Transcripts For CSPAN Washington Journal 20140822 : vimarsan

Ferguson that we have to talk. Host lydia. Caller good morning, mr. Page. I have followed your career for years and i agree with you on most things. Guest well, that is better than my wife. [laughter] caller but the idea that the president needs to be saying about race if we have insulted the racial problem in the country 300 years after civil war, what can the pet if we havent solved the racial problem in this country 200 years after the civil war, what do you think the president can do in five years . Guest that is a good question. Caller we need a plan for revitalizing black communities across the country to create jobs. Hud would be a big help in this caring down these tearing down these boardedup apartment buildings, and give young people jobs. As long as there is no jobs in the black community, these kids stand around and walk around all day. They see other people with jobs and money and cars, all the things that they aspire to half. As for ferguson, they have a fergusons all over this country, right here in baltimore, maryland, where i live. On the police force when they cant find a job anywhere else, and these barney fifeone of t barney wannabes protect and serve the white community, and they harass black men. You cannot stand on the corner and talk to your friends you dont have a swimming pools and recreation places to go. Get in me to shut up and my house or he would arrest me. Host we will let Clarence Page comment. Guest there is a lot there. For one thing, she sounds like the Kerner Commission report, talking about a Marshall Plan. Whitney young for decades called for a Marshall Plan for americas cities to redevelop these communities that have been devastated. For the last couple decades the urban league stopped calling for it. They were getting nowhere, and i certainly expect barack obama to get nowhere proposing it with this congress. Washington is not in the mood to help inner cities in that way. But there is no question that we have to deal with the underlying causes of these racial interruption racial eruptions. And it is not just the black community. There have been other communities as well. And stories talking about why property white poverty. In appalachia, where i was a war on poverty volunteer as a college student. I watched poverty take on a black face in the media, but still white poor outnumber the black poor. We should not forget that. Host michael is waiting on our line for republicans. Caller good morning. Clarence, i appreciate the opportunity to talk to. Talk to you. Guest thank you. Caller i am a thomas sowell, gu guy. Guest i dont hate thomas sowell. Caller i hope you dont hate me for being that. Guest i love everybody, just want you to know that. Caller i was raised by a white liberal mom, but ive seen the light, so to speak. As a white radical guy raised by a white mother, white grandmother, with dark skin. That is what i see. Nic liberals and i see beerals they always can judged by their intent and not the results. Give you an example, johnsons Great Society, they paid women to have babies if the father left the home. Now we have 70 of the innercity, blacks, minorities, whites as well, households with no daddies. That is the problem right there. Guest the welfare reform plan that Newt Gingrich and bill clinton pushed through in 1996 . Im sorry, still there . Host still there, michael . Guest how did you like the welfare reform bill that in bill clinton and Newt Gingrich pushed her in 1996 to change the system . Caller well, i liked it, but obama has taken the work requirement out of it. There is a problem there. Guest thats the problem we have today, misinformation, because obama has not taken the work requirement out of welfare reform. The misses out there the myth is out there. It is fair, it is up to president obama to sell this programs. It is not my job in the media to sell his programs. I think he has undermined his own both within aca with the aca and other programs, by not pushing them hard enough. This is what makes politics in america. I bring up again the new york from this week and looking at black and white attitudes, two thirds of the white response sounding like the caller justin out in terms of how the war on poverty was a lah, whilelah blah b two thirds of blacks feel the other way. That is a big divide in this country, just perception, and perceptions of police are some of the biggest divides of all. Host the caller rings up president johnsons vision of a Great Society and that is our next segment in washington journal. Time for a few more calls. Donna in massachusetts on our line for democrats. Caller good morning to you, and thank you for having such a wonderful discussion at a very serious time, mr. Cage. Mr. Page. I am in my mid60s and grew up during the age of the 1960s, but also, i grew up in a family that not only spoke of their history and their culture, but did it in a way so that their actions showed what was important to us. Do needthat really, we to go back to be telling the truth of the history of the colonization of this country. Until we can really tell the truth about what happened and how america became the way that it is today, and people understand their own history, i bet you a very few of the irish realize that they came to be the indentured servants of the english. So there is always a caste system, no matter what plan you come from. There has always been the underclass, the people who were made to do all the work with no pay and no power. Has continued since the english walked up on the continent of north america. Guest you know, i agree, we need to look at the history of the country, the rich ethnic history of the country. Greatmccourt, the late, Frank Mccourt of angelas ashes fame, was a friend, and he opened my eyes to a lot of irishamerican history. One thing he mentioned, the harbor in new orleans, they would send irish workers to unload the cotton because often or i should say to load the cotton, because they were explosions with rotten fibers in the air and people would die. Slaves cost money, whereas you could buy an irish man for pennies a day. Enat is why they send irish m to do this. It says so much to me about the dynamism of class in this country and ethnicity that continues today. Americans, rather than trying to pretend, we are all the same, blah blah blah, no, lets talk about diversity. Our strength is our diversity but it has faultlines, it has weaknesses in it, and if we play to those weaknesses, we fall apart, but if we play to the strengths we prosper. Host tennessee on our line for republicans. Caller good morning. Thanks for taking my call. During 1967i live in the city of detroit, where they had the rights. In the national guard, tanks down the road. The problem with the riots, detroit suffered a very huge economic disorder because of it. When you bring your own neighborhoods and loot a lot of detroit was divided, 52 white, 48 black. Residents. Lion at that time, that just escalated. It got to the place where businesses like for example, if you wanted to buy your groceries, you could not buy them within the city of detroit. But if you found somebody, or you could actually buy your , it is almost 1. 5 times what it is. Ferguson, with the writing, will suffer some of the same economic punishment. Host before you answer, should know that some images we are showing of the tour came from 1967. I will let you respond to the caller. Guest detroit is like a second city to me. I have so many relatives in town. I was in detroit days after the riots. And working on the war on poverty in appalachia, i went up. The caller is right about the negative impact of those riots. But it is also true that those riots were caused by complaints over police action. Contrary to the label race r it started in those afterhours bars were black and white would get together, and 4 00 in the morning, please came and police came and raided it and it turned into a mob scene that turned into a riot, etc. It is a fact of life up there that detroit suffered as a result of that, but it was something that was the result of result in sentiment of problems that had been brewing for a long time. I went back to the troy recently and it may i went back to detroit recently and it may go through a second recount now. Sameson shows some of the sense, but ferguson is right next to st. Louis, lets remember, so they are not as isolated. Etroit is so huge you could put manhattan and San Francisco on it and still have land left over. Detroit was built for previous economy back in world war ii. In any case, the period were talking about in the 1960s has shaped our concept of cities today as we know them. I think this Younger Generation is coming along now in places like detroit and gentrifying the city. Look at d. C. In the mid1970s it was chocolate city. Suburbs, city, vanilla according to the funkadelic at that time. But now, the city council is majority white. We are seeing a revival of neighborhoods here. For now we cant find places for poor folks to live. Host one more call, william interest in, virginia in reston, virginia, on our line for independents. Caller good morning, gentlemen. Part of all, these key t tea partiers, do they know who [indiscernible] and what would the amount of hate be if these people were white . Guest what was the tea party question again . Of the membersy atticks is . Spus and if the protesters were white man, with a have all these hate rs . Guest if the president were a white man would he have all these haters . Guest i cant say he would have with a whiteters father, but would he have been as impressive 10 years ago at the Democratic Convention if he were another white speaker . He wouldve been a more eloquent john edwards but i dont know if you would have had the kind of impact that he did. I think his racial background is significant, his International Background is significant. It says a lot about him and us. Host Clarence Page is a columnist with the Chicago Tribune and his 30th anniversary collection of columns is out next month. We appreciate you coming by on washington journal. Guest i appreciate you having me. Host our weeklong series on the Great Society wraps up as we look at the commission on product safety. Later, our weekly america by the numbers segment will look at Consumer Spending and economic wellbeing. We will be right back. Here are some of the highlights for this weekend. Tonight on cspan in primetime, we will visit important sites in the history of the civil rights movement. Saturday at 8 00, highlights from this years new york ideas forum, including a cancer biologist. Q a, with New York Times man Charlie Rangel at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Tonight at 8 00 on cspan2, religious scholar reza aslan. Saturday at 10 00, ben carson. The competition between the Wright Brothers and Glenn Curtiss to be the predominant name in manned flight. American history tv on cspan3, tonight at 8 00 eastern, a look at hollywoods portrayal of slavery. Saturday at 8 00 the 200th anniversary of the battle of bladensburg. Sunday, former white house chiefs of staff discuss how president s make decisions. Find out Television Schedule one week in advance at cspan. Org, and let us know what you think of the programs you are watching. Conversation. N like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. Washington journal continues. Host today we wrap up our weeklong series on president Lyndon Johnsons vision for a so called Great Society. We are discussing the 1977 commission on product safety. It is the commission from which todays Consumer Product Safety Commission was born. Talk about it, robert adler joins us. He is one of the commissioners sc. H this etf see cp we want to talk about the proposed National Commission on product safety. He says that host can you talk about the role of product safety pre1967 . Guest it is a fascinating piece of history. It goes back to john kennedy and the new frontier. In march of 1962 he sent a special message to congress where he first spelled out the right to be informed, the right to choose, the right to be heard, and the right to safety. That is a team that was picked up and really expanded during the mid1960s to the mid1970s. We often call that the consumer decade. Just a thing the safety legislation that was passed during that period. You can go to 1966, when the National Traffic safety and administration was set up, 1967, the National Transportation 1870, therd, Environmental Protection agency and the Occupational Safety and health administration, and then finally in 1972, the Consumer Products safety act was passed. All of those had as a theme safety. Safety became the watchword of the day. Host what was this commission charged with doing when it was created . Guest it was charged to look into 4 aspects. First was federal legislation, which they felt was piecemeal and random and intermittent. Theyll were also to look at the Product Liability system to see if that effectively protected the public. They wanted the commission to look at the industrys selfregulation and wanted to see what state and local laws applied and how effective they were in protecting the public. That was the mandate to the National Commission on private product safety. Those state and local laws and how they were protecting the public were also the subject of the message to congress that you noted earlier. Quotery 16, 1967, to Lyndon Johnsons words again host so who specifically was in charge . Was this mostly a state effort in 1967 when comes to product safety . Guest in those days, yes. There was federal legislation but it was fairly small. There was, for example, in 1956 a piece of legislation that i still think is the best safety standard ever, gate ever promulgated, on refrigerator doors. Not until 1953 excuse me, 1960 did we get more legislation addressing consumer hazards. So the state and local legislation was not very effective, and the federal legislation was not comprehensive enough. We have a mandate over roughly 15,000 product categories that Congress Passed legislation dealing only with a small number of those. Host robert adler is commissioner with the Consumer Product Safety Commission. He joins us as we are talking about president johnsons vision for a so called Great Society. When he set up this commission in 1967, was the goal always to create the independent agency that you are a commissioner for . Guest yes. Get been told they couldnt congress to enact legislation, so they did what is often done in washington. You set up a commission and stack it with people that you know are going to reach a preordained conclusion. They certainly did that, and the commission very strongly recommended the astonishment of an independent Consumer Product Safety Commission. Host we are asking our viewers to call in on this segment. If you have questions on the Consumer Product Safety Commission, we will appear stories and interactions with the cpsc and products that are regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Mentioned the 15,000 products that todays Consumer Product Safety Commission covers. Ive seen it read in some of your testimony to congress that what isnt covered is guns, boats, cars, trains, drugs, and food. Why were some things included and other things not included . Guest there are interesting stories about that. First, you dont address the stuff that is already regulated under federal legislation. Back in 1974 we work additioned to we were petitioned to exercise jurisdiction over Tobacco Products. Haveess did not want us to jurisdiction over Tobacco Products, but there is a loophole in the law that they pointed to and they said we think you have jurisdiction over Tobacco Products, and of course, we did have jurisdiction over Tobacco Products. Fast forward another six weeks and we were conditioned petitioned by a group to ban not and weut bullets, exercised jurisdiction under the federal Hazardous Substances act. If you can imagine, this fledgling Agency Within the space of a couple months is told it has jurisdiction over Tobacco Products and bullets, 2 of the most controversial products you could imagine. The fascinating thing about that is that if you think congress can be deadlocked, they werent deadlocked then. Several weeks later they enacted removedion that Tobacco Products and bullets jurisdiction from us conclusively. Host and guns as well . Guest we never had euros diction over guns, they made that clear never had a jurisdiction over guns, they made that clear. Host was that clear in 1967 . Guest it was. And theery small agency controversy surrounding guns is so much of a distraction that if you were going to give jurisdiction to an agency, you would want to give it to an and hasha