>> host: this is certainly a very exciting and very provoking book. it is an incredible achievement and i think you for writing it and for being here today to talk about it. >> guest: thank you for having me. ..

>> such a robust crowd.

thank you very much for the warm welcome. >> [inaudible] >> no, you go. >> okay. we thought we'd have a conversation, which is, in many ways, what the book is. the result of many long conversations about what happened and where we would -- where we had been, 10 we'll kick things back and forth saving time at the end to hear your thoughts and questions about the relevance of the governor's story and where america goes next, so when people hear jennifer's native state, they think about michigan -- >> not native. >> not native. i knew. starting already on me. >> coif. -- coif. sorry. >> born in canada, raised in michigan. when people hear michigan, they think of detroit primarily, gm, ford, and chrysler, and we may talk about them tonight, but i thought it would be good to start with the small town that

nobody's heard of called greenville, which is in the middle of michigan, about 8,000 people because i don't think that if there had not been the story jennifer will tell you about jennifer that there wouldn't be a governor's story. to my, in our experience, i think it was the crystallizing thing. tell them about greenville. >> it was. thanks so much. so, michigan, automotive state, manufacturing state, and i'm elected as governor in 2002 and took office in january of 2003. if you recall, 2001 and 2002, the nation was just emerging from a recession, george w. bush was president, there was all of this talk about whether he was going to allow stimulus to happen for the states so they could get through, and, in fact, they passed the package. when i took office in january of 2003, the economists were saying that michigan would be able to

ride the cycle up, that we would be bouncing back along with the rest of the nation because, of course, this was just another cycle we were going through, and when the nation catches a cold, michigan catches new moan ya because we buy things people buy, but large things like cars, so at the end of my first year in office, after the economists had said that things were going to bounce back, and i kept waiting and, you know, everybody was saying this is a really good time to be legislated governor because you're coming in in the valley. things will emerge, and you can claim credit for all the resurgence of michigan. at the end of the first year when the jobs were not bouncing back, even though the national economy started to recover, i was scratching my head over why this was not the case. i got a call from the head of our michigan economic development corporation, which is our economic development in michigan, and he said, governor, we have a big problem. i said, what is it?

he said greenville, this little toin in michigan, you know, we carry our maps on the end of our hands. who is here from michigan? look at you all. you know. all right, our map of michigan in greenville is close to lancing in the center of the state. there's a town called greenville, and they are about to lose their enormous refrigerator factory. in fact, greenville called itself the refrigerator capitol of the world. they, in fact, in this tiny town of 8,000 people, had north america's largest refridge factory employing 2700 of the 8,000 people who livedded in the town, which all 8,000 people are grandparents and kids, this is a one company town. the whole town grown up around manufacturing, so he says, they are going to leave. they are going to move to mexico, and i said, oh, no, they are not. we are going to go to

greenville, put whatever incentives we have on the table, and make them an offer they can't refuse, so we went to greenville in a room probably about this size in this little town, and the mayor and city manager was there, the guy who was responsible for the community college was there, and the whole work -- the workers were there represented. the whole town and their representatives showed up to try to prevent electrolux that operated the factory to moving to mexico. we put everything on the table. we emptied our pockets of our chips and made a big pile and slid the pile across the table to the management of electrolux, and in the pile was zero taxes for 20 years. we offered to build them an entirely new factory. the workers represented by the uaw offered $30 million in

concessions every single year. they didn't want us to tell anyone how much they were offering because they were afraid of copy cat requests from others who wanted concessions. our pile of incentives was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. the factory -- the management took the list, went outside the room for 17 minutes, came back in, and they said, wow, this is really generous. this is the most generous offer we have ever been presented with, but there's nothing you can do to over come the fact we can pay $1.57 in mexico. there's nothing you can do. the month that the last refrigerator came off the line, there was a gathering in the town, and it was of the employees, and the employees called the gathering the last

supper. it was at a big pavilion called the quackles orchard paville lone. i walked in. there was a band playing sad music, and people were sitting around tables eating boxed lunches saying what are you going to do next? what are you going to do next? it was like a big community grieving almost, and i went up to the first table, and i didn't announce i was coming or anything, but i felt like, you know, i felt so much a part of this community and felt like we had lost this huge thing, and i went to the first table, and the guy comes up to me with two daughters, baseball cap on backwards, tattoos on and says, governor, these are my two daughters, young teenagers, and he said, he said, i've worked in

this factory for 30 years. i'm 48 years old. i went from high school to factory. my father worked at this factory. my grandfather worked at this factory. he said, all i know is how to make refrigerators. he put his hand on his chest, and said, so, governor, who is ever going to hire me? who is ever going to hire me? it was not just him. it is workers all over the country that are experiencing the ramifications of globalization, and it was not just greenville either. >> so let me pick up the tale there a little bit. what we tried to do in the story was kind of shoir how piece by piece this thing came out of.

she had optimism how things would turn around. we always had a cyclical economy, and all of us in america are saying, okay, where's the upturn? the dow in the last six weeks 1 up, back down, up, and back down, up, and back down, but one of the questions that we had was when does it come? one of the things that we learned is that the recovery actually came and the recession really was not as real in the first decade as we thought. now, that may sound ridiculous, but let me explain. here's why it probably sounds ridiculous. you wouldn't know this, but america lost 42,000 factories in the first decade of this century. 42,000, so, you know, a thousand a state, a thousand factories shut down. what happened, we lost 2.5 million jobs among american companies that were

multinational companies that had a presence somewhere else. we lost 2.5 million jobs, but the crazy thing is as we look at the numbers and start to see experience after experience like the one she described, noun is poignant or is just nuclear as greenville was, but experience after experience of jennifer getting what are called worn act notices where a company employing over 500 people, i think? >> do a mass layoff of 50 or more. >> a company laying off 50 or more has to inform their governor by federal law, so these were flooding in at a certain point in 2008 and 2009 when things for terrible; right? we have a terrible shrinkage, but at the same time, those companies grew 2.9 million jobs abroad. there was actually a net growth. now, think about it. this is the era that we've all lived in of tremendous

efficiency and productivity; right? of two people doing one job, of increasing overtime, especially white collar overtime without paying for it, pushing health care costs on to people, all kinds of things to get more and more efficient, to use flood warning in every -- technology in every way possible. in that time, they were still adding jobs. what we noticed and like to say is adam smith, you remember, the great capitalist economist, talked about the visible hand. when people make efficient decisions, when they decide to work more to make more, they decide to buy a cheaper product than an expensive product, all of those decisions create this sort of invisible hand where money and resources move to the most efficient places, and that's exactly what we've experienced. we watched as our jobs have migrated elsewhere, and we've lived still within a protected sort of bubble of our thought

process that we're in a closed economy, that we're in an economic system, and so, for instance, if you give companies more money or give wealthy people more money, they think, how do i invest this and make more money which is great if you're in a closed system, but the most efficient place to spend the money, 20 use that money as a business person is to invest abroad, then we've got a major jobs problem. like wise on the consumer side, if consumers do the most prudent thing, which is go to wal-mart rather than somewhere else to get a lower dollar amount, where do they go? well, a big chunk flow across the ocean to china, so we're in the midst of this tremendous situation where we're still in 20th century minds about what the economy's like. we'll talk more probably about michigan and how our michigan residents were very much, and i think it's true in california, i think it's true even in my

brilliant berkeley students across the bay, still thinking with 20th century minds about 21st searching ri problems. >> yeah, in fact, when this happened with electrolux and i realized this was potentially the problem of all the stuff to come for us, we decided that we, in michigan, were going to do an analysis on the economy and do everything possible to be able to keep jobs in michigan so despite the global economy, so i listened to the business community, and i cut taxes. in fact, in the back of the book, i've got the list. in the first four and a half years i got taxes 99 times. they were small, large, targeted, they were, you know, individual. 99 times. in fact, by the time i left office, michigan had cut by far as a percentage more out of government than any state in the country. we had cut just on raw numbers

by far more employees, public employees than any state in the country. by the time i left, we were 48th in terms of the size of the government. our corporate tax burden had dropped between 1997 and 2007 more than any state in the country, 10 you would think that -- so you would think the prescriptions of small government and cutting taxes, which many people continued to put forward as the solution to our national economy today, you would think if those were, in fact, thee only solutions to be able to use that michigan would have had the most robust economy in the nation, and, yet, we still have the highest unemployment rate for the vast majority of the last decade. there was a mismatch. we -- i was not applying solutions to a 21st century problem, but 20th century solutions to a 21st century problem. now, all of that means i do

believe that you have to be efficient in government, and i'm not suggesting that you want huge bloated government. i think you have to cut where you can in order to invest where you must but the thing that started to turn us around was the ability to partner with the federal government to make strategic investments in areas where michigan could compete globally. one example -- when the recovery act was first adopted, president obama said he wanted for there to be a component for that to allow for america to make electric vehicles, and you can only do that if you make the battery, the guts of that electric vehicle here in the country. before 2009, the vast -- all of the electric vehicle batteries, other than 3%, were made in asia, and so what the president had said repeatedly on the campaign trail is you don't want to substitute our reliance on foreign oil for reliance on

foreign batteries, let's, us, in america make the guts for the vehicle. we raised our hands. we said we made vehicle 1.0 as the automotive capitol of the world, let's make 2.0 as well. in order to compete for the federal grants, we teamed from with the private sector and universities to put together a really compelling series, a pack of proposals to the federal government, and in august of 2009, in fact, joe biden came to michigan to announce all of the winners of that opportunity. within the space of 18 months, michigan had developed an entire battery cluster in our state because we had done an analysis, and we were able to co-invest with the federal government. that investment is supposed to create 63,000 jobs in michigan by the year 2020.

in fact, one of the battery companies just hired their 1,000th person, a123, and we identified a whole supply chain, not just the folks building the batteries, but all the suppliers to the companies too. we had gaps in the chain, so i went to japan and said come to michigan and provide the material for the battery, please. i went to another company in japan saying provide the batteries we're developing, and i went to korea saying you make all the batteries for these consumer products, you're going to build the batteries for the electricity for the vehicles -- >> you're sounding like howard deen now -- we're going to south carolina and florida -- [laughter] >> at any rate, we developed the cluster, but we never would have been able to do it on our own, only in partnership with the

federal government and the universities and the private sector that we were able to do it, so the trajectory of the learning, for me as governor, was one that lasted really the entire eight years trying a lot of stuff throughout the time, and the only thing that worked was the willingness to invest in the economy, and the proof of that in 2010, our unemployment rate dropped six times faster than the national average and the gallop organization said michigan's job improvement was the most improved of all the states, and "news week" said michigan was the number one state for job creation opportunities. we have a long way to go yet, but it finally started to turn around once we were able to strategically invest in order to bring jobs there.

>> why don't you talk about states competing with hall lee barbour in mississippi and you were in indiana trying to pull other jobs there or in california. that is a favorite place. >> governors love to come to california and try to pull -- >> what's the problem with that? >> here's the issue. no state has the opportunity or the resources to compete against say china or germany, even a state as powerful as california because you have to balance the budget and there's no resources to be able to do it, but states do compete against one another all the time in whatever way we can, and the only way we can often compete is by throwing tax incentives at businesses and luring businesses and you're moving them around from one state to another. every governor, we are constantly competing with one another to say, oh, i got that

one from you guys or that from you. in fact, there's a magazine that facilitates this called "site selection" amazing and there's a -- magazine, and there's a governor's cup seeing what governor won the most investments for their state. >> did you win? >> i did for several years, but it's a national strategy because you're just moving the jobs around from one state to the other when the real competition is overseas; right? so what do we do as a nation to be able to crack the code to keep jobs here, when the movement of jobs in capital as we've seen so ready flows to the places not just those with the cheapest labor, but also where there is an offer of a partnership on behalf of our governments, and i'll say a quick story and flip it back to you. i was in march in china, and i'm very interested in the opportunity that the clean

energy provides in terms of jobs, and we went with securing america's future energy, meeting with a number of chinese officials to see what they were doing to attract -- they attracted so many solar jobs from california, used provide a huge number, and now a smaller number because they are aggressive. i was at the meeting, and they say, so, when do you think the united states is going to get a national energy policy? congress is so devicive, i don't know. this is what the chinese official did. he goes like this -- [laughter] he grinned, rubbed his hands together and then he said to me, take your time. [laughter] they say our passivity as their opportunity. we have to recognize that the federal government in this country in terms of energy policy in getting jobs brought a

knife to a gunfight. >> i think that's one of the issues i can't help but think we're on the verge of an election cycle, and what should we be talking to each other about and asking candidates to take stands on, and where should they be? i think 24 is one of the most important issues. i'll steal one of jennifer's stories which is actually a george bush story in his biography. he talked about being with the president of china, and they are talking about their situations in life and, you know, their peers, their colleagues; right? hanging out and chilling, and so president bush is kind of a conversation starter says what keeps you awake at night? he says, well, what keeps me awake is creating 25 million new jobs a year for the people of china, and, of course, good gentleman flipped the question, how about you, president bush? what keeps you awake at night? can you guess -- you remember eight years of president bush,

and what do you think he said? [inaudible conversations] >> saving the world, cutting taxes -- no, something else. [inaudible conversations] spread of democracy. but what kept him awake at night? the texas rangers -- terrorism. terrorism is what kept him awake after that, you know, bad news that he got while he was reading to the kinder -- kindergartners. are we really focused not just saying we're focused about jobs, but are we focused about creating jobs now in the kind of economy that we're in, in a global economy where countries like china where we don't embrace what they are, but we can embrace the aggressive desire to generate economic activity that leads to the bottom line so consider the

contrast when we bring nissan to tennessee or honda, you're happy to have the plant, give the land, and jennifer said we give you this incentive and that and come here, don't go next door to alabama or tennessee. come to us. the deal is struck. when gm goes to china saying we want to work with you, have a joint venture, build some cars, sell some cars like your asian friends sell cars to our people, let's strike up a deal. who owns that operation? china. china owns half. shanghai motors and shanghai motors is owned by the city of shanghai operating under pretty strict federal guidelines on issue. do we we want that? probably not. 1 it helping them now where 50% of the return is going to come back to shanghai to think about investment in their schools,

investment in their roads, investment in their infrastructure, the things that america thinks that we did in the past, but don't seem to want to or need to do, so somehow what we got to do is how can we be as intensely competitive as they are? do we want to sit on the sidelines? that's the ideology we have, put the government on the sidelines and let the market do its thing. how is that working for us now? it's really not. we need an american style, an american mix of capitalism and democracy that works for us, but we need a government that's determined, and not one that says, hey, trust us, and in time, it's all going to work out. leave it to the individual investors and the rest, and everything works its way out. clearly, that's not working here. we need to go somewhere else. >> in fact, yeah, i was moderating a bunch of multinational ceos on a panel earlier this year, and the question was what should the

role of government be? you know, for the united states in job creation. i said to them, so since you're in a bunch of countries, is there a country that does it best? who should we model ourselves after? >> this was john deere, coca-cola, at&t. we're talking about people who are really seeing the globe; right? from the business person's standpoint. sorry. >> right. and so they said singapore does it best. i said what is it that singapore's doing that we might learn from? what they -- what singapore is doing is they do an assessment of their economy, identify their strengths and their weakness, identify the clusters that they could attract the clusterings and sectors that would be globally competitive and they get the companies with special goal, and we go out, find those companies and bring them into

singapore, create a cluster that has suppliers and has customers as well. then they offer streamlined permitting for businesses to come and open up shop very easily. they give access to capital for businesses who've got heavy equipment and technology that's very expensive to be able to get them in the ground, and in short, they offer them a full-fledged partnership, not a top-down, but a bottom-up partnership with business so say how can we make you competitive? now, in the united states, what could we do? what should we be looking at? going after foreign direct investment, we ought to take advantage of the diversity of the country and saying to international businesses, if you want to do business in the united states, come, hire our people. i think we ought to have specific goals. i think ambassadors should have goals as they are assigned to countries. how many companies can you bring into the united states to be able to employee our citizens?

i think we shouldn't be afraid of identifying the clusters that work for us. in california, you've got a phenomenal silicon valley with ideas, but where are they taken to scale and where's the manufacturing occurring? right? a lot is in china, overseas, maybe not here. i'd go there as governor and say, you got a product, we'll make it for you in michigan. >> in texas, mississippi, all have california spawned companies. >> right. >> doing solar panels. i have so ask you about solyndra, down 580? 880? that highway -- the beautiful plants on the east side. what happened there? there's a situation of $500 million of doing exactly what you say, guaranteeing loans, federal government playing a role and a new sector.

what do you have to say about that? >> it is the tough question. i mean, does the united states provide access to capital for industries that it believes we're in the critical national interest? do we believe as a nation that we should be energy independent? should we spawn an invest in new technologies, sometimes when you invest in new technologies you win. sometimes you don't win. this particular program had 40 applicants, 40 projects going, and one project failed. it was a big number, but if you place no bets, you lose every time. other countries are playing bets aggressively, and if we are not in the game, we will continue to be bystanders to the loss of jobs. now, that's one solution. i'm not suggesting that that should be blown up and used everywhere, but if you have a comprehensive, uniquely, american economic development strategy that is an assist from the federal government, then, i

think, you can start to have some impact. there's an idea in the book. >> let me jump in there a little bit because i think one of the things that happens is we get into this black or white syndrome, you know, with the parties, and so this government investment in the private sector was crazy. look at solyndra, we lost the money, separate the government from the private sector, build the wall like the one, you know, they are building in israel and the one we want to build in israel, build a wall separating business and government. this is really kind of a crazy idea if you ask me in many respects because there's some things we want to invest in that we know we have to invest in. certainly as a society we've decided we want to invest in education. we want to invest in roads. many times in those cases, we have a mix of public and private coming together to do that. i don't know what it's like in california, but almost every road bill -- you won't find the state building roads. you'll find them creating

competition and bidding work just like somebody would in the private sector, letting the market mechanism work to get the best builder of roads you can get, so it's not purely one or purely the other. solyndra is sort of the extreme case where it was actually government money that needed to be there at the beginning. i guarantee -- a guarantee of the loan otherwise you wouldn't have the private money. it was somewhat risky, but the government does other things that are not as risky. what jennifer did in michigan and i'm sure governor brown is down here, is that you bargain for what you need, so if you're the state, what is it that you're looking for? what's your big interest when offering grants or offering some land, or when you offer a tax credit? if you were the governor, what would you say you want from those companies? >> jobs. >> jobs; right? so when did you pay the credit? when do they claim the tax credit on their little income tax form? when they hire people; right? when they prove they hire

people. it's not as though it's entirely one or the other. it's not as though the government can't think and can't decide what are we interested in in investing in, and how do we go about that investment? let the private sector work. find a way to have both work. what we've been hoodwinked to believe is it's an all or nothing proposition than government's a bunch of idiots. is there too much money in government? of course there is. are there great people? tons of them who are really trying to do awesome things? absolutely there are. we have lots of checks and balances in our system. that's a half hour. >> two points quickly. the issue about tax policy is a really important one. what dan said is that when states offer tax credits tied to job creation, your -- you're tieing tax policy to something you want. just across the board kind of tax cuts without tieing it to job creation in the united states, you might actually be giving somebody some extra money

so they can maximize their shareholder return in the best possible way in the global market and investing it somewhere else. if you don't tie the tax policy to job creation in the u.s., you could be, in effect, facilitating the flight of jobs, and so for us in a global economy now, that's really important point. okay. last thing. you know, we wrote the book together, even though it's in my voice, but i insisted he's listed as a co-author because he's been wonderful and all the of that, so i'd love for you just to say a word about the various identity crisis that we experienced. >> okay. a word about that, and you don't have to listen because you can think about what questions or comments you want to share with us. [laughter] what's interesting in the book is jennifer told the story about the man; right? with the ball cap and that -- tattoos and kids in front of him and what am i supposed to do? what was devastating in michigan

was the individual stories. i happened to be there on a number of occasions where people came up to jennifer and asked what do i do and where grown men are crying or close to crying and really at wit's end. there was also, though, true on a larger scale, so that man had a real identity crisis of what am i going to do? say, go back to school. there's a program called no worker left behind that was about retraining workers and giving the 45 and 50-year-old men a chance somewhere. he had to reinvent himself, and we had a state that had to -- has to still reinvent itself, it's gone through crisis, and every time our big three have come back a smaller three, sometimes a half owned german three or half owned italian three or a taxpayer largely owned three in the case of gm that we're all owning that company so next time you think about those cars everybody in

california seems to drive, think about a volt or something because you own the company, too, but that editorial aside, in michigan, people could work low wage, high income jobs. they could go from the graduation line to the employment line, have a job the rest of their life, and in michigan, they would be up north. that means you have a cottage in the north, could be west or east, but we just say up north, and chances are you have a boat, all of that on a high school diploma, if that. that has to change. okay. the interesting thing was that we realized in writing the book that there were two other identity crisis involved, and we talk about this somewhat in the book. one was my wife's. this is a person who had always succeeded at everything, and believed if you are smart enough and get the right people and work hard enough, that's going to get you there. those three things, you know, a little bit of talent, hard work, and find other people to make it

happen, and just couldn't. there's a great story in there that i won't tell about when president obama called and what a moment that was in jennifer's life and in my life and how to respond. the strange thing was thereto another crisis -- there's another crisis, which was mine, because i wanted the governor's story to be my story when i was a young man, and i'll tell you briefly when we were in law school and fell in love and our friend matt was there -- >> matt. >> we were at the third session with the priest, and he was preparing us for the vows of marriage, and in the first two sessions we talked about all kinds of great things that you'd never expect a man who had not lived in a relationship to know. what do you do about money? how many kids do you want to have? how did people fight in your family? great stuff. in the third session, we're sitting across from him, and he says to me at the beginning of the session knowing i'm going back to michigan where my seven siblings lived and all my hundreds of cousins and my dad

was involved in politics, and i'll be writing a governor's story one day. he says to me, 35 years old, off the central casting, hand smit young priest. he says, so, dan, what happens in eight to ten years if the party comes to jennifer and they say there's an open senate seat, and you're a lawyer and you're smart and you're attractive in lots of ways and you're a great speaker and by the way, it's a good time for a woman, he said, you should run. dan, how would you feel about that? if i could have told the truth, i would have said, well, felt like i got hit by a two by four across the forehead. i said jealous and a little bit confused, but if she felt called to the vocation, i'd be 1 00% behind her. what happened over the course of my time and i'll keep this very

brief is that i had an identity crisis as well. i thought i was supposed to walk in the shoes of my beloved and wasn't, and somebody had to care for the wonderful three kids who are 6, 5, and 1 at the time jennifer was elected attorney general going into first grade, 7th grate, and 9th grade when she was governor. that role fell to me. the story was and continues to be an incredibly great experience. like michigan that was asleep, we're sort of asleep, especially men, asleep through enormous change that's ongoing underneath us where 60% of the college degrees go to women, women are earning more law degrees, medical degrees, more female supervisors in the world than men, but still asleep in how do we raise our families? how do we make this whole thing work? so there's another story to be written somewhere that there's a great opportunity for men, not

just women. a great opportunity for fantastic women to jump in and lead and a great opportunity for men to have a very different kind of life than they thought and a very -- >> when he was growing up he wanted ton president or pope. [laughter] he went to yale, you know, majored in theology, was going to go to the seminary, and eventually we met, so that didn't work out. he didn't become a priest, but he did become a saint. [laughter] all right. let's take questions. what -- i mean, we could go on and on, and obviously, we got book signing to do here, but any -- >> we have a microphone. >> right. >> this is, you know, being filmed for c span, so -- c-span, so it's great to hear your voice so people at home can hear as well. >> everyone, please wait for the microphone. >> there's one right in front of you. >> thank you very much, both of you. if you're both co-presidents of the united states, what would you both do to bring

unemployment to 4.5%? thank you. >> well, all right. good hypothetical, can't happen because i was not born in the country, but i do think that the start is what the president is proposing in the jobs and recovery act which was to tie tax policy to job creation in the united states and up vest in key infrastructure that businesses believe is important. i also think that we do have to have a national economic development strategy. i'd like to see a jobs race to the top in the same way we had an education race to the top. if you put a small amount 6 money out there for governors to ceet on jobs, if they do an assessment of their state and have a strategy to develop certain sectors ennate to them, the race to the top was $4 billion causing every single state, 46 out of 50 states, to jump through hoops, to change the standards in a way that they never would have thought

possible because states are really cash hungry. if you had just a little bit of a competition among states for a small pot of money on the federal level, you would see stating changing our permitting, streamlining, you'd see them develop cluster strategies, you would see them leverage technology. you would see them partner with universities. in sweden, it's called the triple helix partnering with private and businesses and we don't have a national economic development strategy partnering with the states. states bend over backwards to make that happen. >> one more idea which jennifer suggested already which is foreign direct investment, and trass form thinking about the world of creating democracy and police all of these countries and be ready for big disputes, deploy hundreds of throws of people around the globe to do that and up stead think -- i don't want to use the word "war"

but the real competition and real opportunity for posttive competition is in the global market police station and say, number one, tell hillary clinton to stay and give her a new mission which is to revamp state in a way that it becomes more of an economic development tool, and we embrace the globe and not fight the globe, and we ask how do we build great companies, how do we build great partnerships making the world interdependent in a positive way and that grow jobs here in the country. >> we have a bunch of recommendations in chapter 10. >> specific goals -- >> in the book. >> how many jobs they create, otherwise there's a new ambassador not based on how many contributions they raised, but based on how many jobs they can bring to the country. >> a lot of folks in the back with hands up too. >> just work the mic back would be easier for you and more efficient. >> hi. i was thinking, though, that any

jobs -- all jobs that need -- are in manufacturing would have to be done in china; right? because we can't compete wage wise. >> great question. >> and so i feel like we're destined to fail. i mean, it's just -- >> let me give you hope on that. i think that the repetitive motion low skill jobs, you're right. we have lost a vast majority of them, and it will be almost impossible for us, as a nation, to get them back, but advanced manufacturing, you better believe we can be competitive in, and the advanced -- >> the story of the lg -- >> the advanced manufacturing realm -- i don't know what you mean. >> oh. >> it requires high skill, and, in fact, a lot of people say, oh, our unions, ect., are driving, you know, investment overseas. the new union model, as least from michigan, the new head of the uaw, for example, the fellow

named bob king, standing before all the manufacturers of the auto industry and suppliers had a big conference in michigan and said once elected, this is not your father's uaw. our goal is to keep jobs 234 america, and we want to partner with management to make that happen. our enemy is not management versus labor. that's not the conflict. the conflict is us versus the globe, and how can we have the most efficient processes and most sophisticated level of skill to be able to make you globally competitive? right now, labor is only 7% of the cost of a vehicle, and the vehicle is the most technologically advanced mass produced product in the world. you need to have people who know how to program the robots and maintain the line. it's not easily transferable. on advanced manufacturing, you better believe the united states can still be competitive, but we will not be competitive if we do nothing. other countries are eagerly jumping over us both on skill as

well as on partnering with the private sector, and -- >> [inaudible] >> well, i wouldn't say -- i would say we have to have federal policy that partners with strategic sectors we know are in our nation's interests. for example, i think that having -- we have a critical national need to be energy independent for purposes related to wars and, you know, our strategic interests overseas, and all 6 that. if we're serious about a critical national need for that, we have to invest to make that happen, period. that's got to be something that the united states government partners on, so maybe you do provide access to low cost capital. maybe you do team up and provide partnership with the private sector, final community to ensure that it is a good business case for the advanced manufactures, team up with universities for a pipeline of skilled talent or community colleges to feed into it, but we are not even having those conversations about that level of partnership to make a good business case for them to locate

here. we could do it, but alone on their own, when other countries are offering all sorts of partnerships, we will not win. >> i think the other thing that you're question gets at is that the irony is the old days in the factory, picture the ford assembly line, you know, they were men who was strong, who were bending steel literally, risking their hands and other body parts, who were enduring all kinds of incredible noise and dirt, 10 i worked in ford factories in college in the 70s, and it resembled that in many ways, noisy, dirty, dangerous. it was redundant and repetitive and set itself all over again and boring as boring can be. the irony is places like china and mexico have stolen some of the old-fashioned manufacturing, but in the process what they are getting is they are getting all of this intellectual talent.

>> right. >> and we risk losing the next phase which is, as jennifer's describing, a much more, high level, sort of situation. a flexible workplace where you or i or jennifer may be engineer, we may be worker, we may be cfo talking about the process and abling to understand how do we make this thing work? the scarry thing is what's happening educationally, you read this, how many ph.d.'s and energying degrees are coming out of universities in india and china that we're being whipped. if we want to look back in 40 # years, it's not going to be taxes or whether we had a 9-9-9 plan like herman cain or did we invest in the work force and children, did we develop human capital? the years in front of us are about this, not about bending steel. >> just to jump on that, i mean, you cannot separate research and development from the manufacturing. once you lose the manufacturing

capacity, the engineers follow. you can want separate the two. people don't realize, oh, we'll, we'll be a service nation and just do the design, but we won't do the manufacturing. the engineers have to see what the products look like coming off the line, and pretty soon the research and development centers will move as well unless we get serious. >> right. >> two thoughts. one is in education. can we put more emphasis on entrepreneurial teaching students to be entrepreneurs so they don't have to work for somebody but for themselves? another comment regarding the first question and this race to the top for jobs for getting companies to come to your state. wouldn't that lead to people --

states asking -- states offering to -- what's the word? deregulate so that the companies would come there? >> right. i think on the second question you have to have a floor. you cannot, you know, you're not going to incentivize behavior that's going to end up damaging, you know, the nation even if it's damaging just one state. you have to have a floor on it, craft it in such a way that you're not violating federal environmental protection laws, ect.. >> state has their own regulations. >> they do -- >> [inaudible] >> you can do stuff like accelerating permit -- eliminating layers of bureaucracy not relateed to protecting natural resources of a state, too. you have to craft it in a way to protect those. >> the answer is yes, and -- as to entrepreneurism, yes, we have to teach that, teach people the ability to invent and create.

this is the world we're in. the and part is it's not just about being an entrepreneur. what we have to create is an entrepreneurial mind set everywhere so the idea that kids still have very much have -- we have a niece living with us in california looking for a job. we know lots of young people, and they still have an idea that there's a job out there somewhere. let me wander around and find the perfect job that i sit in and i fit in, and what i'm trying 20 say is, no, it's not about what a company's going to pull out of you, but what you swren rate in a company and you having a sense, a company, a school, a government, that you're going to generate added value, no matter who you are, these kids have to understand that if they don't generate value, if they are not adding knowledge and creativity and collaboration an great stuff, we're sunk because we are a wage differential of a $1.57 or

less. our kids expect $20 an hour; right? my these wants to earn $40,000 is what she thinks she needs to live here. that's an enormous differential. how do you justify that? just by incredible -- we're halfway through the year, and we're not there, i'm not there with you because y'all sitting here like bumps waiting for me, and i'm fairly innovative, but you're waiting for me to guide you. this is our leadership. >> has to start before college. >> it does. >> they've got 15 years of sitting, you know? >> right, right. >> some schools have certainly changed, but overwhelmingly it's wait until somebody tells you what to do. what do we need? productivity and collaboration.

not that i'm the boss and everybody listens to me, but this environment, where people have ideas and sharing ideas and driving each other along so, yes, yes, yes. [laughter] >> i'm an engineer, and what i see is when i've gone to factories in the last couple of years is i have not given up on manufacturing in this country, but what i see 1 the machinists, they are all in their 50s and 60s. they don't have enough work for the young people, and at some point, the economic standards in china and mexico are going to go up. what i'm afraid of is that we're going to lose that institutional knowledge. when i go to allen town pennsylvania, i think the steel factory is now a casino. how do you feel about protectionism or keeping some of those jobs here by america clauses? >> i think we have to be aggressive in the trade arena,

and when i say that, i think that, first of all, we've been a pussy cat at the world trade organization rather than a tiger, and we have to have that mind set of we've got to create and keep jobs for our people. does that mean i think we have to put up unilaterally walls? no. i think though once other countries assess tariffs or non-tax barriers to our products being able to be shipped in, that should be a signal that allows for us to do the same and to say strongly that we are serious about creating fair, a fair playing field. i think we can compete. i really do. i worry about the generation of the 50-year-olds, that band of 40-year-olds and 50-year-olds, and low 60s and all that knowledge and those jobs being gone, but i also know that every single day there's ideas

generated and regenerated to do advanced manufacturing products, but we are just not playing at at, no offense or defense, and i consider the trade arena to be a place where we should be playing strong defense on behalf of our people. [inaudible conversations] >> hi, thanks very much. i enjoyed it very much. two things to say. one, most brilliant guy i know in washington said you'd be the best president, but you can't be. michigan has the highest amount of tech jobs right now because of what you did, and another aspect is not necessarily positive. 1974, i don't know if you were born then, but i was, and -- >> we were. >> i'm not being facetious, but there was a book called "global reach" professor here probably knows, but that laid it out in 74. incredible lack of attitude that

american manufacturers and mbas and guys like me had about, you know, get your check and go home. do you think that there's absolutely a way that we can reinvigorate our country to say, hey, we're not the best generation anymore, we have to work harder? >> okay. >> it struck me as ironic as a democrat, and we get trapped that, for instance, the republicans are talking about american exceptionalism, and unfortunately, we're not exceptional in some areas we want -- we're exceptional in our fiscal girth, exceptionally large people. [laughter] we have been sliding. it's not a god-given gift, and the right of all people should know that, so this notion that if you criticize the country and say wake up you're somehow unpatriotic, it's repulsive to me and ironic because it comes

at a time where certainly in my life, since world war ii; right? we were the most dominant country on the globe militarily, economically, rebuilt the rest of the world. since that time, we're probably in as precarious a position as we've been 234. we have income sliding; right? home ownership is sliding. educational levels are flat relative to the rest of the world's growth. it's hard to wake us up and create a crisis when people are running around saying he doesn't believe america's a great country. you know, obama doesn't -- or company, that's a good slip; right? [laughter] i don't know. i mean, most of the time you need a burning platform, and i feel like we missed that chance sometimes. we were so frustrated. i have one more storiment i know you're begging 20 get in. in the last presidential campaign, senator mccain and

governor romney came to michigan, and senator mccain said i wish i could tell you your jobs are coming back. they are not. governor romney said my dad was head of the american motors, i'll bring america back, bring the jobs back to you. who do you think they voted for? romney carried michigan. then he wrote an editorial in the "new york times" saying let detroit go bankrupt, and he still thinks he's going to win that seat, and he might. i'm not sure how we wake people up when there's this craziness out there about, you know, patting ourselves on the back. >> i think the occupy wall street is starting to be a wake up call honestly. i think it's an expression of -- [applause] of frustration, you know, but it's embedded in the inequality of income, and if you are inclined to look at this, there is a nobel prize winning

economist at stanford who did an amist of the united states economy, and in that analysis, he evaluates what's happened over the past decade, and, yet it started in the 70s, but we didn't have the trade agreements that we have now, and, of course, the world was not as flat as it is now, and so the -- the movement of capital and trade agreements as well as technology made it easy. michael speans has said what's happened is astonishing in the united states because we have seen in the past decade the movement of all of these tradeable goods jobs, which are manufacturing jobs, and the increase in services jobs. the increase in services jobs, he says, you got o problem because they are not going to pay us much. it contributes to this growther inequality of wages when you don't have good paying, middle class jobs that are tied to things like manufacturing. when you look at occupy wall street, the frustration that people are expressing is, yeah, we don't have jobs.

we got a huge inequality. these folks on wall street are paid hundreds of millions of dollars in some cases, and we can't even get a service job to put food on the tail. i think that that is the beginning of a wakeup call. ..

.5 miles. one half mile radius. it doesn't even go up to grand avenue, grand boulevard. on the other side, there is detroit and a tiny spot in a picture of southeast michigan. it's just one of the many suburbs and we were able to get maps of every single suburb with details streets. but then in the suburban apparatus soon as it hits the street lines, the streets vanish as if nothing had happened. there are still at least 700,000 people living in the city. it's amazing. we went through there. i talked to my neighbors. it is true most people are very poor, most are african-american. i can't help but think this is reese related even if it is for economic reasons because it is a form of discrimination. that city you cannot get a street map of it. so i would like something to be done about it.

tripoli that is what it is, that is the question. so i wonder about your feelings on that, here's your copy of the letter the road to aaa. i would like something done about it. it is a aaa map, that's right. you cannot get a map of detroit today. >> it's a metaphor detroit happens to be the poster child of the industrialized nation of america detroit went from 2 million people on the citigroup built for 2 million so you've got to pockets just vacant land and buildings to the structural changes in the economy of michigan which is the loss of these paying jobs.

>> australia and canada, and something that strikes me is the tendency in this country to have to disregard if it wasn't in that germany for example has a superb system of apprentice ships in france they have to pay 1% of the salary base for at retaining the workers, and i'm wondering if there are any sustained efforts to actually look at what other countries are doing and see if we can replicate them here. >> there must be in fact we use this as a really great point. germany which is a country that is roughly half hour wage level roughly at our love old industrial development, and yet they didn't lose the level of manufacturing that the united states has lost.

why? ayaan, the government is active in keeping manufacturing there. the of direct policies that make a good business case for them to locate there but they are also very serious about this training pipeline. it is talked about here and i think we ought to be looking at adopting a version for the united states. in our little state of michigan we adopted something called no worker left behind where we went to the federal government and said look, can we repurchase all of our workforce training money and give all of those people who are unemployed an opportunity to be retrained for specific areas like apprentice ships, get certification or in the area of the entrepreneurship, but we need to have our federal dollars relevant to the 21st century. they allow us the flexibility to do that. i stood at the state estate address and said to michigan the first 100,000 workers who come in the door we will give you two years of tuition at a community

college, $5,000 per person up to $10,000, but the catch is you have to agree to be trained in an area of need. so an area like we were developing or in health care or something we know will lead to the job. you cannot go and get a degree in french or political science. those are my degrees, so i can see that. [laughter] we need no one like me but we do need nurses, we need entrepreneurs and people and clean energy and as a result of that, and we borrowed a lot of our efforts from what was going on in germany as a result of that we have not only 100,000 people enrolled we had 150,000 until the fed turned up the spigot and our placement rate was four times higher than the national average. anybody who went through training 82% of them found jobs in the areas they trained in a state that had such a heineman plan in rate. so i'm just saying our whole work force training and pipeline

related to apprentice strips is very 20th century. >> and it's a great question. jennifer talked about germany. she could talk about sweden. she has mentioned that before. in both cases there's sanity especially in the scandinavian countries. i wrote about this awhile ago. we had a terrible problem we're we have huge unemployment, chronic unemployment that stands about 10% or 12% in california, right? then we have an extreme over employment where people were just working like they've never worked before. so, why can't we just do a little bit, why can't we figured out like o.k. let people take at least giving people options, give me a 5% cut. but 20 of us take a 5% cut that allows us to have a little bit more time and free up some money so you can hire people. your customers how to get to 4.5% unemployment. we can get to 4.5% unemployment

if we would make some of those moves some with national policy on unemployment, allow people to get unemployment and ticket and get a weigel they are at work for a while which would stimulate the employers to bring people on board if they could have a source of revenue. so maybe that is a way to leverage. >> i have a comment and two questions. first hello from san carlos. >> st carlos california! >> i graduated from san carlos school which no longer exists. [laughter] >> to questions and i will let you decide which is harder. first and confused the national dialogue around the bailout. to me it seems like a success story. they got rid of some crabby business models, the money is getting paid back but if i believe the national media this is viewed by everybody as a failure across the country, which i wanted a reality check

to see if that is how you perceive the perception and the second is i was wondering if you could comment on with it was harder to get an agreement to legislature on the budget or harder to get agreement as a couple of the outlines for the book. >> that's a great question. first this has been a huge success. the although recovery effort that all of these although companies are making a profit. they paid back their loans, i just drove here in my old which is an electric car that you plug into the garage. the cars have been winning all of these awards now. they've been totally retooled. the old model is so 20th century. the new auto industry has been enormous success meant. and i have to jump in this is a great example of the government and private sector because the president, read the book, the

president beat the heck out of chrysler and gm, and everybody -- the uaw can out chastised and made huge concessions, so what you had all kinds of movement in all kind of places. we paid the taxpayers some, but the company went through incredible downsize and got rid of the ceo and it was really deep. labor came to the table and did really different things. very different companies than before. they embraced energy efficiency in a way that they hadn't before. so to me it was an extraordinary story. loss would have been. >> still lost them in effect during backbone in the industry it would have been the steel industry, the glass industry, the electronics industry, the material, the rubber, all of these industries, the collateral damage would have been terrific and instead what you have is the revitalized although industry paid back in the savings of the manufacturing backbone. >> they could've gone into

bankruptcy, but they forced a really furiously fast bankruptcy and creditors lost and the oilers lost. everybody paid in supply just want to make one point about a bigger picture which is ideal if we had a choice, jennifer would be in favor of the occupied wall street. i would be in favor, maybe you would, too, of a different movement which is for rationality and compromise. this book is easier because we love each other and compromise a lot. >> the legislature on the other hand. >> no, that is the point is where you get to these intense ideological positions we will not compromise. i don't know if you watch the first debate there were ten of them up there. they said to them okay this is right when the debt ceiling was being raised. remember the government almost shut down and we lost the credit rating had dropped for the first time ever and the moderator from fox tv set to the candidate if you had a deal right now for the 1.8 trillion or whatever has to

be resolved, if you had a deal right now -- did you see this question? right? 810 part cut, one part tax revenue increase. would you take the deal? every single one of them said they would not take the deal. so i'm in favor of a party, a new party of radical compromise because what happened with the big three was everybody gives a little bit, and i believe that's where we need to be in this country. and right now you're in a place where, you know, the party on the left -- you heard jennifer. she's appeared. my democrat -- i wanted to remind them you're a democrat. i have the smallest government in the country. i cut more than anybody to get my tax rates are lower than everyone. this is a democrat. so folks, we are moving. we understand there's a market out there we need to create jobs. we are moving. but on the other side it's like there is no movement.

>> bottom line is because i know we want to close up, everything that is happening in the country right now happened to michigan first. i'm not kidding you and that is growth from political we have a whole chapter on that as well as economically and so we really are very grateful to people for hosting this and giving the senate were to need to share. >> and the league of women voters. >> and the league of women voters. >> the warmth and here -- >> nobody fell over that's great. thank you all so much. [applause] >> i give one more question i wanted jennifer to comment on her upcoming tv show, which is going to continue the political conversation number one first with the book. i hope everyone will purchase a book and have it signed some you

can also be in a further conversation as the election continues. >> i was invited by al gore to do a tv show following keefer olberman on current tv. starting in january i will be giving a tv show that is focused on the election to the political junkie like me i'm interested in politics and policy. and so it will be called "the war room," sort of a lot of that to the political candidates, and so i hope you will tune in. we have 6:00 here. 6-7 here. agreed. thanks so much. >> thank you. [applause] >> to find out more, visit the author website, jennifergranholm.com. well, there is a new book out called court watchers eyewitness accounts and supreme court history. clare cushman is the author and

john roberts, chief justice of the u.s. supreme court, rutka foreword. who are the court watchers? >> court watchers are the justices themselves. their wives, children, or a lot of kids who argue, court staff, reporters who cover the court, and even some just random bystanders who happen to be in the courtroom and witnessed something exciting and then went back and reported it. so most of what this book is his knees to get all that stuff over the last 220 years the court has been in existence and finding all the insider stories written by people that were affiliated with the court. >> what is one of your favorite inside stories? >> i have so many because there are some that are funny and some of her poignant and some better educational. but i guess the ones i like the most of the ones written by the supreme court espouses because you really get a sense of what it was like at home. my favorit