All people accused of a federal crime plead guilty, i would have said thats because most of them did it. Thats why they plead guilty. The governments right to go after them. Now that i know more i realize thats not the case. Government has ways of making innocent people plead guilty, its unbelievable. Essentially its a plea bargain. They come to a doctor, they say they want to get a doctor. Nothing wrong. Our federal statutes are so luminous and accordion like they can find something if not for your tax return, its looking like you administer Pain Medicine . Were going to charge you with the Illegal Administration of illegal drugs. But she was in pain, im a doctor. They say i know, but you exceeded the allowable dose of pain medication and they charge you with a crime that will put you away for five years but if you plead guilty, you will get three months and you can Practice Medicine again. So whats your choice . Rule growing your entire life, be locked up for five years and destroyed your relationship with your friends, undermine your family or, this is the strong arm tactics routinely used. I used to believe better than the nine innocent people go free, then on innocent people be locked up, now i believe lots of innocent people are locked up and they are locked up right now. Its a view of the way the world is. Its through countries likevenezuela where my wife grew up or me, india. Wed like to believe its totally different here. It is different but its not totally different. So these experience was were eyeopening for me. Its given my conservative position grittier which is to say i have a more solid foundation. The secret of movies that the fate of a movie depends on how the movie does the opening couple of weeks. If the movie does well at the beginning, people say how do you get your seen by independence . Doing this coming weekend because if you are seeing now you are putting fuel into our rocket. What you should learn to do is use your influence. Very few of us use our actual influence. You say i only have 300 friends on facebook. Yes, but they got 300 flat friends on facebook. Today you are a little publisher but if you use your information to get information out your able to change the way people think. The beauty of the movie, you can watch a movie in 90 minutes and it changes you a little on the inside. Movies have the power to do that. And books have the power to change minds by citing information and information is power so once again, i urge you to be not just apathetic but dangerous americans and go out there and change society and help save your country. Thank you very much. [applause] this is book tv on cspan2, television for serious readers. With our primetime lineup, tonight starting at seven former director of the Defense Intelligence agency, retired general Michael Flynn provides his thoughts on how to fight terrorism. At 8 pm eastern former White House CorrespondentKate Anderson brower highlights the first ladies from 1950 until today. Rosa brooks looks at the change in how america fights wars on book cds afterwards Program Starting at 9 pm eastern and at 10, neil baskin chronicles the Covert Mission to keep hitler from buildingan atomic bomb and we wrap up our sunday primetime lineup with Princeton University professor eddie gloss and his thoughts on race in the United States. That all happens tonight on cspan2s book tv. [inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation] thank you so much for coming out tonight for this bit of prozac busboys and poets as we have the honor of hosting Daniel Hatcher for his new book the poverty industry. Im glad to say this, i work with the event that and i just have a few quick notes about this before i introduce daniel tonight. First off, this is a politics and prose at the busboys and poets event. Through this partnership weve had going on for about a year in which we are selling and hosting events in three of the busboys andpoets locations so you are here, you can also find us at fifth and k and , but if you have a calendar you can see different events jewel through the city. Part of that partnership is that now you are at a restaurant, you can order drinks and food at the same time while hearing a bookstore and i encourage you to do that and tip your waitstaff well. If you will pick up your cell phones and assignments them so we dont have any unnecessary interruptions. After the event is over we will have a signing table and opportunity to chat with daniel and a little bit more that you will purchase a book at the front of the store, thats where we have the cash registers. Also, theres going to be time for q a and i have this phone right here so if you will raise your hand during the q a section, i will come around everyone can hear the questions being asked and also book tv is here tonight, shout out to them. [applause] you can look yourself up on the intro where later if you answer a question so anyway, all right. In this eyeopening examination of what all too often happens to medicaid funds, childsupport payments, other public assistance, design to ill the abuse, the elderly after it exposes how entrepreneurs for forprofit agencies themselves benefit from governor programs. We show authors waste reform policy that the aide doesnt reach beneficiaries. Mary ohara of the garden says this meticulously researched book is still in a system that helping communities to quote, a source of government. Daniel hatcher is professor of law at the university of baltimore. He teachers the public apathy clinic and worked for the maryland legal aid and assistant director of apathy as a staff attorney for legal aid at the baltimore Child Advocacy unit and is a senior staff member for the defense. Will you please join me in welcoming Daniel Hatcher. [applause] guest thank you for everybody being here, its such a beautiful Late Afternoon early evening to sit inside and talk about policy issues. Thanks to politics and prose andbusboys and poets. Hugethanks to nyu press for the amazing support publishing this book. I definitely think the university of Baltimore School of law and the Clinical Programs there. I had the honor to teach students who are representing on compliance and then i had the opportunity to learn from my students. I have a couple colleagues from there who are here today who are amazing advocates. I also thank my past clients, ive learned so much from their stories over the years and what they are going through and on an individual basis of difficulties and trying to understand how their problems connect on a more systemic level so i hope that keeps us a little bit informal and have a bit of a conversation and i thought start with acomparison and in fact a little bit with some introduction. In new york, on monday i was talking about a county they are, Westchester County. A few years back there was a small story in the newspaper about a child whose mother of cancer. And apparently the child had Survivor Benefits that were saving her about 16,000. The social worker apparently got a hold of the child Survivor Benefits, got action to the bank account after the adopted mother dies of cancer and took the money. So there was some outrage, criminal charges were brought against the caseworker. And the county officials put out press releases to talk about their efforts to go after the citizen. Meanwhile, whats happening in Westchester County countywide is , this is a county that has a contract with revenue maximization contractor to seek out not just Survivor Benefits for foster kids in their care but also disability benefits and the county is taking the money from children in their care and acting under a fiduciary relationship and were not just talking about 16,000. In this case where talking about tens of thousands of dollars that the county is taking from children but no one is up in arms about that in part because no one has known. I hope through getting this book out it increases awareness about some of the federal practice is occurring and with awareness we have the potential to bring about change so in the poverty industry, im hoping to expose and explain several of these revenue practices where states and state Human Service agencies are partnering with companies, usually revenue contractors to actually use vulnerable populations as a source for revenue. This is happening i think across the country because states are cashstrapped and both rich states and blue states alike across the country have been unwilling to raise revenue through general taxation. When you see that occurring you end up having the state looking for money elsewhere, sort of behind the scenes mechanisms if you will. Sometimes even to the point where they are using their own agencies against the vulnerable populations. Ive been looking into these issues for quite a while, both from past scholarships. Ive been involved in litigation, some policy advocacy efforts and i think it started for me almost 20 years ago. My first job was in Baltimore City representing kids in bono Baltimore Foster care system. I had a huge caseload. My first day in court i represented about 16 children in an afternoon so honestly, i still feel guilt from that time because i feel like i could have, should have done more for those kids but i was awakened to what foster kids were going through in the system, what they were going through before they came into the system and how hard its been for them when they age out of the system and the statistics are lined up against foster children and foster kids suffer from ptsd at twice the level of iraqi war veterans so this was then alarming to me when i realized that the very agencies that exist to serve the best interests of foster care children were actually finding a way to use those children as a source of funds, finding weight to seek out disability or Survivor Benefits and control of those monies as representative fiduciary capacity and then diver those funds to the state coffers. I then started doing some work as well with low income families and Child Support issues including representing low income fathers which was eyeopening to me to see the difficulty they were going through and i realized that some similar practices were happening with Child Support where states are not only taking disability provider benefits from children but taking childsupport from children. Sometimes the same children. When children are in foster care they go after Survivor Benefits. Some states i talk about in the book take more, nebraska has regulation related to take burial plots. In maryland there is a regulation where they will even take the earnings of the child if they are old enough to work so childsupport then is diverted from the childrens best interests and i started to learn as well about vast practices occurring with medicaid so even more dollars that are being diverted from their intended purpose so i wanted to try to understand and did and connect with these issues as much as i can with the book i tried to step back a bit and try to see how these interconnections are happening and the alth seeing a shift in mission where you have state governments and the state Human Service agency that exists to serve the Public Welfare are instead throwing their focus on maximizing revenue and even hiring companies to help in that process. So before, i want to discuss the examples in a little more detail before i do that so i dont forget, i wanted to stress a couple of themes that i hope come out of the book. First one is that i dont think the book provides any evidence whatsoever for apartments to cut aid to those who need theassistance. As you have state governors were really for funds from intended purpose and the answer is it cut the eight progress, the answer is to stop the misuse. This is complicated. The other thing i hope to stress and i hope to keep making a point of his eye hope the vast majority of our frontline caseworkers in this country are overworked and underpaid and they are trying their best to work for their client and these Revenue Strategies are happening on the ground, they are happening much higher as the state Agency Leadership level, sometimes down at the state level where the governors were Comptrollers Office is directing the practices. So to talk more about this practice of how states are using foster children, the way they do that in many states will partner with revenue maximization consultants. What maryland does is a state worker, where i practice law and where i teach in baltimore, maryland darted with an assessment contract or hired maximus to look at how the state potentially can pay more resources for children in their care and that assessment report which i changed through a public records request the company describes children as a met Revenue Generating mechanism. A hopeful increase in the number of children determined disabled at that time, the estimate was around two percent of the population determined disabled for the purposes of obtaining benefits. They increase that number from 15 to 20 percent of children and the goal, writes, was not to provide Additional Services and help the children with those disabling conditions but to diver those funds to general state coffers so when this occurs, the agencies arent even benefiting fiscally. I dont think foster agencies should be in the business of taking resources from abused or neglected children but the agencies themselves arent even getting any more Financial Capacity because when they do this the state, the states across the country reduce funding to the agencies based on how much money the agencies take from the children so its becoming a stealth funded foster care children system where children are safer in the care and that means giving estate dollars. In addition to going after disability benefits they also seek out Survivor Benefits above. Survivor benefits under the Social Security program, these are earnedbenefits when we work , pay into the system. We earn disability or Survivor Benefits but also Survivor Benefits if we die. Its much like life insurance. I represented a client, a former foster child in maryland who had this issue happen to him and he was placed in foster care at age 12 right after his mother died. He was moved around to several different places. They located a brother as a possible resource. His brother dies. They locate his father and his father was a potential resource and then his father dies. So every one of these four kids family is dying and the Foster Agency realizes after his father dies that the boy is entitled to Survivor Benefits. Theynever tell him. They never tell him they are applying for the benefits, they never tell him they are applying to be representative to take control of the money and they never tell him that they are taking the funds. This money, when alex aged out of foster care hes struggled ever since. Hes been homeless and struggle for unemployment. He couldve used this money to plan for his transition out of care, to think about he could best use it. He always talked about wanting to learn how to become an auto mechanic. Hes never had a drivers license or in it also provided an immense connection to his deceased parents for alex. Its not just the money where you have a connection from a parent who dies it could have provided an emotional connection from alex and as hes struggling on hisown, he could have that connection. The state took it without even telling him. Thats happening nationwide. In many states, they take veterans assistance benefits from kids in foster care who died in the Military Area the list goes on. So some of the language, ive seen in several state requests in contract documents, kids are described as they are sort of resources on a Conveyor Belt the mind. Being described as a unit, again as i mentioned in maryland, Revenue Generating mechanism. They are scored triage to determine which kids bring in the most money, algorithms for dissection of the goals of increasing the penetration rate of children whose resources can be obtained. Ive seen documents that are especially concerning as well when they determine which kids try to get to be determined to be disabled first. Its not based on which kids have most needs comments which kids bring in the most money. States will look at interaction with Funding Sources and those kids who might have other sources of federal aid for their foster care, for the state isnt spending as much money, they will go after those kids first regardless of their disabling conditions. They will go after the kid thats giving the state more money because thats saving the state more money when they take the kids fund. I hope that makes sense. Its all about the money, not about helping children. Another example, so this is just one. I may be starting with an example where medicaid funds are being maximized and some states are diverging from their intended purpose, not all states area you could have the same foster child, plus men who are low income and potentially disabled can also receive in their schools schoolbased medicaid to provide Additional Services for their special