the traditional nature of first lady hood which was so confining at first ends up protecting her a little bit because political life is so gatherus and so difficult it's another way of limiting, right? it's another way of saying i don't do policy. i don't have to be part of this kind of discussion, you know, i'm not going to get engaged in, you know, these kinds of debates. i think there's something, you know, very protective about the traditionalism of that role. now, of course, she's playing a more prominent role in the presidential message which is what she wanted in the first place. >> there are moments -- and these are endearing -- there are moments of toughness that she displays but there's moments of sort of real vulnerability. there's one episode where you describe where she's wearing normal shorts to the grand canyon and i guess robin given of the "post" say they weren't

normal shorts and were letting the team down and toughness and vulnerableness is part of the book. >> that's what i think is so fascinating. a part of the reason i think -- let's just banish the phrase angry black woman from the culture, you know, not only from this book but part of the reason i think that caricature of her is so wrong is that it misses the vulnerability and it misses the anxiety. i mean, that's the words that her aides use, right? they don't call her angry. they call her anxious. the part in my reporting write found her really fuming was after the sam brown victory. so scott brown a republican wins ted kennedy's seat. this has devastating consequences for the president's legislative agenda. it's all in jeopardy now.

and, you know, she has two issues we are husband's team. one is that, you know, she doesn't understand how they could have let this happen. you know, how they could have dropped the ball on the race but the other issue which is so -- is more interesting and goes, i think, to the heart of the role she plays in the presidency is that she's always had this idea that her husband is going to be a transformative president. right? she's never liked politics and the deal has always been, if you're going to go into politics, you know, i have this lost vision of who you're going to be. and the administration made these health care deals like the nebraska one which wasn't very popular and didn't look great and barack obama looked more like a more ordinary politician and that's really what she was acting to. and that's why i think the partnership is so interesting. it's not that we're like delving into the secrets into their marriage.

we're looking at her vision of the presidency and what she stakes him to and the standards she has and whether he can meet them. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. it is about 45 minutes. >> thank you all for coming and supporting independent book stores. so thanks for supporting independent bookstores. [applause] >> we have a very good book for you today. he's a professor at roger williams university and he has spoken to many stories. he's here today to discuss his

latest book buckley. please join me in welcoming carl pogus. it's a pleasure to talk to you today about william f.buckley and maybe most speakers don't start by telling you their political affiliation but i think that's important and interesting. i happen to be a liberal and i know i'm speaking about a conservative icon and a figure who's beloved to millions of people and so i think it's important that i confess my a aposcity first. but i wanted to be up front with

you about that. historians debate whether history is made by individuals or by structural forces. if george washington didn't have lived or george madison or abraham lincoln would the united states exist and if it did exist would it be the same country we would know it to be? would other people come forth and filled their shoes and done what they did or would things be markedly different? if william buckley wouldn't have been there would conservatism been different. and if there had been a conservative movement would it have been achieved the same success as it had achieved? i'm going to put that question

aside for the moment and try to circle back to it later. let's start with -- who was buckley? who was buckley? well, he had six different careers or he'd done things that would have been that would have filled careers for six people and made them incredibly successful. let's start with the fact that he was a syndicated columnist. he wrote for many, many years up until he died a column called on the right. at its height it was published three times a week and 350 newspapers. he was the most widely read columnists in the country. he produced in the course of his life 5,600 columns.

if you just took his newspaper columns and you published them in book form they would fill 28 volumes this size. he did this extraordinarily well. he won the best columnist of the year awarded in 1967 and so i suggest that if he had just been a syndicated columnist he would have been enormous successful and enormous influential but he also wrote 56 books and some of those books happened to be collections of magazine articles and speeches but that leaves still 50 additional books. most were on politics but he wrote about all other kind of things. he wrote a very successful spy series. he wrote about sailing across the ocean. and in addition have to these books were national bestsellers many of them. he published countless articles not only his own magazine national review but in magazines

that pride themselves on publishing the very best literature, the new yorker and esquire and many other magazines and he did this very well. he won an award for the best mystery in paperback one year. he won the lowell thomas journalism award for the best travel article one year. if he had done that, it would have made a very successful career. he was a public speaker. he was probably one of sought after politicians. he averaged 70 talks a year. and he did this in large part to raise extra-revenue to raise money for his national review. he was a tv columnist on firing

line. he still holds the record of -- well, firing line holds the record of being the show -- the longest running show with a single host in history. he did this extremely well. he won an emmy award for outstanding achievement for his first television show and if he had done the television show for 33 years and had been that successful, it would have been an enormous accomplishment. and now i come to his signal accomplishment. he founded "national review" magazine in 1955. he edited it up until 1990. he maintained legal control of it until 1999. and probably many of you know national review by weekly or

seven monthly conservative journal of opinion is probably the most influential opinion journal in the united states on the left and the right and it was a vehicle for redefining conservatism in the 50s and the 60s and creating a conservative movement that's still an enormously influential magazine. he was -- buckley was a man of extraordinary wit and charm and for those of you who remember him probably remember this. he had panache. he had charisma. he did things no one else thought of doing. let me take you back in time to 1965 when he happened to fit in, among all these other things running for mayor for new york. he ran for mayor of new york on a conservative party ticket. he did it for too two reasons.

one was to communicate conservative ideas to a wider audience, not just to intellectuals who read opinion magazines and who watch highbrow shows but to a wider audience and he did it to extinguish the political career of a rising liberal reporter john lindsey. he believed lindsey was a dashing handsome rising star in the republican party. and he had not endorsed the republican standard of barry goldwater. there was a battle raging for the heart of the republican party and burke hoped by running on a conservative party line he

would drain enough republican votes from lindsey to defeat him. let me take you back to his first press conference and read you some excerpts from his first conference. understand the conservative party has persuadely buckley to be for mayor. they're introducing him to the public for the first time. and this is how the press conference proceeds the rest of it. reporter, do you want to be mayor, sir? buckley, i have never considered it. [laughter] >> now, you can imagine the conservative party officials standing there aghast. this is their candidate. what is he doing? do you think that is something at present that should be considered? buckley, not necessarily. what is important is that certain points of view should prevail, whether you or i administer those points of view

are immaterial to me assuming you are a good administrator. reporter, but you were asking people to vote for you? if you win, will you serve? buckley pauses as if he's considering this question for the first time. if elected i will serve, he says. reporter, do you think you have a chance of winning? buckley, no. [laughter] >> reporter, how many votes do you expect to get conservatively speaking? >> buckley, conservatively speaking, one. [laughter] >> and a week later another reporter asked him, well, what would you do if you do win? and he said, demand a recount. [laughter] >> now, the conservative party officials may have been horrified but from that first

moment, buckley galvanized the attention of many, many people especially young people. it's almost an oxymoron, an honest politician. someone who felt that running for office, expressing ideas was more important than winning. let me take you back further in time to 1951. i picked 1951 it's because when buckley first became famous. a 26-year-old recent graduate of yale. he wrote a book called god and man at yale in which he excoriated his almamartyr.

it did become a bestseller. and, oh, that period -- '51, he writes god and man at yale. '55, you founds national review. young, young man. let me take you back in time. conservatism had been given up dead and buried by lots of people. the liberal candidate for president, the liberal candidate for president captured the republican nomination in the past four presidential cycles, wendell wilke in 194, thomas dewey in 194 and '48 and dwight eisenhower who described himself in '52 as a modern republican

and also as a liberal republican. and many people thought that conservatism was irrelevant. it had been vanquished. everybody was liberal well, what was conservatism then? probably personified by robert taft who had been the republican standard bearer -- the conservative standard bearer for the nomination. it was characterized by prudence, caution before world war ii, isolationism, skepticism about the use of military force. and buckley i suggest to you changed it. transformed it. buckley wasn't a political philosopher. his ideas weren't his own.

many of them were inherited by his father who was very influential. buried from other thinkers but, but buckley was a brilliant polemicists and he was also an extremely gifted leader and as gifted leaders know building a movement is not about a personal glory, it is about creating an army. you think of -- you can think of buckley, i think, as the conductor of an orchestra. he didn't write the music, he didn't play the instruments but he decided what was going to be played and he decided who was going to play it. he decided who to invite into the orchestra and who not to invite in he decided who to expel from the orchestra. he made all these strategic decisions and he was extremely good at it.

now, what did he zmraet it would not surprise you because it's what we come to associate with conservative. it's not a surprise we've become used to it. so used to it we think well conservatism was always this way but it was conservatism is today and buckley created this way. it's really a three-legged stool sitting on libertarianism and religious or social conservatism. we can think of it as a coalition of these three different philosophies or three different groups if you will. buckle happened to actually embrace all three within his breast. he may not have been the purest of the three but there are many inconsistencies and incompatibilities of the school of thought and he was all three things. but by libertarian i mean, the

philosophy that says that begins with the axiom the right to live your life -- we all have a right to live our lives as we choose as long as we do not infringe on the equal rights of others. and this idea of not being coerced, not being coerced by government but not being coerced by anybody, being free leads many libertarians to a very purest absolutist laissez-faire philosophy. there should little or no government regulation of business. in fact, very little government. and the musician who buckley -- i'm using this as metaphorically the editor that buckley recruited for national review who was kind of the leader of

the libertarian philosophy within national review was a fellow named frank ma-mayer that government has two legitimate functions just two. one is to protect citizen says against violent assaults, whether it's invasion from abroad or criminals domestically. and to adjudicate conflicts, have a court system, particularly, to adjudicate conflicts but particularly commercial conflicts so the economy can keep humming along and nothing else. government should be -- should be very small, very weak. neoconservatism, that term didn't exist back in 1955. but ideas that we've come to call neoconservative were starting up. what do i mean by neoconservatism? well, years leader, irving crystal gave us the famous pithy

description. he said a neoconservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality. and what crystal meant was, look, the world is a dangerous place. it's a hard place. there are bad people. there are bad countries. you can't be naive. you can't coddle -- domestically you can't coddle people. you can't coddle criminals. you can't coddle the poor. they've got a tough love, make them stand on their feet. and the musician that buckley invited into national review who was the protoneoconservative, many called him the first neoconservative and it was a guy named james burnam who was an expert for foreign policy for national review and throughout the cold war, american strategic

doctrine articulated by all presidents, democratic and republican, was containment, containment philosophy, contain communism. burnam said it was too timid and too weak and he advocated roll back, we got to roll back communism through can -- clandestine revolutions in the communist bloc. we got to not shirk from confronting them militarily. they'll back off. they'll back off. and then the third -- the third stool is, is religious conservatism or social conservatism and by that i really mean finding religion very central towards political views not merely a source of inspiration but perhaps even

guidance or policy. now, let me give you -- let me read you two sentences that buckley wrote in god and man and yale when he was 26 in 1951. he said, quote, i myself believe that the duel between christianity and atheism is the most important in the world. i further believe that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level. now, what he's saying here is there is this struggle, this cosmic struggle between good and evil, between christianity and atheism. and whether it's on the international stage, between the west and communism, socialist systems, collectivist systems or

whether it's even domestically between the individualist viewpoint and the collectivist viewpoint, the socialist viewpoint that that itself is tied up with the struggle between good and evil. that good, christianity and good, is on the side of a particular political philosophy. now, it's a complicated story as to how buckley got these particular views together and now he got them to triumph. and the book goes through a series of things that he did. i think that -- i believe that

he wasn't a conscious strategic thinker. that he was intuitive. but brilliant in his intuition as to what to do. and i just have a few minutes left and i want to suggest one of the philosophies that he prevailed over because back in the '50s there were other people saying conservatism would go another direction. it was not just buckley and national review saying, this is the path to follow. there was competition. and one of the most interesting alternative approaches was being offered by a group then called -- or at least four particular individuals who are then collectively called the new conservatives. they were burkians and they were following the philosophy of edmond burke the great eighteenth century statesman. who argued that -- that we

should honor traditions in institutions and we should honor them because they have developed for particular evolutionary reasons. it was almost a darwinisic point of view. we have traditions. they're very important to our society and they have come to be the way they are because they have come to work. we don't always understand exactly what they do and how they do it and how they work. but wisdom is the product of experience. and wisdom has been impressed into these institutions. now, burke frequently is misunderstood as someone who clung to the status quo. not so. burke was a reformer. and burke argued paradoxically, preservation required change. i could go on and talk a lot

more about the burkian philosophy but suffice it to say, it was entirely incompatible with buckleyism. burkians are communetarions. buckleyians believe in independentism and they believe in liberty. libertarians believe that liberty is about being free from coercion. burkians believe that but they also believe that meaningful liberty also requires certain opportunities that you can't particularly in modern society really pursue your dream, have true liberty and freedom to pursue your dream unless you have certain minimums in terms of opportunities. think of education, basic education, nutrition, other things, wholesome communities. libertarians believe in small and weak government.

burkians believe that a strong government is necessary to preserve order and liberty. that a strong government is necessary for liberty. a check on consolidated power is structural. it is separation of powers. federalism, other things. it's not small weak government, which burkians consider to be dangerous. as i mentioned, there were four major -- very individually formidable thinkers. there was a fellow called peter verdick who was a historian at mount holyoke and there was an associate name robert any bet who wrote a book called the quest for community in 1953 with the title stands pretty much for what he believed that human beings find their meaning in

seeking community. there was a political scientist at cornell named clinton roster called conservatism in 1955. you could read any of these three books today and find them evocative, compelling. these were great writers. these were great thinkers. in my opinion, particularly, rossiter and nesbitt. but the most important was a fellow named russell kirk. and russell kirk was in many ways like buckley and many ways not like buckley but he was like buckley because at a very early age in kirk's case, 35 years old, assistant professor of what's now michigan state. he wrote a book called the conservative mind from burke to elliott that became a sensation. it was really his doctoral thesis and, again, it was unlikely that such a book would become such a sensation but it

caught the attention of certain editors at "time" magazine and they bally hued it in a special fourth of july edition of the magazine in 1953. and the book took off. and kirk argued that burke is the true school of conservative thought. burke argued that libertarians were too materialistic and what counted what he called the permanent things, religion, tradition, community, art, literature. .., a community park literature. and he argued that -- one of his phrases was, you know, everything is not about getting another piece of pie and another pat of butter. society in zero we are about is about more important things than just economic growth.

and he was very opposed to libertarians, and he was attacked by buckley and other libertarians quite passionately, quite personally. and then buckley realized, found the magazine, and this fellow is it maybe a potential major competitor. and so the decided to recruit him for the magazine. russell kirk was a socially awkward fellow. when conservatives and in america, not conservatism in america, a conservative mind, such a big hit he did maybe a rasping, and he quit his day job. his tradition and decided he would be an independent public intellectual and found that tough going. he was scraping by, maybe less

than scraping by. buckley made a pilgrimage up to mike costa michigan and met with kirk and said to kirk i would like you to join the national review and charm tim. buckley being a dashing, and some charming guy. a short, socially awkward. shows buckley his library, a converted barn. this is a wonderful library. this is the great tavern. and for nasa review. in the sizzle of like you to write a column on educational policy. educational policy was a subject dear to russell kirk chart, important subjects. but the battle for the future of

this terrorism was not to be decided over educational party -- policy. there his name was. he picks up the phone and calls buckley and he is out raised. i will not the jeep was libertarians. take me off the masthead. nevertheless he agrees to read the column. he does. he raised the call from the academy, rotifer 25 years. for 25 years he muted his criticism of libertarianism. after he quit national review in 1980 the following year he resumed his slashing critique of libertarianism and for other

reasons : roster and peter herrick left the field of battle as well. they fell into criticizing each other, never cohered, they decided that, if you can't take the heat it out of the kitchen, as they would slow invested by conservatives, he went on to retreat. a wonderful surprise for poetry. plan rouser repeal that to being an academic. and robert nisbet he did continue to write for many years also took a very long hiatus to london to university ministration. now, here's the irony of this. there were communitarians who

never acted together, never formed a community buckley was an individualist who formed a community and that community became a very vibrant community. not just a community of thinkers and writers, but readers who looked toward to getting this magazine and felt part of something, part of something new and something dynamic. they looked up to buckley. they looked up to the people that buckley promoted and the people in the magazine and it is my belief that had there been no william f. buckley jr. conservatism would not be the way we think of it today. i cannot tell you what it would be. i am not -- and nobody can do alternative history, how would hurt history turn out differently, but i do believe

that the conservatives and became what we consider it to be because but we took it that way, and he was a person many people, particularly young people admired and wanted to follow. thank you. [applause] >> questions? well, several things. here is one. it is my sense that we are entering a new era of ideological redefinition. this may go on for some time, but partly because of their successes liberalism and conservatism are both kind of run out of gas to a certain extent. they're under stress for other reasons. a lot of searching going on, searching, and it tends to redefinition. the tea party is in the occupy

movement by just some symptoms of this, and because that is my sense i wanted to take a look at the last time one of these great ideologies linked to a process of redefinition. >> do you explore in your book what forces shape the mentality of this man? >> yes. i do. at great length. i believe that it was his father . strangely enough i think it was his father's experiences in mexico during the mexican revolution where his father went off to make his fortune in the oil business. his father developed a particular world view, a particular political philosophy, came home and transmitted that the buckley and his eight siblings.

>> a quick thing for keeping him in power after world war two, did he serve in world war two or was he in yale writing about god and yell? >> buckley did serve in the army. he did serve in the army, but not overseas. >> said he didn't see people blown up in more? >> he did not personally see people blown up in war. >> i want to complement to as a self identify liberal. a very fair job and william f. buckley. i want to ask you about the distinction you draw between perkiness and libertarianism. i, as someone that i would hardly say is on the right to will see this mainly as an objection to powerful government and libertarian, something that

is very deeply suspicious of government going beyond whatever we debate to be there a legitimate role, so i don't see a much to a battle between the rich arianism in that sense and more traditional conservatism. >> i hear you, but i think that most libertarian thinkers would i agree with what i've read from frank mayer. government has very small and all their responsibilities and italy that's essential to preserve freedom there could a few responses about this in the book and the kid of destitute

and not saying they're writing you're wrong, but will the potential philosophy is. lots of libertarians still away. probably ron paul being among them. yes? >> again, don't you think the libertarians are mostly opposed to the government to act as unnecessarily a birkie an idea. the government is to be power except to the sensitive sources come even the things he talked about, the rule of law and protection of private property and individual safety. i mean, we are specifically disagreeing? >> disagree on and many, many things, what the function of government as and even on taxes. so this idea that taxes are bad and we should do everything to lower taxes, i think, is a bit of a libertarian view. it has to do is shrinking

government and shrinking government down to size. thank you. >> could you speak to the -- today's situation and the tea party? is this the next movement of the conservative movement based upon your observations? >> i don't know. it is a lot easier to look in the riviera than out the windshield. i think that actually, nobody can look with confidence out the windshield, but i think we do learn an awful lot by studying history, and it may not tell us exactly where we are going, but it does tell us what they saw the possibilities are. i have no idea what the future is for the party's or whether that will be the trajectory that continues. i don't know.

>> there seems to be a repeat now. the differences between reality and ideology and, even though a lot of the seniors and others in is in hearsay, well, we -- about medicare. i mean, is that what they're saying, we have to cut these things? but the whole idea is, how come people will suffer for ideology and vote for somebody who really may undermine their survival? there are a lot of people now in this country who are urging. people who are middle-class. many people are unemployed. yet rather than voting the reality of where survival or their ability to continue functioning on a level that they had, they voted idea was see that seven times that for themselves. >> well, i believe there -- i believe there are two types of people here.

there are those who believe that there are two types of people and those who don't. so in much the same vein i suggest there are two types of people, people who admit they have an ideology, and people who have an ideology but don't have made it a are not aware of it. we all do have an ideology. it is a world view and mood of the will to kind of camino, walk around politically and have ideas without it. no, the issue is when confronted with particular facts, will fax it trump predispositions? and that is a separate question. william f. buckley would have said that for him they did. the birkie as would have absolutely said that for them it does because they would have said we are about learning from

experience and studying facts and making a pragmatic decision. certainly robert taft did do that. he did have inclination's, but when he sat down and study dated he would go against his inclinations when the data let in the way. that is the real question, whether we are aware of its and can consider, be open to, and consider it inconvenient facts and reconsider our predispositions. >> the elephant in the room religion and politics to follow up on that, and ideology, is and the elephant and their religion and the libertarians that want less government just one rule of law, but yet passing a law that

restricts other people's rights, women's rights, other things, in all of this is serious to me religion and all the politics may also speak to this woman's question why they may vote against their economic self-interest. >> well, i think religion is an elephant in the room. there may be other elements, of hippopotamuses in the room as well. i will say this, but i think for william f. buckley jr. his convulses and was that nothing was more influential to him than that in that that affected. >> a white male. a lot of these questions you would never be affected by a reality. >> we have an election year coming up. >> rear-ended now. >> who is the candidate you're

pushing for? >> and now pushing for a candid and in my book. >> when i was growing up, my first awareness, alice thought of kind of a contrarian who delighted in taking no matter what the topic. and then sort of intellectually bullying people. that is an excellent and the board in question. so buckley was a very sharp debater and he g buckley was the very sharp c debater. and heathcote lacerate in a comment pretty effectively. on the other hand he counted

among his closest friends ardent liberals, john kenneth kamala murray contend, alann steen, people whose ideas were dear friends of this. no, he gave no quarter in debate the law but he was not mean-spirited. he did know where the line was between being very tough and very passionate on an issue and being mean, personally mean. many people who profess to admire him, even emulate him, rush limbaugh, for example, says the other than his own father william f. buckley jr. was the

greatest influence in his life. i wish that there would learn from him about that line. anything else?

he became very wealthy. that is an example in my mind is steve jobs did not cause hardly any lobbyists. he was not at his politically. in a can of very wealthy man. the crony capitalists on the other hand is the voluntary exchange and are interested in making money out of the political system. it is not created innovative practice but having political connections and which allows them to get government contracts and set aside from the tax codes on a guaranteed debt government loans and is guaranteed government grant and actually inside information that will help them on investment decisions. cities they think are the two circuits arch types that exist in america today. my concern is we are increasingly moving in the direction of the crony cap lewis and away from the free market capitalist has steve jobs an example. let me talk about this

phenomenon in a couple of different areas. first the people in the end site of the politicians and how they extract their wealth through this crony capitalism. then i want to talk about the people on the outside that are politically connected and how they're able to effectively use their crony connections to enrich to our extends. and finally went to talk about what are some possible solutions and does this really matter? we've always had politicians that have taken on the entity table and have gotten rich and we've always had the railroad variance of the night teen century to cut sweetheart deals with the government. should we even really care about this? can give a guess that my answers have soviet this is the issue we face in america and the 21st century. so let's talk about politicians first. america is supposed to be governed by self-governance, the

emotion within individuals to washington who are supposed to represent ourselves and supposed to be some form of citizen legislature. about 67 years ago, that started to change. we have a situation that were elected officials could come and perform public service but they come and perform public service relatively middle-class but they leave very wealthy. let me give you two recent examples from people. i believe this is a problem when a speaker of the house in san francisco. the shivers came in the house her net worth was around $3 million. her net worth has come at 876% which means the dry compound he says, your average about 24%.

george soros and warren buffett were certainly aged and would kill for that kind of return on investment. so dramatic increase in wealth. i will argue at least part of that, a large part is connected to her political position. what about a republican? the speaker of the house was dennis hastert from illinois. dennis hastert when he became speaker in the late 1990s had a network around $300,000. when he left a speaker less than a decade later, it was in the millions and could potentially have been $11 million. he didn't inherit money, didn't win the lotto. it's a function of him leveraging his position in order to enrich itself. those are two individuals with multiple others i talk about in the book. any people from political parties in this information comes from the public financial disclosures and comparing their dvds with what they are working on this legislation,

what as they might have to sensitive information. so how does this work? how is it elected officials are able to reference their position and make money? the first example i would care for the ipo, which i would consider simply a form of sleekly let me just give you an example of this. let's say john is in the united states senate and i come into his office and i need a favor and i say john, i need a favor. here's a shoebox at $10,000 cash. i appreciate your help. what is going to happen? if we get caught, or going to jail. that's bravery. cash in exchange for a good parent that doesn't happen in washington. what you hear about the gentlemanly congressman jefferson we paid $90,000 in his freezer. that's the exception to the rule and frankly that is an illegal draft is really small potatoes. you make a lot more money if you play it right engaging in what i

consider legal craft. spinoza; to senator john's office to consider bringing a shoebox of cash i say john and a favor. i'm concerned about a piece of legislation by the way my fault that this company and i'm going to give you access to initial public offering shares of stock. are you going to have to buy these at $20 a share in the next indigo public they're going to sell for at least $50 a share and you can turn around and saw the next and make $100,000. that is perfectly legal and not close on quite frankly in washington d.c. here is the challenging part. when congressmen and senators engage in initial public offering purchases in stock, they don't have to disclose it as such. they simply have it as another stock transaction. when you go through financial disclosure forms, the only way you find out whether they received these secret ipo shares as they literally looking at the date they are purchased and see if that was before a publicly

available for the rest of us. this is what happened in the case of the nancy pelosi a po that i talked about in my book and they would call calls the subject of the 60 minutes episode a couple weeks ago. literally suppose the camp was given access to 5000 shares of stock in peace, the credit card number company. the next day when it went public immediately sold it for $6 a share and within a matter of weeks it was over $90 a share. literally in a matter of the data is a net gain of $100,000 in the visa ipo stock. now was there increase broke while? axonal. what is curious as it was perceived access to shares which are enormously difficult for anyone to get. at the same time they received excess, visa had two pieces of legislation they were profoundly concerned about on capitol hill.

the important thing to remember is visa if a credit card issuer. they make their money from that 3% from the restaurants are grocery store hunting merchant swipes see about 3%. that is how visa makes the money. they don't make their money in interest rates or anything else. these pieces of legislation dealt specifically with this issue of slate fees. one came out of the committee with strong bipartisan support but it never received a vote on the house floor. nancy pelosi never latitude. per literally too serious, nancy pelosi to the position that she was not willing to support or get behind despite the reform. is that related to the visa ipo? i don't know. but what if somebody from visa had taught her $50,000 in cash? but there be any doubt in your mind that there was a quick pro-quote? et al. think so.

but because it is done to this legal mechanism of what i call good draft, this practice happens quite frequently. how widespread is that? i know congresswoman pelosi's case there at least eight to 10 ipos that she and her husband have participated in over the years, oftentimes in access to stop and see the value double overnight selling at the next day. i took a little about ipo method. let's talk about inside information. i think we can all recognize over the last 40 years decisive government has gotten much bigger and a lot more intrusive, whether it be let in 2000 whether it's the growth of government in the health care or. clearly government has become much more involved in markets and the economy. what that means the courses you have a situation where government moves markets. if you have access to information in the position of power, you can trade on that information can be very, very

well. let me give you a couple of examples really briefly what i mean. one example of republican and one example of a democrat. first example. in the beginning sets in september 2 and 8, there were a series of meetings held in washington d.c. when septembers eckstein. in which ben bernanke, said chairman and hank hank paulson treasury secretary sit down with senior members of congress and discuss it and the true gravity of the situation. keep in mind this is mid-september. the dow jones still at 11,400. people are nervous and panic is not set in. we know for hank paulson's memoirs that he has to members of congress at that meeting had to be there but there is in cell phones the door. and we know based on paulson's account that they informed members of congress that this is

a potentially cataclysmic financial crisis, that the dow jones industrial average go down at least 20% am really looking at potential catastrophe in terms of the economy. according to paulson, the congressman was stand out what they were hearing. after that september 18 meeting, 10 people who were at that meeting went out and sold a bunch of stuff the next day. congressman from virginia rammed sold stock in 90 different companies. you had other members of congress to dump shares in the financial dirt and ended up buying shares and other companies come up at a very, very well. also a gentleman named buckets come as a current chairman of financial services committee who left that meeting and the next morning got some thing called crocheters q., q. q. i'm not a financial guy. that is