tank. that connected with the wheels and electrical combination and i drove for 200 miles all over southern california on water as the feed stock. water, okay? now, i know there's water near los angeles. [laughter] >> there are so many -- so many different ways. now, look at honda -- i know we're getting far afield but we're still on the issue. the word now is not only for territory but for the future of the united states for keeping us dependent upon oil. look at honda. they have this wonderful car called the honda gx, it's called the greenest car in america. they won't sell them. they arbitrarily imposed a 2,000 car quota. they sell over 100,000 cars per

month. they imposed a 2,000 car quota for the entire united states, and then they stopped -- they stopped building them once they hit the quota and people had to fight to get them and i personally spent a year to try to get spokane community college -- if they wanted to buy one copy of this car and honda refused to sell it to them for money, okay? because what they really want to do is they want to roll up with this car in front of fox news or "good morning america" and they want the reporter to say, look at this brand-new technology. and what really they're doing averaging their really lousy oil consuming cars with a few good ones. what we really need to do -- what we really need to do is to just have the will and the determination to stop going to

the other side of the earth to bring black stuff out of the ground over the dead bodies of our guys so that you and i can go around to the corner at 7-eleven and buy a gallon of milk. do you know what the most fuel-efficient act is, a military escort for an oil tanker in iraq. what's the mile there? the message is that's how we get off of oil. that's how we got onto oil. you still have the will to get off of oil if anyone will listen. thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. >> is there a nonfiction author or book you'd like to see featured on booktv? send us an email at

book@c-span.org or tweet us at twitter.com booktv. >> next on booktv, jeff girl talks about the death and nature of religious belief in the united states. this is about an hour and a hal half. >> thank you. thank you and thanks for coming out and joining me. it is a pleasure to be here at porter square books. i used to live up the street and so this was my bookstore for a while. i spent a lot of money so i'm getting a little back. and little i like to give sort of plugs for independent bookstores. i'm sort of coming to the end for this book tour, sweet heaven when i die. i decided when i did this book, which is published by norton, one of the last big independent publishers that i didn't want to go to any chains and conveniently borders went out of business just in time.

they were so crushed by my refusal. i hadn't thought of that. and i only wanted to go to independence. and which can be sort of wonderful and it's great to be in sort of a thriving independent bookstore like this but there's also a feeling going around the country, that some of the great independence sort of feel like you're taking a tour of the hospice. independent bookstores are in terrible, terrible trouble so buy lots of books from them. not just my books but all sorts of books. keep your independence live. don't do that thing as i learned on this trip, some people do in independent bookstores is they go and browse their book and they go to amazon to buy it for a few dollars cheaper. and that comes to mind especially tonight because i'm borrowing a copy of this book from porter square because i was

just down -- i'd been working on occupy wall street and i was down in zuccotti park and as you probably know, mayor bloomberg decided to sort of -- in the dead of night at 1:00 am to send in 1,000 police officers in riot gear to clear it out and what they did, which is especially important mainstream as a writer was that they trashed the library, occupy wall street. it's a fascinating thing -- one of the first things they did was build a library, a free library in lower manhattan where there aren't very many libraries anymore. and, in fact, the only bookstore was borders and that's gone now so you would see families who had nothing to do with the politics showing up to this library, to get children's books for their kids. it was a beautiful, wonderful library, professional librarians. and it got trashed. and i'll come back to this at the end. right now we're literally today

trying to figure out -- we know many books, hundreds and thousands were destroyed but i think of that sort of in the functions of bookstores like this and libraries like this and also sort of the stories that i end up telling in this book, sweet heaven when i die that grew out of my last two books a book called family and a book called c street where the result of a long immersion, submersion and it was a fascinating world and it's not a world that gives one a lot of hope or even a lot of laughs. it can be kind of crushing at times. and i know the motto of one of the fundamentalist organizations that i was writing about an old model that they had was they

helped to bring together old political leaders to make decisions and there's this pretention of a little bit of latin beyond the din of the boxed populi, beyond the voice of the people. i ended the last book -- and this is sort of what launched with this book with this other line that i like and it comes from america's worst president in history. you're all sitting here thinking james buchanan, 1857-1861. he did a terrible job but he had this one great line at a time when southern politicians -- some politicians were saying oh, let's not argue. let's agree to argue. we'll have our slaves. you'll have your factories and we'll all just be peaceful. and he responded -- he said i like the noise of democracy. the noise of democracy to me is really key. the noise of democracy, that's what you saw down in that occupy

wall street. and it's not always pretty. the noise of democracy is raucous. it's not always reasonable willful debate. it's full cookiness and argument and disagreement and sharp tongues, sharp elbows. that's the noise of democracy. and out of that comes not -- when you write about religion a long time as i have, you often get -- you do media type things and you ask this sort of question, everyone wants to know, what is the great common denominator of american belief. they want to even it all out and the real answer is there isn't one and that should be obvious in a democracy -- we don't have a common denominator of belief and to be in this public space to argue and to coexist.

the sound of all of these sort of he religious beliefs together at once, that's not harmony. it's cacophony. cacophony is the sound i'm most interested as a writer. cacophony is the sound -- have you ever been in choir or some kind of religious house of worship and you're sitting there and you're singing and the person next to you doesn't sing quite as wonderfully as you do, that's cacophony and you keep singing with them and you say i'm committed in sharing this space singing this song so this book was me setting out to hear in this forced harmony of american fundamentalism. there's a little fundamentalism in this book that it's so eccentric that i decided to include it.

there's 13 stories of people who are -- who have this -- they're all sort of caught on this tight rope between despair on one end and desire on the other end this fatalism and other hemisphere is imagination. like this first person i want to introduce you to in an issue called the rapture. her name is sondra shea. she's sort of a real estate faith healer. she faith-heals apartments. that's her business. let me give you her full title. when i decided i wanted to write about the economy, the material -- i want to follow the money of new age belief and i found sondra and i said, can i spend some time with you and she gave me her business card. teacher and adept member of the great white universal brotherhood and sisterhood of

life, ritual master in the high council of gore, master, metaphysician. that's her business card. that is our first -- our first guide here and you'll have to excuse me. i have a case now of what's called zuccotti lung. anyone read about this in the paper. it's the cough you get sleeping on the ground in the park which i've been doing reporting about this, and i got to go to sondra in faith, heal apartment. every big real estate broker in their new york has in their roller dex someone like sondra. someone who they call when a high property apartment isn't moving and they can bring her in and she can perform some magical rituals which you can decide for yourself may or may not help in

the sale. jim pharaoh, a real estate agent sat with perfect home as sondra squirted holy war tapped by her dispensed from a ping plastic spritzer on the carpet, ceiling and walls of a kips bay apartment he had been trying to sell it was. a one permanent with an open terris overlooking -- [coughing] >> that's what i'm talking about in the armenian cathedral and the east theater. it was priced at $680,000. i just realized when you're doing a book tour and like you're in iowa you're saying $680,000 there's gasps, laughs, boston, that's a steal. can i get in on that? [laughter] >> it wasn't moving. so ferris, sober dignified man with neat black hair and a gray sweater an episcopalian, a former retail executive with no supernatural experience called

sondra on the recommendation of a colleague. now she was standing on the living room. her eyes fluttering and eyes twitching as she called a full congregation of major and minor gods. jim, i whispered is any of this kind of -- i don't know, it's hard to swallow. ferris shook his head and offered the best defense of new ageism he countered, absolutely no. it's a language of its own. the terms he said maybe peculiar but the ideas at hand. the spaces reflect their inhabitants, bad sex energy, sondra had diagnosed this energy that faith goes by many names, all rituals, true or false go here around metaphors of our own creation. these ideas are perfectly ordinary. sondra needed to get a circle around the newly cleanse space. no seller or buyer would budge

an inch on this invisible shield and they would not even mention at the procedure. i looked at him hands folded in his lap waiting for sondra to perform. he purchased the spell the details of which for his own peace of mind so i tried to follow his lead and since sondra was willing to willing to comp me -- when i said sondra shea can i shadow you for a month and she said we need to do some spiritual work on you first before you can hang around with me. and she gets well paid for her spiritual work and so she sort of thought about it, i can't afford this and i think she decided, you know, she's going to take her chances on advertising. so if at the end of this you don't want this book, how can i get in touch with sondra i can put you in touch. if you have property that needs help. so i signed up. i signed up for her special rising star workshop, a healing

modality sondra shares with derek o'neal who's her ex-british forces commando who lives on the astro plane but i spoke to him on the phone. so you can reach it. it was a collected effort involving half a dozen students gathered for 12 hours of instruction, meditation, advisization and holy dancing the highlight for me gently absurd and justinly lovely was a spirited essentially of ring around the rosy with george harrison's beet lord. we were at the home of one of sondra's regulars named louise who sells participants to ball players and athletes. and there was mary a beautiful psychotherapist who was on the

guru trip for years, before she sound sondra, the real thing, louise and anthony and mary were veterans of sondra's workshops adepts so when it came time for me to graduate from the first level they lead me into the living room into a candle lit study where sondra awaited with a sword. a real sword, much bigger and heavier than her cord-cutting way. and here i have to back up again, the first ritual that i had to go through before i was fit to accompany her on her travels is what she calls the emotional cord-cutting ceremony. it's $395. i got it for free and what it consist of is you lie on a massage table but there's nothing sort of sketchy about it. there's no touching at all. in fact, she may not have been in the room. i laid there in a cold room for an hour and the next year i had a terrible flu. and i was down like a sick rhino and she said, oh, that's perfect. that's evidence that it's working. you're getting all the bad stuff out. and the bad stuff, though, was

because she had done this court-cutting. you get up after an hour and she takes out this big knife. the cord-cutting blade and a stick of incents and she holds the knife and the incents and she explains we all have these -- she believes that we're all form these unhealthy metrodome connections to other people. think of it like gulliver tied down by the little tiny people so sondra to the rescue she's going to cut them with this knife. and, you know, you stand there with the incents and she says some things, she's a tiny little elfin person. she does, in fact, believe that she is genetically part fairy and she stands there with a big knife and just starts swooping it over your head and swooping it down your arms and then she explains to you, look, most of us -- i got to be careful about this -- most of us form our

unhealthiest emotional connections in one part of our body. there's one part of our body where we form these connection that is we regret the next day and so i would you to stand -- she said i need you to stand very still while i cut these cords and she takes a big knife and you can sort of see where this is going she does it. so i know she has a steady hand and now she has a much bigger sword and i trust her she's holding it like a butter knife. this is not sondra, i'm informed. this is jesus. jesus i whispered but sondra's jewish. louise just smiled. so, jesus said you're wondering if this is real. jesus spoke in sondra's voice but an okay -- octave lower and she arrested the blade before contacts so that the blows became taps. i was being knighted i was a

mother father of the division. jesus kept talking murmuring just for me. my knees hurt, my legs were asleep. i was afraid i wouldn't be able to get up. what jesus was saying she explained was private, personal, a secret of sorts but, sondra, i said, jesus, she said. jesus, i said. you know i'm here to write about this. no, details, jesus declared. but the gist i could share so here it is. jesus knew that i didn't believe her and that was okay. because she understood my skepticism, she said. and she knew where it came from. and then she delivered an outline of my life story. it was nothing magical about it. sondra had simply stored every fact i revealed about myself in passing and assembled as a narrative colored by her analysis of my motives and fears and for the most part she got it right. sondra knew why there i was. why i was kneeling before her. you're not a seeker, she said. you are a doubter.

doubt, she said is a calling. it is not unbelief. it is in between. that's your niche, sondra/jesus whispered. doubt is your revelation so i should say the subtitle of this book, sweet heaven when i die, this faith base and us in between. and most of us live in the country in between. you know, i spoke with that idea of this tight rope despair on one hand and desire, imagination giving up fatalism. you can switch those back and forth, which one is faith and which one is faithlessness. and somewhere we are stuck on that tight rope in between. and i like to approach writing about people who i guess who are on that tight rope like sondra with doubt. but i think she got it right.

i think, you know, jesus got me right. i got a good track record. but it's a gentle doubt. it's not i don't like to charge in with a wise guy skepticism. but you sometimes run into stories where gentle doubt is not maybe sufficient but when that happens you don't need wise guy skepticism because your subjects really tend to do the work for you. and this next piece i want to share with you is from an essay called she said yes. and she said yes comes from the -- the title comes from the story of columbine -- that the martyr cassie bernell a big figure of christian martyrs was a victim in columbine, he supposedly when the killers found her hiding under a table and they said do you believe in

god and as the story goes, she said yes and they killed her and you can go to christian rock concerts where there's one, in fact, the cause i'm at in the story, you know -- there's an anthem and thousands of kids, she said yes. the complicated part is as far as anyone can tell, that didn't happen. and when we think about columbine everybody, what would they do if she said no. nobody got away. and it's that kind of -- she said yes to me robert gates entire with a certainty where you can nail things down, a desire to like have an explanation that would explain something like the horror of columbine. things are more difficult than that. the movement i'm describing here is called battle cry. it's -- i guess you might say it's the most militant fundamentalist youth movement in america. it's the only -- it's the only

fundamentalism i've encountered in america and i've been reporting on fundamentals for some time for which i would even contemplate using the "f" word which is a fascism. i don't like that kind of lefty tendency to say jerry falwell or pat robertson are facialists. they are not farm bureauests they are making the noise of democracy in. i don't like their noise. this noise is a little more severe the leader name ron luce said i could come along with him and write about them just like sondra. he thought it would going advertising but he did want me to understand that i was a terrorist and lest i'm not misunderstanding. i was writing for rolling stone. by virtue of you being in the bookstore are probably terrorists too. he, in fact, believes american is only 4% christian and you

think, you know, probably there's more than 4% christians in this room you don't count terrorists. ron draws a hard line, and i set out to write about him and his youth movement and i ended up finding myself mostly more interested in the kids. and the kids are sort of wonderful. this scene i want to read to you is from one of the events i do is called acquire the fire. they do a variety of sort of big rallies that can go on for three days. it can have 5,000 kids. the biggest one they had 70,000 kids. there's christian rock bands and pyrotechnics, there's big screens, light shows. it's lots and lots of fun if you're 13 and 14 and lots of kids go there just to have fun. but in the process, they encounter this kind of thinking. so this one is called acquire the fire. and here i'm with two girls about 12, 13 name hannah and

mallory. at a acquire the fire lon ruse tells the kids to make lists of secular pleasures they will sacrifice for his cause. hannah start with hip hop heart throbs, but now wow and usher, bites her men, music she writes and friends the nonfundamentalist ones. and party. this she explains is a polite way of saying sex. not that she's had anything, thank god, or knows anyone her age who has but she has learned from luce that the culture wants to force it upon her at a young age. the world, he tells her, is a 45-year-old pervert posing as another tween online and i will just say with gentle doubt at the time ron luce said he was 45 years old and he had a policy letting his tween children choose his clothes with him so he could fit in and relate to the kids. all i'm saying he speaks with

authority. luce sometimes brings a garbage truck onto the floor to cart the lifts away but this is a relatively small event so hannah and mallory trod over to one of the trash bins stationed around the arena and drop theirs in. i feel so much better mallory tells hannah. hannah nods, smiling now. i feel free, she says. later, one of luce's p.r. reps takes me backstage to shift through the bands of rejected affections. most kids mention music, movies or girlfriends or boys or sex or surprisingly often just condoms which is worrisome. you don't want to do that in stages. you don't want to say i'll start by giving up condoms and maybe i'll work my way up to sex. you should probably do it all at once. a number of new warriors are oddly precise about their proposed abandonings they cast into perdition, starbucks multiple votes victoria's secret

ditto. luce wants them to confront the managers of local lingerie stores, cap'n crunch, hip huggers. one kid writes smelling amazing 99.3 fm. eric, vengeance which is probably a good idea. medication which is probably not. and a&w root beer. i think it's ridiculous who will drink a&w no more. most are the versions of adult fundamentalist anger such as the note from allison, child of god that reads, if this keeps up there won't be kids to buy your stuff. it's the same for the kids who have aids who are dying of sex that you promoted so i say now in the name of jesus, stop with this and signed mtv. are you really willing to risk the destruction of humanity for this. to the media stop spreading your

infectious filth or this, we will take action. this is a real war, luce preaches. when he talks like this, he growls. this is not a metaphor he's fond of saying. and yet he does work in metaphor and one of the things that sort of attracts me to these characters is kind of a certain fascination with magical language, with spells, you know, just like -- just like sondra shea, ron luce is performing his own kind of magic and i think sometimes, you know, why do i end up writing about religion so much, i'm not a religion person. and, you know, sort of one theory i have is, you know, this is a very psychoanalysis go back into the early youth. the wound was at age 7, you know, loving "the hobbit" and "lord of the rings" and discovering that middle earth isn't real. and that hobbits aren't real. magic isn't real. and so i become fascinated with people who think that it is.

people who still live as if they are. and i don't mean that is it a derisive way. people who take action and make things happen in the world as if it is and sometimes that magic is harmless like sondra's. and sometimes that magic is perhaps troubling like ron luce's. the culmination of some of his rallies is -- he decides to illustrate a biblical story, you know, ron, like many -- like many believers, quite reasonable believers and more so fundamentalists believe the bible is a book of every day commonsense wisdom applicable to your daily life, all your answers to your questions are right there, just open it up. ron luce opens it up to judges, chapter 20. and a story that is so horrifying that it should be evident, i think, to most readers that you're going to need some thinking on what this one means. it's a story of a traveller and

he has a concould you bine and he can't go any further and the towns people in this town are not good people and they go to the house and they say, you know, to the host -- they say send out your guest, send out your guest. and what they're going to do to him, we don't know. so instead, he decides to send out the concubine and it's a horrible story. they kill her. they kill her. and the next day the man does what anyone would do and he goes out and cuts her body up into 12 pieces and sends them out to the tribes of israel so at this point, you know, if you're sitting there, gosh, that bible -- you know, every day you learn something from the bible, well, ron luce, i guess, is thinking like that because he brings these rallies together with a little bit of what i think of is sort of a dark magic. he brings a man condition out on the stage and he says the

mannequin represents secularism. is labeled with the sins of secularism pornography and naked and nudity is not one of them. music may be down on one arm. i remember this one arm that's also labeled secularism as a subset of secularism. but you don't get caught up on these details. because he has these 5,000 kids, 10,000 kids and he's had these rallies of 7,000 kids and he's got the kids chanting cut up the concubine, destroy secularism. and as he does this, he takes this mannequin and dismembers it, takes it apart, sends the arms out to the kids. they want this. ..

>> this 14 year-old voices who wants wants to walk home hugging a naked torso? and i just wanted to hug that kid. that kid is a good kid. he saw through that dark magic. i want to close with one more short piece. it may be the flip side of the scene at a battle cry, and it's, i think of it a bit, kind of like the prehistory of occupy

wall street. there's a number of stories in this book, you know, i wasn't planning this but i kept, as i was reporting on occupy wall street i kept running into people i had written about in the book, some of them famous like cornell west who, you know, has already been arrested twice and i think you will be arrested again. to put that in perspective, a man with very advanced cancer. he is putting his body on the line. he is doing this. he had this wonderful line. he says his definition of dignity, human dignity, the ability to contradict what is. that's dignity. it's not the sort of gentle affirmation. it's indication, you say no to things as they are and you begin to imagine something to do. that's what give me sympathy for people like ron luce. is an imagination terrifies me but he is saying no, he is starting down across that tight

rope towards imagination. so i ran into cornel west but also a number of chapters in here about anarchism is another subculture that fascinates me and i think writing about faith, faithlessness in america. i wanted to understand anarchists. in fact i would run into, there's a store in here about a man named brad will, was killed in 2006. he went down to cover an uprising in mexico. was filming a conflict that began as a teachers strike, but this was not -- they took over the state. this is not the part. he filmed his own murder, a policeman, bank him if you slow down the video, if you have the technology, slow down there's a puff of smoke, the bullet and then bang, he falls down. when i was first down at occupy

wall street i kept running into bread, and despite that sort of grim and terrifying end, and i've never known in real life but from talking to strengths and his family, this guy lived an incredibly joyous life. and it was said to me that he couldn't be there to see this thing in the park, which i should say if you haven't, i don't know about boston, if you haven't seen you come it wasn't defined by rage. .net vote in the park was kind of a joy, happiness, imaginati imagination. and i would run into all these people in some of the characters are going to share with you from this story, who had been trying for something like this for a long time. me i have been getting it wrong. as these folks have. this was group of anarchists, some of them were brad's friends, some of them work. many of them you can find even now back in the park, the re- occupy part. that are an oppressed.

this is 2004, the republican national convention. new york city. and as i said they were trying for something big and sometimes they got it wrong. i would argue this is one of the times they really got it wrong. a group of anarchists had set up a track and float, like chinatown, chinese new year dragon and they're all marching inside carrying it, had speakers and smoke or steam puffing out of its head and a dragon came in front doing some results with a big way. is a great spectacle in the middle of a march, hundreds of thousands of people. it pulls up in front of madison square garden, and kaboom, it blows up. this is 2004, three years after 9/11, and they blow something up in a crowd outside of madison square garden. i was right there. i was terrified that everyone was terrified. nobody was hurt. it wasn't that kind of explosion. but it was scared. it wasn't a picture of something more beautiful.

is a picture of something more frightening. and you know, i follow some of those folks and talk to them. some of them new, that didn't quite have the effect we thought it would. they sort of tried to cast a spell and he wanted to create political imagination. instead they ended up with ron luce's mannequin. this is what happened to them. close to midnight, on my way home, i stopped at st. mark's in the bowery, a two under your church made into a temperate haven for any protesters who care to rest or sleep there. it was packed for the duration of the demonstration, giving way to radical rituals and good-natured hard-core hoedown's. marching bands are naturally, peace, war, whatever. when i pass by st. mark, stopping up dust in the greater. two tubas in fact, maybe one with a sousaphone.

compass, clearness, a giant drum, pots and pans at the march. the rude mechanical orchestra and friends, the play what i took for christmas, gypsy music. they are also found a battalion fight songs and some originals. good enough anyway for the men and women standing around us to break into a barefoot flamenco inflammation. they gave way to funny striped leggings and tattered school t-shirts and bare bellies, their backs, shaved heads, dreads, close cropped buzz cuts and well trimmed, shaking in the cemetery dust of gypsy in my time, fight songs. the music was a gamble. the crowd ragtag. but the specter of purity laced in the air like pawns, a belief in its possibility.

its desirability. by the door of the church some have painted a post up or with a giant green fists balled in a command, don't vote. like the holy rollers of old and the radical faeries of now, the midnight and congregation was made up of come out is, as fundamentalists use to describe themselves. come out from the wicked world. come out from big media. come out from the mainstream into the wild waters of on charter channels. put away your notebooks they told us, and then don't report, joy. we didn't do this for him, they can do. we're not doing it for you. there's to story but right now, later, there would be the valuations in the same strategy sessions. the trombone would turn against the tuba. one in argus would call another dark or copper or tool. the burning dragon would be denounced within and without. the dancing derivatives narcissistic, documentaries would be me. history be played and reprinted. that would come later.

now was not a time for media. it was rather not time. cairo. for as long as it lasts, the gray dust in the three day sleeping in a church stink, the big boom, boom of the bass drum, the steps and the gift of tongues granted parched high infantry. all seem to believers like science in which the entirety of the protests or revolution, or radical, or neopaganism, or whatever anyone care to call what they were doing. better still, to call it anything. they scorned sound bites. for the moment they desperately did not want mediation of any kind. what they wanted was revelation. religion as broadly defined as a mountain of hudson, not political digression. they believed they needed and maybe even achieved before the music stopped in the kitchen closed and the big boot the big

putt anarchist boys and the rosy cheeked girls and pat stoken, half wild met with skin all fell asleep among and on the gravestones. they wanted some kind of liberation. that they want our would be one, sweat and smoke of burnt offerings. stolen incense, free food cooked too long come a big fight in front of madison square garden. we did it for ourselves. share with you one more thing. i said at the beginning that i bought this book from porter square. the liberty park or zuccotti park are occupy wall street library, instead of that, another form take into the midnight dance party, the dragging him they got wrong, a dance where they got right in the library they really got it right. this was the embodiment of political imagination. and as i said, the library got,

we are still waiting, last i knew, the city had given back a little less than half its books. most of them were some kind of damage, some of them destroyed. and books of all sorts. this is not just political books. howard zinn and noam chomsky, the first is her book the got back was the bible. they welcomed books from everywhere. there was romance novels. if you're hanging out in a park for two months, you might get complete on not you might get tired of noam chomsky. after two months. and the people want to read sci-fi or twilight novels, or graphic novels, or real literature, poetry, writers were coming down to this library, and well first, writers were not coming down to the library. that was the problem. that's what i want to sort of close with. i want to close with a piece not

of my own writing, maybe symbolically because i did my reading copies "sweet heaven when i die" to the newly reconstituted occupy wall street that sprung up last night with about 50 books and had grown by 3 a.m. when i left had grown and grown and grown. the books just keep coming. but, you know, the books came at first but the writers didn't because riders had to be sort of lonely and selfish people. i can say this with some authority. and when i was sort of reporting on this, and as you can tell i'm not a newspaper reporter. i'm not concerned with objectivity. i'm concerned with transparency and honesty. i thought this thing was fantastic. this was imagination and i said where are the writers? over here i see the construction workers march in.

i see the teachers margin. i see lots of librarians, chefs, a lot of chefs, laid off cooks, scary guys down there, nannies. year, the teamsters. the artists, musicians. where are the writers? i'm waiting and waiting. and i thought someone has a letter, letter of support, i'm going to sign that letter and i waited. and no better emerged. in some going to try an experiment here, and i will normally read from iphone but i think it is appropriate for what i want to do here. so, we've all heard tahrir square in egypt, with great inspirations, small movement, was partially tweet powered. twitter powered. that can be exaggerated. but what i discovered in trying to cover this as a journalist this occupy wall street movement, it did have a lot to

do with twitter. partly because the crackdowns, not just last night but for a month and half, over every nitpickers over 200,000 occupations that. if you look at twitter and admit that, you will see that and not in the big cities in tucson and peoria. every night somebody gets beat up. every night the cops come after the 11:00 news, after the paper goes dead, and they come with bulldozers or horses, rubber bullets, every night this happened. this i think if something is important because of what your politics are, regardless of what you think they have the right approach. the noise of democracy, america, you know, as the daily news put it about mayor bloomberg today, cities don't do things they are proud of that one in the morning. so the only way to track this was on twitter. so i'd be other late at night on twitter and that's why discovered salman rushdie on twitter. and salman rushdie, some of you may know, has spent a lot of

time on twitter, or has too much time. have you seen his kardashians homes? he done a series of poems for kim kardashian. but it's kind of wonderful to be able to say there's this one, i don't know some of rushdie, i can say if there was a letter of support for this occupy wall street movement, would you sign it? and he answers back in the middle of night, sure, yeah, and his ideas and names. so we came up with a short letter, i mean really a sense of we the undersigned writers support occupy wall street and occupy moving. we did want to get into debates. and we invited people to sign. and rushdie was the first, the first signature pages joined by $2000, five u.s. lorries, more national book award winner, pulitzer winners, a gaggle of

guggenheim's, a lanyard of -- all these prices, but the key thing is it's alphabetical and anybody can sign pics of your here and you're a writer, you should suntech and i'm not going, how do i know if i cannot? you decide. we want to democratize literary culture. the celebrity of salman rushdie, margaret atwood, all these writers i like him but openly disappear. so before them, because a becomes in the book about vegans and zombies, could be a good book. it's 2000, i haven't read most of them. but i want to close by sharing we become an amusing the iphone because it began on twitter, partly because i gave away my copy with my book last night. started asking is, okay, write something about what's happening. we don't care if it is pro or con. whatever you want. go down to one of these things. if you think this is

disorganized, come back and write that. one of the first pieces we got was from lemony snicker can people know that eliminates make it is the answer to old but now high have caught up. i missed them as a kid. maybe it would have restored my faith if i read early on. lemony snicker growth is one case where someone, i want to close with someone else's writing because i think that's kind part of the noise of democracy i'm interested in. 13 observations made while watching occupy wall street from a discreet distance. i'll give you a few. number one, if you work hard and become successful, does not necessarily mean you are successful because you work hard. just as if you are tall with long hair does not mean you would be a midget if you are bald. [laughter] three, money is like a child. rarely unaccompanied.

when it disappears from those who are supposed be keeping an eye on it while you're at the grocery store, you might also look for someone who has a lot of extra children sitting around with long suspicious explanations for how they got there. number four, people who say money doesn't matter are like people who say cake doesn't matter. it's probably because they've already had a few slices. seven, someone -- excuse me. very authentic, getting the real thing. someone feeling raw is like someone feeling thirsty. don't tell them they aren't. sit with him and have a drink. and, finally, i'm going to close with my favor, number 11, historically, a story of the people inside impress the buildings ignoring or even taunting people standing outside shouting at them, turns out to

be a story with an unhappy ending. thank you. [applause] >> so i always like to begin the q&a period with a meeting where we sit here quietly. [inaudible] >> i have a question, not about this book, about -- it's about one of your previous books. the family. i guess to question. the first question, from what i can tell come your book doesn't seem to have slowed down one bit. and i wonder if you can come if you agree on this, sort of speculate, but you trace the origin of the outset back some way. and it gets coming in, the more

you find out, the more incredible it is, it's like there should be she's coming up all over the landscape, you have no idea, alcoholics anonymous uplifting, you know -- >> neither of which are part of this fundamentalist organization but you see -- >> they all -- >> social activists are coming -- >> it's the same group. >> okay. >> takes us back to moral disarmament, way back when because it's kind of scary, they praised hitler and after the war there pushing reconciliation. now, and then you show that hillary clinton -- >> not quite. let me share -- because that egeland has read the book him on that ever, ever has read any of my books, you're doing a good

summary, but -- >> let me get to the question. this is all kind of frightening. i think, now, you know, i've read the book, but question is, how scared should we be? there's a really interesting aspects of this. you can imagine that it was well, let -- >> the question i'm told for this thing, to restate the question. the question was in regard to what might argue books on the sort of fundamentalist subculture, and this particular organization, the family has been around for a long time. i would argue, and many of us would argue is probably the most influential christian conservative organization in washington, international organization but it goes back to

the 1930s. and they tend to be secretive organization. there's no conspiracy but they are not bringing the noise a democracy but cannot marching they cannot even like ron luce. you can disagree with ron luce. they are sort of doing things quietly. so there's the question of how scared should we be, you know? you know, this is sort of a glib answer, scared enough to buy copies for all your friends. but the real answer i think is not too scared. i think, you know, i'm not going to lecture on fear. partly because of this organization has been around for longtime is an organization as their own fondness allies described in from its religion of the status quo, they are into things as they are. so if.

so if you look around this world and you say we really have it pretty much figured out. our democracy is coming along. we have liberty. you have no problems. if on the other hand you see something problematic, and you should be concerned. i don't find fear they particularly compelling reaction. you know, right now we have the most extravagant and almost impossible to believe to split of a little imagination. and at least 40 years. you can almost make an argument that goes back further than that. now there's this display, that's a much, much more interesting response. and i said as a person who has spent years writing about right and being on book tours this fall during the republican primary season, and then being assigned to go down to zuccotti park, has been such a wonderful

liberation. suddenly i stopped watching the debates. i turned down an assignment to go down and spend sometime with rick perry. i just did not have that much love in me but i couldn't do it. and it's much more interesting to be imagining what you could do. now, i said quoting cornell west, subject of the book, so when you're talking about fear i think you say no. i say no to the status quo. this religion that sees the rich as rewarded by god, and the poor as i pointed to the poverty by god. say no to that. that's the beginning but that opens a space, i hope, for imagination. >> i was wondering, since you have been present at or near occupied, what have you learned about other movements that you may britain about over the years from being present so early on when usually probably, laid on

after the movement? >> that's a really good question. it's interesting. you know, this other social movement come for years i've been writing about christian rights movements. this group, this gentleman over is asking that began in 1935 in response to the west coast, largely in response to the west coast general strike of 1934, which forgotten in a bit of american history. kind of astonishing. this was a true general strike in america. it alarmed people enough that fdr, you know, crazy right wing fdr, fdr moved warships off the coast. the city of san francisco was shut down. seattle was shut down. and it was a very similar general strike in that they didn't have exactly clear demands. it was real small a an artist, and the social movement that arose in response was the

christian right rose in response. had some of the same language that year from people good-faith and many liberal people. welcome the message is messy, yes, these beloved in the something wrong with society that we must have a clear program. we must have a clear program but we must have it right away. we have no time for deliberation. we must our with clear program. it's been interesting seeing this one start from the beginning, income maybe by beginning i almost mean like midnight mass of anarchists dancing in the church. because they're having those same debates. most of the people involved in those debates are really there in good faith. let's not have any demands, you know, like the folks in that story, the moment is now versus the people who must have a program. and they have a persuasive case as well. so you see, i think, i don't

think i understood you were witnessing this one can even i spend so much time writing about the family, just how fragile social movement is at the beginning. this one is interesting in the story i write about in rolling stones come to go back to the early meetings in august is when they started having meetings. the great lucky break occupy wall street have with other digital leftist organizations it didn't show up are left because they thought it was too disorganized. you know, like old labor wasn't even there, the community organizers weren't there, the academics weren't there. is a bunch of crusty kind of come in, some socialist parties, ranging to the downright kooky like the workers world party which are things that north korea is the ideal state. they had their microphones, come to with a banned organization. they have been ruining the last four years. they marched out and they said this doesn't have a chance that the only people left there were artists and songwriters who were

there at the beginning, and media makers and filmmakers. they had no idea what to do. so they made it up. when you make things up, this may go nowhere, and i think, you know, really they are still in the opening pages. you don't know, what is become a manuscript or a short story? i don't think we have an answer so that fragility to me is fascinating. >> i have one question. we have heard a lot about the mormon church, and i don't know if you've written about mormons or scientologists, but if you have come maybe if you could share your experience. it so interesting like american religions and where they are in terms of being accepted are not being accepted. >> years ago, i was asked by a magazine to write about scientology, and you asked me before, you know, to be afraid

and i was like no way am i writing on scientology, the most litigious religious group in world history. and i didn't want to deal with it. a while pass and a friend of mine for another magazine ends up writing about it, and she is a book you want to know about called inside scientology. it's an important book. she took the risk, and i think this was a rolling stone. i think at one point i remember crack and have a strong, tom showed up after offices to try to kill the story for tom cruise's sister something like this. so no, i haven't read about scientology. i read about it and i'm sorted person interest in religion i've sometimes gone and looked scientology castle. mormonism is more interesting. at the heart of the noise of democracy, you know, the

american history, terrible history with mormons. dvd the persecution of mormons. mormons, mormon church doesn't have such a great history itself. most big organized religions don't. and i haven't written about mormons yet but i want to do a story. the next story i want to do. i got invited to speak at the salt lake city county annual conference of ex-mormons. and i said i am not a mormon or ex-to have ever written about mormons can have nothing would offer. but they said no, they're interested action in the work i had done about fundamentals and it is with you at all left their faith, and sometimes some mormon families that's fine, these are people who have been disowned, pushed out, drummed out of the community and so on. and they were all fabulous speakers but, of course, will do great things about mormonism, real emphasis on everybody, speaking to meetings. so you get up, there's a raucous

drunken meeting are doing everything they were supposed to do before. naughtiest jokes i've ever heard. and they line up in each get three minutes to give testimony about becoming an ex-mormon. and i thought this is going to be kind of dispiriting come one of the things now i know better. day started with a no and other onto the yes, the drunken drivel kind of joyous yes, and so that's maybe a story. i want to go back and may be recorded. there's so much of there. i don't want to sort of advocate ex-mormonism. i listen to the mormons, too. these stories are hard to beat. should we -- thanks very much. thank you coming out and joining me on a rainy night. appreciate it. [applause] >> you're watching 40 hours of

nonfiction authors and books on c-span2's booktv. >> winston churchill graces the cover of the world and about. new book by brooke astana. mr. staton what was going on in great britain june-october 1940? >> the nazis from germany had basically overrun nearly all of europe, a control from the atlantic circle, northern norway through southern part of your. a lot of people thought britain would collapse are caving in a matter of weeks. france had been overrun in about three or fashionable, several weeks. and many people thought that britain would follow. it didn't happen. and this is the story about why

that didn't happen. churchill's leadership was a big part of it. the british people rallied the winston churchill. the germans couldn't come across the channel on account of the royal navy. but they did send thousands of airplanes to bomb britain, and in hopes of evading britain eventually. they couldn't overcome the royal air force. and eventually, october came along, bad weather began. the germans couldn't invade britain. and they had to put off any kind of invasion plan and to spring. so this is the story about those much. they were very, very critical months in exile after the bombing ended, did the bombing essentially and in november?

i'm in october, 1940? >> no, it continued. in britain have what is called the battle of britain, then they have the blitz, the germans continued to bomb mainly at night through the winter. but the battle of britain was basically in the daylight, and they couldn't overcome the fighter arm of the royal air force, and couldn't invade. that's what the battle of britain was about. >> was there a time between june and october 1940 when it looked really bad for great britain? >> there were a number of times it looked really bad. in june, that was the end of the dunkirk battle, and it looked pretty bad then. and then again in september, it was a very, very critical month.

and the royal air force was not really sure they could maintain air superiority over southern england. submarine warfare was very critical at this point. it was a very, very close call. it was a close thing. >> brooke stoddard is a former editor of the military heritage magazine. is this your first book he? >> it is my first book, yes, peter. >> how much time did you spend on its? >> i actually started it in the 1990s, and worked on it, until very recently. >> potomac books is a publisher of "world in the balance." >> up next, book tv interview former president bill clinton about his recent book "back to work: why we need smart government for a strong economy."

>> president bill clinton, in your new book, "back to work," you talk about the fact that you should get back into the future business. what do you mean by that? >> i niña that we should have a strategy to build the future of shared prosperity, and shared responsibilities based on a cooperative relationship between a strong private economy and a smart government. i think this 30 year battle we been in over whether the government is the source of all of our problems, and there's no such thing as a bad tax cut or a good tax, or a bad deregulation are good regulation, has obscured what really going on out there in the world. we still have a lot of enormous advantage in america but we've lost ground ball to do a lot of other countries, and the percentage are young adults with college degrees and our performance in standardized

tests, and the competitiveness of our health care system, what we get for what we pay, and our ability to generate manufacturing employment and our ability to export into a research and development capability in areas that we know are growing in the years ahead. and i think it's because we've been asking the wrong question. we need to talk about how can we build an economy of broadly shared prosperity? what does the private sector to come how can they work together? >> what happened in 1990 question spent a lot of time and you were talking about, i'm sorry, 1980 in the last 30 years but what was the fundamental change that was made? >> well, president carter had a very successful first two years in office. a lot of you have forgotten about the. go back and look at the midterm election. his party did quite well. and we had about 10 million jobs in the ford carter years but would like to have that 10 million magna. but at the end of his term, we have this stagflation. high inflation, stagnant growth,

managing our foreign oil across, the iranian hostage crisis, trust in government was low. and present reagan was elected, the government is the problem and he said let me cut all the taxes and they'll cut off the life-support of gum and then we will shrink government. but it turned out neither the white house nor both parties in congress really wanted to shrink government very much so we begin to work, to run systematic structural deficit for the first time in our history. and it was the beginning along with some the balance of the private sector of a slow erosion of our competitive position. we were going to have some tough times anyway because other countries with people just as smart as we are been able to work as hard as we do are going to start writing. so we would have to be on our gain to rein untamed maintain america's position. but by taking our eye off the ball which is doing what works, in a modern highly independent

world and how, the same are you in 2010 all over again, the government is the source of all the problems i think is causing us a lot of trouble. so i tried to talk about why this strategy didn't work, why what we did in the '90s worked better, and why it will work again. and why i essentially have supported the positions that president obama has taken on energy and a number of others because i think it's taking us in the direction we should be going. >> well, when you talk about solutions, your solutions to how we can get the economy back, utah quite a bit about the simpson-bowles commission and some of the recommendations. if you had been president and the commission come up with its report, what would you have done with it? >> well, i believe what i would have done is to say that it's a great piece of work, and i think that in general it is going in the right direction. i think we should use it as a blueprint and work off of it.

i don't agree with everything in report, as i say in the book that while i agree with them that we are taxing a 35%, corporation tax, and where the only major country still taxing overseas income, which is keeping that money from coming back here, but our tax take is only 23%. so i would like to see the broadening the tax base and get as close to 20% rate, which is what we are taxing it anyway, as possible. but i would lead the tax credit in. in other words, if we use it as a framework, we can always change it. they had a proposal in social security that was pride -- quite progressive but they gave more money to lower income seniors which is really important because as you saw from the report the chemistry on the poverty statistics, poverty is undergoing up among lower income

seniors because notwithstanding medicare they still have significant out of pocket health care costs. so i like the social security, the drift of their social security proposal. on the other hand, if the economy were to produce more growth than the estimate, i think we should try to balance the budget sooner than they would bring it back and abounds in 2035. on that score, they are pretty conservative. but they do know that we have to swallow the retirement of the baby boomers, and they have to assume, in the estimates, that we cannot bring health care costs back in line with inflation. i think we can, but you couldn't. it's hard to assume if you're running a commission like that be back one after 46 recommendations, repatriating tax or profits from overseas, when we talk to policymakers and everyone seems to support that. why is that not become the focus? >> for two reasons. reason number one is in 2004,

president bush tried to do it. let me back up a second. the law in america is if you're an american corporation, if you are in my overseas, if you bring back to america to reinvest, whether it's in new plant and equipment, new employees or, you know, they raises come whatever you bring it back for, you of the american tax my us whatever you paid overseas. now, every other major country has gone into a territorial system which means they let people bring their money back without that tax. so as a result, a lot of the money gets parked overseas. and eventually it will be invested overseas. but in fairness from 2004 when president bush tried this with the congress and tax very modest by .4%, the three companies that repatriated the largest amount

of money not only didn't create any jobs in america, they put all the money and executive compensation. they eliminated about 30,000 jobs. my answer to that is this, when we work on and i think the president should ask the republicans for tax reform, and democratic i think the goal should be to get the rate as close to the tax take as possible, which is 23%, which would mean you would have fewer people paying less than 20 to which i think is not acceptable to that's about what the average american pays. while doing that, and i would let them repatriate it in the fall away to avoid the problems we had in 2004. i've make the same to you on that that the president spent on payroll tax. i would say if you can document that you have added to that employment, then the portion used been doing that is not subject to any tax.

bring it back free right now but it won't do what you want with my thing it is a long-term capital gains rate, 15%, not 5.4%come and we will take that money and fund america's share of an infrastructure bank and then open it up to americans to invest by buying bonds to build america, and opened up to foreign investors and opened up to to sovereign wealth funds from other country a let america join the ranks of other countries to using private as well as public money to modernize their infrastructure. and so that's one problem. we had that expensive the other part is that the joint tax committee is inclined to say what they said in 2004. you can do it now but you're losing $80 billion over the long run. they shouldn't say that anymore. now the every other country has changed the system, we are not getting the 80 billion. we might look at the money back now, invest it and put america to work. >> you also in your book, trenton, present and, talk about

executive compensation and executive compensation levels. do you think it needs to be regulated? >> no. i don't. because unit, i tried to take a whack at it by passing a law in 93 with the economic plan to limit the tax of executive compensation the i believe we limited it to $1 million a year. so pay people would've your but you can't deduct $1 million a year. and inadvertently i might have contributed to another trend which has been destabilizing i think, which is paying executives in stock that they can do for cash until it rises in value. and problem with that is, it reinforces trendsetting stockholders -- customers and the communities.

and from the 1930s when most, a lot of our corporate law was really made, up through the mid '70s, late '70s, corporations were thought to be creatures of the state that got certain privileges like a limited liability, in return for which they had obligations to shareholders, employees, the customers and the communities. then starting in the late '70s and going through the last 30 years, we created this environment with shareholders can't weigh more than a customers or employees or the committees. and the irony is that the people with the biggest stake in the long-term profitability of the company have the least influence. so i think government policy should try to rebalance that. if that happened, i think he would have more corporations run

like new core. and a talk about nucor in there, whether it be tried to be taken care of employees, to. >> president clinton, you look at a new book as well, utah can when you talk about simpson-bowles commission, and you also talk about how perhaps we should be moving in that direction. >> yeah, i think over the long run, the virtues are as follows. number one, you can structure it to be progressive so it doesn't fall on the necessity and lower income people never to come actually good for export because the last level of the vat tax which is basically a later tax on various steps in the production chain, the last level doesn't fall on a product that is sold in another country. and the last level does fall on products that are so from other countries year. so it's wanting you can do to help your exports.

that does not violate any international trade law. secondly, the vat prefers investment over consumption is more oriented towards the future than the present and that's something where to do in america. so i think that that's something that i think we will have to move towards. but it's virtually impossible to do now with middle american incomes declining as against inflation and the cost of living. and with his dead specter hanging over us in the future, and with an urgent need to create jobs now. but i do believe that if we do succeed in corporate tax reform that we should take a look at individual tax reform as the simpson-bowles commission recommends, and then we should take a look at whether some or all of those taxes could be supplemented or replaced by a vat. >> do you think that the congressional deficit reduction or supercommittee should look at

fundamental reform of the tax system? what do you think of the deficit reduction committee structure in general? >> well, i think the structure is the only practical one with any chance of coming out with a program that will provide cover for democrats to vote for things they don't like and republicans to vote for things they don't like. they seem determined, so far, to do what the president recommended and what was reflected in the first budget deal they made last december, which is not have a lot of budget cuts or tax increases while this economy is a week. even the president of little surcharge on people in my income group to pay for some of the things we need to do would not trigger until 2013. so i haven't given up on that. it's tough because if you want to get to a million and a half dollars of deficit reduction, a trillion and a half, excuse me,

it's hard to get there without any new revenues at all, and as you can bring health costs more closely in line with inflation. and the best things to do that as a point out in this book are changing the delivery system of health care. and those things are hard to quote, score. president reagan signed a bill that he worked with a democratic congress on. i signed a bill i work with a republican congress on to save money in medicare and medicaid. the bill that president reagan signed states 15% more the first year and eventually 50% more than the bill i signed acts as a 50% more the first year, and i don't unfold quickly. we all work together, democrats and republicans to we're just one forget what work. but the point is, i am convinced there are tons of things that can be done that would not erode the quality of health care, not leave people feeling their health care has been cut, and bring this inflation rate down. but it's hard to get the

congressional committees to quote score it, because you can't know in advance exactly how much money is involved. >> this is president clinton's fourth book. this is trend 11. mr. president, in this book you refer quite often too and are hosting new book, the next american economy. >> it's a good book. and americans are pessimistic should read it. because it will get you out of your pessimism. it's a good in two ways. first, it shows that there are places in america that are roaring into the future with confidence. and secondly, it describes what they do so you can imagine where ever you live, adopting some version of that and putting it in where you live. now, not everybody can be silicon valley. that everybody can be the tech cluster around mit. nothing one can have 100

simulation companies the way orlando does. i was there last night talking about it. not everybody can be the center of genomic research the way san diego is a. but everybody can do something. when we had the global initiative being for the united states, last summer, a company called on shoring said they would create 1000 jobs in joplin, missouri, which have been devastated by the generator by providing services that previously used to be outsourced to other countries, in a smaller community in more rural setting. they're going to do 12,000 more jobs in the next few years. those are the kinds of things that we need to look at. so i think if people read the book, it will, to come help to break the pessimism. >> if you are president and you the opportunity to be the encourager in chief, how would you naked that ipads are manufactured in the united

states? what policies which is a? >> first of all, i don't know that we can because apple has invested a lot of money in their infrastructure your but in general what i think we ought to do is to look at the overall weight structure which is rising at the time, and then you have to add, if tiny sparks are going to be made there and sold in america you have to look at the freight costs, you have to look at the productivity of the workforce, not just their wages. you have to look at where the materials come from. and i would be analyzing all the high-end manufacturing in the world today. not just the ipads. and figure out which of those things could be made in america if we had a good generous research tax credit, if they could have their lands on site with manufacturing. and then i would organize a set

of tax incentives to do that. i mean, for example, the chinese want the solar and wind jobs is so bad that they just put another 30 for mine dollars in incentives and. free training. free land. a 20 year tax holiday. they are determined to hold on to this is key the 21st century manufacturing. we don't have to do that much because we have great venture capital, because of a lot of laboratories doing this work, because our capacity for solar and wind generation is just staggering. we rank first or second in the world with ability to do that. north dakota alone can generate enough electricity for 25% over used in america from the wind if we had a national grid and you could see the power to where the people are, where the wind blows. or where the sun shines. so that's what i would do. i would design a program around the kind of new jobs that we have the best chance to get.

>> a review of your book and "the wall street journal" lamented what he said was you going from being new democrat to back to big government person, and that this book is all about big government coming back. what is your response to the? >> just not true. i mean, you know, when i was president as i pointed out, we spent less than 20% of gdp -- we spent less than 90% of gdp and we taxed less than 20% of gdp. both under our post-world war ii average. when i was a governor with the second lowest tax burden in the country. i raise taxes to fund education and economic develop incentives and lowered taxes to provide taxes is to create jobs and to reduce the income tax burden. i get rid of the income tax for

25% of our people. so that's not true. but i do what i want to do is come up and where we would disagree as he would just like to keep petting him and think everything is wonderful to look at this book, i call for a public-private partnership infrastructure. something america has never done. i have no objection to privatizing certain things, but on the other hand, if you look at the facts, it's not public versus private. it's what works best. for example, we have a privatized health care finance system, in 2009 in the depth of the recession raised health care premium so much under the guise that the culture going up at health insurance profits went up 50% and five many people lost their health insurance. three and half million of them went on medicaid because they had no other place to go. a government program, so the policies that he would support are increasing government as

maintenance, and so i believe that, i just don't think it's a public-private thing. i think we have a cooperative attitude. i think there are a lot of things the private sector does way better than government will ever do. for example, like i prefer tax credits to direct government subsidies, picking the particular companies to win and lose. but i like this section 16 through the program would to talk a lot about in there because it gives the equivalent of a tax credit to start so we encourage startups as was existing businesses. so i know, you know, they would like is his continues to shrink the federal government, more or less indiscriminately. i have no objection to remember, when i was president we had the smallest federal government since dwight eisenhower said last year. smallest percentage of the

federal workforce since franklin roosevelt was president. i wouldn't mind doing that again. but i think there's some things the government has to do. government is very good at activating capital for modern infrastructure, for example. but i think we need more private investment. so i would like to see a debate and this committee could do this. they could say okay, look, here's what government has got to do. be. detected a national security council people through no fault of themselves can't support himself. we made a decision in return is people should have a decent standard of living. we have a whole wealth of things that support economic become and thinking where to do more there because our competitors are. same thing with scientific research, same thing with technological expansion of access, same thing with education. so what we need to do is to identify those things which government should do, and do them well, and no greater cost

than is absolutely necessary. and then those things that the private sector should do, and then figure out how to culture partnerships. >> your well known for the era of big government is over, address to congress. ya 46 policy recommendations in this book. is this book consistent with that speaks oh, yeah. i never said the era of strong government was over. what i meant was i thought the era in which big government bureaucracy would deliver services, and on an industrial model was over. ..

>> like clean air, clean water, safe food or because we with have to do it to be competitive, new manufacturing jobs in high-tech areas. then we ought to do it and do it well. >> host: finally, mr. president, could you have written this book while in office? >> guest: well, it deals with a lot of the things i've been concerned about since before i started running for president including the dramatic upsurge in income and equality and the shrinking of the middle class prospects which i was concerned about. but i know e more about it now, and i think we have now more historical evidence. we have the 12 years before i was president, eight years after and then the effort to struggle out of the financial crisis with

president obama's first two years, essentially, before he got the new congress. so i couldn't have written this exact book, but this book is consistent with my philosophy. >> host: and we are here at the new york historical society with president bill clinton talking about his book "back to work." there's an event tonight with chelsea clinton. >> guest: yeah. she's going to ask me questions about my book, i hope i can remember what's in it. [laughter] she's, you know, one of the great signs of success in life is when your children know more than you do about everything. so i'm sure that will be on display tonight. >> host: thank you for your time. booktv will also be covering the event with chelsea clinton. >> for more information on president clinton's book, "back to work," go to knopftroubleday.com. >> host: well, now on your screen on booktv is keni thomas, and he has written this book, "get it on: what it means

to lead the way." keni thomas, tell us about your experience, your connection with blackhawk down. >> i was part of the 75th ranger rebelment -- regiment, and we were part of the guys that went in on that raid -- >> '94? >> '93. close though. everything changed when the first helicopter got shot down, and just like that, the course of our lives changed. so what i get from that is anybody that's going to make it out of something others didn't, you're going to spend the rest of your life thank those on your right and left that day, so you'll use every opportunity you can to tell their storying or whether it do it through music or a book, i'm going to tell the story. >> walk us through that day. >> dude, there's been documentaries on that, we'd be here for hours, but i can tell you -- >> your experience. >> my experience, everybody

thought it was going to a -- to be a normal thing. what we didn't know is we would lose 18 guys. of the 130 of us that went in, a ton of us got wounded and hit. those numbers would have been significantly higher had it not been for the level of the planning and the training. but mostly, the leadership at every level. and i mean from david floyd who was the one private who saves everybody all the way up to the general garrison. and by the time the morning rolls around, you know, if you know the story, we were there to help the pilot. we waited for the pilot so we could get his body out of the wreckage, we didn't have the equipment, and in the morning the pakistanis came, the malaysians came, 10th mountain came, and not a single one of those guys said@not my -- said it's not my job. and the rest of us ran out. so when you make it, there again, when you make it out, you're going to spend your life

thanking those folks, and it's an extraordinary story. nobody can tell it about david floyd and eric and jesus and sergeant watson not the way that i can because those were my guys. >> when did you leave the rangers? >> i got out of the military at the end of the '90s and picked up the guitar. this whole book thing's a new world for me. it's -- >> why are you writing this now, in 2011? >> that's a good question. i get a chance to tell that story to a ton of people, and the more people that you can reach, i feel like the more chance you have to make a difference with the message of leadership. i started doing so many events, and why haven't you written this story down? actually, it's ollie north that said you really need to write this. and it was as simple as somebody saying yes. it was that simple. and then all of a sudden you

have this book that's on tv, we're in walmart. come on, now, you know something's happening. so it's been a heck of a ride. >> what is this about music and the guitar? >> i work in nashville. i do country music, so we have a whole audience on that side of the world. so it's kind of a neat thing, all these fans coming in for music, and you've got these new people that you're meeting, and they're all coming to keni thomas, and they're all starting to figure out what the message is which is set an example, lead the way. your extraordinary. you can do amazing things if you're willing to shoulder that burden. >> what -- who do you play with in country music, anybody -- >> name it. we've opened up -- the only people i have not opened up for yet is faith hill and tim mcgraw, so if they're watching, you guys need to give me a slot. you get to see everybody that's been doing it for a while now. >> is it well known that you are

an army ranger in your new career? >> it is. folks know what i did. and it affects the music every now and then. i feel like you have to entertain folks, especially on stage, and then when you write a story, that's how you get people, you captivate them, you tell them a story. but at the end of it all whether it's a guitar, microphone or book, you better have something to say. and, obviously, what i have to say is leeld the way. >> keni thomas is the author of "get it on: what it means to lead the way." veteran of blackhawk down talks about his experiences. >> this fall, this last fall the european commission issued a memorandum saying, uh-oh, we need a trillion euros for the energy internet now in the next nine years. why? countries put in feed-in tariffs across europe. feed-in tariffs, here's how they work. you raise the electricity bill

for consumers so slight, you don't even notice it on your bill. but the funds that you collect are then used so early adopters who want to put wind or photovoltaic or geothermal heat in can to that and then get premium for sending their energy back to the grid. so we put in these feed-in tariffs across europe, and in germany especially created hundreds of thousands of jobs overnight. but what's happening now is everyone's trying to feed in their green electricity to the grid. the grid can't accept the electricity easily because the grid is 60 years old, servile mechanical, unidirection lal, it's leaking 20% of the electricity just across the transmission line, it's a disgrace. but then we realize we have another problem with feed-in tariffs, some of our regions have become so successful that they're 0, 30, 40% green electricity. spain is 70% green electricity.

so what's happening is because there's no hydrogen storage, we're losing three out of four kilowatts. in other words, the wind's blowing at night, we need it during the day, we lose the electricity. so now we realize we have to ratchet up pillar iii. then we realized we weren't incentivizing pillar ii for the little guys, the buildings. the big infrastructure, the big companies, they were getting their facilities transformed into power plants, but what about a homeowner or a small business? how do they afford or 25,000 euros to put a photovoltaic power plant on their roof? well, now we've got on the that. the banks have come together in germany and italy. and listen to this, if you've ever spent time in italy, you flow it's pretty bureaucratic, right? if banks have come together, and if you're a homeowner, you sign a little paper.

60 years later, you have a photovoltaic power plant on your roof. why are the banks willing to do this? they check your electricity bill, and they can tell in advance how much welcome terrorist you -- electricity you will save, and they know you're going to pay back, so it's called pay as you save. why can't we do this? and then we realize that the other four pillars are not put in place in this infrastructure, plug-in transport will die on the vine because they won't be able to plug in and create green electricity for the future. be this five pillars is a mega technology. it's an infrastructure, a nervous system for a new era. the reason we can do this now is something called grid i.t., you know, for 30 years government leaders have said, mr. rivkin, come on. you're trying to tell us we're going to run the world on garbage and windmills?

get serious. they're soft energy. you can't run a robust global economy like we have on windmills and solar roof and garbage, etc. for 30 years we couldn't answer this question. now we can, and it was brought to us here in silicon valley when a couple young researchers were trying to figure out how to monitor radio waves in the universe. they wanted to see if there was any intent, caring life out there which is kind of strange spending all that time doing that when we're killing off the intelligent life here -- [laughter] and what they realized even centralized supercomputers couldn't monitor the entire universe, so they came up with the idea of creating software to connect thousands and millions of little teeny be desktop computers. and when they connect them with software, the little computers dwarfs anything you can imagine with centralized supercomputers. grid i.t. is the cutting edge ofivity t., it's being used in industry. now we can take it to

electricity and transmission. when millions and millions and millions of buildings are collecting just a little bit of electricity, storing hydrogen and then sharing across intelligent energy networks, the power of distributed energy dwarfs these little nuclear coal-fired power plants. but this energy is sustainable, it works with the rhythm of the planet. this is power to the people. this is the democratization of energy. this is a form of distributed capitalism. it requires that everyone be an entrepreneur, but it also requires that we collaborate in deep social spaces to share our energy across continents. the music companies did not understand distributed power with file sharing of music. and we have a few young people smiling. because you figured out, apparently, young people had nothing else to do after school but find new ways to create

software to get all this music for free. we used to call it cheating. now, the music companies, at first they laughed at this. then they tried to legislate against it, then they went out to business. you can't beat millions of little kids who have nothing else to do, apparently, after school than find software. they'll win every time. the newspapers did not understand the blogosphere, and now the newspapers are either going out of business or creating blogs, and certainly, encyclopedia britannica could not fathom wikipedia. why would millions of people recreate the knowledge of the universe and do it free and then check each other for accuracy? [laughter] it's counterintuitive. people cooperating. well, guess what? that's why the human race has been somewhat success. we are a social creature, and cooperation is basic to us. and our neurocircuit try is wired not for utilitarian,

pleasure-seeking behavior, that's secondary drive. we're now learning that we're wifed in our circuit try for distress, so we can feel another's experience as if it's our own. if a spider goes up your arm and i'm watching it, i'll feel it going up my arm. we're ultimately social. we seek companionship. the worst thing we can do to each other is isolate or os ostracize. so the third industrial revolution's interesting because the first and second industrial revolution based on elite energies had to scale vertically, top down. because the energies were elite, they required huge financial capital investments in large banking institutions. and they also required that all the businesses that flow off that elite energy had the scale in big, giant factories, giant logistics, transport networks, it all scaled top down, centralized. the third industal