>> one that is tilted towards the favorite position of the corporate right if you will bare

with my broad generalization. i'd like to talk about one the most prominent issues in the news today which is the deficit. because we are hearing quite a bit about the deficit. and i would argue that we hear about the deficit generally in a very specific context. which is that the deficit keeps us from doing things that are very popular. it keeps us from being able to have an adequate social security system, a good fully funded safety net, and it's a way to say, look, you may like those things, this maybe a democracy, you may have very, very favorable polling for these things. and we're not trying to take those things away. we simply can't afford them. it's a very insidious narrative, and a very effective one. you see it used in other issues, it's spilling over into the discussion of public employees, and unions, and the right to collectively bargain. so i think we need to look at

this deficit issue very, very carefully. now james galbright is an esteemed economist from the university of texas. he points out an interesting tidbit in the cbo projections, of course, every reporter writing about this uses these same projections. that's what everybody is talking about. and the cbo projects relatively large and increasing budget deficits over the next year. especially if the so-called bush tax cuts which we might rename now the obama tax cuts are not allowed to expire on schedule. he says it's an interesting thing that the cbo does. they assume that we will have inflation at about the same rate as now. one half or two percent. and they assume that interest rates will go from close to zero

to 5% over the next five years. now i know that the worse thing you could do in public speaking is to get wonky, but this is crucial to understand. the only reason they raised interest rates is to attract buyers who the inflation is high. so it's pretty much impossible to have very low inflation as we have now or relatively low inflation and magically have them increase interest rates from almost zero to 5%. what he says is this basically mechanically creates the massive deficits. so there's other assumptions in there to. he points out cbo health care spending will reach 30% of our gross domestic product. and he points out and i think this is absolutely true, before that happens we will simply buy

france and send people over there for health care. we'll buy it. we could get some cheese on the way. although, i don't know how that works with the health care. let's set that aside. let's pretend that these deficits are not mechanically created by very dodgy assumptions that we never hear about. james galbright by the way, if he could go door to door and tell everybody, he would. if he could learn how to sky right, he could. if he could get on the tv, he would explain this better than i. it's not like he's never heard from, he's often quoted in the 17th photograph of the story of the washington "washington poste fold after we heard from the heritage and a bunch of other sources that tell us that the sky -- the fiscal sky is falling. fiscal sky is falling. but let's set that aside for a second and define the terms. what does it mean?

what does a fiscal deficit mean? what does a budget crisis mean? now in very common sense terms the way i think of that, it's when i want to do something but i simply don't have enough money to do it. i'd like to purchase a new car. and it cost $10,000, or $20,000. i don't have enough cash for that. so let's examine this narrative, this fiscal many budget deficit as an economic shortfall, as something that we just -- it's just baked into the cake, which is a term that economist like to use. now i would think that we have a structural economic problem called the deficit if as many tea partyers, for example, contend. we had out of control spending. crazy, wild, government spending. because it's possible that we couldn't afford that. so i'd like to point out between 2004 and 2007 we ranked 24th out

of 26 wealthy countries in the organization for economic cooperation and development in terms of our government spending. overall spending as a share of the economy. 24th out of 26. we are ranked officially as a low public spending country. that's one. i think also it might be true that we have a structural, economic problem that we're going to call it deficit. if we were indeed taxed to death, the tea and tea party means taxed enough already. taxed enough already. in 2008 before the crash, we were 26th out of 30 oecd countries in terms of the overall tax burden. we were very, very far from the top. we were nine percentage points below the average. below the average. so i want to just think for one moment about how many credence is given to the idea that we are

taxed to death. now when you look at those very angry people at the tea party gatherings, they have one point. even though they don't know it. in world war ii, corporations paid 50% more than individuals and families in terms of federal taxes. 50% more. by the time ronald reagan left office, individuals and households paid four times what corporations paid. so it's a shift in tax burden that's a story we almost never hear. i hear all the time, all the time about high tax rates or low tax rates. but i never hear enough about the details of this shifting tax burden. so those people do have reason to feel that they are taxed enough already even if we as a society are not.

our federal government last year collected the lowest amount of revenue since 1950. 1950. this is primarily a result of the financial crash. not even the tax cuts that have been given away. you know, revenues are now. now that's not exactly the whole story when i talk about our tax burden and spending. if you look at the countries we're compared to. a lot of them send in the tax checks like we do and we get free health care and education. if you think about another narrative that is just as true as the structural economic problem, it's that if we had the same -- if we spend the same on health care cost per person as any one of the 35 countries, any single one of them within a few short years, all of those projected deficits turn around

and become surpluses. what can you do with surpluses? maybe we can talk about lowering the age, and helping people that need help more, we can talk about different programs. there's a lot we could do with that. or if you are a conservative, you can give a rebate. you can give more tax cuts. we could just as easily say we have an out of control health care cost crisis as we say we have a deficit crisis. but how often do you hear that compared to the deficit crisis narrative, which i would argue is ubiquitous. now we have -- there's a lot of different ways to estimate how much of the public debt is due to military spending. but according to one very basic analysis which just goes back and looks at the defense budget and the veterans affair budget, the very straightforward defense

spending. 91% -- 91% -- of our public debt is based on unpaid past conflicts. 91%. we have not fully paid off world war ii, ladies and gentlemen. we have not fully paid it off. we are still paying for korea, we are still paying for vietnam, we are still paying for grenada. it was a good war. we could say we are a foreign entanglement crisis. but the one that suggests we must cut whether we like it or not, popular progressive programs is the dominant narrative that you hear again and again and again every time you open up your newspaper and

turn on the cable tv. it's very clear. and i want you to think about that. the amount of ink, the amount of discussion that we're going over over this deficit, i would argue hysteria. and then i want you to contrast that for a moment with some very real, very real crisis in the american economy today. these are not contrived. we've been hearing less and less about the crisis. even though 2011 is projected to break the record set either in 2008 or 2009. i'm not sure which in foreclosures. so in other words, that crisis which began several years ago is going to be at it's worse this year. and it's getting very, very little attention. few interesting facts about that, the amount of housing wealth that has been lost by the

american people since the crash is a number 50% greater than our entire deficit. this year americans will spend $250 billion paying mortgage payments on phantom housing wealth they have lost. just on the part that they have lost. not the whole house. just the value that they've lost. this represents four times the amount of money being debated by democrats and republicans in washington, d.c. four times. more than four times. they are looking for $61 billion in cuts, republicans are. low let's talk about the depths of the job crisis. this is a real crisis. this is a deep and painful and sustained crisis. and i've interviewed a number of economist who tell me i don't know how we're getting out of it.

there's no obvious engine of growth absent really large scale public intervention in terms of either a direct jobs program, or a green energy program, or something else. they don't see any new wonderful engine of economic prosperity that's going to be taking over. i want to just talk about this because it's not getting the attention that it should be. yes, we see stories about oh, unemployment is 9.5%, unemployment is bad. companies aren't hiring. but i think that we don't really grapple with just how severe it is. we have 16% of the work force right now is either unemployed or under employed. which means a lot of people have given up. we just -- they've tried, we've been out of jobs for a long time. they have given up. that includes people who are working part time and need a full-time job, want or need a full-time job.

the average duration for the unemployed right now in the united states or in february was 36 weeks, nine months, nine months is the average duration of unemployment. now the previous record is something like don't quote me the exact number, 23 weeks. but whatever the precise number, this is a hugely inflated new record. it's an all time record since they began tracking these things. now long term unemployment is a little different than if you are at a job for a month or six weeks. it crushes your self-esteem, of course. like finding an partner, you have to be careful doing into a job interview and feel good. it's a real problem, the psychological issue. beyond the psychological issues, we're seeing increasing

discrimination against the long-term unemployed. we're seeing reports of companies that are saying we're getting so many applications for each job that the easiest way to win it down to just a narrower pool is to just throw out everybody who's been unemployed for two years or more, or 18 month or more under the assumption that their skills are rusty, or there's something wrong with them. there's something wrong with them. credit scores are a problem. companies increasingly check credit scores. 3.9 million people last year were skill jobless when their extended unemployment benefits ran out and a similar numbers projected for this year. so what happens? what do you do? what do you do? well, we see anecdotal story. people moving into their parents or kids house or getting roommates. what do you do when you have in

benefits and no job? this is a human catastrophe. right here in the united states. so your credit goes. you got to max out the credit cards. you can't pay your mortgage. you can't take your bills on time. your credit goes. it's another barrier to reentry the work force for the people. it's a horribly bleak situation. finally we see ageism. age discrimination, it's not legal. but the average unemployment duration for somebody between 55 and 64 years of age is 44 weeks for 11 months that's the average. younger workers, their average is 29 weeks. so it's right there in the numbers. you see it. if you are over 45, you have been out of a work for a while, what are you going to do? nobody is telling people what they are supposed to do. there is no relief in sight. there's no relief. they are tinkering around the

margins of this problem. maybe we can get them 13 more weeks of extended unemployment. that's not enough. that's not enough. extended unemployment has long term effects. long after the economy recovers. there are studies of people who have been out of work for an extended period of time in the early '80s, and we found their earnings were significantly less than those who kept their jobs ten years later, 15 years later. one study that i find particularly jarring given the current circumstances that we're dealing with track 60,000 father/son pairs from 1981 to '82 recession, through 2000. and what they found was 17 years after that recession, 17 years after that recession, children of fathers who had been

unemployed during the '81-'82 recession for an extended period of time earned 9% less than those who had kept their jobs. you hear sometimes that there's five people who are unemployed for every job opening in the united states. that's true. but i want to include the people who are involuntarily working part time. they are looking for a job too. they are in the same pool looking for a job. that number, ladies and gentlemen, is 8 to 1. all the people looking for a full time job for each full-time job opening. now i want you to think for a moment. just imagine for one moment what we might be doing if the same attention were being paid to

these real crises that are hitting the american middle class in the most profoundly painful way as was being paid to this deficit which is contrived from a little funny numbers. little funny accounting. there are solutions, there are potential solutions during the great depression, of course, we had direct job programs. we were paying people to work to fix roads and murals and we remember the wpa murals. you can talk the second stimulus. don't believe anybody that says there's nothing that can be done. nothing is being done. because there's such a relentless focus on other issues and very little attention being paid to this. how am i doing for time? okay. now how the financial crash happened is a fairly complex story. but how it has spread to the

main street economy is fairly simple. american households, individuals, families lost $14 trillion in wealth. $14 trillion in housing wealth, 401(k)s, stockwell, et cetera, et cetera. and economist talk about something called the wealth effect. it's a very simple idea that when you lose wealth, or gain wealth, you spend less or spend more. to adjust. it's very common sense. i have a lot of wealth. you want to go out to dinner. that's fine. it's on me. and if you look at housing wealth, for example, they say that about five cents for every dollar is the wealth effect. it's depresses demand. consumer demand represented about 70% of our economy. so you talk about the great drop in wealth, anxiety about losing your job, anxiety about losing

your home, and the subtotal of this is significant falloff in demand. that's my mother slipping me water. thank you. thanks. so we have a huge demand problem and every single survey of business owners, these are the people who actually are running businesses. every single survey i've read in the last two years has the same conclusion. we need customer customers. we need customers. there's not enough customers. demand for goods and services. but we have this alternative narrative that's really interesting. even though taxes have gone down, for the third year in a row, by the way, we've collected less taxes than under the bush administration. even though taxes have gone down

under obama, we get the narrative that taxes are killing the jobs. we need to cut taxes. we need to cut taxes. it's a demand matter. you could argue that that puts money into people's pockets. the other one is the idea that there's uncertainty about some future regulation that's coming down the road. like you never know maybe he'll turn out to be a kenyan socialist. who knows. who knows what could happen. so the idea and it's being advanced every day by conservatives is that the only reason that companies aren't hiring is because they are uncertain of how the future. it's not because there's no customers. but i want to tell you what is happening. we have productivity going through the roof. we have record profits. and what does that mean? well, in 2009 and 2010 we saw our first two year drop in labor costs since the early 1960s.

never happened before. never happened. or it's never happened in the last 40 years. and productivity grew for the fastest rate in eight years, and it just beat out 2009 which was a super fast year for productivity growth 37 what does this mean? what does productivity mean? it means how much a single worker can produce. and what economist are telling us, serious economist looking at these data, is that they are says that employers are squeezing more and more out of the existing work force. they've trimmed them down, they have gotten rid of older workers, they have brought in younger workers who are willing to work for less, and they are using the threat of joblessness in this horrific, horrific economy to just ring every last bit of productivity out of them. and yet we're talking deficit reduction, that's the main topic of discussion these days.

the economist mark zandi who is a chief economist for moody's estimated if the republican spending cuts were to take effect, the economy would shed $700,000 additional jobs. because that job spending is, of course, an alternative to consumers demand. so there are companies that are kind of keeping afloat because of the stimulus which now is over. but the issue that -- so in response the republican study group in the house and the republican economic staff put out a report and they said, this is really remarkable, this came out two weeks ago. this is in response to the criticism. they said that this is good. they are going to cut transfer payments which means, you know,

social security, welfare, aid to the poor, and they are going to cut salaries for public economies and they are going to trim, reduce, the public sector work force. and what they touted as a benefit of all of this, and this is, i think, eye opening as a benefit of this program they touted the fact that you would have all of these newly unemployed public sector workers, highly educated public sector workers coming into the work force and that in turn would help lower labor costs further. now i guess there is a point -- there is a point where we need the china price. and that would achieve some sort of equilibrium where there would be no reason to off shore jobs. if you are going to come out and say that, i mean, it's eye opening. so these are the kinds of things

that i talk about in the book. and we can talk about how we end up with such a stilted discourse looking forward to answering questions and i'm sure that we have a very lively conversation in the offing. so that will conclude my chitchat. [applause] [applause] >> now i think you need to get a mike to ask the question. is that right? so just -- okay. wait for the mike. >> my question is in regard to the corporate tax rates. >> yes. >> it's been suggested that one the problems that we've had is the corporate tax rate is such that it moves jobs overseas because of the lower tax rates

in the foreign location. >> good question. >> it's been suggested we should lower it further. i want to hear your argument about it. >> okay. great. it's based on the false premise. this is the nominal tax rate. that is the tax rate that's written in the books. that's the law they passed. okay. 35% corporate tax rate in the united states. and that is one the highest in the world. that's the kernel of truth around which an utter fabrication is built. the nominal tax rate, what they write in the books is inconsequential next to the effective tax rates. which means what they write in checks. what they write in checks. now our effective tax rate is about half of what our nominal tax rate is. because corporate america, lobbyist have created so many -- have effectively won so many loopholes. and manipulative to tax code in such a way they are paying far, far less than the nominal, official corporate tax rate of

35%. now let me add something, 2/3 of all major u.s. corporations pay no pack taxes at all. this week a big story was general electric. general electric is not only not paying taxes, they took a $3.2 billion tax benefit. what does that mean? that means you and i are paying general electric. out of our taxes, we're paying them, effectively. so this idea is simply based on using a number that's inconsequential. our nominal tax rate. if anybody wanted to make a deal with the left if they could find the left, to drop the effective -- the nominal rate and increase the effective rate by closing loopholes, we'd be all for that. okay. we got to wait for microphones.

i'll let you figure out who's next. >> well, this may not be your area of say. but i just wondered, you know, you mentioned that things can be done like a second stimulus and -- we're currently seeing a congress that is fighting and in a deadlock and not even able to pass our next fiscal budget. so i guess my question is how do you -- you know, the conservative agenda they seem to be able to create falsehoods in their own reports that are not necessarily accurate. but they seem to be able to talk louder. they seem to be able to have the general public believe what they are saying even if it's not true. how can that be combated? i mean how can, you know, we

have democratic president and house of representatives, but we don't seem to be able to get the truth out there. and it's amazing to me that regarding the bush tax cuts that are expiring. it's amazing to me that not much of a stink has been made about the top two, you know, tax brackets like people making, you know, a million or more. >> right. >> why it seems like we should let those people have tax cuts at the expense of taking money from the poor and things like that, you know? >> or just social services. not even the poor. just the fact. >> of everyone. right. so i guess i just wondered if you have any ideas or -- >> it's a hard question. >> about how to get that through. that message that seems to get stuck. >> it's a question that i faced every time i talk about the book. i think it's probably the hardest question that i have to answer. there's two points that i'd make. first you need an opposition

party that's not afraid of it's own ideology. we don't really have a forceful opposition party in this country. president obama has, i think, not done a sufficient job of articulating these problems. he's been too quick to concede the terrain to the other side. the other thing is that i think we need to think long term. i think one real advantage that conservatives seem to have in my analysis is that they will think, okay, what is going to further our movements agenda 30 years from now. we don't think that way. we never think that way. finally i would make a call to all progressive fat cat donors to stop being afraid of investing in media infrastructure. this is something that the conservative movement does a lot. they put a lot of money into media infrastructure. and it's not an accident then that we have these kind of dominant narratives that take a

distinctly conservative turn. and i've been told by -- i won't mention names. i've been told by a progressive donor that he won't fund media because the facts have a liberal bias. because the facts are on our side. so he doesn't feel the need to help get out out there. he invests in very good organizations, think tanks, very valuable things, community groups, et cetera, et cetera, we won't put any money into media. i think that's resulted in an uneven playing field. if you read the book, it talks about how much invest wants the conservative movement has put into what i call alternative information structure like the media. >> thank you. that was wonderful talk.

what about the right wing chicken little narrative involving who owns our tea bills? and china, of course, being a big investor in -- this kind of abstraction called treasury bills and the nervousness if we do something that upsets this country or that country, we will completely go to hell in a hand basket because suddenly the debts will be called in. how does that work into this progressive response to the right wing chicken little narrative. >> it's like the audience was planted with people that asked me questions of things like i like to talk about. >> i don't know how the idea of china owns so much of the debt has become so rev -- prevalent. the reality is they are holding

9.6% of our public debt. americans households and institutions own 42%. more than four times the amount. it's an odd kind of thing. i think part of it is that i don't know why this is so prevalent, i'm not sure it is an ideological thing. it seems to be that i meet everybody -- everybody that i meet, whatever their political persuasion, also seems to think china holds this huge sword over our head and we need to do -- we need to let, you know, i don't know walmart go there and do -- we can't make china angry, oh no. but more than four times the amount is held by u.s. individuals and institutions. a very big chunk of it is held in the social security trust fund. now this is one of the pernicious lies that i think in my book, the social security trust fund is a huge pile of

treasury bills. a huge pile of treasury bills. according to the law of the united states of america, the social security administration's finances can be be used to either influence the surplus or deficit of u.s. federal budget. but law they are distinct. by law. you have the huge pile of cash, $2.6 trillion. it's earning so much interest, even as we start drawing it down, you hear so much. we're going to start drawing it down. even after we draw it down, the interest payments are such that it will continue to increase in size until it hits $4.2 trillion with a t. and i hear people who are so brazen as to assault this incredibly secure and popular retirement program by saying

these are worthless ious. which is just stunning. because i want you to just think about this. those worthless ious are $2.6 trillion, out of $14 trillion in total. so that means that if they are worthless, so are the 9.6 held by china and 42% in your 401(k), pension funds, et cetera, et cetera. they are not worthless ious. they are the safest investment on planet earth. that's what they are. >> you've been waiting far long time. actually, they both have. >> getting to the question. >> uh-oh. >> why do you think the president is not willing to deal with the issues and why is he even willing the discuss the

insolvency of social security? >> it's -- >> tell me. >> i don't have a good answer. i'm informed, i'm not something who has very good contact in the white house. but i know people who do. and they tell me that these are deeply held convictions that they have to get out in front of the conservative movement on the issues that by seeming willing to fix social security and to do those kind of technocratic, democratic fixes they have been talking about. tweak here and they'll make it so obviously sustainable, even on the outside of the 75 year projection that everybody always talks about that it will under cut the rights desire to utterly gut the program. okay. we'll get in there, we'll tweak it and play with it and, you know, we'll cut benefits a little bit. that that'll protect the program. now i'll tell you oo -- you a

much more, i think, self-evident narrative reality. once you start fiddling, one you concede the ground that it needs to be fixed now, then what happens next? you are negotiating it. you know how obama negotiates. not very hard. >> thank you. it was great hearing you. i've got three pages of notes already. [laughter] >> you should bring an audio recorder next time. >> first thing though, i have been a green party candidate four times. i cannot tell you how many times i've heard i love to vote for you, but i can't. because you can't win. self fulfilling prophesy. >> this is an argument that i try to stay out of. >> second thing, i heard trumka answer this very recently.

he was asked why didn't the labor movement have it's own cable, cable network or at minimum cable shows? he shrugged his shoulders and said -- so they will put hundreds of millions into democratic politics, but not into the media. which is where i come to the question for you, you are obviously a very smart journalist and an honest journalist. how is it that 90% of the journalist in the country are propounding these stories? >> all right. that's actually a very complex -- it's a complex story. and i'll just point to a few very simple answers. and then in the book, i go into the -- i talk about this in great detail. so i think there's a few things going on. i think the end of the cold war resulted in the kind of economic triumphize, as well as the american triumphism, which is kind of idea that it's not

capitalism that proved to be ascendant. but american style, you know, corporate capitalism. that's a dubious claim in itself. it's clear to me that central planning in an economy is wrought with difficulties. but that doesn't mean that you have to, you know, have a low wage economy. it doesn't mean to you have have a threat bare social safety net. it's a false economy to suggest one or the other. i think it infused a lot of economic reporting. now our theories have been proven true. the other thing is the nature of the american reporting. it's this supposedly neutral, unbiased reporting in that this is an old critique that many people have made. he said/she said. if you think about the amount of intellectual infrastructure that the conservative movement has created over the years, any

reporter who needs a quote on deadline can get somebody on the phone from heritage or cato or whatever and balance out their story. then you have a story where you probably have a pretty accurate rendering somewhere in the story. but it's very hard for readers to differentiate fact from fiction. it's just not part of the reporting model to do the kind of presentation that i did today, look at this. then look at the data that suggests that this may not be true. that's just not the way they -- that's just not the way our media does it. it's up to you. >> thanks. i'd like to do a flipside to the lie that i brought up to you before that i discussed regarding tea bills going south.

sometimes more i think perhaps more honestly, you'll hear the right say, well, whatever money we have to spend has to be spend militarily. because to the extent that we are arguing to protect our investments, we have to show that we're an ever muscle flexing and very secure country because that'll mean that people will want to put their money here because we're safe, we're secure, and the military proves. you spend on the military, then you don't have money left over and maybe that is not true either. this is the scenario. then you don't have money left over for social security. please discuss. >> okay. yes, this is a very interesting thing. there's another kind of related lament. there's a great column by max boot. very gifted neoconservative crazy person. i talk about this in the book. he wrote this column and he

complained. he complained the europeans were subsidizing the general safety nets by piggy backing on our defense spending. he turned the whole thing around and said why won't they spend more on military so we can spend less? the obvious answer to this as far as i'm concerned is multilateralism. you know, you don't need to be -- you don't need to spend whatever we spend which is so disproportionate to the rest of the world to be safe. it's not defense spending. so even if you -- i reject the premise that this is defense spending and we're defending the homeland. i'm not afraid of the italians invading the country. we have base there is. we have an enormous amount of waste and waste doesn't make us any safer, waste may put some money into people's pockets if you want to think of it is stimulus, but it is not good economic policy to waste untold

billions. you know, the missile defense shield, i hadn't realized just how ridiculously flawed the system is. once in a while, we did a test. we got one the vehicles to hit a missile in midair. what i found out was that they put a homing device on that missile. first of all, they know -- they program into the interception vehicle, the coordinates. but then in case they can't figure it out, they put a homing device. and because it has an infrared seeking, they heat it up. they still only hit it one out of every -- we've spent -- i don't know the numbers offhand. but we spent a fortune on that. just one example. okay. we only have time for, i think, a couple more. two more. two more. two more questions.

>> i'm going to take these two. >> so this is the kind of question that i feel like what is the ultimate goal of the conservative side? i mean it's kind of frightening if you look down the road towards the ultimate end of the economic policies. i'm sure you can't speak to their ultimate goal. but it certainly seems like not the american dream for almost anyone. >> yeah, you know, i'd like to say i don't like to impugn the motives of those of whom i disagree. it's not true. i do impugn their motives quite a bit. i don't know what the end goal is. i think there is a common misconception about what the end result will look like. you know, a lot of conservatives are motivated by these very

abstract ideas when they talk about the economy; right? they talk about freedom and liberty and it's an economic policy with a lot of emotional appeal. a lot of these messages are designed to appeal not to this but to this. you know, and i think that's -- i think that means there's not a clear idea. it's supposed to look like no taxes and minimal taxes and no regulation and a very, very threadbare social safety net if at all. depends on who you talk to. certainly the ayn rand fans. they don't believe there should be a safety net. i believe if they were ever to go face to face with their vision and practice, maybe some of them would have second thoughts as well. look for tent camps this summer. look for tent camps this summer. when it heats up. we're going to have 3.9 million

people out of a job when their unemployment benefits expire this year just as we did last year. this is a very visual thing. i think we're going to see them. i'm not hopeful, but i think so. thank you for your patient. >> the tea party has demonstration in washington complaining about there are not enough access. >> i heard about that. i heard about that everywhere. >> and they are willing to say, you know, let the government shut down. to me that wouldn't be a good thing. how do we educate? i'm sure the people have good intentions. are they so ill informed they don't know. how do we get across, or is that progressives do not do a good job in getting the message out? it frustrates and depresses me. >> i'd say yes to both. they are so ill ininformed they don't understand.

we're bad at getting the message out. if you look at even in the mainstream media, you know, there was a story that the associated press did that was picked up by the drudge report, which was a conservative blog and fox nation. it went viral. there was a lot of attention paid to it. it had the credibility of being the associated press which is the liberal media. and it's headline and most of the text of the piece said that 50% of american household don't pay taxes. 50% of americans don't pay taxes. and rush limbaugh said now when you hear the liberals talking about the tax cuts for the wealthy, they are the only ones paying taxes, baby. who else are you going to cut? the reality is that that's a very intentional kind of misleading statement because you have to just imagine that the only taxes paid in the united

states are federal income taxes which are among the most progressive. and it's true. about 50% of families don't pay federal income taxes. the most progressive taxes. we have a lot of regressive taxes too. most of the working poor, their biggest taxes come out of their paychecks and social security taxes. sales taxes are very regressive. excise taxes are among the most regressive. and a lot of states that have income have less progressive income tax structures. some economists added it all up. what they found we all pay about the same taxes, give or take 5%. that's an really important difference between reality, that reality that we all pay taxes, very similar amount of taxes, as a percentage, and this idea that only half of the families pay taxes. so this is a great example of,

you know, this group of people that are very angry not having solid information. of course, that was typified in the tea party health care demonstrations when you saw people saying keep the government out of my medicare. you know, that is a big problem. thank you all very much. [applause] >> you are watching book tv on c-span2. 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend. >> called eye of the hurricane. my path from darkness to freedom with a forward by nelson mandela and your co-hour is ken. >> that is correct. >> let me read to you. you say here my main purpose in writing this book is to share with you that i have discovered the truth.

>> to being the truth. >> yeah, the love is truth is the spirit of man. given where i was, and for how long i was there, this is incredible. >> that is absolutely correct. >> now you say you were in jail 40% years. what do you mean by that. >> well, i was in jail 47 years. the fact that we are born into a prison actually, we were born as perfect beans. perfect being everything in tact. we are also born into a world of human, where hate and war and death and destruction and inequality reign supreme. we were born into a prison. i was in that prison for the first 40 years of my life.

until i was able to wake up and get out of that prison. and real who i am. >> i real that. let's say that you were actually incarcerated in prison for about 20 years, 1964 or '65? >> 1966 to 1985. >> '66 to '85. the charge was having murdered three people and wounded one in a bar. >> yes, it's just not having murder somebody. i mean to be accused of murder is bad enough. but to be accused being a racist murder is doubly mad. a triple racist murder. >> racist, why racist? >> all white people were killed. >> it was a charge that you had charged them because of their

face? >> because the black man had been part in another town they thought it was racially binge motive. you have to realize at that time, 1966, early '60s when the country was still segregated and black folks weren't allowed to eat in restaurants or go to school and ride on certain parts or even have equal boating rights at the time. that was what was going on from this country at that time. which was a herbal thing. so that is what i was accused of being a triple racist murder. >> and in the book you write about growing up in a household that really was violent and difficult. basing your father across the living room with shotguns. >> yeah, my family life was not violent.

the violent was outside. but you got to realize that in may, i will be 74. so my mother and father come from a generation where they taught if a child put his hands on his parents or even threatened the parents, since they brought you into this world, they will take you out of this world as well. that was the type of society that i grew up in. >> but describe for the people who are watching who might want to read the book why you would be facing your father with a shotgun and he with a shotgun facing you? >> well, because i was a very angry young man at the time. very angry. and i confronted by brother, my brother james who was a highly successful academic. i mean he was going to harvard, he was one the youngest to graduate from harvard university with a phd. he later became the

superintendent of schools of boston, you know? and i was in and out of school doing my youth. you know? so my father had to sort of choose between which one he's going to support. and i confronted my brother because when i came home from the military in 1956, i heard that my brother was hanging out with homosexuals that he had known when we were child -- children growing up. now when we were children, all of these folks used to dress up on halloween like women. they looked better on the women on the streets. now he was home on vacation in harvard university and they were doing the same thing. so i confronted my brother about that. we started to fight. of course, i beat him up. and that's when my father got --

that's when my father got involved in this. and my father jumped me because of that. i pushed my power away and told him don't put his hands on me. i wouldn't allow no one to put their hands on me in anger anymore. my father ran and got his shotgun, and i ran and got my shotgun. this is the same thing that happened to marvin gay and his father. that's why marvin gay's father shot him. killed him. had not been for my brother, my father would have killed me as well. >> because your mother intervened and said you could go out of here. >> absolutely. get away. >> now what's interesting here is you just described yourself as technically having been in jail for 20 years, 66 to 85. but the violence and the whole world of hatred that you describe, you say that's really been a jail for 40 plus years. until you discovered yourself. let me read again from your

book, this is an interesting moment. because you say you are going to be 74 years old. you've been in jail. but you are also right, i was a prize fighter, soldier, convict at one point, jailhouse lawyer at one point. you says here it was executive director of a group that was called association and defense of the wrongly convicted at one point. today your ceo of the innocence international group. >> yes. >> and it says but if i had to choose an epitaph to be carved on the tomb stone, this is hurricane carter, it was simply read he was just enough. >> just enough. >> somebody in the high school audience asked you what'd you want for your epitaph. now your man bob dylan wrote a song about you. nelson mandela has written a forward to the book and spoken, i know nelson loves boxes.

>> he was a boxer himself. >> then he talked about someone like him who was in jail. and has come out of it. so here's nelson mandela, bob dylan, even tony bennett, you say. big supporter. >> muhammad ali. >> these people have all known you. now it comes time for you to say about yourself. for your epitaph, it should be he had the courage to stand up no matter what problems his actions may have caused him, he was just enough to perform a miracle to wake up and escape the universal prison of sleep, regain the humanity. when people hear this, just enough. i'm sure they are going to be thinking to themselves, just enough to get off? or just enough to escape or survivor? why not to make something bolder? >> universally, we are all just

enough. that's what that means. we're all universally just enough. we are born with every thing that we need to wake up and to become conscious. that is just enough. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> hi, can you tell us about your latest release and what your next writing project might be? >> the latest thing we did is a photobook on ronald reagan, called "running with destiny" which started with the movie and over the idea that we ought to do a book that was in honor of his 100th birthday. we were excited and at the reagan library. and it actually lasted three and a half hours. we were thrilled and there seemed to be a lot of interest because of the renewed interest in president reagan. >> what comes next for you, writing wise? >> we'll have a book ou