Transcripts For CSPAN3 Politics And Public Policy Today 2016

CSPAN3 Politics And Public Policy Today May 23, 2016

Multisignatumultiagency unit. Larry craig, center from idaho nope for his wide stance, didnt like the information they were putting out, and he reached out and had unit abolished. We were able to sue and get their positions restored. But throughout all of the head of the center asked the question that haunted us, which was, who knew math coulding dangerous . So we employ a number of tools to help scientists suing under statutes where best available science is required, use of scientific integrity policies and even tools like the data quality act and industry sponsored law that allows us to file administrative challenges to Government Agency policies. Recently we were able to use this act to get, again, guided by agency toxicologist, the epa to drop safety assurance for artificial turf made with crumb rubber. We were able to persuade the white house to order overdue multiagency Risk Assessment on using solid waste as a play surface. [ applause ] thank you. And a number of our employees, basically, are in trouble because they found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time or doing their job too well at an inconvenient time. When employees become the victims of witch hunts, it terrifying to see. We represented, two polar researchers who had observed drowned polar bears in open ocean after a storm because of the retreat of sea ice. The agency became upset when their published work became an important vehicle to help the public understand the effects of Climate Change in the arctic and went after them and started this investigation. And it turned into a criminal investigation. It went on for 4 1 2 years. Caused three criminal referrals, all of which without merit. They couldnt find anything wrong. With the whole thing imploded after we posted transcripts of the clueless criminal investigators trying to interrogate these ph. D. Scientists. But the point of it is that, when people find themselves in that situation, one person against an entire institution, they need outside help. So like ghostbusters who you gonna call . Heres how this works for a larger civil society. And its about things that people talk about, transparency, accountability, responsiveness. A transparency example. We do a ton of freedom of information act work. By the way, foya turns 50 this year. The typical scenarios approached by somebody with documents and in essence dont want us to use the leaked version but go through the front door and forced them to be diskorjed by the agency. Knowing whackly what were looking for, we file on the average one lawsuit every three weeks. The information laundromat, our job to wash the identifying marks off the material and hang it on the line for everybody to see. Or institutional change. The point of a lot the of this isnt to win individual victories. Its force change so the same thing doesnt occur over and over. For example, trying to work with Forest Service special agents who after the agency blocked timber theft investigations used that scenario to justify creating a new chain of command for the voeginvestigations. The same thing with land appraisers who pointed out you the taxpayer were losing millions if not billion of dollars on one sided exchanges because the agency had its thumb on the scales. Were enable to enact reforms. Lastly, one of the Top Economists from the army corps of engineers revealed the corps was cooking the books to corps reform adopted to require that these studies be interpenly checked. The idea is empowerment. Make clear staff is not spelled with ph, youre a peer, you have a seat at the table and you be part of balance of power because expertise cannot be ignored. Part of what were doing allowing internal critique to reach the true the true employer, the public, and validate that many of the critics of the agencies, their criticisms, shared by those inside and in many instances shared bit people that should know best the feedback look can be em treatmently powerful. Were facing a number of changes of course, environmental changes such as Climate Change. A generational shift where a whole group of baby boomers is leave something were trying to harness the great wave to come back and help the agency. And of course, theres a president ial transition, you can imagine the demand for our services in a trump administration. What were doing can be exported to any one of a number of agencies, and the approach is Cost Effective because we dont hire experts, you already have hired the experts. Were just trying to make sure their expertise can shine forth. So, were relatively Small Organization with 1 million budget and 5 field offices. We can always use more support. We invite your involvement with our organization. You dont have to have been a a public employee. You have to appreciate the importance and not centrality of public service. So thank you. [ applause ] so, now lets get into still a consumer effort but one little bit different, consumer watchdog, based out in los angeles, halrvey rosenfield. First of all, hes a trial lawyer, you know powers that be try to make that per jorty somehow or another but as a trial lawyer supporting me when i was running in politics in texas, we take from the rich and give approximately half to the poor. Thats not a bad relationship, really. But harvey takes on medical malpractice issues, hmo reform, insurance reforms, utility rates and goes at the big guys, insurance giants, in particular. I grew up in the small town in texas and i learned early on, you should never hit a man with glasses. You should use something much heavier. Heavier thing that we have, the heaviest thing that we have, are those values of fairness, justice, opportunity for all, and in particular, people who represent those, bringing the people inside, again. And thats what consumer watchdog does a lot of, in addition to straight out litigation, they rally citizens into direct citizen action behind issues and referendums. Harveys known for numbers, proposition 9, proposition 45, these are victories for consumers that he and his organization with local people have produced. Proposition 103 alone was about Auto Insurance reform. It has saved over 100 billion for consumers on Auto Insurance rates since 1988. Its remarkable advances that theyre making. So lets bring up harvey rosenfield. Thank you. Thank you. Well, this is an amazingly opportune moment to conconvene a citizen conference like this. In my entire lifetime, i have not seen people as mad and as engaged as they are today. There is there is deep, deep outrage about the corruption in our democracy and i think that a lot of people across the United States are suffering from a form of posttraumatic stress disorder from the economic collapse of 2008. Most people, most americans, not all, but most americans have not really fully recovered from that disaster, either financially or emotionally. And the unconditional bailout of wall street, while leaving all of the rest of americans to fend for themselves, is something that i think was a revelation for even those people who were not paying attention to politics in our country. I once calculated that the amount of money that the federal government handed over to financial corporations in the aftermath as a part of the bailout could have easily paid off every Residential Mortgage in the country. But instead, instead, it was handed, unconditionally, to a bunch of banks and Insurance Companies. So theres a disruption of the current status quo under way in our political or Electoral Campaigns. Its aided by the democratization of communications, technologies that make it easier for people to communicate and enhance peoples creativity. But the bad news is, at the end of the day, i think all of us know that no one person, not even the president , can stop the force of Corporate Power in this country. No nobody has the ability to do that by themselves. And so going in, even as exciting as this Election Campaign is, as startling as it might be feel the bern feel the bern, yep, and feel the donald. As powerful as the emotions are part of the Electoral Campaign this year, theres no doubt at the end there will be d disappointment. Thats the bad news. The good news is that for people who do what we do, who are advocates, we can we can and must be poised to answer that d disappointment to vector the publics engagement, to keep them insipired and bring them into the work that we all do once the dust settles, whoever wins in november. Because that is what advocates do, they seize or create moments and issues at points in time when theres when the public per serve receives theres a problem and looking for a solution and question is, who will provide that solution . Will the politicians provide it . Or will citizen advocates and activists provide it . Todays discussion is all about how its done. So id like to summarize the approach the consumer watchdog has taken over the last 31 years. Its an approach that is set forth in our Mission Statement which consists of three words, expose, confront, and change. So, first of all, expose, we bring a journalists or a lawyers eye to uncover and expose problems in our society. In fact, of the 13 people on our staff, 4 are lawyers, 3 are journalists, or former journalists, and the rest are advocates and researchers and what they do, and we expose things, we tell the story in terms that people can relate to, in Human Interest terms. So the next thing we do, once weve told that story, we confront the folks who have caused the problem. Once we explain what the problem is, then we confront the folks who are the wrong doers. Now, most corporate ceos tried to hide behind pr people and other surrogates because they dont want to have to be to defend themselves. They cant really very well defend themselves. But what we do, honestly, were pretty aggressive about it, is prevent the special interests, Corporate Executives, the greeddriven corporate officials, from escaping accountability for causing the problem. We hold them directly accountable. And these confrontations, by the way, are very dramatic sometimes. We invite the immediate media to witness them. The final part, final role, the most Important Role we play, once we created the conditions for it, we seize the moment to supply the needed solution. Now, as in corporate in the battle between consumers and corporations, corporations are always advocating their own solution. Usually its by scapegoating Something Else, they never take responsibility. But we advocate the solution that we determined to be the one that best protects consumers, taxpayers, workers, savers, and we ask those voters, those consumers, to support us, and we use our opponents weight against them. Its kind of like a political jujitsu. We use their weight, their sloth, their arrogance, against them in order to win. Let me describe the one kind of seminal example of this that id like to present to you today. And this involves Auto Insurance. And 1980s, Auto Insurance rates were skyrocketing in california. The Insurance Companies were claiming that they had to raise rates because there were too many lawsuits. Their solution to restrict the Consumer Protection laws in a state of california. But we did some research and we exposed the faing that the problem in california was, unlike every other major state in the nation, california had no ruled that regulated the Insurance Companies. So we put an initiative on the ballot to regulate, to roll back and regulate Auto Insurance, home insurance, Business Insurance premiums. The Insurance Companies spent an unprecedented 80 million fighting our proposal. And ill give you an example of one things they did, this mailer, which features me on one side, one of the guards that were guarding the petitions we submitted to put the initiative on the ballot, this went to every household in the state of california. And they spent tens of millions of dollars on tv ads. How did we counter that . First, we pointed out, guess whos behind the ad blitz . The more they spent, the more it made sense to people in the political jujitsu, its the Insurance Companies trying to defend their right to rip you off. But we had no money. So we resorted to things like this, where i delivered a truck load full of horse manure to farmers insurance, that was one of the major backers of the opposition to proposition 103. And then, of course, what happened was, it took off. People it galvanized Public Opinion and every dollar they spent against us, we jujitsued it into a galvanizing people to support our initiative. There was one other element to our campaign and this is ralph nader, in 1988, Farmers Market in los angeles campaigning for proposition 103. And his button says 103 is the one for me because of the battle involved Insurance Companies putting three competing initiatives on the same ballot to try to confuse people. But on election day, thanks to ralph, the voters saw through the insurance industrys campaign and passed proposition 103. It passed in blue, Democrat Los Angeles and reagan country, Orange County california, and that shows you that when people are approached with a policy issue and a solution to it that makes sense to them, they will support it. Turns out that was just the beginning of the battle. There were a hundred lawsuits filed. The Insurance Companies were relentless. Weve defeated every single one of them. And it took us, just for one provision of the pop significance that barred companies from basing auto premiums on your zip code, it took us 16 years to win that battle. Not as long as it took and clarence to get air bags. But it took us 16 year than perseverance led to immediate 1. 4 billion in rate rollbacks. 100 billion in savings for motorists alone. Between 1989, when prop 103 took effect, and 2013, Auto Insurance rates went down in california. Its the only state in the nation where rates went down. Rest of the nation, went up 43 . And yet, of course, the you cant even read that site, forget about that that describes the average in california for Auto Insurance premiums. And then sorry, a little bit of a delay okay, they come back at us. In 2010, one of the Insurance Companies puts initiative on the ballot to repeal part of proposition 103. They spent 17 million on ads like this, vote yes on prop 17 and used our own tactics against us. If you pass prop 17, it will lower your insurance rates. But it didnt work. We spent we had to raise a million bucks and we did the following 15second ad this is a consumer alert. Why are car Insurance Companies spending millions to pass prop 17 . The California Attorney general says prop 17 will raise your rates. Stop the hidden rate increases. Vote no on 17. And then, so we beat them, we beat them in 2010. [ applause ] and then, and then the same Insurance Company that did that put it back on the ballot in 2012. They spent another 17 million. This time we spent 100,000, and we beat them again. [ applause ] so its all about its all about perseverance. Now in addition to this battle, which goes on to this very day, there are dozens 0 of lawsuits, administrative and judicial lawsuits on challenges part of prop 103 and we challenge the rates under proposition 103 to force over 3 billion in rollbacks just from consumer watchdogs work over the last ten years or so. But we also work on things like hmo reform, Health Insurance rates. We fought electricity deregulation. We fought to change the unfair and draconian limits on medical malpractice lawsuits in california law. These days, were doing a lot of privacy, trying to trying to ensure that the nations auto safety regulators, working with Clarence Ditlow and joan clay brook, make sure nhtsa national Highway Safety administration, requiring companies to develop regot cars, driverless vehicles, they dont want to comply with federal law, auto safety laws. Were trying to make sure the federal government hues to the mission its supposed to follow and regulate auto safety for those companies. So we do a lot of Different Things besides insurance. But i want to move very quickly and just address speak to those of you in the audience at the beginning of a possible career in citizen advocacy or thinking about whether to spend the rest of your lives devoted to the Public Interest. And ive kind of distilled my experience to ten tips that id like to convey. First, find a battle and jump in right away. Now, there are lots of projects out there. You can be a volunteer to get started. And get a taste of it before you decide. Dont think you cant do it or youre not skilled enough to do it. For example, theres a big Ballot Initiative campaign scheduled for november to regulate Prescription Drug prices in california that needs a lot of volunteers. Start by jumping in. Number two, youve got to work hard. Time and time again, as ralph indicated earlier, a handful of committed people can defeat goliath. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful and committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, its the

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