government. it is not in the constitution, they took on that power. later on it was deemed worthwhile in terms of bounced power without that the court would have been a really weak sister to the other two branches it is an interesting example of how the founding fathers hadn't thought of that, but once the court came up with it everyone said this is a good idea, the court should have that power! it became ingrained in our system. we can't think of what it would be like without it, so it really is a great example of how the constitution is a living document. it just added this element it never had in the beginning. everybody said, that's a good idea. >> there is in marbury a sort of logic that gets them to the power to engage in judicial review. the court has to decide cases, it decides cases that arise under the constitution. sometimes a provision of the constitution might be in conflict with a statute. -- the answer is the constitution defeats a statute. the court strikes down an unconstitutional statute in the context of a case. the power of judicial review, though, is different than that answer becoming the authoritative last word. >> right. >> judicial review becoming a judicial supremacy. i think that process is something that we also to wrestle with. with the court packing plan was pushing back on was judicial supremacy being asserted over a new deal laws in the early 1930s. robert jackson wrote a whole book about this called the struggle for judicial supremacy, published just as he became attorney general in the 1940s. historically in the supreme court, it became an institution that inflated itself as big as it could get away with, as we would let it get away with. and marbury was the start. they left that road to big. other times we push back. a 1937 court packing issue is one. judicial restraint by individual justices is another. proposals for court reform today, obviously, would be in that vein. >> so we've have got some good questions coming in now. please, if you have a question just put it in the chat. joanne morris wants know what argument was given for increasing the court from 6 to 9 in the first place? when and who did this? did they face similar opposition? that's a great question. >> it was not in one fell swoop. generally it relates to the structure and creation of the lower federal courts. as the number of circuit court grew, a corresponding supreme court justice because of the circuit riding responsibilities, it largely explains the early growth and the oscillation. those circuit panels were injustice visiting in riding and joining the circuit court activity. i think it is workload driven. there is more and more cases coming within the jurisdiction of the court, i'm sure the supreme court was communicating to the congress that they could use another guy up here! laws grow the size of the court. that is what largely got off to nine. >> it was less political and more workload? >> i think structural for the judiciary and workload. the political moment is more in the post-civil war non-filling vacancies. the legal tender case was pending before the supreme court and basically congress let the court shrink rather than let andrew jackson grow the core in the wrong direction, that might have threatened reconstruction. >> one of the original proposals for reform in the court along with the packing was to designate different districts for each of the justices, right? they would come from nine different parts of the country and all that. that would be limiting roosevelt, trying to think of two people. wasn't robinson from one place? arkansas or something? somebody came from another justice, he had to be ruled out. that was one of the ideas to trying to get the justices picked from different parts of the country. we have a question from princess michelle, your highness, do you have any information on how president fdr celebrated the american holiday thanksgiving. my mom and dad were born here during his term of service in the day. my mom was born in the american holiday thanksgiving. i can answer a little bit of this. for many years, fdr would celebrate thanksgiving in palm springs, georgia, after the rehabilitation center for polio that he created down there. he bought an old rundown spa and created the world's lead polio research center. he will go down there every thanksgiving in spend time with the patients in the mid 1920s, he first got polio he went there for quite a while when he first became president. as president he went down there and he could drop his act. he could let people know that he was crippled, handicapped, he could swim in the pool with them. they called him doc roosevelt. it was a tradition that really meant a great deal to him. good question. >> that image from photographs was the first thing that came to mind when i heard the question. the other thing i know but not in detail is that the date of thanksgiving, that particular thursday was standardized under roosevelt. so it made him more of a national holiday, a fixed date. >> it was standardized because he created a controversy. retail industry asked him to move it up earlier so they had a longer period between thanksgiving and christmas for people to buy things. he moved it, and there was such an outcry about it that he had to move back and solidify that date forever. >> you mentioned polio, we should not let -- >> we lost ralph for a second. technical wizardry. >> and i'm back? are you back? >> yes. >> how is that, is that better? is that all right? so, this is the 100th anniversary of roosevelt's polio. that of course made him a great leader that he was. it gave him the empathy, they gave him the strength the power to overcome adversity, all these things that abandon him during the court packing thing. the empathy, his wisdom, the only thing he had left with his strength. he had that in excess, maybe too much in this case. it is interesting that this is that important anniversary. which history could've been different. he may never have developed into the later he was if he hadn't had that adversity to battle against. >> i absolutely believe that. we have a great question which has come in from christopher d. go. was jane -- appointment roosevelt's way of paying him back for not taking him on as vice president? a little political history here as well as a court history. certainly a interesting character. threatening to run against brazil as well. any comments on that? >> i'm not sure how explicit that was. it's 1941, after 1940 has occurred and it's over and done. i'm not sure what senator burns would have gone to a third term president. they obviously had a fine relationship. roosevelt had a high regard for his talent. not only because he put him on the court, and a year later when burns hated the job anyway, roosevelt pulled him out of the court and into the white house and had him manage the economy during the war. i think burns was and executive branch manager or legislator way ahead of being a judge. >> right. do you agree with that, ralph? >> i will defer to john here. much more of an expert than i am. the people who end up being with the president on this court packing thing the ones who are against him it was really loyal group, tommy cochrane, others who stood with him at a time when so many other people were abandoning him. wheeler, and connally and others. garner, of course! so, it is interesting that he had a small circle of people. and jackson! you know, jackson was one of the people that really stood by the president, right john? that is right. in many more, the memoir that was never published in his lifetime, i had the luck to find the manuscript and these families support to publish it. in four pages, he tells his experience with court packing. he recounts going over to the president, to the white house, for a meeting with the inner team in february when this has been announced. it is off to a bumpy start. jackson is telling the president, before you go fishing, before you head out of washington, you need to have another crack at explaining this. a pile of unaddressed so special -- is not during the day. roosevelt, according to jackson, positive, that is a terrible explanation, isn't it? they went into a fireside chat and started to tell the truth. it was more of a political process that had a chance thereafter. >> we have a lot of questions coming in. we want to jump over to a question from camilla about the connection between justices and political perspectives. the question is, did the 1930s justices have the same controversies or is this a modern development in terms of overt political connections outside of the court system? we will start with you, ralph, on that one. >> i would tell you that the book, 168 days, opened my eyes to the poison atmosphere in washington. i had this vision of the new deal as the program that everyone subscribe to and sailed through that roosevelt saved the country. then you look back and we think that our time is full of internal strife, and political poison. what went on back then, it is amazing. the court, i do not know how much the court itself took part in that. we do not know. the book itself does not know what went on behind closed doors. we still don't know. certainly all around the court, the atmosphere in washington in those days was murderous. in that sense, nothing has changed. >> if i am understanding the question, if she's asking about supreme court appointments, were there poisonous fights in that context? generally, no. roosevelt had a big majority in the senate. he could get his appointees confirmed. that is a fundamental difference between his time in our time. the one that did not have hard sailing but an ugly whispering campaign around it from the bad side with the nomination of frankfurter in 39 and the antisemitic reaction to that. frankly, the whole reserve. -- was roosevelt not giving a bleep about antisemitism. he flicked his chin at adolf hitler by putting america's leading lawyer and prominent american jew on the supreme court. >> also, the senatorial courtesy in those days was very strong. when and if roosevelt nominated a senator like hugo black, that immediately sailed through because of senatorial courtesy. i do not know if we still have that today. >> it seems highly unlikely. there is a sense that many people have today, taking the people that are not history buffs, that this contentious nature of the supreme court is new. it is a new phenomenon. it used to be that they would just sit in their black robes and the supreme court would hand out things. everything was fine. have you heard about brown versus board of education? it is an interesting thing to look at because of the connection that it has to the roosevelt court. there was perhaps no decision in the american history that has had more significant consequences on the way that millions of americans would. talk about how this came about and why it was such a revolutionary decision. it took them out of traditional roles. let's start with john. >> that is a huge question. in the starting point is obviously the creation of this country as a slave country with our constitution ducking that moral question as the price of ratifying a unity of slave states and free states and a race through the 19th century, the civil war, the minute after the civil war. this is fundamental historic reality and our permanent challenge. it is our deepest sin. we won world war ii with a segregated army fighting against racial supremacy theory opponents. that all came home and had to get sorted out. the dissonance of nazism, imperial japan, and going home to being a separated country. this is what the w cpa attacks. it is what's a court full of roosevelt appointees would still. frankfort, jackson, black, douglas, they are the heart of the court. they begin to deal with this in the late 1940s. they are the leading edge. for them, this is not at all a hard question morally, or personally. in various ways, it is a challenging legal question. the guys who wrote the 14th amendment were segregationists. frankly, jimmy burns, who we are talking about at this point is the governor of south carolina. he is a segregationist. the supreme court, with -- leadership and -- in a series of decisions, worked its way to give meaning to the equal protection clause. >> i think it is our finest moment in constitutional history. >> and you could not draw a clearer division between the congress and the court at that time. congress was controlled by southerners with the majority system. groups like aggregations, powerful chairmen, people who roosevelt had dealt with all throughout his administrations, yet here we have a supreme court that is taking a radically different approach to equality, and the new shape of americans society. if you get it in up to congress, we never want to segregated the schools. >> i find it an interesting book and to the other cases that came up during the roosevelt demonstration where this idea of protections of american citizenship were thrown out the window. i have to wonder what those conversations were like. as you pointed, out jackson is the dissenting voice in the non judicial sense. the case stressed the court in a way that forced it to make a decision. you are in the midst of this war and you have this fear gripping the country. how did this decision come down? why did they not acknowledge the constitutional rights of american citizens who happen to have japanese ancestry? decidede >> they did and they did not. the court decides these series of japanese american in a slow walk. the curfew cases not get decide until 43. internment cases do not get decided until late 44. at this point, the war in the pacific is far offshore and approaching japan. this is through the island hopping carnage that we were winning. imperative of national security is gone by that time. the majority fictionalizes at the time when the president of the army decided that we had a security concern. -- national security is a real thing. it is a vital thing. it's also something that can be used as a cudgel. the supreme court was beaten down by the claim of national security. >> and you only have to look at this climate in this country after 9/11 to see how inflamed the new society can be by the pearl harbor attack, 9/11 attacks, and more recently, all the statutes that were passed around militarizing the police, invading our privacy, monitoring the muslim community, the patriot act. so we do not have to look back that far to understand the mentality of the country after pearl harbor. look what happened after 9/11. >> i think it is interesting that the supreme court played a key role in whether these muslim ban, travel bans, were constitutional. they found themselves in the middle of a political firestorm as it has for so many cases. when president biden was elected after supreme justices being appointed by trump, there was this movement that he should pack the court. walk us through, we will start with you john, what this would mean? how can this even happen in today's political environment? what would this process look like today? >> they are not votes, she's not the prideful party. the meaning is exactly would proposed in 1837 there is no basis to think that the ordinary process was manipulated both in 2016 and in 2020 after the just -- death of justice scalia. trump really needed to fill that seat, and those to be inconsequential appointments that distorted something that naturally should have been the other way. president biden, i think, probably, wants to spend no color capital. he began a commission that was started by brilliant academics who have been talking, studying, writing. there are a range of proposals ranging from statutes to constitutional amendments to retirement schemes and retirements that would depoliticize the court. that could be talking without a constitutional amendment. in other words, justices for good behavior, which is interpreted to mean for life. this doesn't necessarily mean we have the right sit on supreme court cases until one expires. it can be structured that they move into circuit court or become a senior bench in the recusal or something. they want to continue to be justices. in the meantime, it would be a vacancy that would be created. let's say every president in a four-year term got two appointments, that would be a much more regular thing. that might take some of the political venom out of this process. of course, it would take a statute. it might be challenged. it is ironic to see how the supreme court would be asked in deciding that. after we got past that he would take some number of years before we were in the new regime of orderly and less politicized supreme court opponents. it's a very hard question. >> also, when roosevelt came up with this court plan, it was immediately seized upon that one of the justices -- not cardoza. anyway, he was great and really popular. now of course, people are living longer, that age does not seem to old anymore. secondly, look at the differences between biden and fdr. biden is much more careful, not as sure footed in a political animal -- though he is good politically -- as roosevelt. biden did not come off 27 vote a landslide, 27 million vote landslide that fdr did in 36. they are different people. roosevelt is very headstrong on this issue. biden is not committed to this issue, from what i can see. and yet, the latest refusal of the court to dive into the texas abortion law really flung a new element into the debate. a lot of you are thinking that biden is not going to invest his prestige on this issue. now this, of all issues, is very volatile. it caused a lot of a couple more decisions like that by the court and they may move this panel to come up with something. we've got a couple of questions that have come in that are not strictly related to the court. i will try to answer a couple of them. princess michelle asked again who was franklin roosevelt friends with from the monarchy and government from the united kingdom. very famously he invited the king and queen of england to come to america in 1939. americans hopefully realize that they didn't particularly like the british monarchy. as a matter of fact they had a very low popularity ratings. the previous king had advocated because he married an american. there was a real sense that the english monarchy did not want anything to do. roosevelt knew that we had to solidify a relationship with them. the war was coming! he knew the war was coming. he knew that britain would be a critical ally. he invites the king and queen, they have a big fancy dinner in washington. they come up here to hyde park, fdr famously has the hot dog picnic up at the cottage where he serves hot dogs to the king and queen. they feared other things to. i think you talk a little bit about that ralph in your article. >> i think they tried to serve some sort of a fruity cocktail to winston churchill who spat it out. [laughs] absolutely, that was a famous episode. roosevelt saw the need to cultivate closer relations with england. it very well could have lost the war once and for all for the west. he had this wonderful relationship with churchill, of course. i think roosevelt addressed him as, i forget -- by a navy title. >> he was the former naval person. >> former naval person, right. >> they started the correspondence when he was still the first corner of the admiralty before he became prime minister. in that case he would refer to him as a naval person. president of the united states is not supposed to be talking to the british navy. he later referred to him as the former naval person. >> i spent the pandemic reading all six volumes of churchill world war 2 history. it's the only good thing that came out of the pandemic. >> we have another quick question, we are running out of time here. question from andrew smith, i appreciate the importance of the supreme court stuff. i wonder if you have planned to have another conversation on fdr subjects in the future. first of all we've been doing this for a year and a half. each week or two we do a new program. we did the education specialist, the curator, they are all available on our youtube page. our facebook videos. we have done everything with fdr's relationship with different president such as eisenhower or johnson, the great depression, the yalta conference, there is a lot of material there. we had to stop -- i think we've done 75 of these conversations with authors and historians. please, we have lots of content! we will continue to do this, and hopefully someday as the pandemic eases we will go back to doing live programs. at which point, we will continue the live streams and records them and put them on our youtube that we have a collection of this content. this is going to be the last question. it is a really good one. it's from joanne moretz. is it a lifetime appointment isn't supposed to be a way to avoid politicization and justices feeling beholden to a certain president or political viewpoint? >> lifetime appointment. ralph, we'll start with you. john after. that was the -- that was the idea, it refers to federal judges below the supreme court and the core. it is a wonderful mechanism for insulating them from the day-to-day political pressures. a used to be the fbi director had something similar, a tenured term that insulated him. i think it worked well historically. i think it could be very difficult to take that away. i defer to john's expertise here. >> now, i agree completely. it is valuable insulation. the question is, how much do you need? lifetimes today can be very long. if there is a way to permit a justice to serve out beyond the politics of his or her appointed moment that is desirable and insulates them. i don't think that needs to be 30, 40, or 50 years. although due to heart disease, robert jackson died at age 62 after serving only 14 years on the court. one of those he was awol being a prosecutor at nuremberg. one can make hitter or mark doing great service on the supreme court without needing many many decades. also if we are not trying to play forever, we might not prioritize appointing ever younger people. perhaps we will get more of the career wisdom and experience of more senior people. 60 and 70-year-old people, including people who have held high public offices they are not viable supreme court candidates today. i think that is a terrible loss. >> right. ralph, john, thank you very much. great conversation! i think we all know that u.s. constitution day, there are three branches of government. they just did a survey that less than 30% of americans can name off three branch of the government. the executive branch, which is the president. which is the legislative branch of congress, the judicial branch which is a supreme court. they are supposed to be three equal branches yet none of them feel the others live up to their potential. on that note i want to thank you guys. thank you very much for coming. thank you all for watching! >> at least six presidents recorded conversations while in office. your many of those conversations during season two of c-span's podcast, presidential recordings. >> the nixon tapes. they're part private conversations, part deliberations, and 100 percent unfiltered. >> well, let me say that the main thing is, it will pass, and my heart goes out to those people who, with the best of intentions, or overzealous. but as i'm sure you know, i'll tell you if only i could have spent a little more time being a politician last year and less time being president, i would've kicked their butts out. i didn't know what they were doing. >> find presidential recordings, season two, on c-span now mobile app. or wherever you get your podcasts. >> book tv. every sunday, on c-span two. it features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. at 3:30 pm eastern, emergency room doctor thomas fischer provides insight on giving patient care during the pandemic. and the challenges navigating the american health care system, with his book the emergency. a year of healing and heartbreak in the chicago er. then, at 8 pm eastern, jason kander shares his book, invisible storm describing living with ptsd and how it affected his run. watch book tv, every sunday, on c-span two, and find a full schedule on your program guide. at book tv, dot org. >> it gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the university of washington and to the podium, kirsten dougherty.
appointed eight justices during his administration, some of whom help change american democracy for the better. he got to the point that no supreme court justices during his first term, which was a point of extreme frustration for him. we will talk about that a little bit later. the role of the supreme court has changed over the years. today it certainly plays a central war in our political process. but make no mistake, the court has always been important. joining me today is professor john barrett professor of law at the st. john's university, and fellow of the robert eight jackson fellow. he is the writer of the jackson list, a popular email newsletter and website. and editor of jackson's acclaimed 2003 posthumous book, quote that man. an insider portrait of franklin d. roosevelt. the last new deal insider memoir. also with us today ralph blumenthal distinguished lecturer from baruch college, continues to be a contributor to the times and other publications. author of five books, including the believer about the harvard psychologist john mack who investigated ufos an alien encounters. he actually has a very direct connection with fdr, we will talk about that in a minute. we will start with professor barrett, give us a little bit of your background specifically with your work on justice robert jackson. >> thank you, paul for this opportunity, and really the privilege to be at the roosevelt library at homestead in every sense except actual. the path that led me to all of this was really being a lawyer in washington at first. i worked with the department of justice in different federal investigations for about seven years. i then became a law professor. among my areas public life, public figures, legal ethics and constitutional law. sort of a converging on the supreme court and the people on the core. robert jackson in particular. someone who was in roosevelt's cabinet as attorney general. was confirmed through this senate in five different jobs in a very short run of years. he became a big project. for our topic it matter that jackson was a named assistant attorney general in 1937, principal witness defending the president court backing plan, and then the solicitor general who over the next two years argued in defense of new deal laws constitutionality before the supreme court. it is the jackson path that brought me into this rose about world and the court performance the tide in. >> jackson was of course part of the nuremberg trials, we can talk about that separately. professor blumenthal, give us a little bit about your background both as a reporter and working at the library collection. one of the key members of fdr's administration. >> thank you paul. i really appreciate being on with you and john. i am a distinguished lecturer at baruch college as you mentioned. in that capacity we supervise our archives collection in the newman library, among which we have a collection of the papers on looser halle gilles the third, as a member of the committee that really reorganize the executive branch for fdr. that came up right in the middle of the court packing fight. that is interesting. i also was on the new york times for 45 years. one of my happiest stories, actually, was being up at the roosevelt hohman library to do a story on top cottage in 2001 when it was renovated. also, i have written a lot about the holocaust, and of course robert jackson's role as prosecutor at nuremberg. it is a very sterling episode the prosecution of these nazi criminals. anyway, i should say, i came into the subject from a book called 168 days, which is a virtual diary of the court packing controversy, co-written by turner caliber, co-editor at the new york times when i started there. -- it is a wonderful account, not completely unbiased and we can discuss, of the day today struggles back and forth over the court packing controversy. it is a privilege to be here. >> cloud to have you here. for those of you don't know, tom cottage is a home that fdr bill in hyde park here. in the 1930s, he planned to move into and live and after he left the presidency. one of the fully design houses in america that was made to accommodate handicap person, with a wheelchair. there's no thresholds on the door. the doors and windows have lovers. i'm really is an architectural marvel. it is only open part of the time. it is part of the national park service collection of properties appear. they have eleanor home on south hill, the top cottage, the vanderbilt mansion. quick plug, anyone coming up to the hudson valley make sure you stop here and visit in. back to this subject at hand. let's talk about fdr's court packing scheme. john, set the scene. what were the circumstances that made fdr so frustrated with the court. when he is done, why did he -- and what he did he try to do to change? >> i think you have to go back a little bit before his presidency and remember that we are in the great depression the stock market crashed in the fall of 1929, coincidentally during that term president herbert hoover had three supreme court appointment opportunities. he made great appointments, no denying that. it is the luck of the draw if the president gets vacancies. president trump got three, president hoover got three. president roosevelt in 1932, inaugurated and 33, and that first four-year term he got zero. as you mentioned paul. he had a super majority in both the house and the senate. there was an attack on legislation in the problems of japan -- the torpid voluntourism of the hoover air was replaced by the new deal. the new deal ran into a supreme court roadblock. in the course of that four-year term, not only did roosevelt have no chance to appoint justices but the nine who were there struck down major reform relief laws. here's a quick laundry list. national recovery act. the railroad retirement act. section three of the national recovery act. the fraser lumpy act. the tax component of the agricultural adjustment act. there were poll conservation act. the amendment to the bankruptcy law, and a state new york minimum wage law that was a state level counterpart progressive level. roosevelt was the popular, powerful, democratically response of president. the supreme court was a tremendous obstacle. reelected overwhelmingly in 1936, he decided to use his political capital on his supreme court problem. >> what did he do? what was his strategy? what was he trying to accomplish here. >> well, he took it very personally. actually, he had this dream that the supreme would cooperate with him in getting his programs going. now, maybe john can help me understand, and our listeners, whether roosevelt was being disingenuous or if he really believes the separation of powers did not apply to him. the idea that and he came up with the idea to appoint six new justices and then cooperate with them and he would cooperate. to get his program through it is insane to our way of thinking today. >> it is a mystery to me how much he believes that he could really merge these two branches of government. what happened is, he was really smarting under these rejections. although the court overturning of the nra actually probably helped him in retrospect, because it was so unpopular. he was resolved! it was really unlike him with his perfect temperament and his great sense of timing, his wonderful way of reading the country, he kind of lost it! he decided to put all of his chips on this plan to change the core. there were several, there were four actual proposals given to him by home or cummings, his attorney general. one with a constitutional amendment, which would be very difficult. one was statutory to change the jurisdiction of the court. they were various levels of tinkering. the last one was to add the provision that whenever a justice reach 70, he or she -- while he in those days, now she. he would have to step down. or roosevelt could appoint somebody to take his place. that was his plan. he somehow got convinced that this was doable. as john said, he had this wonderful supermajority. he coasted in with 27,000 votes, a huge majority in 1936. he had every reason to think that the country was just waiting. labor was on his side, liberals were on his side, that this would be welcome. of course, it was not! >> a little context here. the 1936 presidential election, as you mentioned, was the largest electoral landslide in american political history. i always think that fdr had extraordinary political instincts. they got him to where he was. elected and then reelected in a wheelchair is simply incredible on every level! during one of the darkest times in american history. i would also like to point out that he made the three biggest mistakes of his entire political career i think during that period after that landslide victory. he decided to pack the court, he decided he would primary the conservative southern democrats who are holding up legislation in congress, and he cut the budget, leading to the rose about recession of 1937. as you said he lost it. he was so enthralling with his own success in popularity that he tried to do things that were way off path of with the american people wanted. john, talk a little bit about what's the reaction was when he put this forward. even his own party had trouble supporting him in this court packing scheme. >> yeah, the constitution does not prescribe a size for this is cream court. it is a creature of statute. originally it was six and went down to five, it's oscillated around in the 19th century. since the 1870s we have had a nine member court. it's now been 60 years of the country being used to nine as if it is etched in marvel. that is they -- trying to grow the court in 15 with one fell swoop of trying to fill it with like-minded and -- it was somehow un-american even though it is an unconstitutional. it opened up some of the fault lines in the democratic party. there were old barons who were the committee chairman's. there were southern segregationist to a part of this coalition that roosevelt was trying to hold together. the court and the target was not such a publicly notoriously evil institution. especially the way that roosevelt spun it out. he claimed in the announcement that the justices were so far behind on their work. there was a pile of unaddressed certiorari petitions. which was jargon in just not true. he also claim that these aging justices no longer had the fastball. that was a hard thing to claim about louis brandeis, the oldest of the bunch! that's been sort of hit a wall of hostility. it immediately became controversial. roosevelt did try to recalibrate. robert jackson was one of the people who told him, you need to start telling the truth about this! it's not about age it's not about backlog it is about interpretations that particularly be for most conservative justices have porn into their constitution. >> they have red state powers to protect our welfare and use their police powers must to restrictively. it is about the core putting its political preferences in place of the proper understanding of the constitution. democracy can and should respond by appointing more straight shooters. i would even say more conservative justices in terms of constitutional -- as opposed to these four horsemen radicals. >> if i could just jump in here, it wasn't dead in the water from the beginning. it might've seem like it would be because vice president garner came out of the meeting where the news was sprung on him holding his nose and going like this. he had a shot a good shot at getting this through. because of all the reasons we mentioned. his popularity, the election landslide, et cetera. through a series of almost biblical, greek, whatever you want to call them, missteps, he succeeded in sabotaging himself. even though it was not a popular thing to change the third branch of government, it could've been done. had it been handled differently. it is not just self sabotage. there are external events. a couple of things that happened in that 30 30 or 40 days. announcing the plan in february, early march the senate hearings are happening. the supreme court justices sent a letter to the chairman of the committee that says we are current on our work. they blow up that cover story. then the supreme court in mid march starts to hand down decisions upholding new deal laws. all of a sudden the supreme court problem is receding. a statement imam wages upheld. the national liberal nation is upheld. social security is argued that spring. in may it's constitutional is upheld. that confluence of events made it really much less necessary to do something dramatic. >> of course that changes one of the decisions that led to one of the great catchphrases of supreme court history. a switch in nine states time. >> as roosevelt other said in my notes, he would not take yes for an answer. the courts went out of their way, enough if they decide the decisions in order to placate him. that was a good question. was it done with design. did they see the lie in reliving need to uphold the good new deal programs. for whatever reason the court gave him what he wanted. basically, i don't know if you want to use this image but it dug his grave for him and he jumped in. he didn't have to. it really is amazing how he missed all the signals and just plowed ahead. he was determined to remake that court. put up to six that would carry through his programs. it is just astounding. it is still a political mystery. the turner callan's book that i reference, he and else up interviewed everybody but the president. we don't know, i don't know maybe john knows. in roosevelt's own riding and what has come out in his papers about what his thinking was about this. why he wouldn't take yes for an answer. >> he was much too careful to leave a paper trail on anything! [laughs] >> we have a question from the audience, i hope i pronounce this way. camilla -- how do we know that core packing was unpopular? outside of the conservative voice of the court? did average americans in the 1930s have a strong opinion on the court? >> the two strong constituencies of roosevelt, farmers and labor, and liberals -- they all turned against a pretty quickly! he lost his natural constituency. it was not popular from the beginning. it is interesting. he thought, roosevelt thought it might be. which is why he embarked on a! he started losing his natural allies from the beginning. am i right on that, john? >> no, i think that's correct. look at the mailbags. some of which is archive there. >> we have millions of letters! >> you can measure, page by page, the public reaction. a lot of it is very critical. look at the congressional committee votes. ultimately the congressional committee reports. it rejects the first version of the proposed bill. and the urgency is receding in the springtime, the presidency does pull back. it was a second version that expands the courts buy two seats that he well would have one had that been pushed through to a vote. he kind of had to deal with the senate majority leader, senator robinson from arkansas, who would get that over the finish line. roosevelt had frankly promised him a supreme court appointment, one of those two seats. he was making nice, a jefferson island picnic with all the members of congress early that summer. robinson drop dead right after the fourth of july. at that point, one more development justice band of inter announced he was resigning. roosevelt finally felt he had a vacancy to fill! at that point, just none of it was worth any more trouble. we live with nine, you can see the dominoes. black is appointed in august, read the next year. both felix in a dog with the next year. frank murphy the next year. robert jackson and james burns the next year. these eight roosevelt appointees just one after another in the wings, starting in the summer of 37. >> there were so many opportunities for him to compromise. not so much cummings, who was a true believer as his attorney general, but others came to him, repeatedly, with offers. wheeler, montana -- with offers to compromise. he just wouldn't have it! he was dead set on moving ahead. he wouldn't even recognize the reality of what was happening. his own allies were coming to him with stories about what's going on out there. how he was losing, you know, support -- constituencies. he was very bull headed in that. it is extraordinary. the sense of timing that we credit him with, the exquisite sensitivity to political wins. he just was dead set on this. >> there is a little colonel in this that i think is maybe an explanation of that. home are cummings, the attorney general, was really the harassment and the proponent in this. part of the problem on the supreme court was justice james make reynolds. he was one of the four horsemen. he was a wilson appointee. he had been in the wilson administration with fdr. as attorney general, mick reynolds had drafted, in effect, a court packing plan. when cummings found that in told it to roosevelt they both thought it was such an incredibly wonderful car mixing to take on mick reynolds. i think they got too attached to the idea. that held their enthusiasm in february, march, and into the springtime finally before recalibration started. >> we have another question from my wife, what's determines what's level of justices are on the court? does congress have the power to change that number? could they change it down? as you said earlier, it's been five, it's been seven. you know, is that? >> it is entirely a statutory manner. it is an axe judiciary act, if you will. to create a supreme court seat, if one became vacant and could've all-ish one. i do not think a law can abolish a sitting justice. the constitution protects against that. also in older history and in recent history we have seen that the senate has the power to sit on a nomination. that happened under president under president andrew johnson, it happened under president obama for a stretch in 2016. >> also congress has the power to limit the jurisdiction of the court. it can say that the court would need a supermajority to overrule any decisions. thank can tinker with the mandate of the court in so many different ways. we think that is somehow protected in the constitution but it is not. congress could not only change the number of justices but reorganize their responsibilities. >> i want to go back to something that john was talking about which was this string starting in the second term of the administration going forward, disappointment of eight justices. i will ask you both into question, like who is your favorite child. of the a, who do you think was the most significant employment that he made, in terms of both changing the core and changing america? >> john, point to you first. >> i have a bias but i think it is well founded, in favor of robert jackson. i think he was such a special, incredible talent. a beautiful probably the best rider in the courts history. a case by case jurist. he did not pigeonhole easily. it turned out to be quite a fractious court. this rose about court that began in the late 30s and lived on to the late 50s. jackson was kind of more on the conservative side, but in the middle if you will. a much more a case of time person. he was the exception in the japanese american exclusion cases. and of talent jackson is the person. in terms of significance, i may be hugo black because he broke the ice. that really started the flow. and of course black served until 1971, a long and distinguished career. perhaps overcoming the stigma of having been a ku klux klan member, not coming out just after he was appointed to the court, undeniably. he chartered and egalitarian path of our constitutional law. by the late 1940s, he really had becoming the leading liberties justice. he was that, for most of his career, i think he is also very important. i have two children, i don't pick save a children. i look at these justices and think, really, that is an all-star team! quite a talented roster with almost no exceptions. >> who do you put your money on, ralph? >> i would say black also. it's interesting that rose about claimed him. he probably was blindsided. he didn't really do his homework i'm black and his klain membership, although it did end up pretty irrelevant based on the direction that he took on the court. it's also interesting that there was this deal to appoint joe robinson to the vacancy after advantage retired. robinson, of course, was carrying the president water off through the court packing case. he with the senate majority leader who literally worked himself to death and die before he could be appointed to the court. roosevelt turned on him. he was afraid as a southerner he wouldn't carry through his liberal agenda. he left robinson hanging. really a very sad episode in history. robinson, i found out, his best friend was bernard baroque, i didn't know that. -- >> there is a college named after him isn't there? >> well, that's where i work. baruch college, but rookie of course being a famous financial adviser to fdr. it is strange just the way things turned that whole thing could've been settled long before it went down to defeat. if the plan had been carried through rose about would've appointed robinson to compromise and maybe a 0. 2 justices not go for the full six. as i keep coming back to this he was adamant that he was going to have his way or the highway. >> all i have two more quick comments about the appointees. i want to flag felix frankfurter he was of course brilliant and his career i think most closely to the judicial restraint model that actually the court packing model is about that our country should be made by our elective representatives it is the supreme court's job to get out of the way of a national government. and stake a vermont have ample powers in our system. so frankfurter it's sort of a through line. also just a charming in fascinating character. the other person that i think we all forget is that roosevelt elevated harlan fixed gellin to be a republican a coolidge appointee to the court, in the 1920s. roosevelt did that in the summer of 1941 as a sort of bipartisan non political move. that is a lost are. that was a great thing for the president to do. >> he was a member of the liberal minority, wasn't he? >> that's correct, he was not one of the four horsemen. >> interestingly, frankfurter actually oppose the court packing plant, right? >> in his private heart, he held his powder and did not do anything publicly. >> roosevelt became very frustrated with frankfurter. we are going to go back in time for a minute and then we are going to come up to the present day. i want to go back to talk about why the supreme court has this power to determine what is constitutional law and what is not. it goes back to the very founding days of the early 1800s with the rather extraordinary legal case of lamar barry versus madison. let's talk about this and why this it laid the foundation of why the supreme court gets the final say >> was that to me well ma barry versus madison except the supreme court to rule on all legal battles in the government. it is not in the constitution they took on that power later on it was deemed worthwhile in terms of bounced power without that the court would have been a really weak sister to the other two branches it is an interesting example of how the founding fathers hadn't thought of that once the court came up with it everyone said this is a good idea, the court should have that power! it became ingrained in our system. we can't think of what it would be like without it so it really is a great example of how the constitution is a living document it just added this element and never had in the beginning. everybody said, that's a good idea. >> there is in marbury a sort of logic that gets them to the power to engage in judicial review. the court has to decide cases, it decides cases that arrived under the constitution. sometimes a provision of the constitution might be in conflict with a statute. -- the answer is the constitution defeats a statute. the court strikes down a unconstitutional statute in the context of a case. the power of judicial review though is different than that answer becoming the authoritative last word. >> right. >> judicial review becoming a judicial supremacy. i think that process is something that we also to wrestle with. with the court packing plane was pushing back on was judicial supremacy being asserted over a new deal laws in the early 1930s. robert jackson wrote a whole book about this called the struggle for judicial supremacy, published just as he became attorney general in the 1940s. historically in the supreme court it became institution that inflated itself as big as it could get away with, as we would let it get up -- and marbury was the start. they left that road to big. other times we push back. a 1937 court packing issue is one. judicial for by individual justices is another. proposals for court reform today, obviously, would be in that vein. >> so we've have got some good questions coming in now. please, if you have a question just put it in the chat. joanne morris wants know what's argument was given for increasing the court from 6 to 9 in the first place? when and who did this? did they face similar opposition? that's a great question. >> it was not in one fell swoop. generally it relates to the structure and creation of the lower federal courts. as the number of circuit court grew, a corresponding supreme court justice because of the circuit riding responsibilities, it largely explains the early growth vacillation. those circuit panels were injustice visiting in riding and joining the circuit court activity. i think bennett is workload driven. there is more and more cases coming within the jurisdiction of the court, i'm sure the supreme court was communicating to the congress that they could use another guy up here! laws grow the size of the court. that is what largely got off to nine. >> a lot of political and more workload? >> i think structural for the judiciary and workload. the political moment is more in the civil war non-filling vacancies. the legal tender case was pending before the supreme court and basically congress let the court shrink rather than that andrew jackson grow the core in the wrong direction, that might have threatened reconstruction. >> one of the original proposals for reform in the court along with the packing west to designate different districts for each of the justices, right? they would come from nine different parts of the country and all that. they would be limiting roosevelt, trying to think of two people. wasn't robinson from one place? arkansas or something? somebody came from another justice, he had to be ruled out. that was one of the ideas to trying to get the justices picked from different parts of the country. we have a question from princess michelle, your highness, do you have any information on how president fdr celebrated the american holiday thanksgiving. my mom and dad were born here during his term of service in the day. my mom was born in the american holiday thanksgiving. i can answer a little bit of this. for many years, fdr would celebrate thanksgiving in palm springs, georgia, after the rehabilitation center for polio that he created down there. he bought an old rundown stall and created the world's lead polio research center. he will go down there every thinks giving in spend time with the patients in the mid 1920s, he first got polio he went there for quite a while when he first became president. as president he went down there and he could drop his act. he could let people know that he was crippled, handicapped, he could swim in the pool with them. they called him doc roosevelt. it was a tradition that really meant a great deal to him. good question. >> that image from photographs was the first thing that came to mind when i heard the question. the other thing i know but not in detail is that the date of thanksgiving, that particular thursday was standardized on the roosevelt. so it made him more of a national holiday, a fixed date. >> it was standardized because he created a controversy. retail industry asked him to move it up earlier so they had a longer period between thanksgiving and christmas for people to buy things. he moved to, there was such an outcry about it that he had to move back and solidify that date forever. >> you mentioned polio, we should not let -- >> we lost ralph for a second. technical wizardry. >> and i'm back? are you back? >> yes. >> has that, is that better? is that all right? so, this is the 100th anniversary -- that of course made him a great leader that he was. he gave him the empathy, they gave him the strength the power to overcome adversity all these things that abandon him during the court packing thing. the embassy, his wisdom, the only thing he had left with his strength. he had that in access, maybe too much in this case. it is interesting that this is that important anniversary. which history could've been different. he may never have developed into the later he was if he hadn't had that adversity to battle against. adversity to bat >> i absolutely believe that. we have a great question which has come in from christopher d. go. was jane hampered's appointment roosevelt's way of paying him back for not taking him on as vice president? a little political history here as well as a court history. certainly a interesting character. threatening to run against brazil as well. any comments on that? >> i'm not sure how explicit that was. it's 1941, after 1940 has occurred and it's over and done. i'm not sure what's said under burns would have gone to a third term president. they obviously had a fine relationship. roosevelt had a high regard for his talent. not only because he put him on the court, and a year later when burns hated the job anyway, roosevelt pulled him out of the court and into the white house and had him manage the economy during the war. i think lawrence was and executive branch manager or legislator way ahead of being a judge. >> right. do you agree with that, ralph? >> all will defer to john here. much more of an expert than i am. the people who end up being with the president on this court packing thing the ones who are against him it was really loyal group, tommy cochrane, others who stood with him at a time when so many other people were abandoning him. wheeler, and connally and others. garner, of course! so, it is interesting that he had a small circle of people. and jackson! you know, jackson was one of the people that really stood by the president, right john? that is right. in many more, the one that was never published in his lifetime, i had the luck to find the manuscript and these families support to publish it. in four pages, he tells his experience with court packing. he recounts going over to the president, to the white house, for a meeting with the inner team in february when this has been announced. it is off to a bumpy start. jackson is telling the president, before you go fishing, before you head out of washington, you need to have another crack at explaining this. a pile of an addressed so special -- is not during the day. roosevelt, according to jackson, positive, that is a terrible explanation, isn't it. they went into a fireside chat and started to tell the truth. it was more of a political process that had a chance thereafter. >> we have a lot of questions coming in. we want to jump over to a question from camilla about the connection between justices and political perspectives. the question is, does the 1930s that justices have the same controversies or is this a modern development in terms of over political connections outside of the court system? we will start with you, ralph, on that one. >> i would tell you that the book, 168 days, opened my eyes to the poison atmosphere in washington. i had a new deal as the program that everyone subscribe to and sailed through that roosevelt saved the country. then you look back and we think that our time is full of internal us, strive, and political poison. what went on back then, it is amazing. the court, i do not know how much the court itself took part in that. we do not know. the book itself does not know what went on behind closed doors. we still don't know. certainly all around the court, the atmosphere in washington at those days was murderous. in that sense, nothing has changed. >> if i am understanding the question, if she's asking about supreme court appointments, where their poisonous fights in that context? generally, no. roosevelt had a big majority in the senate. he could get his appointees confirmed. that isn't a point mental difference between his time in our time. the one that did not have hard sailing but an ugly whispering campaign around it from the band side with the nomination of frankfurt in 39 and the antisemitic reaction to that. frankly, the hold -- the whole reserve. -- was roosevelt not giving a about antisemitism. he flicked his chin at adolf hitler by putting america's leading lawyer and prominent american and you on the supreme court. >> also, the senatorial courtesy in those days was very strong. when and if roosevelt nominated a senator like hugo black, that immediately sailed through because it is courtesy. i do not know if we still have that today. >> it seems highly unlikely. there is a sense that many people have today, taking the people that are not history buffs, that this contentious nature of the supreme court's new. it is a new phenomenon. it used to be that they would just sit in their robes and the supreme court would hand out things. everything was fine. have you heard about brown versus board of education? it is an interesting thing to look at because of the connection that it has to the roosevelt court. it is perhaps there was no decision in the american history that has had more significant consequences on the way that millions of americans would. talk about how this came about and why it was such a revolutionary decision. it took them out of traditional roles. let's start with john. >> that is a huge question. in the starting point is obviously the creation of this country as a slave country with our constitution ducking that moral con destruct as the price of ratifying a unity of slave states and previous states and a race through the 19th century, the civil war, the minutes after the civil war. this is fundamental historic reality and our permanent challenge. it is our deepest sin. we won world war ii with a segregated army fighting against racial supremacy siri opponents. that all came home and had to get settled out. the dissonance of not, nazism, impaired pull japan, and going home to being a separate country. this is what the w cpa attacks. it is what's a court full of roosevelt appointees would still. frankfort, jackson, black, douglas, they are the heart of the court. they begin to deal with this in the late 1940s. they are the leading edge. for them, this is not at all a hard question and morally, or personally. in various ways, it is a challenging legal question. the guys who wrote the 14th amendment or segregationists. frankly, jimmy burns, who we are talking about at this point is the governor of south carolina. he is a segregationist. the supreme court, with owen williams leadership and -- in a series of decisions, worked its way to give meaning to the equal protection clause. >> i think it is our finest moment in constitutional history. >> and you could not draw a clear vision between the congress and the court at that time. congress was controlled by saint southerners by the majority system. groups like aggregations, powerful chairmen, people who roosevelt had dealt with all throughout his administration's yet here we have a supreme court that is taking a radically different approach to equality, and you shape of americans acai. if i get it in up to congress we never want to segregated the schools. >> i find it an interesting book and to the other cases that came up during the roosevelt demonstration where this idea of protections of american i. d. ills were thrown out the window. i have to wonder what those conversations were like. as you pointed, out jackson is the dissenting voice in the non judicial sense. the case stressed the court in a way that forced it to make a decision. you are in the midst of this war and you have this fear gripping the country. how did this decision come down? why did they not acknowledge the constitutional rights of american citizens who have to have japanese ancestors? >> they did and they did not. the court decides these series of japanese american in a slow walk. the curfew cases not get decide until 43. internment cases do not get decided until late 44. at this point, the war in the pacific is far offshore approach approaching japan. this is through the island hopping carnage that we were winning. imperative of national security is gone by that time. the majority fictionalizes at the time when the president of the army decided that we had a security decision. -- national security is a real thing. it is a vital thing. it's also something that can be held as a crutch. the supreme court was beaten down by the claim of national security. >> and you only have to look at this climate in this country after 9/11 to see how inflamed the new society can blaine be by the pearl harbor attack, 9/11 attacks, and more recently, all the statues that were passed around militarizing the police. they were invading our privacy, monitoring the muslim community, the patriot act, so we do not have to look back that far to understand the mentality of the country after pearl harbor. look what happened after 9/11. >> i think it is interesting that the supreme court played eight key role in whether these muslim ban, travel bans, were constitutional. they found themselves in the middle does a political firestorm as it has for so many cases when president biden was elected after supreme justice being appointed by trump, there was this movement that he should pack the court. walk us through, we will start with you john, what this would've been? how can this even happen in today's political environment? well with this process look like today? >> they are not votes, she's not the prideful party. the meaning is exactly would proposed in 1837 there is no basis to think that the ordinary process was manipulated both in 2016 and in 2020. is that the justice of scalia and -- >> these two were being consequential appointments that distorted something that should have naturally been the other way. president biden, i think, probably, wants to spend no color capital. he began a commission that was started by brilliant academics who have been talking, a studying, writing. there are a range of proposals ranging from statues to constitutional amendments to retirement schemes and retirements that would declutter the court that could be talking without a constitutional amendment. in other words, justices for good behavior, which is interpreted to mean for life. this doesn't necessarily mean we have the right sit on supreme court cases. this is until one expires. it can be structured that they move into service court or become a senior bench in the recusal or something. they want to give it to be justices. in the meantime, it would be a vacancy that would be created. let's say every president in a four-year term got two appointments, that would be a much more regular thing. that might take some of the political venom out of this process. of course, it would take a statute. it might be challenge. it is ironic to see how the supreme court would be asked in deciding them. after we got past that he would take some number of years before we were in the new regime of orderly and less politicized supreme court opponents. it's a very hard question. >> also, when roosevelt came up with this court plan, it was immediately,, seized upon that one of the justices -- now cardoza. anyway, he was great and really popular. not because people are living longer, that age does not seem to old anymore. secondly, look at the differences between biden and fdr. biden is much more careful, not as sure footed in a political animal or good politically as roosevelt. biden did not come off 27 vote a landslide, 27 million vote landslide that fdr did in 36. they are different people. roosevelt is very headstrong on this issue. biden is not committed to this issue, from what i can see. the latest refusal of the court to dive into the texas abortion law really through a new element into the debate. a lot of you are thinking that biden is not going to invest his prestige on this issue. now this is of all issues is very valuable. it caused a lot of a couple more decisions like that by the court and they may move this panel to come up with something. we've got a couple of questions that have come in that are not strictly related to the court. i will try to answer a couple of them. princess michelle asked again who was franklin roosevelt friends with from the monarchy and government from the united kingdom. very famously he invited the king in queen of england to come to america in 1939. america's hopefully realize that they didn't particularly like the british monarchy. a matter of fact i had a very low popularity ratings. the previous king had advocated because he married an american. there was a real sense that the english monarchy did not want anything to do. roosevelt knew that we had to solidify a relationship with them. the war was coming! he knew the war was coming. he knew that britain would be a critical ally. he invites the king and queen, they have a big fancy dinner in washington. the come up here to hyde park, fdr famously has the hot dog picnic up and talk cottage. where he serves hot dogs to the king and queen. they feared other things to. i think you talk a little bit about that ralph in your article. >> i think they tried to serve some sort of a foodie cocktail to winston churchill who spat it out. [laughs] absolutely, that was a famous episode. roosevelt saw the need to cultivate closer relations with england. it very well could have lost the war once and for all from the west. he had this wonderful relationship with churchill, of course. i think roosevelt addressed him as, i forget -- by a navy title. >> he was the former naval person. >> former naval person, right. >> they started the correspondence when he was still the first corner of the admiralty before he became prime minister. in that case he would refer to him as a naval person. president of the united states is not supposed to be talking to the british navy. he later referred to him as the former naval person. >> i spent the pandemic reading all six volumes of churchill forward to history. it's the only good thing that came out of the pandemic. >> we have another quick question, we are running out of time here. question from andrew smith, i appreciate the importance of the supreme court stuff. i wonder if you have planned to have another conversation on fdr subjects in the future. first of all we've been doing this for a year and a half. each week or two we do a new program. we did the education specialist are the curator, they are all available on our youtube page. our facebook videos. we have done everything with fdr's relationship with different president such as eisenhower or johnson, the great depression, the yalta conference, there is a lot of material there. we had to start -- i think we've done 75 of these conversations with authors and historians. please we have lots of content! we will continue to do this, hopefully someday as the pandemic eases we will go back to doing live programs. at which point we will continue the live streams and records them and put them on our youtube that we have a collection of this content. this is going to be the last question. it is a really good one. it's from joanne moore it's. is it a lifetime appointment isn't supposed to be a way to avoid politicization and justices feeling beholden to a certain president or political viewpoint? >> lifetime appointment. ralph, we'll start with? you john after. that was the -- that was the idea, it refers to federal judges below the supreme court and the core. it is a wonderful mechanism for insulating them from the day-to-day political pressures. a used to be the fbi director had something similar, a tenured term that isolated ham. i think it worked well historically. i think it could be very difficult to take that away. i defer to johnson fatigued here. >> now, i agree completely. it is valuable insulation. the question is, how much do you need? lifetimes today can be very long things. if there is a way to permit a justice to serve out beyond the politics of his or her appointed moment that is desirable in insulates them. i don't think that needs to be 30, 40, or 50 years. although due to heart disease robert jackson died at age 62 after serving only four years on the court. one of those he was a wall being a prosecutor at nuremberg. one can make hitter or mark doing great service on the supreme court without needing many many decades. also if we are not trying to play forever, we might not prioritize appointing ever younger people. perhaps we will get more of the career wisdom and experience more senior people. 68 70-year-old people, including people who have held high public offices they are not viable supreme court candidates they. i think that is a terrible loss. >> right. ralph, john, thank you very much. great conversation! i think we all know that u.s. constitution there are three branches of government. they just did a survey that less than 30% of americans can name off three branch of the government. the executive branch, which is the president. which is the legislative branch of congress, the judicial branch which is a supreme court. they are supposed to be three equal branches yet none of them feel the others live up to their potential. on that note i want to thank you guys. thank you very much for coming. thank you all for watching! v wade in their confirmation hearings. we begin with justice samuel alito the author of the new leaked draft opinion which seeks to overturn the row case his nomination hearing was held in which seeks to overturn -- in january 2006 >> you conceded the fact that we have free speech because
>> university of virginia professor, risa goluboff type to the tv about herb hook, "the lost promise of civil rights." the interview is part of the tedious college series. it's just over 10 minutes. >> "the lost promise of civil rights" was published by harvard university press. the author is risa goluboff at university of virginia. what is the civil rights section? >> a unit of the united states federal government, just before world war ii. one of his creative is part of the department of justice. it's charge to protect individual rights, fundamental individual rights. people aren't sure what that meant. they were trained to collectively bargain and organize into unions. when world war ii started, greece became much but a prominent in the civil rights section and as a result start to think about how to write the workers. it takes a whole bunch of cases in which the rights of black workers are at stake and prosecutes all kinds of employers for violations of civil rights laws. >> host: was defined by executive order? >> guest: is formed by president frank was about and at their request of the attorney general and frank murphy was a big labor guide. he was from michigan. he was a very big supporter of labor union and he goes on to a career as a supreme court justice commences at the product of individual rights as well. >> host: what kind of pricey to get when it was first formed? just go there with him that controversy. a lot of what it does over the course of world war ii i think it can need because it's small and largely flies below the radar screen. >> host: does it still exists? >> guest: i came the civil rights division of the department of justice and 1857, so it doubles in 1957 and becomes its only division aggression against much bigger come, specially in 1864 civil rights act of the 1960 voting rights act. the number of lawyers in it that is gross. in a way to still exist. >> host: how does the civil rights section tie into the title of your book, "the lost promise of civil rights"? >> guest: is crucial to the title of my book. so it's basically a bus of between the new deal in the 1930s in brown v. board of education in 1954. the idea is to think what civil rights looked like before brown. ron tells us one vision of civil rights comment that jim crow was a state mandated segregation in brown versus the board of education that's not constitutional and we know from there into a new era of civil rights. what civil rights look like before brown, before we had that idea of jim crow? index of a black workers rights killers to do for them, what they thought jim crow did to them and how it harms none and in their idea was a lot prouder than brown versus board of education. it's not only was saying that black children are my children go to different schools. it's not only anti-miscegenation laws. it's also employers who only higher weight or hire african-americans only for the worst paid and most dangerous and worse condition jobs. if the federal government and the state government interfering in the economy and racially discriminatory ways. the image that comes out other cases that takes on african-american workers reveal a jim crow that is much more total, much more about deprivation and exploitation as well as stigma and symbolism and state-mandated thought. >> host: during that period, what with some of the success civil rights section? >> guest: the big success of the civil rights section had to do with agricultural workers in the south actually who are really a lot of the worse off of african-americans in any race or color. a lot of the complaints were from agricultural workers in this house in forms of involuntary servitude. nasa civil rights for help and civil rights section prosecuted individual employers for holding their employees and involuntary servitude. they would not do as agricultural cases to cases of domestic workers such about african-american women and those workers complain that not just a ripping hunt against their will because often they were allowed to go to the store by themselves or leave their employers presents, but there is so subjugated they were and she concludes, paid almost been for the laborer. they were never given days off in the cases the prosecution said even though they weren't held in chains, even though they weren't held a coercion, this is a form of slavery and people can't treat other people this way. >> host: when did the term civil rights conmen and prior to the area you are talking about, when the civil rights legislation are action start to go away? >> guest: the term civil rights has a long history and it means different things over different periods of time. one of the things i discovered was during the early 20th century, civil rights largely refer to property rights and contract rights of individuals who wanted to be free to contract with employers or employees or property owners without interference in the government. in the mid-1930s new deal regulation of the economy, if you're going have large-scale interventions come to every individual can have a right to contract and take on dangerous work with no protections. we have agencies that say you can't do that. so in the 1930s, civil rights comes to refer to collectively per rights, rights to collectively bargain and join the union and the kind of right the national labor relations act and the fair labor ask all protected. and then something interesting happens which in the 1940s and 50s, civil rights becomes much more entwined with race. but that's not always been the case monopoly changes. one of the interesting things is it's not good to civil rights means voting rights for the civil rights means the right to even a restaurant and a non-segregated basis. if you look back at the civil war and the reconstruction era when the 14th amendment supports civil rights today was ratified, people thought civil rights are about owning property in making contracts in sitting on juries and being able to sue in court. but not about what they call social rights, have been able to go to a hotel or write on a streetcar or go to a restaurant and not political rights. the definition we have a civil rights coming out of the civil rights movement from multiple changes in definitions you see over the course of american history. >> host: ready to go out? >> guest: i grew up in brooklyn and what it was based on my own family where we had a very robust than in our family has. was you go through ellis island and i got to college and i came across james goodman in a book he wrote called stories of scottsboro. i wrote a class on the american south. we had gone to monticello and new orleans, but i really never thought about a completely different america with different relations and histories and everyone i neo is a few generations in america. generation after generation in different racial politics and i then spent several summers in college in the south. i spent time after i graduated i just thought it was really a world very unlike what i experience, although one of the things i discovered was we think of jim crow is a southern experience and i'll think that's true anymore. there's a lot of that jim crow if you understood it more broadly the mr. of the whole nation. certain forms of the state-mandated aspects of segregation or lurches limited although not entirely at all, but that a lot of the more private economic forms of exploitation and part of why we haven't gone as far in getting to civil rights as i would like to see us do and define the problem as a southern problem of law and without we fixed a southern problem of law. it was society and we haven't actually talked about the rest of it all that well. >> host: why do you call it the last province? >> guest: i call it that because the lawyers in the 1940s had a sense of what it would take to undermine jim crow to the last after brown versus board of education, that we could've had an interpretation of our constitution that would have banned much more efficacious and undermining all the skirts of jim crow and instead we undermanned one part and my home. i think we got captured. it's understandable, right? was a huge victory. i don't want to say it wasn't. but we don't want to go back and say there's all this other stuff we didn't get to do and we should do it now. the smart charter could associate for layers. they want to build on this category is to not make sense, but i think we ought on the table. >> host: was this photograph? >> guest: is a photograph in the 1940s and it's an african-american family living in a rural area. they're looking at the future. even though his last cause of the civil rights and is a bit pessimistic, i'm a hardened pessimist and i like them standing determined to not do mistakenly came out and ready to take on whatever there was to take on. >> host: risa goluboff is a professor at university of virginia. this is her book, "the lost promise of civil rights" published by harvard. we sat down at alondra nelson to talk about her book, "body and
>> for a complete schedule visit booktv.org. >> now on booktv, edward mcclelland reports on america's industrial midwest, also known as the rust belt. the author examines the region's once-powerful manufacturing centers and how their demise has resulted in the exodus of local populations in search of employment. it's about an hour. [applause] >> thank you. that was a really good introduction because it segways right into what i wanted to talk about at the beginning which was the fisher body plant in its heyday. it was, i went to high school across the street from the fisher body plant in lansing, michigan, and it was perfectly integrated into the industrial life of the state. the high school was part of the supply chain. it would provide the workers for industrial labor. and there was a saying that you had a diploma in your hand one week and a ratchet in your hand the next week. people would just walk right across the street two weeks after graduation, and they'd have a job. and when i was going to school, i remember inhaling paint fumes as i ran on the track. there was sort of -- it was just this sweetish chemical odor and seeing workers standing on the balcony during friday night football games. and, of course, there was a bar across from every entrance. the prologue is called gus' bar, and it's about gus who 'em grated to lansing in 1960 because an american consul told him the most jobs were in michigan, so he figured that was the most promising place. by the time i started high school in 1982, the unemployment rate in michigan was 14%, and one of our chemistry teachers used to begin his classes every semester by telling us it used to be that you didn't have to study here, but those days are over. now you guys are going to have to study hard and go to college. so i studied hard and went to college, and even after that i didn't get a good job. i remember being fascinated by stories from baby boom with autoworkers about how easy they'd had it finding work. i read a story in the "detroit free press" about a young guy who was pumping gas in flint, and a driver took down his name and number, and a week later he got a call telling him to report for work. gm had a couple nicknames, one was the general, and the other was generous motors because at that point, this was in the early '70s. at that point the workers had a deal where they could work for 30 years and retire on full benefits no matter what age they were, and they had health care for the rest of their lives. that's over, too, which we'll get to later. this was like employment porn. i have one anecdote in the book about one of my high school friends who came home from the army and started getting a hard time from the his dad because he didn't have a job. so my friend larry had to tell his dad kids these days don't have it as easy as you did dad. and larry said i think you have to know if everyone had the same opportunity you did to just walk into a personnel office, fill out a piece of paper, get a job the same day, we'd all be there. larry eventually made it to general motors, but i think it took him about ten years, and he had to work in several other manufactureing plants. he's a fireman, and he works for a subcontractor. another guy i profiled was don cooper who runs a classic car show. he aggravated assaulted from high school in 1965 -- he graduated from high school in 1965. and his job search consisted of cutting classes one afternoon. he hired in on september 13, 1965, which was gm's largest hiring day since world war ii, and it was just as the vietnam war was cranking up. vietnam was the perfect little war for general motors because it was big enough to provide $750 million a year in defense contracts, but it wasn't so big that the company couldn't build cars too, it wasn't a total war. from 1965-1969 there was not a single month where the unemployment rate was higher than 4% in the united states. the hippies had to create an entire alternative morality to justify their indolence. so don got married and bought a house when he was 20 years old and went on to work 37 years after general motors, so his whole life course was basically set right out of high school. and one thing he told me was that the baby boomers, he beliefs, will be -- believes, will be the last generation to earn more than their parents did. so part of this is a generational story. in 2006 fisher body was torn down, and while the work was going on i saw a sign on the fence that said "demolition means progress" which i thought was kind of orwellian. and now it looks like a cross between nagasaki and the badlands. and bus, who had done -- and gus, who had done so much business for 20-some years, actually, it would have been almost 40 years, from general motors workers had to lay off all 14 of his waitresses the week after the plant closed. because he went from guys shoving money across the bar to having his only customers being the retired workers who lived in the rooms he rented above the bar. so the book was also an attempt to find out what happened to the factories that defined our communities in the midwest. and as i researched the book, i realized it was also a biography of the american middle class. and that's mostly what i want to talk about today, because one of the points i tried to mix -- make in this book is the nation's economic trends originate here in the midwest. this was the birthplace, and this is becoming the graveyard of the middle class. this is where henry ford started paying his workers $5 a day so they could afford to buy the cars they were building and where the flint sit-down strike took plaits which led to the -- place which led to auto workers movement. no product had more value during production than the automobile. the first interpret is about everett ketcham. i'm going to talk about how his life reflected the prosperity of the mid century middle class. one of the last surviving sit-down strikers, everett not only participated in the battle that founded the piddle class, he enjoyed all the spoils of the peace that followed. everett earned $27 an hour in the 1970s, more than any of the necktied budget analysts in lansing's mazes of state government cubicles. only a year less than he worked in the shop. without the benefits the uaw won from general motors, everett would have lived out his old age as an unwanted uncle. he's deciding 100 years will be enough life. after gm went bankrupt in 2008, i told him his superannuation, both the result and cause of consumption of health benefits, was personally responsible for gm's financial crisis. everett cackled. i don't know where i'd be living without it, he said. my two sisters is gone. i really don't know where i'd be if i didn't have where i had. how long are my benefits going to last because i'm not working? all the money i got is interest money i saved think the years. in his own lifetime, which began three months after world war i broke out, everett went from northern michigan farm boy to autoworker to prosperous pensioner. and flint went from a small town where building cars was a cottage industry to the city with the highest per capita income in the united states to a depopulated slum with the highest murder rate in the nation. how did all this happen? everett's father wanted to be a farmer, but he congress make corn and beans grow -- but he couldn't make corn and beans grow, so he drove a horse and buggy around the countryside trading goods for milk, potatoes and eggs. when america entered the great war, it was join the army of work in factory, so earl moved his family to flint where he built buicks. by the early 20th century, flint was already on its third great industry, each a descendant of the last. in 1865 a saw mill began operating on the flint live. once the forests were exhausted, flint used the timber to become the carriage-making capital. a scottish-born tinkerer named buick formed the country that became general motors. for a factory town, war meant work. in the teens and '20s, flint's population quadrupled. gm headhunters sought out dirt farmers all over the midwest and the mississippi valley handing them one-way tickets to the vehicle city as flint nicknamed itself. the newcomers slept in shacks, tents and railroad cars. earl's family rented a tiny house, all he could afford on his factory pay. after the war earl tried farming again, failed again and returned to flint for good. everett grew up a city boy with no agricultural ambitions. after graduating from high school in 1933, he enlisted in general motors as an apprentice tool and dye maker at 50 cents an hour. the job could disappear in a day. if a supervisor wanted to hire his brother-in-law, he created ap opening by handing a worker a yellow slip, the color of termination. bachelors were laid off while married men with lower seniority kept their jobs. the supervision, they had no control either, everett recalled. you could come in today and have a desk and have a yellow slip on there that said you're all done. on november 12th, three welders conducted a short pro-union sit-down demonstration. in protest, a department in the plant stopped working. the plant manager agreed to meet with the uaw representative who told him production would not are assume until the militant welders returned to work. the next 500 autoworkers signed up with the union that had prevented the firings. the uaw high command had planned a strike for january when michigan's newly-elected new deal golf, frank murphy, would be sworn in. but the week after christmas, the company forced the union's hand. gm was about to ship dyes to grand rapids and pontiac. suddenly, flint went on strike. at 10 p.m. the night shift stopped working and refused to go home. the sit-down strike had begun. e rent was -- e -- when the strike spread, everett asked the supervisor whether he should keep working on join the union. join it, his foreman told him, you need it. the sit-down strike was the most important event of everett's career. it made his working man's fortune possible and was the source of his long life. there was never a better time to work for general motors than the 1940s through the 170s. -- 1970s. after gm recognized the uaw, everett received a pension plan and health insurance. during world war ii he stayed out of combat by building armored trucks for chevrolet. once the war was won, flint was booming. they even bussed people up from the south. everybody was working, everybody had a job, everybody had one or two car, and you kept getting bigger homes. oh, boy. america's greatest 20th century invention was not the airplane or the atomic bomb or the lunar lander, it was the middle class. we won the cold war not because of our military strength, but because we shared our wealth more broadly than the communists and, as a result, had more wealth to share. everett has a depression boy's gratitude for his good fortune. born half a century later, i assumed universal prosperity was a natural progress of human life. i'm begunking to assume -- i'm beginning to assume otherwise. in which the massive humankind had been born with saddles on their back to be ridden by a booted and spurred air stockily si. collective bargaining made obsolete the iron law of wages which stated that labor could command no more than a subsis tense living from capital. it made obsolete bidding at the factory gate in which workers offered their services for ten cents an hour only to lose a job to a more desperate pan who would take nine. -- man who would take nine. perhaps we have to ask when the golden age of the american worker was a historical aberration made possible by the fact that we were the only country to emerge from world war ii with any industrial capacity. was that golden age destined to end as soon as the rest of the world rebuilt itself making blue collar workers an obsolete class? in this global century, will laborers have to reconcile themselves to the roles of an international peasantry? was the american middle class just a moment in -- just that moment? america's never again going to be as wealthy as it was in the '50s and '60s because we had no economic tet to haves. the rest of the world was still digging itself out from the damage inflicted during world war ii. and, of course, the countries that became our greatest competitors were the countries we defeated during that war. we paid to rebuild their infrastructure so they had more modern factories, and we took over responsibility for their defense. over here our best engineers were going into defense and aerospace because that's where the best government contracts were. their best engineers or were building cars. and the event that really put an end to the geometric expansion of the american way of life was the arab oil embargo of 1973, and that was the consequence of world war ii, which was the protection of israel. after we sent arms to israeling, there's a local connection here. [laughter] saudi arabia cut off our oil supply. the the price of a gallon of gas went from 36 cents to 53 cents a gallon, and filling stations started rationing gas. so if you had a license plate that ended in an odd number, you could get it on monday, wednesday, or friday, even numbers on tuesday, thursday or saturday. and this was at a time when the average american car got 13 miles to the gallon. so i owned a 1972 chevy impala 20 years after the fact, and it had to be 20 feet long. it was a rolling motel. [laughter] i drove it from michigan to california and slept comfortably in the backseat. and so not surprisingly, people wanted cars they didn't have to fill up every day, but the american auto companies didn't want to build small cars. they'd just signed a contract allowing the workers to retire after 30 years at any age with health benefits for life, and there budget enough profit margin in small cars to pay for those benefits. and they really believed only flaky people out in california wanted to drive tote that's and vocessing wagons. ford decided or calculated it would be cheaper to pay off the lawsuits that resulted from it catching on fire than to fit the tank with a plastic liner to prevent it from spewing fuel. there was an actual memo that was discovered by mother jones magazine. i think they did actuarial calculations. they say an actuary puts a value on human life, and they did in this case. the vega leaked oil, so the american auto companies lost an entire generation of drivers with cars like that and the che vet and's corps, and both of the head gaskets blew up. so even though the quality of american small cars has caught up, there are still people who won't touch them. and the recession of the early '80s which i call the first great recession -- it was not nationwide like the one we just had, but it was deeper here than i think even the recent recession. it was sort of confined to the midwest. that was a result of the disruption of the oil supply caused by the iranian revolution and the anti-inflationary interest rates set by president carter. people couldn't afford the gas to fill a car or alone to buy one with. they couldn't afford a new house either. and all this had a terrible effect on the steel mills which sold half their product to the auto industry. and so this next interpret is about what happened to -- excerpt is ant what happened to a chicago steel worker in the mid '60s and about how the steel crisis there led to the launching of barack obama's career as a community organizer. so that's the tie-in to the previous book i wrote which is called young mr. obama, chicago and the making of a black president. okay. this is from a chapter titled a rust bowl, and the term rust belt was actually originally rust bowl. and the first usage i found for it was in "time" magazine, and it was popularized by walter mondale when he accused president reagan of turning the midwest into a rust bowl, and then it was alter inside the way of journalism to match the sunbelt and whatever other belts we have. the term -- >> the bible belt, yeah. >> the term before the rust belt was the frost belt. anyway, on the east side of chicago, life did not run according to the laws that nature imposed on the rest of the world. when night fell on other neighborhoods, those neighborhoods stayed dark until the next morning. on the east side, the night sky burned red when u.s. steel, republic steel or wisconsin steel dumped the waste product of steel making. the steel mills created their own suns, skies and weather. in other neighborhoods, housewives hung their washing in the basement when it rained. on the east side, wives hung it inside when the wind blew in from the mills. the air on the sidewalks glittered with a metallic mist so thick you could take a spoon and get ahold of it. visitors remarked on a musty odor, but the sense of steel making was as natural an atmosphere as oxygen. men didn't go to work when the sun rose and came home when it set, today pulled a different shift every week. so when you went up on 106th street, all the doors were open, and marino would sell you a 12-pack of beer, damn the city's two a.m. license. rob stanley was born on the east side in 1947, two years after his father came home from the war. of english and welsh descent, stanley was an exotic in his ethnic neighborhood. his playmates called him catholic killer. as a student at chicago vocational high school, stanley never thought about going to college, because steel workers made more money than chemistry teachers. he thought about rumbling with negro gangs from across the river and playing football. about 5% of my class went to college, stanley said. a lot of the guys on the east side didn't have plans. what happened is you were just enjoying life, going out. our plan was to get a better team, get better ball players and make enough money to get a car and make it to our games. when stanley graduated in 1965, he had to pay represent or get kicked out ott of father's house, so he walked over to one of the steel mills. it was the worst job, but it paid $2.32 an hour, enough for an apartment and a car. you'd go apply, he said. there was so much work, especially during vietnam. when i quit to go over to republic, they hired 50 guys that day. you'd always see guys with new helmets walking around. the vietnam war made it easily for stanley to get hired as a grunt but impossible to enroll in a years' long apprentice program. one afternoon in 1966 as stanley was driving home from work with, a friend pulled up alongside his car, i just got drafted, he shouted, and so did you. sure enough, when stanley arrived home, the same envelope -- the envelope every noncollegiate 19-year-old male received that year -- was waiting in the mailbox. and that's another reason unemployment was so high especially in industry because the young blue collar males were being drafted and sent to the army. stanley's time in country lasted only a year, but the war lasted longer so there was still plenty of work when he came home. for two years he was part of building a blast furnace at u.s. steel. he figured he had his whole life to work in the steel mill, so he wrote letters to international construction companies hoping to find a job that would take him back to hong kong where he'd r and r'd during the war. then he got his girlfriend pregnant which would keep him on the east side forever. he'd just gotten back from vietnam and had big plans for traveling the world. stanley needed something more than a job on a shovel crew. he needed a career like his father who put in 39 years at u.s. steel before retiring after open heart surgery. in 1970, stanley began at wisconsin steel. he didn't know it, nobody knew then, but he could not have hired in at a worse time. wisconsin steel was, had been purchased by international harvester in 1902. fearing price gouging, the farm equipment manufacturer wanted a mill to produce plate and bar steel for its assembly plants. a labor dispute killed off wisconsin steel. on november 1, 1979, workers at international harvester's plants went on strike. international harvester was still wisconsin steel's biggest customer purchasing 40% of the mill's output. when stanley showed up for work on march 27, 1980, television news crews were gathered outside the gate. you never want to see that when you're coming to work. did you hear what happened, a coworker asked? it's closed. stanley couldn't believe it. wisconsin steel had been in the neighborhood for three generations. how could an institution like that close? as stanley left the mill carrying his bag of clean clothes, a foreman told him we'll contact you if something changes. nothing ever changed. march 27th was the last day stanley and his 3400 coworkers ever spent inside wisconsin steel. the mill was bankrupt. stanley's last two paychecks bounced. he'd worked there for nine and a half years, six months short of what would have qualified him for a pension. he got a check for -- 700. stanley had been earning $10 an hour in the milker but once he was -- mill, but once he was laid off, he had to get by with whatever he could pick up. he even wrote a letter to the chicago bears asking for a tryout, but the team turned him down. his ex-wife had remarried to an he can tradition with a house and a boat, so he told her i can't pay what i've been paying you, so i'll just take my daughter and buy her clothes or whatever. stanley and a few buddies from wisconsin steel caught out at a coal mill in indiana, but after seven months he was laid off again. two layoffs in one year seemed hike a message that the steel industry in chicago had no more use for rob stanley, so he moved to houston. the high gasoline prices destroying the auto and steel industries had rained prosperity on texas. an out of work auto executive drove to houston every weekend and filled his trunk with sunday papers. back in detroit he resold the want ads to union men. stanley took $6.50 an hour to stand on a wobbly scaffold with a bunch of illegal aliens. after houston he tried california, enrolling in a bartending school. when the classes ended his instructor told him, i think you'd be better off looking on your own. so rob stanley, a steel worker who hadn't made steel for over three years, wandered back home to the east side more no other reason than it was spring, and softball was about to start. on a 36 -- as a 36-year-old bachelor, unemployment didn't bother him that much. if his car wasn't running, one of his teammates would always drive him to a game, and eventually he found a new job as a plumber for the federal government, but he really had to start his whole retirement savings over again at age 40. so it's taking him a lot longer to retire than he expected originally. so the last excerpt i'll read a is about what happens to a city after its middle class disappears. this is about chiefland -- cleveland which was the cradle of the housing crisis that ended up sinking the entire american economy in 2008. i have to go back a little bit because i didn't explain about barack obama. i'm sorry about that. he was hired in chicago to work -- i'll go back here. in the suburb of call you met city, two towns south t of the east side, desperate steel workers turned for help to their priest. father leo mann was so distressed by their plight that he organized a conference which won a $100,000 grant. in 1985 the conference was looking for a black organizer to serve its inner city chapter. the group took out an advertisement in a magazine called community jobs. the ad was read by a 23-year-old columbia university graduate at the new york public library. thus, the shutdown of wisconsin steel brought barack obama to chicago where he began his rise to the presidency of the united states. obama counseled steel workers still in denial about the disappearance of their industry. blue collar aristocrats, they planned to ride out their layoffs. in the past they'd always gone on strike, returned to work and earned more money than ever. why would it be different this time? the brightest were retrained as computer programmers, the less fortunate at the sherwin williams paint factory or brach's candy. all right, so i'll go back to cleveland here. okay. so slavic village. yes, this was the cradle of the housing crisis that ended up sinking the entire american economy in 2008 which is another reason to pay anticipation to what's going on -- attention to what's going on in the midwest. slavicville ram was first settle inside the 19th century by poles, czechs and bohemians who were imported to break a strike at one of the mills, one of those self-contained ethnic ghettos where you could speak the old word language and follow customs, you could be baptized, married, work, drink and worship and be buried all within a few square miles. that started to break up after world war ii when young families began moving to the suburbs. when their parents died, the kids sold out to absentee landlords, and you started hearing people say my grandmother grew up in slavic village, but the neighborhood has changed, which is cleveland code for black people are moving in. or there's another code which is the element is moving in. so in the 2000s, slavic villages population fell 27% on its way down from 70,000 to 20,000, and those unwanted houses attracted speculators and house flippers. ohio had some of the weakest lending laws in the nation. so ameriquest ip evented the stated income loan which means if a borrower said he earned a hundred grand a year, the lender took his word for it. [laughter] so the result of all this was that by 2006 903 of slavic village's 944 properties were in foreclosure, the highest rate of any zip code in the nation. and this next excerpt is about what it's like to live in a neighborhood of empty homes. if houses go to heaven, then slavic village has been the site of a mass rapture. ted michaels, a retired trade magazine editor, a bachelor, a man who likes to sit on his por be. and share his neighborhood with the passers by he's known for 50 years, has lived his entire life in the little square house his grandfather bought in 1923. it's the kind of house that used to be good enough for everybody in cleveland. 800 square feet of.com citiesty. he shared it with his brother, another bachelor, who died in 2005. now he's alope. his old school friends want to know why he never followed them to the suburbs. to them, slavic village the old neighborhood but no longer the neighborhood they grew up in. slavic village is polish. unlike many urban neighborhoods, slavic village only changed halfway. at seven roses the newspapers and lunchtime gossip are about crackhouses in warsaw, and staying in slavic village meant staying in the parish of holy mary. we were working on the sidewalk, about ten people stopped and talked. you don't get that in the suburbs. people don't talk. but he had fewer friends than before the housing crisis. the house next door disappeared first. the couple who lived there pause $17,500 for it when they moved in. they liked to buy stuff, michaels observed, so they borrowed and borrowed against their equity until in 2004 they lost it to the bank. a fireman picked it up. he painted it and rented it to a woman on section eight who was so clueless about housekeeping that michaels had to mow her lawn. eventually, a corner of the foundation collapsed causing the floor the sink four inches. the tenant moved out, and the house was demolished leaving only the outline of its basement. the same thing happened across the street where an absentee owner bought out. michaels went to court to have the place demolished. frugality was easy for michaels. having inherited his house, he never made a mortgage payment. he was astonished by the appliance repairman who divorced his wife and abandoned his house owing $83,000 and by the speculators who were paying double what the neighbors knew the properties were worth. sometimes we said this is going to for $86,000? what is going on? the bank wasn't looking at applications. as the loans went bad and houses emptied, the scrappers arrived tearing out furnaces and water pipes right in broad daylight. signs reading this house does not have copper plumbing were posted on windows. but clausen avenue became such a magnet for thieves, they even broke into occupied houses. only a neighbor who mowed the vacant lots prevented clausen avenue from reverting to presettlement prairie. cleveland's pain, the nation's gain. it means a lot of bad stuff happens here, but we hope the rest of america can learn from our misfortune and avoid the same crap. the lenders were so aggressive, they went door to door on the east side of cleveland pointing out loose shingles, collapsing chimneys or sagging porches. money from a second mortgage could repair any of those defects. they never mentioned the adjustable rates. anita gardener's sons fell for that scam. gardener, who worked 31 years as a welder at trw automotive bought a two-story house on the east side back in the early 1970s. she was -- it was almost paid off when she was diagnosed with a brain disorder that left her too ill to workover even walk up the stairs to her bedroom, so she bought a converted liquor store and signed the old house -- my buckingham palace -- over to her 30-something sons. when gardener had moved in, every house was owned by an auto worker or a steel worker with a wife, four or five children and a new car. then j and l steel closed in 1999. the blue collar workers moved out, and the mortgage brokers began moving in, attracted by the remaining residents' financial desperation. having lost their paychecks, these dispossessed factory rats were told they still had a source of income in the houses they'd bought cheap and paid off with frugality. this couldn't have happened if people had good jobs, gardener said, or why would they change their mortgage? they were desperate for money. it was targeted. mortgage agents were going door to door, calling on phone. you don't have to have credit, you can have nice things. gardener's sons fell for the pitch. neither had been able to afford nice things. the other brother had served 11 years on a drug charge. when he got out of prison, the only job he could find was delivering furniture for sears. when an agent from countrywide financial whose ceo is in prison now, by the way, offered them a $70,000 mortgage on their mom's almost paid off house, they signed. gardener suspects the agent falsely ip facilitated the home's value -- inflated the home's value. agents receive bigger commissions for adjustable rate mortgages. the boys used the second mortgage for a shopping spree. a black hyundai sports car, a new couch, a big screen tv, a refrigerator in the garage full of beer. the monthly payments began at $436 a month, but as the boys missed payment, it more than doubled to 950, far more than they can pay on their small time jobs. when the past due amount reaches $4,000, gardener's sons appealed to mom for a bailout. this raises a question, which is the greater social ill: allowing people who can no longer afford their mortgages to stay in their houses thus undermining the credit system by letting people skip out on the payments or evicting people from the houses for which there is no buyer? ted michaels and anita gardener would say let the poor folks stay and look after the house. michaels called the cops on a stripper trying to tear the aluminum drainpipe off a house at 11:00 in the morning. in a 150 foot radius around a vacant house, property values go down at least $7,000. it's usually denuded of plumbing fixture, boiler, carpeting, sinks, toilet and any architectural sconces that can be peddled. yellow foreclosure stickers and plywood windows are ini invitat. inner city scavengers salvage the last pennies out of a house until demolition. so after all that, i should tell you that my book has a happy ending. [laughter] when i went back to lansing, i found out that the fisher body plant -- whose demolition had helped inspire the book -- had actually been replaced. it was obsolete because it was costing general motors millions of dollars a year. so they acquired some land out in the country and put the whole operation under one roof. the plant on the grand river, which was 100 years old, was also tomorrow down and replaced and now builds the cadillac ats which was esquire's car of the year and is the best selling cadillac in decades, and it's also going to be building the chevy camaro soon. i think it's interesting to talk about the difference between lansing and flint where gm never replaced the plants it tore down, and auto employment has gone from 80,000 in the late 1970s to 7500 now. and as a result, the town has half the people it had. its murder rate is 60 per 100,000, and to put that in perspective, if new york had the same murder rate as flint, it would have 5,000 murders a year. so when you look at murders of cities in the western hemisphere, flint is up there with latin american drug capitals. but flint, it was in a way crippled by the legacy of the sit-down strike because the flint autoworkers never let go of that militant spirit. strikes, they were more frequent, and they lasted longer than anywhere else in the gm universe, so gm dispersed its workers to less militant locals. i also discovered a company in lansing which makes particle accelerators for physics experiments and missile defense systems, and the company's president told we lansing was one of the few places he could operate because he'd hired retired fm craftsmen -- gm craftsmen to build the equipment, and there were very few places that had the academic knowledge and the ethic of manual craftsmanship. so i think high-tech manufacturing offers a future for postindustrial cities. another example i found about that was in syracuse, new york. and syracuse used to be the air-conditioning capital of america. and it made the sun belt possible. and as a result, they ended up moving all the jobs down south because that's where the customers were, and the labor was cheaper. so syracuse invented the appliance that caused its own demise. but i visited a company called mister scroll which made high complexion chillers, and -- compression chillers, and they needed the legacy of craftsmanship and engineering knowledge that was still in the community. and be finally, discuss sold his bar. be i actually ran into him about a month ago. he was working on a house he still owns across the street from the old bar, and i showed him the book, and he said i can't read english, so i'm hoping this book does well enough for there to be a greek edition for gus to read. [laughter] and, actually, if it does generate royalty, i'm going to donate 25% to some of the social service agencies that i wrote about in here such as slavic village development or recovery park which is an urban crop and fish farm in detroit. so i guess -- and as i talk here about sort of the future of some of these high-tech businesses, i guess i should end with michigan did not become great because of the auto industry, the auto industry became great because of a michigander named henry ford. so i will take any questions now. i guess we have to go up to the microphone. no? you don't have to do that? >> are you familiar with the book "someplace like america"? >> no, i'm not. tell me about it. >> there are two versions of it. a reporter and a photographer from akron did the first book. and that book inspired the springsteen song, and i can't remember the title of it now. >> okay, so was it about -- >> troubled things are in america. and then are they came out with a second one to check out the people they had interviewed. people had lost their jobs at steel mills and all across the country. >> right. >> they actually got an old chevy, drove -- slept in the car and that kind of thing, and they checked on them. it's an interesting book. no conclusions come from it, just that things are tough for a large number of people. >> yeah. i wrote a little bit about bruce springsteen in here and kind of -- there was a whole school in the early '80s of heartland rock, i guess they called it. so people, musicians finally got interested in blue collar work right when people stopped doing it. [laughter] so, you know, they'd been inspired by all these great two minute songs from california about the pacific association which was -- pacific ocean which was their greatest and post endless feature, so i -- they started writing about unemployment. [laughter] so there was bruce springsteen writing "my hometown." there was michael stanley from cleveland, he wrote a book called "this town" which was sort of an anthem of local pride. things were tough in cleveland. there was john cougar mellencamp, his songs "jack and diane," "pink houses." and billy joel, he wrote "allentown." and bob seger had a song about the glory days of the auto industry. and then springsteen, actually, he did a song about youngstown on the ghost of tom jones. >> that's the song the book inspired. >> oh, okay. >> and the title's interesting because they were in california, a homeless person was murdered, and the guy wanted to see what it felt like to kill someone. >> oh, my god. >> so the homeless gathered in this park in orange county, and these guys were camped with them. and all of a sudden the police came in to run them off at midnight, and the author said i can't believe they're doing this. and he said, well, what do you think, this is someplace like america? >> wow. >> it's a good book. >> do you know who the author is? >> no, i don't remember. >> okay. all right, i'll look it up. oh, okay. >> how many rust belt cities did you see that kind of bucked the trend and really didn't have a significant, you know, downfall in. >> well, definitely chicago. i devoted a whole chapter to that. it was from a comment i overheard from people actually working in a bookstore in lansing, and they said we're all going to end up in chicago. [laughter] so it's kind of a rite of passage, you know? you go to high school, you go to college, you spend maybe a year or two off on a low wage job, and then you move to chicago. which is what i did. i followed all my friends to chicago in the mid 1990s. they just were suddenly picking up and moving during that recession. and, i mean, chicago -- there are a couple reasons. back in the '80s when i, during the period i was reading about, people did think it was going to become a rust belt casualty. and a couple reasons were, one, it had a more diversified economy. the steel mills were only in one small part of chicago. it had publishing, advertising, and finance. it's the financial capital of the midwest, so it was well positioned for when finance replaced industry. and mayor richard j. daley, he had really worked hard to preserve downtown. i mean, he inherited a downtown in which no buildings had been built since the 19 -- since the great depression. and, you know, he left it with the john hancock center and the sears tower, and he also made sure that to hear as transportation switched from -- that o'hare, that chicago was still the transportation center of the country. and someone in cleveland asked me what did chicago do right, and i think they wanted to know what can cleveland do that chicago did, and my conclusion was cleveland can't do anything. in a lot of ways, chicago's expense -- success comes at the expense of the rest of the region. i mean, it really attracts, you know, it's getting a free ride on the public education systems in michigan and indiana and ohio and here in wisconsin because, you know, so many young people move to chicago. there's at least one bar for every big ten school in chicago, and for my school, michigan state, i think there are over a dozen which i think are more than in east lansing. more than half the graduates now leave the state. so that's definitely the success story. but it's kind of a case where it's kind of a consequence of globalization. just as money and education becomes concentrated among fewer people, it becomes concentrated among fewer cities too. and so you had -- did someone -- you had a question back there. >> just wondering with the great depression and the rides of the unions because of that -- rise of the unions because of that why during this great recession -- [inaudible] sort of right-wing backlash and why -- [inaudible] >> well, i think one problem is that people associate unions with industrial worker, with blue collar work, and i remember i asked a union, former union organizer or a union local president in chicago why don't more white collar workers demand unions. and he said, well, you know, the white collar worker, he has kind of a bob crash chet attitude. i'm going to make you an assistant manager, and call me harry. they're kind of lulled into thinking they're actually peers of the people they work for when the blue collar workers never had that attitude. so i think people need to take the attitude that, you know, unions are for all workers, not just for blue collar workers. but, i mean, the union movement in private industry has pretty much been destroyed. it's down to 6 or 7%, and certainly as you've seen here in wisconsin, now they're moving on to the public sector unions. i mean, i think maybe -- i don't know what the exact percentage is in the public sector, but it's higher. and they kind of use the argument, you know, after they destroy the public sector unions, they go to the people who are now doing less well than they would have been if they had a union, look, aren't you envious of them? they want to drag everybody down to that level. and, well, and another reason in the depression there was certainly more political support. i mean, one reason that the sit-down strike succeeded was because franklin d. roosevelt was in the white house, and frank murphy, who was a roosevelt ally, was governor of michigan. they deliberately were trying to wait until he was inaugurated because he refused to send in the national guard to kick them out of the plants. so, and i don't think there's that kind of political support, at least at the governor level, anywhere in the midwest right now. >> you could argue barack obama? >> well -- >> [inaudible] >> yeah, well, he did have the steel workers in chicago. and i think that's a big reason that he was so sympathetic to bailing out the auto industry. i mean, that was pretty much the first task of his administration, was putting together a task force to rescue the auto industry. and he certainly beat that drum hard during last year's campaign, especially in ohio where they have plenty of auto plants. i mean, mitt romney had written a, an op-ed for the new for "thk times" titled let detroit go bankrupt, and obama didn't let him forget about that. >> i was curious -- >> yeah. >> -- the, what's, what would you say is the number one lesson that you take away from what appears to be kind of an industrial evolution which has happened in the past and is likely to ap in the future -- to happen in the future as economies evolve? is there a key lesson that you found that you would look and say that as we look at economies 10 and 20 and 30 years moving forward that you look and say it was true here, it's likely to be true there and that people should be aware of? >> well, i would certainly say diversify your city's economy would probably be number one. because you look at flint, and flint had two-thirds of the labor force in flint was dependent on general motors in one way or another, either directly or through a subsidiary. and after, after they lost that, i mean, the whole town fell apart. no way you can -- there's no way you can replace 70,000 jobs, and even if you can replace them, there's no way you can replace them with the kind of middle class jobs that they had. so i think, i'd say that would be the number one lesson. but, i mean, i think part of this, though, was simply unavoidable. i mean, in the era when things were so good, the economy i guess as they would say, was siloed. we didn't really have to think about the rest of the world. we were the only country that could make anything. and now we live in a global economy. and so workers are competing against workers all over the world. so, but don't be, don't be a one-industry town. i think that applies to big towns as well as small towns, whether you, you know, have a paper mill or anything like that. don't think one industry's going to come in and save your town. >> [inaudible] in there also that don't think -- >> don't think you're going to have a job for life, i suppose, lesson for workers. don't even think you're going to have benefits for life, because i think a lot of workers as you saw in wisconsin steel thought they were going to have a pension and benefits. it's sad that you have to say that to people, but i think maybe the promise that the baby boomers thought that they grew up with, i don't think people of my generation expect that same promise that they did of, you know, lifetime employment and craild l to grave benefits -- cradle to grave benefits. all right. one more question here. >> okay. so what should happen with towns like flint and detroit? should they be dissolved? do they deserve to continue as cities? can they? is it feasible? >> well, i think that -- i don't think flint and detroit are functional cities anymore. really. i mean, their both under the control of emergency managers appointed by the governor of michigan. whose job is really to keep cutting their budgets. but they've already been cut to such a level that they can no longer provide basic services. so, i mean, they've lost so many people that there's no way 700,000 lower crass people in detroit -- lower class people can pay for the infrastructure that was built for 1.8 million people in the 1950s. when i was in detroit, the lighting company blew out, and the library and wayne state and all the court buildings could cn were shut down for the day. that's the kind of thing you expect to happen in third world capitals. i mean, i think the answer is consolidating them with the surrounding suburbs the way they did in indianapolis and toronto and miami. because if a city can't afford democracy, it's not really a city anymore. it's -- they're basically wards of the state, and it's really dragging down not just the city itself, but the entire state of michigan. i mean, when you have the two most violet cities in the nation -- violent cities in the nation and a city that is such an international symbol of urban decay you've got people flying in from france to take pictures of it, that reflects badly on the state from monroe to ironwood. all right. so i guess we've run through our hour, so i'll thank everybody for coming here. [applause] >> for more information, visit the author's web site, edwardmcclelland.com. >> we've got more coverage of nonfiction books and the book industry every weekend on booktv. including today at 6 p.m. eastern. a 1997 book notes interview with the late katherine graham. >> what year did your father buy the post? >> in 1933. he had just gotten out of the government, been out about three weeks. he had started the reconstruction finance cooperation under hoover, and he stayed as federal reserve chairman for a little while under roosevelt, and then he resigned because he didn't like roosevelt's monetary policies and went to -- [inaudible] the post came out three weeks later for auction on the steps of the building, and he bought it anonymously. c-span: what'd he pay for it? >> guest: ing $825,000. c-span: how many newspapers in washington then? >> guest: there were five, and the post was fifth in a field of fife. so it had a circulation of about 50,000 in a pretty broken-down building. and so he started in, and he -- he was a businessman, and he thought he knew how to turn around businesses, but he never really had had any newspaper experience, and he encountered the most horrendous difficulties in fighting his way up. but he really did a terrific job starting with nothing. >> along with our schedule, you can also see our programs anytime at booktv.org and get the latest updates throughout the week. follow us on facebook and twitter. >> here's a look at the bestselling hard cover nonfiction books according to the new york time thes. this list reflects sale as of august 8th. climbing to the top is zealot. the book is a biography of jesus of nazareth and was fourth on the list last week. sheryl sandberg, the chief operating officer of facebook, offers her career advice to women with "lean in: women, work and the will to lead." the book is we second. next, chief national correspondent mark leibovich in the his book, "this town." he will be on c-span's "q&a" on august 18th. duck dynasty reality tv star phil robertson is fourth with his autobiography happy, happy, happy followed by jeff stibel's "breakpoint," how the internet compares to the human brain. sixth, laura hillen brand recounts the story of an olympic run or's survival as a prisoner of the japanese in world world , in "unbroken." number seven is "let's explore diabetes with owls" from humorist david she dairies. eighth is "dad is fat" followed by singer and actress shirley jones' self-titled biography. and a behind the scenes look at "the duck dynasty" show. go to nytimes.com and click on arts for more on these bestsellers. ..
it. you do not have the same director or deputy -- there have multiple people. people under investigation right now. there will be laws. if you look at the financial services bill that has gone through appropriations. not only is the irs defunded for but they have cut the budget. i think the same thing needs to happen with the possible examination of the nsa. but i do not think we ought to immediately toss out a program until we think about it and look at it, you know, and the homeland security people on both sides of the aisle tell us it has done the job. >> ok. one thing i would like to point out though -- if the program were abused, we would not know. let me rephrase that. we would not know it until it was too late. know or have i read that the way this deal was supposed to work was when the controversy first kind of started, they were going to monitor these phone calls to find terrorists outside the united states. when that person contacted someone within the united states, they were going to go get a fisa order for that person. i felt a little bit uneasy about that, but i remember thinking, well, you know if it is one person or two people that are terrorists, you know, maybe. but , there are things we can do to make the united states saying, well, we need this database of phone calls. we need a database of this. we need a database of that. regardless, the fact is they have the capability of doing it, right? we do not know what they are or what they are not doing. they are saying no. they are saying supposedly they are really aren't. is if they have the power, eventually it will get abused. so, my larger point to you is hopefully you will take a look at that and you have a chance to reconsider this stuff. saying,e -- people are i know the people running these programs. the are good people. they are trustworthy. the good people are not always going to be there. and i am sure for the old who vote for the irs that were viewing taxpayers were great people. that is the response that i have. you know. i would really like for you to reconsider that. keep in mind there is no way -- >> yeah, i agree. [applause] point. agree with your congress will reconsider this. there are people looking at it. but the key part to me is so far -- and i want to triple underline so far -- there are no abuses. no person has come forward. says america who isn't free and runs off to china and russia to tell about it is not exactly my idea of a great american patriot. i do put a lot of trust in the people who had defended the united states of america their entire careers with distinction and with honor and with the .alor when they walk in and tell me, this is what it is and we are not doing this and you're not doing that and we're not doing this and we asked them the question, then i have got to listen to that before i jerked the rug out from under them. congress is looking at this. it will continue. you, i always worry about the concentrations of power and and eventual liberty. i think that is what keeps free, that individual citizens are passionate about you havethe same time, these abuses. you have got to know where they and i do not think we have lost these freedoms. had, we would not be having this conversation on c- span. it is not china. there is the fbi case and they lost that case -- >> [indiscernible] >> we will see what happens. >> [indiscernible] the consent of the court -- [applause] in the presidential election we do not get to a point the attorney general. >> [indiscernible] what's that? >> [indiscernible] >> we had a lot of republican candidates running. [applause] let me get a microphone to you. andhank you for coming joining us, congressman. >> thank you for joining me. at >> just a quick announcement .@their art to. one to audit the fed. last week congressman cole voted audit the fed. whoever has held that, please let it go. the other is to define obamacare. and congressman cole voted for appealing that on the federal level. 2 question to you, sir, vote had to do with raising the debt ceiling -- i probably need my glasses to read this. you were one of three congressman who voted to raise the debt ceiling, which basically empower the big spenders to keep spending whenever they want to spend. i take issue with that, sir. continuing resolution was over $1 trillion. if there is anything unconstitutional but you do not i you have nole business voting on that as an expenditure. i need some explanation on that, sir. >> i was not one of three congressman. it was part of honest the and in negotiating a $1.23 trillion out of the debt. the consequences of not raising would have been across the board. it would have been a 50% cut in all federal spending. that is defense. it takes a while to turn the ship around and get in the right direction. we have started to make that turn. that is why i voted for the ryan budget. a every single year i have been in 120 or 130e get people at most to vote for that. it would be shutting down or essentially crippling the country. yes, sir? that meet get you a microphone so they can hear you back there. here you go. microphone. you, congressman cole. >> thank you. when we go into default, we you speak to what will happen to the bond market and how much we will have to pay on bonds that we heard -- that we are currently getting almost nothing on. what is the total impact on our country, and after our country goes down, what will happen to the world economy of the entire world? the pigs - mind that -i-g-s -- are almost down now. >> over 30 years, the united intes has paid its debts full on time tomorrow ever it owed money to. that is the symbol of financial stability. that is one of the things that hamilton talked about. borrow money to pay off the revolutionary war debts and redeem the bonds that had been given to revolutionary soldiers that were sold to speculators because they thought they were never going to get that money and established the sick credit in the night it states. i think it is a very dangerous thing. you, if the most credit worthy institution in the world defaults, your interest rates are going up. on your homes, on your cars, on your credit cards, you name it. they will all go up. if you get credit at all. what happens to the stock market? i guarantee you it will take a terrific it, a terrific beating. default, i think would be much more dangerous. you put your finger on another key point. a lot of other countries are in even worse situations than we are. think it wouldi be something like the great depression again. do i know that for a fact? nope. i am in congress. do you want me to run that risk? i'm not sure. think it would be bad if the united states started defaulting on its obligations. right now the interest on the debt is about six percent of the federal budget. big, but not gigantic, because we are borrowing fairly cheaply. our obligations, ok, you are paying the medicaid system, paying the social security system, you will get social security. to fight for the united states, you are going to get paid. you will get your pension, what you are entitled to. we have lots of obligations to people that are not borrowing money. they are obligations to american citizens. it is not enough if you just cut the money to the people you have borrowed money from. which is pretty bad. used if the people you borrowed money from. you make the obligation to your citizens. there are better ways -- we have balanced the budget before. only four times in 50 years. it happened to be with a democratic president and a republican congress. the deficits were considerably lower until the last five years than they have been since then. we are making progress. .ut we have got to be careful yes, sir, let me get that microphone right to you. we will give you your chance. look, everyone will get a chance to answer, i promise. >> an article written by george will and he stated that obamacare would fail under its own weight. for one have more faith than that in congress changing it. [applause] i was wondering what your opinion was of this? i share yourdays frustration. congress would change it if the american people would change congress. when you change the house of representatives in 2010, it voted 40 times to get rid of this thing. but we have got to get the senate and we have to get a president that will work with us instead of against us. the ultimate solution is usually at the ballot box. it is frustrating when you are states that are conservative at home and you have voted against the president on two different occasions and elected every member you've got and every vote you have had, but we did not win the election in enough laces. we won it here, but we did not win it enough. the have to be some changes. and mentioned those. there are places where the law is under appeal. it is not as though we do not change what we can when we can. at 500 rid of the 1040. other pieces of legislation. guys who passed this thing sometimes think, it is pretty bad in this area. the vice tax. the senate has voted on a bipartisan pieces to get rid of it. i think you keep chipping away. the last thing is, let's just be real -- the thing is not working real well. the president of the united states, it it is his signature piece of legislation, he says i want to push the business mandate off of here because it is not ready yet. that is crazy. be pushed offth together. when you got a guy like howard dean who supported this saying, look, the independent payment advisory .oard is not going to work it is going to collapse. that tells you something. think itand folks who is a do or die moment. i actually see the trend moving forward. i can tell you what it was like to be on the floor and talk for months and months. some democrats that helped us. and we took it to the last play, until they finally had some democrats that broke on this. and i remember thinking at the time, my gosh, it is the end of the world. do you remember how popular the public and party was in 2009? think back to 2009. talk about roadkill. and months later because republicans did the important vote, again, they have the majority in the house and i think you keep the fight up every single day. you come at it every each way you can. you repeal the parts you can and you try over time to change, because i think it is real bad policy and irresponsible legislation. it is promising benefits it will never be able to approve in the long run, in my view. we already have a shortage of 12,000 doctors and the are being replaced by -- a with the iressa, there is good chance you are never going to see. , there is a good chance you are never going to see. [applause] you are right about the incentives. because we promise you coverage does not mean we can promise you care. do not have enough physicians and healthcare providers out there because they think this thing is too burdensome and restrictive. that is what is really going to push up prices even higher than the are today. i have talked to a lot of positions. particularly physicians to have said, i am getting out of here. i do not have to stay here anymore. i am done. i am getting out of practice. fortunately, more and more people, i think, understand this. tryingin, they have been to sell this dog for three years. it is just not hunting. people sort of know it. fight up.o keep the honestly you have to get people in other parts of the country to see it the way we see it here. and i can think of a number of people who vote for democratic senators or the president, you know, also feel this way about, but they have other issues that are more important to them than obamacare. they want to vote democratic perhaps on those issues. fundamentally i think this is a really dangerous policy. >> pinkie very much. an oldt know if i'm just country boy. head.ot hit it into my we have these problems with social security and medicaid, and yet we seem to come up with money to send around the world. [applause] i hear that dumb country boy line, i put my hand on my wallet. good you make a very point. a a 24% cut ind foreign aid. bignt you to understand how or small this is in the overall budget. the overall budget of the united states -- that is everything, social security, medicare, 5 trillion.-- $3. 20%. the foreign aid budget which includes every embassy in the world is about $50 billion. about 700on will cut billion. you can save some money, but you will not solve the problem. you should sink some money. one thing i can tell you. when you talk about which countries you want to cut the aid from, you need to sometimes stop and ask tough questions whether it is or is not in our interest to read we get humanitarian aid, two, but we majorly try to affect countries like egypt. fought until 1973. we began getting the made in 1978. we have a vested interest. they allow us to fly into iraq and afghanistan. warshipss us in their to the frontline, through the suez canal. and egyptian intelligence has cooperated with the united states extensively in the middle east and has been very helpful. is that a good investment or a bad investment? particularly given the turmoil there right now. that is a question every single year. remember. we have changed administrations multiple times. democrat, republican, conservative, liberal. congress has men in different control at different times. changeot as if we do not where we give money and cut it off or behavior. but to your point, are we stretched then, yes? secondly, each individual country, there is always a calculus about whether it is in our interest or it's not. sometimes it is. sometimes it's not. >> [indiscernible] someone.some will and believe me. it is pretty varied as to whether they do or not. tell you theng to times they are supportive. and you win votes are one thing. i can tell you the intelligence cooperation, the movements of american planes over someone else's airspace to help american troops, that is a lot more meaningful than a human vote. i get your time. these things do get looked at. these decisions do change. we are cutting the foreign aid budget and the house. i guess the senate will cut some. probably not as much as we would in the house. obviously there will be some reductions. are also tools of diplomacy. and sometimes -- i remember talking to the general on the defense appropriations subcommittee and he says, you know, if you have to send me there, i should -- i should like to have some friends there when i arrived. some of this is food, humanitarian. commodity.ly some usually something made in this country. at the aim is to try to influence and affect behavior in ways that help the united states. i can't tell you we always get it right, because we don't. clearly we make mistakes. we will continue to try to be vigilant and reduce in this area. it is a great question and we are still wrestling with it. let me go all the way back, back here. whoever gets the first mic. on the aisle back here. >> i've been hearing a lot about change here lately. reading a lot about change. changed costs the of living. that has been affect thing a lot of people for a lot of time. when are we going to change spending? >> i would like to. discretionarye budget in the united states for three years in a row. the last time that helped was in the 1940's. that is 40% of the budget. medicare, budget are medicaid, social security, food stamps, veterans benefits. most of those things are what they call nondiscretionary. nobody is talking about cutting them absolutely. but the rate of growth is pretty phenomenal. we have changed social security before. 1964.y remember it is going to be 66, 67 -- 66, 66 and a half or something. maker, the changes you can at the margins, that saves you a lot of money over time. those are the kinds of issues, sooner or later, the country is going to have to deal with. but the spending -- congress is appropriating less money than it has appropriated. budget,r side of the the popular side is growing very rapidly. the baby boomers are retiring. that is the largest generation ever. they are living longer than any generation ever. upn we set social security -- we did not have medicare and so 1965 -- the average person in until 62 or lived 63. you got your first check at 65. only in america. today at 65, you have a better than 50% chance of being 85 and about a 20% chance of getting to 92. i think that is a good thing. that's not a bad thing. adjust someve to things? yes. nobody is talking about things that will hurt people now. but those things are going to be on the table for debate. senior or later you have to deal thinkhe budget. don't that these adjustments are not happening. they already are. so, there is more revenue coming in. it would also help, by the way, if the economy started growing. that is one of the big disagreements with the president. an economy that is growing by three percent or four percent generates a lot more tax revenue than an economy growing at 1.5%. people do not want to be unemployed. but you've got unemployment insurance, medicaid. they are not working. we are paying. getting the economy moving is just as important as cutting. yes, let me get right here in the back -- on the side. >> [indiscernible] >> yes, it is on. >> our mailbox is absolutely full of conservative urbanization's requesting money. organizations are dealing with exactly the same issues, which means that our money is aing fragmented. i am certain percentage of those are scams where the money is filtered into private pockets. i'm also sure that some of those are filtering money into liberal hands. just putan say, well, your money into the republican party. well, if you were talking about the oklahoma republican party, that's a great idea. but i cannot in good conscience give money to the national republican party -- [applause] all of those eastern liberals involved. so what is your device? is their art about as many democrats here as republicans and i beg they get their mailboxes full, too. is read asy instinct much as you want and throw away the rest of it. one, you do not have to give a dime. it is the united states of america, you don't have to do it. don't let anyone do to him to do it. certainly are having trouble, don't do it. don't do it. it if you want to give, i think the best thing is to give to candidates or individuals. the oklahomaup democratic chairman and get an appointment. we are happy to get a call. i usually think your local candidate. people running for county commissioner, school board, city council. it's going to have a lot to do with your life. the guy who determines whether your garden will be cut or not is a pretty important guy. they come in all shapes and sizes. most americans never give a dime. a checkrity never write to any person or any party. having been in, politics -- this is not a partisan statement -- the personal knock on doors, the personal chart signs, the person who will put your bumper sticker on the outside of their window, mom wasa commitment. my a bank teller with a high school education. my dad was a master sergeant. doors.cked on a lot of you talk to a lot of people. she was republican. this was a very democratic town back in 1978. they mostly voted on her because they liked helen. chiklits to kids and dog biscuits to dogs, and you sort of like a lady that does that. i tip my cap to the president of the united states. he raised more money than anybody ever has and in small increments. go online. you have the ability to get on your computer and find out a lot about anything and find any point of view, by the way, you want to find. the whole political spectrum of america is available to you. do not just write a check. check them out. see what other people think. believe me, you will get more requests. you will. say,e always come and well, gosh, why are they wasting you stopmoney? i say, sending money, they will stop sending you mail. it will take a while. don't worry about them. you decide where you use your dollars. i just picked the local candidates i like for local office. but again, if you want to run for the district, that is fine, too, and he will -- and people american you the political process is expensive. but one aircraft carrier costs more than all the political contributions. so, actually if you look at it from the size of our economy, it is pretty responsive, pretty open, and you can have an impact if you choose to do it. at you do not have to vote if you don't want to. don't vote, if you you have to pay a fine. we do not do that. it is not up for us to tell you to vote. although i think you ought to vote. write appear. again, we are going to get there, everybody. >> hi. larry schaffer from norman. i'm a rhino. anyone want to know what a rhino is? a rhino is a republican in name only. ask thelike to audience, is there anyone here who would not like to say 50% on your health insurance? would not like to? because of the affordable care act, people in new york and california are saving 50% because of the insurance .xchanges the insurance companies are competing against each other. that is one result of the affordable care act. know, things come from the east and the west coast and then they come here to us. the other thing -- my actual is related to this lady's comments, the definition of insanity. times to has voted 40 try to repeal that. if we know it's not going to be repealed and it is a law that is taking place, why do we continue to do that? you know, sometimes it is not the repeal of the whole thing. it is targeted. some of these things are things ,ike getting rid of the 1040 which we left in the original bill, and on reflections, democrats decided, you know, people in the small business community work against that, too. and we have been screaming for a long time about the stream of revenue coming in for assisted- program.upporting the it is to love. it is going to collapse. secretary sebelius looked at it and said, you know, you are right. at sometimes you get surprised in politics. which is passed the bill -- in normandy will be interested. student loans. it was surprising to us. when they looked at it, they found that it was pretty close to what the president recommended in his budget. at the end of the day, he ended up working with the republican house and the democratic and it, changed to where it is linked to the 10-year treasury rate. again, obviously new members come. if every soldier wants to be in combat, or every new democrat and republican wants to be on the obamacare fight on one side or the other. they want to say i voted for it or i voted to repeal it. they want to be able to go home and say that. i always say whether you are for it or not, it it is a very contentious, complex these of legislation. we are going to be debating it, arguing about it for a long time to come. it.ill also be reshaping even republicans will tell you that. so, just -- you know, strap on your safety belt. gamee in this bumper car on obamacare for quite some time. the case has not yet made to settle. and frankly as someone who does not believe in it, clearly the case has not been made to it rid of it or we would have a different person in the white house. the american people want this debate to continue, because they did not change anything. they kept the same balance of power. this is going to be decided one way or another. you are going to have the president reelected with a democratic house and a strong majority in the senate or the republicans thought, surely we will beat this guy this time. no one has ever had unemployment decide. oddly enough the president -- the first president in american astory to get elected with lower percentage of the popular vote and a lower electoral vote. that has never happened. close. i think as you suggest, if this turns out to be a great success, the facts on the ground will win the argument. the rest of us believe, it turns into an overly burden, it will be modified into some more acceptable form of overtime. overtime. go ahead. we will let you have a follow- up. we are thew-up is richest per capita nation in the world. what is wrong with this picture that 30 million people who are working to not have health insurance? >> we are the richest country. they may not have health care, but it does not mean they don't have health insurance. there are things we can do to help in that regard. for instance we should be able to sell insurance across state boundaries. [applause] allow businesses to combine and purchase at the same rate if they have a larger pool. that is called the associated health care plan. we ought to -- the insurance rates for healthcare providers are unbelievably high in the united states. no one pays anything remotely like that. at those are common sense things that don't cost a lot of money, but they expand accessibility and bring down prices. so the step-by-step kind of changes are the way you ought to go. instead we tried something much bigger. shared concerns with a lot of folks that this is an overreach and not sustainable fiscally. insurance mandates in this country. i have a hard time telling you what you have got to do. you know, i have a pretty good idea what i think you ought to do. but i think you ought to be very careful telling you what you have to do. this is the united states of america. it is a free entry. a lot of people who do not have health insurance -- some of them by the way our young adults, having been there -- and it is a gamble for them. att of them will when it. -- will win it. about a lot more insurance. some people need insurance and they are not buying it. why? we have done analysis of markets. a significant portion you say they don't want it, don't need it, whatever. know, the debate is not going to stop. and it should not stop until the country makes up its mind. people are sincerely very opposed to this. my friends on the other side have a hard time understanding. they say, you lost congress over this deal. cannot show me a political poll or the majority of american people yet think this is a good idea. the overwhelming plurality think it is a bad idea. a smaller amount think it is a good idea. must people are not sure one way or the other. i have never seen anything run into that kind of resistance before, which tells me it was not the together very well. i can tell you. i have been there. they would not take this back to the senate because they could not get succeed votes. and there was tremendous pressure rocks on democrats. there was not a single republican vote for it. bipartisanever a vote for this bill. that was not true of medicare or social security. you got that through because you got that kind of muscle. do not be surprised when the other side resist's until the bitter end. that is what is going on. the gentleman right here -- >> representative cole, i appreciate you coming before us today. i appreciate what you doing congress. have my feeling that we lost our way. we have no leadership. not in the 535 people who run this nation. [applause] i think part of the problem, and frustration,uine my wife is a registered democrat and i have the obama side -- i have the obama sign in my yard. am an american. vote for thee to person i wanted to in this election because oklahoma's voting rules are so harsh. think most of the stuff we do at the local level seems to be doing ok. the idea is if we started as a state painting our federal taxes and let the state decide when they will pay the federal government and have it done that way? i've said ais -- lot of things and i don't expect you to listen to all of them. maybe question -- i don't think 1970 thederstand since fed is creating currency out of nothing but fed and -- thin air. decide to quit taking american dollars, and it looks like that process has started, there is nothing the federal government is going to be able to do about it. what you you think of that, sir? >> let me answer some of your the questions and then i will get to the fed question because i think that is one of the big debates that will be going on. on your point about keeping everything local, i actually agree. we have a great government here. moresponded well to the disaster -- to the moore disaster. i think the legislature has done a pretty good job. with the federal government i share some of your disappointment. we have a constitution today because the articles of confederation did not work. title government living on handouts from the state government was a problem during the revolution and stuff did not get done. the framers decided they needed that kind of mechanism. they were very critical of it. said that government is a dangerous servant and a fearful master, something like that, and it is. they put the bill of rights and, a lot of things that nobody had done it anything for before. that is how we operate. you get a social security check or medicare check or in the military, the federal government is where that comes from, and that's a sizable portion of the federal government. more money goes to those programs than anything else. that, yout to end all want to think twice about doing it. on the fed question, there is the point about auditing the fed. i think that is a good thing to do. i worry about the amount of currency that has been created out of thin air. say we will see more inflation in the wake of what has happened since 2008. this has not occurred. i thought it would. maybe, as worried, you are about the chinese, because honestly they will think twice about making an american debt valueless. they will want to invest back in this country. it is kind of like japanese auto companies. sooner or later we start putting plants back here. the next set appointment will be an interesting appointment. i would feel better if somebody else was making it. i'm not a financial expert on the fed. i will tell you this. i have talked to a lot of bankers and a lot of people. i am talking about guys who run the local banks here. said thathem have they wanted to get rid of it. theyusually argued that don't need that mechanism to control the currency. we have a -- were boom and busts just had one called the great recession. from what i read, a lot of what the fed did was the wrong stuff to do and made it worse. again, let's audit. let's see what they are doing. let's have this discussion on the debt. i share your concern about the printing of money. i really do. we need more to back it up than we have right now. let's go right over here to this lady. >> thank you for being here. first of all i have a lot of comments. on health care, you mentioned coburn is against the funding -- >> no. he would love to defund obamacare. >> conservatives like a cruise have said that the house -- ted cruz have said that the house that woulda bill fund everything except obamacare and convince americans that obama and the democrats are willing to shut down the government. you mentioned coburn, but you did not say hancock. you did not mention breitenstein. know, nothing has been done. let's try something different. you mentioned medicare, medicaid , and social security in the same sentence. we pay for it. >> we did. >> people believe that medicare -- they say, well, you are a senior citizen. yes, i am. then how come you are taking stuff from the government? i paid for my health care. i paid for my social security. [applause] -- whytion to you is don't you go along with right and spain and lucas and -- made a lot of great points. well -- [laughter] let me respond. go ahead, take the mic. that's fine. >> you were quoted as referring to tea party people as the drunken uncle at christmas -- >> what i was referring to were republican congressman tom a not tea party people. that was totally out of context. i would be happy -- look. i am free with my opinions. that is the way i fly. but in terms of social security, medicare, i have paid into that my whole life, too. most people drawing on medicare draw out three times as much as they paid in. that is not their fault. that's just true. mo -- no politician likes to raise the medicare tax. most people will draw more benefits than they ever put in. social security, it depends on your income level. a lot of people put in more than they ever get back. the less successful usually it back more than they put in. that is just a math problem. it's not a moral problem. it's not a judgment problem. people --ve some social security disability is by people andd just like we have people who abuse food stamps, we have people that abuse health care. we a big case coming to the floor. only cheated $70 million instead of the $270 million they are charging. give me a break. people earn the benefit. so, we have a lot of things like that that should be corrected. in terms of senator cruise, senator paul -- look, i know. i vote with them 95% of the time. house it isn the always interesting they are telling the house what to do. we are the majority. we have got to get more republicans elected in the senate to help. fight first,ou go and let's say we did exactly what they suggest. i don't have any problem with that. do they really think they can get the votes? to get it to the president? no. it back to the house. the house will reject it, and then we shut down the government. at the end of the day -- let me finish my point and i will give you the chance to respond. first of all, i do not think it is smart for anybody to shut down the government. i do not think that is a good thing. i do not think not being american troops in the faulting on obligations and costing people their jobs is a good strategy. and i don't think it will work. nobody has ever shown a point in american history where it did work. -- like tom coburn who was there in 1995 -- that is someone i will listen to and value. now i will give you a chance to respond. >> i said continue funding everything in the government except for obamacare. and you keep saying you don't want to defund the government. we are not seeing, they are not saying they want to shut the government down. they just want to shut down -- versatile, most of it can't be shut down that way. most of it is mandatory spending sorry.dicare. i'm that's just law. that's the way it works. we are talking about discretion in the government. most of this would not be impacted by that particular passage. second, the house of representatives -- our founders systemvery different than the british. the house of commons is where all legislative decisions reside. representatives, when we pass something, we have to send it to the senate. we cannot send it right to the president. the senate has the option of rejecting it or amending it and sending it back. it is not accepted in sent on. to thell send it back house. it will never get to the president from desk. again, if these guys -- i don't having objection to what they are trying to do. obviously none of them were here to vote against obamacare. i'm glad they are here now. i wish they had been running in 2006 and 2008. when you put every vote against it and try to repeal it -- i do not feel that what myin terms of commitment is to change it should be questioning. but i am not going to support something that absolutely will not work. i do not have any problem voting for the legislation you suggest. no problem at all. easy thing to do. to i also have an obligation tell you, it is not going to get past in the united states senate in my view. that is what many senators are saying. and it certainly will not get it will certainly not get past the presidential veto. wealthy're saying is, president and the democratic senators will give then. maybe you are right. it did not work that way the last time. >> [indiscernible] know, if we worked winning on other fronts, if we were not making changes in it -- but you know, you feel so strongly about something. you are going to put the air force out of work. i hope they understand. i am not going to pay troops in combat in afghanistan. i know they will understand. i know that they will be ok that their family is not getting a check. at they will be fine. know, the national weather they will tell folks without getting paid that a tornado is coming. if you want to risk that, you it is not like we have not been debating obamacare for four years. >> [indiscernible] well, do you want to give them a mic? well -- >> i'm suggesting that you explain more about the mandatory part of obamacare that makes a big difference. -- i don't think a lot of people understand. i didn't until i thought about it. >> it's a tough thing. certain parts of the budget congress has to vote on every year or the money does not get paid. that is about 40% of the budget. it has to change the law to change the budget. you know, we don't vote money for social security. if you reach the age of eligibility, you take and the resident -- the requisite numbers, you get your check. congress does not make the changes on the cost-of-living index. they used to up until the 1970's. people in short under obamacare will actually be insured by changing the rates of eligibility for medicaid. that is higher income will be eligible to use that program. so, you can cut down all the discretionary stuff. it does not change. in portions of it, those are in another part of the budget very that is complex here i'm trying to get through it. there is a relatively small portion of the budget here. it is 100% of what we spin on indian hospitals. it is 100% of the better and budget. of budget.eterans you want to shut it down on the chance the other guy will you in and restore it. think that is a good idea. he would have been pretty upset if while he was going out working on airplanes somebody your out of work. that will hurt the country. i would be concerned by that. awill let this lady have chance. >> i am going to change the subject. i have some questions. you can save the first three and answer them later. when are we going to impeach obama? [applause] fire holder? [applause] i would like to know, i have a son. law who ise a son in a border patrol agent. i have a son who is a city police officer. i have a son who is a highway patrolman here in oklahoma. my son-in-law on the southern ing theis experience sequester. they have had all their overtime. am not sure if you are everybody else knows is but what is going on down there is bad for them. if they arrest a bunch of guys coming over, which he says their traffic coming across the eagle pass, it is three or four times more than they had a year ago because everybody knows we are talking about the immigration bill. he brought in five pakistanis the other day. that they areuns taking off people coming across the border. he has been there five years. , they doey told him not have air conditioning in their truck, if it break too is, and you know how hot it there. if you have a flat and you're in the desert, too bad. you better call one of your friends. out there in the wilderness. what is it going to come down to on these ranches? we are going to take you and your partner out, we are going to drop you off and we will come back a hours later to pick you off. extremely dangerous. they all have a bounty on their heads with the cartels. >> absolutely. >> homeland security is buying up all these rounds of ammunition. campedand cannot -- he out at walmart on the day of the shipment so he can buy up whatever allotment he can get. thate not crazy people are going to revolt and all that stuff. we not that kind of people. those are some of my issues. i would like to talk to you later about my son. >> i will be delighted. i will hang around. they are great questions. lets talk about ammunition and work back. , it you arer exactly right. let's talk about what it is. sequester was of the deal negotiated in the last debt ceiling that said you are going to cut long-term spending by the same amount you raised it, $2.1 trillion. it was immediately agreed to. the presidentwas suggestion. if you want to read about it "ere is a bob woodward book the price of politics." was a very lively exchange when the white house when it was released. the president said if congress does not do this, then we're going to have a cut that is so painful it will mostly fall on did then, things like this. it'll knock at the nondiscretionary side. that will will make us come to a deal. fall on thenot discretionary side of the budget. that will make us come to a deal. he is likely to get a third. the amount of money involved is considerable. $85 billion. it is a $3.5 trillion budget. in yourannot find 2% budget you can do without laying people off and putting my people -- putting people like your son in danger, i think you could. we have some furloughs that should not have ever happened because of appropriations. but. is ons what the standoff the sequester. what the republicans have told the president is we will sit down and renegotiate where the cuts come from. we think some of these are really stupid. we are not going to give up the cuts and we are not going to raise taxes on the american people again. we're just not doing that. we did not do it last time. you did. that is what the standoff is right now. be at thehis will heart of what happens from september to december as we approach the end of the school year. the president aim will to get rid of the questioner either by raising taxes or by just far winky money. republican aim will be to redistribute the cut away from these countries -- areas from the entire budget. that is the essence of that problem. your son knows far more than any of us in this room. on the upside, we have double the size of the border patrol while bush was president. we are talking about increasing his again. there is a lot more that needs to be done. there has to be internal enforcement in the united states. 40 or send came into the country legally, not like the people your son art doing -- dealing with. you have to hold higher people accountable. a major debate going on. i suspect no matter what happens at the end of the day the border patrol is a bigger and stronger and more robust. it needs to be. , who the circumstances would blame them? it is dangerous. your you for what all sons do. that is all dangerous work. that is really tough going right now. more senators voted for the immigration bill, because they did not think it would work. i agree with him on that? in terms of holder, you know, we do not hire and fire the attorney general. he works for one guy. he has to be approved. i am sure a lot which they have not approved 10 now but he only has to be approved one time. that is the president's -- approved him, but he only has to be approved one time. there is an extraordinarily high bar. only nixon resigned. no american has been removed from office, no matter how popular. there are high crimes and misdemeanors. if he got that voted out of the house, you have to have two thirds of the senate agree. think that is very likely to happen. the country would be riveted on this. there is pending legislation to do this. there's no committee that has been tasked to do it. as a rule, and this can certainly happen in american. you are better off litigating this at the ballot box. i was remind my republican friends. .hey were pretty frustrated they did not like george bush very much. they sure hated losing to him in 2004, even more than 2000. they did not quit. they took the house and the senate in 2006. they never try to impeach george bush. think long and hard. always easier to say try it. usually that means we need to work harder at what we are doing. i am old enough to watch barry goldwater go down in flames. took 16 years to get one old reagan -- to get ronald reagan. democracy is hard work. it is people going out and knocking on doors. is is people going out and voting. .ur system works it is hard to work in part because that is what the founders wanted to be. they are afraid of centralized power. they're going to make this very difficult to do. they're going to have this president for four years that selected this. there's no other system that is is as complex as ours to work and get things through. the founders but it was the best defense for liberty. out.large it has worked i believe that madison came back he would be very happy. sometimes they do. different point of view are successful, they won the argument and they did it fair and square. they go back and go harder. >> let's go all the way back here. >> it was the attorney general under president bush? did he knowingly allow the mexican drug cartels? >> not to my knowledge. >> to have a question? >> why is anything being done? >> a lot is being done. the attorney general has been held in contempt of congress. the bestell i'll will chance was to win the elections last election. is why we no caps happened right now. you to me -- what you doing in libya in the first place? bewas a dumb idea and will there. it did change the rule of the game. they never came back to congress. they never came back and submitted a budget. can say what you want about iraq and afghanistan. and payad to come home for political. if we had a democratic house, i attorneyink the general would ever be held in contempt or do i do not think the federal a budget would have been cut. things are getting done and so far as we have the weapons to do that? we do not have the executive ranch. we came close but not close enough. we have a great chance to get the senate . >> it is to give work in our communities. this is to go and make this a teller line terminal. when you and stella, you will bring us out of using the officer. >> i do not know a lot about the atms. >> let me go back here. there you go. >> hi. , sorry.ou can you discuss your views on immigration reform? >> very skeptical. very opposed to the senate bill. way too much discretion by the administration. they decide when the border is secure. this is a recipe for disaster. you have to have a piece of legislation. this will be comprehensive. for security first. do like the fact that he put extra technology and they add either by -- e-verify. that is why it was passed. two out of every three republican senators still voted no here there is: a lot of skepticism. they overstayed. i am sorry they are not to do that. , no amnesty. by that i mean i do not know the senate bill is an amnesty bill. yet you know english. he had to go through a background check. you have to pay all your back -- you have to know english. you have to go through a background check. yet to pay all your back taxes and go to the end of the line. that is not amnesty. we know this does not work. that is in general. i do not think you're going to sa see an immigration bill until you sort out some of these other things. if you do not have the debt ceiling dealt with, you're not going to get immigration reform ever. immigration takes a lot longer. i think there is a real effort to do the bums rush the summer. that bill would be law. think twice before you take the goalie out of the game. annk we will pay such offense that will -- playsets could offense that we will never pay defense. that is not work on a foot goal -- football field very often. it doesn't work in politics. the only thing in the president be able to do. frank and -- dodd/frankrank and stimulus. this is something i do not think the country can afford. i would like to say thank you for coming. more of these would be very helpful. first of all, i feel like you do. i am not for amnesty. i am sorry that the people to come here and overstayed their visas. i am not for having them citizenship. also on benghazi, i have two children serving in the military. i am so disappointed -- disappointe in obama. i believe he leading us on a socialist country path. ourink there are a lot of young people who do not understand that because they are not being taught taught that anymore in the schools. , i do notghazi thing understand why it is taking for loans. if anyone had done something like this we would already be hung and buried. for obama and hillary to stand up in front of the parent of those young men and blamed this on some man in california, how in heavens name do they get away with it? if one of those have been one of my grandchildren or son, i would have been screaming at that man. they probably had to put me underground. for him to act like our be aary, he wants us to socialist country. i get sick of it every day. my husband told me i needed to take a rake. i see and hear so much. i have two children -- -- take a break. i see and hear so much. i have two children fighting. we need to get rid of him. [applause] one quick thing i would like for you to answer. i do not know if any of you are aware or have seen these giveaway phones. >> outrages. >> we traveled 11 states. oklahoma is the worst one we have seen. my dealings are the more things we giveaway the more things these things the kids are going to sit back, my grandson has a tattoo, i know they do it. they choose not to get in surance. and we just ignore it. to keep giving away, and they're sitting there with their hand out. is makingn mexico billions of dollars. how do you stop that? >> we start defunding it piece by piece. we do. will cut it. i am not a big fan of this program. i would be happy to get rid of it. your point about the culture about giving and giving and giving is exactly right. food stamps double under george bush. under theed again current administration. we go from $17 billion to 78 billion dollars only have a pretty be sent -- pretty decent set of legislation that would have started reforms. we're going to take another crack at it. we lost some votes because they did not think it went far enough. there may lost others because it went too far. we have almost no democrats. we did not get it done. programs are open to abuse. it is not just the money. it is pretty bad. fromre taking money people who need it, which is worse. also that you are creating a culture where people think the government is responsible for everything. they do not have to do the things that every other generation has done. i cannot agree more. on benghazi, this is a situation where the political process to a degree has worked. i gave a speech on the floor about this. i said it is a really sad tale .f incompetence and cover-up we are complacent, because let's be real, this is a pretty dangerous part of the world. you have to ask some hard questions. this pulled out of there. they shut their diplomatic mission. warned us that this is extraordinarily dangerous. they did not get to the secretary of state desk. i've no reason to believe that is a lie. they do not do it. i am not saying that they wanted this to happen. no one wanted this to happen. when you are responsible we do it. have fouroccurs only dead americans and we are told it is a video is of a planned terrorist attack. we know it was planned. the people on the ground were telling us. there were not telling us about spontaneous riots. not think the administration has ever been honest with the american people will about what happened that night i ended up with four dead americans. of help inet a lot the senate. in the house we are pushing pretty hard. most of the testimony you have heard that have contradicted our .eople that we got to testify including the number two guy on the ground. i have to getg our folks credit for, one of the guys in the oversight committee was actually out with in days after this here. state department people were told by the chief of staff "don't talk to them. go what do you mean? -- don't talk to them. co what do you mean? they are the oversight committee. to push this.ue when the president talks about we have had a summer of phony scandals, really? how is benghazi a phony scandal? how is the irs harassing people mostly on the right not a scandal? how is not tapping the phones not a scandal? those are all on his watch. those are all either his appointees are places where he has authority. cannot act like you are the absentee landlord. you are the chief of the executive ranch. -- branch. we will keep pushing on these things as hard as we possibly can until people to account. sometimes it works. commissioner. irs there have been multiple changes in that department. i suspect there will be more. in the state department, the four people responsible have had to change positions. i do not think that is enough. i think they need to be gone. you have to keep the pressure relentlessly. there are so many targets of apple -- opportunity that paying attention to one of them is tough. it is not one thing or one mistake. it is multiple things, multiple policy disputes. we will be fighting them out each and every day. we will continue to do that. absolutely. >> i do have a question for you. before i asked that question, i would like to respond. one of our fellow members of the lossnce seemed to be at a as to why we are not supporting obama care when people in new york and california are. am a former nursing home administrator. am a general manager for an assisted-living facility. i have been married to a nurse for 30 years. i have a dozen members of my family that worked in health care. i am originally from the west.trial midway there are only two insurance companies that are willing to assure this in the state of michigan. and everything else that cost everything money that we needed to pass tort reform. is in the pocket of the american trial lawyers association. that is never going to happen. it did not happen. that is the answer to your question. that is why it has never been passed. the gentleman. i am going to go ahead and take it a step further. i am going to put you on the spot. i know that you have served us well. to you before. my own son is a serving officer in the navy. i worked with a guy who son just .ame back from afghanistan i worked with another guy huge and not hear his -- from his son for six months because he was in special ops. it is a case where i can tell you that what we are concerned about is again and again whether , and i agree 100% with the outrage, it or whether metadata irs or this scandal, we do not seem to be hearing enough from the republican leadership, mainly the guy from my own home state. i will tell you why. i hear a lot of good arguments football. i am ashamed of the kind of inaction that appears to be going on with our speaker john boehner. [applause] on bed like to put you spot. i'm just going to ask you flat out, would you support an effort to move john boehner and put in another speaker of the house that would the more in tuned with the concerns that a lot of us have? >> if you're talking about right now in the middle of a turn, no. additions can sign a and you can have an election. is every two we do years you elect. he won the election. he did not have a serious action. you change it back in the middle of this game. i would not do it now. we will see who actually set up and offers themselves. i have been in a couple of this contest before. i'm not the winning side. this is where i was at. far as your point on football, we will not argue with you much, legislative there. went think is important to point out. >> let me turn around. this is what this is supposed to be about. of theit is the middle day. it is 99 degrees outside. and appreciate the fact that you asked up and go and that you have a point of view. you serving democracy a little bit right here. thank you. let's go back. we have done this. he'd have been very patient. we will get you next. -- you have been very patient. we will get you next. >> thank you for taking our questions. i have a comment and then a question. my first comment is why are we s,nning from terrorist shutting down our and the seas, when we are the most powerful on earth? we should not be running. my second question has to do with the financial markets. since the clinton administration banksff glass-steagall, and investment houses have been merging which caused the recession of 2008 and 2009. since that time, they have continued to merge. they now have a derivatives market that has the liability of more than all the money in the world. it is a major tightrope. if anything goes wrong, it is not just the united states going down. it is the entire world. why hasn't glass-steagall been put back in to unravel this thing? -- the vocal rule is being read by people like jamie dimon. they're asking the fox to come into the henhouse to take dinner. how do we get this unraveled before we hear a sucking sound everything goes away. >> we are not running away. these discussions are helpful. there has been more of them. we will continue to be pretty aggressive by going after the bad guys. in terms of the embassies, i think that is probably as much to warm people not to come and be there. not to worry about what happened in east africa. this has happened since we have been home. not want tothey do risk a situation where hundreds of will get killed. that is a call. i am sure it will be looked at when the get back. we are a lot more on offense here. that is why we have not had anything like a 9/11 again. i am not on financial services. a lot to youris point. i do not want to stomp on president clinton. he signed it but everybody and congress voted for it. it was a republican proposal. i am not sure that both sides didn't get fooled on it. there is an effort to reinstituted in the senate right now. it is bipartisan. we have not seen it on the house side. what we had tried to do is go after fannie mae and freddie mac with major legislation moving to protect taxpayers from ever having been dragged into that thing again. theto gradually return mortgage markets to private hands and get the government out of that. your point about the expansion of bank is a worrisome one. i think it is a good one. i did not vote for dodd/frank. i think it is pretty misconceived. it has heard a lot that community banks without doing anything to the big banks. if we have a bank failure in oklahoma, we know what to do with it. dic no such a handler. if you are talking about institutes the size you're, you are exactly right. it is not the answer. fullynot been implemented. we are looking at this. all i can tell you is that you will continue to see legislation coming out of the republican financial affairs committee. i have raised this point to some of the guys on that committee. they would not share the point of view that you describe. i think there is a serious did eight over how much that contributed. i think it contributed a lot. thinking is one thing and derivatives are something else. insuring bank deposits is one thing. insuring derivatives bets and where the taxpayer got the loss, is quite something else. i do not think this debate is over. i would think we will be looking at it legislatively for a while. i do not have a definitive answer for you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> we continue with the conversation. this is a question from a constituent on gun rights and violence. >> a lot of scorecards in my life. usually they are drawn up to arrive at a predetermined answer. let me talk about my voting record. i have a 92% lifetime american voting record. i have a 100% pro life to life voting record. -- pro-right to life voting record. to a taxr voted increase. that does not seem like a dangerous liberal to me. i think my record is pretty conservative. and a lot of times they picked opposednimum vote as to final passage. it may have a point they want to make. some scorecards have been mentioned today that represent the jumpers of pride -- john bird society. some are libertarian and do not care about the control. i do. i think that is consistent with conservatism. you cast several hundred vote in the course of the year, someone is always allowed to pick one out and talk about it. that is fair game. toould be happy to respond anything particular. by and large, i have a pretty conservative voting record. a district still has more democrats than republicans. to make my case at the appropriate time. you have been very patient. i am paul from southwest oklahoma city. i have arty talk to you about the foreign aid. abouteady talked to you the foreign aid. how can congress consciously vote for bills that american people have to abide by it then exclude their sale? >> they generally don't. they should not have them. .e have it as a rule withis one of the changes the contract with america. we are under the same rules. quite often i get these questions do you have to pay social security? i do. insurance?special no, i get what they get acting your air force base. will i have to go on the exchange? yes i will. those are fair questions. . wish i were not under it we are under it. congress actually put itself under obamacare and put it staff under there. that is pretty unfair to the staff. they are federal workers. we are put on it. we will have to go on to the. what the president said is basically you will have to go on the exchange that you are sticking -- still picking out of the federal health-care pot here .hat was a decision he made it was done mostly because democrats to push the bill through did not want to live under it. they are the ones that have been besieging the president about changing the law. sir. glenn and i played football here together a longer time ago than an either of us are willing to admit. he is a great veteran. it is good to see you. fore also beat me out first-run bowl: we were in junior high. >> and then we played football. when we werebone in junior high. >> and then we played the all. >> all the things that have been set are very important. it is on the heart and minds of a lot of people. i have something personal that i want to put to tom that i have talked to him about. that has yet to be paid as americans to a very important group of americans here in the united states. many people do not know about. that is to a group of world war that were promised veteran status after the war due to their service. then they were denied that veteran service until 1988. that is the world war ii merchant marines. my father who is a doctor here in the state of oklahoma was a the ss von stupen and was bombed. he was denied veteran status until 1988. a special act of congress was their to let them have status. of course, by that time they were old enough to not get their g.i. bills. they did not have to get there did.ans at everybody else my dad borrowed $5,000 to go to college and become a dock jerk and help build -- to become a doctor and help build this great state. i am going to read a couple of things so you can be a little more educated on this. during26 marine others world war ii died in the line of duty. a greater percentage of war related deaths other than u.s. services -- other than all the other u.s. services. they kept a secret during the war to keep the information about the success to the enemy. the newspapers say the same story every week. two allied ships sunk in the atlantic era in reality, the 33 sunkfor 1942 was every week. it was not until 1988 until they got that recognition. in 1942 just off brunswick, the s s uncle -- as as oklahoma was ss oklahoma was sunk. it was an oil tanker. where was i? here. 19 merchant marine others were killed. four of them were burned beyond recognition. they have been since identified by private funds and now have a memorial to them. that is from people from our own state. we still do not have recognition from our own congress. 8300 marine others were killed at sea. 12,000 were wounded. 1100 died from the wounds. 6033 men and women were taken prisoner. some were blown to death. some are drowned. some start. .6 -- some starved did 31 ships vanished without trace. the most dramatic of these at during that war -- acts during the war was in 1942 in the south atlantic. this trend spells when they refused to surrender. the ship was in flames and the the cadet from the u.s. merchant marine academy fired the last five available shells, setting the sheeteer on fire. he was killed by shrapnel and 40 others went down with the ship. and you don't want to be disrespectful but you're going to have to make your point. >-- >> i do not want to be dishes but full but you're going to have to make your point. >> i am asking you to present a gold-medal to the survivors or the living u.s. merchant marine others, there are not many of them anymore, just like we have s andother veterans group to do it done as soon as possible. >> i do not have any problem doing something like that. whether we can get it done. you need almost every member of congress to deal with it. your point is without question a great point. look. i had a dad who served 20 years in the air force. i had an uncle who did the debt march -- the death march in a prison yard. i read beer it be people who did those kind of things. revere theeer -- type of people who did those kind of things. let us get you a microphone. they are almost there. >> thank you. this dates back to the welfare thing. are people not required to work in order to receive welfare? they were and were talking about all of this infrastructure and everything. my dad went out. a build bridges and western oklahoma. s.ey did road all dayout and worked long and we got food stamps and commodities. other things. then he got a little bit of money. why are we just giving a handout to these people will? -- to these people? >> i could not agree more. frank lucas when he is negotiating, he is from western oklahoma. 80% foodbill is about stamps and nutrition programs. he put in a ton of reforms including one just like that. republican votes. some did not want to vote for. they wanted more reform. they voted no. we lost most of the democrats when we were doing that though the bill went down. he is trying to resurrect it now. i think you will come back with a very tough bill, probably even tougher it them when it went down in september. this is coming back again. it is much better to be getting a paycheck. people on the other and do not feel like they are suckers. these kind of requirements make sense. on food stamps, well over half of them are food stamps. >> i understand that. >> what you are trying to do is what we are trying to pass in the house of representatives. this is the art of politics. you hate to lose people when you know they agree with you but they ain't it needs to go further. but they think it needs to go further. if you do not vote with us we lose your boat and we are losing all the democratic votes. we cannot get it rude. that is what frank is trying to do. i think you will see a pretty tough bill in the house floor in september. we will have to have three universal republican support. this is a state issue. this is an argument i do not disagree with. .his is a program as it exists next time,o better let's do better next time. sometime this attitude i am not going to do anything unless i get everything does not work in real life. nobody ever gets everything they want all the time. sometimes you can say i can make rockers in the right direction. i can save money. -- progress in the right direction. i can save money. and build self-esteem, the work. >> i could not agree more. thank you. work our way forward here. then we will come over here. >> i think we need a select committee. we have multiple committees looking into. why don't we get this gentleman right here. then i will come to the site. do not worry. i'll come back. >> when secretary clinton was for speaking out about that, she said it was reprehensible that this person made this video. that was the reason benghazi happens. what i find reprehensible is that we have a secretary of state does not realize we have freedom of speech in this country. if you choose to speak out against islam and making movie about it that is not illegal. we have freedom of -- because we have freedom of religion and speech. to say she's going to go after that person, i find that reprehensible. she made a statement as secretary of state that it was going to be u.s. policy to support those countries that supported homosexual rights. i do not that should be the primary focus of our state department. the fact that they did not defended doma and allows benefit to go to gay marriages andoing to force oklahoma other states to give benefits to gay marriages. >> good issues. on benghazi, i certainly agree. why mention the video anyway? we do not have proof it had anything to do with anything. as an effort to secure the truth. they got caught flat-footed and d as a consequence. the fact that this is still unfolding, the truth is still working its way to the surface. we know more now because people have hearings. they start telling the truth. esther and -- as far as the president not defending the laws, that has helped him multiple times. it is their obligation to defend the law. -- that has happened multiple times. it is their obligation to defend the law. law, and you don't get to pick and choose which ones you want to. so i think we have seen a pattern of that kind of behavior. the house of representatives ended up paying for legal defense. we should not have had to do that. if the executive branch's, the department of justice's responsibility. in terms of oklahoma, the supreme court decision, effectively turned gay marriage now into a state issue. know, i don't know enough about the law to know where we're are headed on this, but it looks to me like it is going to be a state-by-state thing unless we get another supreme court ruling. i think what the supreme court is trying to do is to avoid doing what i did in the abortion debates, that is having a one- size-fits-all, basically trying to kick it back to the states and let people and individual states do it. but it has made very clear that if a state decides to do it and you are a federal employee in that state, that you are obviously subject to the same benefits that everybody else are in the state. again, that was not a congressional action, that is supreme court action. but i think that is where we at -- are at. it will be devils state policy for the time being, but probably better than a sweeping decision where the supreme court decided they would do wherever he wanted to do instead of letting people in individual states make their own decisions. let me come over here, but we will get back there. yes, sir. [inaudible] >> frank murphy. thank you for could you hold it closer? >> could you hold it closer? get drove 300 miles to here. we touched on amnesty. i lived in california until 1995. i was born in san diego. i was a police officer, a police and detective in san diego for a number of years. i was also a contractor. i had two other businesses, as a mechanic and as a machinist. i can tell you the problems that have killed california are headed right here, and somebody had better wake up. california was just like this place was in about 1970. right now, if you go to los angeles, four out of five babies being born are born to illegal aliens, and they do not pay a dime. ratealifornia unemployment is indescribable. i don't want to see that happen here. i had beene because here in the army in the 1960's, and i know what a great state god ita is good i thank is here. i do not want to see it destroyed. amnesty, no work permits, get rid of every legal alien pushing back across the border. that is your enforcement. and cut unemployment to six weeks. i have had numerous jobs over my lifetime, and it never took me more than two weeks to become employed. when i moved to oklahoma, i went to the unemployment office your i asked for a job, not a handout. they did not know what to do. they were lost. they could not believe it. finally, after an hour or two, i got to some guy that helped veterans. i am a veteran. and he got me a job. i was unemployed in oklahoma for two days. so somebody that tells me they cannot get work here -- it is a lame, lazy jerk. thank you. [laughter] [applause] >> that's ok. well, you are not going to be the first guy to slip out the door. but that is ok. that is ok, thank you, and thank you for your service. [inaudible] [laughter] we will do what we can, we can do some of it. we are trying to cut the unemployment links now. it needs to go back -- we pushed legislation through the house several times. long,it has been way too and so i think you're going to continue to see efforts to reduce that. i will tell you -- i think whatever happens on immigration, border security is going to continue to be a top priority. theave actually doubled size of the border patrol. we are actually spending more money. not enough yet. not enough. but it is moving in the right direction. it is going to continue to do that. we have got a long way to go to address these problems. let me get around to everybody that has not had a chance. this gentleman here has been very patient. we will get you next, ok? >> there is an quite a bit said about the -- about what president obama said about the scandals -- y, yeah.y phone >> i know that you disapprove of what he said. i thought it was one of the most egregious things he has ever said. >> sorry, i had it upside down. [laughter] do i need to say that all over again? >> well, that is ok. >> i wonder, did you and did the speaker, did you express your disapproval to him, and i'm not talking about an anti-chamber in -- anddle of the night editorial somewhere. i know you can watch an -- write an editorial in the "daily oklahoma." >> sundays. but about what yo> ? -- they verym seldom gets published in the "oklahoman," but within them around the areas that we represent. of andeen very critical got become a very critical of the irs, had voted repeatedly from everything from cutting funded -- funding, people have been very supportive on these issues. attitudeso about his kind of tour, i also thought that it was downright terrible the way he said phony scandals. >> they are not phony when people have been harassed. and people die. that is not a phony scandal. >> those things can also affect the investigation because there are people on the conservative side in those investigations, and there are also people on his side in those investigations. it can really have a bad effect on his attitude. >> yeah, presidents need to be very careful about that what they say. i need to get this gentleman appear. teaching first grade with all your transcripts. as a congressman, is it possible for you to see the president's transcripts? >> well, no, i do not think it is. life i have another question. -- >> i have another question. i assume the answer is no. quite as far as i know, i do not think we have any right dizziness transcripts. greg i think all of us have found many times that we would tax or aave a fair flat tax, and it seems to me to be the best opportunity to get rid of irs. is it ever announced or discussed in congress about fair -- or flat tax >> yes, absolutely, i actually sponsored a fair tax system. i would take the fair tax over the current system in a heartbeat. there is major tax reform legislation being discussed now between -- in the house ways and means committee. unfortunately, we do not have an oklahoman sitting on a city. -- on that committee. the senate is also trying to move something. our challenge will be to mike and, you have a democratic senate and a democratic president. i think it is an opportunity to be for major tax reform. we have a tax system that is riddled with credits, loopholes, game playing. a friend of mine, kevin brady, is a member from texas that sits on a committee. the tax code of the united states is four times the size of a bible with none of the good news. pretty good summary. >> it is. in your opinion, if a presidential candidate made that a major point, would it carry any weight? >> yeah, i think it would. i think nobody ever thinks the tax system is fair. that is always an issue that resonates with america. let's be real -- taxes are one of the reasons we do put -- we declared our independence in the first place. we did not like the way was done, we thought we should have a direct say, which we did not. . think it is a major effort i think you are going to see it more, particularly if commerce cannot act in the next couple of years and this divided situation. i suspect whoever is running for president will make it a major issue. the last time we had really important tax stuff, ronald reagan was president. he ran on what was back then camp ross, which was lowering the rates, and then he carried another part of it out in the tax reform act of 1986. it helps getting elected and reelected. i think it helped unlock the prosperity of the 1980 for the. so we need to change the tax system, and there are multiple ways. flat tax to me is the easiest. but fair tax -- again, it would be better than what we have got now for sure. yes, ma'am. >> thank you so much for coming. are antion is since we energy state, i agree with all of the things you have talked about, but as an energy state, it seems like we are getting attacked on fossil fuels these days. and the coal industry is the first one that is going to go down. i feel like it is going to go to natural gas and so on until it is gone. the epa is obviously overreaching. what can we do? >> first of all, you are exactly right. i think there is almost been a war on carbon-based industry by this administration. coal has been the number one target. we have 250 years worth of coal supply. we export coal. coal, it is high quality, and we have a lot at her technology than we did 20 years ago. the idea that we are going to knock this american resource out of the mix is just crazy to me. and jobs. thousands and thousands of jobs. the house interior procreation's budget, i said we cut epa's budget by 34%. we put some writers in there. writers are special legislation things that research what they can do. and some of the regulations they can propose. we will continue that. the chairman of the appropriations committee is from kentucky. bigger coal a much industry then kentucky. he has seen thousands of jobs lost in his dexter. it is not a very rich district. whole mining districts are not historically big, wealthy districts. you are destroying a core industry that is critical, some areas that have been challenged in our country for a long time. my biggest concern as an oklahoman is with natural gas and oil. look, i am all of the above energy. i am for all kinds of energy, i love wind power, i have no problem with the wind tax credit, i think it is a good thing. in about 80% of the power this country comes from carbon- based industry. anybody that thinks we're going to be getting rid of it in anybody's lifetime here is just fooling themselves. natural gas is cleaner than any kind of carbon-based energy. we have got tons of it in this country. it has brought the rice down 40 dollars down to around four dollars per thousand cubic feet. we actually have a few huge and managed over a lot of our industrial competitors. again, these are industries that are productive, that are growing in output and that we ought to be fostering. so i voted for about every pro- energy piece of legislation you can find. will -- be contribution controversial to some people -- that includes the export of natural gas or die would like somebody dependent on us for a change instead of us independent on some foreign country. i would like us to be a will to have that kind of leverage in a world affairs. i think that will continue development and investment here. i have been a big proponent of the keystone pipeline. i doubt we are going to disagree on energy. i think the most important energy debate coming forward may well be the debate over tax reform. advantage domestic exploration in the united states intangibleike drilling costs. extremely important because it encourages exploration here. we don't give those things to american companies that produce offshore, we will give it to you if you produce here. when the president talks about oil and gas getting subsidies, that is what he is talking about. by the way, is about the same tax break we give every manufacturing company in america to manufacture here. why would we not give energy companies comparable tax for them to stay here? the district i'm privileged to represent is still one of the top 20 oil and gas to districts in the country. we are producing more natural gas than we ever have in history. there is a lot out there still define here in places we have been drilling for 100 years. again, i think it will be a big component in our future. it always amazes me -- the president likes to vilify the in history, lately i have noticed how he is talking about how we import less oil since he has been president than we did before. like, really? do you think you had any earthly thing to do with this? you that did not invent fracking , you deny then horizontal drilling. if you look at carbon base here, oil and gas on federal land, since the president has been president is down, like, 19%. drilling is down by about one third. that is 20% of the land of the united states is owned by the federal government. we don't see too much of it here, but you get much west of here, utah and wyoming and places like that, the majority of those states are in the hands of the federal government. helpfult particularly in terms of developing that resource, which we get the royalties on that as taxpayers. that flows into the treasury. we ought to be doing as much private development on that land as we possibly can. >> [inaudible] >> i don't think it is going to be done. all, we need a president with a different attitude towards this industry. there are some things we can do in congress, and we have done to try to slow down, but when the president gets to a point, the chief regulars, never certain regulatory philosophy, they're going to make it different on -- difficult on coal. we had one of the president of the energy advisers saying yes, there is a war on coal. i am not for a war on american energy. period. we are going to keep reducing. we ought to be investing, and we ale, and clean: -- in clean co technology. we have the largest reserves of it in the world. the idea that we would ever turn and walk away from it i think is just crazy. i think it weakens us. i don't think it strengthens us. yeah, go all the way back here. then we will come up and get you, ok? thank you. >> thank you. there is a law that went into effect in oklahoma that ,asically made oklahoma city called competitive bidding and access to durable medical the clement. -- equipment. you said you are going to be at medicare age soon. how far do you think you have to go to get medical equipment now in your district? >> oh, quite a ways. >> there are 26 supplier second .upply the state of oklahoma there are three of those that are local. the average travel distance to find a week -- a wheelchair tomorrow is 752 miles. happened, and nobody is talking about it. the stores even go in there, they did not get a hundred, they went to florida, they went to to thethey went nationals, who don't do that stuff. we passed this law, a cayman, it it cameur district -- in, it is in your district from the very southern part of it all the way out to guthrie, which comes out of your district. but i mean it just hit oklahoma july 1, if you need a wheelchair, you are going to have to travel, and then you're going to have to have a supplier -- >> is this a state or a -- >> a federal law. who is yourre.gov suppliers. in other words, this happened, the one gentleman said the california bit of this stuff and it was whatever else, there is for local suppliers that got a hundred. dash ofrest of the is a these are national. so the access to wheelchair, walkers, whatever else in your district has drastically changed. the law says that walmart got a contract, and they got to bring it to you and deliver it and teach you how to use it. if anybody believes that it's going to happen, i don't. [laughter] good thing.m is a let me take this gentleman right here. >> on the sequestration, i think a lot of us are asking, we want more of this, more of that. i was really proud to take a job at the air force base. up until this year. and all of a sudden you're telling me that my time is not worth -- whatever we are doing out there must be completely wrong because you are not willing to pay us for it. >> no, i do not think that at all. my dad worked there 20 years, and my brother worked there. you finish your question, and i will respond, i am sorry. to get gasoline for their vehicles. we are calling united way so we can avoid to pay our bills. that ain't right. that is not treating us right. talking lady back here about our border patrol, having to go out there with your own tires, that is what we are coming down to? sequestration, you are talking about cuts this year, what about the next year down the road? and that is not a solution for government. i mean, if we can't put 500 people together and come up with some type of a solution. you had to make this thing work out. it is not supposed to be a whole bunch of little kids up there saying this is mine, and no, everybody wants their spirit >> -- oncwants theirs. great point. the house of representatives responded twice to take care and it eliminates sequestration. the senate never up picked it up, the president never made a counter offer at all. they do not have to agree with how we wanted to stop it, which andto redistribute because nobody would have been furloughed. this is 2.5% of the total federal budget, less. if you spread it over the entire federal budget, you would not see this. i think the president was not serious -- and this was his idea. this is an idea he proposed. he advocated for, he signed into law. solutions.to now, this year when the first announcement came, there would be 22 days of furlough. my colleagues and i worked hard and got a cut first 214 and then to 11. two weeks ago, i offered a commitment on the house floor. we have something you are working familiar -- capital fund. that is not appropriated dollars. there is no reason that 9500 workers being paid through that find, 1500 ad for steel, and 180,000 around the country, are being furloughed at all. that is the it ministration's decision. -- the administration's decision. when i brought this up, i was told we think everybody should be saving the same amount. why would we furlough these people? come to a deal with the president, i have been there on making compromises with the president. i'm not one of these people that say no, i will never sit down. i have done it. but on this one, he is not offered a plan, he has not responded to hours, the senate has never passed anything. they have let this happen. and i think they have let it happen because they want to make a political point. and they think we can sign a bill that says we're going to save us money, and now we are just going to waive it. that is not going to happen. we were willing to sit down and redistribute these cuts over the entire budget. we have done it twice. --et through the house twice passed it through the house twice. when the president has a real plan to sit down, then we are happy. we would be happy. his campaign for about six weeks wading into this sequester, all over the country, he never bothered to call the seeker or the majority leader or the minority leaders in the two houses, he brought them down the very last day before the sequester began for a photo app and a political -- a photo op and a political statement. that is not how you do these things. when the president wants to sit down, and i have talked to him personally, happy to sit down, happy to try to find a solution think it is the administration which has not acted responsibility. acted responsibly. again, their idea, no solution. we have offered a couple of solutions and are willing to sit down and negotiate other spirit when he wants to do it, then we will do it. i suspect we will do it this fall. but your other point, which is really important, is exactly right -- it is not a one-time deal. happens again next fiscal year if we do not get this fixed. so we need to sit down and do it. >> i would like to invite you out to tinker to talk to the people out there. >> sure, i would be happy to. i've been out there multiple times. this is not good for some i have ever been to tinker air force base. you will find i've been pretty supportive not just to set the base but the workforce. that is an extraordinary workforce. you get 50-year-old plant in the air in combat condition. -- planes in the air in combat condition. that is really sophisticated skill. my dad worked there 20 years. my brother, after his air force career, worked there. i have a pretty good idea what goes on. we fight really hard for it. that is why i pushed the amendment, that is why i have been willing to compromise. i will be happy to stack up what i have tried to do to make sure this didn't happen versus what the president and the democrats in the senate have done. i will be happy to sack of what might republican colleagues in the house to have actually passed a bill. we will have the debate and see who is responsible for this. but this is the president, in my view, and the administration, i should say, broadly in the senate that has paid -- has played fast and loose. it should have never happened. but i would be happy to visit. yes, sir. bill, hr2685, smart meters mandatory in the united states or have you feel about that? >> you know, i am not really familiar with that legislation. i would be happy to look at that. >> how do you feel about smart meters? >> i do not have a problem with them, but how you feel about your meters is up to you. >> this is a meter that can be controlled from a central location, they can turn your location -- your air -- turn your electricity on and off. there are people that are having health problems with them. i know personally of a man whose house was set on fire by a smart meter. there are a lot of problems, and nobody seems to be paying any attention to them. >> well, we would be happy to look into it. i have had a couple of other people mention it to me, but again, i cannot tell you i know every bill, and i don't even know if that one was around when i was in congress. we will be happy to help anybody. nobody is for people having interruptions in power e peoplereason, let alon with medical things or situations were houses burned down. we will be happy to help. i want to make sure everybody has a chance to do at least one if we have missed anybody. >> on this workplace violence in fort hood. >> outrageous. >> i had a grand child that had just left there, fortunately, thank you, lord. how can i be a workplace violence? >> how to take four years to take a guy to trial who was guilty. >> and still receiving his pay. i don't understand that. >> i don't either. we try to do this legislatively on this. it is difficult because then you are legislatively tampering with a court case, which you usually do not want the legislature to do. i went to funerals of one of those soldiers that was killed. one of their funerals was in norman heard one of those kids was from this district. the most heartbreaking funeral i have ever seen in my life. he had already done one deployment, they were getting ready to do another one, his fellow soldiers got up and talked about what a great, young soldier he was. his sister got up and read letters home and he had written home from basic training about how proud he was and that he had finally found his niche in life and what this meant to him to put on the uniform. it was just heartbreaking. and how this guy, you know, number one there is a lot of questions to answer as to why he wasn't killed out of the military -- kicked out of the military before. there were serious questions about his stability, about whether he was a sociopath. they knew he was committed hitting with radical terrorists in yemen. he should've never been in a position in the first place. all i can tell you is i don't know the justice system. but it should not take four years to get this done. and the workplace violence denies those soldiers the benefits that they should get, their families should get, and the recognition. this is not workplace violence. this is an act of terrorism, an act of war against the united states of america, and it is a traitorous act by a person that was supposedly in our service. the guy that is on top of this the most, whose district this took place in, is a former texas judge named john -- named john carter. ofupported every piece legislation that he is that, and we will continue to try and work, but this is a totally unjust situation. outrageous. >> my husband is retired air force, and he was mentioning the other day, he said i do not understand why they allow him to keep his beard, first of all, being in the military, and proclaimed the thing he is going for -- going through. personally, i think it is obama's fault. [laughter] >> everything is his fault. >> let's get this human right here. >> if the employer mandate on delusional, and is a violet, and if it did, -- and it didn't violate, and if they did -- >> i don't think it is. i had a pretty serious exchange, if we had passed through the house, we do not think he could do it on his own. we are happy to delay it. and only passed one to do the -- i got in a discussion, he assigning to give reasonable authority. i do not think so. this was a major component, and i think on the grants ought to approve it, and congress would approve it, but it would also throw in the individual mandate. from my view, and i am not an attorney, but i think it is the executive usurping legislative authority. i do not think there is anything in the law. portions given certain administered of latitude, but to me this is way beyond that. you and i probably agree on that issue. >> and the other one with eric holder given a contempt of congress. if anybody is content in any civil court, there will be consequences. what does that actually mean that he is in contempt of congress? takell, congress has to them to court. we are in litigation now. i can't tell you -- i will find out and get back to you what the precise penalties would be. i just honestly don't know. >> and a third 1 -- can you put a got -- a gag on john mccain and lindsey graham? [laughter] [applause] -- you know, it is the united states of america, so i i did notan't do it, spend five years in a vietnamese prison camp, and i respect anybody that did. i did not say i agree with him all the time, but i have great respect for that. and lindsey graham has won the uniform of the united states, and i respect that too. we don't always agree, but, you know, i don't question their patriotism, we just don't always agree. yes, ma'am. let's get you a microphone row quick -- real quick. youram not actually from district. >> that is ok, you are an american, you are allowed. a townve never been to meeting before. i have always voted republican. [inaudible] percent you described as donated to republicans. i'm having a hard time recognizing the party that i have voted for my entire life. is reallysue that bothering me is the immigration issue. and what i am hearing that is going on behind the scenes is it thatl cooked in the books, you all are supporting this issue that is being pushed by , and that itrove is going to be done. figuringaving trouble out if i'm going to show up to vote in 2014. and the problem that i have is that you all have passed legislation to solve the problems with the border, and it is not being done. you have had legislation with e- verify, and it has not been done. you have mentioned many times not the administration does follow through on things. why would you even consider passing other legislation which they will have an equal opportunity not to follow through on? conferenceu go to with the senate, will he pass something and go to conference and also what about the discharges? >> can i answer the question? first of all, both of our senators voted no. again, i do not know if you are from the state or whatever, but nobody in this state has voted for that. and two thirds, over two thirds of the republican senators voted no. on the immigration bill. the bill that passed have not even gotten a hearing in committee let alone a vote on the floor. and it won't. it is not going to pass the house of representatives. what the speaker has said, we're going to work on our own bill, and it will be very different than the senate bill. and it may not pass. so we are a long way away a man because this or that group says this or that, i would just follow the debate and see what happens, but i think it is pretty unlikely that what you saw coming out of the senate is going to be anything remotely like that is going to come out of the house. you can't go to conference and silly pass a bill. we have not even pass a bill yet. fromnk we are months away even dealing with this. i think these other issues, the end of the fiscal year, the debt ceiling, these things are way ahead of. i don't think anybody think the immigration system is working. you have to decide whether doing nothing is better than doing something. au know, if something is senate bill, i would say doing nothing is better. but you have to wait and let the legislative ross is work out. and for people that are all haveked about this, we actually increased border security, but it is nowhere near enough. we have never enacted e-verify through both houses. to the senate's credit, they actually have it in their bill. i do not think it is enough, but they actually tested to move further in their bill that it -- than it has ever move legislatively. let's wait and see what we do. concern is the senate bill, it is not going anywhere. >> i realize that. i'm concerned about other things. but sinceair enough, we have not enacted a bill and have not voted on the bill yet, and haven't voted most will times in the majority and in the funding,to increase increased security, this idea that somehow the republicans are responsible -- look, a lot of what has happened is we did not win the last two presidential elections, and we do not run the senate. not participating at the polls, if that is your point, won't help. guysd a lot of good elected in 2010 that have stopped a lot of bad stuff. and have cut the deficit in half, and our every -- and are every bit as tough on american security border or internationals as everybody else. you are to elect more of them. again, nobody in the state has voted for the things that you were talking about. and all of us have fought repeatedly against those things. and i suspect we will continue to. you know, tom coburn, who had an opportunity, you should listen to this statement on border security. pretty tough stuff. he will tell you this border is not 50% secure. that one your own cbo study says that if you did all this stuff in this bill, you would cut illegal immigration by one third to one half, does anybody think that is good enough? i don't spirit i don't think so at all. so again, understand the concern, but so far that bill is a move anywhere, and as written it certainly is not. before anything does move, we will end up having town halls again, and people will know about it. all the way in the back there. >> good to see you again, counselor. my question is this -- what does the majority in the house doing theuarantee or preserve freedom of our military chaplains to express their faith and share it with the soldiers, military personnel? >> quite a bit. we have legislation on a moving. tim walberg, who is an ordained minister, and i cosponsored the legislation. we're trying to do everything that we possibly can on that. and we passed legislation. i'm trying to remember in the last couple of weeks on this issue, through the house, so we will continue -- and i do not consider this a particularly partisan issue. you actually get a fair number of democrats that feel strongly about this too. but the idea that we would have chaplains who are atheists -- pretty terrible. the idea that you would tell a person of enough conscious to be a minister or a priest or a rabbi what they are going to say -- i don't think so. cases whereof those their allegiance really is to a higher power and they have committed their lives and their values and they ought to have the right to exercise that even in uniform. any minute women in your form certainly ought to have the rights to pray or friendly not to as they choose. that is their right, they are defending our rights to that. we certainly need to make sure that there's are protected. i think you'll find unanimity on this, on our side of the aisle. again, a fair number of democratic supporters. anything else? i'm not soliciting. you only said there for three hours. >> because you sat there for three hours. [laughter] it is not my but, it is my knees, man. [laughter] they get old. i know you and i need to visit, but if anybody else have anything both in case, we have got staff people here that would be delighted to help you help your to get some they personally want to visit with me about, i am more than happy to do. yes, ma'am, last question. >> [inaudible] the young people that answer the phones [inaudible] >> well, that is what they're supposed to do your a lot of those -- to do. a lot of those kids in a dcr interns. there are student, they are there for three-month or so. we go through what the calls are. and what they are concerned about. it really is helpful. what is the old will rogers saying? everybody is -- but only about different things. when you are in congress, you will find a way things are ignorant about cause you are voting on it. there is always the money in my knows more about anything that i do. if we can have the chance to open their opinion and get educated, it is very helpful. with that -- >> [inaudible] to thebut i want to talk lady first. again, i will be there. i can say, all right, you are the man. if you want to wait here, again, we will be here. we do not have anything after. oh, my knees. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> we will be taking you to another town hall meeting in just a minute. first, a bit about the analyst leaked documents. he may be getting a visit from his father. lawn snowden has then issued a snowden has been issued a russian visa. snowden's father talked on abc's "this week." >> as a father, i want my son to come home if i believe the justice system that we should be afforded as americans is going to be applied correctly. at this point, when you consider many of the statements made by our leaders, leaders in congress, they are absolutely irresponsible and inconsistent with our system of justice. they have poisoned the well, so to speak, in terms of the potential joy -- jury pool. where my son chooses to live the rest of his life is going to be his decision, but i would like at some point in time for him to be able to come back to the u.s. , whether he is going to live the rest of his life you're not, and face it. because i believe the truth will shine through. it is clear that the american people, regardless of what law that been passed by congress -- law -- he broke the >> george, that is irresponsible to suggest before a trial that somebody has broken the law. what is done may well be protected by the first amendment. the president himself has admitted there might be something irregular what he said was mr. snowden should have gone to the congressional oversight committee. the congressional oversight committee has artie gone on record, dianne feinstein, guilty of treason. these are the committees that new for seven years and refused to disclose it to the american people. statements. if the american people knew what was going on, they would be's don, and edward snowden is supposed to go to them? implausible. >> i want to add to this. the president made a statement laws thatresident had protected contractors like my son, edward. that is absolutely untrue. either the president is being misled by his advisors, or he is intentionally misleading the american -- >> -- >> absolutely not. and maybe at some point we should go through that, hypothetically let's imagine that edwards noted that well, there is a problem, let's say he got on an airline in honolulu fly tochose tool washington, d.c., and he actually gets an audience with peter king or dianne diane feinstein, how do we think that he would be received if he had a private audience? we have seen how they reacted even when the truth comes out. it's been the truth, they try to hide it from the american people, we would have never known the truth. >> that was edward snowden's father, lon, appearing on abc's "this week." you can listen on your radio or online at c-span.org/c- spanradio. 6:30 p.m. tonight eastern time, we will take you to the family leaders that -- leadership summit in ames, iowa where rick santorum talked about the lyrical process and the republican party moving forward. again, that is tonight, 6:30 p.m. eastern time. >> mayor adrian fenty and council chairman vincent gray faced each other in one of the most contentious and expensive elections in d.c. recent history. fenty raised nearly $5 million. vincent gray only raised $1.2 million. but he won the public over as an affable and effective chairman. he beat fenty. shortly after gray took office in 2011, brown, who had also run for mayor, told the "washington post" that he was paid and offered a job in exchange for disparaging information about fenty during the election. federal investigators soon discovered that much of brown's story was true. they also uncovered david even bigger secret -- the shadow campaign. basically you had a campaign that was going on, the regular campaign you see, and then you had another set of folks who were in an office right next to the gray campaign. during the campaign, there is so much going on, you had several workers actually complaining, several official workers complaining about the other workers because they felt that they were getting paid more, and there was a lot of confusion as to who was paying them, etc. it was not until a year later that folks started putting things together when federal investigators began asking questions, and they realize wait a minute, the folks who were next door, we cannot find any record of them in the campaign- finance records that we see. so how did those folks get paid, and who was in charge of them? >> nikita stewart looks at corruption in d.c. city at 8:00 on c-ht span's "q&a." >> heading out to another town hall meeting now, this one happened in pawtucket, rhode island, with democratic senator sheldon whitehouse. he met with constituents over dinner. this is about one hour. [applause] >> all right now. this is my -- go ahead and have a seat, guys. this is the 115th, by our count, community dinner that i have held since i first start running for the senate back now, what, seven years ago. we do them steadily. we have kind of got routine down. everybody gets something to eat. i speak very briefly and then it is just a discussion. if you a question, if you have a comment, this is rhode island, we even accept rude remarks. the whole package. please put your hand up and give us a chance to get the microphone to you. who is running the microphones here? the hand mics. all right. these gentlemen will get the hand mics around. one other thing that i'll say is i know everybody doesn't love public speaking. and whether it is because you don't love public speaking or whether it is because what you want to talk about is more personal than that, or whether we simply run out of time, if for some reason we don't get to you, don't worry about it. one of my rules for these community dinners is that i try to be the last person to leave. so i'll stick around and if you want to talk about something that you don't want to talk about in front of everybody, that's fine too. thank you all very much. obviously this is a challenging time to be in washington. the economic recovery is still very slow and it is particularly slow here in rhode island. and we're trying to do things to get the economy moving more quickly, but we're trying to do so in a time when there is enormous conflict. and dissension in washington. and the one thing that i want to tell you about that, because it is my job to report back to you on what i see, and what's going on around me, is that what i see is not actually a lot of conflict between republicans and democrats. what i see is immense conflict, bitter conflict within the republican party. you have a tea party contingent that has one set of views. you have more moderate republicans who have a different set of views. they are really almost at each other's throats now. you have flat-out conflict on the floor of the senate between republicans. you have fights within the caucus. among republicans. you have one group raising money against the other group and it is really very, very contentious. we're kind of bystanders to that fight, but we experience the effects of it, because when one party is that divided and there is that much anger and conflict, it is very hard for them to help with getting legislation passed. so we have had had our troubles there, but we are pushing very, very hard. senator reed and i had dinner several months ago with president obama and there were 12 of us around the table and the president was talking about many of the difficulties. he pointed out one area where he thinks the republicans are willing to work with us and that is on infrastructure. that is an important opening. because if we can get that done, that is a big deal. there are so many roads that need work in rhode island. there are so many bridges that are past their appropriate life or need repair and maintenance. there is so much water work that needs to be done, both sewage and clean water piping that needs to be done. nationally, we have $600 billion worth of just water work that we could be doing. we have got $6 billion of it done in the stimulus. 1%. there is a lot more. we need to do it sooner or later. the stuff is in fact old and need to be replaced. it will help rhode island more than other states because we have been around a while. we have a lot of old infrastructure. we need the jobs. we need to get after that. i think that is an important window and i'm working very hard with my colleagues to try to find a way to get a good infrastructure bill through the senate. we got a water infrastructure bill through and we need to get some ones for roads and bridges. the last thing i'll mention is healthcare. we are closing on being able to stand up the insurance exchanges that were in the affordable care act. that should be a really good deal for everybody. where they come up, we have seen prices come down and it is for the very obvious reason, that if you have an insurance exchange. it is like a market. you can go there and you can find what's for sale, what the price is and you can match things side by side, because they have to match in order to qualify. so you can know what you're dealing with. and you can find out, ok, which gives the best price and that makes the insurance companies have to compete on price. most of the time, when what insurance companies do is compete on trying to get the business of a really big business. if you're a big business you get really good rates for your employees. if you're a small business, maybe not so much. if you're on your own, and trying to buy insurance, you pay through the nose. this brings everybody together. so you don't have to be a big business to get a good price. the market will work and we hope it will bring prices down. i'm very pleased with the terrific job that elizabeth roberts has done moving us forward on that. so there are a lot issues i know that interest you. we can talk about any and all of them. i just wanted to open with those two and if anybody wants to lead off with a question or a comment, i will gladly do that and as we do that, let me find ian lang who is here. ian, where are you? right in the light. ian is working, actually at the health exchange. and that has now been stood up and if there are any specific questions, i just wanted to make sure that we had ian here, because with that coming on very soon, he is there to answer all sorts of technical questions and try to help. i wanted to recognize ian as well. thank you, ian. thank you for the great job you guys are all doing. >> my name is ken. i'm a retired fire captain and i have worked for the senator since he first ran and you have always made me proud, and i told you that. it is unfortunate, that if i was in a union and i ran for president and you defeated me, what i would do, in america, or the school council, if you become president, i am going to back you. it is my union. what can i do to help you? but we seem to have a thing here, that i lost. we're all americans. however, i'm going to get up every morning and think what i can possibly do to destroy the winner. what can i do to prevent jobs to make him look bad? say no to the infrastructure. what can i do to make more people unemployed so -- this is the united states. that is not the way things are supposed to work. the representative of the house, boehner, the head of the house says we're not here to pass laws, because laws help people. he says we're here to repeal laws. unfortunately he has done lousy at that job too, because in five years, he hasn't repealed any laws. so all i'm asking you, senator, and i spoke to you a little earlier, is only thing i'm asking for you is because everything you have done so far is do not give in to the debt ceiling terrorism. i call it terrorism because that is absolutely ridiculous. i guess i was talking -- gabby gobble at the times, i don't know why they publish him. for the last 13 years he has been wrong on everything. he finally got one right two days ago. he had a picture of the elephant the republican with a gun over its head. over its head, it said debt ceiling. i said get me a glass of water. i'm going to pass out. i said gary gobble said something about the republican party. that's all i'm asking you is to stand strong and thank you. >> i can promise you that i will. [applause] i can also promise you that a lot of republicans will stand with me. this is another one of those issues where it is not all the republicans together wanting to do this. there is a group of extremists who are making this threat. and many republicans disagree with them. i -- know a senator from north carolina. his name is richard burr. he is a republican. he is as conservative as you can imagine. but he is also a responsible person. he was asked about this idea of voting against the debt limit and crashing the credit of the united states of america as the threat for the repeal of obamacare, which nobody actually wants. they can't win on a vote, so they want to have -- operate like you would like take a hostage. and what richard said, he was actually overseas visiting the troops. they put a microphone in front of his face. he said that's the dumbest idea i've ever heard. so when a conservative republican is saying that is the dumbest idea i've ever heard, i think it is pretty safe that not only will i stand up, but so will many of them. that's very important. thanks, ken. yes, sir? >> thanks, senator. my name is ryan from west greenwich. i'm a small businessman. >> congratulations on your son. >> thank you. we have a family also. when we don't have money anymore to operate our business, to pay additional people, to pay for things of this sort, we have to let people go, to avoid bankruptcy. we stop spending money. whatever it is, we just stop spending money. the u.s. government right now isn't stopping. they are increasing debts. they are doing stimulus. yes, it helps some people, but it is also costing him and his future everything. they won't be able to afford this. his children won't be able to afford it. i don't like the future that my children and my grandchildren will incur. >> that is a very fair comment. let me make two points about that. because it is a really good point. if that was all that was going on, you'd want to say yeah, we got to get the debt down and we have got to get the deficit down. the deficit is already coming down because of the economic recovery. we have to do it more on the long-term debt, we have to get down also. there are two considerations about this that i think are important to that discussion. one is we're still in a recession. we're still recovering. and if you look over in europe, they tried to basically cut their way out of the recession. and followed the so-called austerity principles. and what happened is that their economies actually got worse. and our g.d.p., our gross domestic product isn't climbing much, but it is climbing by 1% to 2%. theirs are actually falling. our unemployment is higher than it should be, but it is single digits and even in rhode island it is around 9%. just under 9%. in a lot of those countries, greece, italy, portugal, it is 17%. it is 27%. so there are -- when the economy goes bad, families spend less. businesses spend less. municipalities spend less. states spend less. that contracts the economy further. the federal government's job, i think in that time is to counterbalance that by spending to offset it. i think our economic results are better. now that's a short-term thing. as soon it is an economy begins to take hold, you need to be ready to dial that back, but you do have to get through the down period continuing to spend. i think if we had followed the republican prescription of all of those cuts that they wanted in the middle of the recession, we would look a lot more like than we do -- portugal than we do now, economically. we would be in real dire straits. the second point is if you look at the big issue that crushes the deficit, is healthcare. everybody agrees on that. paul ryan, who is probably the most conservative budget cutter in washington says if you're going to be honest about the deficit, it is really healthcare and president obama, another side of the equation said if you're going to be honest about the debt, it is really healthcare. so if you want to get after this, you really have got to get after healthcare. and to me, the issue in healthcare is that we have to make it way more efficient. and we can. we really can. we espn 18% of our gross domestic product, 18% on healthcare. in europe it is about 11% on average. why are we spending more than half as much than they do in europe when in europe it is free health care for everybody and here we have people left uninsured? we have all of these problems in our healthcare system. it is very, very unfortunate. the national institutes of medicine say that you can save $750 billion every year in healthcare expense. nearly half of that comes back to the federal government to, the taxpayer, through v.a. benefits, medicare, medicaid, all of that. to me, that's where we need to look. how do you bring that number, right now we spend $2.2 trillion on healthcare. how do you bring that number under $2 trillion? if you could? then all of that savings goes into the federal budget. that's the big issue on a going- forward basis. and the battle that we have in washington is that there is one group of people that says we have all of this healthcare expense. let's cut medicare and medicaid and not solve the underlying problem. i think we have to solve the underlying problem. frankly i've been beating pretty hard on the obama administration to be more responsible and accountable about trying to get down that road further. i'll close by saying we are actually good at this in rhode island. people like to knock rhode island, but this is an area where we are doing really cool things. go to any intensive care unit in rhode island, your likelihood of getting an infection from needles going in and all of that, people always get infections in the hospital, in an intensive care unit because of a program they kicked off on intensive care units, your likelihood of getting a hospital infection is now about zero. they simply don't happen any longer because they have put the procedures in place to prevent it. does that save money? millions of dollars because you're not having to treat the infection, not to mention that people die of them. there is a huge human cost as well. we're paying doctors more to keep you well instead of just how many procedures they can give to you. that is changing way they do business. coastal medical. the doctor in charge of it is steering them in a whole new direction. their patients love it. they are open more hours. you get more support as a patient to keep yourself healthy. there is less -- who likes having medical procedures done to them, really? if you stay healthy, you don't have much of that. it is happening in rhode island. you can see the future happening and rhode island is leading the way. i agree with you. i think we have to hold off a little bit because we want to make sure the economy is back before we start to draw federal money out of the economy. it has to be a time that private money is coming back in. we have to keep our eye on the ball. healthcare. it is the big dollar item. if we do that, we can get back to very sensible levels of debt quickly. but you're right to be concerned. i appreciate that you raised that. i promise not to give such long answers in the future. that is a really interesting question. sorry about that. yes, sir? >> i know you -- \[inaudible] >> grab a microphone so everybody can hear. >> do you support elizabeth warren or universal healthcare? something like that, like vermont? if not, why so? do you support universal healthcare in rhode island? >> i think it would be a good idea, and i think it would be a lot more efficient and i think it would be a lot fairer. practically, how do you get there? that is a bit of a problem. i actually wrote along with sherrod brown, the senator from ohio, the two of us wrote in the affordable care act what we call the public option. so people that didn't want to have a public program, they didn't have to, but there was a public option that was available. now we could not get the votes for it and so it failed. i felt strongly enough about it with sherrod, the two of us sat down and wrote that bill together and i still believe in a public option. you mentioned vermont. there is a waiver in the affordable care act that if a state wants to go to single payer, they can do that. vermont is starting to decide whether they want to go to a statewide single payer system. my guess is if vermont does that and you find the cost come down 25% to 30%, that will be pretty interesting to a lot of other states and people will start saying we ought to think about that. that actually seems to be working pretty well. >> thanks for your response. >> yeah, absolutely. yes, sir? blue shirt. >> hi, senator. steve. >> hey, steve. >> a couple of questions on healthcare. >> yes. >> one with the website that has been set up. the portal. >> yeah. >> i want to know how secure my data will be when i and others go to enter our data come october 1, if the feds have confirmed security on their end? >> i believe that it is secure. i don't know the details of how they secure it. if you look at the information exchange that rhode island has running, in the insurance exchange, there will be some information, but not a lot, because you basically, the product goes up and you decide if you want it and you go. where the data is much more personal is in n the information exchange. the information exchange is the thing where let's say you got an m.r.i. or you have to go to the lab and get a blood test, the information exchange allows the lab that did the blood test to basically post it directly on to your own private electronic health record. so your doctors can see it right away and know what's going on with you and it simplifies things and speeds up the time, but that is really personal info. i've been watching that for years and they have that covered very tightly for leaks. it is a priority that it needs to be secure. >> right. i'm wondering who'll have access to my data once i input it into the system. >> on the information exchange, you select who has access to your data. and you can select by naming doctors and you can select by saying any doctor who is treating me or i think you can even select wide open and anybody can see it. it is your choice. you select when you come into the current care program. >> ok. as far as penalties go, who is in charge of assessing -- well, we have already assessed the penalties, at least for 2014. who is going to collect those penalties? >> there is a -- statute that requires releases of public information to be disclosed. and once they are disclosed, there is both a private cause of action where you can go to court and say hey, wait a minute, you released my information and the regulatory agency over the -- whatever it is, if it is the telephone company or hospital, whoever is regulating them has authority to sanction them for having released the information in unauthorized fashion. >> ok. but i'm talking about if i choose or if somebody chooses not to sign up for healthcare, there is a penalty, i believe, the first year it is $95 or 1% of your income. >> i think the i.r.s. collects that. >> i.r.s.? the i.r.s.? >> yeah. they are the ones who do the collecting. >> that doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy. >> no, the tax agency normally doesn't make you feel very warm and fuzzy. >> so they are going to get access to my data because obviously they are going to come collecting the money. >> they don't need access to your data to collect the money. >> ok. well, i guess they will find me somehow. \[laughter] and i had one final question on healthcare. oh, i notice that illegal aliens do not have to participate in this program. can they participate in this program? >> that's a good question. i don't know off the top of my head. i think at the moment the answer is no. because if you are an alien who is here in undocumented or illegal fashion, you're not entitled to any federal health benefits, so you would not be entitled to the benefit of the payment that you get to make the insurance affordable under this plan. >> right. >> when that changes, if we pass immigration reform, and at what point people who are on the path to citizenship, can start to claim that benefit, is at this point not certain, because the house hasn't passed a bill yet. >> sure. >> but it could happen after that passes, there is a point at which undocumented folks get the chance to come in. >> finally, when do the federal subsidies end? subsidies for healthcare? i know they start in 2014, right? >> they are intended to be continuing. >> ok. and that is taxpayer money that foots the bill for that? >> ultimately, yeah. >> thank you. >> you're very welcome. thanks for your questions and thanks for coming out. who else have we got? i'm looking. grab a microphone. >> i didn't come in from the beginning so if you have answered this question, just ignore it. the role of states in the setting of interest rates. >> yes. >>how that was overturned -- was the case -- until a certain point that it no longer became the case. >> yes. >> if i understand, you have co- sponsored legislation with elizabeth warren that would -- >> reverse that. >> if that is case, if you could elaborate on the status of those attempts. >> no, i would be happy to. this is obviously not something that makes me very popular with the big banks. but many of you will remember a time when if a bank or somebody else charged interest rates that were too high, it was called usury. and it was actually an offense. and it was a matter, to refer to the police. and rhode island actually had laws, among other states that limited the amount of interest that banks could charge, which is a long, long, long, long tradition. back to the bible days where there were limitations. back to the early codes of -- and both religious and legal codes of justice. there has always been this ability to put a limit on the amount that folks could charge, and in america, it was always a state decision. and so there would be a state law that said 12% is the max. 17% is the max. whatever it is. you could decide. so about 40 years ago now, a bank sued and said look, i've got -- i'm in nebraska. and this customer is in minnesota. and i need to straighten out whose law is it my nebraska law or is it their minnesota law? so the supreme court said no, you're the bank. it is your nebraska law. we're going to decide it that way. no big deal, it seemed. but then the banks got smart and they did a little thinking about that and they said hey, wait a minute, if it is the state where i'm incorporated that sets the law, maybe we can find some states that will get rid of all of their banking consumer protection laws for us. and then we can move there and set up shop. so -- bingo. delaware did it and north dakota did it. do you ever wonder why your credit card is from north dakota? why would they be in north dakota? because in north dakota they got rid of so many of their consumer protections. so now if rhode island passed an interest cap, it would not make a darn bit of difference because of that ruling and because the bank just has to move to north dakota and then they could charge whatever the heck they please. that's how you get interest rates of 30%. who here has had a credit card that hit 30% interest? it happens. you fall into a trap. you miss a payment. something goes wrong and suddenly that credit card of yours, boom, up goes the interest rate. 20%, 30%. in the day, that would have been illegal in rhode island. we had a usury law. so what i proposed is a law that would say no. it is the law of the consumer. so if you want to live in a state where you get consumer protection and you get low interest rates, that's your choice. if that limits the amount of banks that will come and do business in that state, that is your choice too. it is based on the person, not the bank, because they have gained that system in order to take advantage of it. so we actually got a vote on it, i think i got 38 other senators to vote with me. not even all the democrats. the banks are pretty powerful. so when i resubmitted it, refiled it this year, elizabeth warren decided that she would join it, as you said. so elizabeth is my co-sponsor and we're going to keep at it. one of the things about congress, just because you have an idea that you think is a good idea, you don't get it pass right away. you have to sometimes be patient, wait for the right moment, wait for the right season, wait for the right congress and then you can make your move. so i'm going to keep steadily at that, and with any luck, sir, the time will come when we get it done and we can get rid of these abusive, unjustifiable 30%-plus interest rates and we can have control in the different states of how much consumer protection our people get. i think that is the right way to go. and by the way, all the republicans who talk about states' rights, here would be a good chance to show what state'' rights federalists they really are. but so far we're not getting a lot of traction yet. thank you. \[applause] yes? >> i'm miles parker. we have a long way to go on wall street reform. >> we sure do. >> a long way. we have some transparency in the market and in these interactions we still have a very unstable environment. what's happening? >> well, we got a pretty good distance with dodd frank, the bank reform bill. on some of the big issues like separating investment banks from regular checking account main street banks, we could not actually get the glass steagall it was called, the law restored that separated them. but what we did get was -- to build it at the regulatory level and try to separate those functions. now they have had years to do it. they have been harassed constantly by the big banks. they have made varying degrees of progress and in some cases we gave them some authority and they didn't use it all or they didn't use as much as we would like so i think we need to begin revisiting those questions. i think the most significant one is this business of separating the speculating banks, the investment banks from the regular main street, it is my checking account, it is my savings account banks. we had that rule in effect for decades and it really protected the banking system. and if a bank that was speculating and dealing in fancy derivatives and all of this weird stuff and went bust, that was their funeral. you could let them go bust. they were not going to take the economy down with them because they didn't have millions and millions and millions of americans with their day-to-day savings tied up in their gambling, basically. so getting that separation back, i think, is very, very important and i constantly support those bills. i constantly vote for them. i'm a co-sponsor of the new revised glass steagall act. one thing i can say, i'm very fortunate, i think we're all fortunate to have jack reed as our senior senator. i feel particularly fortunate because i get to work with him every day. jack doesn't toot his own horn very much, so i'm going to give it one quick toot in front of everybody here. that is to point out that at the end of this election in 2014, if jack gets re-elected, he is the number two right now on the armed services committee and he is the number two on the banking committee of the senate. both chairmen have announced their retirements. so jack reed, if and when we re- elect him, is going to be able to choose to be either the chairman of the senate armed services committee or chairman of the senate banking committee. >> not both? >> unfortunately he only gets one, not two. you have to leave some scraps for the others, but that will be a terrific opportunity. so that's going to be a great opportunity for our whole state to have jack in that kind of a position. yes, sir? >> i'm a science teacher. i try to keep up on the current understanding of climate change. >> yeah. >> i'm one of those people who has come to the conclusion that it is really happening and it is our fault and we're in real trouble. i know it is going to be a longer term problem than these financial or medical problems. i was wondering do you -- what do you see when you talk privately to our senators and representatives? do you see any motion towards understanding how serious this problem is? because what i hear on the air ways is people saying no, it is a controversy. the science community doesn't believe it is a controversy. >> no, people that know what they are talking about don't believe it is a controversy. the controversy is manufactured. guess who is behind the controversy? the polluters. the oil companies. the coal companies. they put out lots of propaganda about this. what they have figured out, which is very clever, is that they don't have to convince you that it is not happening. all they have to do is put a little question mark in your mind so you think, i think that is controversial, right? so they just try to solve the debate with this is controversial. this is unsure. people are uncertain. this is a level of certainty that anybody would act on in their personal life. al franken is a friend of mine in the senate. we were talking about climate change one day on the senate floor. 97% of the scientists who know about climate stuff say look, this is happening. this is real. this is profound. it is going to change the way we live. we have got to do something about it. franken has a good sense of humor. he says ok. how many people, just take our own senators, how many people, if their child was sick, would go to the doctor and the doctor said you need this treatment for your child. you think, it is expensive. i'm not sure i really want to do it. maybe there is a side effect. let me get a second opinion. so you get a second opinion. let's say you went and got 100 opinions. you went to 100 doctors to ask them is my child sick and do they need the treatment and 97 of the doctors said yes, your child needs the treatment. three of them said no. who do you go with? 97-3. who do you go with? it is obvious. it is obvious. and what is important about this is that it is not just theoretical any longer. for a while it was kind of theoretical. how much carbon can you put up. what does it do to the atmosphere? how does it create that blanketing thing? how warm does it get? well, we're already seeing it. go down to newport. go down to the tide gauge that has been there for decades. the tides on average in rhode island are 10 inches higher than they were back when we had the hurricane of 1938 back in the 1930's. so you get another big hurricane like the hurricane of 1938. you know we could. we already did. and it is now throwing 10 inches more of ocean and actually that stacks up because of storm surge. that's going to be a very bad day for rhode island when that happens. the bay is four degrees warmer in the winter than it used to be. that affects a lot of things. that affects the winter flounder. when my wife was a scientist, she was studying the winter flounder because it was so valuable for our fisherman. they trolled up and down the by a catching winter flounder. our winter flounder catch is down more than 90%. it is 4 degrees warmer. the flounder don't like it as much. they had rather be offshore. the thing that eats them when they are little is the shrimp. some would grow past where to shrimp couldn't eat them any longer. that's how they got to survive. now that's all change. the people who own the orchards in johnston in the northern part of the state, that grow apples and peaches and other fruits, they are seeing their trees bloom in the middle of winter. they have never seen that before. it is changing. it is really going to be very, very serious. so we have got to get on top of it and i think it is going to be a very tough lesson when we have to explain to these young eagle scouts and to their kids why when we knew all of that science, how is it that the american system of government allowed people to ignore what all the scientists were saying and how could the polluters have pulled off such a stunt on the american people? and that's -- i will tell you that question haunts me. i don't have grandchildren yet, but i have got a 24-year-old and 20-year-old. and 20 or 30 years from now, this is going to be really coming on strong. they are going to be my age then. they are going to be looking around saying dad, what the hell? you knew this. scientists all knew this. all of this stuff is going on right now in our world and you didn't do anything about it? how could you? and i don't want to have to answer that question. so that's why i give that speech every single week on the senate floor. that's why i started the senate oceans caucus to get people working together on oceans. i have tried pass it now twice, the national endowment for the oceans. trying to get more information because it is really clobbering the seas. this one is -- this one haunts me. yeah? yes, ma'am, sorry. campbell's got you there. >> what you were saying made me think that global warming is from our energy usage. >> yeah. >> so is this anything out there, different kinds of energies to use? >> oh, ya. >> besides moving our coal plants to mexico or china? >> if we just moved the coal plans to mexico or china, that doesn't do any good at all. what we need to do is develop new technology. some of them are basically already here. it is a question of bringing the price down. solar. the price is coming down constantly. wind. we're about to do wind farms offshore. i'm excited about that. you can drill down and do geothermal. in iceland, it is hot when you drill down so they can really do geothermal. moving to natural gas is a very good first step because that is does so much less damage than coal and oil. and then there are terrific technologies that are emerging, including one company i visited out on the west coast that thinks it has the way to take the nuclear waste that's around all the power plants in the country. we don't have any place to put our nuclear waste. no place. so what they do is they leave it at the power plant and try to bury it some place relatively safe and guard it. there it is. poisonous as all get out. it is going to be poisonous for generations. what do you do with it? this guy thinks it could be used to reburn it as a new fuel and create new power. if we could crack the scientific problem of how you get the power out. not only is that essentially free power, you're avoiding the cost of having to figure out how you get rid of the darn nuclear waste. so technology ultimately is the solution. and if you think of two things, when it is a -- when it is a natural resource, the more you use it, the more the price goes up. you have got to dig farther to get it. you have to drill farther to get it. you have to go further out in the ocean to find it. it gets more expensive and the price always goes up. that is the nature of the beast. but when it is technology, this stuff gets cheaper every minute. i can remember when if you wanted to buy a simple calculator. it was like $59.99 for a little dumb calculator that didn't hardly do a thing. now you go to the opening of an insurance agent or a new bank branch, they are giving them away for free. they cost a buck. so you want to be on the side of technology, not on the side of resources in terms of this. and we can do it. and if we're good at it, we will own those technologies and we will export those technologies and we will be part of -- that will be part of our economic growth in the years to come, instead of importing oil from saudi arabia and propping up dictators in countries that really don't like us, we'll be inventing, which we're good at, innovating, which we're good at, exporting that throughout the world and having our energy future also be our economic future. that is my goal, anyway. two left. tony is saying. ok. yes, sir? >> my name is george. my question is for the last three years, the property tax has been going up and up and it seems like there is no limit. people are getting hurt. so what is the solution? >> well, the property taxes are mostly a municipal problem. so pawtucket, newport, providence, they set their property taxes. that's not a complete dodge, because they set it but they set their property taxes in part depending on how much money the state can provide to support the different municipalities. as the budget is dried up for the state, there has been less money for the municipalities ask any mayor, so they have had to depend more on property taxes so it has been hard on property tax owners. and the states in turn, have taken a beating because there is less federal money coming in because of the cutting that we have done. i think we need to do two things. one is be very careful about what we're cutting. sometimes when you cut, you cut off your nose to spite your face and it is not a wise cut. i think supporting the states and supporting municipalities is usually a reasonable way to spend money. cdbg grants and things like that are very, very helpful and allow a lot of flexibility for local communities. i think that is really important. another thing is that as the economy kicks up and taxes come in from other sources then you can be less dependent on the property tax. the property tax is like the last tax standing when people are not coming to the hotels, so there is no hotel tax, people are not buying things so the sales tax is crashing. what do you do? there is the property tax. there is the property owner. you kind of have to stick with that. the more we can get the economy going again, the better off we are. to me, the big jump-start for that is infrastructure. that is something that we need to spend money on, and you know, people often say, if your family is short of money, you have to cut expenses. so that you balance your family budget and that's way the government should work. not quite right. because of that what we talked about earlier where you have got to offset what everybody else is doing so the economy doesn't crash and you don't have another greece or portugal here. but infrastructure, that's not just spending money. in your own life, that's like fixing the roof on your house that you own with your credit card. yeah, it might be a big expense to fix the roof, but you got to fix the roof. and when it is fixed, your house is worth more and you get that value. it is not like taking a credit card and having everybody go to walt disney world. you fix something that you own and it adds to the value of your home. the same way with infrastructure, when you fix our american roads and our american bridges and you fix our american water pipes and water treatment plants, that is wealth in this country. and if it is spent wisely, it makes more wealth. because roads and water and utilities allow for development and allow for commerce. you can't let that stuff go. and we have let it go. we have a huge infrastructure deficit and it is just crazy. so i can't do anything directly about pawtucket property taxes, but if i can help make sure that money keeps coming into the state the way it used to so they still get supported and they can support the municipalities and the economy is cruising and lifting all votes, that's the best that i can do and that is my target. >> that is the point every year, it goes up 20% or 30%. in three years, it has gone up 75%. >> yeah, it is not just providence. what i can do is influence their choice that we have an economy that is rolling again and that we're supporting the states and the municipalities so that they don't have to hit the local taxpayer so hard, because it is the local property owner who is the person who has to pick up the tab when everything else is dried up. and it gets very expensive. you're absolutely right. >> before we take the last question, license plate bb 796 has got to move your car, you're in the fire lane. bb 796. i'm not sure who that is but if you could just please move your vehicle, we need to clear the fire lane. thank you. >> yes, ma'am? hang on. we'll get you a microphone. want to get the microphone to lynn, right here? coming your way. there you go. >> hi, how are you? i'm lynn. i'm from pawtucket. i just had a few questions for you. are you for or against the obama plan and why? >> the healthcare plan? >> right. >> yeah, i'm very for it. i helped write it before it got called the obama healthcare plan. it started in what's called the help committee of the senate and i had a temporary assignment to the help committee to work on that bill. i'm for it for three big reasons. one is a lot of people didn't have insurance in this country. and if you don't have health insurance, it really affects your life, and it really affects the care you get when you get sick and it actually can make the difference between getting well and not getting well. it can even make the difference in some extreme cases between whether you live or whether you die. so getting people, more people to have health insurance, i felt was a really, really good goal and a really good achievement. the second thing is that the insurance marketplace wasn't all that fair. as i said earlier, if you work for a big company, you got a pretty good rate because the big company could negotiate like crazy. if you were with a little company you got not such a good rate. and if you were on your own, forget it. you were paying top dollar on your own and you were stuck. plus they put little tricks into the policy that said things like ok, now you're sick so by the way, there is a cap and we're not going to cover you past the cap or actually it looks like that disease you have, you had it before you signed up for the policy and you didn't tell us about it and we're going to kick you off the policy because you didn't disclose, and if it is a pre-existing condition, you're stuck for life because no insurance company is going to cover it. that is a terrible position to be in. people want to be able to move around. i talked to rhode islanders who were literally trapped in their job because they could never get another job because they could never get a new healthcare policy that covered their sickness because it was now a pre-existing condition. they got it on one job and they were trapped with that company for the rest of their lives until they got to medicare and they were safe at last in medicare. basically all of the problems that we could think of with the insurance industry, i think were fixed in there. and the last thing is that it set off a whole array, there were 40 different programs to help innovate, to help figure out ways to help deliver better health department care cheaper. to figure out ways to pay a doctor in a different way so you stay healthier. right now the only way a doctor gets paid is when you get sick and when they order stuff for you. guess what happens to a system in which the only way a doctor gets paid is when you get sick and they order stuff for you? they wait until you get sick and then they order a lot of stuff for you. that is an expensive system. what we want is a system that keeps you well. that can answer your question before you have to go to the emergency room. that keeps track of whether you're taking your medication so that you stay out of the hospital. those sorts of things. no doctor ever got paid for doing any of that. that's all changing. if you got a hospital-acquired infection, we're starting to stop pay hospitals for that. if you took your car to the shop and they dropped it off the lift, would they come to you and say oh, by the way, we fixed your car, but also we dropped it off the lift. here is your bill for all the body work we had to do because we dropped your car off the lift. but if you're a hospital, we gave you a hospital-acquired infection and here is your bill for $30,000 infection, we gave you a bill for curing the hospital-acquired infection. that's nuts, so we cut that off. because what they were doing was, it is called the discharge order. when you leave the hospital that you have a discharge order and you have a discharge plan. well the discharge orders were crummy. the discharge plan stunk. nobody bothered to call your doctor and say they had released you. there was no follow-up. so somebody would do fine and they would not take their medication and they would not do this and they would not do that and boom, they are back in the hospital. no, no, you have to follow up. you put the discharge plan out. make it a good one. and stick to it. you don't do that, you don't get paid. that changes the behavior. and those kinds of changes are what's going to change the way we do healthcare in this country and that's how we're going to get the costs down and at the same time, have everybody have a better experience and a better outcome. so those were the three big chunks of the bill. covering people, making the insurance industry fairer and trying to move this innovation thing forward. i think we did pretty well on all three. no bill is perfect, and it was a big bill. i'm sure there are bugs in it, but i'm pretty happy with it and i'm standing by. yeah? >> is it also true that -- my understanding was that congress has up until october 1 to veto that bill. is that correct or am i misunderstanding something? >> the -- exchanges that market where they -- you have to be able to go there and say ok, i want to buy insurance. what are my choices? somebody has to be there and say hoc, here are your choices. that starts october 1. and i think if you don't get it done, they have a year for the federal government to back in. that starts october 1. now the people who want to get rid of the bill would like to get rid of it before f then, i think largely because once the exchanges go up, it will look pretty sensible. and in the same way that people are happy that their 26-year-old could say on their policy and were happy that they could still get coverage for pre-existing conditions and were happy that seniors didn't have to fall all the way into the doughnut hole, i think people will see this is a pretty good deal. it is a market solution. that's what people should want. that's what the october 1 date is all about. there is a big push to repeal obamacare. well, you know, good luck. they have done it 40 separate times in the house. it is never going to pass in the senate. they want to keep doing it. >> employers out there announcing unless you work so many hours and work full time, we're going to cut your health insurance. i'm on 20 medications a day. i'm on insulin. i get zero help. i have health insurance. now they are saying you have to be full time and they are going to give you two or three hours less so you will not be able to have health insurance at work. i choose to work. >> well, good for you. good for you. >> because i'm able to work. >> if that happens to you, you now have a choice that you didn't have before. which is that you can go to the insurance exchange, you can even go and talk to ian about it right now. what they will do is say ok, here is your list of options. there are like three levels, gold, silver, bronze of coverage. you say i want great coverage, ok coverage, medium coverage, and then you choose what one you like and then they will say ok, what do you make? and depending on what you make, there will be a subsidy so that you don't have to pay more than >> it is a sliding scale. 3% to 10%. no more than 10% of your income for healthcare. so whatever you're making, you keep 90%. 10% goes for healthcare and the rest gets made up for through the subsidy. so you get covered that way. i think you'll find, obviously there are going to be a few bugs when you start something new. now you have a choice. if the employer doesn't stick with your coverage, you can go to the exchange and you cannot only get the coverage, but get the support that makes it affordable for you. so that it is affordable. >> why are they making it harder for the working people? >> this should actually make it easier. not only easier, but you're more flexible now. if you can go to the exchange and get that insurance coverage, you can work where you want. you're not stuck with your employer because of the healthcare. >> exactly. well that is a good thing, yes. i'm going to -- >> sorry to interrupt. i work for the mayor here in pawtucket. the mayor had a meeting tonight and he apologizes that it went over. he asked me to thank you on his behalf for all the work you and your staff do throughout the years and obviously tonight as well coming out and doing this for the public. thank you. >> thank you, dylan. thank the mayor. he has always made me feel very welcome in pawtucket. thank you, everybody. good night. as i promised, i will be the last person to leave. >> i just wanted to say it is a pleasure. >> thank you. we will take you live another townhall meeting tomorrow. this one will be hosted by congressman bobby scott. he will be talking mainly about the healthcare law. it is the first of three scheduled, hosted by the virginia congressman. that is tomorrow night, 6:30 p.m. eastern time, that will be live here on c-span. next, a look at how news organizations operate and cover politics. we will hear from journalist from buzz feed, huffington post, and politico. then the new jersey senate debate between all four democratic candidates running in the august 13 primary. after that, newsmakers with republican congressman ina or .ohrabacher of california >> of all of the handsome young officers surrounding my grandmother, he was 23 years old at the time. my grandfather could not talk to her because of all the handsome young officers around. to doll rushed upstairs whatever they were trained to do. she knew my father was -- she knew my grandfather was up there. he fell in behind going upstairs. instead of running back -- fainted right back into the arms of the president. tenderly and gently. >> the encore presentation of our original series, first and image.fluence this week, anna harrison to eliza johnson. lex the hull to this discussion is the association for education and journalism and mass communication. this is about an hour and a half. >> thank you for coming. welcome to this wonderful panel. a welcome to our c-span audience. politicalve top-notch journalists who do things differently. i am really excited about this panel, i have been looking forward to it for months. i'm dr. jane singer, vice chair of the aj stanley committee on professional freedom and responsibility. our chair is also here with us. we are sponsoring this panel, so it is a special session. a quick plug that more politics are on tap tomorrow. we are also giving our first amendment award this year to the first amendment center based in nashville area that's going to be a great program tomorrow during the plenary time spot. if you have nothing else to do, please come to that. we're going to do this very informally and just ask some questions and bounce around some answers and panelists are going to share their thoughts and we will open it up and i hope we have a great discussion. i know you have some good questions. i'm going to go in the order in which they are seated. first to my right is bill adair, the new professor of the practice of journalism and practice at duke university. you probably know him better as the founder of politfact, the fact checking site you know. a pulitzer prize winner for national reporting from a couple of years ago. next is rachel smolkin, the current deputy manager at "politico." she has overseen the stories of the killing of osama bin laden come of the president's reelection campaign and you may know her from her great work with the politics team at usa today and the managing editor of the american journalism review. next to rachel is jen pendry and who is not on your program. originally we were going to have an al jazeera reporter here but she has gone over to the mainstream and is now working for cnn, making her ineligible for the panel. so jen kindly agreed to step in and we appreciate that. she is the white house reporter for the huffington post and covers leadership on capitol hill. she joined huffington post a couple of years ago and spent years covering the legislative and executive wrenches of government for "rollcall." probably a walk in the park for her because she started covering the texas state legislature. again, stepping in for camille, so thank you for that. next to jen is john stanton who also has "rollcall" roots rate he is the chair of buzz feed here in washington. then smith, the editor described him as a reporter's reporter with being in his veins. he's a third-generation news man and it probably doesn't hurt he's a former bouncer as well. at the end of the table is alex mueller, currently with "rollcall." he is currently the design editor, so he gives us a graphic perspective. he has a rounded graphics, graphic design and journalism and web design and production. his current career niche is making our legislatures look at least interesting online and in print. not sure we envy him that one. that's a great group and we are happy to have them here. i would ask you not to make any kind of hesitation. mercifully, none of them brought power points. i thought we just throw out some questions and jump in, panelists, jumped in with each other and we will talk about whatever you want to talk about. we want to hear your views on the washington post and the transitional state it is in now. but we want to say a little bit about how you do things differently. what do you do that different from the way you cover politics and how do you define your role and how do you make it work in communicating to the public? >> i would be happy to go first and say we throughout the mold in terms of story form when we created political act --when we created politfact. the traditional news story, the pyramid, was not going to be the way we inform people about politics. we were going to do it through a different form of journalism and where the information was communicated both through an individual fact check article and also through the collective. go to michele bachmann's politfact page and you can see she has been checked sixtysomething times and 50 of those she has been rated false or hands-on fire. so you learn something about michele bachmann to learn the collect of about her tells something as well as the individual articles. as we said up contact for our obameter, which tracks the president's record, we decided we would create something new. >> we will go in order here. i work for will it go, and all politics of location, now politics and policies we have expanded little bit in the past couple of years and continue to expand. we are very much directed at being fast and smart and trying to think of the story that the post and the times might do the next day and we do it quicker and sooner. we have a traffic team of reporters and editors who work to make us look smart and we were directed very much at influence makers inside the beltway and out. it has been a big shift for me because before i worked at politico, i was at usa today, which is a mass publication. including people who might not be familiar to politics. it has been a shift to the inside perspective and we want to be interesting and accessible, written in a way that is punchy and so we think a lot about tone and style and how to tell a compelling story. >> i work at the huffington post trade you probably all know what that is. if you go to the front page website, it's a screen of all kinds of issues all thrown up there together. to me, covering politics is great because we can take an heissue that is in the dailyand in andgrind of news and do it a little differently.daily andwe have the ability to run a wire story to get the daily, this is what is happening today, and we can put that up and separately go do something related to it which is not probably the way someone elsein awould report on it. andfor example, we've been focused on sequestration and the and inissue seems to have lost aand inlot of its wow factor and power in this town. areit's not something you hear youthat much about anymore except for side comments. reallysomething we have done that has been done for me and unique to what we can do is we and in andhave focused on the subject and try to write on it all a time.andtime. we focus on janitors and we talk you and youto families in tennessee who are struggling because their kids are cut out and they don't know how they are going to get by everyday. it's related to the himdaily news grind, but i like to think of it as you kind of inject that into broader policy himissues all the time in this town.him him him him himfor me, that's one of the things i feel makes huffington different from political reporting. >> buzz feed is aimed at the 18 >> buzz feed is aimed at the 18 to 40 or so, a pretty broad range of people. coming from rollcall, the thing i found interesting is we have two things -- we focus on telling the stories in a way that will be viral. we consider twitter to be our front page or facebook, we consider our readers to be our front page. that requires us to find ways to explain stories inside the beltway, congressional stories that your average person may not understand or have any real reason to care. we have to find ways to tell them those stories and it's been interesting. we don't write stories about commodity news kinds of stuff. we try to find ways to explicate those stories in a different matter. interesting things people are saying or doing as a way to tell these stories. it's a general news and entertainment site which is very different than politico or rollcall. it's sort of the opposite way of going big to small and now you are finding a way to tell people who eric cantor is and why you should care about the fact that he and john boehner are having a fight today. that has been the interesting thing, but we are sort of trying to use social media as a way to broaden people's awareness of politics. >> our bread and butter at rollcall has been focusing on the stories that affect capitol hill and the community in general grade we been doing that since 1955, so we build relationships on the hill. we look at rotter issues like piggybacking off sequestration, but we also narrow it down to focus on how it affects the catol hill community and things like weight times to get into the visitor center and things like that. we are broadening our web presence right now and doing a good job of that. we are always focusing on the stories that most affect the people who live and work in capitol hill. >> you talk about the audience and we have done that as we go along. do you find you're using different kinds of sources than you use in traditional media? how do you bridge that gap you are referring to of we are inside the beltway, but we need to help people who are not inside the beltway understand why this matters to them. does that affect your sourcing? >> we are very conscious of what people are talking about on twitter come a facebook, reddit, and sites like that. if we see something pop up, we will report on it. after the trayvon martin verdict came out, for and since, there was an acknowledgment among white people that there was a thing that got termed black twitter. we did a story on black twitter and the power the black communities found in using twitter as a way to communicate things to each other and the broader national audience. those kinds of things happen in other areas. we used it to look at things like the election and people talked about a particular story or video someone put on youtube of a townhall, let's say or something like that great we definitely use it as a source, but we are still trying to have these very traditional notions of being a reporter in this new world. we are talking to staff, members, the interest groups and people outside of the beltway it is a new tool to find out what people are interested in in a way to investigate the things they might already have prayed >> not just the use of social media sites, but since moving to politico from usa today, getting people who are in the room, making the policy, if there is a leadership fight some of these are abstract examples that all happen and we want to talk to lawmakers in the room and we want as much detail as we can possibly give. we did that at usa today but we were more likely to rely on a professor who could tell you about the dynamics and overview, we want to get to the action as close as we can as consistently as possible. >> in the case of politfact, our rule is when reporters have defined original sources, it's not enough to renew a story that says so and so voted for this bill, we require the reporters to actually go to the rollcall vote and look at the original rollcall vote. we put a heavy emphasis on original reporting, unlike some of the other panelists. our metabolism isn't quite as feverish. we do a thorough fact check. sometimes it takes a day, sometimes it takes a little longer. our goal is to take a political claim and check it and be as thorough about it as we can and doing so to rely on original sources more than secondhand sources. >> i feel like we have a lot of flexibility to decide on the way we want to do our coverage. what is fun for me is we can walk into the senate press area, i can walk up to marco rubio and ask how we are supporting the immigration bill and how this is upsetting people on the far right. this is like our tried and true sources, but i can walk outside and there's a huge rally outside with the tea party happening outside the capital and a colleague and i spent the afternoon talking about what we think about marco rubio's role in the debate. do they hate him now? by and large they were unhappy. you probably can imagine what the responses were. those were separate stories that addressed the fight from a different perspective and from a sourcing standpoint, some of my favorite stories are talking to people struggling with the kinds of people that get talked up in this town and feel like they lose meaning, but when you talk about people not in the bubble here, you can get some great stories. they are real people and i think huffington has been really good for our sourcing, not just people in the bubble, but they've got millions of sources. why not talk about them? >> i wouldn't let too much time to buy without asking what's happening this week at the "washington post was quote and how you might think they will change. being bought by jeff acis and someone who is very much into audiences and engaging audiences and serving audiences, will they change or will it be a different kind of competition for you or player in washington? will it continue the role? >> i think it is inevitable they will change. i think bezos has shown as jim brady put it, head of the digital first media, that he was able to see the future and build amazon before people knew they wanted to order things online. that is what has been needed in journalism, somebody who can envision the ways people are going to want information a few years down the road. i think it is a great thing for the post and i know there are a lot of people who are apprehensive about it some but i think he said all the right things. the letter to the employees of the post was pitch perfect in terms of the balance between his commitment to the great journalism the post has always done, but 20 of clues for futurists who wanted to see what he is going to do. he invented almost internet commerce. so much of internet commerce has been affected by what amazon did and i think he could have the same role at the post. i think it's a very positive thing. >> one of our editors made the joke that a free washington post subscription with every candle sold. it's a lame joke but if you think about it, you wonder how that is going to affect others and how that's going to affect local news coverage because the local news has been incredible at covering the d.c. reach and you have to wonder how they are going to evolve in the upcoming years with the new mindset of digital first. >> as a local growing up reading the post, i'm a little apprehensive. i think the post for a very long time seemed their core audience was not people in the city but sort of an upper economic group. they have started to change and have a great columnist is a fantastic writer. i'm a little concerned that move toward a more focused within the city, focused on a younger demographic may or may not be helped or hurt by that. but i think there is a utility for families who live in those cities. having somebody who lives in california or wherever he lives and whose mind is not about local at all. i do have some reservations about what it will mean for coverage of crime and life in washington and even sports in washington. do they continue to be to go to place to read about the redskins or the nationals? does it become a bigger focus? these are questions that are not going to be answered for months, if not years as a result of this sale. on the same end, i do believe the post has been struggling a little bit. all the big newspapers have been struggling and having somebody with such a creative online commerce can help create a new renaissance for the post and all of the old guard newspapers, which is very important. i don't think they should die. i think they play a very important role in our society. they are the institutes that hold what journalism should be on all levels and the beats of journalism. if someone can come in and find a way for them to come in and find a place within the new digital environment, that will be great. >> i don't have much to add. i also grew up around here and i have friends who worked there and my sense is people are kind of excited. people have to change. we don't know how long it will take to show what's going to happen, but something had to give. we will see what happens. >> i think it's hard to say how seismic this feels in the industry and the graham family has been such a wonderful store of journalism and their names are synonymous with watergate and the pentagon papers and the kind of journalism that inspired a generation to come. it really feels like a dramatic turn in the industry representative of the time we live in. the panel is built around what our publications do differently than traditional journalism and this is a sign there is no more traditional journalism in the sense we are used to thinking about there is not web versus friend anymore because we live in a digital age and you have to think about good journalism delivered to people in a way they can absorb it and get excited about it in a way that they wanted. for big metropolitan papers like the "washington post" and the "boston globe" and others that have been in the newspaper facing circulation decline and pressures, on profitability, they have to find a way to thrive in the new space if they are going to remain viable. we all watch the post and want to see it produce the excellent journalism they have for so many years but at the same time, there is a need to transform for them to succeed in the new world. the question i will have watching them move forward is sometimes it's easier to come into a wholly new space and create something from scratch that is to take a existing institution with proud traditions and an entrenched uropathy and figure out how to make that move into a new space. that will be an interesting process for them. >> it will be interesting. they are coming from a very different place and dealing with a long-standing institution. something you have all mentioned going along the line here is getting people outside the beltway to care and see how sequestration matters to them. what if we could go deeper than that and offer some examples of things you have done that have worked really well in engaging your audience. how do you do that and what do you do with that feedback and how do you use it moving forward? >> we wrestled with this because there had been some fact checking before. i'll a cell like it wasn't your vegetables herbalism. if you are in a newsroom, has to be done before an election. somebody do a story on the candidates decision on education and then they write a story and hardly anybody reads it because it's not appealing to people. we came up with the idea of the truthometer. we go out and do in-depth research and get together and have a methodology for this and come up with a rating. we know it is very affect event doing this because it drives people crazy. they go bonkers about our ratings and the wonderful thing is, as they are talking about our ratings, they are having substantive discussions about policy which i guarantee is not happening with the long 20 inch fact check. you may not agree with our rating on any particular claim, but the great saying is that it's giving you a snapshot of our work and our best judgment of what the relative truth of it is and you can disagree. i think that is what is needed and one of the problems as we made the transition into the digital age is this expectation that the old construct a easier vegetables will work, and i just don't think they will. >> that's a terrific point great we all spend time thinking of how to make journalism interesting and engaging. we're way past the world where this can involve today and how we can expect anybody to care about it erie it we've talked a lot about how to punch through. you probably all heard driving the phrase that politico drives so much. we talk about ways to measure if you are reaching your audience and what we do look at, is it being talked about by lawmakers and policymakers and hopefully in a respectful manner but we do use that as a measure. sometimes it's a committee meeting, the publication, all of those measures we look at on topics inside the fiscal debate to the talks we do so many of and do them very well and we cover all aspects that there will be delays or employers on the obamacare mandate trade we did that for many topics and as we expand into more policy areas, are we looking at the best way to meld them with the core mission of e as well -- mission of politico as well. >> the huffington post has always prized itself on engaging with the communities. we have people with blogs on the site and have very engaging comment sections for most of the stories. engaging is a euphemism for something else. there is a lot of interaction with the non-mobile community. one thing that's a real success, when the senate voted down the background checks bill, there was an outcry and a lot of people couldn't believe it who don't live in bc and don't follow politics a by day. why can we pass a background checks bill? one of our projects was we clicked something on the site that said if you have a personal story about being affected by gun violence, send it in. here is a phone number. call and leave a message. leave your name and number and we will call you back if we want to use your story. we've got hundreds of people who called. so many people have stories, all personal stories of losing a husband, friend, son, daughter, people killed in gun violence. we had this huge splash on the front page. it was like 10 images on the front of the page that were just people. it was just people who have been affected by gun violence and really sad ways. when you hovered your cursor over one of their faces, it would take you directly to their story. you could hear it. you could hear the audio. you could hear their voices shake. and when they would get more worked up as they were talking. that was one of our proudest moments, because it is directly engaging the public on the issue that infuriated some of the people and letting the people tell the story that resonates much more broadly than the failed bill in the senate. that is the kind of thing that huffington has been very good at doing, telling people to tell stories that in return d.c. has to read about. it connects to world in one way. -- two worlds in one way. >> in mid-december during the fiscal cliff fight, i originally read a story about how members were not feeling that much pressure, which is a very traditional motion. that interest in politics drops of red after the election. we went in and looked at the data from the web sites. i compared the point in the fight with that with the debt ceiling fight in 2011. the thing we found is more people were reading stories about the fiscal cliff at that exact point in that debate than they were in 2011, despite the fact that they had just gone through grueling election where no one wanted to talk about politics. it was right before christmas. we were surprised that there were not many people. i think it is indicative of a shift that is going on in the public. i do think people are more engaged in politics than they have been in a few years. probably because they're frustrated. partly because they are increasing able to see the people they see with and agree with and that keeps them more engaged. the fights right now become these life-and-death sort of deals. that gives me a lot of hope that we're finding a white, even if we do not understand how we're doing, it, people and keep them engaged with what is going on. i think one of the things that we try to do that helps with that is to try to find ways to make things a little bit more personal. i did a story that has had a lot of traffic to illustrate this. a friend of mine that was working for the defense department as a contractor and the sequester started, and he was your average american, lots of credit card debt, the house, divorced and had kids. he took a new job here thinking it would help him get ahead and get a handle on the finances and then the sequester hits. it sounds like a 2 percent cut, but it can be 20 percent of your pay in some cases. that reality forced him to reenlist in the military. they go year without having to pay taxes and they get all these benefits by putting yourself in danger of dying. we did this story and a lot of people read this, an average american being forced into this terrible decision because of sequester. the other one that i think that very well that illustrates this is we did a story about the chief justice for fis the court. one of the highest-ranking black judges in the united states. we found this great essay he had done about being racially profiled and what that meant for a justice and how he viewed the legal system. we just broke the spirit and this is a guy in charge of one of the most powerful courts in the world. a lot of people read it. an interesting way to look at the debate. i think it puts a human face on this otherwise impenetrable government bureaucracy. no one understands exactly. >> i agree with john when he says people have been more plugged into politics than they ever have been here yet that is in part due to media analyst covering politics on capitol hill. sort of what you see is people are only going places that reinforce their already held opinions. it is important to provide an independent look at what is going on. that is simplified enough for the common person but still the ones be enough that you are not boiling it down to something where we're not getting anything out of it. i was talking about roll-call does the 50 richest list which looks at lawmaker wealth on capitol hill. we just revamped its this year to create this fantastic online database. when you talk about the fat cats in washington, now you can see easily just how fast those cats are. conversely, we also read about the least rich lawmakers. some people who are not worth anything actually owe money. it is an interesting snapshot of who is making the decisions that affect you every day. you can look and see a lot of the people who have been on capitol hill the long this are the richest,, reject what committee they said on and how well changes from year to year. what sort of assets their money is wrapped up in. you are providing this fantastic resources for people to look at their own lawmakers and see exactly how much money this person has and whether you can make your own call on whether that affects the decision making. purely as a resource to learn information about the lawmaker. that is the sort of resources and reporting that we pride ourselves on. and >> i remember joe biden always came in dead last. least rich on capitol hill. he made $200 on his book last year. [laughter] >> i know everyone has questions. each team has worked somewhere else. some of you have worked in more traditional places compared to where you are now. can you tell us how that is different for you personally, what you feel has been a change for you perhaps in moving into the work you are doing now. we're also interested in how you help students prepare for this environment where there are all of these opportunities. what do they need to know to take a vantage of opportunities that are out there? >> i think they need to learn how to code. as someone who has worked for a newspaper for 24 years, the last six of that running politifact. i am struck by the tremendous opportunity for opportune it -- opportunity for students that can understand the fundamental of journalism and understand computer science, understand html and want to take the curiosity of record a list and put it to work on the web. >> i will push back a little bit on that from my own interest and say i do not know -- do not care if they know how to code. i want to find students who are smart and curious. i was on a panel and talking to students in st. i think curiosity is the most important factor. i want to see the wheels in their mind returning all the time. we finish a moderator says are there any questions? a whole group just sits there and look at us. finally someone asked as a question. -- us a question. i think we get so focused on social media and the bag of tricks we forget that journalism in the most fundamental way has not changed. you still have to be able to ask the smart questions and do this more reporting and be able to write a story that it's interesting, coherent and draws people in. i see young journalist be too reliant on the new tools. i could email my source or send them direct message. i want you to get out of office and have coffee with them and look in their eyes. many new tricks of the trade, that is wonderful, but not at the expense of the most important things that we do. fifth >> i have to completely agree. i asked for questions and it is silent. one of the first questions i have gotten is is it worth it to get into journalism? there will kick off all of the hits the industry has taken and it is depressing. you do not make a lot of money. other than that, it is great. it is a great job. the teachers to organize the class suggested they should not go into it. i am like what are you doing? no names. are you interested? are you curious? these see something happening in your community that does not seem fair or right? someone disempowered that seems stomp all over by people of power. basic questions like that that need to be told because that is how it works. i have a friend who told me once that he loves his job so much because the only job in the world where your actual -- your actual job is to tell the truth. at the end of the day you are supposedly here to tell the truth. you cut through all and you tell the truth. put it up for everyone to see. when it is a good story, that it's like the best feeling in the world. there are friends leaving jobs because of newspapers holdings and things like that, but it is the initial excitement of these that are wrong and telling people about it. that is our job. we look for people who are not necessarily i believe frederick to want to come to huffington and get into this world. we look for people that are created in want of different ideas because they are curious. that is the most important thing i would say. >> i would agree with all of you. to learn the coding and things like that is very important and you half of the course set of values. i would say if you could teach them how to run a lead is awesome. i think my view of this is increasingly a lot of the kids i see sometimes, you read the other stuff, everyone is cause i-columnist -- quasi- columnist blogger. at the boys is something that seems completely foreign to the millennial generation. we all had the idea of what was a movie. did not understand that they built that movie off over originally very boring stuff. a local crime story no one wanted to cover. they built the store that way. now it is more and more like a notion of understanding. it is a weird thing. i think that is the thing i have noticed with younger reporters sometimes make it frustrated by pierre did they feel like they're not getting ahead as fast as they feel they should. that is a shame because a lot of them are very talented and maybe they have tempered their notion about what they will learn on the job, they would be better off for it. at the same time, i think because of the 24 hour news cycle, because of twitter and facebook and the ability to push things out, they have an ability that i do not know that we had what i was 22 or 23 and wanted to work all day long, all night loan -- all night long and never complained about it. they just do not. that is an amazing thing. every reporter i know is more than willing to drop what they're doing on a sunday afternoon and spend three hours working on a story. that is a credit to them. >> i think it is a born for young journalists to look for ways to evolve their storytelling, whether that is increasing the media or looking for ways, working with other people in the news from to create resources to complement your story. i think you should have an idea of what coating is a you can work with someone else in the newsroom to create a package that shines and hesitates the term " -- go viral. you could be writing the best story, most important story, but no one sees it -- there is a so much competition out there right now. it is always important to be looking at ways to make your product unique. >> as editors we oftentimes need to learn how to learn from them. they have, but a world that is foreign to me. i remember when pages for a new thing. kids come up and they have had laptops with wifi for a much their entire life. they do not know world without e-mail or all these things we did not know. i am constantly amazed, the reporters are work with that have a different way of seeing the world. different ideas about how to tell people what is going on in the world. things that i look at and i am like that is crazy. it has been an eye opener to work with the folks and my outlet because i have embraced twitter. i thought it was this silly thing. i really have learned it is a valuable way to talk to people. if you can write a good, solid lead on 140 characters, i think you are doing something very bright. it takes me refer to figure out how to write a tweet that is not terribly misspelled and books right. they do it everywhere it was bleak. >> i would make one more point to piggyback on one of these comments. we've been talking about building a brand and the younger journalists seem to know instinctively. they are born with that in their dna. they note to do all of that, but i think there is a little bit that has been lost. paying your dues is still viable. there are some opportunities now for young journalist to cover congress, even the president before they have covered a zoning meeting in chester county, which is where i started out. i think that is something that is important to emphasize. get ahead and take all the opportunities but did not miss the thing that you were when you covered with it when you cover the school board hearing and the county planning meeting. you learn how to deal with people, not be afraid of sources when they're yelling at you and how to tell sources at top story is coming and things that will ultimately make you successful journalist. >> i feel like we're in the don't take stage of the panel. kids today. >> i have more questions but we have such a nice audience. i will ask if your questions and also at the panelists at questions of each other. let me ask the panelists, is there anything others have said that you would like to follow up on? >> when you work creating politifact what was the conversation around dealing with the fear that maybe you were watering things down or simplifying it enough that it was easy for the layperson to understand but not losing any of the details of the overall conversation and discussion. >> it started on a word document. from the beginning it was a meter. that gave us confidence this was not going to be seen too much. there was a willingness that this thing was a going to revolve. there was a willingness to invent overtime. i have said this and other speeches in panels, the willingness of the management to stick with it. and stick with this and let us to invent it, recognizing there would be mistakes along the way and what ever. i think it is a really cool story of creation. and also a cool story of team work. i was the guy who did the word doc scutched but the staff filled in the blanks and made it work. >> talking about writing today. i have to teach writing to these kids. i know how to do it, but i notions were created in 1973. has there been a definite change in how the writing style should be? the rise of logs -- blogs cause the softening of writing. it caused a little bit of softening for a time where people that went from being bloggers to reporters. the notion that you do not to talk to a bunch of people. what he does is great, but not exactly hard news and reporting. he has some opinions and read about it. a lot of people thought that was being a reporter, and it is not. there is a difference. now there is a shift back. it is tough to tell. when i was a kid, when i was a dumb reporter, i could not write my way out of a paperback. i spent hours being screamed at by my editor about how much of an idiot i was. i learned and got beat up said the head about how to follow a lead. a little bit of it is the speed of journalism, a lot less of that. editors often times say they will not spend the time to browbeat the reporter and explain why this is wrong, which does not do the reporter a whole lot of good. the need someone to say this is how you do it right and wrong. we get caught up in the speed of it and it does have an effect. as a reporter is incumbent upon them and on us to be much more careful with our riding, at least the top of the story. >> the matter of the medium, the pyramid is timeless. you are not dealing with linked issues, space issues, but dealing with people leading the way. so if you have the attention span issues now. still important to get your best information at the top of the story. i have noticed the trend, mainly that some of them are pretty good writers and also pretty good reporters. we throw them in the capitol building like here is congress, a figure it out. you have to start somewhere and get screened out -- his grain at a lot. one thing i have notice from the here and there stories i take a look at that the interns are doing, of some of them are great writers and really good reporters, but it is the lead. they seemed to vary the lead. you are like what? he said what? one thing i think maybe can help with that is for whenever my advice is worth, just talking through a story before you write it. i think what sometimes there is a pressure to write everything you have and try to make something up tops down created by you are missing the content. where is the nagging that is the news? -- content that is the news? >> i absolutely agree with that. i do not want to hear any throat clearing at the start of the story. tell it quickly so i do not have to wade through to figure it out. i would much rather see someone who can write a good, strong news lead. we're talking here a lot about the style of writing, but the other thing i would say is accuracy is more important than ever. yes, you could fix your mistakes quickly but a lot easier to make a mistake because it is not let me write this story and go up and eat lunch and have a talk with people and come back and fix it. you want it as accurate as possible the first time around. >> you did long form journalism. takeover politico is now launching a long-form journalism. i think the future of that is fantastic. i think the future is less great for journalism in the middle. i think long-form, more and more than ever. we're all talking about journalism that can really tell us something that we do not know. i think there is a lot of exciting experimentation in the industry with how you translate it to the web. do you put it on a continuous green? how do you tell it best with video and promote -- formed journalism on twitter and facebook and the other places you might do it. i think the future is extremely bright because we're looking for ways to set journalism apart from others and make a difference with our stores in think that is the best way to do it. >> i agree. we started long reads of speed and has done extremely well. -- buzz feed. we did a long story about david lee roth's a couple months ago. it was fantastic. a lot of people read it. he reminded you of the old days sitting down with a magazine. part of that was there was this push on the internet to make everything fast, get it out first. i think consumers of news are starting to shift back a little bit. they are saying there is 5000 of you and all of you are posting the exact same for sentences of a democrat at the same time. as editors we are saying i want more than that. i think the content over speed is driving this resurgence of long read journalism. i think it is very good. >> i agree with that. we are also launching a long form initiative. we have an app for long form pieces. they are specifically who want to read it on their candles or whatever. to me, it is repackaging the way you present it. i feel very excited and hopeful for it. we do the really fast stuff all the time, but it is encouraging if we have ideas about long form pieces to go with it. we can work with the design team on certain pieces. we can have video that goes with it. not to distract you, but to put it all together that works where you are engaged with it. a field there is a lot of potential that has not been fully tapped. to go before we go on, i want to mention design. are there things you do that and engage people with that kind of journalism? >> getting back to video or audio, not to accent the story itself, but you read a piece and you can click to watch the interview with the individual or they have just set up a camera during the interview and you can watch that as an addendum to the store you just read. that provides a different aspect of what you're looking for. you can see reaction to the questions and get a real feel for what the actual conversation was like. it is important to provide images. whether you are reading the newspapers or journalism or person writing it, a lot of gray can be very daunting. it is interesting to see you are all launching -- read products that are in a specialized location. you want people to know there is a place where they can go that they can read along the peace about something they might be interested in. whether they can sit down with a have a long commute and plan ahead because they see something interesting bit like instead of accepting a clicking on it, putting it away and saving it for later and forgetting about it. it is interesting to see how that has evolved. here, and then behind you. this lady here. >> could you talk a little bit more about how marketplace pressures affect the work your organization does? years ago there was a camel news hour. today there is more instances of advertising masquerading as journalism. >> trying to get us in trouble. take a like sponsor contents -- >> likes bonds are content, that sort of thing? >> what challenges your organization has faced, and either keeping that at bay or trying to do something with it. >> we are a little bit different than a lot of organizations because we do not have advertisement. we did not have banner advertisements, pop up advertisements, things like that. the advertisement done on our website is sponsored content. it is very much in line with how we do things. mostly because we do viral marketing. i do not know whole lot about it. and could be they are in a different part of the universe. i did not know if anyone does any advertising. that is how it is. i do not know. that is how we do it. >> i feel pretty separate from the people that make those decisions. i know when i see the pages, the story, there is an advertisement here or video advertisements here. i did not even notice them honestly. >> i think there is a very strong desire to keep advertising separate from the work they do. every news room i have bitten is focused on the separation. that remains critical to the success of the business. having said that, i think there is a little bit less. there is the fear of i cannot think about business because i am on the editorial side. i do not think there is a greater level of comfort. i think editors and general crop across the business, papers probably interact more with the business side than they used to, and as long as that does not come up the expense or integrity of the journalism, it is necessary to keep it healthy. >> we would never elect the roll-call influence what we're reporting. we do have a web site run by boeing. it is set off to the side and very of front about it not being at -- roll-call is not writing this story. it is material. they pay us to advertise on the web site. it has been well received in industry and a testament to the editor. the outlet saw this opportunity and ran with it. i think we will probably start more blocks like that. it was a new way to build revenue for the product. the unfortunate reality is you have to do it somehow. >> it is decent content. >> in our case, politico is an interesting aspect. they also provide content as the political side. i do not think any standalone site is making enough advertisement to pay for the bill for reporters. the news organizations do it because it is great content. fortunately, i think politifacts is viewed as a public service. we have gotten money from foundations. i think that is another avenue. >> a lot of people have questions. i think will -- we will ask the panelist one or two people to respond unless you really feel you need to respond. i have a question about legitimacy and this may go more to huffington post. >> first of all, michael hastings death. this delegitimized him in the journalism he did and what has been done. and then also, questioning of glenn greenwald and the david gregory questioning whether he is a journalist or not. i feel like it is strange today we're still fighting the battles of who is a journalist and who is not and we are questioning people that are doing really good journalism. how do you go against these areas of going against what she wants to say that day. >> people say that? >> well, on the topic of "the new york times" it is an example of what is not journalism and was terrible. so there is that. on the broader question, people saying it is the content, i always point back to the 1930's and this trial of the silent movie star accused of murdering and having sex with an underage girl. it was on the front page of every single newspaper in the united states for like a year and a half. it was the biggest story. during the depression. during the worst economic time in this country's history, this was a top story. we have created this motion in my mind that for some reason, journalism, there was a decade- long time of very serious news and kim kardashian's back end was not something anybody read about and suddenly in the past decade it is all right about, and that is wrong. the history of the profession is both of those savings are talked about. they want to know what is going on with kim kardashian. if they want to know what is going on with sports teams, but they also want to know when a general is acting like a crazy person answering bad things about the commander in chief. i have never understood the notion that those things cannot coexist together perfectly well, or the idea that there are serious journalist that do this other stuff. i have tried to write a story several times and very difficult to do. takes a lot of time and skill. you have to have an eye for what will make people want to read it and continue to read it. >> i read the top 20 things about growing up in the 1980's that was awesome. loved it. >> requires you to have a depth of knowledge and understanding of how to relate information to your reader. those are exactly what made a good journalist in any part of the business. so that is my take on it. >> i have thought about this, and there is a difference between being between journalism and things people want to talk about. to me, they are both valid. we have what is miley cyrus doing to her hair? she is almost bald now. those things are there now. i am not sure you would call it journalism, but they are there. people want to talk about all kinds of stuff. to me, that is fair. it is the way it works. then there are stories that are next to the stories that are well reported pieces of journalism. it is the way it works of huffington. the miley cyrus storey and cute cat pictures are like catnip. they come to the site of like clicking on them, but hopefully while they are they're clicking on the fun things and our board at work and do not want to work anymore, they will notice this story next to a about the latest fight over closing abortion clinics in texas or something, a real substantive issue to be reported on. people who have left their house and wrote a really good piece. that is journalism. to me, it comes down to pretty basic stuff. then there is journalism. does that mean they're not worth reading about? i think they're fine. i like those things. i read heavy stories and i like to look at the cutis cats born in 2012 but i also want to know what is going on in texas. if it is a well-reported peace, it is journalism. and it is a fun read. it is not that hard to differentiate. i think it is great because this together. in the end, it is human interest. >> if you like those, 20 reasons why john stanton should be in the 20 most beautiful people in washington. >> i have a question about the archiving of your content. a lot of you are born digital and only think about digital. as someone who thinks about capturing content for the future, what, if anything, could you go back and get from years ago or that is continuing on in the next 10 years is someone going to be able to get content from today 10 years from now? >> that is a great and important question. as someone who is moving on to academia, i cannot tell you how many broken links i have found in the past two-three weeks. it is so frustrating. when we created this, we said it was going to be as important for people to be able to look things up as it is for people to see the latest fact checks. there has been a commitment from the start to archiving. the commitment was that we would also give the content to nexis. it is preserved in both places. you just want someone to put some energy at every news organization to go put energy into fixing the link. some of these will time out. a news organization will say this could only be used for two weeks. is a really big issue. >> take a more and more organizations are posting their news library. what used to be the place responsible for collecting and archiving is gone and those functions have not been absorbed by other people in the news organizations. especially troubling for the born digital publications. >> that is a great question. theoretically it should be on the internet. we update stories over and over. as the news story developed throughout the day, we call it more times, depending on what the news dictates and then switching to the analysis piece. i find myself more often telling editors let's start and won because i want to preserve the original story for the people looking for it -- start at new link. >> there is no protocol for that at news organizations. i am putting things on the newtown shooting and trying to find the early news stories and they have all been written through. there is no protocol in journalism for how you do that? how to use signal to a reader that this is an old story. if you want to correct one, go to this. we have not sorted it out yet. >> it is something that is new, we will put up data of the top. the original version is not there anymore. that is definitely something we are very actively thinking through a minister right now. >> how much do you discuss the finding your role and defining the presidential field for 2016? we hear about grand paul and mark rubio. >> we just wrote about this today. this is actually it -- we have a debate about it all the time, almost every story. i feel like our reporters are very reluctant to become part of the cottage industry of the next presidential election the day after the last one. >> we will stay with that. but, the reality is we all do it. i think right now, i have been trying to not get too far ahead of ourselves end allowing us to interview the players. paul ryan is not doing anything to make it look like he is really running for president. i feel like he probably is, but he is keeping a lower profile than save and paul is. pretty good about keeping it to the limited. >> we started off early in the discussion talking about implications for the buyout of the washington post. one of the things we've been able to do is whistle-blowers. let's say edward snoden's best friend comes forward. he believed he wants to blow the whistle on government mismanagement. how does your organization handle that if they want to come to you because you are not the washington post? >> we would handle it the same way. i think they have done a very good job of being good stewards of information. there are tons and tons of information. way more than anybody realizes. said we're not want to use this for whatever reason, it will put someone in danger or whatever. i think they have done a much better job than some of the legacy u.s. papers. the new york times has erred too much on the side of caution in some cases. i think there is a model of how to handle that frankly. >> in an era of citizen journalism, he chose to go through traditional journalists. he could have very easily posted that of the website somewhere, and he did that need journalists, but he did. it would be fascinating to talk about this because i've -- because i would presume if he posted on the website it would be shut down but if he could and list -- enlist if journalists that they would give credibility and protection to him. so it has been a fascinating episode, and yet, he really did not have to have them and probably had he put it up, wikileaks would have taken a snapshot of it. >> an organization that could go to bat for you. especially some of the smaller small citizen blockers would back away from that in a heartbeat. >> we had a series on ecuador. the government enlisted the outfit in spain to put the screws to us and get the documents we have gone taken down from file-sharing sites. a few of them agreed. there was never a question. there was never a question from the top-down that we would protect not only rosy but the story and make sure the website put the information back up. we pushed back hard and they did. i have worked roll-call and work here and i know both of them and i feel like all of us come from that same place. >> i think we have all work that organizations were the top leaders are very respected journalist and what not back down from a fight if they felt it was the right one to be having. >> we would handle it similar to greenwald said approach of handling this. >> time for one more question. one more question? anyone? final thoughts. tell us one thing that has been the most fun for you in this new endeavor. give us a lead. >> in this panel or in life? >> i think the new media world creates great opportunities for invention, and in my previous job, i loved working with people to invent. it was great fun sitting in meetings coming up with stuff. in my new job i am looking forward to a new and different things. i think invention is a time of invention. i think there is a great spirit of journalism to do that. >> i agree with that. i think the creativity and the adrenalin of the new media world are incredibly exciting. i think there is a time where practically everything we are covering feels like a first. the debt ceiling, brinksmanship or anything else. i feel like we're living in historic times and have a new way of covering this to get the news out. so it is of very exciting time to be a journalist in washington. >> i have fun every day. it is fun. it is fun to be a journalist right now. this frees me up to take all kinds of different approaches to stories that previously i probably would not have been able to write. really quickly, i am thinking of one now. i ended up in a twitter exchange with republican congressman about gay marriage. we went back and forth back and forth. in the end he said he did not think we should have the defense of marriage act. this is a republican congressman who leans libertarian. that was a new story that a rogue, and it tweets into the story and was published onto the site. it was a fun exchange. random people were jumping into the conversation. even five years ago, we could not have done that. the gay marriage fight and emphasis we have been putting on the lgbt community has been the most interesting and fun part for me on this job. since i came on last year, it has been a major focus for the site. be a newsto organization that is focused on that. the civil rights issue right now . that moment when you get to say yes, we are working on this and paying attention to it, and it is an important thing. for me, that has been the best thing. >> i agree with everybody. you all so my answers. -- you all stole my answers. that media is playing, whether it creates a story, or sources, it is an exciting time to be a journalist a journalist especially in d.c.. we are seeing history being made right now. it is incredible. it is an important time to be paying attention to politics, so it is exciting to try and get those stories out there to as any people as possible. >> that is a perfect note to end on. thank you so much. [applause] i don't want to volunteer their time, but -- [indiscernible] tonight, at 6:35 p.m. eastern time, we show you former pennsylvania senator and presidential candidate rick santorum appearing at the second annual family leadership summit in ames, iowa. here is a preview of what he had to say. successful --be if we are going to be successful country, wend as a need to have a revitalized program and engage in it. that is where you come in. last lives and breathes the values. this administration wants to make sure that that does not happen. beinge ready see policies put forward by the administration that are changing the freedom of religion in this country. you see from the administration that internationally the state department uses the statement, freedom of worship. be in the four walls of the church and worship, but do not take that religion and faith and practice it outside of the church. there, we will restrict you. see it happen already, and it will explode. i will never forget a quote by the cardinal in chicago who said bed. i expect to die in my i expect my successor to die in prison. his successor to die a martyr. unless we begin to do what they do, use not the policies, do not idea that we need to change our policies, but we need to change our tactics to be more like they are. [applause] rex we will have war with the former senator tonight at 6:35 p.m. eastern time on c-span. tomorrow morning on washington journal, we hear from matt bennett, the cofounder of third way. his groups efforts to influence issues related to the economy, immigration, and national security. we also have kaiser health news and its hospital -- and its impact on hospitals and medicare patients. then we talk about the wic that serves up and infants and children. all of that tomorrow on the washington journal at 7 a.m. eastern time. >> the media business is a huge story. for the first time, a true digital data has stepped into would've the legacy media businesses in our country. if he acts in any way like he did in disrupting the book publishing business, the delivering of streaming media and e-commerce, mr. bezos will probably disrupt and re-envision what it is to be a newspaper in the 21st century, and how that business remains a business. journalism itself is changing. it manifests in different ways am a whether it is a blog or through twitter, the intersection between video and newspapers these days, it is hard to say where it is headed. we are at a stage where it is still being figured out. with jeff bezos by the post, that is one example of one possible future of the newspaper. that is monday night on the communicators on c-span2. >> heading to new jersey where last week, all four of the states democratic candidates debated. the front runner of the race, cory booker, along with representatives rush holt and frank pallone. also, general sibley speaker sheila oliver. they will be vying for the seat vacated by senator frank lautenberg, who died in june. the special election will be held october 16. this comes courtesy of new jersey public television. ♪ >> good evening. we welcome you to the campus of montclair state university. i am mike schneider, the managing editor here at njtv. in alphabetical order, the candidates are cory booker, rush holt, sheila oliver, and frank pallone. joining me is editorial journalist alfred doblin. each will have 60 seconds, but each will also have up to 60 seconds for rebuttal. there is a timing light that will be used, and it is my job to see that light and to use that light. you have no studio audience tonight. if you would like to join the conversation, you can be part of it. you can follow us on twitter. let's begin. the candidates drew straws. cory booker starts. >> good evening, and i would like to thank everybody who organized this debate. i began my career in newark, but i was born in bergen county, some of the smallest towns there. i chose to move to newark. when you bring people together, you can make tremendous progress. the heroes i met and others during my time as a person representing people who cannot not afford attorneys showed me that philosophy could work. 15 years later, going from a time when newark's headlines were about crime, the city has changed, but the city has seen progress. we have lowered crime, ushered in the biggest economic element period since the 1950's, and hope is on the horizon, testimony to what people can do, taking on difficult challenges working together. as we look at washington, we do not see people doing that. i believe it is time for new leadership that can bring people together to make changes to do difficult things to help us have progress. >> thank you very much, and for the next opening statement, rush holt. >> thank you. i should level at the beginning by saying i have never run into a burning building. i am well known to many in new jersey because i am the guy who took on the jeopardy! computer and won. i am a dedicated progressive. i hope new jerseyans know me as one who is dedicated, a hard- working public servant, someone who fights and gets things done. when a new jersey soldier committed suicide and his parents said do not let that ever happen again, i got $40 million for mental health and suicide prevention for soldiers and veterans. knowing that through investing in education and research, you create jobs and improve the economy, i got $22 billion in new research money, medical research, environmental research, the national science foundation, the largest increase ever. long before anyone had heard of edward snowden, i was leading the fight in congress to take the nsa to task. i wrote a legislation to repeal the patriot act and the fisa amendments act. throughout my career and this campaign, i have been advancing the bold ideas that we need to extend the american dream to all americans, bold ideas people will be talking about tonight. >> thank you very much. sheila oliver. >> i appreciate the opportunity to engage in dialogue with my opponents in this quest to fill the seat of the late senator frank lautenberg. it is my hope that the voters of new jersey listen intently this evening as we focus on issues that are not just important to capitol hill, but also those issues that are important to the people that live in the state. as a u.s. senator, you have an obligation to engage in moving the agenda of the nation forward, but you should also use that representation to help move an agenda forward for the state of new jersey and its citizens. as a legislative leader, i have visited the length and breadth of the state, engaged with communities from cape may up to warren, and not just during a campaign. i think that my 10 years in the state legislature and my four years as the speaker of the new jersey general assembly has equipped me with the ability to best represent the state of new jersey as a u.s. senator. i look forward to the dialogue this evening, and i know that the residents of the state are better served by having the opportunity to see the differences and the similarities to between our respective candidacies. >> thank you very much. now frank pallone. >> thank you for being here as well as thanking alfred doblin, and it is important that this is the first time they candidates are getting together for the debate. it is an opportunity for voters to see where we stand on the issues and to make clear choices. i think they will see clear choices. i would like to be your united states senator. i represent you now in congress. i am the father of three children raised in the same town where we still live. i really want you to understand that although you may hear often tonight that congress is broken, that i really believe that in congress, as a senator, i can make a difference, and i have tried over the years in congress, or i have been now, to actually work on problems and come up with solutions. i think you can get things done in congress. when first elected to congress, all of the beaches were closed along the north jersey shore, and i worked hard to clean up the ocean and close all the ocean dumping sites, often with senator lautenberg who was my partner in the senate. i worked with him in order to clean up toxic waste sites in new jersey, with the superfund program. when obama became president, i helped to provide universal health care with the affordable care act. it is making a difference in people's lives. i believe in congress you can make a difference. you can get things done. >> thank you. that concludes our opening statements. we want to discuss issues that are germane to our state, country, issues that take the role of a senator, which transcends our communities and our state and takes in a worldview as well. congressman holt, you up first. the question revolves around the terror warning that was announced over the last couple of days, information obtained by the nsa resulting in the u.s. issuing traveling warnings overseas, closing a number of embassies throughout the arab world, and heightened security at home. you have been very critical of the role of the nsa and the surveillance program as well. knowing what we know right now and knowing that much of this information has come from intercepts by the nsa, are you changing your mind about the way you view the nsa surveillance programs and the way they may impact our fellow americans? >> no. for years, i was on the intelligence committee in congress. i understand how they work. i do not know the details of these. i am not on the intelligence committee now. but we can presume that these were international intercepts, which we should be doing. but the idea of vacuum cleaner wholesale collection of information, personal information, about americans is completely acceptable. it is not simply unconstitutional. it changes the relationship between a citizen and a citizen's government. if the government regards people as suspects first and citizens second, that changes the very structure of our nation and a reason for being. and this has to be put to an end, and that is why i have the legislation that would repeal the patriot act, would repeal the fisa amendments act. >> thank you. madam speaker, your view of the nsa programs? >> after we all experienced loss of life in benghazi and we learned today about the terrorist activities in yemen and the al qaeda extremists, i believe there has to be a balance. there's no doubt that for national security and for the security of american citizens, we must engage in the gathering of intelligence data. that must be balanced very properly with the constitutional rights that citizens in this country have. we are in an age of technology. our smart phones can be tracked. red light cameras are on us all day. surveillance happens at every intersection in this country. i think that technology has placed us in a situation where it is inevitable that data is collected on us. but it is imperative for our nation's commander in chief and the joint chiefs of staff and the intelligence community to have the ability to protect us. >> thank you. congressman pallone? >> the terrorist warnings do not change my mind with the problems with the nsa. we have to protect civil liberties, and i'm concerned we have gone too far with this nsa program. i did not vote for the fisa amendments. i do not vote to reauthorize the patriot act as i was concerned about infringement on civil liberties. i think at a minimum we should say that any kind of information gathering that goes or is obtained through the fisa courts has to be only for a particular investigation, not just a broad brush that you go after anything that you may not even use. there has to be transparency with the fisa courts. their decision should be made public in most cases. we have to be worried about how these judges are appointed in the fisa court because they are not appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the senate, which they should be. again, i think we have to have a balance, but right now the balance is skewed too much toward surveillance and infringing on civil liberties. we have to change it. >> thank you. >> what is going on overseas is not an abstract concept to me. it is something we are dealing with, that have to with in newark. we have to every single day work to keep our residents safe. that is why i went to the situation room in the white house. you have got to balance the urgent need for security with the other urgent need about what makes us american, which is our privacy rights. this is not abstract to me. we have had to do it. when we put up the public safety cameras that the speaker was speaking about, we reached out to the aclu first. we have to deal with this every day. i look at washington and i see they are not in balance. we have a job. it is not being done right now. they should be doing a lot more to get oversight to the executive, and do some of these things like the fisa court which are doing things that are unnecessary infringements onto the privacy rights of america. >> we have a one-minute rebuttal period. >> the point of the fourth amendment is not to make things difficult for enforcers, but it is to make sure that they do their job, to make sure it is not to preserve civil liberties niceties, it is to make sure that these agencies that have fearsome powers to intrude on people's personal lives demonstrate to an independent judge that they know what they are doing. that is what makes us safer. this wholesale vacuum cleaner collection does not make us safer, and it tears at the fabric of our society and our government. and i must say, i am the one in this campaign that has been talking about this openly and vociferously and repeatedly and strongly, this and the other progressive issues that we need to get our country going to where it should be going. >> thank you. madam speaker? >> this is no novelty in the united states, the collection of intelligence data on citizens. when we saw the release of the papers on j. edgar hoover, we learned he was collecting intelligence data on some of the most civicly minded citizens in this country, martin luther king, the kennedy family. intelligence gathering has been happening in the united states way before we had to deal with terrorism. the issue today is that with our place in the world's order and the importance of the united states and its allies. there are extreme theocracies that operate in the middle east that have as their main purpose thwarting democracy. >> what i am saying in terms of how this should operate, you talked about the terrorist warning. if the agency knew or had an inkling that there was an al qaeda attack that was about to begin and was coming from pakistan or yemen, they could go to the fisa court and they could say we have this investigation, we have this information, and therefore we need some surveillance to look at the actual situation in pakistan or yemen or the al qaeda operatives that are actually potentially planning this attack. that would be a specific investigation that they would be going before the court and ask for that authority. that is not what is happening now. they are simply asking verizon or at&t for anything that they have about anybody without there being a specific investigation. that is what is wrong, and i do not know if that is what was intended with these fisa amendments or the patriot act. in the patriot act, it actually says you have to have a specific investigation. that is not what is happening now. >> this is a point of distinction that is important. please understand these security and privacy issues are paramount, and i agree with the congressman about how people are concerned about that. do not forget the congressmen holt and pallone voted for the patriot act. this is where i disagree with congressman holt. the reality is there are aspects of that they need to be changed, but this needs to be done in a special manner because there are aspects of the patriot act about people who drive dangerous chemicals throughout state that empower police like mine better conjunction with our federal authorities. these are difficult issues, and a key right now is that we need aggressive oversight and action by congress to keep people safe. we need privacy rights of american citizens. >> second question, we will start with you, madam speaker, and it is semi-related. mr. snowden has been granted temporary asylum. many people within the u.s. government are appalled by that. many are equally appalled by the treatment of the gay community in russia because of some new laws that have been adopted by the putin administration. some say it is starting to feel like the cold war over again. should the united states reevaluate its relations with russia? >> i think president obama has certainly expressed in his discussions and his meetings with putin that he is displeased his stance that russia has taken, so much so that they could not engage in a long discussion. you know those talks took off. i think that we do have to re- examine the motives of russia as you look at eastern europe and you look at the breakup of the soviet union. there is a lot of dissension in that region. we saw in boston this year that you had two brothers who emanated from that region and they came to the united states and to boston with the intent purpose of wreaking havoc and harming americans. i believe that we have to re- examine our relationship with russia. we have known for years that russia is the provider of arms and potentially nuclear weapons to a number of different countries that are not necessarily our allies. >> thank you. >> i think relationships between the united states and russia or between united states and any country should be primarily based on democracy, rule of law, and also a market economy. those are the principles that we espouse. i think the president has to look at the relationship in that respect. if he feels that the treatment of the gay community or the way that they are granting asylum to snowden is something that goes against those principles, for example, the rule of law, then he has to decide what kinds of actions to take. the case of snowden is not important enough to our relationships with russia. we have to worry about those three principles in everything we do, in terms of our foreign- policy, and to push russia to become more of a democracy, to recognize the rule of law, and move toward a market economy. everything should be looked at in that way, and i am not sure the snowden case is enough of a problem to go back on our relationship. i think we need to work on the treatment of gays and push russia for the rule of law. >> it is not just snowden, not just what is going on with the gay community, it should mark the outrage of all of us who believe in human rights. understand that russia is also supplying support to the syria regime in serious, and what that regime is doing to its people is unconscionable. over 4 million displaced people, 1.3 million outside the country, humanitarian issues are abounding because of russia's actions. the reality is we just saw in boston how important it is that a relationship with russia to share critical of safety information. it is in this context that i support the president in using measured diplomacy, pushing for what are not just american issues, but when it comes to syria, the military, humanitarian and human rights as well. we need to advocate for what is right and for critical american interests. >> russia is always testing and straining the relationship. we should not sacrifice the diplomatic relationship with russia because of the snowden affair. it is not that significant right now. we need russia to be working with us on syria and a number of other things. we need to take them to task on many matters around the world and within their country. when i mentioned earlier about my background as a teacher, a scientist, to say i would bring a unique background to the people of new jersey to the senate, it is important to point out that the senate has a lot of international responsibility. i am the person here who was actually on the negotiating team in geneva representing the united states across the table from the then soviet union on the abm missile violations. >> time for rebuttal. >> yes. you know, the issue of snowden, snowden is not the first. it is just that attention has been drawn to his most recent disclosure of sensitive information. our military leaders have been dealing with and having to address members of the intelligence community who have, with frequency, taken measures of national security and provided documents and other things to other nations. so i do believe that snowden is no anomaly. we have a history of this and we can point to those who have done this in other situations. i think the snowden issue raises a broader issue when we begin to contract out to defense operators responsibility for our national security, we cannot control the outcome. >> congressman? >> i think russia and our relationship with russia is very similar to what it has to be with other countries. we believed in democracy. we believe in the rule of law. we want to protect the human rights and we want to have a market economy. oftentimes the countries do not live up to that. the arab spring has brought that out. that was an example where many people in the arab world were really looking for democracy and so with mixed results because they do not have a history of democracy. russia is very much the same. we have to recognize that russia is an important country. they have nuclear weapons. they are on the security council. it is not like we can cut off relationships because of the snowden case. i do not think that makes sense. i do think at all times we have to think about what we are doing to push the russians toward democracy and towards rule of law. i am very much and concerned about how they have changed their laws in ways that violates human rights. you mentioned the gay community. also the instance with adopted children, where they were taking the wrong stance. we have to continue to work toward those guiding principles. >> this is an example that is difficult and challenging. russia is playing an important role globally, whether we want to recognize that or not. the reality is when it comes to nuclear weapons, one of the biggest threats to the safety of america or our allies is nuclear proliferation. we need to make sure that problems like that do not get out of hand. we live in a community now. snowden is somebody that should be returned to america and given a fair trial. there are so many other interests on the table right now nuclear proliferation, terrorism, what is going on in syria, and this necessitates america not acting single- handedly, but acting in a community of countries that can give a call to the consciousness of the globe to begin to push for human rights, to begin to push against nuclear proliferation, and begin to suppress the urgency, not facing america, but all democracy on this globe, pushing against the real threat of terrorism. >> thank you. rebuttal or expansion? >> i am sorry, i thought we had been through that. i guess this was a repeat question. >> your chance to rebut. >> thank you. as i was saying, i would agree with the mayor that there are many things that we need to work with the soviet union on and we should not throw away the relationship on the basis of the snowden affair. >> we will take a trip to our studio next door and standing by, alfred doblin with his first question. >> there are conflicting opinions about what the united states should be doing with regard to syria. after lengthy wars in iraq and afghanistan, there's not an appetite to be engaged in any kind of boots-on-the-ground combat. there is some discussion about whether we should be providing aid to the rebels and there are questions about whether we know who the good guys are. what do you think we should be doing in syria? >> the u.s. always has to be guided by certain principles, and this primarily is democracy, rule of law, and a market economy. in the aftermath of the arab spring, it is clear that the people in these countries would like to see democracy. they're not used it and there's not a lot of experience. right now the problem in syria that the president pointed out was the use of chemical and biological weapons, which he said would be a mark whereby he would then intervene in some fashion. but he has been very cautious. he does not want to put boots on the ground. he is talking about arming some rebels, but is concerned whether they are possibly terrorists or they are democratic oriented. we have to avoid the boots on the ground if at all possible, and we have to be very careful, constantly being guided by principles of democracy, rule of law, and market economy. that is easy for me to say in the abstract. in terms of reality, we have to be very cautious. >> i want everybody to understand why this is such a serious issue. you have the assad regime who is in league with the iranians who are the single largest state sponsor of terrorism, and the assad regime is in league with hezbollah. this poses a serious threat. it would be easy to think we need to do everything we can to oppose them. on the other side, a group of forces opposing assad that range from pro-democracy folks to people who are terrorists themselves. there's no easy way to arm the opposition and win them. that is why the obama administration is doing the right thing. one is not committing the american troops. that should be the last issue. we need to support our allies, jordan, turkey, who are dealing with millions of refugees, making it difficult on their infrastructure. we need to act thoughtfully and make sure we do the right thing by not just americans' interest, but their interests of the region as a whole. >> thank you. congressman. >> as someone who fought against the iraq war. it is clear that the public has no stomach for military intervention in syria. nor, should we. we should apply the lesson that we learned in the 1980s in afghanistan when the armed the rebels, now known as al qaeda and others. the principle applied was "the enemy of our enemy is our friend." we should be engaging in every possible way to get this under control. hezbollah is tied up in this. the future of israel is tied up in this. we want israel to survive and prosper for everything that it stands for. we want to bring a peaceful solution for the palestinians in the area. what is going on in syria >> i believe that if the united states is to maintain its position as a world power and dominate as a willpower, we need to pay attention to syria. it is unfortunate that we did not intervene rwanda. we have to recognize that this is a sensitive region of the world and what we do in syria or, what we do not do, may be viewed as a lack of u.s. response to save lives. i do believe that international allies need to be engaged. the united states should end straight leadership. our allies should provide support to the people of syria. >> thank you. i believe in resident obama's cautious approach. i think that assad has to go all stop i do not think that we should push for democracy. he is a dictator. he has to go. we have a question of chemical weapons being used and the human rights violations that are going along with that. we had to make sure that this requires certain action but united states. because of this cautious approach, no ground troops, some arms to rebels, figuring out who is pro-democracy. arming international organizations, like we did in libya. we should reject the united nations and we have, to some extent. russia has a potential veto and could use the veto in the security council. i would take caution. i would respect the president for what he is trying to do because he understands what needs to be done. >> i think there is a lot of agreements tonight. i want to make a few more points. assad must go. it must be done in a sober and deliberate way so that we do not cause more problems in the long run like we saw in the early and immediate. we need to make sure that we do everything we can to support other nations that have been destabilized from refugees and others going into their country. that means looking at lebanon, turkey, as well as israel. finally, america does not need to act alone. we have learned this the hard way in our history that if we go it alone, we put ourselves in jeopardy. when asked in a community of countries that share the same values, we can be a lot more effective. we can bring back stability to a region that is way too unstable. >> thank you. >> an important factor to be considering with the next senator of new jersey is who has the experience and sophistication to deal with international questions. i talked about the complicated situation in that part of the world. the friends, if you pull on one, it pulls through jordan, saudi arabia, egypt, israel, palestine, and iran, and iraq, and turkey. i sent a letter to the president saying that he should ask the new iranian president if he is good to his word. he did appoint someone i know from their time at the united nations as foreign minister. it gives us time to work with iran on these important matters. >> on capitol hill, in the last couple of sessions, we have not seen a lot of experience or sophistication. i think our next senator should be someone who has the ability to examine a broad range of issues. internationally, to weigh out the sensitivity of these issues. protecting our national interests and understanding that we pay a dear price in not investing in domestic challenges. at the same time, maintain our position as the world leader. this is our challenge and the responsibility of the next u.s. senator. >> for our next question, i want to blend the domestic with foreign relation issues. there is no better place to do that than china. a rising power. a true economic superpower. many wonder how the united states should position it self going forward. the chinese show an inclination to challenge american military forces around the world in some measured fashion. is the united states well- positioned to deal with the reality of a rising and competitive china? should we alter our position and stance with the chinese? >> i have confidence in the american worker and the american economy is number one in the globe. i know we can continue to lead in that manner. we have to make sure that we are all played by the same walls and there is fairness. back to the issue of china, it is not a bad thing that they are rising. i'm telling you, what we're seeing with china is that they are often not willing to play by the same rules. whether it is with their currency. whether it is with their copyright infringements if america. whether it is about paying their workers a fair wage that reflects humanitarian interests. this is an area i feel very strongly about. we can compete and this. we need to turn our attention, as a country, to making our domestic economy stronger. we invest in research and development. there are real things that we can be doing to grow our economy and make it stronger. >> congressman. >> whenever we sent a trade agreement with another country, like we did with china, we should not ask "what are the regulations for products entering and leaving the ports." we must ask what is acceptable behavior. and workers rights. in human rights. we did not do that with china. we do not do that with trade agreements elsewhere. we have been negotiating with them on their currency manipulation and making a little bit of headway. their currency manipulation has hurt us badly. our outsourcing has hurt us badly. not just in lost jobs, but, in an inferior merchandise and dangerous merchandise. dangers of equipment that we have been getting through the chinese shoddy manufacturers. we have to stand up to their adventurism around the oceans and the world. >> china has emerged as an economic power because senators and members of the u.s. house of representatives enacted laws and influenced the regulatory process to permit our commerce, our manufacturing, and our jobs. it has been decades that we have turnover products in our homes and seen "made in china" on the bottom. there are places around the world with a can bolster investment. individual investors look to china as a way to grow their wealth. that is how we got to the situation with china. when you look at the pollution that hovers over many of the large cities, to the detriment of the people who live there, china's policies as they relate to women and the inhumane treatment of women. that having the legal system dealing with women. we created that on capitol hill. >> we have to be worried about the unfairness of china. first, they do not open up their markets to american goods. it is an unfair trade practice. they put up barriers, and various ways, to our exports and make it difficult to export. they constantly subsidize and make it easy for their manufacturers to produce things and send them to the united states. the best example is renewable resources. i believe that we should be manufacturing solar panels and wind turbines here. china is cornering the market because they subsidize those industries and make a cheaper for export. we have to get tough. they are working over us, when it comes to the economy. we have an obligation in the united states senate. we have jurisdiction over treaties. we have to make sure that these treaties operates in a fair way. >> i hear a lot of the same views. we have to make sure china plays by the same rules. copyright, trade, humane treatment of workers. we need to look at home. we have an incredible nation where we said that we can build our local economy strong. people tell me that manufacturing is dead in america, we showed, in newark, that with the right strategy manufacturers can grow jobs and grow exports. it can be done in america if we have a congress that makes more investments in workforce training and education. research and development. these investments revised huge returns for the american economy. if we focus on growing strong and home, america will thrive. >> thank you. >> for pick up on that point. america is a strong nation. the strongest in the world. the wealthiest in the world. we are not second in manufacturing. china has caught up. we can prevail around the world. we do not have to do it through military force, although we must make sure that we check china's projection of military force. working with india and southeast asia, working with our own strong workforce and our production capabilities, we can prevail. we have the strongest and best educated workforce in the world. we have a great production the ability. we should be aggressive in going around the world and not letting china by up all of the rare earth elements. >> i go to decision on capitol hill. everyone looked in awe when chinese investors bought the chrysler holding in new york city. we now know that a significant amount of real estate in manhattan is owned by the chinese. it is difficult to acquire some of the most critique and real estate that exists. the reason we have a situation with china is because of the backslapping that goes on on capitol hill between and amongst members of the congress who would rather cut a deal, make some investments, instead of looking out for the benefits of the citizens that live in this country. i think it is time for the senate to reflect a different kind of a standard. the only winning you do that is by sending people to the united states senate who are going to change the paradigm. >> i believe that there are lessons they can be learned from china, in terms of our domestic economy. they are making huge investments. one of the problems in washington is due to the tea party. the tea party wants to have a sequester an across-the-board cuts. with to stop that mentality. we are investments to infrastructures -- we have to stop that mentality. we have to make investments to infrastructure. in research and development, we have used our tax structure to bring back jobs from overseas. the chinese used cap structured and subsidies to encouragement and faxing. manufacturing can come back to unite states, but we have to encourage it. companies cannot move their money overseas. companies will stay here and manufactured here because of transportation cost. we're not doing that. we have to make a difference. >> that let me to where i want to go. there are those who say that it is time for america to do something to jumpstart our economic recovery. 162,000 jobs disappointed wall street. we had to do something with our tax code to reflect the need of a modern-day economy. i harken back to the days when i was a young reporter covering bill bradley who came up with the fair tax. it modified the tax code that people were paying in the 1980s. is it time to tear apart the tax code? >> we are not a poor nation. the mentality in washington has become, we cannot do this or that. all we can do is provide the privilege to the fortunate. the high jobless rate that we have an crumbling infrastructure, we can afford to take care of all those things and we cannot afford not to. it requires making sure that those who can pay, those who have benefited from our economy, and their fair share. that is not happening. take the a gentle of social security, we're talking about how social security is going to go bust. i'm saying that millionaires and billionaires should pay the same tax rate and we will not be talking about social security solvency. it will be solid and we can raise benefits. >> we absolutely need to simplify the tax code in this country. it is to consultative. and, working-class and middle- class families bear the brunt of the burden. we have a lot of things through the tax code to provide incentives and write-offs to large corporations. those corporations do not reinvest in our economy. i just discussed the practice of an international company, a national chain in the united states that is significantly present in new jersey. in order to get around a loophole they claim their tax credits, they hire people and pay them 8.25 an hour. they retain those workers until they solidify those tax credits and then they lay them off. this is possible because of our tax code. >> we need to jumpstart the economy. there is a tea party effort to cut across the federal government and it is killing us and slowing growth. ok? you can bring in more funds by reforming the tax code. i believe that everyone needs to pay more and it should not be on the backs of working families. corporations need to make it more every contribution. president obama suggested that we may be able to lower the corporate tax rate if you reform the tax code. they pay more, even though they are paying a lower rates. they do not have all the loopholes. take the companies that are spending money overseas and reform the tax code. give them encouragement to manufacture here. we sent money back to the cities to prevent layoffs of the police and firefighters. we need to do this again. >> i don't have hair like you, but issues like this make you want to pull it all out. we have incredible growth, how do i know that? because we did in newark. creating thousands of jobs in newark. in the manufacturing sector, we knew we had strategy to make it grow. even for small businesses, we had to increase the access to the capital pool. that helps 50 or 60 is this is growth. why isn't congress doing the obvious things that we need to grow our economy? yes, we need to fix the tax code. we need to make it simpler. we can in best in research and development. we can do the things that i noted to happen. manufacturing can grow even more robustly. >> thank you. need to invest. invest has fallen in disfavor in washington. there is such a thing. if we invest in infrastructure, we will be a weathier nation. that is the way it was with the g.i. bill. it paid back many times over. that's what we need to be doing now. invest in our public schools. making them accessible for motivated and prepared students to go to college. i am working with elizabeth warren to make sure that we have the lowest possible interest rates for student loans for prepared students to go to college. we can do that. we do not need to have the interest rates that we have now. >> yes. something that is a concern to me is that when you look around the country, we have significant numbers of aging suburban communities that once had stabilized tax rates and tax renewables. those things are gone. it is time for the federal government to work with the president and governors of states to move forward a recreation of economies of crosses country. i use new jersey as an example. despite what you read about the bureau of labor statistics and what you hear about job creation, significant numbers of people in newark, trenton, asbury park, people continue to be unemployed in the state. the jobs being created here are not jobs that are providing livable wages and one of the highest wage states in the country. >> there are references to congress being broken. i mentioned in my opening remarks. i believe that we can get things done in congress. i believe that we can get things done in congress. not the tea party. i believe they are the problem. but, there are mainstream republicans and we have to reach across the aisle. republicans are the majority in the house. find the moderates and explain to them that we have to get rid of the sequester. this is with the president was talking about in his speech. a grand bargain, or deal, we must do things to affect the tax rate. we have to get rid of these tax loopholes. we would invest money in the economy grow jobs that have good benefits. we can make cuts. rational cuts. not across the board cuts. >> final word. >> congressman pallone is a noble person and has worked hard to do the things that he said. i'm telling you that we need to act. the media do a deed of point. we now make up 33% of all the development in the state from the commercial developments going on in newark right now. that is because we have a speaker that helped out with that. that's because the government -- a governor, will i disagree with on most issues, who helped. we're bringing community activists together and extending apprenticeships for our kids. what i'm saying is that we can get this done. we need to have people who can bring people together in washington and bridge divides. we can do this. it is not time for excuses. there are too many people suffering in a tough economy. it is time for action and getting things done. >> the next question will go to madam speaker. >> i want to stay on investment. rather than taxes, let's talk about education. people view the most important investment in the future as educating our children. it is something that is talked about. however, changing it from washington has not been affected. no child left behind has left a lot of children behind. >> we need a national agenda. the public educational system. the community college system. the university system. leadership is required at the federal level. the challenges presented do not have the expectation that washington weeks away. the demographics are different. the profiles and economies of the states are different. the federal government cannot craft a national agenda that is going to reflect the needs in each particular state. without question, one of my opponents made references to science, technology, engineering, and math. we need to make broader investments. we need to make sure that our curriculums reflect those investments. >> i have been advocated a school modernization program where towns and counties can apply for grants to repair schools, like transportation. we should be sending money back to schools. we did this a few years ago after the recession. we did this in 2009. in terms of no child left behind, it has mis-functioned in many ways. these tests and the rating of schools. we need to invite teachers with skills and provide better qualified teachers. that is where the government can play a role. i do have to say, and our district, with mayor booker, i do not think that vouchers are the answer. i am concerned about vouchers, which he supports. >> i believe in public schools strongly. it is a federal government responsibility and about taking action. all four of us have the same amount of legal authority of schools -- was schools in our district. we brought in -- with schools in our district. we brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars. we have worked to expand the school day and give kids home libraries. this allows kids to learn at home. the federal government has a role to play. if i am your united states senator, i'm not going to sit back and watch kids struggle. my policy paper was about dealing with childhood poverty. kids have empowerment with universal preschool. with prenatal care, they go to school. we need people who will take action. >> in addition to universal early education and making public schools work, we also have to pay attention to science and math education. there's no one, and the congress, who has been a bigger proponent of science then this scientist. i do not think that -- i'm interested mayor booker was silent about vouchers that mr. pallone raced. i would like to know how doctors can help the schools? they siphon money away. a massive expansion of charter schools is not the answer for education for 15 million children. the idea -- the washington post that mayor booker is a vigorous proponent of this policy. >> since we have focused in on the troubled school district in our state, newark comes into destruction. newark has been a takeover district will stop paterson has been a takeover district. under the state's auspices, we have seen no improvements in the operation of our schools. it is in your district, while it was under state control, that we saw massive fiscal impropriety in a state superintendent who contracted with a large company. we have not seen improvements with state intervention in schools. there is no question that there is political system that is involved with the school. we have to have competent professionals and legislators to address the issues that affect urban schools. >> major booker talked about governor christie's economic programs. governor christie has been doing the opposite. he is the taking money away from the cities and making it harder to pay for firefighters and the police. he is not helping. the federal government should help. the governor is not doing that. mayor booker plan for education means vouchers and privatization of schools. maybe some money goes from private interests to help with the school, what is the impact? what is the impact, in terms of other things, that are involved that takeover. we are concerned about the lack of funds that are going to the public schools. if you have to have teachers and comeback of curriculum, it is not going to make for good public schools. >> i will never apologize for bringing hundreds of millions of dollars to help poor kids get a better education. i want to bring up my silence about vouchers. these vouchers are for four kids below the poverty line who are stuck in failing schools. i support scholarship from dems to give them a lifeline. i find it interesting that congressman holt would bring it up as a criticism of me. he voted or the washington dc opportunity scholarship program he voted for a program that is similar to what i support. both congressman voted for on the bus those that support this. i would like them to explain why they have voted for the same position i have. >> the mayor should check the record. i have been in opponents of vouchers. they are an efficient method of siphoning resources away from public schools. the idea is to bring excellent education to all children in america. not some children who are lucky enough to be in specialized schools. we should be investing in teachers. that is where it starts. we should not turn education into a market based enterprise where the products and the teachers are the means of production. we should be treating teachers as professionals. not someone who you hire or fire or go to a temporary agency for all stop in the professional -- for. we need to be investing in the public school system. >> obamacare has been hailed by some. others say it is putting us on the road to bankruptcy and driving doctors away from the medical field. your take on it. is the affordable care act, the way it is constituted, are you satisfied with the way it stands in the way things are going? >> i helped to write the affordable care act. it is my proudest moments as a member of congress. the reason i think people should nominate me is because i care about issues that matter to people. do not believe the key party or those who tell you that the affordable care act is harmful. it is one of the best pieces of legislation that we have ever created. the bottom line is, americans will be insured. they are now going to have a good benefit package. they were preconditions and destroyed discriminatory practices. by the end of this year, those problems go away and most americans have health insurance and a benefit package. there'll not pay more because of a pre-existing condition. discriminatory practices, for the most part, will go away. this is how congress works. congress can work and make a different stop the affordable care act is an example. >> i want to give the congressman credit. this is a great bill and the courageous leadership of our president has expanded opportunities for our residents in new jersey. young people who are getting to an older age can stay on their parent's insurance. we do fight for the implementation and defended against those who want to -- voting almost 40 times in congress -- repeal it. the sustainability of our healthcare requires that we do more to control cost. it is unsustainable what we're doing right now. we can do a lot more to get waste, fraud, and abuse of the system and reward doctors for outcomes. we can make health care strong in america and implement the affordable care act. we can make sure that we do what is the sick to control costs in the long run. >> as a member of the authorizing committee, i helped to write it. it is an improvement over what existed three years ago. the affordable care act, we need to see that it is implemented. over the objection of governor christie and those in congress who voted to repeal it 40 times over the last double of years. that's will not, by itself, as good as it is, as good as far as it goes, it will not bring all americans into the fold of excellent health care. we need to take the next step. universal single-payer health care coverage. that's a you bring excellent education to all. it is a way to put a check on the uncontrolled increase in spending. the other candidates said that that was impractical. that is another way of saying that we can only do things that we clear with the tea party. i want to know how mayor booker feels about it. >> i have been a proponent of single-payer, as well. within the past several years, there was a long time spent with legislative leaders in his district with labor unions and health care advocates to work and advocate for a one-payer system. that is not what we could get. i am embracing the affordable care act. there are people in the state who have no access to healthcare. i commend the congressional delegation from new jersey that created an opportunity in our state to make sure that children can get insured. we need to provide access to doctors for all. wellness and prevention are going to because her stones, as you will implementation. as with any law, created at any level, when pieces don't operate correctly, you go back and correct it. >> i will be critical of my colleagues who say that we need to go further. this is a major achievement. the tea party wanted to and is still trying to kill it. i'm a big single-payer advocate. the bottom line is that we could not get a single-payer system. we couldn't get a public option. you deal with what you can. senator can he always said that half a loaf is better than none. that is a reality. factor that in to controlling costs. with the affordable care act, cost for insurance will be 50% less than what was before the affordable care act. when he talked about single- payer, that sounds great and it is wonderful. the fact the matter is, we cannot give the poster for that. most people will be covered. this be an effective program. >> thank you. there is still urgency. we need to do everything we can to implement this. again, we cannot wait. we have to get it done. we're showing a pathway to reduced costs by promoting that are held. we are dealing with childhood obesity. we have done this in newark to lower costs for seniors. even more than what we do with our newark-based prescription drug plan. there are things that we can do to build upon this. we cannot wait. we have to get going now. the urgency -- not just for people having health insurance but, for preventing people from getting sick in the first place and giving them access to preventive care. for children, too. >> universal single-payer system is not pie in the sky. that is what va and medicare is. it works. it works better than what most people have more what so many people do not have, at all. it is doable. the idea that we cannot hold out a vision of what is best for america because the tea party is going to object, that hold us back. that is up the definition of leadership, in my book. >> talking to the issue of what system is better, the reality is, there are immunities that are losing hospitals to guys hospitals cannot provide charity care. that is despite initiatives in obesity control. in a city like newark, we have added the closure of hospitals. columbus hospital, saint michaels hospital is teetering on the brink. if there is not political support, we will see more hospitals close and vulnerable communities. with the affordable care act will do is provide a way for hospitals to be compensated for the care that is being subsidized by the state. >> last question. we are up against the clock. you are democrats. you've gotten rave reviews from the papers. you're the best candidates that they have seen a long time. there's a good chance that what before of you will end up being the u.s. senator and go to an institution is dominated by democrats in fighting against another body is dominated by republicans. why should the voters send any of you there? >> i do not understand why it is a criticism that i have worked with governor christie. we disagree on almost anything. despite our differences, i'm the mayor of the largest city of the state and i have to work with the governor. we worked together and created the largest economic developments in newark since the 1960s. that is what you have to do is united states senator. you have to find a way to work with people that you disagree with you stop not to criticize and yell at them. find common ground when it exist. even if it is only 10% of the things between you. is the problem washington. if you like what you're getting from washington, stick with it. it is not working. if you want the same experience, take the same experience. we need a different experience. not to washington experience. >> as a scientist, i listen to people and study evidence, follow the facts, and take it where it leads, to a conclusion. that is true for all this. if you start with the facts, you can get things done in a divided and polarized system in washington. that is how i got the mental health and suicide programs gone for soldiers and veterans. that is what i have done with student aid. setting up money for teachers. historic preservation for foreign languages that i did was senator lautenberg. you find common ground and you can get things done. that is what i have done in washington and i have a vision. >> talent comes in a skirt often. the lack of women representation in new jersey's congressional delegation must end. i have served at every level of government. i have worked in newark's municipal government when the man was in high school. i have sat at every desk at every level of government. municipal, county, state. i have worked in higher education. i have worked in the private sector. i know the challenges that face the state and this country. i believe that i have the capability to address any issue that is of note to new jersey's nexen her. i think, with that, the scope of experience in working with new jersey's issues. >> being an experienced legislator does not make indifference. i work with my colleagues on either side of the aisle to make a difference, in writing the affordable care act, cleaning up toxic waste sites, these are all examples of how you can get things done. we need an experienced legislator. i know that the mayor feels that being the mayor qualifies him. he does not work with a lot of the congressman. half of the people in the senate are former members of congress. i've worked on legislation with them over the years. if you think about what i have done and what i can do to make a difference for working families, growing economy, creating jobs, changing the tax code, working with the president to grow the economy, this is what you need. a congressman with experience. >> it's time for closing statements. we barely scraped the surface. i apologize. i want to get to as many as we can. it is time for closing statements. >> we have seen clear differences between the candidates. we had to protect working families and look out for the little guy. that is what i want to do in the united states senate. i have a myself on senator lautenberg. people think that i can get things done. like senator lautenberg, i will never couple mice my principles. i was one of the first -- i will never compromise my principles. i voted against defense of marriage act because i thought it was wrong. i was an early opponent of the iraq war. i think you have to stand up for your principles. we're all democrats. i believe in the democratic party and i believe that i can make a difference. i mentioned the fight to clean up toxic websites. the fight for the affordable care act. i can make a difference as the united states senator. i ask for your vote on august 13th. thank you. >> time for the closing statement from mayor booker. you have 40 years of experience between these two congressmen. if you like what you are getting out of washington, you should go for them. to me, we do not need more washington experience. we need a different experience in washington. when washington could not pass a jobs bill, we got to work. we were able to create local loan funds and other programs that created jobs. in washington, we could not get right for our veterans come home, we started the first ever been impossible and stop. -- that are in -- veteran's one- stop. enough is enough. we've seen what 40 years of experience is getting us. a sign for different leadership. good is not enough and better is possible. i hope i get the chance to be your senator because i know that we can do better. >> i think the organizers and the viewers. the citizens of new jersey need to know what they will get in the next senator from new jersey. in my case, i have been out there and very public. i've been running this campaign on issues and specific issues. i have a record that is clear. the new york times said that i am the most able legislator of the group. you have the position that i hold out. i wish we could have more of these debates. we need to know where mayor booker is on these things. i say that i support breaking up the big banks that are too big to fail and are too big to exist. i support a carbon tax. i support stopping spying on americans. mayor booker did not support any of those. he does not support single- payer, either. i have a list that is available for display and i have not hit or equivocated. i reflect a progressive agenda that will help the people of new jersey. that will extend to all americans. >> i would like to thank njtv for allowing us to engage in this dialogue. i like to say that it is time to break up the old boy's network that exists on capitol hill. the way we do that is by making certain that new jersey's congressional delegation reflects the people that live in the state. 53% of our population is composed of women. households are headed by women. whether they be widowed, divorced, never married. it is time for issues that are important to average, working, every day new jerseyans. it is time to have a center that will represent working class people and people who are trying to get a toehold to become part of the middle class. it is not matter that you have fraternization with other states. this campaign is about new jersey and no place else on the plan. >> thank you very much. to all of the candidates, thank you very much. this first debate is over. we want to send it to the studio next door. and, to our host here at the university. thank you to all of the candidates. a reminder that the special election to choose the candidate is a week from tomorrow. we have had the privilege to bring all this to you. many issues that we tried to get to, we try to cover them as much as possible. we tried to cover them as much as possible. thank you very much. we hope to see you back here once again. good night. from almost here at njtv. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] councilmayor and chairman vincent gray faced each other and one of the most expensive and contentious elections in d.c.'s recent history. $5 million was spent to hold onto his seat and vincent gray spent only 1.2 million dollars but one the public over as an affable and effective chairman. office inter he took mayor,rown who ran for said he was paid and promised a job during the elections. federal investigators soon discovered much of his story was true. they also uncovered an even bigger secret -- the shadow campaign. basically, you had a campaign going on that is the regular campaign you see. then you have another set of rightwho are in an office next to the gray campaign. during the campaign, there is so much going on. you had several workers actually the otherg about workers because they know they are getting paid more and there was a lot of confusion as to who was paying them, etc. it wasn't until a year later that folks started adding things together when federal investigators began asking questions and they realized the folks who were next door, we can't find any record of them in the campaign-finance records. how did they get paid and who was in charge of them? >> that's tonight at 8:00 on c- span's "q&a." >> if we can weigh the needs of others, those forces wringing about this suffering. >> the white house is a bully pulpit and you ought to take advantage of it. >> obesity in this country is nothing short of a public health crisis. >> somebody had their own agenda. >> there is so much influence in that office. >> i think they serve as a window on the past to what was going on with american women. becomes the chief confidant to -- the only person the world that man can trust. >> they are in many cases more interesting as human beings that their husbands, if only because they are not first and foremost limited by political ambition. >> roosevelt is one of the unsung heroes. when you go to the white house today, it is edith roosevelt's white house area -- white house. >> there was too much looking down and i think it was little too fast. not enough change of pace. >> yes, mamma. >> in every case, done whatever has fit her personality and interests. >> she later wrote in her memoir that she said i, myself never made any decisions. decided what was important and when to present it to my husband. stop and think about how much power that is. it's a lot of power. part of the battle against thatr is to fight the fear accompanies the disease. >> she transformed the way we look at these bugaboos and made it possible for countless people to survive and flourish as a result. i don't know how many presidents have that kind of impact on the way we live our lives great fax -- our lives. >> just walking around the white house grounds, i'm constantly reminded of all the people who live there before and particularly all of the women. influenceladies -- and image" produced in cooperation with the white house association. season two premieres on september 9 as we explore the modern era and first ladies from edith roosevelt to michelle obama area -- michelle obama. up next, "newsmakers" with california congressman, dana rohrabacher on u.s. russia relations and al qaeda's continued threat abroad. then the second annual family leadership conference with remarks by rick santorum and donald trump. after that, president obama's speaking to disabled in orlando, florida. with aq and a" washington post investigative >> our guest this week is dana rohrabacher. he has responsibilities for issues involving russia and also looks at emerging threats. after the big decisions about u.s./russian relations in the summit, we thought it important to speak to him. let me introduce our reporters, guy taylor. blake houshell is the deputy editor of politico. >> my first quonon
>> well, it's thank you all for coming. i have to say first that i really honored that mark asked me to be part of this as a third world friends from ann arbor are we both went to college and the editors at the newspaper. i knew then that mark was from the area, like icann, but i didn't know of these intense interest in detroit history and the stories here and that leads me to my first question, which is what i do to want to write this book? i remember you calling me when you are starting to work on that you said to write about book about the jewish heard that since it is everybody. this is a different book than this the others are reading right now. >> i sensed that a little tiny bit with her not to lunch the first time. thank you first of all for doing this. i guess i've always been drawn to detroit as a topic and, you know, i thought for the longest time it would maybe turn out to be a novel. that seems like the way to go. then, you know, when i came back in 2009, for "rolling stone," i was assigned to do a piece on the auto show. this was january 2009 comest you remember, you were here. it was, you know, chrysler and gm were on the brink of bankruptcy. the former mayor was in jail and detroit had become sort of the posters city of the recession basically. so i've seen reporters come from not even all over the country, but all over the world recently to cover this story, but also docked in a weird way, to take a few photos and use detroit is some sort of metaphor for whatever was happening in the country. that's probably around the time i called you and your lake good luck, buddy. but i did believe, i guess, as someone from the area that could hopefully bring more nuanced insensitivity to the topic. and that kind of nuance and clues, you know, didn't thank you very. so often somebody comes to detroit for a few days, focusing on the bleakest and most tired narratives told again and again and again. again as you know, t-shirt is a city of fascinating characters. he talked to people, don't just take pictures of empty buildings with nobody in the picture. >> that's one of the things that struck me about the book. it's not to treat the building. is to treat the. in some cases it's the people you happen to cross. it's not talking heads, not public officials, not price people. vicious people you met. one of my favorite stories in the book is the day you go down to the site of the original train from which now has a hotel on it that is sitting there empty and you met a bunch of different people down there, but one of them was this guy, tony. i wanted you to talk about how you met him hemline included him in the boat. >> at least asserted a telling moment. i guess i loved that kind of moment because of the serendipity of it. i'd been reading a lot of detroit history. it wasn't long after i got here. you know, as people here know, near the plaza is where cadillac, the french explorer, land owners a statue and so i've been reading about that and decided in this an unusually sunny day in the fall, so i decided to make my way down there and sit outside. it was a weekday and it was pretty empty. this guy, tony, approached me. he looked like he might be a street guy, maybe homeless. i thought he was going to sa for money. he saw me reading it said pulled out a couple of paper book packets out of this pocket. he started talking about how we love john urban. and then somehow he started telling me about his experience in the prison system and its different scars and bullet wins. he eventually starts telling me that people don't want to mess with him and he yanks up his sweatshirt and had a giant machete and unlike in acts in his belt. he just sat totally straight face. you know, i'm a license carpenter, sauna like to carry my tool. [laughter] it was such a great -- great for the purpose of metanarrative detroit moment. his name is tony and antoine cadillac. persius a lot of resonance. >> and you're telling the story of the city through these characters to your meeting, but one of the things that struck me about the book is your not so much making -- are making observations. you're not making judgments and there's not that much analysis in the book. it really shows the story of what it's like to be here now, what it's like to live here now. you type out a nicely with a history of the place in lots of different instances. >> thank you. we appreciate you saying that. i've been doing interviews last two days and people want analysis. they want kind of a soundbite. is it a bunch of radio interviews of people in other parts of the country. they're like what's next for detroit? just like these ridiculous questions. i didn't write a policy book that i could answer that question and 30 seconds, i would be announcing my candidacy for mayor probably. [laughter] >> you and everybody else. >> i tried really to talk to people and certified detroiters tell their stories. the history as you said is so rich and so multilayered that i just kind of let that come out. >> another really striking part of the book for me was about the blues concert that happened. actually not far from where i grew up. >> near lafayette park. >> ray. and by live now -- i'm not quite sure i seen anyone else come to detroit and actually pick up on the fact that things like that still go wanted neighborhoods like that. and that's a neighborhood that if you went and drove through, you'd really think almost nobody lives there. >> i found that very interesting. it's right up saying often, you know, a part of the east side of detroit, where you go down some blocks and there's one house last in the grass is up to here in the summer. you really feel like you're standing in the country or some thing. you know, i found a really fascinating the way people kind of take ownership of that and can sometimes, you know, turn it aside into an asset, at least make something of it. this guy pete aero, who happens to be a cousin of joe louis. >> and related to tom barrett was time for mayor couple times. >> of course, yet. >> so everybody is connected. there is this kind does block renfield basically, that it had once been densely populated with residential houses and now it's all in d. and so he has these blues every sunday during the summer. it's a great kind of people that comes out and that's another only in detroit thing. you feel like coming in in okamura clarksdale, mississippi, only five minutes from downtown. >> i know you're from this area, like i said. after ann arbor, you left it mostly lived other places and then you come back to detroit to tell this kind of story. tell me about the things that surprised you about the city, things that she found it were different that maybe he didn't expect for things you found over the same that may be shocking. >> the first thing that surprised me was how much i like living here, to be honest. full disclosure, when i decided to do the piece, i moved away and 93 in my family still lives here. so a year never went by where he didn't come back to visit at least a couple times. the idea of a real extended-stay, planting myself here. i wasn't sure how that would go. i had a life in new york, liked my life there. i kind of thought i would approach it is almost like a regular reporting gig come away with comment, work really hard for legal week, get every time done that needed done and then retreat back to new york for like four weeks. it didn't work out that way. i found myself spending more time in new york and making a lot of great friends and been inspired by things, you know, things like what you just mentioned, like the weekly thing. there's an interesting energy that it's hard to pitch your finger on, but does cooper, quote through the book, she's not a native, the nature in the 80s and she's a longtime journalist and smart anchor about detroit. she talks about how detroit is the sort of place where people are doing things every day that you're not expected to do anywhere else. people come home from work and patrolling neighborhoods because their site every claiming the think that lots and turning them into gardens are concert venues. they're bored and i it houses. bible chapter in the book and i feel like that surprised me i guess, that the extent of that and how real and kind of inspirational that can be. >> some of the characters in your book are familiar characters. characters we see written up all the time in reference to detroit. one of them is by rick akin, someone who lives not too far from me and where i grew up. i've read i don't know how many different things about tyree who i've met several times and talked to. this treatment was very different than anything else i have seen and i wanted to read just a couple drafts of how you captured him and talk more about it. at the end of this section it says guyton said he been pondering why he did what he did and how we got to this point in his life, waving his arms skyward again, he believed in a purpose for all of us. this guy didn't look strikingly beautiful this morning. about my silly to argue with her host. but we got to my car, everything was fine. a few blocks earlier, it doesn't have -- in front of our past. we seem to all cry out at once. one so inclined, might have interpreted the moment is arguing something good. it's a really hopeful set of phrases that you put together around a guy who i'm not sure has ever seen described quite that way. >> is another thing i stumbled upon. he's definitely somebody who's been written about a lot. so i had kind of a list of those people who have wanted to reach out to come especially when i first arrived here, because i wasn't sure what the direction of the book would be. i somehow got an e-mail and his wife responded and said he doesn't do interviews unless he's paid now. i was like alright. i was hanging out these other people, this guy rich feldman, who is a longtime labor at this and works with grace bob, who is a really interesting as well. really, mark read eastern part of the weather underground in the 60s and 70s happened to be in town doing a reading. so this guy rich was taking brought on a tour and and i tagged along and we ended up at the heidelberg project and tyree just happened to be there. i don't know, everything just seemed very weirdly fortuitous. i'd never talk to him before and he's very devout me kind of just out of the blue started asking us about god. we were standing on the street that was kind of left for dead when he reclaimed it in the 80s and he's turned into coming in now, really you could say an international tourist destination. he further any day during that we can see people all over. i don't know -- >> it's not guyton as celebrity in the book. it is guyton sa guy. >> he happened to pull up in his pickup truck and was checking out this flag he had just detached from one of the houses. i would much rather present a character come especially well-known character like that and that sort of setting, but the camera is slightly off kilter, rather than sit down and do a formal interview. they're going to have talking points to get the same story. >> i'm going to indulge myself here because i work at one of the newspapers. but she read a lot about press coverage of the city in the book and particularly local press coverage. the first-time user to visit this with the headlines about crime in the city. i think one of the tricks of writing about detroit is not assuming it's one or the other. not assuming it's these things have not those, but that it's all of those things and trying to figure out how they'll coexist and fit together. i sigh you did a good job of something like murder, which we get a lot of coverage for and violence is a real presence in people's lives here. he did a good job of capturing how it is so surreal to you as an outsider, some of the headlines and things you see, but it's a very real presence also for people here. >> yeah, for sure. you're right. there were several aspects of the detroit story that been told so often and can be told in such a caricature way. i struggled with how to do with it myself because you can't just ignore it. i think it was the detroit news that had to pull a recently, where 40% of detroiters said they wanted to move in the next for years that they could and crime is the number one reason. you can't tell the story honestly without reckoning with that kind of thing. but how to do it was tricky. i think telling the story to characters for me was the way to go. it's the kind of nonfiction writing i like to read. hearing it through carrot dirt rather than through statistics are experts or whatever. along the lines of crime, one example that just came to mind, john is here somewhere, but detroit blogger john -- there he is -- he took me to this weird place, which is a whole other story called club thunderbolt. >> i want to talk about that a little later. we'll get back to that. >> the crime aspect of the story was this guy who lives in a rough neighborhood in detroit. were chitchatting one of us noticed a hole in his front door that had been crudely covered up with the board, like somebody had hammered a shot. i was like what happened and he said he been upstairs one night watching one no and heard somebody break and come assuming that there's a shotgun. this guy was heavily armed combat against taking out the back of his peers. he had a whole arsenal he showed it. so he runs downstairs, she's the guide to the door, have an infinity intentionally shut up because he didn't want to kill him and called a lease. took them four hours to get there. when they arrived, think they told them was aimed higher. so it's very dark, but also, you know, a better way of illustrating the severity of what's going on here. >> sure. so let's talk about club thunderbolt. this came up on the web chat you had with us today. i saw that. john carla is one of the first people i met when i initially came here to report on the collapse of the auto industry for rolling stone gate i didn't know at that point is going to be about, but i started poking around and i found some blogs and just loved it. so it e-mailed him and he wrote back right away and ended up showing me around for that story. but became friends and when i moved here, we would occasionally go out and he say i found this crazy spot. this spot was particularly -- this might've been the craziest. he's probably found something else, but it is the sky who is living at his parents house. they both died in this very rough neighborhood in detroit. he had been shot in the face as a kid, like a teenager may be, so he looked like he had a stroke. it was partially paralyzed, but he was a very strange, intense carrot or, like i said, heavily armed. the club part is that he turned his parents house into a strip club. so you had to call this number and if you went there come you end up in this house that is furnace -- furnished by a couple in the late 1960s. it's like frozen in time in a creepy what him away, but then their strippers. so that was a weird night. [laughter] >> there was another part of the book, another passage in the book is struck me when you're writing that evangelist murders that have been on the east side an outsider was really interesting how you sort of drew a parallel to those murders and murders that it happened i think 80 years before in the same neighborhood. but then you talk about going to see the trial and i thought i would just read again a short passage to capture how you essentially right about us and how we deal with these things. when i arrived at the quarterback frank murphy how i was surprised by the absence of any other journalist. i thought i pulled a bouldering turned out unnecessarily early. perhaps never even bothered with the first day. at a single reporter turned out for the duration of the trial. hickerson dismember what it erred in some small entries, but it is a crime was a quite extraordinary enough registry standards. what you have to do around here to get the name? essay make the big local crime story had been tollroad crew try to rob a suburban convenience store with a loaded gun. a real insight into the challenges we have, that anybody has coming here, taking it all in and trying to sort through what is important. >> i was a strange thing. you mentioned the murders and not was at one point i system in light of research on detroit history and i came across this very sensational crime that happened in the 20th. account my attention because it involved italians and my parents are here. italian immigrants. at that time, this neighborhood very close to it those blues concerts are on the east side was very italian and there was this guy, he called himself any evangelist. his last name is evangelista. it was sort of a cult leader. there is some economic fate that he basically made up his own religion and wrote this really weird book called something like this secret history of the universe as revealed through a cult science in the troy, michigan, which i almost used for my title. [laughter] so just to tell the story very quickly, he and his entire family were brutally, gruesomely murdered. they were beheaded and his children were killed as well and it was this big sensational story at the time. you can go through the free press archives and plan on this coverage. and it was never solved. at a certain point i realized it was not far from where i was living over in eastern market. so what to check it out for his house was is just a field now. i just kind of filed it away. weirdly enough, probably a year later, there was another murder, almost literally across the street. it was the drug thing and these kids were trying to scare -- two rival drug houses in this zone and these two teenagers were trying to scare off their rivals and so to do this, i ended up killing them horribly dismembering this guy come in the this random guy and scattering audi parts around literally across the street from the southern murder. so i thought it can, i was like history repeating itself in a way that i found fascinating. as you say, i went to the trial. i don't normally cover murder trials. i don't have the etiquette. idea mike [laughter] i don't know if it's not cool to show up the first day, but i was the only one there to the point where the judge called me out of the china site who are you? he noticed me taking notes. it was very shocking to me that did not rise to the level of daily coverage. >> i think that's a fair criticism. the reaction to the book has been, at least from my standpoint, just overwhelmingly stark and positive. i mean, you've got a lot of national attention for this book, but i don't see going to some other things people are doing around here. i wondered what you thought. did you expect he would have this kind of resonance nationwide? >> it's been great. i couldn't really hope for -- the coverage has been great so far, so i was really thrilled by that. i do suspect people would be interested, just paste in the totally out whenever i meet people not from detroit, the sort of general interest and be sure you detroit still has the special mystique for people. i think in a way few other american cities have. a handful of cities, but i can't tell you how many times i tell people about the book were just a turn the area. you get this too because he lived in baltimore and other places. detroit i always meant to go there. what's it like? i don't know. there's a fascination. sometimes it's like a morbid kind of unseemly fascination. but i write in the book, over the course of my reporting and i'd be curious to see if you've agree, it's changed a little bit. the recession ground on and on, there came a point when it seems that people who are not from the short really wanted detroit to succeed. like it became almost like a horatio alger story, where you want a street urchin to become the president of the bank. it was sick and inspirational story because people are looking at their own cities wherever they are, stockton, scranton, jefferson city. and then i look at detroit, with the reputation of the worst place who they think if detroit can make a comeback, we've got hope, too. the comeback narrative was willing capsule he did in a super bowl ad, really resonated in a way that shocked me. but it kind of makes sense. >> i think locally, like i said, i grew up in the 70s and 80s and left after college like you did and came back in 2007. i was more shocked that people were still talking about a comeback in 2007 because i can remember 1977, when i was in first grade on a field trip to see them build the renaissance runner and the people leading the field trip telling us this was the beginning of detroit coming back. i was six-time. i am not six now. so that is a really resonant him. for those of us here, it's like all right. we be back. >> , they have there been since then? >> right. that sort of leads me to another passage that was really telling them the boat. for decades a succession of city officials have struggled mightily to rebrand detroit's battered image. the schemes included gambling, new ballparks, hosting a super bowl, even commissioning they are young mayor yemenite tuning fork, records who fled detroit for l.a. in the early 1970s, taken the entire operation to a theme song for the city modeled after frank smashers theme for new york new york come a half years earlier. a black or member of the rat pack, sammy davis junior was conscripted to handle vocals but other detroit failed to burn up the charts. i do remember that. although we used to play it every morning one of the local radio stations. except in belgium where it reached number one. i didn't know that. but now much attention showered on detroit from the trendiest quarters came in no small measure thanks to the city's play. detroit spring had become authenticity and a key component have to do with the way this city look. fixing the very real problems faced by detroiters i began to wonder inevitably robbing detroit of some part of its essential detroit mess. three or four people in the last couple days have given the book a read have come back and asked me about a specific last line and they're curious whether what you're saying is that our dysfunction is such a part of us that we can't afford to let it go, that we can't afford to lose it. a couple people were mad when they asked you about that. i said i don't know. so i'm asking you. >> there's actually not dysfunction, but i do think -- i don't know, i don't want to say a word about this because any development to detroit, people welcome mat. but a think about what it -- but the positive developments, especially you see stuff coming up in downtown. but what will that mean exactly? is bulldozing a bunch of those old things and putting up new models like structures, some people would share that. in a way, why not. you've been driving past the same ratted outbuildings for decades. so you can't fault people for that. at the same time, i don't want detroit to look like houston or every other city basically accept a handful of cities. i guess i'm referring more to what i referred to earlier, the mystique that detroit has a basic new orleans and a handful of other cities as hard to push your finger on what makes that essential. you know, what components planned to that exactly. but it shows something to think about. >> to think of us have been detroit forget her together? >> now, definitely get our act together, but it's more paving over history may be. i think that's what is he not completely. >> we should probably take some questions from the audience. if there are any. come on, folks. you've got to have questions. >> i write under the name martian music. i noticed that in your dialog with one another just a little bit ago, that you seem to me, both of you, and perhaps you've are based in a relationship with the media here to be trapped in some kind of the crimes were attacks that seem to be a rapid whole that those of you are going down because i have no doubt that this book probably has a great many more stories other than the crime issue. do you find it to be very high to avoid that -- dotmatrix i've sorted the only interesting thing to say about the city? >> well, certainly i think there's lots of other interesting things about this city. but as someone who's lived here more time than anywhere else, i also say that crime is a very big part of our life here, no matter where you live, no matter who you are. i worry every day because some of you may be to pay for may know that my street lights have been out for a good long time. i worry about my wife and kids walking from garage to building every day because the lights are out and it's dangerous. so you can get too caught up in it. it doesn't define my life, but it does give contour. it does shape decisions i make every day in the decisions i ask a wife and kids to make every day. but i certainly didn't mean to suggest that's the only thing that's interesting, either about the book, which is not about crime, but does give you a good sense of the role that crime plays here. abby imac >> i thought we did. >> autosave marcia is one of the stars of the book. we actually met funnily enough that a different path -- not a talk i was giving, but someone who is even a lecture on berlin's and we were discussing -- they were discussing the things you and i were just discussing. what do you want to preserve? who do not want to preserve? and marcia asked a few provocative questions, so i introduced myself afterward and she kindly took me on this great driving to her of the city. as the note that within this weekend's "new york times" magazine with a longer version of the book. so i have plenty of reason the book were just not good people. [inaudible] >> i do the same tree, but i'm now back in detroit. i lived in brooklyn for a while. care to comment on similarities between brooklyn raised in an? >> i feel like an away detroit pistons will version of what they think they're doing. [laughter] [applause] i mean, i have so many new yorkers tell me i want detroit. about to open a bakery, in our store, whatever. i say have ever been? it's not williamsburg. trust me. come visit first. i feel like i found a lot of fat, that sort of really positive coverage of detroit, particularly of the art scene and young bohemians coming in. it was kind of cool at first, they started grating on me a bit after a while. i feel that some of that was striven to people coming from places like brooklyn and fighting this place they could really romanticize. you know, living in a place like new york communally theo like you missed the golden era of coming out, bohemian grittiness that people think they are looking for. but the east village in the 80s or whatever. i think detroit and a very superficial way came to represent that for some people. >> do you think that is a distraction from the real story here? are the real trajectory of the? >> all things considered, positive coverage about detroit is good. obviously it is annoying. detailed city story, where lake people under 30 will save detroit and everybody was white. officiously, really? so i think it's distortion were then distraction. all the stuff happening is great and exciting, but it's such a tiny little pocket. [inaudible] >> by a defense pity that the question you ask me about this city that he could see detroit, that he literally could see detroit and is seeing detroit, what i really meant -- what they mean to say by that is he was able to see the totality of the people who live here because there's many ways in which particularly in this bible as he calls it at the newly developed midtown and downtown areas, there's a tendency to treat detroiters, native detroiters is invisible and i have been on a mission for some time to counter the invisibility of the actual african-americans who make up the majority of the city. and i was very clear that he was not trying to do a positive story on detroit because just the triteness of that is offensive, too. but he was trying to do an objective and penetrating look at the city and cutting through some of the myths of the city and the new development because that has been mythologized as well. >> again, because you stick to stories, stories about real people who live here and i've been here a long time, the book really has that feeling of just saying what is that supposed to saying good or bad, or even what should the, which i've heard some of the interviewers then they try to lead you to some sort of analysis and where is the city going, with the city's teacher? the book i thought did a very good job of restraining itself from that, which were getting a lot of from other places. [inaudible] rbi mark >> i just wanted to know how much of your book was really surrounding the music in history in and i'm really sad that she didn't ask me about my error. as a big part of that guy would mansion group, bob seger, hung out there every weekend. i just wanted to know about that. i understood in your blog that no one has hit a book about your next adventure. [inaudible] >> the most loaded question i've heard. >> i do stand by that. there's a great biography. >> there have been books written about him. they are much more academic. i'm spilling beans that are not mine i suppose, but i know there are projects in the work to either do a biography or documentary. next year will have municipal elections. it will be 20 years since he stepped down. so that's sort of a good time to pitch to people to get money to do it. maybe someday. >> good, good. as for the music stuff, it's partly why i had to leave detroit to actually write the book because part of me wanted to read every book about detroit. i could've done a whole book about the music, a whole book about coleman young. so sorry to disappoint you, there's not that much music in the boat. there's a little bit about detroit techno music because i ended up living on this block where they basically invented techno music, so that was another story has stumbled onto. i talked to older guys around, talked the last surviving people , but i do a lot of music writing for "rolling stone" and i just wanted to do something different with this one. >> is there a single character in your book does more inspirational than any other? [inaudible] more inspirational than any other. that's a good question. i thought the firefighters that i spent time with in highland park -- i spent time with these firefighters in highland park who was literally operating on applicable chrysler warehouse. their firehouse had been condemned like five years earlier. some of the guys were sleeping in tents because they spend three days they are at a time. they had so few walkie-talkies that they would communicate with hand signals that the fires. it was insane what they were doing. but they're really dedicated. i would say maybe those guys. >> hi, how are you doing? >> pleasure to meet you -- very honored to meet you. your son spoke very highly of you. do you think detroit is suffering from what i think this payment is suffering from, this specialness, this need for specialness on the planet earth in the sense that detroit is a claim specialness in an unusual way the mess they grasp to claim that, that's where a lot of a lot of dysfunction happens. in fact, the whole planet has a whole dysfunctional relationship to specialness. like my family claimed that specialness. >> a direct descendent of the same mounting family, one of the original french settlers of detroit. so the streets on that side, with french sounding names for the original birthing farms owned by the founders, the first settlers of detroit. i just found you on the internet somehow. and weirdly, you knew my brother's wife's family. but i'm not totally following the question i guess. >> i guess what i'm saying is there's a claim to specialness that detroit seems to have. everybody i think that's in a certain way, shape or form. tel aviv thinks they're special. wherever you go, there's a specialness. detroit has a unique relationship in specialness than other cities do. for example, san antonio thinks they're special because this come about or anything. and this city is a unique claim to specialness in a way that i think no one else can relate to because as we keep getting all these errors had not disrupted student banks, we find a specialness even in that. >> i think that's one of the things that attract me to writing about detroit even before writing this book was this one of the great stories -- american stories of the 20th century. if you think about the epic rise of the city from what came out of it, you know, basically modern life in the 20th century. consumer culture, the middle class, it changed everything. that rise in the fall, the way of so also said so much about the top things of american culture. yeah, i think that is special. >> the reason i ask is because it was funny to me when i was a kid, when they landed on the moon, when you look at the united states is what thing that stands out is michigander and i can say salt mines that people don't even recognize. we have in our family, boxes and boxes of documents signed by pontiac and all these people. this river is very unique, separating two countries and a very unique way. we talk about the arsenal of democracy. i don't know if this country would've won world war ii without the city. >> talking about the specialness fire, now defaulting in a way that there's a lot more things to be proud about, not to crying, not any of this, but specialness in the wrong areas. been 61 i grew up in woodstock, the whole thing. it was like wonderful in the city. i haven't read the book. i'm anxious to read it. >> thank you. the only other thing i'll say someone mentioned to me once something about the soul. i'm trying to buy what he said, but because there's so much it created some positive energy your positive and negative energy. this guy was a druggie, strange character. but there might be something special about this all. and it's going to throw it out there. >> temperature more questions. >> i guess i want to follow up in the attached on a couple of these things, but just the idea that detroit may be more than any other place is a product of the 20th century and responsible for all these things we sort of assume that relate to, whether it's generational or not, we are at this place, it kind of behavior we have other stuff,, the remnants, the baggage and you can talk about that in a lot of ways. but where does that kind of leave us? what do you sort of see in terms of detroit 100 years from now -- [inaudible] i'm not asking for a prescription. it's more like here we are, kind of had this big? i'm not asking you to paint a picture as much a sort of lake wonderware status what it is -- why we are here. why many of us sort of get up in the morning. >> yeah, i think that's a good question. we talked a little bit about this earlier, the idea of my fear of bulldozing and paving over some of that history. i think you and i might have talked about this once. frances is another person i interviewed at the boat. he's been active in the preservation movement here. the industrial history of detroit is, you know, it is a significant part of 20th century american history. the way that we look back, preserved, you know, some of the ruins in rome and greece. so i don't think we want to lose that. as far as what it becomes, i have no idea. [inaudible] my question is, you know, i love detroit. and from here he moved back. i'm in love with the city still. everyday i find something about the city that i just fall in love with. i actually live in the city and not outside the city, so i can say a lot about the city. so my question is what neighborhood or area did you find this fascinating? this is either the caller or the bombshell. you have to go there like the next day. >> our street, you know, this is another weird moment of serendipity. i was looking for a semi-furnished apartment, found an ad on craigslist in a different team basically the single block, service street, not far from where you grew up. [inaudible] >> that names the data service street. totally different story. >> there were some shops back there. my father is retired now, based to make deliveries to the butcher shops there. >> for people living there back then? >> i don't think so. the business owners on the street didn't want me and my friends doing what we were doing there. >> is changed even in the four years since i went to that place. when i first arrived, it felt like the best possible version of what i thought detroit could be. issue such a vibrant ask of people. you know, a personal chef. there was djs and john sinclair was around a lot. rock history. ron scott, whose degree of local care your found at the local chapter of the black answers back then. so just a wild mix of people in such a tight community. so that is one neighborhood, even though it's just a single block, that i would point to. [inaudible] >> yeah right, there was a fire pit people would hang out at. this is an eastern market. the other neighborhood i say, which we talked about a bit, the part of the eastside, very populated part of the eastside was still has interesting pockets of people doing things. farnsworth street is just a single block, basically one type up a bunch of the houses that it's almost like this hippie commune do you see other people who kind of nx pr is all the ground that it put up these big fences and put this crazy italian statute area and have like a quadruple sized yard. so i don't know, bad things happen there, too, like these drug mergers. but that is a neighborhood i kept going to again and again. >> i'm going to ask the last question. it's about the title, which i think it's a great title, but i think when you say detroit companies to detroit. if you say detroit city of detroit city. have you had to explain that to people? >> i don't really know how to explain it, but i say it that way and people always remark. >> so how did you come up with? >> is from a song. vicious about the motor city madhouse, yeah. it just felt appropriate for this moment. we touched on this during the talk, just as camino, and he treats her trendiness right now. postrecession it did seem to become the place to be for all sorts of reasons. people wanting to fix it, people wanting to come up with these urban realignment plans. people wanting to take pictures of the ruins. for whatever reason, it seems like a special moment. it just felt right. >> lancelot, mark. >> thank you. [applause] >> for more information, visit the author's website, mark binelli.com. >> hopkins could read the president's news unlike anyone else. he came this close to anyone to gaining admittance into what robert sherwood called roosevelts heavily forested interior. unlike mrs. roosevelt, he knew when to be still in the presence of the president, went to price had, when to back off until the joke. after he won the election, wendell wilkie who he beat us in his office. they remained friends. he said to the president, why do you keep have been so close to? that man being hopkins. wilkie did not like hopkins and roosevelt said, you know, you may be in the south is sunday you'll understand. but he asks for nothing except to serve me. ..
>> you just can't walk into general motors. larry eventually made it to general motors but i think it took him 10 years also working another smaller concerns and still not in actual employee but a fireman and works for the subcontractor. and the other graduated in 1965 in the job search consisted of cutting class's to apply all auto plants in to hold down -- in town hall it was no coincidence that when the vietnam war was cranking up it was the perfect war for general motors because it was big enough to provide $750 million per year of defense contracts but not so big that it could not build cars light in world war ii. so 65 to 69 not a single month when the unemployment rate was higher than 4% in the united states for you could not be as lacquer the hippies had to create the alternative morality to justify themselves. so dog got married and bought a house and he was 20 and went on to work 37 years of general motors the course was set right out of my school he thought the baby boomers would be the last generation to earn more than their parents support of this is a generational story then in 2006 the body was torn down and saw a sign that said demolition means progress which i thought was orwellian. now that piece of land looks like a cross between nagasaki and the badlands is nothing there but wildflowers and they had to do layoff all waitresses' after the plant closed he had guys touche of the many across the bar between the ship's only to those that to the rooms to rent above the bar so what happened to those factories that to find cover community's? as a research the book i found there is a biography of the american middle-class and that is when -- what i want to talk about today because one of the my points is while the trends originally on the east and west coasts the economic trends originate in the midwest this is the birthplace in becoming the graveyard of the middle class where henry ford started to pay workers $5 a day so they could buy the cars they were building and this is for the sit-down strike took place with the modern union movement that played a big role to maintain the middle-class to make share -- make sure they got a fair share in the uaw always set the standard because of a product has more value during production of the automobile so the first excerpt is about a family friend who is 98 years old and one of the last of not the last surviving veterans of the sit-down strike and i will talk about how his life reflected the prosperity of the midcentury middle-class. >> one of the last surviving sit down strikers' natalie participated in the middle class but enjoyed all of the spoils of the peace that followed and tear and $27 an hour in the '70s mortgage any analyst wildlife biologist after he retired he was guaranteed free health care for the rest of his life 38 years so far only one year the work to the shot dead without the benefits from the uaw everyone is the unwanted uncle if you live his old age cattle he decided 100 years is enough life after gm went they groped in 2008 i told him the results and the consumption of his health benefits was personally responsible for the gm financial crisis he cackled provide of mower i would be living without it may be with one of my nephews or nieces my two sisters is. i don't know where i would be if i would not be living in the $2,000 a month apartment how long will the benefits last? although many i have this interest money i have saved. in his own lifetime that began three months after robo or one whit from farm boy to autoworker to prosper as pension american went from agrarian society to the post industrial nation and flint went from a small town building a cottage industry to the highest per-capita industry in the united states with the highest murder rate in the nation and how did all this happened in the span of one man's years? everett's father wanted to be a farmer but could not make cornyn beans grow so he worked with the family general store creating goods for milk and potatoes and takes aerial moves his family to flint where he built airplanes at the buick division would employ two-thirds of the city by the early 20th-century flint was already on the third great industry a descendant of the last in 1965 a saw mill began to operate with the pinewoods a.m. though lumber than the use that to become the carriage making capital when the automobile reid carriages obsolete been buick added in mentioned in the company became general motors for urban network flints population quadrupled 30,000 at one hit a 36,000 and gm had those all-out throughout the mississippi valley hitting a one-way tickets to the vehicle city the newcomers caveman railroad cars to into rented a tiny house all he could afford was factory pay. and then tried farming again and failed again and returned to flinch for good. he grew up of a city boy was no agricultural ambitions after graduating high-school he enlisted as "the apprentice" tool and dye maker at $0.50 per hour not only were the wages were low but the job could disappear in one day if you wanted in opening he would hand out a yellow sweatband bachelors were laid off while married men were kept the job and when did relate also men could work in the plant you could have a supervisor job then have it slip that said you we're done on november november 12th 3 welders conducted a sit down demonstration they pulled the time cards from the rackham and tired of parma's stopped working with the shutdown the plant manager agreed to meet with them who said production would not resume until they return to work the next day 500 autoworkers signed up there prevented the firing the uaw plan to the strike and january when the production is at its peak in the new deal governor would be sworn in but the week after christmas the company forced the unions and. on december 30th there rumors circulated that gm was about to shift the dye to grand rapids to stamp out 400 you expert day then they went on strike the move ended up causing the shutdown it was intending to prevent that 10:00 p.m. the nation's stopped working in refuse to go home and the strike had begun edward was working at the chevrolet plant because it was located in the low-lying area of the flint river ran the strike spread everybody as a supervisor vichy keep working or join the union he said joint. you need a. the sit-down strike was the most important event of his career to make is working man's fortune possible over the source of his long life there was never a better time to work for general motors than the 40's through the '70s and never a better time period after gm recognize the uaw to receive a pension plan and health insurance during world war ii he stayed out of combat to build armored trucks for chevrolet there would even bus people up from the south and everybody was working every betty had a job or wonder to cars we were getting better homes but america's greatest 20th-century invention was not the airplane or the atomic bomb or the lunar lander but the middle-class. we won the cold war not because of our military strength but we share the wealth more broadly than the communists and as a result had more wealth to share. born half a century later i assume to universal prosperity was a natural condition of life space beginning to assume otherwise the labor union through the economic order of what was saddled on their backs and the order to provide pleasures for the few in collective bargaining made obsolete the wages that stated that labor could command no more than its living from capitol and the notorious marketplace as bidding at the factory gate where they would offer services for $0.10 per hour only to lose a job to a more desperate man who did take $0.9 if this is nacelles of them perhaps the golden age of american worker was the aberration made possible by the fact resume the country to re-emerge from world war ii with any industrial capacity plan that end as soon as the world would rebuild itself making them the obsolete class? in this global century to reconcile themselves of the peasantry we have to ask was the american middle-class just a moment? america will never be as healthy as it was in the '50s and '60s because we had no competitors during those decades than the world was still digging itself out from the damage several ports to end those countries that became our competitors were the countries we defeated during that war and paid to rebuild the infrastructure so they have more modern factories in may took over responsibility for their defense over here the best engineers we're going into defensive aerospace because that is for the big government contracts were there best engineers are building cars and the event that really put the end to the geometric expansion of the way of life was the arab oil embargo in 73 also another imperial responsibility after world war ii which was the protection of israel after recent arms to israel and golda meir was the prime minister who requested those so there is the connection there. saudi arabia cut off our oil supply in the price of a gallon of gas going from $0.63 a gallon and with the license plate with an item number you get gas monday when stare friday or even number tuesday and thursday saturday at a time when the average american car got 30 miles to the gallon so i found a 1972 chevy impala after the fact there was a rolling hotel. [laughter] i drove it from michigan to california and slipped comfortably in the backseat not surprisingly they did not what cars to fill up every day but the auto companies did not want to build small cars they would sign the contract 11 the workers to retire after 381 negative 30 years neh and there was not enough profit margins with the small cars to pay for the benefits they really only believed those flaky people in california wanted to buy those small cars they made terrible small cars the pinto was rushed into production after 25 months and four decided it would be cheaper to pay off the lawsuits and to put the gas tank above a the we are axle and 30 live with the plastic liner there is a natural meadow discovered in those to put a value on human life and of they go with the quayle and both of my head gaskets plug on mind -- minds of their still people that will not touch them and the first great recession but in the '80s not nationwide like we just had but a deeper here that even the recent recession it was confined to the midwest. and those caused by the iranian revolution and the anti-inflationary industry set by carter they could not for the loan to buy one or a new house either this had a terrible effect on the steel mills that sold half of the product to the steel industry so nec's is what happened to a the steelworker starting his career in the '60s and also hall that crisis led to the launching of broccoli on his career as a community organizer that is from the previous book that i wrote young mr. obama in the making of a black president. the term rust belt originated was originally the rust bowl the first usage i felt was time magazine popularized by eight walter mondale during the presidential campaign when he accused reagan to turn the midwest into the rust bowl then it was altered to match the sunbelt's and whatever other bills that we have. [laughter] the bible belt. the term was the frost belt's before that. on the east side of chicago life to not go according to nature of the rest of the world when i fell in other neighborhoods they stayed dark until the next morning but on the side the night sky burned red when the waste product of steelmaking the steel mills created their own sun and sky and weather. in other neighborhoods housewives would state in deciding when a range of and did not want their sheets stayed with the senate there would be a metallic missed so thick you could get us boon to get a hold of it and if the natives the stench was as natural as the oxygen in did not go to work when the sun rose they went 11 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. or three teeeleven or sometimes a different shift every week when you went above 163 all the restaurants are open when you knocked on the door at the same hour he would sell you a cold pack of beer no matter the 2:00 a.m. license two years after his father is a demand came home from the war stanley was the exotic and the ethnic neighborhood his playmates call him catholic schiller as a student in the chicago occasional ice cody never thought about going to college because steelmakers made morphing chemistry teachers he thought about playing football and about 5% of my class went to college with a lot of guys on the side did not have plans we had the park and the teams in the plan was to get a better team campbell players to make enough money to get a car to make it to the game when graduated he had to pay renter get kicked out of his father's house said he walked over to enter lakes deal it was the worst job but it paid $2.32 an hour enough for an apartment and a car. just go apply there was so much work especially during vietnam they hired 50 guys that day and you'd always see guys a new helmets walking around the vietnam war which cause so much work to the steel industry made it easy for him to get hired but made it difficult to enroll in the apprenticeships program. one afternoon in 1966 as driving home from work a friend pulled up waving the envelope i just got drafted. so did you. sure enough when he arrived home the same envelope was waiting in the mailbox i guess that is why it was so high because especially in the industry because the young blue-collar males we're being drafted to the army. the war lasted longer so there was plenty of work with the cable but for two years he was part of the construction gang. and had whole life to work with the international construction company to where he would from the way home from the war and which would help him keep him on the side and then he got hit his girlfriend pregnant with to keep them on the side forever he does come back from vietnam to have big plans to travel the world. he was a planning for fatherhood into put in those careers for open-heart surgery then he began a pipe producer apprenticeships out wisconsin steel but nobody knew that he could not have prodded at a worse time. wisconsin steel was purchased by international harvester in in 1902 and they wanted to have placed deal and part steel labor dispute killed off but it had nothing to do with the steelworkers. november 1st, 1979 they went on strike after the company demanded they accept compulsory overtime and limits of seniority. international harvester was still wisconsin steel biggest customer. when they set up television news crews were gathered outside. did you hear what happened? it is closed. closed? he could not believe that why would they close the mill? wisconsin steel was in the neighborhood three generations how could that close? says he left carrying his bank of four men said we will contact you if something changes. nothing ever change. march 27 was the last day they ever spent inside wisconsin steel the mill was bankrupt. the last to paychecks bounced he worked there nine and a half years, the six months short of what would qualify for a pension he was promised 4200 in severance and bad check at $700. stanley was hurting $10 an hour but once he was laid off he got $100 per week in unemployment and would every to pick up at the hot spot he even asked for a tryout with the chicago bears he told his lifelike could not pay so i will just take my daughter to buy her clothes. him an end a few guys went to a of a mill in indiana but then he was laid off again in chicago had no more use for rob stamps so he moved to houston said he found a job playing as she rocked the high gasoline prices had brought prosperity and texas and out of work auto executive joked used in every region to filled his car with the papers and sold them in he would stand on a scaffold with a bunch of illegal aliens after houston he tried california and in goldeneye bartending school the promised a job and the glasses ended his instructors said it think you'd be better off working on your own so bob stanley a steelworker wandered back home for no other reason than it was spring and softball season was about to start at the park. the 36 old bachelor unemployment did not bother him along with three friends t. paid a couple hundred bucks a month to share an apartment and one remains italy's drive him to regain. he found a job as a plumber for the federal government but he had to start his whole retirement savings over again at age 40 so it took camelot lager to retire than he expected originally. so the last excerpt is what happens to a city after it disappears. this is about cleveland a neighborhood called islamic village was the cradle of the housing crisis that sink the entire american economy in 2008. i have to go back i did not explain about barack obama. he was hired in chicago i will go back, in this suburb of calumet city desperate steelworkers would turn to help the others to his parishioners plight in the religious conference. and also looking for a black organizer to serve and unable to find the right candidate locally they took out an advertisement in the magazine community jobs and was read by a graduate at the columbia school in barack obama began his rise of the presidency. with this deal workers still in denial they would plan to right out there and employ nonunion benefits they would always the one strike and return to work and earn more money than ever. wise a different this time? the less fortunate landed it minimum-wage jobs at sherman williams pate factory or lays potato chip in a never made as much money again. so back to cleveland, the cradle of the housing crisis that was seen the entire american in it economy in 2008 also to pay attention to what is going on in the midwest. slavic village was settled by bohemians and tax imported to break the strike at the cleveland to mel and one of those ethnic ghettos where you could speak the old world language and follow the old world customs your grandparents brodeur over to be married and working and drinking were shipping and be buried all within the same square mile but that would break up after world war ii so they sold out in the neighborhood is changed there is another cody that means the element. in the 2000 the village population fell 20% and those unwanted houses attracted speculators and flippers it had some of the weakest lending laws in the nation so on their quest opened an office and invented the stated income loan. if a borrower said hebron's 100,000 the lender took his word for it to. they would not let the facts get in the way. but 903 the properties were in foreclosure the highest in the zip code of any nation but of what it is like to live in the neighborhood of empty homes. but it houses the to have been then slavic village is the site of a mass rapture. the retired magazine editor a bachelor who would like to sit on his porch has lived his entire life in this little house of his grandfather bought in 1923. the kind of house that is good enough for everyone in cleveland. 800 square feet in a plot of grass with the virgin mary and the american flag. he shared with his brother. now he is alone. he died in 2005. his school friends want to know why he didn't go to the suburbs. is no wonder the neighborhood they grew up in. he stayed here and like many other urban neighborhoods where interrogation is the arrival of the first black and the leaving of though white slavic village only changed half way. the newspapers and lunchtime costs up for about crackpot and warsaw. and where he was baptized. . . >> eventually, a corner of the foundation collapsed causing the floor to sink 4 inches. the tenant moved occupant, and the house was -- moved out, and the house was demolished. the same thing happened across the street. after they set the house on fire, michaels went to court to have the place demolished. frugality was easy for michaels. having inherited his house, he never made a mortgage payment. he was astonished by the appliance repairman who divorced his wife and abandoned his house owing $83,000 and by the speculators who were paying double what the old line neighbors knew the properties were worth. sometimes we looked at some of these homes, and we said this is going for $86,000? what is going on? the bank wasn't looking at applications. as the loans went bad and the houses empty, the scrappers arrived tearing out furnesses and water pipes -- furnaces and water pipes right in broad daylight. clausen avenue came such a magnet for thieves, they even broke into occupied houses. a kid down the street tried to burgle michaels, but michaels chased him off. clevelanders have a saying, cleveland's pain, the rest of us gain. the lenders were so aggressive they went door to door on the east side of cleveland pointing out loose shingles, collapsing chimneys or sagging porches. money from a second mortgage could repair any of those defects, the door to door brokers told the homeowners. they never mentioned the adjustable rates. anita gardener's sons fell for that scam. gardener, who worked 31 years as a heavy duty machinist bought a two-story house on the east side for $21,000 back in the early 1970s. she was, it was almost paid off when she was diagnosed with a brain disorder that left her too ill to work or even walk up the stairs to her bedroom. so she bought a one-bedroom home and signed the old house, my buckingham palace where i could close off the world, over to her 30-something son. when gardener moved in, every house was owned by an autoworker, steel worker with a wife and new car. then the neighborhood's largest employer closed in 1999. the blue collar workers moved out, and the mortgage brokers moved in. having lost their paychecks, these dispossessed factory rats were told they still had a source of income. this couldn't have happened if people had good jobs, gardener said, or why would they change their mortgage? they were desperate for money. it was targeted, it was definitely targeted. morgan agents were going door to door calling on the phone. it was in the air. you don't have to have credit. you can have nice things. gardener's sons fell for the pitch. neither had been able to afford nice things. the other brother had served 11 years on a drug charge. when he got out of prison, the only job he could find was delivering lumber for sears. when an agent for countrywide financial -- whose ceo is in prison now, by the way -- offered them a mortgage, they signed. gardener suspects the agent falsely inflated the home's value. agents received bigger commissions for adjustable rate mortgages. the boys used the second mortgage for a shopping spree, a new couch, a big screen tv, a reafrican-american rater in the garage full of beer. the monthly payments began at $436 a month, but as the boys missed payments, it more than doubled to 950. when the past due amount reached $4,000, gardener's sons appealed to mom for a bailout. this raises a question, which is the greater social ill, allowing people who can no longer afford their mortgages to stay in their houses, thus undermining the credit system by letting people skip out on payments or evicting people from the houses for which there is no buyer, thus undermining the property itself and the surrounding neighborhood. ted michaels and anita gardener would say let the poor folks say and look after the house. vacant houses attract criminals. michaels called the cops on a stripper trying to tear the aluminum drainpipe off a house at 11:00 in the morning. in a 150-foot radius around a vacant house, property values go down at least $7,000. it's usually denuded of plumbing fixtures, boilers, carpeting, sinks, toilets and any architectural sconces that can be peddled to a secondhand shop. yellow foreclosure stickers are not warnings, they're invitations. inner sky scavengers salvage the last pennies of value until the mortgage lender ends up paying the city for demolition. so after all that i should tell you that my book has a happy ending. [laughter] when i went back to lansing, i found out that the fisher body plant whose demolition had helped inspire the book had actually been replaced. it was obsolete because it was costing general motors millions of dollars a year to build bodies in one plant and ship them across town to another plant to be assembled. so they acquired some land out in the country and put the whole operation under one roof. the plant on the grand river, which was 100 years old, was also torn down and replaced and now builds the cadillac ats which was car of the year and is the best-selling cadillac in decades. and it's also going to be building the chevy camaro soon. i think it's interesting to talk about the difference between lansing and flint where gm never replaced the plants it tore down, and auto employment has gone from 80,000 in the late 1970s to 7500 now. and as a result, the town has half the people it had, and its murder rate so high, its murder rate is 60 per 100,000, and if new york had the same murder rate, it would have 5,000 murders a year. so it's -- when you look at murders of cities in the western hemisphere, flint is up there with latin american drug capitals. but flint, it was crippled by the legacy of the sit-down strike because the flint autoworkers never let go of that militant spirit. strikes there were more frequent and lasted longer than anywhere else in the gm universe, so gm dispersed its workers to less militant locals. i also discovered a company in lansing which makes particle accelerators for physics experiments, x-ray imaging devices, and the company's president told we lansing was one of the few places he could operate the business because he'd hired retired gm craftsmen and very few places had both the academic knowledge and the ethic of manual craftsmanship that gm had imparted to the community. so i think high-tech manufacturing offers a future for postindustrial cities. another example i found about that was in syracuse, new york, and syracuse used to be the air-conditioning capital of america, and it made the sun belt possible. as a result, they ended up moving all the jobs down south because that's where the customers were, and the labor was cheaper. so syracuse invented the appliance that caused its own demise. but i visited a company which made high compression chillers, and they needed the, you know, legacy of craftsmanship and the legacy of engineeringnology that was still in the -- knowledge that was still in the community. and finally gus sold his bar. i actually, i ran into him about a month ago. he was working on a house he still owns across the street from the old bar, and i showed him the book, and he said i can't read english. so i'm hoping this book does well enough for there to be a greek edition for gus to read. [laughter] and, actually, if it does generate royalties, i'm going to donate 25% to some of the social service agencies that i wrote about in here such as slavic village development or recovery park which is an urban crop and fish farm in detroit. so i guess -- and as i talk here about the future of some of these high-tech businesses, i guess what i should end with is that michigan did not become great because of the auto industry, the auto industry became great because of a michigander. by name of henry ford. so i will take any questions now if anybody has any. i guess we have to go up to the microphone. no? oh, you don't have to do that? okay. >> you familiar with the book "someplace like america"? >> no, i'm not. tell me more ab it. >> well, there were actually two versions of it, and a reporter, writers -- a reporter and a photographer from acura did the first book. and that book inspired the springsteen song, and i can't remember the title of it now, one of the great -- >> okay. so was with it about -- >> how tough things are in america. and then they came out with a second one to check on the people they had interviewed. people had lost their jobs in steel mills and all across the country. >> right. >> they actually got an old chevy and drove and slept in the car and did all that kind of thing like people do, and they checked on them. it's an interesting book. no conclusions come from it, just that things are tough for a large number of people. >> [inaudible] >> yeah. i wrote a little bit about bruce springsteen in here and kind of -- there was a whole school in the early '80s of heartland rock, i guess they called it. so people, musicians finally got interested in blue collar work right when people stopped doing it. [laughter] so, you know, they'd been inspired by all these, you know, great two minute songs from california about, you know, the pacific ocean which was there, their greatest and most endless feature s and so they started writing songs about the mid midwest's greatest and most endless feature which was unemployment. there was bruce springsteen writing "my hometown," michael stanley from cleveland who wrote a book called "this town" which was an anthem of local pride. things are tough in cleveland. there was john cougar mellencamp, his songs jack and diane, pink house, and billy joel -- even though he's not actually from the rust belt, he wrote allentown, and bob seger had a song called making thunderbirds about the glory days of the auto industry. and be springsteen, actually, he did a song about youngstown, the ghost of tom -- >> that's the song the book inspired. >> oh, okay. okay. >> and the title's interesting because they were in california, there was a homeless person who was murdered, and the guy was -- he just wanted to see what it felt like to kill someone. >> oh, my god. >> so the homeless gather ored in this park in orange county, and these guys were camped with them, and all of a sudden the police came in to run them off at midnight, and the author said i can't believe they're doing this. and he said, what do you think? is this someplace like america? >> wow. do you know who the author is? >> no, i don't remember. >> are okay. i'll look it up. oh, okay. >> how many rust belt cities did you see that kind of bucked the trend and really didn't have a significant, you know, downfall? >> well, definitely chicago. i devoted a whole chapter to that, and it was from a comment i overherald from people actually working -- overheard from people actually working in a bookstore in the lansing, and they said we're all going to end up in chicago. [laughter] so it's kind of a rite of passage. you go to high school, you go to college, you spend a year or two on a low-wage job and then move to chicago, which was what i did. i followed all my friends to chicago in the mid 1990s. they just were suddenly picking up and moving during that recession. and, i mean, chicago finish there are a couple reasons. back in the '80s when i, during the period where i was reading about when stanley was losing his job, people really did think it was going to go the same way as detroit and gary and buffalo and just become a casualty. and a couple reasons were, one, it had a more diversified economy. i mean, the steel mills were only in one small part of chicago, but chicago had publishing, it had advertising, and most importantly it had finance. it's the financial capital of the midwest, so it was well positioned for when finance replaced industry. and mayor richard j. daley, he had really worked hard to preserve downtown. he inherited a downtown in which no buildings had been built since the 19 -- since the great depression. and, you know, he left it with the john hancock center and the sears tower, and he also made sure that o'hare, as transportation switched from trains to jets, that chicago was still the transportation center of the country. and someone in cleveland asked me what did chicago do right, and i i think what they wanted to know was, well, what can cleveland do that chicago did, and my conclusion was that cleveland can't do anything because in a lot of ways chicago's expense comes at the rest -- success comes at the expense of the rest of the region. i mean, it really attracts, you know, it's getting a free ride on the public education systems in michigan and indiana and ohio and here in wisconsin because, you know, so many young people move to chicago. i mean, there's at least one bar for every big ten school in chicago, and for my school, michigan state, i think there are over a dozen which i think are more than in east lansing. chicago is the number one destination for michigan state university graduates now. more than half the graduates now leave the state. so that's definitely the success story. but it's kind of a case where it's kind of a consequence of globalization just as money and education becomes concentrated among fewer people, it becomes concentrated among fewer cities too. so you had a -- did someone -- you had a question back there, yeah. >> i'm just wondering with the great depression and the rise of the unions because of that, say, why during this great recession it's been sort of absent backlash and why do you think that is? >> well, i think one problem is that people associate unions with industrial worker, with blue collar work. and i remember i asked a union, former union organizer or a union local president in chicago why don't more white collar workers demand unions, and he said, well, you know, the white collar worker, he has kind of a bob crash chet attitude. call me harry. so their kind of lulled into thinking that they're actually peers of the people they work for when the blue collar workers never had that attitude. i think people need the take the attitude that unions are for all workers, not just blue collar workers. but the union movement in the private industry is down to 6 or 7%. and certainly as you've seen here in wisconsin, now they're moving on to the public sector unions. i mean, i think maybe -- i don't know what the exact percentage is in the public sector, but it's higher. and they kind of use the argument, you know, after they destroy the public sector unions, they go to the people who are now doing less well than they would have been if they had a union and say, look, these people have jobs and benefits, aren't you envious of them? so they want to drag everybody down to that level. and, well, and another reason the depression was there was certainly more political support. i mean, one reason that the sit-down strike succeeded was because franklin d. roosevelt was in the white house, and frank murphy who was a roosevelt ally was the governor of michigan. they deliberately were trying to wait until he was inaugurated because he refused to send in the national guard to kick them out of the plants. so, and i don't think there's that kind of political support at least at the governor level anywhere in the midwest right now. >> you could argue barack obama? >> well, he did help us in chicago, and i think that's a big reason that he was so sympathetic to bailing out the auto industry. i mean, that was pretty much the first task of his administration, was putting together a task force to rescue the auto industry. and he certainly beat that drum hard during last year's campaign, especially in ohio where they had plenty of auto plants. mitt romney had written an op-ed for "the new york times," said -- it's titled let detroit go bankrupt. [laughter] and obama didn't let him forget about that. >> i'm curious -- >> yeah. >> -- the, what's, what would you say is the number one lesson that you take away from from what appears to be kind of an industrial evolution which has happened in the past and is likely to happen in the future as the economy evolves? is there a key lesson that you found that you would look and say that as we look at economies 10 and 20 and 30 years looking forward that you look at today as it was true here, it's likely to be true there and that people should be aware of? is. >> well, i would certainly say diversify your city's economy would probably be number one. because you look at flint, and flint had, i mean, two-thirds of the labor force in flint was dependent on general motors in one way or the other, either directly or through a subsidiary. and after, after they lost that, i mean, the whole town fell apart. there's no way you can replace 70,000 jobs, and even if you can replace them, there's no way you can replace them with the kind of middle class jobs that they had. so i think i'd say that would be the firm one lesson. -- the number one lesson. but, i mean, i think it was simply unavoidable. i mean, in the era when things were so good, the economy, i guess as they would say, was siloed. i mean, we didn't really have to think about the rest of the world. we were the only country that could make anything. and now we live in a global economy. and so workers are competing against workers all over the world. so, but don't be, don't be a one-industry town. i think that applies to big towns as well as small towns whether you, you know, have a paper mill or anything like that. don't think one industry's going to come in and save your town. >> [inaudible] >> don't think you're going to have a job for life, i suppose, is a lesson for workers. don't even think you're going to have benefits for life. because a lot of workers as you saw in wisconsin thought they were going to have a pension and men pits -- benefits. and it's sad that you have to say that a to people, but i think maybe the promise that the baby boomers thought that they grew up with i don't think people of my generation expect that same promise that they did of lifetime employment and cradle-to-grave benefits. i think -- all right. one more question here. i think it's about -- >> so what should happen with towns like mint and detroit? should they be dissolved? do they deserve to continue as cities? >> well -- >> can they? is it feasible? >> well, i think that -- i don't think flint and detroit are functional cities anymore. really. i mean, they're both under the control of emergency managers appointed by the governor of michigan. whose job is really to keep cutting their budgets. but they've already been cut to such a level that they can no longer provide basic services. so, i mean, they've lost so many people that there's no way 700,000 lower class people in detroit can pay for the infrastructure that was built for 1.8 million people. in the 1950s. i mean, when i was in detroit, the lighting company blew out, and the library and wayne state and all the cord buildings downtown were shut down for the be day. so, i mean, that's the kind of thing you expect be to happen in third world capitals. i mean, i think the answer is consolidating them with the surrounding suburbs the way they did in indianapolis and drop toe and miami -- toronto and miami. because if a city can't afford democracy, it's not really a city anymore. it's, they're basically wards of the state, and it's really dragging down not just the city itself, but the entire state of michigan. i mean, when you have the two most violent cities in the nation, and when you have a city that is such an international similar symbol of urban decay you've got people flying in from france to take pictures of it, that reflects badly on the entire state of michigan from monroe to ironwood. all right. so i guess we've run through our hour, so i'll thank everybody for coming here. [applause] >> for more information visit the author's web site, edwardmcclelland.com. >> now, tamim ansary, author of "games without rules" and the author of "lost decency, the untold afghan story. authors discuss the past, present and future of their country. this hourlong event was hosted by the commonwealth club of california. >> good afternoon, and welcome to today's meeting of the commonwealth club of california. i'm robert rosenthal, executive director of the center for investigator reporting. i'll be your chair today for today's program called "afghanistan." we also welcome our listening and internet audiences and invite everyone to visit us online at www.commonwealthclub.org. and now it's my pleasure to introduce our distinguished speakers. tamim ansary was born in kabul where his american mother taught english in afghanistan's first school for girls. tamim left for the u.s. in 1964. he is a writer, lecturer, teacher and director of the san francisco writers' workshop. he has written several noteworthy books and award-winning books including "a game without rules: the often untold history of afghanistan." he will sign in the book after the program today. our other author wassal born in kabul. his father was a prominent military office and leader. after high school he served in the afghan air force. when the political situation changed in the 1980s and russians invaded, he fled to germany and then came to the u.s. where he enjoyed a successful banking career. like tamim, he was shocked by 9/11. he visited afghanistan recently, and buck read about his amazing journey back to afghanistan in his book "lost decency, at an award-winning book, "the untold story of afghanistan." i think today's program's going to be very interesting. you may hear different perspectives. you're going to learn a lot about the history of afghanistan, and if you read these two books which are both wonderful books, you'll get in one, tamim's book, the context and history of afghanistan. if you read atta's book, you'll see a character who comes to life during part of the period of history we're going to talk about today. so we'll start off, please welcome tamim. [applause] >> thank you all for being here, thank you to the commonwealth club. let me check the time so i don't go over. all right, so i'm sure all of you are very interested in what's going on in afghanistan right now, who is contesting for the presidential seat in the elections next year, what happens after the nato forces withdraw, if they do. but as a historian, and we can get into all that with questions and so on, but as a historian what i'm interested in is how we got here. and i feel that how we got here is part of the question of where do we go from here. and, you know, in this book, "games without rules," i've gone back to what i consider the origins of the afghan nation's state which is about two and a half centuries ago, and i trace the narrative arc of that country, that emerging developing country which has still not quite developed, and i will note that the origins go back the about the same period that the united states was taking shape, late colonial era. and what i see is that in that early period this territory that we now call afghanistan was populated by many tribes, clans, different populations, but it was also permeated by a sense of uniformity of culture of which islam was perhaps the most important binding factor. but there were also values in common, a sense of common history and something about the social structure that you would find. so that, you know, there were various levels of power, but the people in the villages and the people in the cities and the rulers and the peasants and the poor and the rich, they might have conflicts, but they considered themselves all to be part of the same world. then in the course of history what happened is a very different cultural entity suddenly appeared on the afghan scene, and it was pressing in on this area. and these were the global powers whose culture was basically western and who saw this territory as an important spot because of strategic considerations in their contests with each other globally. so now for the afghans for anybody who was part of the ruling elite in afghanistan or wanted to rule the country, it was necessary for them to negotiate with two very different entities, and one was the outside power -- whoever that might be, the british, whatever -- and then there was, you know, the old afghanistan, the original afghanistan, this world of clerics and elders that came from the grassroots and the villages and the networks, the tribes. and that world still had its, you know, the old culture that characterized the life in this area. so what i find is that over time in the way that, you know, if you put a liquid in a centrifuge, the heavier stuff separates from the lighter stuff. there's some sense in which afghan society also separated into two societies. and there was this urban western eased elite, and -- westernized elite, and there was this inward looking old country that was afghanistan. and these are both afghan, you know, these are both aspects of afghan society. and they're in context and have been in contention for control of the identity of afghanistan. so this is a story that's been going on in afghanistan from the beginning partly caused by the various interventions. but then there's this separate story which is that every 40 years or so without fail, like clock work -- well, not quite like clockwork -- but about every 40 years some foreign global power has tried to come in and dominate the afghan scene and control it and use it for its own purposes. ..
place across the country. tornado breakout in the southeast. 18 people have already died. >> it was just terrible. awful. >> and now that wild weather is moving north. we're going to begin, of course, this morning with president trump. getting down to business. his very first monday. at the top of his agenda, plans to renegotiate the multibillion dollar trade agreement, known as nafta, and the big tpp deal in asia. donald trump wants out of that all together. remember, it was a signature of president obama. trump is expected to sign executive orders on both of them today. and at this very hour, starting right now at 9:00 a.m., he'll be bringing together leading executives from at least a dozen major manufacturers, the heads of ford, lockheed martin, u.s. steel, just some of the ceos on that guest st. and at 4:30, a huge vote where rex tillerson could confirm him as secretary of state. and the day is not over then. at 5:00 p.m., the president brings congressional leaders from both sides for their first meeting and we have the best team in the business covering every angle. i want to start with kristen welker, just outside the white house. kristen, looks like a lot of today will revolve around trade and the economy, almost like donald trump is trying to erase all of the gaffes of the weekend and bring us back to the business of what he got elected on. he being the jobs and economy guy. >> reporter: he's trying to turn the page. that's for sure, steph. i am told today is going to focus on trade. as you mapped out, this was a campaign promise for then candidate trump, trying to make good on that promise. here's what we're anticipating today. two executive orders that relate to trade, one announcing his intentions to renegotiate nafta. that's the trade deal signed under former president bill clinton with mexico and canada. some republicans not necessarily sold on that idea. they're concerned it could ultimately cost jobs. that could be setting up a little bit of fight with members of his own party. the second action we're anticipating, he's going to sign an executive order announcing his intention to pull out of tpp. that multinational trade deal that president obama was fighting for during his administration. the thing to know about that, though, steph, is that president trump is going to task his top economic advisers, his u.s. trade rep, with negotiating trade deals with the individual companies within tpp. let me redo a little bit of what we have heard from president trump on this issue. this is from the white house website, which says if our partners refuse a renegotiation that gives american workers a fair deal, the president will give notice of the united states' intent to withdraw from nafta. this was president trump's tweet from earlier today. he says, busy week with a heavy focus on jobs and national security. top executives coming in at 9:00 a.m. to talk about manufacturing in america. so that is how he is setting the scene here on what is being described as a day of action here at the white house. jobs, trade, the economy, all at the top of the agenda today, steph. >> all right. you mentioned a campaign promise. i would like to bring up anyone who thinks donald trump thinks no one wants to see his taxes. i would like to remind anyone, there is one person who sure would, president trump, i would love to see your taxes. time to bring in my panel. welcome to you both. so much to cover. megan, i want to start with you. people are gassed, saying nafta, you can't touch nafta. why is it a bad idea? it's a 20-year-old deal. why not renegotiate? >> when you look at what he's taking on nafta, the issue he faces, if we're going to withdraw, renegotiate with both canada and mexico, we're talking about a multiyear effort. and i think the think thing that trump's team, when we look at manufacturing to mexico, that is cheaper labor down there, of course. it also brings cheaper cars into the u.s. what you would see if we with drew, you're likely to see a loss of american jobs in tms ofhe supply of parts. but most importantly for his promise to t middle and working class, cars are likely to get more expensive. hundreds of thousands of cars made in mexico. they're shipped around the world. for example, you look at audi and the q5. that is based in mexico, produced in mexico and shipped to europe, shipped to america. to really change that and look at companies that have to think about their investment decisions in mexico, it's likely they won't bring their facilities to the united states. we have companies saying they're going to put jobs back in america. whether or not it becomes less cheap for them, less economical, less efficient to put those jobs in mexico, i'm not so sure they're bringing those jobs to america. >> how do we know, frank, that's what donald trump is officially going to execute? he has said over and over, that's what i'm going to do. i'm going to bring jobs back. and there has been arguments whether he really brought jobs back for carrier. whether we're talking ford or gm. you've got a lot of ceos that are simply afraid of donald trump. they don't want to get in his way. so this morning the first meeting he's got is with ten ceos, ceos that manufacture. this meeting was only called for yesterday. but he's meeting with u.s. steel, tesla, dow. these are major companies. sure enough, donald trump is going to sit down with them. fair to guess he's going to walk out of that meeting and say tough talking, we're going to keep jobs here. when do we prove that? when do we know, yes, he's doing that. donald trump supporters will say everything else you don't like about donald trump is noise, as long as he puts me back to work. >> yeah, we'll know that, because people will be back to work or not. you're touching on what is going to be major tension and theme of this presidency, which is theatre versus reality. you mentioned carrier, great photo ops. donald trump got a lot of headlines that for people who don't dig into the news, see it as they're driving by, it all looked very good. he is focus on theatre, optics. >> that's exactly what this morning will be. >> i'll use the words of newt gingrich. newt gingrich has been saying again and again in recent interviews, come 2020, if more people have jobs, if people feel their lives have improved economically, people feel safer, donald trump will be re-elected. that's the real metric, not whether he's sitting down with ceos, not whether he gets headlines. people will feel an improvement in their lives, in their safety and he's ultimately going to live and die by that, not by these short term optics. >> that meeting actually has just started. that's not the only thing happening. i want you stick with me. we have the question of ethics. at this very moment, a group called "the citizens for responsibility and ethics in washington" is filing a federal lawsuit, arguing that president trump is illegally profiting from foreign governments through his businesses, which is a violation of the constitution. richard painter is part of that group. he was the chief ethics lawyer for president george w. bush. welcome. you say that trump's business ties open up a whole new front for corruption. that is a strong charge, especially when the trump white house has said over and over with a smile on their face, president trump can't have conflicts of interest. so how do you back up your argument? >> well, of course, he could add conflicts of interest, and he does. and he has been talking throughout this campaign about made in america, and we're going to buy american, we're going to renegotiate all of these trade agreements and the rest of it. and that's what we're hearing this week. and the reality is that the trump business empire is receiving payments under the table from foreign governments and companies controlled by foreign governments, including banks controlled by foreign governments. and the founders anticipated this problem. and in the constitution specifically provided no one holding a position of trust within the united states government can receive benefits and payments from foreign governments. and yet that's what's going on. this is a violation of the constitution. and what's the point of having a tea party, throwing king george's tea into the boston harbor and putting a president there buying and selling tea with king george. and it's the same thing now. when we've had foreign governments trying to influence our elections. this is not a liberal cause or conservative cause. we want a president who is loyal to americans and who has not taken ununder the table while negotiating trade agreements that are supposed to be protecting american jobs. >> okay. take under the table off the table and let's go right on top of it. donald trump's lawyer a few weeks ago said before inauguration, he would sign papers signing off, distancing himself, separating himself from his companies, but according to pro publica, that didn't happen. >> well, he has not divested ownership of the companies. we thought he would. he said he would separate himself from his businesses. and when was in the bush white house as ethics lawyer, i understood that meant that you're going to sell your businesses. and that's what the office of government ethics understood to be the case. but that's not what's happening in the trump business empire. he has not sold the businesses. the businesses are profiting from foreign governments, among others. and he wilnot release the tax returns. which will demonstrate clearly where the money is coming from, where the financing is coming from. the american people are not going to put up with this. we need a president who is going to adhere to the constitution, and is going to put americans first. that was the message that we have heard consistently from president trump. and yet his actions are completely different. >> okay. well yesterday kellyanne conway said that issue has been litigated. he won, nobody cares. well, if you look at polls today without a doubt, people care. he now has to govern the nation. but if, for example, richard's lawsuit goes through, in terms of discovery, would donald trump have to put his taxes forth in a case like this? >> this case -- >> megan? >> this case revolves around nuanced legal issue in terms of the emoluments clause. some think because these payments are going to a trump business as opposed to donald trump himself personally that it falls outside that clause. now it's really a distraction. this goes to the core issue that you're talking about. has donald trump really gone through with his promise. not only to not just release his taxes which you and i have been discussing for months and months. but to put forward a credible plan to divest businesses in the way the american people feel confident that foreign governments and leaders are not channelling money through both his businesses -- not just his hotel in washington but striking partnerships in far-off jurisdictions to curry favor with the trump administration. that's the question we really should be addressing. yes, this lawsuit hits at it. but he has so far managed to sidestep, as you just mentioned, keeps dodging the tax return sue. whether the american people with foe s agenda or whether it's left to lawyers and third party people who keep this nuisance hanging on him. just donating the profits to charity. is that -- can you even donate charity profits to the treasury? so far it hasn't proven something that has galvanized the kind of attention i would have expected. >> we have a photo of the meeting taking place that i want to show right now. can we pull that up? that is the meeting taking place right now. president trump is meeting, reince priebus is in the room, katie bush, and about ten ceos with different manufacturing companies who may or may not have been donald trump supporters. when the president calls, you show up. in terms of donald trump and his businesses, think about what it's like -- thursday night, when the president-elect shows up at his hotel in washington, d.c., that he now says my son has run, i don't. shows up surprised visit and kicks up the tab for two diners. is that not promoting his -- isn't that amazing promotion? i'm a tourist. maybe the president shows up and picks up my dinner tab. >> talking about amazing promotions. he also praised the gorgeousness. i think americans could too easily get confused about things they should not get confused about. he has said he will separate himself from the management of his business. he has not separated himself economically. his wealth is still tied into and affected by what happens with that business. and even if he's not talking to his sons about it, which is hard to believe and who polices that, he can read headlines. number two, the tax return thing is fascinating. through the whole campaign, we heard he couldn't release it because it was under audit. and now kellyanne conway saying it's been litigated, the american people don't care. the rationale has changed entirely. let's note and keep sight of that. >> we all know why he's not releasing that tax return. it's likely to show not only a vast array of sophisticated entities around the world and hungs of companies he set up, and likely to show he's worth a lot less and mak a lot less money than he says. >> and size matters to donald trump. crowd size and hand size, wealth size. >> and also, who his lenders are. remember, the trump organization was not an institutional client to major u.s. bank. deutsche bank was the only international bank we can find that is a major lender. so given their vast real estate portfolio, you've got to wonder who does this man and this organization owe money to. not saying there is a smoking gun in those taxes but would sure help if we could see the president-elect -- president trump. thank you so much. i did not elect president. he's our president and i accept that. okey-doke. richard, you have your work cut out for you. good luck, my friend. and you're here the whole hour. next, the new press secretary telling falsehoods. this was a mind-blower for me. really took my doors off this weekend on his first very first day. and then kellyanne conway calling them alternative facts. is this a strategy or worse. and communications between the president's newly sworn in national security adviser and officials. we have those details. and in case you missed it, snl came out of the gates on fire with his first show under president trump. and they did it without alec baldwin and without a shirtless vladimir putin offering advice on providing alternative facts. >> today you went to the cia and said 1 million people came to see you in washington, d.c. if you're going to lie, don't make it so obvious. you know, saying you are friends with lebron james. not that you are lebron james. s. and now much of that same advanced technology is found in the audi a4. with one notable difference... ♪ the highly advanced audi a4, with available traffic jam assist. ♪ with a crust made chfrom scratche and mixes crisp vegetables with all white meat chicken, and bakes it to perfection. because making the perfect dinner isn't easy as pie but finding someone to enjoy it with sure is. marie callender's. 's time to savor. watry...duo fusiong heartburn relief? duo fusion goes to work in seconds and lasts up to 12 hours. tums only lasts up to 3. for longer lasting relief...in one chewable tablet try duo fusion from the makers of zantac you're saying it's a falsehood and they are giving sean spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that. >> wait a minute, alternative facts? >> i mean, even gave kellyanne pause for a second there. pause, alternative facts. reaction, obviously, swift and fierce to that revealing exchange on "meet the press" yesterday. it started when white house press secretary, sean spicer, said this on saturday. >> this was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period! both in person and around the globe. >> that's crazy town right there. joining me now, "new york times" media columnist -- i don't know how to say, it's ruetten berg, rutten berg. >> and guess what, frank murphy and megan murphy still here. >> you called that exchange, that quote, chilling. why? >> well, i'm just not used to seeing that from white house -- from that lectern. i mean, the most watched ever. we have nielsen numbers that dispute that. the subway ridership numbers that mr. spicer cited did not bear up to scrutiny. this is the learning turn from which america speaks to the world. i was frankly surprised. >> then what is the broader thing happening? is this president trump and add his administration in their quest to sort of dismantle the media, given how important investigative journalism right now, or is this donald trump simply putting out sean spicer, because he doesn't like getting insulted and sean said, yes, sir, may i have another. >> this is a really serious point and a really, really serious issue when we look at what happened. i mean, the entire way of coughing a president if they're going to go out and do blatant falsehoods. if you're going to lie, at least lie smart, not when you have verifiable facts to iediately dispute the truth of what s said. the shock is that it was the very first press conference from sean spicer, who has a formal role. if this is living in the land of alternative facts and what is a blatant tit for tat, what the media needs to do is forge its own norm. go out, check facts, always call into question what they say. always remind -- not in terms of bringing and telling people what to think, but constantly hitting back at what is being told. the official narrative is probably going to be wrong or only half true. perhaps more so than has been in previous administrations. and more of the burden for fall to say the media to really question, to push and to move outside of the official statements that are given and find their own -- to actually find out and get the facts and truth and release that. it's a really hard job, made harder when official spokespeople are telling you stuff that is blatantly not true. >> you bring up a good point. i think they believe the media is in such disrepute, the public so distrusts us, they will believe an alternative fact. there is a difference between someone saying obamacare is working and citing these statistics, someone saying obamacare isn't and focusing on some other statistics, and talking about something as cut and dry as crowd size. anybody who has been in d.c. for inaugurations, multiple inaugurations, which i have been, can tell you it was not jammed on friday. and on saturday when the women's march happened, it was chaotic. you can measure and see it with your own eyes. this is a level of -- we have spin and become way too en you'red to spin. this is beyond spin. this is a whole new dangerous terrain. >> gabe sherman put out a tweet, saying that donald trump sent sean spicer out to give that statement. and afterwards, a long-time trump adviser said donald trump thought sean spicer did a terrible job. so -- >> is that a lie? how many -- >> so what's donald trump's motives here? >> how many aides are going to have to put their reputations on the funeral pierre? >> this is day one. >> but you don't do your job well if you can't convince the public of a blatant lie? >> right. and we're going to hear a lot of these undercutting things coming out of the oval office. the bottom line is that it is mr. trump's administration, and whatever he thought afterwards, will they correct it today. because it's a new day. mr. spicer is having a press briefing at 1:30. who he is going to call on. there is a lot to correct here in 24 hours. >> people have careers and personal integrity. and this is not -- it's not sustainable going forward for a long term for people to be doing things. he has -- if we're going to descend into blatant warfare for the next four years, he knows to sell some of his programs, including on nafta, manufacturing, he needs to have the media at least not in a full-out, full frontal war. it's not going to work. >> but it's not just sean spicer going out there. when donald trump went to the cia on saturday, and it was a good move to make that his first visit, to go and see them on their day off, but to say it's the media that created this rift between me and the intelligence agencies. it was donald trump's words making that comparison to not -- >> proves he's lying right there. >> how does donald trump make a claim like that? >> he may continue to make claims like that. what we're seeing is, this is how he campaigned. there is a big difference because he's governing now. you hear talk, his base loves it. >> i need to interrupt. i've got to bring kristen welker in, at the white house. he had a meeting with the ceos, looking right there, speaking hands with the ceo of u.s. steel, now mark fields from ford. and right there, the women from lockheed martin, the one female ceo. what do we know? >> reporter: well, a couple headlines to tell you about, steph. first of all, president trump -- in the white house told ceos he's going to try to decrease regulations by 75%. he's going to decrease taxes. and he was very -- >> kristen, we're going to listen in. donald trump is speaking now. >> have you set everything up so well. and i hear your company is doing well. and i really do -- appreciate we'll get to know each other very well. we'll have these meetings every -- whenever you need them, actually. but i would say a reporter perhaps. you could say monthly, but then all of a sudden monthly becomes repetitive. as we know. sounds good, but then youave to do it, and it gets a lite repetitive. but i would say probably on a quarterly basis. you are great people. you've done an amazing job. and the biggest in the world. and this is a worldwide meeting. and what we want to do is bring manufacturing back to our country. vice president pence, good morning, is -- >> morning, mr. president. >> is very much involved with me on that. one of my most important subjects. it's what the people wanted. it's one of the reasons i'm sitting here instead of somebody else sitting here. and i think it's something i'm good at. we've already had a big impact. and i want to thank mark and ford, because you've been great. i think that -- i think maryland is going to be terrific. we're going to find out soon, right? it's lockheed martin. and we are going to -- i think we're going to have a tremendous amount of -- if you read today's papers, you'll see what's happening with four or five different companies that announced they feel much differently. foxconn is going to spend an tremendous amount of money. so that's what we want. we want people -- we want to start making our products again. we don't want to bring them in, we want to make them here. and that doesn't mean we don't trade. we do trade. but we want to make our products here. and if you look at some of the original great people that ran this country, you will see that they felt very strongly about that. making products. and we're going to start making our products. and there will be advantages to companies that do indeed make their products here. so we have seen it. it's going to get -- it's going to be a wave. you watch. it's going to be a wave. and i've always said by the time you put them in these massive ships or airplanes, i think it's going to be cheaper. what we're doing is, we are going to be cutting taxes massively for both the middle class and for companies. and that's massively. we're trying to get it down to anywhere from 15 to 20%. and it's now 35%. but it's probably more 38% than it is 35. wouldn't you say? that's a big thing. a bigger thing, and that surprised me, is the fact that we're going to be cutting regulation massively. it will be just as strong and just as good and just as protective of the people as the regulation we have right now. the problem with the regulation we have right now is you can't do anything. you can't -- i have people that tell me they have more people working on regulations than they have doing product. and it's out of control. it's gotten out of control. i mean, very -- big person when it comes to the environment. i've received awards on the environment. but some of that stuff makes it impossible to get anything built. it takes years and years -- you know, you can look at some examples. i read one reasonable where a man trying to build a factory for many, many years, and his vote was going to be fairly soon and he gave up, because he wasn't going to win the vote. spent millions and millions of dollars. actually, ruined his life. and we can't have that. so somebody wants to put up a factory, it's going to be expedited. and you have to go through the process, but it's going to be expedited. and we're going to take care of the environment, take care of safety and all of the other things we have to take care. you're going to get such great service and no country is going to be faster, better, more fair, and at the same time, protecting the people of the country. whether it's safety or so many other reasons. we think we can cut regulations by 75%. maybe more. but by 75%. have in a certain way better protections. but when you want to expand your plant, or when mark wants to come and build a big massive plant or when dell wants to come in and do something monstrous and special, you're going to have your approva really fast. and the one thing that surprised me that i want to hear what you have to say, but the one thing that surprised me, going around and meeting with a lot of the people at this table, and meeting with a lot of the small business owners, if i gave them a choice of this massive tax decrease that we're giving for business, for everybody, but for business, or the cutting down of regulation, if i took a vote, i think the regulation wins 100%. now, in one case, it's hard dollars. and the other case, it's regulation. you would think that the regulations would have no chance. it's -- i've never seen anything like it. virtually everybody is happy with regulation than cutting taxes. so the regulations are going to be cut massively, and the taxes are going to be cut way down. so you're going to have now incentive -- incentive. the one thing i do have to warn you about. when you have a company here, you have a plant here, it's going to be in indiana, or it's in ohio, or it's in michigan. or it's in north carolina or pennsylvania. anywhere in this country. when it decides -- when you decide, if you decide, to close it, and you no longer will have a real reason because your taxes are going to be lower. and by the way, if you go to another state, that's it. that's great. if you can go from ohio to indiana or from indiana to ohio, that's fine. you have 50 great, wonderful governors to negotiate with. so it's not like we're taking away competition. but if you go to another country, and you decide that you're going to close and get rid of 2,000 people or 5,000 people, i tell you, technology was an example we with carrier and i got involved two years after they announced so in all fairness, that was tough. united technologies was terrific. and they brought back many of those jobs. but if that happens, we are going to be imposing a very major border tax on the product when it comes in. which i think is fair. which is fair. so a company that wants to fire all of its people in the united states and build some factory someplace else andhen thinks that product is going to just flow across the border into the united states, that's not going to happen. they're going to have a tax -- border tax, substantial border tax. now, some people would say -- that's not free trade. but we don't have free trade now. because we're the only one that makes it easy to come into the country. if you look at china, if you look at many other countries, they can't believe what we do. so we take -- if you want to take a plant or you want to do something, you want to sell something -- into china and other countries, it's very, very hard. in some cases, impossible. they won't even take your product. when they do take your product, they charge a lot of tax. so i don't call that will free trade. what we want is fair trade. and we're going to treat countries fairly, but they have to treat us fairly. if they're going to charge tax to our countries, if we sell a car into japan and they do things to us to make it impossible to sell cars into japan and they sell cars into us and they come in like by the hundreds of thousands on the biggest ships i've ever seen it's not fair. i can't believe it took so long. so i'm talking about no tax. somebody would say, oh, trump is going to tax. there is no tax. none whatsoever. we have the greatest people. and many other countries have great people. we all have great people, okay? this isn't that kind of a competition. everybody has great people. but if we're going to fire people and build a frod product outside, it's not going to happen. so with that, we'll take some questions. >> donald trump is taking questions from the room. some people,ockheed martin ceo, michael dell, elon musk. dow chemical, barack obama was somebody who had valley jarrett, sitting on huge balance sheets and not send spending it, because of the regulatory overhang. this is a positive for donald trump. a meeting like this. >> this is definitely his sweet spot. and not only for his campaign message that he made. you just heard the states he referenced, ohio, pennsylvania, indiana -- >> maryland. >> where he wants the manufacturers to go. so what he is saying, look, we think we can produce regulation by 75%. incredibly popular among corporate america. and we'll strip back your taxes, make america great. again, incredibly popular. i can tell you among the corporate elite, they were publicly gushing in their praise. privately, even more enthusiastic. here's the problem. what donald trump doesn't say in these meetings with ceos and other manufacturing leaders. >> how are you going to do it. >> there has been a reason there has been a decline. that's a structural change in the american work force. and that more and more of these traditional manufacturing jobs have been automated, being done by robots. or have moved for good reason to more competitive, more efficient jurisdictions. you cannot solve that overnight. you are going to get people saying they're announcing new jobs in america. he is going to bring manufacturing in some sense, because these ceos are frankly scared what he will do if they don't. this is a structural problem, it is about globalization. and just saying, hey, look, i'm not going to tax you if you move from indiana to wisconsin or michigan isn't going to solve that problem. america faces a long-term crisis, whether for the jobs of the future and not the jobs of the past. >> kristen welker, many have said donald trump got off on the wrong foot this weekend. but starting his monday morning like this, he's lacing that shoe up, and walking out on the right foot. >> reporter: he's clearly trying to turn the page, steph. he has called this a day of action, and he's trying to put that into practice. and we have seen when he was a president-elect going through his transition, really taking a hard line with a number of companies for outsourcing jobs, including on twitter, calling them out. gm, to name one recent example. and so he's making it very clear, this is going to be his strategy, moving forward. as you point out, he's going to interface with the heads of these companies in person. he is going to be engaged in this process, and it does come on the heels of what we anticipate will be two executive orders focused on trade. announcing his intentions to renegotiate nafta, to pull out of tpp. he's going to get some resistance on that. but he is really drawing the battle lines early, in his presidency. and trying to put the focus on jobs and trade. and, of course, those were two key issues that he campaigned on, steph. this is part of the reason why he won all of those working class voters throughout the midwest. so what we're seeing is, he's trying to put his words into practice. the question is, will it lead to broad job growth. so far, we have seen him try to preserve jobs in various companies, but the counter point to that, it's not necessarily a shift in policy. today saying we're going to focus on policy, as well, steph. >> frank, so many people have said if donald trump puts people back to work, all the noise and things you don't like will go by its wayside. most ceos yesterday morning, drinking their coffee, watching kellyanne conway, probably choking with the alternative truth. but when they walk into the white hoe th morning, when they get to high-five gary cohn of goldman sachs, they have got to feel good sitting at the table, hearing donald trump's message. >> they like what he's saying. he is saying that regulations are going to be cut. and there are a lot of people who think that's the right way to go. there are going to be many more mornings where people like us gather and talk about ridiculous things that donald trump has started to talk about. he is talking about substantive things, tax reform, regulatory reform. people did elect him. the people who wanted him in the white house and who voted for them, these are exactly the things they voted for. and, yeah, i think the vos are very happy to hear it. whether that is going to turn the economy around and bring jobs to the extent he wants it to, big open question. i don't hear him talking as much as they should about innovation. i don't hear him talking about how we produce high-skilled labor force in america. that enables us to compete globally in the way we need to compete. because just tariffs and that sort of thing is not going to do it. that said, he's having a serious discussion right there. >> without a doubt. r & d is being spent on automation. these ceos are excited to be in the white house with the exception of elon musk, you did not see these types of ceo there was voted over the last eight years. >> one thing i want to watch, there is an element of protectionism here that is in contrast to everything you have heard from the republican party, the chamber of commerce and the donor class of that party for my entire career that, you know, is not -- you didn't hear a lot about that. but it was mixed into taxation. how will they react to that. that is a fascinating thing politically. >> to what extent will republicans roll over for him and to what extent in the name of party unity do you end up with a republican party that has a completely new orthodoxy. >> well, we'll soon find out. we'll take a break. next, new reporting on president trump's national security adviser. why are intelligence agencies investigating his contacts with russian officials? i'm speaking, of course, about mike flynn. plus, deadly tornadoes. more than 12 people killed. homes leveled down south. now the northeast is in for more wild weather. it's red lobster's big festival of shrimp and for just $15.99 you can pick 2 of 6 new and classic creations on one plate new flavors like sweet bourbon-brown sugar grilled shrimp and bold firecracker red shrimp are too big to last so hurry in. welcome back. you're watching msnbc. i'm stephanie ruhle. the senate foreign relations committee is expected to vote for secretary of state later this afternoon. the vote for rex tillerson after john mccain and lindsey graham announced their official support. now the big question is, what will senator marco rubio do? you know he had some testy, testy exchanges with tillerson during the confirmation hearing. >> is vladimir putin a war criminal? >> i would not use that term. >> is military targeted schools -- >> would want to have more information before reaching that conclusion. >> i find it discouraging your inability to cite that which i think is globally accepted. >> joining me now is kasie hunt on capitol hill. all eyes are obviously on marco rubio today. any indication on what he's going to do? >> well, steph, i think that what you saw from lindsey graham and john mccain over the weekend is a key part of this. they came out and said that they will vote for tillerson when his nomination comes to a vote on the floor of the full senate. and that really ensures that his overall confirmation is all but guaranteed. this, of course, is the foreign relations committee. and the question is, just what kind of a fight, if any, does marco rubio want to pick with donald trump? it's been made clear to him privately that there likely be some repercussions if he were to vote against tillerson in this hearing committee today, that is the calculus going on behind the scenes. rubio has demanded these answers to written questions, 100-plus written questions from tillerson. they say they've gotten that back in recent days. but at this point, marco rubio is more on an island than he was before. and that may discourage him from actually voting no here in the committee. what that would mean, if he were to vote no, there is only a difference of one in partisanship on this committee. so if all the democrats hang together and vote no, rubio could make it so that the committee does not send its recommendation that tillerson be approved. no matter what, steph, the reality is, it's probably not going to change the fact that tillerson is very likely to be confirmed. >> i'm a rock, i'm an island, works in music, but not in real life. what is marco rubio going to do? >> he did something significant, we have to remind people. he asked tillerson to fill out this questionnaire. he also met privately with tillerson. that's not just about getting more information. that's about if he does vote yay, being able to say my last contact warrant those questions you saw in public. i've since spoken with him privately and received some assurances, i feel better now. asking the questions to be filled out, having a private meeting, that's called giving yourself some cover if you go in the direction that contradicts that tense exchange. >> ah. there you have it. all right. up next, donald trump won a lot of working class voters with his promise to renegotiate trade deals. now that he's begun that process, what will the removal actually mean for workers? and later, those deadly tornadoes that have killed over a dozen people. we're going to go live to the path of destruction. liberty mutual stood with me when i was too busy with the kids to get a repair estimate. i just snapped a photo and got an estimate in 24 hours. my insurance company definitely doesn't have that... you can leave worry behind when liberty stands with you™ liberty mutual insurance there will be advantages to companies that do indeed make their products here. so we have seen it. it's going to get -- it's going to be a way of -- you watch. it's going to be a way. and i've always said, by the time you put them in these massive ships or airplanes and fly them, i think it's going to be cheaper. >> that was president trump, just moments ago as he began a meeting with business leaders at the white house. he wasted no time when it comes to trade. and executive action could come as early as today, regarding nafta. what's more, the official white house website has been updated announcing president trump's plans to withdraw from the transpacific tip or tpp, which is the u.s. has signed. ali velshi joins me. donald trump said once you got on the planes and ships it would be cheaper to make it here. yet in the products donald trump made or his for giggles, they're doing because at the end of the day they do the math. >> he talks about taxing and shipping. he conveniently ignores the absolute single biggest determinant in why you make things in different parts of the world and that is wages. they're substantially cheaper, a third in mexico, in china, they're lower. if you're shipping steel, that's a problem because it's bigger and heavy. there are a million things people make that are not heavy and it's worth them to make it elsewhere. he's got to start using the full argue moneme argument, not half of it. >> nafta, this maybe could use negotiation. >> that's kind of what tpp was about. nafta has been in effect since 1994 but it was devieved from te canada/u.s. free trade agreement. nafta causes some problems because of mexico's low cages. this was designed in part not just to sell mexico heavy machinery and agriculture, which the u.s. does, but to try to strengthen mexico's economy back in the days when the people coming across mexico's border were mexicans and they're not now, they're central americans. the idea was to wage mexican wages and reduce emigration from mexico to the united states. and that part worked. >> extraordinary. and take a quick look at tpp. tpp isn't necessarily andy business. obama presented it at nike headquarters. it's 12 questions. canada, mexico, the u.s. and the rest are asian. it's so that they don't chum up with china. it's much more political than it is trade. but it would be positive for companies. the net effect is these deals are all actually really good for companies. ha they're not fantastic for workers, particularly manufacturing workers. >> it's how bernie sanders got his name on the scene. people across the country are going bernie who? ali velshi, thank you. next, the deadly tornadoes that ripped across the south killing 18 people. we'll go live next. better than the leading branded pill, which didn't get me to my goal. victoza® works with your body to lower blood sugar in three ways: in the stomach, the liver, and the pancreas. and while it isn't for weight loss, victoza® may help you lose some weight. non-insulin victoza® comes in a pen and is taken once a day. (announcer) victoza® is not recommended as the first medication to treat diabetes and is not for people with type 1 diabetes or diabetic ketoacidosis. do not take victoza® if you have a personal or familytory of medullary thyroid cancer, multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2, or if you are allergic to victoza® or any of its ingredients. stop taking victoza® and call your doctor right away if you get a lump or swelling in your neck or if you develop any allergic symptoms including itching, rash, or difficulty breathing. serious side effects may happen, including pancreatitis. so, stop taking victoza® and call your doctor right away if you have severe pain in your stomach area. tell your doctor your medical history. taking victoza® with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. the most common side effects are headache, nausea, diarrhea and vomiting. side effects can lead to dehydration, which may cause kidney problems. now's the time for a better moment of proof. ask your doctor about victoza®. millions of people are waking up to their lives turned upside down after deadly storms struck several southeastern states. the huge storm system spawned dozens of tornadoes that shredded home in southern georgia and mississippi. 18 people were killed. president trump expressed his condolences. >> i just spoke with governor nathan diehl of georgia, great state, great people, florida and alabama affected by the tornadoes and just expressed our sincere condolences for the lives taken. >> that storm system is now headed north with the powerful nor'easter that will batter coastal states with high winds and possible flooding from d.c. up till maine. mariana atencio joins us. what have you seen? >> reporter: it was absolutely devastating driving through here, especially as the sun came up and you started to see the extent of the damage. this is holly drive in albany, georgia, three hours south of atlanta. businesses like the one to my left just completely destroyed after this tornado ripped through this wall of cinder blocks. many businesses and homes look look this one in in dougherty county, at least three died from these twisters. the total number of fatalities is 14 in georgia alone. it's the deadliest storm in six years. authorities are focused on evacuating people from the hardest hit areas. they're telling people not to go into their homes looking for people because of the danger of power lines. we will be getting an update as to the damage and rescue efforts but we're told that the fear is the death toll could rise. seven counties remain under a state of emergency. stephanie? >> did people have any warning of what was coming? look at the area around you. decimated. >> reporter: they were told this was one of the areas that was going to be hit. remember, this was a storm system that just started plowing through the south since thursday. there were 47 tornadoes reportedly since thursday and throughout the weekend. so they did get some warning but i just think many did not expect the extent of the devastation to be this big. we're starting to see some people in the neighborhood just in front of me starting to look through what's left of their homes and the look of desperation on their faces shows they were not expecting this. stephanie? >> thanks so much, devastating. that weather is heading north. i'm stephanie ruhle. i'll see you tauo tomorrow at 9 coming up, more news with hallie jackson. >> hey, everybody. i'm hallie jackson. we have so much to get to. in just the last hour, president trump meeting with business leaders for breakfast. coming up, he's going to be issue executive orders, we think, on two of the country's biggest trade agreements. he wants to overhaul one and get out of the other one completely. >> and defendant in chief? >> president trump and his family are complying with all the ethical rules, everything they need to do to step away from his businesses and be a full-time president. >> that's what the president's team says. but coming up, we're talking to one of the lawyers filing that suit against president trump. here on capitol hill, the senate expected to vote on critical and controversial cabinet nominees. let's get to kristen welker. what do we know and when are the highlights coming at about 30 minutes from now? >> according to a white house official, president trump is going to sign a number of executive orders today but two of them will be focused on trade. one announcing his intention to renegotiate nafta. that's the trade deal with mexico and canada that was signed with former president bill clinton in 1994. now, president trump has called that the worst trade deal ever negotiated. he wants to tear it up, start from scratch, impose tariffs on canada and mexico. it could have unintended consequences. they say it could ultimately kind wind up costing tens of thousands of u.s. jobs.