Im in equality, politics and media. My name is john schwartz. I am a faculty member in public talks policy at the university of arizona. We have three wonderful authors here today and id like to introduce each of them to you from right to left and then have each of them talk in succession for 10 to 12 minutes on a question not hosted on. On my immediate left is john nichols, a pioneer blogger is washington correspondent for the nation and hes a contributing writer for the progressive spirit his articles appear in newspapers across the country it is a frequent commentator on msn received and other radio and television venues. His latest book is an extremely thoughtful, yet also quite troubling analysis of the demise of democracy in America Today, entitled accuracy, have the money and Media Election complex is destroying america. Baxter had on his left is arbor carson, an awardwinning author playwright and activist who is what among other books, money makes the world go down, or the global economy. Her latest book jampacked with powerful insights about life in America Today who earned from her portrayal of the individual lives of americans is entitled down the up escalator, how to 99 live. Finally, william d. Cohen is a former wall street banker who has written for the nations newspapers and appeared as a guest on the daily show, and the news hour among many hours. Author of many books, hes one the Financial Times best of the year award and his latest work just coming out is a gripping book that tells a riveting story called the price of silence, the cross scandal, the power of the elite and the corruption of our great universities. And so, i bet you start with a question for john nichols and asking to speak for 10 to 12 minutes of not going in to other areas he would like to emphasize. A lot of changes have taken place over the past several decades in the operations of journalism on the role of money and elections. How they affected ordinary citizens sense of having the true voice in our elections and our governing process. Taken that are the question, john. It goes right to the heart of the book. Im embarrassed to be on a panel where i had been questioned at john or rope of the most important books of the year and he is a great thinker whose outline a lot of the ideas that helped us think about what im talking about. The fact of the matter is nothing if the same about politics, nothing is what it was. The only people that havent been informed of this are the people. Its a fascinating notion because every day across america, citizens continue to engage in the political process. Imagining that they are fighting deal if i commented they are doing it in ways that they have historically done it. Occasionally they will prevail. Beyond the zone in which they operate, there is another reality altogether and the separate reality altogether is now so definitional that grassroots politics is actually discard it and highly irrelevant , at least in the eyes of the media. Let me give you an example of what i am saying. 16 american state have called on the congress that the United States to pass a constitutional amendment to overturn the 2010 Citizens United ruling that allowed corporations to spend as they choose in our politics. 500 American Communities across this country, los angeles, tucson high petition their government for the redress of grievances. Last tuesday, 35 New Hampshire towns at their town needed petition their congress to overturn the citizen, to begin the process of the ruling and yet that story is discussed almost nowhere in our media. I go to audiences across this country and people are like id know idea. I had no idea thursday Mass Movement involving millions of people seeking to solve the problems of this republic. And why is that i ask why is that . R. Media in this country has decided the only really interesting thing is the cost of the rich people and their political points. So our political coverage is essentially gossip coverage. I had to be fair here. Thats a little insulting to gossip shows on tv. If nancy grace goes after his trial, theres simply no question you learn a lot more than you do about politics are much in a political show. The basic concept told us we had dumbed down an empty out our political coverage over the last 20 years at a rate that is so a learning that it had happened by force, if someone had come from outside and said we want you to layout more than 20,000 newspaper employees across this country, which have been the last, five to six years. We want to shut down the competing newspapers and towns across this country. Some that have been in tucson and also in albuquerque and seattle and denver, kansas city, kansas. Ann arbor, michigan, a college town no longer has a print daily newspaper. The fact of the matter is we have hollowed this thing out. The number of newspapers that have shut down the washington bureaus would blow your mind. At one point or cataloging it was happening at a week debate in state houses across this country. The number one complaint i get from politicians is not about the tea party and its not about the labor movement. The number one complaint is no one is paying attention anymore. Statehouse beers had to shut down and disappeared. City halls across this country are uncovered. We literally have a blank cell. It has gone dark and huge price of america. Our media is failing to do the basic job of providing the information necessary for democracy. People say we have the internet now. The internet the fact of the matter is that people making it is absurdly small. It does not begin to keep up with a number of print of print journalists use to make basis. We are hollowing out journalism in this country and at the same time, we are flooding in money. We are literally allowing the wealthiest people in this country and the most powerful people in this country and corporations themselves to pour money into her campaign. So i know that we are talking to one of the smartest audiences in america so i probably dont have to make this connection. But when you hollow out, dumbed down and disappeared journalism and new flood in money from the wealthy, money from the elite, for the most powerful, what do you get . Apolitical discourse defined by wealth and privilege and as a result, what we discussed in america and i use quotation marks here, seriously is how we can see what the problem of hungry people getting too much food stamps and too much school lunch. That is people laugh. Im not kidding. The congress of the United States is debating massive cut in food and Supplemental Nutrition Program and republicans were saying it should be really huge cut in the democrat said now, just a moderate cuts. Thats the range of discourse in america. It is a range of absurdity. We see it on issue after issue after issue. The Sunlight Foundation recently said, while streep must be upset where the government a Government Shutdown are when we have dysfunction in washington. A friend of mine writes for the Sunlight Foundation a lot of can be in politics asks the question, why would they be upset . We have raging in coming equality, a massive redistribution of the wealth upward, corporations be literally giving money to do what they used to do if is a capitalist society they would do, right . Massive monopolization. But the hugest corporations looking to mercenaries of communications. This is the golden age for wealth and privilege. The people dont like it. The people are totally upset. The polling shows that people are profoundly angry and upset with the circumstance of our country. The data on respect for a process, the servants of the country in the right direction is overwhelming. Right and left him everybody. We are an incredibly united country, john. Well think its a horrible situation. The thing to understand about it is in the book we talk about going to tea party events, progressive events, occupy, the great mass rallies to capitalist approach has labor law. You know what Company Circumstances . Again and again, people didnt always articulate in the same way. Its really not a detailing of the crisis so much as a call for people to lead once again we dont have to accept we been handed. The massive and equality and by the media that no longer serves democracy. [applause] you know, the founders advised us that freedom could not survive unless individuals were virtuous. With regard to individuals, that doesnt just mean political leaders, politicians. It also means individual citizens and voters. Voters have got to will themselves to a higher standard and if the kinds of reforms john is talking about in the kind of movement john is talking about is going to occur, it requires that voters see themselves as having an educated role to play and willing to spend time because that is what the founders understood was required for a republic to survive. Are voters doing what they need to do . Thats a very important question coming out of johns boat, at least implied why his book. Barbara who has written a very engaging book, let me ask you what the individual lives that you so beautifully portrayed in your book, what do they tell us . What lessons do they have for rising inequality in america and indeed in america that is in great danger of declining . Well, thank you for asking the question. I had a publisher who asked me when the Great Recession started to write a book about what they assumed, what the editor assumed was a sudden housing crash brought on by mortgage manipulation perfect to visit the crash. We started looking at people who lost jobs, housing income in the first time i realized is most of the people we spoke to were so vulnerable not because those the recent crisis, but during the 40 years from which income has been stagnating and increasing. Im just going to introduce you to a couple of people, a couple of people who represent what is happening over those 40 years. This is a father and son, two generations. This happened and my husband, who is sitting right there, got a phone call from someone trying to sell have xm radio subscription. Its the kind of phone call you get off as fast as you can. I hear my husband talking on genially with this person on the telephone. And then he buys a subscription. He certainly got off he said this kid was so clever he told me how i could take sure that the subscription ended immediately with the introductory rate so i did not forget to cancel it and start paying a lot of money. He told me i should really talk to this person. It has to do with the recession. He was so smart. He was so personable. So i called had i found that he was calling from a call center in evanston, indiana. You never know where those places are and i certainly have not heard of it. He worked there for about a month and prior to that, his last job had kind of manage the office of a sassy and agencies. He rounded up people that he sent out laborers for 750 an hour to work. And warehouses around evansville. When the crisis hit in the recession of 2008 hey, there wasnt enough call for these people to do construction work in warehouse work. The agency closed down. He worked there for five months in between the five months, that job as call center job, he had no work at all. The whole year unemployed. He said he was going to quit the call center job, too because he hated it. He hated annoying people. Before he knew it, i asked him what would you do after that . And his dancers only a negative. I wont do with my father dies. He said to me and im going to quote him, my dad says i dont know how to stick to anything. But im not going to purdue 20, 25 years busting my hump for a company that puts me on night shift when i get close to my pension that is trying to make me quit so they can bring in someone younger for half the pay. Well, i talked to them for a while, and before you knew it, i was up to evanston evansville, indiana, to see both father and son. As soon as i arrived, Michael Kennedy recognized that i was seen immediately was a fast buck. This is a 1960s hippie. He and his girlfriend had moved into a new place. He was burning tickets from Thrift Stores the things he found on the street. Very clever. Very good with his hands as well as his mind. His friends would drop by. Obviously their house was the center for a group of friends like again in the 60s, almost like a commune. Some i dropped it and said i cant make the band gig tonight because im going to pull a double shift at the pizza parlor. They were his friends. Poor kid are not working in those kinds of jobs. One thing he was sure a company wasnt going to go by matching furniture on credit. Again, referring back to his father. Im not going to do what my parents did. They got in trouble for a little while although they did straighten out. I have to say, this was of course the way his friends trapped in an out, they seemed very much like the dropouts at the 60s except one difference, there was nothing they could drop back into. It was not like us were. Said commodities got the college degree, do something. We could go back to something. What they were doing this but they were going to go on doing. Theres really two different days. The artwork he and his friends were doing with their computer printing and Computer Graphics was a lot better then the tide as in the 60s [laughter] so, finally i get to see his father immediately his father in a nice, small modest house in the suburb cover. He and his father is exactly as the sun describes him. Religious, republican and right on. That took a lot of work not of the struggles between a father and son. Personal struggles, not all struggles about the economy. Im a playwright and i tell you the economic story. I live enough for you to understand the people as individuals, to ask questions about them. Well, his father works as a manager. 200 people under him and the regional depot at a big box chain, which i call big box than i did so because the man still works there and i certainly didnt want to get in trouble. They guess he acknowledged his work was now very insecure. Theyve put them on the night shift. He was working 10, 12 hours. And remember hes managed that, so he wasnt getting overtime for those 10, 12 hours a day. He could no longer coach soccer because his schedule did not allow it anymore. Not only did they get extra time, but his basic salary had gone up for a long time. And yes he was in a very insecure situation. They were pushing him to try to get him to quit before the pension. He had seen other people forced out, younger people brought in. Yes that was a problem. But so far he doesnt give himself any credit to keeping the job, but god had helped him in every situation and had told him the right is to say and he had kept his job. Really im telling you that mans problem. He was not a man to talk about his problem. What he really wanted to talk about was his son. These two are so intertwined with each other. Look, its not just economics. Fatherson conflict goes back to the bible. All he could say to me is michael is so smart. If you would just cut his hair and stick to some than, and a something. He couldnt think what something michaels friends could do. They would have to go to michaels at mcdonalds in time to herne and maybe get promoted to management and maybe his company would hire them if we take a lot of people from the donalds. You know how to work fast under pressure. I need to be people who take his job at half pay. Thats the best he could imagine for my close friends. But michael himself, i dont leave him. All parents all of our children are above average in the matter the statistic i cant blame anybody for doing something for that one special child. And there probably is a place in the world for michael, but not for all the michaels. The difference between a father and son is the attitudes they took to what was happening to them. The father took all the blame on himself. For instance, if he was 60 now. His daughter and soninlaw were giving him three acres on their farm. What he wanted to do is build a house there. And indeed near his grandchildren. You should see his space be when he talked to about grandchildren. But he went to sell his house. The idea was to sell his house and use the money to go the other house. The house has gone down by 40 . So in order to be able to afford the house he has to take on a new big mortgage and he knew i 60s that he shouldnt do that. So he couldnt do that, but his attitude to that was, and i quote, some people buy a house. They lived there, sell it, make profits. Not us. Hes not a person that says that banks cause this bubble. Thats not the way he talks. Soon about the job. I have a job in a Small Company and they really liked me. But i thought it would be more secure with this Larger Company and i could move ahead. Again, even in terms of their bringing in young people, he said maybe the young people are better at computers that we older people are. I mean, it was kind of the maybe im not a firstrate person because he was still in his mind that someone like himself with any smarts should have been able to use to send to children to college and to retire modestly in debt free and if he didnt make it on a such a for him, maybe that was because he just wasnt effort raised person. That is not a pleasant way to feel. His son michael of course guarded himself against such feelings saying i dont want to give my life to these corporations. I dont want to do what they want me to do. I dont want to buy the stuff they say i should buy. And that is a pleasing mantra. The 60s mantra, do your own thing. Its the right thing to say, especially if you can afford matching furniture anyway. He would have another psychological problem. He was smart like his father said. All people are smart. He would like to work with other people would be part of some place. But even if he went to college for a couple years, which he smart enough to do, primarily because government is subsidizing bus of its states. If you went to college and he got some kind of skill Computer Graphics and things that act, other people i talk to come away collar people who are unemployed , when they got reemployed come even if their companies are profitable, those jobs have been transformed into contract jobs. You are not your own entrepreneur from which are supposed to be. And others come me pick a job or wiki or a week there. You not only did get paid much but you are part of something. We should all be part of america and White America produces. The sun protected hi