Interested in projects, and investigative projects, enterprise journalism and he thought the two of us were newcomers, might be able to work together. Very often that doesnt work and people dont like to work together. We tried an experiment and so far so good. Hey say. Host why did it work for so long . Guest we think it worked because a similarity of work ethics. We both love to research and report. We love to research and report and we were of sound mind and it makes for a sound mind that is hard for all of us but it was similar work habits, we believed down deep in fairness, government, private interest, not always treat the average person fairly and we sort of realize that early on in the partnership and one way or another, writing about that ever since. Host Donald Bartlett was your first project for the Philadelphia Inquirer . Federal housing administration, and it was a fascinating project that dragged on for two years. Guest they thought they were going to put together for three months and we wrote some articles after three months and these in turn generated tremendous response. Poor people were being sold defective houses and the federal government was insuring them and they would collapse after a month or two at the same guy who sold them would fix it up again and start again with somebody else. This generated a huge response. Just keep working, keep digging to see how this goes. Host there were warning signs for matters . We kept producing more and more and more. One of our editors and later years, dont ask them any questions, it will generate 50 answers. Host 1979 your first book came out empire, the life, legend and badness of Howard Hughes. Why Howard Hughes . Guest we had done a series for the inquirer and the 70s examining the Howard Hughes empires ties to the federal government. A very limited kind of thing. We call it the silent partner of Howard Hughes, the government. It flew in the face of everybodys perception of a rugged individual and all that stuff. The publisher came to us and said how about doing a book . We said great idea. We signed a contract and a month later hughes died and the publisher said how about we make this a fullscale biography . Years later the result of that was empire. Cradle to grave kind of story of his life. A book we are very proud of because it has remained continuously impressed since 1979. Host what were Howard Hughess connections to the government . Guest it is hard not to imagine, hard to figure out how he wasnt connected. He had contracts across the board. From the cia to defense. They were huge. They were not small contracts. He did really well on the taxpayerss expense. What emerged was whenever you hear this rugged individualism i do this on my own, i dont need the government, if you look you will find the government somewhere putting money into that persons pockets somewhere at some point in time, these people did not do anything on their own. And Howard Hughes definitely did not. Guest host your most recent book, the betrayal of the American Dream. This is a quote from that book. It deals with an issue we are dealing with today. If congress had not enacted these tax cuts and opened new loopholes we would not be having discussions about the dangers of the federal deficit. Tax cuts didnt just that in the Bank Accounts of rich people, they plunged the nation deeper into the red. Guest absolutely. In deficit financing and all these things for many years, what we looked at for this book, we didnt fully realize just how egregious those revenue losses had been. This is the point we make in the book. About people and what is happening in the american economy, the Global Economy is inevitable and the rest of the world is catching up with us which is why incomes are stagnant. We show it is very much because of Public Policy. These things are not happening on their own. Taxes are perfect example. One of the statistics in the book that has absolutely stunned people, go back to the 50s and look at the richest americans which is a specific number of people, the 400 richest people, in the mid 50s they paid the 51 of their income in federal taxes. On the verge of the implosion, economic meltdown of 2008 those 400 richest americans, the percentage was down 16 . That is a huge difference. A lot of young people dont realize what has happened to the tax burden because of those tax cuts. Not just in the last decade but preceding that as well. Guest you cant do that and not create massive deficits. Host do you consider yourselves muckrakers . Is that a fair word to use . Guest i suppose the rest of the world considers us i think we have always called ourselves investigative reporters and we try to help people something they dont know to connect some dots on stories that may be out there. That is the most important thing about what we have done. We dont start out with a game plan. We are going to prove this whether it is a book or journalism we try to show here is an issue, is the World Running out of oil, are the rich getting richer, are the deficits because of entitlement, so we begin testing hypotheses to see exactly what is real and what isnt. That is what drives us more than a game plan of politics or political theory. Guest i have never done that ever. I have picked the subject of were going to do a number on this person or a number on this program, that is not a good idea. It is really unnecessary. Usually what we do comes as a result of a question. We hear from somebody else, from an editor or a reader. Why is this happening . Host what about advocates . They you consider yourself advocates . Guest the critics would call us advocates but i dont think so. One of the more interesting things is over the years, extreme liberals or at least liberals, but that is misleading because over the years we have had some of our work published in conservative publications much to the chagrin of some people. You cant name one person, no one ideology has a lock on what is right and what is wrong. Guest what is interesting over the years, some of the things we have written about, the range of letters. And the response of a book we wrote 20 years ago called america what went wrong . Much to the surprise of some liberals, folks we know, probably half of the mail was from conservatives who asked things of the book in terms of what had happened to corporations because of things out of wall street and so forth. Is hard to generalize about these things. One other thing about advocacy, we feel if we had brought things to light, some other part of the process, when it dies it dies. If somebody else picks up on those ideas, the way it goes. Our job as far as we are concerned ends when we bring something to light and a lot of journalists feel crutch, something they brought, attention to the public picked up and run with. Host in 1994 your book america who really pays the taxes comes out. Any attempt to tax the country out of its annual deficits would prove futile. Therefore a new and more just tax code should be accompanied by a reduction in federal spending amounting to at least 10 of general fund outlays. Guest sounds like it would be relevant to today. Guest we have always believed taxing and a certain amount of restraint are important. The problem we have had with some things today is the emphasis is supposedly on cutting and the forces just want to cut very often are not increasing revenues and both go hand in hand and some of the negotiations over the last few weeks there has been a slight glimmer that more and more people seem to recognize you really need both. You cant do one and not the other. Host what is the nexus between wall street and washington . Wall street, once it gets the movement between wall street and washington has gone on forever and not to denigrate everybody who works on wall street, coming had a problem with a different perspective, not necessarily to the benefit of the largest number of people in this country. It works to the benefit really of quite often a handful of people. Their approach to government. Host you began at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Where were you there . Where did you go and where are you now . Guest we left the inquirer in 97. We were there from 70 to 97 and it worked on our own for one year until 71. Then we went to Time Magazine for ten years. Host and now . Guest vanity fair. Host james steele, give us a quick history of the award you have won as authors. Guest two of the ones that are probably on most peoples radar, one in 1975 and the other in 1989, two National Magazine awards, 1999, 2001 when we were at Time Magazine. That is rather unusual. For people to win in both of these categories. National magazine awards beyond that, most of the major journalism awards over time we have won, book awards, other awards, the total is somewhere around 50. That goes back to the early 70s. Host good afternoon and welcome to booktvs monthly in that program. This month coauthors james steele and Donald Bartlett are our guests. They are the authors of eight books. We will show those to you in just a minute. We want to get you involved if you would like to participate in our conversation we will put the phone numbers on screen, 2025853880 in the east and central time zones, 3881 for those in the mountain and pacific time zones. You can also contact us on social media, make a comment on our Facebook Page facebook. Com booktv. You will see it posted at the top of the page and if you have a question or comment we will get to as many of those as possible. You can send us a tweet at twitter. Com booktv or booktv is our twitter handle and finally you can send an email to booktv cspan. Org. We will get to those very quickly. Here are mr. Bartlett and mr. Steeles books beginning in 1979, empire, the life, legend and madness of Howard Hughes. In 1985, Nuclear Waste in america came out. And in 92, america what went wrong . America who really pays the taxes . America who stole the dream in 1996, the Great American tax dodge house spiraling fraud and avoidance are killing fairness, destroying the income tax and costing you, that came out in 2000. Critical conditions how health care in america became big business and bad medicine, 2004, and finally the betrayal of the American Dream came out in 2012. James steele, the use of the word american and america throughout your books. When did that become a trend for you guys . Guest it became a trend in the america what went wrong . Book which was a series prior to that inquiry that we expanded into book form. The idea was these books are about average americans for the most part, what theyre going through, national in scope, the problems are not endemic to one area of the country and they resonate with people. America is one of those words with such deep and powerful meaning with readers and viewers because it gets to the heart of what the country is about. It wasnt a conscious thing in the beginning when this name was developed in the case of america what went wrong . In 91 and 92 but after that, it seemed to be kind of a way to capture those issues that we wanted to portray to people. It hasnt been in every book but it has been with many of them. Host your 1996 book america who stole the dream your report you receive 30,000 letters in response to this magazine style feature. How did you research that book . The 96 book, a really big book was the joy of hate to. We realized when we finished it, one of the huge areas, we didnt explore to the extent we felt we should have. It was almost 100,000 word newspaper series. People lined up around the block to buy the reprints. Guest we are talking about america what went wrong . Guest one of the things left out of that book wasnt treated with the same degree that it should have been was trade and that was what happened with america who stole the dream . Heavier emphasis on trade. Host i want to read two quote from america who stole the dream . Beginning with in the Global Economy constructed by washington and wall street all americans live next door to a low wage country end a second quote from that book because there is little real difference between the Political Parties on trade there has been little real difference in dealing with an issue at the heart of the formulation of National Trade policy, the revolving door. Guest we talk about that in the recent book and it is one of the things people found most and lightning particularly about the more recent book because most people say i am for free trade, it is a great idea and we made a point in america who stole the dream . And the more recent book that free trade is a wonderful idea, a great idea but all your trading partners need to practice in the same way or else you dont have true reciprocity, you have the u. S. Being taken advantage of which is why we have a 10 trillion trade deficit. One of our Major Trading partners, very unusual situation has developed and was also encouraged is movement in and out of congress and lobbying and so forth that has assisted very much in promoting various free trade ideologies. They sound good, they sound like apple pie and motherhood but until you look and see how they are playing out in the real world, you see the way we practice in this country is not the way it should be practiced and that is why it has eliminated jobs, why we have the trade deficit and trading partners can maintain policies that are very detrimental to us and our workers because they know we will never in any way get particularly tough on that issue because such free trade be leaders. A lot of that is incurred by political process and influence peddlers who insist that process. Host in the betrayal of the American Dream you talk about the boeing corporation and a Faustian Bargain. What is the Faustian Bargain and how does it involve the boeing corporation . Guest boeing got into a series of agreements with china. One day it is going to come to regret because the company will be either a chinese subsidiary or working for the benefit of china and not a u. S. Company and without blowings plane escorts, sale of boeing planes, our trade deficit would be massive and what boeing has done is turn over its technology to the chinese to the extent that they are now producing their very unknown mediumrange, equivalent of 737 plane, they wont need belling any more. At some point in time, china is very nice but we down need you. This is more about governments involvement, and it just has the handwriting in the wall. What is the Faustian Bargain . Guest in exchange for selling the chinese airplanes, transferring production to china, all of this in the short term, able to sell your planes to china, and production in the meantime and we continue to ship more and more of it, Research Facility and even the manual on how to build aircraft, put together over decades by belling, taxpayer supported and boeing is a major defense contractor. For the shortterm borrowing has made this bargain but in the long term it cant work to our advantage. The chinese have created their own commercial aircraft industry financed by the government, started by the government call the supposedly free trade is supposed to be about, no secret about it. What does it mean down the road . One great export we have is probably going to be in peril. Host you rightfully 70 of the 787 dreamliner is foreign content according to the society of professional engineering employees and aerospace, the union that represents boeing engineers. In contrast boeings 727 was originally built with 2 foreign content. That changed. It also explains why employment in the future is going to be very dismal because jobs are gone and they are not coming back. Host Critical Condition, how health care in america became big business and bad medicine came out in 2004. You write whatever their purpose prescription drugs, 30 to 60 more, the same medication sold anywhere in the industrialized world. Governments elsewhere to not consider drugs to be just another consider item but products vital to the health of their people. Guest the only thing i would change in that sentence is i think 60 is low. No doubt it is much higher. Theres a cancer drug that just came on the market, 28,000 for a single treatment. That is not the real world. If people want to understand why health care in this country is in such bad shape, all they have to do is look at drug prices and the prescriptions, americans consume more prescription drugs on a percapita basis than any population in the world. Necessary . Absolutely not. If we had a ceo from a drug company out here he would say what about the research we put into this, we have to get our investments so we can find more drugs etc. Guest what those people dont understand at what the drug industry has been good about keeping quiet, most drugs do not work. If you tell someone that, they are really shocked but the fact of the matter is 50 of the people taking drugs derived 0 benefit from those prescription drugs. Is because of the internal makeup of their bodies. They dont work. Nobody ever tells people that. The fda or another agency comes along trying to take a drug of of the market the industry will bring forth these crying people say and i am going to die, baloney. They dont work. What i always found amusing, the thing the medical industry is most quick to respond to is vitamins. You excrete them in no time. They dont work. The same is true for escription drugs. They dont work in 50 of cases. It is not 50 across the board. Cancer drugs dont work, are only effective in 25 of the cases. 75 are worthless and then goes up to the disease and these are from the drug industrys own internal studies, not ours or some think tank, or some person who thought the pharmaceutical the drug industrys old day. Guest the reason the industry says they need those profits for research is that is the only argument they have to justify higher prices here. They sell these medications around the world and theyre not selling these at a loss. Theyre still making money elsewher