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tv   U.S. Senate  CSPAN  April 26, 2011 5:00pm-8:00pm EDT

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i suppose it has more to do with the unions, but i do not know why they insist on rejecting the obvious, simple policies that work for the pilots, and apply them to the controllers. the apply a lot of other stuff, but they will not apply the simple concepts to get people enough rest to do their job. host: again, that is two evening shifts, two of the ships, and two overnight shift. euest: i think the addressed this very responsibly, the issue of fatigue, as has the military in terms of who has and manuals, ongoing training,aining pilots and copilots double checking and enforcing each other on these things. my predecessor who used to be wo the administrator of the faa
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before i was rhodopes in this w weekend's wall street journal healled that schedule, the 2-to-1 schedule but rather because it will come back and bite us. it is the above schedule, and it is one that over the years thele union has exist -- insisted on maintaining.ink more and more controllers are realizing, as we know more about fatigue those things are hard on them and they are also dangerous for the public. >> host: what has been thehostah ycommendation over the years te switch up that to what? what type of schedule?e >> guest: schedules that are much more consistent.schedules t maintain much more of the same t schedule throughout a working week, for example, so that yourh body gets used to it. whether you are working an overnight ship or whether you are working a day shiftki consistency helps.ay plus having enough time between ships so that you can take care
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of those things and get a decene eight hours of sleep.ght those sound common sense, but it has not been installed in to shift work in a lot of places and it is very important to do. the financial -- federal transportation safety board hasn called on the faa and the unions to change this kind of schedule. so there is a lot of pressure at make point to make a shift. >> host: united at the top that you represent companiesou like boeing. le here is a headline.a headline f reports show that boeing southwest incident. federal investigators allege ing manufacturing labs at the boeing factory 15 years ago led to theg mid-air fusil as rupture of the south and a -- southwest airlins jetliner. the original report comes from -- officials told the journal it is too difficult to draw definite conclusions as for the testing to bring o tther issueso the forefront, the probe has
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become increasingly focused. i what do you know about this? the what can you tell us? youl u >> guest: well, i also used to head the ntsb, the ntsb that investigates accidents. i learned long ago that youteace don't speculate about what a cause might be. you read all the way through that. there were a lot of qualifiers. we don't know this and that to be the important thing is whenth ts tstigators do their work, and it may be a problem with one and aircraft were a problem that wao exacerbated by the kind of cycld time, take off and landings over and over, conditions of which the plane flew.th there areer so many things that can be at the heart of somethinf like that incident. the very important thing to do is to wait until you have the im fact said, and i don't have anye way of knowing what happened 15n years ago in the plant. >> host: so exactly 15 yearslant ago this plane stayed in
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circulation for 15 years. is that typical? di >> guest: absolutely.ation for te of the g15reat things about aircraft is that an aluminum? body well put together insoluly. typically fly 15 years. b-52s fly 50 years and older. it's perfectly safe to do so as long as they are well maintained >> host: the guidelines by the safety officials, how often did hey have to be looked at and maintained for safety?ained? >> guest: well, there are definite requirements by the faa as to how long between sidelines -- cycles that they have to come and for various kinds of checkse there are routine maintenance checks that happened all the ise and then there are what are called heavy maintenance that mi recurve regularly over periods so that the plane is in a more rougough review, the engines and everything before they go backe into service. a lot of magnets occurs at thatt
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point. so the system is an extremely sm safe system, and i don't think anyone is suggesting that theren is a need for a different kind n toapproach to maintenance. we do have to get to the bottom of what may have occurred in a specific incident and whether ii then has an effect on other aircraft of a similar type word similar circumstance. boeing is looking into this with the ntsb. the two of them together i feel very confident can get to the bottom of it.he >> host: when do you expect an answer? >> guest: i wish theseex things were high science. they are not.ec ans you have to look at forensic evidence, get the metallurgist, you have to examine all the records, talk to the pilots. everyone acknowledges that you need to figure this out. ied t the key thing is that boeing, the airline, and the faa areaa acting immediately.. they decided they needed to be checks in this particular group3
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of seven 3/7 and immediately went into and very intense, inspection which involvesnspeion whanning the outside of the fuselage with a light detector that can really see in terms of what may be going on underneath the skin of the aircraft, where there may be cracks, problems in the fuselage. so that has been done. at think they have a great deal of knowledge and confidence inev the planes that are flying.kn still, you have to find out wha. happened.: we will go >> we will go to chris, the democrat ion hollywood florida., >> caller: good morning. house subject rfa regulators to the political process? it seems if it were up to the republicans all these things would be scuttled. it is always driving cost down were both in labor, regulators, regulations, just like in a lot of other industries, especially in republican aide administrations. >> host: let me just add the
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headline that the republicanshoe propose 84 billion funding gap for the faa. what will be the impact of that given the caller's comments?at? >> well, of course the issues on capitol hill are trying to address the federal budget, the deficit, what are we going to dn about the debt. where that cut will come from ii do not know. ongihave to look at the details and try to see.come we have a concern that cuts may come from what is called the fri next generation air transportation system. this is something we should e frs on this morning because it really is the future of where air traffic is going.d frankly what will make airfi traffic much safer. we are talking about moving to a satellite based system wherewe l what we take for granted in our cars and other circumstances, we assume gps is going to be what is providing navigation precision. that's not true in our air traffic control system. pde we are still working with world
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war ii technology, radar and. radio control. you know, one controller talking tr one pilot. and it simply is a system that needs to be replaced because it will allow us to know much more precisely where plans are, much more automation, and very importantly in times when the fuel costs are going through the roof it also will very muchouhe reduced fuel burden, and thath means in burma the benefits. obviously less fuel burned, less carbon emissions. >> host: the price tag is a billion dollars a year through 2018 for this next gen system. can we afford it? >> guest: we have to affordrd it.when look bee cost-benefit is enormous. in three years it has paid forut itself. this is where, again, when you realize the cost of fuel is the single largest bank these days that airlines have to shell outi and it's driving ticket prices and driving everything.es h
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plus the fact that we as a society spend a lot in terms of cleaner air and working on this issue of the environment and emissions. all of those kinds of things ems really contribute to monetary, concrete monetary benefits, spending that kind of investment and infrastructure. the infrastructure. we don't blink. we should not when it comes to aviation as well.nd you know, it is a well worth the investment. again, in terms of safety thereg is a huge benefit that this system is going to allow us. host: t: all right. thanks formi waiting, michael. >> caller: yes, ma'am. good morning, ms. marion blakey. ariould like to challenge you. you are speaking about your you industry which is basically theb defense industry making america sifter. in the middle east we have a good example. we supply weapons to some of the most despotic, brittle dictators
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or aggressiveaggr nations massed as democracies without blinking. i would like to know how muchull money your industry funnelsoney through lobbyists and our congress? ext d like to comment on how much influence you by. you also spoke about war fighters. the volunteers. uur volunteers are people who vove been deprived by government of the ability to go to school, a gain an education, work in normal everyday american jobs. your industry are among the industries that have exploited american jobs three differents places. now, i would like to compliment your industry for these technological engineering advances that give us cell phones, computers, wonderful us things that we have.
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>> host: let me jump in. i missed your first point. t what washi it? wt? >> caller: well, the defense industry does not keep americafe safe. we create problems throughout the world.worl we supply despot's with weapons that they use on their own people, to expand their territories. will >> host: we will start there.man do you have any thought?at? >> guest: the defense industry does not do any of those things. the defense industry is called the congress and by the pentagon to supply the equipment that will protect the war fighter and enable us to dealeqn with conflict.te i don't think anyone including the caller would challenge the fact that we livei in a veryill dangerous world, threats are real, and they are not of our making. to be able to address those we have a very brave group of men and women and officers who area out there, and they are the ones
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to determine what they need. some of this goes to a very dete high-tech aircraft. some of this goes to kevlar vests and night vision goggles, the kind of thing that really makes a difference to the warhig fighter out there. the industry is very proud to supply what is requested by the pentagon and approved by the president and the congress in terms of high technology. iques by the way, i would certainly. challenge the caller on the, the caence of men and women who go into the military.hat in point of fact you will see ee that th is a very well-educated group of men and women who choose this as an avenue. , en they come out they have tremendous education advantages in terms of the current gi billl and the ability to get to college. the advantages that certainly the average person does not wheh they come out of school and go immediately into the kinds of
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professions. so the military is an excellent career to beat you can look at a statistics. the number of people going in the testifies to that right now. i would certainly say that the esller lives in another world and i know. it is a dangerous world and a world that think kipnis we do have the kind of technologies that keep us safe. >> the efforts by your organization. >> guest: something people like to throw up as a red herring. lobbyists, those who are up on the hill usually make the case h for a specific issue or a specific course of the ie legislative fight. i have no idea what kinds of money is invested by any of the corporate entities.corporat the they in our field ore pharmaceuticals or across the f entire spectrum.s, remember, this is part of free-speech. having people who are skilled at understanding the issues,re understanding the arguments and argg ill to make a good case
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case lawyers with specialized backgrounds, that is a part of the way america works in termsra of our decision making. >> host: a registeredst? lobbyist? >> guest: no. >> host: go ahead. >> caller: how is it going? want to thank you for doing a great service to america. my question for you, it seems that you guys are putting all of uhe blame on the men and women to almost forced them as citizens of that the military can complete control this. my question to you is, and correct me if i'm wrong. it seems that the government is taking over nasa. you know, our travel industry
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thomas told us all hostage. hostcan the government shut down nasa?w c it is supposed to be ann be oration to see where we are going in this world and now you guys are going to open it too op commercial.p a whole new field. -- >> host: albright. i think we got your point. let's leave it at nasa and what is happening, the future of nasa. >> guest: nasa we believe has a great future. bel incredibly important part of our exploration and our technological advances. nasa has contributed so many eri things to this country as wellae as, of course, the that the united states exercises. and we certainly want to see that advance. we do think that more money iste needed from the standpoint, ands i would simply say that i think at this point we would like to see a greater clarity about the vision of where we're going with human exploration of space. the administration has shifted t
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gears. we are putting more the lions og commercial providers.cial provis ere e are different approaches year. what we need is more robust funding. so from that standpoint i amfund with the caller. there is no attempt by the w government to shut down nasa. the government certainly could find nasa with greater resourcet fundat it really can accomplish what i think we all want to seeo which is exploration of the further out reaches of space. :" host: recent magazine has a link the piece about nasa ande s future. they have a picture of the crew for shuttle endeavor which is scheduled to take off this friday at kennedy center in florida. it ibe there? >> guest: i was at the lastay ones, and it was very exciting. it was i could go to all of them. this one will see captain mark kelly at the controls. >> host: husband of gabriellecod difference. >> guest: gabrielle difference
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will be right there.brielle gifr a particularly exciting launch, and the next-to-last. launch. i will tell you, everyone really should watch this. is s the most amazing thing when you see that tinyen y see spacecraft attached to those spa giant rockets.those the earth shakes and then you realize what humankind and the united states can do. >> host: where were you when you watch the last one? the control room? outside? >> outside. not terribly far away. you know, everyone has explained to me because i've watched many a watch on television. it is very different. it on really is. one thing you are seeing the flame and the flame is just enormous of a sudden you begin to feel this reverberation. you then the noise hits you.re isn't exactly like it is all tied together. tie boy, when your heart feels like it is being pounded it is a very visceral and personalerso
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experience. >> host:ce burlington, vermont.o ron on the democratic line. the state of the u.s. airline industry which marion blakey served as administrator from t 2002-2007 and chairman of the national transportation safety board from 2001-02 and currentle president and ceo of thent aerospace industry association.. >> caller: congratulations on all those accomplishments. i have a question.n is it true that boeing will ber building a plant in china? furthermore, i am curious about the restrictions or the agreements that are made with china. i heard that once our tha corporation does build a plantlt there that the intellectual property rights and patents it jointly owns by the corporation
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and the state of china. and is that true? >> host: man. >> guest: until you, i am not familiar with any requirements that you are laying out from thh standpoint of the chinesees government and the way those agreement work. i think it very much depends on technology, on what kind of manufacturing is going on. and i'm not familiar that boeing is building a new plant in china. they are building a new plant in south carolina. everyone is very excited.eyre this will be the second plan foe the 787 streamliner, and it indicates what a robust program that is because in fact you're going to see huge numbers of aircraft coming off the assembly lines and populating the skies. america is very competitive froy the standpoint with any chinese aircraft that may be manufactured over there. b the chinese themselves are manufacturing several aircraft. they have one right now, this
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crj21 which is a small aircrafti and they have aspirations to build one the size of the larger air transport aircraft. we will see how that goes. one of the things that you dooe. see is that a lot of companies,, be the european committee the u.s., etc., are asked to provide supplies for aircraft to suppliers and provide some of the technology.an at the companies are pretty sophisticated these days about not allowing their intellectuale property to get away. i also would say that the united states has a robust system of export controls when it comes ts higher levels of technology. approval has to be given by thes government for certain kinds of technologies to be exported.iveb while the system is under reform, which it should be, because we need to have the highest expenses on the right hg technologies. a lot of stuff that probably shouldn't be.
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ert the broader principle still applies. we are vigilant about what ispp- exported. i think that is very wt is appropriate. >> host: at the chamber of commerce tomorrow will be the tenth annual aviation summit, an all-day event. you're speaking asar well in t's morning time around 10:00 a.m. what will you be saying? >> guest: i will be talking about the fact that i think the next gen is something that even in very tight fiscal times we need to consider accelerating because the benefits of veryant. important. i'll just use another event that was in the news recently, and this was the reason to go around, the recent abortivean landing of michelle a bomb asofe aircraft. these things happen in this system. that is not a terribly unusual s event. it is unfortunate that it was with the first lady's plane. nevertheless the reason i bring it up is that under a next gen
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system, when next gen is fullybn deployed you will have so much more automation and so much more precision as to exactly whereau aircraft are in relation to each other as well as in relation too the ground and to the runwayslai that it would be highly, highly unlikely that you would find a circumstance like that when we get that system in. we are not that far away. the ground station that will provide this kind of precise control will be completed bylete 2013. what we need is to get the equipment on board the aircraftt that is something of will be talking about tomorrow because it is expensive for the airlinet to install. it's something we need to think about how we complete the thi system. >> host: in the meantime with mistakes like that happening,eae with this guy becoming even mord crowded by you 100 percente confident that the skies are safe? confi >> guest: i amde confident this geyser sake. when you look at the statisticsf the numbers of takeoffs and landings, the number of aircraft
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at any given time in the air, we are running a very safe system. >> host: thanks for being here and talking to our viewers. marion blakey. we appreciate it. come back again. >> up next on c-span2 from the constitution center in philadelphia a look at stability and democracy. later, a conversation with one of our first prize winners from the student can video documentary competition. join us for more book tv tonight during our prime-time schedule beginning at 8:00 p.m. central. an hour later the focus will be on iran with a new book called the shaw. just after 10:00 p.m. douglas waller discusses his latest wild bill donovan, the spymaster who created the zero ss and modern american has been nice. olcott's under way tonight at 8:00 eastern here on c-span2. tomorrow live coverage of the tenth annual aviation summit.
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that theme, advancing aviation through global partnership over the next seniors to read it gets under way at 9:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. and also tomorrow federal reserve chairman been burning key in his first news conference set for teefifteen easton and people have it live on our companion network, c-span. >> send me the bill in its present form, i will sign it. okay. any questions? really? are you still year? >> almost every year the president and journalists meet at the white house correspondents' dinner. president of, will have their again this saturday. watch live or go back and watch the past dinner, search, watch, click, and share on-line at that c-span video library. watch what you want when you want.
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>> up next the national constitution center in philadelphia was a discussion on civility in political discourse in america. speakers include former congressman and nine / 11 commission co-chairman lee hamilton lasting an hour and 40 minutes. [applause] >> well, thank you, allison. politics has high and low moments. sometimes bring out the better angels of our nature and sometimes baser instincts. higher moments have usually been characterized by expansions of political tolerance and lower moments by debilitating political discourse. i sometimes suggest that the difference between george w. bush and brock of, is that the former president was called a fascist. the current president is called
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a fascist and communist, sometimes at the same time by the same people. and one might ask what is wrong with a bit of hyperbole? and the answer is plenty because some frameworks of thought bring out rival ideas, some frameworks' define opposite views and opposite -- rather opponents as an mes. loud voices in american politics capture the news. they sometimes set the tone of the political conversation. generally speaking quieter voices determine the future. if you ask most people in this country whether they are concerned about the political rhetoric were concerned about the political dialogue not from the perspective of the issues but from the perspective of the intensity of the feelings of americans dividing among
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themselves, it is extraordinary that there is a tremendous consensus of concern. those that shout sometimes think that people are concerned about squelching vibrant ideas. actually it is the reverse. when one shells too loud and performs particularly on civil acts they have the effect of dousing argumentation. when you think about it, spirited debate and argumentation are a social good. if you don't have a debate, if you don't have argumentation there is a tendency both to dogmatism and potentially to charity. and so when i think of america at this particular moment in time it is clear that we have had periods that have been more difficult and more divisive and more on civil.
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by the same token there has seldom been a time in which the country has more reason to come together. the key and the great sense of our times is probably captured and the one observation of one of our greatest presidents, abraham lincoln, when setting scripture. he suggested that the house divided cannot stand. but a country that is splintered is a country that simply cannot reach its full list greatness. that is the context of concern about civil discourse in america today. it is one that is designed to reach out to increase argumentation.
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[applause] >> thank you, mr. chairman. let's let the listening began. this weekend brings together around 50 distinguished participants from the fields of history, politics, media, scholarships, education, and religion to be among them three very good friends of the national constitution center, dr. a. b. gutman and award winning film makers. we want to thank all of our distinguished guests for your participation this weekend. we begin with a panel exploring the complex issues of stability, democracy, and dissent in america. i would now like to ask the panelists to join me on stage. our panelists of diverse backgrounds and prospectus will surely provoke the discussion. let me introduce lee hamilton,
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former member of congress and director of the center on congress at the indiana university. [applause] next is kelly -- kelly carrier, the first tea party protest activists. [applause] next is john palfrey, the third professor of law, vice dean of library and information and resources and faculty co-director at harvard law school. [applause] and finally, our panel's moderator, david eisner, president and ceo of the national constitution center, assumed the following a 5-year tenure as ceo of the corporation for international and community service, the federal agency overseeing americorps, vista, a senior court, and other national service programs.
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after seven years and a well, time warner, and america online. thank you very much for being here. david, the stage is yours. >> terrific. so, thank you all for joining us. before we get going on really would like to ask our panelists, our audience to think alison young for putting all this together along with hugh allen who is they're actually taking pictures as well. thank you. [applause] and last night we got started so nicely with a preview of the upcoming movie, a series prohibition. we got to meet with ken burns and lynn novick who are putting that together. they put a lot of the questions that were facing in sort of a historical context using prohibition as a case study. one of the questions that seem
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to be percolating through all of the folks that are coming for this great weekend is why is this becoming such an important issue for america now? we are facing some of the toughest issues that we have faced in decades. they all seem to be coming together at one point. we heard the chairman talk about how important civility is, and it seems like america is responding, yes, this is very, very important. very timely, and we must discuss it right now. why is that happening? why is civility beginning to crowd out other issues? why are americans seeming to demand as to have this conversation? this is all of you. congressman, would you want to take a stab at it?
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>> midmorning. i am delighted to be here at the constitution center. one of the remarkable institutions in the country today. i commend all of the leaders of the institution, including you, david. well, so concerned about civility. i think the answer is we simply had a sharp decline in civility in our public form. when i went to the congress in 1965i wrote a newsletter back to my constituents saying that i was surrounded by a cocoon of want and i said that everything was extraordinarily hospitable in the congress. if a new member of congress said today he or she would be laughed out of the rum in all likelihood. civility is on the decline in political campaigns today we often want to demonize our
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opponent. we want to attack their motivation. we want to attack the credibility. we want to attack their integrity rather than keeping the discussion on a substantive level. so, you have these very nasty political attacks that take place just constantly. we have vast public relations efforts now put together to tear down the opponent and to discredit the opponents, not just build up what it is that you advocate. the kind of pull out all the stops to undermine the adversaries agenda. this is a serious matter. it is a serious matter not just because it is brewed and in polite and all the rest, but if you have a breakdown in civility it creates a very serious
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threats to the ability of the body whether it is the congress or the city council to do business. if you cannot get along with those with whom you're working then the chances of being able to reconcile a very difficult issue, and they are difficult, greatly diminished. i want to say one other thing. i know you want to turn to these other panelists. i think oftentimes the american people don't understand sufficiently that you must have robust in our bodies of decision making. that is to be encouraged. neither i nor anybody else should fall of of our chair if somebody disagrees with us strongly. that is okay. there is a line, isn't there? it is not an easy line to define
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where you step over the line of advocacy in a forceful way. it becomes excessive. becomes highly in civil. we don't always agree just where that line is, but i think most of us agree that there is such a line. so the american people should expect robust debate. they should expect members of congress to go in and argue forcefully for the position that they advocate. but at the same time, and now probably say more about this later. i think each of us has a responsibility to say to the elected officials, look, we want you to be a forceful advocate, but we want you to be polite. the words of asea probably still the best. come, let us reason together. we need to keep that in front and center. >> okay. >> well, i will be very frank and honest about this.
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i will start by relating it to the story. most of you can imagine that seattle is not a very conservative place. so, growing up there i was a bit like a fish out of water, i kept my views to myself for years and years and years and years. i would find myself at dinner parties. everyone in seattle, the majority of people in seattle because it is known to be a liberal city, i assumed that everyone thinks the same way. so you go to an event or dinner party. eventually politics comes up. everyone starts agreeing with each other. and then they start to say some really nasty things. and so as a conservative who was in the closet for most of her life and is now way out, you know, i would sit there and take it and take it and take it and
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think i had two choices. one was to interrupt and say, you know, it's scary when you are the only person that thinks a certain way in a group of people to say, well, actually, you know, what you are saying, you know, you are smearing people were you have mischaracterized how people feel about an issue and try to set the record straight to which their reply would always speak, oh, thanks, thanks for running the dinner party. because i brought this agreement. they assumed it would be this nice conversation where everybody could agree in the real thing would be great. i get accused of being the one to make things ugly and disagreeable even though i was just disagreeing. or i could sit there and not say anything and then hang my head in shame for not standing up for myself later that night. so i honestly think that this question of civility has come up now because there are millions of us that were like me that
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were quiet before and never said anything when we were smeared or mischaracterized what things were going on that we disagreed with. we just stayed quiet and finally got tired of it and said enough is enough, we are going to stand up not only to democrats that republicans who violate our beliefs. what we think our vision of america should be. and you were mentioning in the green room that academics really took to this idea of talking about civility. and i think that it is really the media and academia and other -- pardon me, elites, that want to have this conversation because this scary, scary tea party movement has made things uncomfortable. we are loud and we do have strong beliefs and we do want to assess policy and have an impact on the direction of this
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country. a lot of those things are constantly mischaracterized. i can't tell you how many times i have been called a racist. for the last two years nobody has seemed to care. in so i find it a little bit hard to buy the credibility of those calling for stability now and for the last two years those of us in the tea party movement have been mischaracterized and really in tune and maligned are very integrity and our values. so, it might not be the nicest answer, but that is why i think that conversation is happening. >> when you hear people say let's talk about civility, that's peaceable, there is an element that you hear directed at the tea party that is basically saying sit down and shut up. >> exactly. i feel like, you know, nobody called out when we were accused of all these horrible things and still are today. harry reid on the floor of the
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senate like in our opposition to the health care bill which was purely based on a philosophical world view that disagrees with universal health care and things like that. he likened it to being against civil rights and being proslavery. i mean, that is the majority leader of the united states senate on the floor of the senate saying those things, and nobody called him out. i am a little cynical about the call for stability. >> john. >> david, thank you. thank you very much for inviting me to this forum. this is an amazing museum and center and a wonderful program. i thought i was going to be the representative from cyberspace, the man from the internet to talk about what is going on in that environment, but i realize i may be a representative of academia and the liberal elite which is also possible. >> welcome to a new niche. >> adjust my thinking about my niche. i was going to start answering your question by indicating that
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one of the reasons i think that we are having this civility conversation is that in the context of new media sometimes we see very older conversations going on. sometimes we are exposed to conversations where people take very sharp positions on different sides of debate and often are uncivil to one another. i study young people and how they use the internet in particular. as i talk to parents and teachers about the discourse they see on line, things that their kids are saying where students are saying, very often people worry about kids these days with a sense of the generation that is now growing up staying and being mean to one another. the fear about cyber bullying as discourse in schools and not about democracy, but how kids are treating one another. and i do think there is one element about new media that is relevant to this conversation which we think about. the disinhibition affected. we have all been riding an
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e-mail to someone else to be hit send too quickly and it is a more mean you now than you would have said. and i think the notion that you are not face-to-face with someone is something that creates a lack of inhibition sometimes to say something harsher. i do think that is of real dynamic going on in these digitally mediated environments where more and more of our conversations are happening. i don't think that is the full story. we should see the on-line environment is very much tied to the real world environment that we have, very much tied to this party in seattle or philadelphia or wherever they might be that this is not too different worlds. we should stop thinking about cyberspace and the block this year or the two interspaces different than the conversations be having in real space. we need to be just as accountable in this new media environment as we are face-to-face sitting on a panel whether or not mediated by c-span. the emergence of these two related tied together spier's in
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which we sometimes act differently in shouldn't is part of the answer. >> quickly abbott like to add, you are absolutely right. during that three of weeks of the wisconsin protests that people felt totally comfortable going on tour with their picture and their full name of who they are and issuing death threats against scott walker. a lot of bonds said, have really come to this place where people are totally comfortable issuing a death threat for everyone to see that the screen capture all of eternity and with their full name and picture a one-sided? while. i mean, maybe it is better to have those people out in the open. i don't know. it is true. at the people on-line just think it is a totally different world. >> i know that we are doing this. this is being broadcast on c-span, web cast with pbs, our partner. we are getting questions today.
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the questions that come in will often be less balanced and less civil than we would see standing face-to-face. do we think -- one of the provocative things that i think you raise your, there is an interesting question of whether stability is a challenge right now on all sides of the political spectrum or whether there is a particular focus on civility for the status quo trying to stop the more upstart. one of the questions emerged around civility is whether there is a question of somebody being in power having to be more civil
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than someone that is seeking to influence power. so i know that when i ran a federal agency in the hearings people would testify that those hearings and we did red-faced and point fingers and express their anger in a way that was actually helpful. yesterday i learned the rational hostility. a reasonable hostility. i think -- do we think that there are different standards for civility in different venues and from different people? should we be thinking about one standard that applies to everybody evenly? >> my reaction to what you said is, i think a person in public office has to be exceedingly careful to try to be civil. i don't know whether it is a different standard than is applied to everybody else and
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not, but i know in conducting a public meeting, for example, if you as the presiding person, as the person with power, whatever that may mean, display any kind of instability or try to cut somebody off or try to cut them down or try to call them are racist or whenever, that really reflects on you, not so much on the person. the audience kind of automatically takes the side of the audience and not the person in the position of power. so i do think there is an extra burden on public officials. they have to be very, very careful to be courteous and civil in their discussions. that can often take place in an environment of extreme provocation because people in the audience will often provoke you and the u.s. agree or stirred up about something.
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you have to be careful about that. one question that i think we may want to look at briefly is what we mean by civility. from my point of view it is as simple matter. members of the congress or members of the county council whenever simply have to treat one another with dignity and respect. don't try to attack them on motivational or whenever brown's. you just have to treat people decently and with respect and tolerance. and i think that is kind of the key. jim leach will remember when he was speaker not too many people remember his speakership these days, but one of the things you would always say is that every single member of this institution has been elected at that time by about 500,000 people. because they have been elected by 500,000 americans you of that
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person whether you agree with them are not respect and tolerance. i always thought that was pretty good vice, and that think it is pretty good buys to carry into the public arena. you are dealing with human beings and human beings, you should pay to this human beings fundamental respect and tolerance from their point of view. >> to me there are two issues that question brings up. one is i would think also the idea of discussing what you mean by stability is important, but also i'm very uncomfortable with trying to place any sort of box around political speech because i think that is the most important thing we have in this country. i am always a little bit wary of people who tried to the --
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somehow be the arbiter of what is acceptable and what is appropriate. i just think we have to tread very lightly in that direction. we don't want to end up censoring people, obviously, were stifling them. and i also, my world view is basically agreed in self-government's. so i think that the police yourself first. you know, in all of my protesting and activism you know, i don't accuse people of being nazis because i know what and not see is. you know, as much as i disagree with the administration and the democrats right now i understand the difference between them and not seize. so i believe that you govern yourself first before you try to govern other people. again, the people calling for stability should really be governing themselves first
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before they reach out to try to tell someone else how to behave or what to say. >> i think i agree with much of that although i suspect we did find some ways to disagree over the course of the panel. to answer your question about the standards, should we have a single standard where we are equally civil to people in all different environments, i think the answer is yes. my answer is, yes, there is a basic human respect and approach to dignity whether you are in public office or with your wife or children or husband or friends were in the city council. we do have a basic responsibility to act civilly to one another, and i would make the point that whether we are in cyberspace as this gentleman is year blocking a way where we are speaking face-to-face that we should have the same standard and the equally accountable in these environments. i do think that the point of how we get to this level of civility is a useful conversation and whether or not it should be something where we turn to the
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law of return to government to do it or return to ourselves and our own institutions that we create, namely in the constitution we have a very broad set of protections that have served us incredibly well here at the national constitution center. seems important to note that. most attempts have tried to curtail that other than in very narrow well-defined waists have not worked very well. they are both found to be unconstitutional in most instances but also often don't actually constrained the activity. so most of the ways in which we can get disability are not ones where we impose it from the congress of supreme court but find it in ourselves and institutions as a way that we want to be an act with one another. >> you have spent a good deal of time really making the case that i think year "is we are all activists. you have spoken of what about the importance of dissent.
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two questions. one is if being an activist mean skidding more people to follow your and breaking through the media's year, getting to where people pay attention, does that require, does the need to be effective and sufficiently shrill to get people to pay attention, did you see a balance there with the need to be civil? to some extent a more civil you are the more bland your and the more shrill you are the more you're able to get people to pay attention and you are able to cut issues in a sharper way. the first question is, does being an activist force you at times and being an activist specially around to send force you to be less than civil?
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and secondly, if you see this dissent playing out and you accomplished everything that you wanted to accomplish what do you think, how would america look? what would change around the way that we have these kinds of discussions? >> well, i think if you -- i mean, obviously we have a certain media culture that if you are loud and shrill you get more media attention. obviously you are also going to turn people off. i think -- i think there is, you know, you make certain allowances for a motion and passion. i mean, people get angry. it is okay to be angry. we shouldn't tell people it's not okay to be angry. obviously what you do with that anger is important, but it's okay to be angry, especially if you see something that you think is unjust war that you want to change. i have personally, my theory is
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to bypass the media altogether and just go straight to my neighbors and the people that i know. obviously i'm not going to go walking up to somebody i know and scream in the face. i will try to present a well reasoned arguments and, you know, logical, rational arguments that i can hopefully persuade them with. so -- and it is also personal stuff. some people are just a little more in your face and other people. but i do think, you know, if you really want to change people's hearts and minds you can't constantly be insulting for using a tax or things like that. again, i said i police myself because i know that i am going to be a more accepted advocate for the things i believe in if i just talked to people about it. it was just common sense to me to do that.
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i don't -- see, i don't ever see this whole, the contentious debate and things like that. i don't actually ever see that going away regardless of one side wins or whenever. nobody ever wins forever. we are human beings to be human beings are messy. relationships are messy. freedom is messy and chaotic. i think that is a good thing. so, my vision, even if i achieved 100 percent of my policy goals i am sure, you know, other people would come up to try to change those and we would fight back. i think it is always going to exist. >> i would make this point. jim made a very good point. i think i heard you correctly. i was in the wings, but he said that a quiet voice usually has the largest impact. that is my experience.
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i have been in command many of you have been in bodies, not necessarily government bodies where important decisions to make. might experience has been, and i suspect yours has as well that the people who really have an impact on policy are people who presented civilly, reasonably, strong arguments. the people who tend to have less impact on policy are people who yell and scream at one another. i have sat in on a lot of councils in the congress and in consultation with the executive branch. i have seen members of the congress just flip their lives and storm and rage. if you look around the room when that is occurring people are dismissing that and saying,
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well, he is off base here where she is off base. and then almost invariably when decisions are to be made the discussions will return to serious, sometimes vigorous, robust conversation, but not kill civil. so, i believe that if you are objective and you want to have an impact on policy then you have to go at it in a very simple way. to the extent that you are in civil you decrease your impact in the decisionmaking body. now, there is a different kind of forum, of course. there are different kind of forms. if i am appearing -- i happened to be a democrat. if i am appearing before a democratic partisan group and i get up and give a very reasoned course on why we ought to do this or that or the other they would probably get bored. and so you have to, as a public
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leader, sometimes i'd just to the crowd that you're in so we often get the phenomenon every politician is acquainted with of stirring up your partisan friends. that is part of the process. but i don't think that is the body where the decisions are made. i think the decisions are made, fortunately, in this country in both the public and private sector in very constructive, serious, civil discussions. >> this example because i think it actually points to one of the things that may be changing in our media environment today where one of the things we see when we study him people to the extent to which in different environments they seek to have different entities, something that is true in the regular environments to where you try on different roles as you are going up. one thing we see on the internet is they will have one entity in face book and might have a
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second entity of this book and another one in a game environment like world of work craft and another one in another virtual space. one of the differences is from the observers of perspective if you can see all those you can see the different identities. one of the challenges that we are going to see emerge in the political sphere is that the same may be true of people who were speaking differently in different environments to their constituents. said take the example of the congressman it goes back to the district and speaks in fired up terms of their rhetorically strong terms about a topic to a set of observers who is then filled as very easily they might be, comparably going in giving a different talk to a series of people in washington d.c. and a series of talks to fund-raisers and then someone comes back and sees the distinction between the congressperson and all of those environments. i think that is a complicating factor of how this course will play out. the example of the npr fund-raisers who were captured
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on tape speaking one way to some donors and then exposed in a certain fashion is an example of that where it may be harder to have different kinds of conversations in different spaces if, in fact, we are recording ourselves any time we are in some of public space. >> the other day when i was walking around, these remarkable historical monuments within blocks of this year, the debate would occur in independence hall to read it would be very strong and vigorous. but it would not get out the country for weeks, if then. today you get up and make a sharp debate and it is in seattle instantaneously. boy, let me tell you, that is a different environment for a public speaker. it is a very, very different environment. i am kind of envious of the founding fathers on that ground alone. >> it is not just the currency.
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in other words, right now someone could be listening to us. is that it is then recorded for posterity. the distinction is not only that you can see the events happening at the same moment, but it is later that great filmmakers and others can come back and capture based on the keyboard searching what was said at any moment so that the record extends like a series of tattoos that we might or might not want to have some years later. >> the experience of asking a question in a congressional hearing and then almost as soon as they stopped asking the question and aid would say, you got a phone call. i would go back and have a phone call from somebody criticizing me all over the place for the question i asked. instantaneous, and they could be in london or paris. people are falling these debates carefully now.
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>> state legislature, one of my state legislatures who refuses to be videotaped. she makes arrangements with her whenever venue she is going to. she refuses to be videotaped. to me there is something seriously wrong with that. to me i feel like there is something she is hiding. i love the fact that we can videotape people and have it and there is a record. again, it does force people to have support for their arguments were to be a little more, maybe to have a little more integrity because people are watching. >> well, i hope it also encourages people to be a little bit less positive. once in awhile they will be proved wrong. that will also hopefully over the long force people to figure
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out the right way of apologizing for acknowledging what they are changing their point of view. for the last several years i have been saying this, as you can see from the clips. but i think that i am moving toward this point of view for the following reasons. >> congressman, you talked about the need, that people have more influence when they speak with a quiet voice. do you think that is true for decision making? that really discounts the will of dissent. dissent. what you're really talking about their are people that have already gotten to the point where they are at the table helping make the decision. what about -- it seems to me that when people are trying to get to the table, when they are trying to basically say i need a seat at the table that they are less likely to be effective when
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they are using a quiet voice. do you think that is right? >> at think it is a good point that you are making. kelly a moment ago was talking about her feeling that she had been excluded from her viewpoint that is not an uncommon view. you run into that all the time in politics. people feel, by golly i was not consulted. i did not have my voice in it. it is usually a legitimate and serious complaint. it is very, very hard to be all-inclusive, and it is true that sometimes the dissenter has to speak up with a little more passion, i guess. the person who is trying to -- who is in the mainstream. but even a dissenter whose peaks up with passion must speak up with confidence. in order to have an impact on our policy process in this
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country i think you do need to bring some passion to your position. if you are bland no one is going to pay much attention to you probably. you can feel something very passionately and still not be very effective because you are not competent or the reverse can be true. you can be very competent, but you don't have any compassion or excuse me, compassion. and you don't have all that much impact either. so i think in order to bring real impact you have to combine both competence and the passion. how you express that passion makes all the difference. if i get up and say to this group that is about ready to vote, i think you are all a bunch of idiots, that is not exactly the way i'm going to win influence in that body. i have to be civil, respectful, tolerate every point of view.
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but i appreciate the point. the dissenter does have a problem. people often feel in this country, by golly, they are not paying any attention to my point of view. that is often right. the reason that the party people have had the impact that they have had which has been very substantial in the country is because they felt very deeply that their point of view was being ignored. and so they had to speak out strongly. >> and you know, to meet another question, how you deal -- if you are a passionate and competent person and speak that way how do you deal with the speaker of the house saying, equating your physical movement, though very passionate, a very impassioned movement, how do you deal with her equating that to the time around harvey milk's assassination implying that we are getting toward a place where
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somebody could be assassinated? i mean, to have leaders who have such a huge microphone and platform to stand on accuse you constantly of hating minorities, wanting to take the country back to pre civil rights, i mean, it is the most disgusting thing. and to hear it from people who are elected and have these microphones and to not have any media hold them accountable, you know, they are on cnn making accusations. after the tucson incidents, within and our people were accusing conservatives in the tea party movement that we later find out this guy was completely apolitical and had never listened to talk radio and does not a tea party. where was the media when the people making accusations were on cnn? where were the cnn anchor is
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saying, hold on the second. you are maligning a lot of people right now, and you don't know any of the facts. how is somebody supposed to deal with that? al is the normal everyday average person who is now in activist, maybe not even an activist but sympathizes and feels a certain way, that is a very important question because it sucks to have people think this about you. >> well, let's pursue the media for just a moment here. how much do we think the increase in -- the increase in what feel like incidents in incivility is contributed to by a media that, first of all, jobs with vigor and passion on a statement that it can see violates any frame of political
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correctness and that also really tends to focus much more on controversy than on any element of substance. so, for a moment we will stay away from the other question. how the new technology in terms of new media is exacerbated. what about news media? are they creating a lot of the issues that we are dealing with the day around civility? >> david, i often say facetiously to my journalist friends in washington that there are no journalist in washington. by that i mean i am disturbed by the trend in journalism generally for everybody to want to be abundant and nobody to report the facts. now, of course, there are a lot of very good journalists in washington. it is true, i think, that the media over years has become less
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interested in reporting where, when, what, -- where, when, what, hal, whenever the old adage was and much more in expressing opinion. and, of course, that is where the money is. if you are a journalist today and you want to make a big income you become abundant. you write a syndicated column or you get on television as a commentator. so the financial incentives work against the traditional reporting in this country. but i often feel that the media exacerbates the problem and does not help. look, what you have to try to do in the congress at least, and i think in other bodies as well is you have to search for remedy. that is what the congress is all about. you have all of these difficult issues out here, and they really
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are difficult. and the congress represents all the people in the country. when i was in high school we had 130 million people in this country. today i don't know what it is, over 300 million. we know that the country has become enormously more diverse than it was decades ago. you have to reconcile those points of view in the congress. that means you have to make accommodations. you cannot govern this country without making accommodations, without making compromise. we would not have a country if the gentleman who met down here at independence hall did not make major compromises. the media, i think, does tend to exaggerate the differences. they do that in part because they want to make the issue clear. i understand that.
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some of these issues are not easy to make clear, but i do think they tend to exacerbate. i have had the experience personally and number of times of being asked to go were being sounded out to go on a talk show. they say, well, what is your position? al express a position and it may be a middle of the road were moderate position. they are very frank and will say to me, well, we don't want you on the program because it is not a sharp enough difference. in other words, they want the extreme point of view presented in order to make the contrast so that you, the american public, can understand it better. so i understand the problem. at the same time i do think overall the media has become more opinionated over recent decades. they have become much more interested in punditry then in reporting the facts. from my point of view at least that is a setback.
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trying to reach an agreement on these difficult issues as a public figure, you do need the help of the press for sure, but it is not an easy group of people to deal with. if they are more inclined stored opinion in fact. >> i agree mosley which that perspective, but i am disinclined to point the finger at the media. i think there are a couple of other factors that we should think about. one is the way in which the news business has been affected by of very -- i won't talk about the internet, but plainly greg's list and other things that have taken some of the revenues from the media have put the news media in a difficult position where they are seeking sharper and more shrill ways to describe things in order to make more money. i think we have to recognize that there is a news media
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operating in the marketplace. the second is the extent to which obviously the way in which they're doing this is to respond to us as the audience. we are the ones seeking out and making choices between different points of view. if everybody read the national constitution center blind rather than watching a partisan news program maybe there would be some extent to which there would be greater incentive to have a more nuanced positions. we do have to look at ourselves as the market to which the news media are reaching. but i do think this notion, many times the same interview request before going on a tv show or reporter. basically saying, that is too new wants to. this is one way in which academics are out of the debate because we want to be the two and. we are looking at it in a fairly objective way, and that never gets the "or the sound bite. so i credit the issue, but i don't want to just simply say they, the media.
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>> i would also argue, of course, that the media -- the mainstream media can either exaggerate things or they can completely ignore it. that -- if they don't decide that it's news it's not news and nobody knows about it unless you seek it out somewhere else like online. you know, again, i'd go back to how many people here have read the various death threats against walker and the senate republicans and wisconsin. did you know that there were chalk outlines with walker written in them around the capitol? people have been protesting at these senators helms, personal homes. i would never in a million years ever get to some of these personal home. i cannot imagine what coaster's somebody said to go to their personal home. i think it is creepy and you have to have a completely different mind set for that to
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be okay. i mean, list after list of things that have happened in wisconsin, and i haven't seen anywhere except on line. they are all documented with a video and photographic evidence the media plays i think a huge part in what we see is news because they can stifle something or they can exaggerated. >> so, we are going to move to q&a. as we get people in the audience thinking about what your questions are we have a couple from the block. kelly, a question. you seem to love your country, but you hate your governments. how are you contributing to civility? >> well, that is a very common conception. i don't hate my government. i think the american government and system of governments is the best in the world. i am totally biased for america
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as opposed to other governments of there. what i don't like is a lot of the ways that i think the government has changed. you know, tea party patriots, or three core principles our fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government and free market. to me we have this beautiful document, the constitution, that was handed down to us and allows us to progress and to change with the times in a very structured way that makes sure that various branches don't take control. so you know, the party used it mischaracterized as totally anti-government, totally anti regulation, totally anti-tax, almost anarchist somehow. believe me, that is not the case at all. so i think i obviously have
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issues and problems with some of the things the government does, but i think you are never going to be fully happy with it, and that is why an active and engaged, and active and engaged citizenry can find a way to something that is still good for all of us. >> we have some questions. yes. yes. is the microphone on? >> yes, it's on to read william allen, maryland to be done would like to pose for the panel to examples. historical examples that i would ask you to comment on in light of your general discussion. the first historical example is thomas jefferson who while serving as secretary of state described very quietly george washington as of whirred in councils. he did so in italian, published in italy as if it would get back, and of course it did.
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i would like to know whether you consider that civil war in civil. also remembering what was said at the outset by chairman leach with regard to the house divided speech, i am mindful that speech was received as a loud shout which some interpreted as declaring that only war would resolve these issues. i'd like to know how you take that reaction to what was, in fact, a statesmanlike diplomatic speech. i agree with the chairman. but it was received as an average. >> david, i'm not sure i heard all of that. i don't hear as well as i should to be the first comment was jefferson's attack on washington. well, he said some pretty tough things about washington. washington acted with extraordinary restraint overall. at the end of the day after washington was no longer
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president jefferson said some very gracious thanks. we can point to all kinds of incidents in our history where debate has gotten out of hand. even among the founding fathers. i don't know that it is any more vigorous or rigorous today than it was back then. it is just that when you say it today it is all over the country to instantaneously. when you said it back then it took awhile. by that time passions it cool. that is my reaction. what was the second part of the question? >> the fact that lincoln statesman lee reference to the better angels of our nature, that was actually received by the self as provocative and basically requiring war. >> if i may, it was the house divided speech, house divided. prior to the election. it was taken by those in the
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south, the authoritative voices as declaring that war was necessary. >> one reaction i have to that is that, look, if you are talking no matter how accurately and eloquently, you state a position. there are going to be a lot of people who disagree with you and some who disagree with you very strongly. you simply cannot deal with the really controversial issues that this country confronts and get up and make a statement that everybody agrees with on that issue. lincoln, of course, was faced with the question of succession at that point. people in the south were predisposed to interpret anything lincoln said in a very negative way and from their own point of view. we all do that.
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we all interpret everything we hear it through our own present. that is not unusual that that kind of thing would happen, and i'm not the least bit surprised that even lincoln had some problems with it. >> question. >> yes. >> christopher kelly, again. those who have been responsible for health care reform since the a bomb administration or any sort of health care reform which would involve government intervention to expand the number of americans, what do you imagine their deepest motivations in its operations to be for a project like that? >> all right. i think most people are, you know, very compassionately believing that is the best system for the most people, and i happen to disagree with that. you know, probably because i live in seattle and i have mostly all liberal friends who might disagree with all the time on face book.
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like i said, now i am totally out and open about it. i know them and i know they are good people. i think they are totally wrong, but i know that they are good people and that there are is in the right place. so, you know, a lot of this comes up because a lot of people in the tea party use the word socialism more socialist. >> or communist. >> well -- [inaudible] >> on behalf of america or socialist communist. >> but i don't refer to a bomb as a communist. i do believe that there are people in this nation who have communist political viewpoints, but this is where actually it relates to your comments about people taking things. when i use the word socialist and communist i am referring to of very specific set of policies
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and the way in which somebody wants to see the government run. all of that, all of that entails. a lot of people who then get called a socialist assume that they are being called a fascist and a nazi in the merger and things like that. i personally don't view it that way. i view it as saying, you believe in policies, you can call it socialism, democratic socialism, european socialism, whenever label you want to put on it, but i think it is very much what this to come and referred to as far as somebody saying something and then the south taking it as a declaration of war when that is not how it is intended. and i have friends that are proud self-declared socialist, but there's still good people. you can be a socialist and communist and be a good person. nobody has said otherwise.
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there is a big difference between saying at totally disagree with your policies but still think you have a good heart. >> the best center of gravity of tea party rhetoric about the health care project, just one example that seems to have been the most important on that type of the spectrum has rejected the idea, the motivation is primarily about compassion and primarily about expanding health care and primarily about a different philosophy of government as opposed to something like something more insidious. what your saying here today, did you think that reflects the broader center of gravity of the way that honest debate about a legitimate policy disagreement has been structured and friend? >> absolutely. i have met thousands of people, been at hundreds of rallies, and just like we were saying what the media, who did they pick out? when they go to a left-wing rally or of right wing rally, who did they pick out of the crowd?
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it pick up the crazy people with the crazy signs, the people that will be most interesting, again because i'm not going to be that interesting if i'm actually talking about page 547 in the health care bill and try to make a rational point. that's not interesting, but i can guarantee you that the vast majority of people in the tea party movement are just regular people who of learning how to be engaged in their government, burning about six, going to city council meetings to hold the governments accountable, learning about government transparency. worldview and philosophically they are opposed to the health care bill that passed. yes, a lot of us view it as at least a move toward socialism. that doesn't mean that we think people are bad people. a lot of that comes from, you know, just meeting of the people that have different viewpoints. i want to say something else really quickly. i spoke at mount holyoke back in december. it was very interesting, the
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questions that i got. it was very obvious that a lot of these women had never really been challenged in didn't know anybody with a different viewpoint, which i thought was really sad because it's such a good university. as book to some of them afterwards, and they said to me, yeah, i have no conservative friends. when you don't know people who have differing viewpoints from yourself you tend to look at them as caricatures and you believe the 52nd sound bites that you see on the media as a representative of the entire movement. you know, in wisconsin the violent protesters or the violent rhetoric is, the vast majority of people, that isn't them. so they said, most of these people are pretty peaceful. but, you know, you are going to -- i mean, the media tends to report the more salacious. >> next question. yes?
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>> hi. i have more questions than i know what to do with. the first was really for representative hamilton. .. the national spotlight and he shaped an entire generation of what the topics on the agenda were.
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it seems to me we need somehow to reach a better -- and this is part of the agenda for this weekend -- a better definition of the problem. it is not so much arise and fall of civility it seems to me as a different context in which we make public debate. i thought another thing representative hamilton said that was very important we are twice as big a country and a more diverse country in the days of senator mccarthy. it was perfectly acceptable in so-called polite company, meaning mostly white males to make racist jokes and sexist jokes and jokes that were almost
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a requirement to establish her membership in that community. that has changed. it seems to me that has changed a lot and for the better, so has the ability increased or decreased or is it this changed social fabric in which speech takes place that is the big change, and that we have to rethink and redefine what it is? >> well, i certainly hope he is right. that civility is increasing rather than decreasing and it would be a much better world if you are right then if i am right i have to speak in terms of the congress. i know what with a bit more about that. if you track the polls with regard to the american public opinion, of the congress, the
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thing that has risen very very sharply is that many many americans today are unhappy with the congress for a lot of different reasons but among the chief reasons is the excessive partisanship and the instability so i think at least in that world, the world of the congress, there is pretty broad viewpoint incivility has increased but we haven't really gotten into that today. let me give you a illustration that impacts my view. when i was a very new member of the congress, i made a bad parliamentary mistake on the floor and i didn't even know i had made it. the minority leader at the time was jerry ford and jerry ford sent over to me a republican member from my state of indiana
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and that republican member said to me b you just made a mistake. the minority leader noticed it and this is the way you corrected. on a bill they didn't approve of. now, i just cannot imagine that kind of thing happening today. the environment today just wouldn't accept that. but in this case, the minority leader, mr. ford and his republican colleague from indiana saw a young member of congress who didn't know what he was doing and told him how to correct it. and extraordinary courtesy and civility that seem to me. i can imagine that sort of thing happening today. >> there is a great passage in the new biography, the recently new biography of george washington that notes that after benedict arnold was unmasked and
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had fled, and he had tried both to end up with -- over annapolis and also kidnapping washington, benedict arnold sent a note asking washington since he had to flee, can you please send my clothes after and general washington did send benedict arnold his clothing was some sort of a polite note. so there really is a fascinating fascinating -- you know having somebody spy on you and try to have you kidnapped is fairly uncivil and yet there is this ability to have the overlay of politeness. >> david i don't know of another figure in american history that better illustrates civility than
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washington. it is just an extraordinary restraint on his part. during his presidency, as you would know, they faction, the factional problem developed and in really became very acute. and it caused him enormous anguish when he saw hamilton and jefferson at each other's throats. both of them were sitting in his cabinet and jefferson to be blunt about it was duplicitous with regard to washington. and washington knew all of that, but he never lashed out at him, never and just remarkable restraint on his part. so, we are talking about civility. if you have got to have some heroes in anything you do and with regard to this role, washington was an extraordinary model.
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>> i am sorry, you wanted to contribute to this. >> i would only act of the most recent speakers comments and try to bridge a couple of his previous comments. one is i agree with the sentiment that it is very hard to say we are less civil than we were it any other point. it just seems an empirical matter and hard to prove. there tends to be this notion of of -- and if you go back and said that the previous generation was less religious and rock 'n roll so with the bat and our parents think the internet is that we have the inclination to think that way but i do think actually the invocation is that socialism socialism.actually helps to explain some of the the colloquy we saw the minute before. if you have a generation of people growing up thinking about the bad guy is communist and socialist you know well that is a hot button thing to call something socialist or communist so when we are having a discussion about a policy matter for whomever it might be in a
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blog or otherwise to say that a socialist or that is communist even if you are not saying you where it is easy to personalize that ari quickly. i'm a capitalist who happens to be -- think the health care bill is a good thing. i don't think of myself as lenin, stalin or any number of others but that obviously invokes so very quickly i think the conversation does go, that is how the passions arise when you are pressing those buttons. i will bring it back to hamilton and jefferson. we would have a stronger country as we do today but for those guys going at it to some extent. that was crucial, two different visions of the country that helped to forge where we are now and i think we just have to figure out how can we have in the right context in the right way the hamiltonian jeffersonian debate on health care without getting at what others -- one another's throats literally. >> yes but i think, i think there is a very -- maybe because of the pacifist nations that i'm
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31 and i don't have those associations and i you the attempt to have universal health care and government involved in so much industry and things like that as a move toward socialism and i know there are nuanced differences between social democracy and various labels but i'm not going to not use that word because somebody else has an association with it and gets offended by it and they don't think it is fair to ask me to change my vocabulary like that. because someone happens to think that because of this pacification with this word. i think it is a legitimate ordeal and we had some literature to read before we came here and one of them was president obama's commencement speech in michigan in 2010 to one of the universities there, and he talked about civility in there for a little bit and part of what he said was talking
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about name-calling and things like that. all of the different leaders have been called nazis and fascists and that sort of thing but he threw socialist in there. it is totally not okay to put those in the same league. it is completely different thing to call someone a racist and a nazi than to call them a socialist or to say the policy that they support a socialist. or statist is the word that i like to use. i am sorry if you make that big should feel bad but you can say a lot of things to make me feel bad to. >> what about the word communist? >> i rarely use the word communist. i rarely use it because i don't see that is very mainstream. i think that is very much a fringe group but i do think there is a lot of socialism or socialism right that has made its way into the progressive side of politics in this country and again it is is not meant offensively. i don't think that makes you a bad person. doesn't mean that you hate people or something.
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it means that you have certain prescriptions for the ills of society and i think they are totally wrong and i'm using that as an easy label to put them in a box to discuss at. >> to follow-up on this question of whether the real issue is civility or whether there is another framework that we need to be talking about, what about the possibility that the real issue is about efficacy or effectiveness of our discussion at a sickly we are failing to solve our problems. we are failing to get rings done and our discussions are becoming increasingly sort of fruitless and impotent in terms of dealing with everything from the challenges around health care, challenges around immigration, challenges around our tax code, some of the larger structural issues of being an overleveraged and overly leveraged economy.
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is it possible that this worry that we are not being sufficiently sipple is really a proxy for the fact that our conversations are becoming less fruitful? >> possibly. >> i don't think it is correct to say that our government is dysfunctional. you may not agree with what they produce and you may be very frustrated with the process because the process is messy. there is in any doubt about it, but the government does make decisions and they may not be decisions we agree with. a dysfunctional government is like the government of iraq today, it simply cannot deliver any service. our government deliver services. >> that is a pretty low threshold. >> what? >> that is a pretty low
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threshold. >> well les trent to give you an illustration that is one that our government deliver services, not perfectly obviously and our government makes a lot of decisions. if you go back to last december the government in a matter of a few weeks made all kinds of decisions, many of them. many of them keli probably wouldn't like but they did make decisions. on the question of civility and whether it is going up or down, i think my view, i don't want to come across as saying to you that i think the situation is hopeless. i don't think it is. i think incivility or put it the other way around, i think civility is just not as clear as much in evidence as it used to be. that is the way i would put it and i don't think the situation is helpless or hopeless. i think there are all kinds of illustrations today.
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members of congress who joined together in bipartisan efforts and many politicians believe they benefit from taking a bipartisan position. i also think that in our country, in the congress at least, there are rhythms here. there are patterns where there are times when the congress is much more partisan than at other times. and, now it is true today that you have a lot of factors that may be built very strongly into our system that encourage incivility and excessive partisanship but overall, i think it is important to keep in mind that historically there are patterns of the country being in civil and more civil at other times. the important point to remember here is that the congress is a responsive body, and if we, you
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and i, make clear to our representatives look we want you to get in there and debate seriously on this question. we want you to take the position you are comfortable taking that we do not approve of your excessive partisanship, however you might define excessive partnership. another which we can't blame the excessive partisanship just on the politicians. date deserve some of the plane but because they are the ones that executed, we have to accept our own responsibility. look it is an easy thing for me as a democrat to say to a republican i think you are being in civil. that is an easy judgment for me to make. the tougher thing for me to say is to a member of my own party look, i agree with your position but you are just out of bounds the way you are stating that position. you are using all kinds of words you shouldn't use. you are accusing keli of being a
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racist. you are accusing somebody of being a nazi or communist or whatever. so, our responsibility within our own party it seems to me more than with the other party is to say when that leader of our party gets up and says something that is in civil that is excessively partisan is to say to that leader or that representative look i am with you, i support your positions but by golly you stepped out of line. >> a great way of thinking that really the trick is not to be trying to enforce civility across these bridges the sort of within these areas. are you saying john that in the on line communities where you clearly see these emerging niches where communities of like-minded folks are gathering more and more together. do you see that there is a trend towards this towards self-policing or is the trend more towards as folks congregate
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more with like-minded people they tend to become more shrill and more extreme? >> this is one of the key debates that goes on in the literature about the on line debate which is characterized in one sense often by a guy named named -- in the government with a law professor before that who talked about the daily media and the idea that one of the effects of the internet was for us to surround ourselves only with the views that we believed then and that someone who believed one very strong view would simply get a whole series of feeds or tweets or whatever that would come in and create a personal echo chamber and the people on the other side would do the other. there are a group of others, particular at harvard law school who thinks in fact we can have this more civil dialogue and in fact we can listen to one another more in this environment and there is an empirical debate as to which of those are true
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and i happen to believe that in the possibility of the medium. i think we have an attention deficit which is i think one of the big issues. there is only a certain amount of time. there are many more speakers now. it is no longer the case that you wake up in the morning and read "the new york times" cover to cover and at the end of the day you hear walter cronkite or katie couric tally what happened. all day long you are getting this information from different sources and sometimes it is keli directly and sometimes it is mediated. we have changed in the wake to get that information. i do think the idea though of our view of congress is very important to this debate of civility broadly. i'm sure over the several decades that you have been in congress you have noticed the extent to which public opinion polls show that we think congress is less effective than we did there will decades ago and a fairly precipitous drop even while the rating of the supreme court is totally unaccountable and has stayed very high.
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i wonder fairs and the connection in some ways between those two that as we see more directly as opposed to mediated through a few sources what is in fact going on in the congress that we get more frustrated with what we see in that environment and i don't know it is a hypothesis but i wonder if there's a connection between those two. >> i think we are, we have got about 10 minutes left so i think what we will do is ask folks that have questions that would like to ask questions. we will try to get a bunch of them together and then we will go around and you can respond to the ones that you think are the most urgent in needing responded to. yeah. >> congressman, congressman when you mentioned that those who are more shrill, more uncivil for example usually get dismissed an
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a group, however it seems we are bombarded continuously by images in popular media, films and tv and so on, where they tend to glorify those who scream, who yell, who say obnoxious things in a crowd or at a meeting. how do you think that fits in with our current situation? >> yes. >> do you think that the principles of civility were violated by edward r. morrow when he attacked joe mccarthy? >> could you repeat the end of that? >> when he morley and personally attacked joe mccarthy. was he violating civility by pointing out joe mccarthy's personal moral shortcomings? thank you.
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>> david asked this question several times. i want to just repeat it and that is, where does the debate debate -- what is it that you seek is an outcome in the democracy where
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between the severity of congressman lee hamilton and the severity of talking to governor ed rendell? >> thank you. >> you are welcome. >> do you have anymore on that side? >> a word i haven't heard much this morning is compromise and how far civility and compromise
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work hand-in-hand and that is not part of the problem today that we have. >> asked whether or not we thought it was civility the question we need to be asking. i got to see the screening of prohibition and i thought it was outstanding but one thing that really struck me was the level of corruption and i think that is a word we need to discuss. more so than civility is the corruption and we had the bootleggers going right into the capital, delivering illegal goods. we have got things going on in our government that are like that and worse. but, i actually wrote a rather lengthy article recently about the paradox of political divide. while i personally would
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identify more with keli. he said i'm a dyed in the bold liberal so we can definitely agree on one thing that the corruption is absolutely no place in our government at all and until that is fixed i don't see a whole lot of hope with civility. >> thank you. that is clearly a whole lot for all of us to chew on and so i will let you all take 30 seconds to think about what your response is going to be. the couple of questions that i end up coming away with from the discussion in addition to -- lee you started us off begging the question of what is civility and i didn't take us down that because i actually think it is such a big question that it might have not given us the opportunity we had to talk about
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some causes but it really does does -- that question is begged across the board what we consider civility. i think another question is can we learn from history when you see the great film prohibition and you hear some of the case studies that we have talked about this morning. there is almost a question of are we capable of learning lessons around what constitutes the most effective political discourse. been the final question that i have, i still tend to suspect that a lot of us are an easy about the tone and content of our political dialogue but that the root of that uneasiness is less about the style or how much anger there is or passion or whether we are stepping over lines and that the root is really more about how productive is it?
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are we getting done what we need to get done as a nation and our dialogue does not seem to be helping us get there. so now i think i have given you all time. john, would you like to start either answering questions are sharing final thoughts? >> absolutely and i'm delighted that this will lead to congressman hamilton having the last word. thank you david farwell moderated panel and a great discussion. a couple of jus rapidfire responses. lunch at the judgment over here i think the discourse itself is important. how we do it and why we are here is because we believe in the conversation being important and for me to take away in some ways for the session is keli's opening notion about feeling unwelcome and in a discussion is trying to understand that and make sure that isn't the way that people who are coming into civic life are reacting and that we are welcome. i think the second is this point about history. this is where disagree with keli.
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i think we desperately have to understand our history whether it is washington hamilton jefferson or what stalin and -- did there would have been in prohibition and that is the beauty of these museums and that is incumbent on us as we participate in these dialogues. the third one is that while i believe in the effectiveness of dialogue leading to action and certainly i agree that money in politics is one of the reasons we are very skeptical of our congress, back to the gentleman who mentioned the civil war, sometimes the rhetoric and the discussion in fact needs to lead to war. i think in the hindsight of history the civil war may have been a necessary thing for this country to have that fight in order to resolve something that simply we could not coexist with that base there but it has been a great conversation and i'm grateful to be a part of it. >> thank you. >> also buy to thank you for inviting me to this. i thought it was really great and i always look welcome the opportunity to talk to people with opposing viewpoints or similar viewpoints.
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i would like to address the corruption question because as i have become more engaged in civics and in politics, i really have sort of come to the conclusion that transparency in government or the lack thereof is really the root of many many of our problems. it is the root of people being dissatisfied with their government and their elected officials. it is the root of having no accountability or little accountability. it is the root of a lot of our profligate spending because we don't know where money is going. and tea party patriots have decided to take this on as an issue and we have a web site tea party sunshine.com. we are trying to get local activists to work on getting sunshine legislation passed through their states, keeping track of their local city
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councils and things like that. but, if the people don't feel that their government is being accountable with their tax dollars, then there is no flow of information. i mean, when people have to wait three years to get them to pay a thousand dollars that is ridiculous. it is incumbent upon government to provide information to us. is an beauty on the citizen shoulders to have to go figured out. is their responsibility to give us information about how they're conducting the public is this so i think that is a really great point. and i think as far as the question about the majority, we know in our history the majority of people have incredibly wrong at times and i don't have an easy answer right now but i think that is a really good question to ask is when do we take a look at the majority and
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when do people stand up and say the majority is wrong right now. and that is, i mean that is a huge question too. and i guess in closing i would ask that if people really believe in having more stability that you start again with yourself and at the same time, i also i am a believer in free speech completely especially for political speech and if you think there is bad speech out there you don't need to ban the speech or stop the speech. you use your own free speech and that that is so if you think somebody says something like me going back there didn't like what i said on the blog, he probably will because he is he's taking notes i think. so, you know i think that is the best way. we have really can make sure that we stay free and we still have our discussions that need to happen our debates so if you
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don't like something is somebody said then you should say something about it. >> congressman hamilton. >> i'm not sure i heard all the question but let me take them up as best i heard them. one comment was about uncivil behavior. we are being bombarded by it from all sides and that obviously points out that maybe society in general is less civil than that was decades ago and the congress or other political bodies reflect, as they should, be feeling of the american people. ..
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citizen. the decision was made, the point was made about decisions have to be made in government. that's a very important point. you can have all of the debate dialogue you can think of, all the consultation. you've got to make a decision and when you make that decision you're going to get a lot of people mad. that's just part of the process. now the important thing to note is the manner in which the decision is made is terribly important. if i'm in the minority, if i cast a vote in the minority and
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i don't win the vote in the house of representatives, but i feel like i have had a fair shot, the life and listened to, that my colleagues have been respectful, the life been shut out of the process, i don't have that many complaints to make. i fought the fight and lost it, and i have to accept that. i can come back and fight another day that on that 1i lost, so the matter in which we make of this decision is important. democracy is not a result. democracy is a process, and we have to keep that in mind. there's another comment made about the role of compromise and accommodation. i'm not sure that is a matter of civility, but i just want to see that look, our government cannot function if you do not compromise and do not make accommodations. it cannot function.
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when i hear a politician get up and say i'm not going to compromise on this issue that is a formula for deadline because there's going to be people on the of the side of the ogle taking a different, maybe not on the other side of the aisle, making a different position. now, so the question becomes you've got to stand up for your rights, you ought to argue your ideological point and are entitled to do that but at the end of the day we have to make accommodations and the responsibility of the public official is to make the country work. i was a democrat when ronald reagan was president. president reagan held his position very strongly and firmly. but at the end of the day we in the democratic party knew that ronald reagan would compromise. the government didn't shut down during ronald reagan's presidency. we compromised coming and i hope both sides walk away feeling
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reasonably good about it. and i think the date appearing at the correctional point is a serious one. look i don't have much to say about that except on believe that wall enforcement people, the prosecutors, the fbi, the county prosecutor's have the enormous responsibility in our government. they are the ones that have to enforce the criminal law and bob miller who i think destiny and important as that director of the fbi shifted the attention of the fbi from law enforcement to dealing with terrorism for obviously very good reasons. but as that shift has taken place in the culture of the fbi by worry about it because i don't want to see a devolution of our ability to prosecute the wrongdoer. i talked to a very good friend in the position not long ago and the fbi who said to me the fbi
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cannot prosecute an enron case because the do not have the capabilities and it takes extraordinarily important capabilities to prosecute that kind of case that they did have back then. i don't do if my friend is right or wrong but they're worried me because we have seen a lot of activity in the financial markets and the rest that at least raises suspicion of misconduct. so david, i feel we have had a very good discussion. thank you for being such an excellent moderator and thanks to my fellow panelists here and for these very patient people out there for the morning's discussion. it's been a good discussion i am pleased to be a part of it. >> please join me in thanking the panel. [applause]
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[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]
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coming up next in just a tnute a discussion on the nmvernment's role in disasterer
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response. the first price high school in winner in the 2011 studentcam competition focused on this issue for his video. video, here's the documentary. >> my name is math that you want to i'm a junior at a high school. on may 25, my life was changed first-ever. >> a history-making twister produced winds in excess of 200 miles per hour. the severe storm system virtually ripped the town in half. 22 businesses. leveled 222 homes and damaged others in a community of only 2,000. but the statistics don't do justice to the heartbreak and the hurt. >> my home was located where it
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took nearly a year to rebuild and we were finally able to move in. but in a matter of seconds, it was gone. but even after the tornado, it did not seize to exist our recovery began after the storm passed and the city, high school and city hall and majority of the other buildings destroyed during the storm have been rebuild. >> it's amazing to see their determination and resilience. it was inspiring to see the community really come together. >> but there's still a cloud hanging over our community. we still struggle with the federal government and fema and disaster relief. >> 2 1/2 years removed from that day and we're still working with fema. >> in the 1990's, fema was a model government agency. but as hurricane katrina showed, croneyism, underfunding
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and lack of leadership turned fema into the most rid called agency in the federal government. >> the team has handled continued disaster relief there. >> parts of the government you love and parts you hate. >> there's been sometimes with some national disasters, fema has not functioned so well. take in the last five years. they could have gotten their act together and done a better job. >> in several areas, fema handles parts of tornado assistance well. >> when it comes to recovery in florida, fema has been good to us. >> they have helped us with school buses, laying another
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track at the football field. playgrounds and parking lots. >> once the tornado happened, it was very apparent from the damage that it was a catastrophic event. that it was going to be beyond the needs of the community. fema stepped in very, very early in the process. >> that was definitely beneficial. they also set up a command center here not only for helping the disaster and recovery but also helping the citizens. >> we distributed more than $2 million within the first two weeks of that nade parkersburg. >> without fema funds, parkersburg wouldn't exist or be where we are at today. >> however, they missed due to miscommunications, we find ourselves today in a critical struggle. >> at the very grassroots
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there's a little problem with fema, maybe different people having a different view of what the government can and can't do. >> it's easy for misunderstandings like that to happen, because they don't keep enough people on the payroll to just handle a disaster in that part of the country. >> fema has a full-time staff. we then pull from what we call our reservists or disaster assistance employees. unfortunately, the way the reservists work, we do rotate them in and out. >> well, 2 na years later, a lot of that information we received was inaccurate. some of the guidance we received is not policy-driven. the decisions we made as a school board and really on behalf of our students and
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communities was based entirely on that information we received. and we find ourselves 2 1/2 years later in kind of a financial crisis of sorts as we are waiting an official word on funding. fema is now requesting that be returned. >> from the initial time we give out kind of an estimate of the amount of funding in what we call project work sheet, there are likely to be changes that happen from that time until the time the money is allocated. so that's how those types of situations where we have those occur. >> i guess that's the 180-degree difference to obligating money. you sign a project work sheeth and state the federal government going to help by contributing this much money towards the project. months go by. in this case years go by, and they come back after a third or fourth review and say that
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isn't how it should have been handeled and now they are going to de obligate that money. >> they can take it away after they gave it. and de obligated, i didn't even know that was a word. you know, we should have known that could have happened. >> fema has very strict guidelines. if you don't do this or that or everything right, they have the ability to de obligate at any point. >> that's where thing of the people have become such a factor for us. the people we originally worked with understood we needed to get back into our high school within a year. so decisions were need move that time line along quickly. and that's how things change now. things being reviewed by the third or fourth viewer and the
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extra costs associated. >> the city may never fully recover. but my community's restoration was not only the result of federal assistance. >> we were not going to sit around and wait for the federal government to do everything. or what we can do or not do. we just had a can-do attitude and did it. >> we, the people created our success. >> though fema has aided parts tremendously, it's also created challenges that athlete the progress we've made. the lack of funding jeopardize my school and the education of the area. without the renewed aid from the federal government, my life and my community may face continued devastation after the storm. host: we'd like to introduce
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you to this year's first prize high school winner, matthew joining us from john on the, iowa. congratulations on your prize-winning entry. >> thank you, very much. host: we just showed the tour and document enrichment it was a personal story for you, but how did you come about deciding this is what you wanted to do? >> i was taking an american history class and in the class i was spodse to make a documentary on american history and my teacher approached me with this idea to enter the sfean competition. and i thought hey, do this project and earn some money, get an a. it works. but we brain stormed some issues, and the top i can that seemed most fitting and -- most
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fitting and most obvious had to do with the parkersburg tornado and the role the federal government played through fema in the cast part of the federal government. host: what did you learn about the federal government? guest: that the cover, fema was able to definitely help parkersburg a lot with certain projects and getting things together. without finally fema, we wouldn't be as rebuilt as we are today. host: and what surprised you about the federal government and how it works? >> well, particularly through fema, we are still working with the federal government today. it's an ongoing process. host: so did you start out having one opinion of fema and the government, and thven it
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changed as you went along? >> well, in the beginning, i wasn't aware of the struggles weerp having. it was -- we recovered, and it was done with. but i learned there was a bigger role it played and i learned both the good things fema has done and certain things they can improve on. and fema has definitely done well for parkersburg, but there are still issues that need to be dealt with. host: the community exists of about 2,000 people. ital leveled 222 homes and damaged 480. have you been following the project of fema since you submitted the documentary? and what have you learned? >> i've heard of other tornadoes and disasters and such and i've learned that fema
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is still trying to help therges and they are doing the best they can. there's been issues that need to be addressed also with the floods in 2010. and i've learned that's an ongoing process for many communities. host: you mentioned there's $3,000 that goes look nch along with this. what do you mant to do with it? >> a lot of it i will put -- distribute some to a group called neighbors across the land formed after the tornado. they go around and help other communities stricken by disasters. and they help with the recovery. so i plan to donate a portion of that and update some of my film equipment. film is a passion of mine, and i like to do it, but i need a little bit of upgrade with my
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equipment. so i'm going to put a little bit of money into that. >> we spoke about filming for the documentary, getting all the different types of elements that you needed. >> yeses a fascinating process talking to all these people and learning their story. i had a great time talking with the former governor and as well as a representative from fema, and they provided get a insights into their -- i filmed all the interviews on my little flip portible camcorder with a tripod with a missing leg. so had a liling little issue with that. and then i borrowed a school lap top and used some editing software off of that to put it
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together. i had so much great information that was difficult to compress into a 10-minute voofment but i got that done. host: well, congratulations matthew. thank you for being here and talking about the role of government in disaster response. our first-place prize winner. also joining us is the former fema director from 2001-2003 to help us answer viewer phone calls, and in a situation like this tornado that hit parkersburg, aye aye, twhast the role -- dd --
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guest: he probably left the best stories on the cutting room floor. but it's a challenge. we'll be nice to him today. he might be the next steven speelburg. host: you're right. guest: fema basically takes place when the local government -- budgets are outstripped for what resources are actually needed to respond to any type of disaster. and the process is that the local entity talks to the governor's office, and the governor eefs office prepares a disaster's declaration that goes to the president of the united states. the president's office through fema normally reviews that application and makes a recommendation. normally when lives are at risk, the president acts very, very quickly. always with a -- with the
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hearts of those who have been hampled. and it really doesn't matter whether it's a democrat or republican, the president is fulfilling his obligation through people ray to respond to disasters. i know of one particular response. in kansas in 2002. the city was leled much like parkersburg was, and fema acted responsibly as they did in parkersburg. now one of the problems is as projects develop and evolve and come to completion, there's always disagreements and discussions about the finer points. and i understand that fema has some ongoing issues with parkersburg. but i'm sure there can be an immediate resolution.
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i don't know the particulars in this case. the residents of parkersburg wants a quick resolution. host: how does fema determine who is going to help and how? >> well, it's individual and public assistance. i think the video matthew did mainly focuses on public assistance. public buildings. public infrastructure. and sometimes federal agencies in my opinion overstep their bounds in trying to enforce a particular edict or rules or regulations that may be important elsewhere in the country. maybe not in the plain state of iowa. and the additional thing i think that is always a problem
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is you have staff over the. you make agreements. there's promises made and a fema representative says yes, we can do this and no, we can't do that. as time passes, those disaster assistance employees go out after serving their term. new policies come in. what happens is that that's not fair to local taxpayers. when you're -- we're still dealing with issues from hurricane katrina six years ago. and in my mind that's absolutely unacceptable. host: you touched on this and matthew talked about it in hisvoofment how can money be de obligated. guest: the stat ford act sets
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out broad parameters on what you can and can't do rightly so there was great latitude on what officials can and can't agree to within the guidelines. sometimes a political agenda or personality gets in the way and as a last resort someone will step in and say we're going to de obligate your funds. which is totally not right and not fair. no one en wants to see of on top of the table and a decision come to by everyone host: if there's a time frame in which fema says we've been working with you for x number of days or months and we can no longer work with you, what goes on? >> well, it was given to the
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then director and fotch -- but there were a lot of ongoing disasters whether it's flooding or the massive tornadoes that hit the southeast last week. those are all open disasters and normally the director or or administrator is directed to put an individual in charge to act in his or her sted to make these decisions. that's where these decisions need to be resolved. the obligation comes about when they get -- we're running a deficit. over $1 trillion. $1.5 trillion. so many agencies are put under the gun to not spend money or
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hold off on money. as a result when commitments are made some officials and representatives are put on the hot plate, so to speak, and go back and study instead of saying we once money is bhiggetted or committed by fema, there ought to be follow through. host: disaster response is our topic this morning. a new study shows rival for tornado aly. ground zero for twisters now may be in the southeast of the country. and floods drive people from gnomes missouri. -- from homes in missouri. and more rain is on the way. probably a headline we're going to be seeing across the country with spring floods. we're talking about disaster responses today. our first prize high school winner, matthew wick did his
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study about the role of government and disaster. caller? caller: i was wondering to talk to the director there, how much difference it makes in fema when george bush cut a lot of the funding from it? because we're having all these problems now, and now we have no money, and fema is taken care of. so i'll take your answer off the air. guest: i am always asked often about the budgets. and the way the congress operates and the president signs the funding bill is there's what's called the disaster relief fund. d.r.f. for short. washington loves ack are anymores, but they are given x million dollars a queer to start with in their annual budgets and congress will ails
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replenish their disaster relief fund should it run dry. i don't know any time president budget and were called to respond to any and all actions. especially the principal responsible for 9/11. we spent so much at the sites in pennsylvania and at the pentagon. but congress says this is an american issue and when people are hurt and in harm's way, the congress always has a generous national security trying to help their fellow citizens. if i knew specifically what you were referring to on cutting budgets, i could respond. but as the former budget director for a time, we got a
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response. host: caller? caller: i want to commend the young man for doing his winning video. and i worked with fema right after hurricane andrew. in miami. in 1992-1993. it took us about six years, but i was actually giggling, because this young man has fema right on the money. everything that he indicated in his video is exactly what we went through in the early 90's. and it's interesting to see that in the 19 90's until now, it's not changed at all. >> eff -- connie, i think you and he are on to something. i would not like it when people would inform me that money got
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de obligated. i would basically say you made a commitment. is your word good or no good? we, as american taxpayers, expect the government to step up and assist states in responding to all natural disasters. it's not just the response but the recovery mode and rebuilding mode. i appreciate your point, connie, and i have heart burn with those individuals that made the commitment and then for whatever reason moved another job or have a promotion or moved out of that particular responsibility and then local officials are left to deal with a new team, new faces, and they have to retell the story again. i think retelling the story once is enough. particularly when money is obligated to fund whatever projects for individuals, families or in the public
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assistance arena. >> in matthew's documentary, he features congressman waxman's -- saying it suffered from croneyism, lack of funding and leadership. >> i have no specifics on something specific -- guest: but maybe after hurricane katrina, i believe fema had a breakdown in communication, but you can't just point fingers at fema for the lack of response in fema. i could point it to lack of government and it needs to start with the local government. we are still at the federal government dealing with issues. issues after the fact, helping
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louisiana get back up off their feet. guest: we do a lot of security consulting, high-profile protection. a lot of training. we also do a lot of disaster assistance, helping local officials try to negotiate the path. we're basically a consulting firm internationally. host: san antonio, texas, independent. welcome to the kong very sation. caller: my question for the director is about the properties fema has located across the country that are for the expected insur intelligence of immigrants because of the war on drugs and how do they relate to disaster responses and what are they expecting as far as a disaster. >> alex, i appreciate your call, but i have to tell you, i don't know anything about that.
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there were no such facilities during the two years i existed as director. i know there's a lot of buzz on the internet about locations fema owns and i know we have regional offices, regional personnel. we preposition access supplies and people in those regions, but unless you know something specifically, i'm afraid i can't help you on that issue. host: we'll go to ron, a democrat from north town, pennsylvania. caller: thank you for taking my call. i wanted to correct the director on one thing. first, in 2001, i happen to know because i grew up in highwaysenton, and i left kansas in 2001 shortly after the housen to know tornado.
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i was interested in knowing what kind of help fema gave to that area, and i want to congratulate matthew on his win. and i'll take my answer off the line. guest: thank you, ron. i went there. the path of the tornado, as you probably remember, acted like a knife, slicing if -- through. schools, hospitals, roads, i don't remember the specifics. it's almost 10 years ago. but measure importantly to families and individuals, individual assistance. a lot of confusing comes into
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play if individuals or businesses have the insurance policies. that's part of the reason that we have an industry to take the risk and lower the risk in individuals and companies by paying monthly premiums for insurance. if you have insurance, fema will not allow you to essentially double dip. in other words, they will allow your insurance policy, but then if there's a belief by fema officials that more money, sometimes people are underinsured -- more money is needed -- remember, it's not supposed to be a full-time permanent fix. it's supposed to help you in the rough times. and i remember assistance for families that was an immediate
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influx that was supposed to help you pay for family needs and toiletry items and clothing. i don't remember the amount of money, but i know that it was a lot of money. and out in the plains, you're subject to a lot of tornadoes. high winds. and it's not an uncommon occurrence. part of our problem here in the u.s. is that we've raised expectations for all our citizens that if there's something that's going to happen, then the federal government is going to come in and make you 100% whole. that's just not possible. not possible in today's budgets where we're running such huge, vast sums of money over our budgets. and it's much like you having your credit card. if you over spend your credit card, pretty soon they won't give you any credit. we're trying to make sure we
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have money. that's the job of the federal government. not to be first on the scene. but probably last on the see. caller: first of all, so you understand my position. if the main job of the federal government is to protect the citizens of the united states, whether it be from terrorism or war or whatever, i believe that that constitutes also helping people recover. i live in florida. i went through the hurricane charley, hurricane francis. you name it, we went there. all of a sudden because my home was hit in hurricane charley, which was the first of four, the insurance company was
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willing to make us somewhat whole. but once we got to the second or third hurricane, the insurance companies didn't want to pay. to in fema or the government, certainly not the state. certainly not the city. they had no funds and were notaling with -- and -- guest: i remember very well suggest down with leaders of the insurance industry. we were talking about property and casualty companies that ensure the majority of businesses and homes in the u.s. but they too, are in a for-profit business, and they, too, have policy holders and
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stock holders that they have to respond to. those pressures. so it's a difficult issue. i don't like the way some insurance companies treat their policy holders, particularly if you have a policy in good standing, your premiums are current. i just don't like it. but at the same time let me just say it's not federal government's job or fema's troll make you whole again. there's not enough money in the world to make everyone whole in narrow own mind. it is important to get you over the rough spot and get you back on your feet so you can take care of yourself. i mean, we are supposed to be a culture of individualism. and unfortunately we have become somewhat lax and reliant
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upon government agencies to help us. and that is not what made our country great and we cannot be on a government dole all the time. it is not possible. host: yesterday we introduced you to our first prize middle school winner for our student cam competition. today we're talking about disaster response, because that was the topic of our first prize winner in the high school category. matthew wick. i'm curious, because you went along in the process of doing your documentary. what do you think about fema that needs to change, if anything guest: the big issue when i spoke to people around the community were the communication and de obligation issues. the miscommunication issues were mainly caused by the turnover of people. which means the people the community was talking to with
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fema would go somewhere else and a new person would come in and the community would have to reexplain their situation, which happened several times. that process mistakes were made and miscommunication happens. then they gave up the money and now they are de obligating it. so we are now in a financial crisis at the moment. host: can you quabt phi how much money is the school or town waiting on? did they give you that figure? guest: i'm not sure of the current figure, but i believe it was nearly $700,000. guest: so given that, is there a way to change over the staff en -- change over the staff
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differently? guest: for an agency that's supposed to have a responsibility as large and vast as fema's responsibility is, to take care of all the disasters o' -- you have to have the weight behind the congress and president to fully fund the agencies to do the job they are required to do. that is the only answer. second to that, i would only make sure once someone is assigned to a particular disaster, as the decision maker, then i would make sure that that person remains with that disaster as in parkersburg's case, until all issues on file is -- are
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closed. and it just stounds me that you have -- sounds to me that you have dealt with a lot of different people in turnovers. and in the big scheme of things, $700,000 didn't sound like a lot of money, but it is to parkersburg and your school district. like i said in the beginning, to believe this could be solved in a 25-30-minute meeting, it should be able to be hashed out. that's what we do. we solve problems. this problem happened in may of 2008. we're now approaching may of 2011. and i feel sorry for the citizens of your statement, matthew, and for parkersburg, because they are dealing with this shortfall.
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i wish i could encourage everyone to move through this swiftly to solve the problem. not only this problem in parkersburg, but open, outstanding problems that exist in the government's files so far. >> fema its director from 2001-2003 here with us this morning to help us answer questions about disaster response and our first -- -- our caller is on. caller: y'all were talking about hurricane katrina. and when i think back on that, and everything, i lived in arkansas. and yesterday, a monday, was
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filled with tornado warnings all afternoon. we are thankful that we have a tornado siren. but to get back to hurricane cat, -- hurricane katrina, what i think about when i think about that is why did the government not reinforce those levies when they knew that they were not going to hold? plus, on top of that, the people that i blame mostly for some of the things that happened down there is the mayor who did not get the people out when they had buses sitting around to get the people out host: all right. we'll leave it there. guest: she is referring to the worst photo i've ever seen in a disaster response. that would be the parking lot
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full of the 100 or so buses that could have been used. unfortunately, when leaders or community officials issue warnings, some citizens just refuse to heed the warnings to evacuate, to leave their home. i fully understand that. but at the same time those leaders need to put assets in place. that case, the school bus system for those who didn't have transportation, for the elderly who needed to be moved out of the way. one of my greatest nightmares is a hurricane hitting new orleans, a category five or so, because it will destroy, as we've seen in hurricane katrina's instance, a lot of that community. much of that community, particularly the lower ninth ward to my disgust has not been rebuilt yet. money and time has been wasted.
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individuals have not returned. but again, it is up to the leaders of those communities to set with the government and, the only reason they were built to a category three was because of money. they were built years and years and years ago to the technical spessifications that were provided at that time. state of the art science. plus, no one really believed that a category five hurricane would hit new orleans. but it's bound to happen eventually. host: from clums, ohio. -- from columbia, ohio. caller: i want to congratulations matthew on his great job with the video, and
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it looks like your guest was allegation a volunteer growing up according to some of the sources i've been reading. so maybe the young man would potentially have a position in government. [laughter] caller: hopefully he'll continue on with reviewing some of the issues in these other states that are still undergoing fema controversy. i think that would be a good job for him. at any rate, i was wondering about, you know, the fact that when joe, you were working with president bush, and you were on his cabinet as the director of the federal emergency agency
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and then transferred to the homeland security department and then later left in 2003 and looks like you then went on to support new bridge strategies, which is a private company -- host: diana, we need to get to a question. caller: well, i wanted to know with the contracts that are in iraq, is there any way that bring some of that work back into the united states for the people that need jobs here. guest: well, number one, i do not have any contracts in iraq. nor my company. so i appreciate you reading the internet. unfortunately, it's not true. i just am not prepared to respond to what you're talking about.
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preal because i don't know what you're -- principal my, because i don't know what you're talking about. caller: local preparedness. if local communities are not into the news program, national incident program to have their communities set up with their local officials, then be prepared to cover any of the -- any emergency -- last time we had an f-1 go through my community. we had a flood in 2008. our little community of some 900 souls. stepping back to the to seten tornado. it was not certified, and it caused them grief anding a croatian vacation. they didn't get a -- so they
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suffered through this without fema's help. the government insisted at that time that those local communities must become certified. we did that. i became certified, and it's all documentation, and thank you, matthew. you might say, with my film and camera work, i became our local documentor, so that when we had the flood in 2008, i documented as much of that as we could. host: we'll leave it there. joe, what about that? guest: well, he makes a good point. even though wrong. but a lot of communities can help themselves, and again, it gets to personal responsibility whether as an individual or family or community, to come together. make an assessment of where you think you're vulnerable. fema can help you do that.
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they can help communities plan properly to prepare for potential disasters, even with their building codes. our building codes nationwide today are much stronger because of programs like the ones that fema promotes, to help educate -- better educate. plus our sciences did improve dramatically. first and foremost they need to step up to the plate and not always count on some government agency to bail you out. host: to george. caller: the matthew study was very timely. i just heard on the news last night that fema was de obligating some of its response to the recent flooding along the pa sake river in new jersey. this is a chronic problem that
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involves hundreds of thousands in the communities. and what my point and question is. i understand the army core of engineers has been involved in trying to mitigate some of that problem, because it's been a growing problem. not necessarily related to the problem of rainfall. what coordination is there between government agencies between the army's corps of responsiblies and fema's responsibilities under an event that occurs over several storms and you have an accumulation of -- host: my apologies. we have to leave it there. joe? guest: well, he makes a good point in so far as coordination. there was massive coordination when it comes to the flood plain issue. un fortunately, a lot of folks in our country like to be close
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to water. rivers, lakes, and the oceans on both gulfs. there's an inherent risk and responsibility that goes along with that desire to be along the coast. it might be nice for the government or insurance companies to step up once or twice to rebuild for you. but you have a personal responsibility if you want to live in a flood plain, you have to know it's going to flood eventually. that's the purpose of flood plain maps. either five,10, 1,000 years out, it will happen. and we can't always, as a taxpayer, rebuild and pay for rebuilding in low-lying areas. that's why studies need to be completed. and elected officials have to make tough decisions to decide where to build and where not to build. but you as individuals have responsibilities, too.
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host: matthew, talk about how the town responded. how the people responded to the tornado back in 2008. guest: immediately after the tornado hit, neighbors were helping neighbors. half the town was leveled, but there was a good portion that was untouched. and the untouched side of town didn't just stand around. they went immediately to help their neighbors and help them recover, and that was a big part of our relief effort. it was one of the reasons why we are as rebuilt as we are today. host: and matthew, how is the town doing today? guest: the majority of the town is fully rebuilt. people have mostly rebuilt on-site. some of the houses are where they were and things are returned to normal. host: matthew wick.
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this year's high school winner. thank you for entering the competition. congratulations on winning, and thanks for being here this morning. guest: thank you. host: joe, i also want to thank you. appreciate your time. guest: you bet. congratulations to matthew and to parkersburg for stepping up and helping their neighbors. host: tomorrow we will be joined by the 2011 student cam grand prize winner to discuss the top i can -- the topic of compromise in the go now meet the grand prize winner and sees video tomorrow morning, what the documentary at 6:50 eastern and meet the winner live during c-span washington journal let 9:15. stream the videos any time on line at studentcam.org.
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