>> it's a matter of will and how they react to public opinion about its performance whether the public has to the sense that there has to be more fairness. >> would entail to fix the problem with it until new rules being passed by congress or what it entailed leadership simply returning? >> both.

tomorrow the leadership could return to enforcement of different standards if it wanted to through the rules committee on an ad hoc basis for the standing rules before the session is over. no, it's technically there for the majority vote situation in the house. the problem is often in the senate and i can remember many frustrations warehouse leadership hastert and gingrich couldn't find out for the last moment with the senate might or might not do on the matter, and the senate parliamentarians were not free to give any information out, and it was very frustrating because the house leadership can understand it is an agenda and a majoritarian approach on the agenda on a day-to-day basis. so, no. but how the leadership now in

the last two months can say here is our new emphasis on openness conciliation mabey the proof will be in the lame-duck session. i don't see it before the lame-duck session. >> there was a new rule in the congress barring the commemorative resolutions, and as i remember, it said it shall be returned on to the representative which means to me it never happened. to what extent can the congress bar introduction of the resolution? and >> every little winning team or town or whatever, the problem with the rule that they wrote this there were loopholes. number when you see the

commemoratives not frequently, on suspicion all the time to read you don't get unanimous consent the way they used to. it took up a lot of time, but rather than put a specific date, the commemoratives require the specific date or period of time for honoring the invasion for the person. rather than put it in the audio resolution they put it in the preamble, so it is just an expensive, but then -- thou was the real around it. but in the return there were many times when we saw the bill that was clearly commemoratives over the years and he but have to change it so that the emphasis was put into the preamble or some other way it was done. the public would know that because the press release, because that was then -- as you said, the rules that should not

introduced. the response of the of the parliamentarians to police that. >> the changes described in the procedure -- back to the parliamentarian, and the parliamentarians role, the relationship of the parliamentarians to the presiding officer or to the leadership? >> a very good question, and i think the answer is yes. not necessarily a negative way. the house decision making is so much more front end loaded through the rules committee, structured rules. the role of the parliamentarian as i grew through it over many years was much more spontaneous and unpredictable, because any and all germane amendments, second-degree amendments, motions etc., would spring up without notice. now most rules virtually eliminate all of those

uncertainties. if you devotee of the parliamentarian as a requirement the parliamentary and get immediate advice is much diminished, and on the other hand of the parliamentarians are always advising any member that wants to go before the rules committee on whether their amendments would be germane or otherwise subject to the point of order. so there is more of that front end loading of decision making. but the electronic ways of communication have changed the dynamic of the relationship between members for civil the parliamentarian's office will send over an amendment as germane to. we don't think so. you never see them more often than not. there's another version. but when i -- that's part of my biggest challenge, because for 30 years in my own time for democratic speakers when new gingrich became speaker, there

was a question about whether he was going to play house with everybody. i had just been named three months earlier by speaker foley. there was some pressure to put out all of us. almost by definition and could have been unfortunate for the house, because anyone he would have chosen would almost had to have been partisan. to my last day, i was a fan, and i think both sides feel the parliamentarians have not been partisan. that has resulted in another trend which has been the proliferation until this year from the appeals and the rulings of the chair where members don't always distinguish between rules and rulings. the committee can be very unfair, and i should have been allowed to offer this amendment, david obey for any of the

republicans would have felt ruling to the chair, and then both sides would politicize the votes on that appeal has votes on subjects to the issue on the amendment, and within minutes there's been operations which would say this is how members felt about an issue which was clearly not germane on the substantive issue, not on the correctness of the rule. so that trend was unheard of for the most part and it is debated again democrats aren't using it to politicize those votes based on the merits and having immediately the districts and david rogers wrote a great article but i think is wrong. it's another example of how respect in some minds at least while the process has been

diminished because of the frustration on the part of most minorities, and allowed to do what i think they would otherwise be allowed to. but then when it comes to personal relationships with the speaker and the parliamentarians , it is not perhaps as intimate as the speaker but john sullivan, my successor, enjoy a professional relationship with her. and john boehner now with tom quick. what concerns me most is recruiting young people to be in that thought as they see the house. you don't see the dynamism, the spontaneity, the friendships that all i saw during my years. perhaps they don't develop the affection, and that sentiment was very sustaining over many

years. the new folks that are coming along to say we are here to do a job for the house of representatives is a challenge. >> do you think that he party will infuse more openness and transparency in the congress? >> that's hard to predict. the idea of do they want openness, or do they just on their agenda? i don't know. the debt limit issue is any indication by the tea party i don't know the answer to your question let me just say that's not a parliamentary inquiry. [laughter]

>> i have read many sources that the field of the friendship has broken down in congress because congressmen fly home on the weekends, and there's not these relationships such as for all reagan had with tip o'neill coming and people don't stay in town and have dinner parties with one another and cocktail parties that they had previously >> absolutely. the demise of the second residents. when they are in town members are fund-raisers every tuesday and wednesday night, maybe thursday. that clearly doesn't encourage members and families to socialize after hours, but there is no argument i don't think. it's very unfortunate.

there were some great -- maybe they're still or committee level and maybe in the gymnasium platform that can be allowed to cultivate, and from time to time -- when there's a bipartisan bill that passes the house, it seems to me the go overboard to talk about how it's a great effort. it might be on something on peanuts. laughter kabir sensitive to it, what they can do about it. >> how extensive are the differences among the parliamentary systems around the world? are they much more homogeneous or has varied between ours and -- >> it's rather unique because it's not a parliamentary system, at least it's headed in that direction where the government is in as is the case in most

parliaments in the world where the executive branch is within the legislative branch. as a, with our separation of powers in the house and senate and then the limitation of power, it is unique, and there are some cause i -- clauson i systems that follow the u.s. model. when i talk to people they normally suggest they not do it as a knee-jerk reaction. but i would say -- i have never done a real survey on the world wide parliamentary systems and the consistencies as the mother of parliament it's amazing how our system is, but they have a commonwealth system, they have many other parliaments through

the world that's basically followed the parliamentary system. and i went to kenya right before those riots. the same issue there as you may recall was the election, where the current president probably lost the tribal rioting and the first thing they did was the office of the prime minister, and his opponents served in that capacity, you have the opposing parties, one as prime minister, and the countries have those two positions, but they are more influential, and they proceeded to create 80 departments, 40 cabinet officers, and that is

there one way of compromising. that was the immediate response -- there's basic reforms and how they can be implemented throughout the world are beyond my expectations. but it's always fun during my time there to read people that had those questions. i would say i'm happy to answer questions. i would be happy to answer questions. so, being able to step back after and look and do some comparisons gives you some insight, but it is ultimately a political decision. if you to see how screwed up the e.u. is, read the segment as far as the european parliament is concerned. >> i know we are on the other side of the capitol but i would be interested in your thoughts

on the filibuster reform. i think from your former counterpart over there is releasing a book this summer called quote code defending the filibuster." >> when i started off talking about the nixon and acted -- anecdote it is the argument you could do it by majority vote. the so-called option to accomplish at, because both parties now have enough ethics it seems to me in the senate to project that notion. i would recall the chair to the effect the majority of voters and the majority of the senate has a tradition that any that is appealed and overrules.

so that is i guess the ultimate effect of the option. but if, just for starters, majority senators see themselves as potentially a minority, what they want to preserve, and not knowing who the president is going to be, that seems to me would be a constant -- robert byrd was the champion of the senate's latest delivery. each senator should have a full range of options every state and then along comes reconciliation he helped write but then he had second thoughts and put in a rule which you can do by the vote of reconciliation. so, i would like to see the senate from a distance become more majoritarian. if only the four senators could

certainly be more transparent, i think they've reached an accommodation to some extent on first the game at 14 and now it is on the confirmation that there would be no nuclear option. the recess appointments are not going to be made in the remainder of this term. clearly the impact of the requirement is profound, and the senate has measures to short circuit that by combining what would otherwise a vote getting up to final passage to get unanimous consent to make a final votes that would ordinarily be a majority vote, that way that is unanimous consent and they don't have the rules committee that can do that. so yes, i think of all of the

reforms, that's with a targeted most heavily and i don't dispute that target. >> thank you. [applause] thank you all for coming. pub

off here is a ten minute portion of his comments. >> thank you. i just want to go to a minute about what the department has done for this event, but before i do that, i want everyone to know the first element of any

special evin the deployment is that we cover the neighborhoods. we want to make sure that there is no reduction in service to any of our neighborhoods and the every neighborhood has the same number of officers that you have any other day of the year. and then we use all of the officers in addition to that function within the rnc. this takes about 3500 to 4,000 police officers in order to secure an event of this magnitude. obviously we don't have that number within the county or the tampa bay area. so, we have partnered with other law enforcement agencies throughout the state to come here and assist us with this event. now, there are actually to the events that are going on. you have the political event inside the secure zone, and that is controlled by matt and of the secret service, and that process

is to elect a candidate for presidency. then you have that even on the outside of the secure zone that we are responsible, and that is where people will be able to come and express their viewpoints and exercise their first amendment rights. both of those processes are equally as important coming and it's our job to ensure everyone has a safe platform on which to express their views. the community oriented policing is not a philosophy, it's not a division or bureau within the tampa police department. it is our philosophy and way of life that defines the tampa police department, and that's how we've been able to reduce crime over the last years. we've reduced crime in the city of tampa by 64.3%. we've reduced auto theft by over 90% coming and we've done that through this community policing approach. we are going to use that same approach with the rnc.

all you have seen the event zone. within that event zone will be broken down into four smaller geographic areas. each of those geographic areas will be overseen by a commander from the tampa police department or the hillsborough sheriff's office. and then within those areas, there will be smaller geographic areas, especially in the downtown of several blocks that officers will be assigned to and they will be assigned throughout the rnc so everyone will get to know them. they are business owners, the residence, the visitors, they will get to know the officers in that area and the officers will get to know their area as well and we believe there will be very, very successful. we also have the ability to expand and contract of arnove that. if we have problems in a particular area, we have the ability to send officers in. i'm going to show you a photograph on the next slide of the new forms that you will see.

i know everyone loves this beautiful 100% polyester uniform that we use, but we are going to be using a tan khaki colored uniform that is caught in coming and the reason that we chose that is to fold. one, it is cooler for the officers. number two, it's more approachable. it has a friendly look so people won't hesitate to come forward to the police officers and approach them. the management of the year with the department will go to the troubled year. you'll see a photograph of that and that will be done whenever there is an issue of public safety or large crowd that we will have to deal with. it's our hope no one will see that, but that's probably unrealistic on our part. on jobs -- our job is to identify individuals that are bent on destruction for destruction and remove them from

the crowd as quickly as possible so that we can restore the environment in which individuals would be able to demonstrate. those that were coming to you, tampa, to express their point of view and illustrate will do so. there will be a very small group the will be coming as i said, been on disruption and destruction coming and we will be dealing with those individuals. now, we have done a great deal to communicate with all the levels of individuals that are involved with the rnc. for example, the town hall meetings. we've had meetings with the business managers and building managers in the downtown area. we have met with a lot of send fungibles to try to communicate exactly what to expect and what they will be seeing during this event. we've also communicated with the individuals that are coming through tanned but to demonstrate. we've participated in the two

panels with the aclu, and i've participated in an hour and a half national webinar college in dealing with the rnc that was hosted by the aclu. frankly the aclu was singing our song. if they were telling everyone that they do not support any criminal activity, and their expectation is that everyone will follow until lawful orders of any police officer, and they also said that there will be individuals in the crowd whose job is to insulate everyone and to taking actions that they normally wouldn't take and they caution the individuals throughout the hour-and-a-half to not get involved or not play to that. this again, it's our job to insure that everyone has and gets to express their viewpoints. as stated by linda carvel, we have a parade route we know there will be spontaneous

events. we are communicating with those individuals as well so we can develop a route and a process that will be advantageous to everyone. so, we certainly do expect that as well triet here is the uniforms i talked about. on the left is one you will see on a day-to-day basis and then on the bottom is what we refer to as our troubled year -- off turtle gear. officers have training. intensive training put on by that part of homeland security, and that is involved in three days of training that every officer that is involved in crowd management has gone through. we've also done a great deal of training on the philosophy of enforcement and first amendment training. one is the golden rule of the police department is everyone is

gaining respect. everyone. there is no exception to the rule coming and that is the same thing with the rnc. and obviously, that is a former law enforcement and all officers would be expected of the dignity and respect, but again we are reinforcing this with all the officers that are coming to assist us. we've done five sessions of the supervisor and commander training. this isn't your everyday policing war triet an officer deals one-on-one with a witness, a victim, suspect. this is a group policing. the officers will be expected to act as a group on the commanders instructions and not act individually. and we have trained all of the supervisors and commanders and let them know that we have set the bar very high, and our

expectations of their leadership in these incidents they are to ensure the officers are showing restraint they bring in extra supply of patients with them and they only act on the commanders borders. and then sheriff david and myself have a message that again reinforces the tone and the philosophy of the enforcement for the rnc and every officer that is coming here saw that tape. if that wasn't enough, we want to make sure we have an e learning test that all of the officers have been obligated to take and pass. as we have done a great deal of training for and we believe everyone will be prepared and at this point is prepared for this event and to ensure it is positively reflected on the city of tampa. >> i'm not in the habit of breaking promises to my country,

neither is if the fenner palin and when we tell you we are going to change washington, leaving our problems for some on lucky generation to fix who can count on. and we -- [applause] the strength, experience, judgment and backbone to keep our word to you. >> you have stood up one by one and said enough to the politics of the past. you understand in this election the greatest risk we can try use the same old politics with of the same and expect a different result. you have shown what history teaches. that it's defining moments like this one, a change we need doesn't come from washington, the change comes to washington.

what do we see when we look at the dead? responding to this in two ways: won by describing the bodies in great detail. and then often, stopping in the middle of that very detailed description and then saying it's

horrible. i cannot actually put this into words. words cannot say this. america will stand up for the ideals that we believe and when we are operating at our best, and we want to see this country perhaps above all else be turned to the path of peace. now, from this year's aspin

ideas festival a discussion on how new technologies are impacting hour from journalism and race relations in this country. speakers include gustavo who writes a column called asking mexican for the weekly and the orange county california. this is about an hour and 20 minutes. >> good afternoon. i am sarah come a writer and digital media consultant and currently the editor of the mago magazinelu design decoded column and i have a book out on culturi in thecu city. i've been at the ideas festivalo for six years and my first year i was and presenting a i publication called wealth changing where i was the a managing editor. it was a small on-line effort sn solutions to some of the most pressing problems of the next entry project attended a roundtable session on the future of media and the inclusion of the session was clearly eight -- industry there is a palpable sense that the center need thing

was no great threat to the giant publisher so bloggers were -- terrell made and i suspect few people run facebook. things have changed. this year walter isaacson spoke about digital media and is up in remarks and we have been given hashtag for the life tweeting panel. every person from roundtable has developed a robust digital strategy for their brand. if you're listening to the leaders on that roundtable six years ago you might not have seen pitchers give up the impending disruption but there were emerging leaders in that crowd that year that could've told you not only that massive change was going to calm but that it was our day already happening just outside the digital field of the industry powerhouses. you have calm to hear the best ideas of the moment that the session is going to be a little bit different. today we are going to start with the best ideas of next year or the year after that. the four people you are here

from today are already established leaders in their field. they're also the carriers of the future. they have the vision and understanding required to actively -- in the coming years and we trust you'll agree that these are the kinds of people you want in that role. we are excited to present you with the frontlines of change. >> i am alexis madrigal senior editor at "the atlantic." this session as in keeping with the idea that is going to be different it's going to be logistically different as well. we have four speakers and we will introduce them in just a second. two of them are speaking solo and their sandwiching people who will do a little too wet. these are going to be fall on presentations as opposed to sort of the more panel discussions that you have seen and they are going to try and really bring you something a fully packaged idea. why we chose these four people aside from --

you know in technologies which is what i mostly write about we talked about the adoption curve and we talked about as a new technology comes to the market like some small percentage of people adopted cell phones or the iphone after came out or computers in the 1980s. but the truth is that lots of different cultural ideas and new practices also have really similar a adoption curves. and so the people that you are looking at here are cultural early adopters. in their chosen fields they are at the forefront of practice and are really trying to bring you new ideas before they hit the mainstream. does anyone here know who the artist -- is? [laughter] for people who don't know i want to let you know you all know his work. he is the sculptor of mount rushmore and adam lerner might be the world's foremost expert on mount rushmore.

he has his ph.d. from hopkins and american monuments. from there he entered the museum world and the contemporary muse -- museum in baltimore and at the denver art museum. after that he wanted to strike out on his own and so he decided to found an art space in a suburban shopping mall outside of denver shopping complex. is called the laboratory of art in ideas and he quickly established himself as one of the most innovative and creative people in the art world and so when the museum of contemporary arts in denver at the mca came looking for someone to run their building they found him. there is also -- and inspiration for this session because that denver and ca, he does a program called -- where he pairs unlike speaker so i gave a talk about compressed air and my counterpart gave a talk about

art history and alchemy and you defined unexpected connections between these. amanda mitchell, we appropriately met when her project beat our longshot magazine for an innovation of journalism award. she has been at the absolute edge of additional media and politics since things really exist it. do you remain the heart -- [inaudible] that was amanda. [laughter] she moved to "huffington post" when she had a groundbreaking project off the bus and now has ended up most curiously after a time back in the newspaper the guardian, the u.k. guardian running many of their social media things. i just want you to believe me

when i tell you she is one of the sharpest minds in digital media in one of the most articulate advocates for how social media can be just or then marketing. she will be presenting with matt thompson who is sitting to her right and he is the digital media inventor constantly on the edge of what our new realities or scientific changes are in its kind of hard to tell because he is so far beyond what most people are thinking. he runs digital things that mpr and he is another advocate for digital journalism and all its forms if there are any budding journalists. he is going to entice you to go out and run on code is simply -- quickly as possible. we couldn't have two better people to talk about the future of media and political media. last but obviously not least gustavo arellano sitting right there. i actually met gestapo in the

best possible way because my dad was his biggest fan. when he was writing the mexican column for "oc weekly" hysterically funny and informed by gustavo latin american studies from ucla my dad never taught me much about mexican culture just outsource that whole project. [laughter] i met him five years ago when his first book came out which which is ask a mexican and in the five year since he has been skyrocketing forward. he has two other books, one of personal history of orange county and his most recent book which is called "taco usa" and it uses mexican food to probe the borders and boundaries between american and mexican culture and he is also the editor of "oc weekly" in southern california. >> just a final comment, we are going to be tweeting these talks using the hashtag aspen futures. and in general just as alexis

already mentioned we really want to encourage everybody to draw connections. these presentations have some boundaries between them but ideally we are breaking down the boundaries and finding the commonalities in the interdisciplinary date between them and that makes interesting things happen. without further ado our first speaker is adam lerner. [applause] >> i love it when people talk about my work as a graduate student, at least until i pay off my student loans. i like to make sure that it gets some airplay. actually, i was a graduate student for a very long time, about 12 years, and sometimes i felt embarrassed to admit to my peers that i was writing my dissertation on the sculptor of mount rushmore because of its lowbrow associations. but now what amazes me is

something very different. what amazes me is that i actually fail to learn what is probably the one single great lesson of studying an artist, especially an artist like him so in the six years of research and writing about this artist, who found his voice by attempting to do something that nobody else had done before, it never occurred to me that there is a lesson in that. there is a lesson in that actually might apply to me, that i might actually think about doing something that no one else had done before. and it's actually the nature of academic pursuits to remain an observer of other people who break the rules. now, as the director of our museum of contemporary arts actually i realize it's actually the nature of all cultural institutions to remain detached

as an observer of those people who break the rules. that actually it is the nature of our cultural decisions to cultivate a sense of maybe appreciative or respectful detachment from the risktakers. it is the nature of art as we have inherited to actually be about breaking rules and going against conventions. there is something about the formal presentation of museums that actually is very similar to an academic thesis and their own creative impulse. so the great implicit message of all of our cultural decisions is

that the artist has made the sacrifice so that you don't have to. and that is basically the christian model. which i think is something that i have sort of always as a museum or sort have tried to work against. so museums, and traditional cultural institutions, they point to the arts and they say isn't that an original voice, but the audience what they see is, they see the institution which has no original voice of its own generally. so it's like when you point in front of a dog, if you have dogs. what does it do? he sniffs your finger, right? the dog sees you, not what you're pointing at and the same thing as the audience for cultural institutions they tend to see you, the cultural

institution as the framer of all that creative energy that the artist has sort of mustard. which means that the institution has to be a sort of model. if they have to model themselves, how we can learn from these creative artists to express an original voice, to break out of existing conventions and so if you want to foster the idea of the artist sacrifice, the artist sacrifice should be an inspiration for us to take chances, for us to break the rules, for us to clear away those conventions and start to see the world afresh. we want to sort of foster that attitude, then we as an institution have to do that ourselves and that is actually what i'm going to talk to you about from here on, sort of how i have tried to serve as an institution to have an original, creative voice. it is the attempt to model what

it is we learn from our. i began in 2004 when a real real estate developer invited me as alexis mentioned, to create a cultural institution in the suburbs of denver where i was freed from any strictures of one cultural institution ought to be. and i began with a lecture program as mentioned. i called it the lab, the lab and it was a labrador retriever. i don't have a labrador retriever. at the docks and that it was sort of funny. i found it funny. maybe you don't come i don't know. we started with a lecture program and that lecture program we called unrelated topics and this was sandy -- andy warhol and artificial lighting.

one speaker spoke on one subject for half an hour and then an unrelated subjects for half an hour and then both of at the same time. now, there we have it. we are in an unleased storefront space in the shopping district and there are 20 people in the audience and that is about two weeks into it. there a few weeks later we have maybe 75 people now showing up. on the left a of professor at the university of colorado talking about ts elliott and then you have a grocer talking about fresh meat sausage. [laughter] this is a sample season for you. carnivorous plants and colorful painting. earth art and cheese. l. and -- chinese opera and alfred hitchcock, walt whitman and whole hog cooking. what we do is sleep here things according to how they sound good

next to each other and that sounded great. tequila and dark energy in the universe. [laughter] so you start to get what happens, your mind immediately makes the connection doesn't it? soul food and existentialism. prairie dogs and gertrude stein. and then the one which of course is obvious, marxism and kittens, kittens, kittens. now the point of all of this is that the mind naturally follows existing patterns when thinking about any subject. think about where you want to go to dinner on an average day and your mind will always go to the same places that it always goes to. you have got to check the mind to get to something new. by forcing the mind to make a connection with indifferent rounds it fosters new patterns of ranking bringing us out of the old patterns. which is why salman rushdie says a bit of this and a bit of that is how the newness enters the

world. so we start to get the developers to build a separate building for us where we did have these programs as well as contemporary artists position. our motto was because culture is big, like canada. we also thought that was funny. obviously a very different sense of humor here. [laughter] so we did exhibitions on international art that there is a sense of play in everything we did. we were across this place from this -- across the street from this place called sporting goods. welcome to the lab, we are not. [laughter] and then we had to actually apologize for that. we had to publish something, apologize to our neighbors saying we are not. apparently we are.

[laughter] so what happens is through play we not only deflated for tensions that are normally associated with high art of the created a sense of the unexpected so we are not sort of saying that this is our budgets a playful spirit of art so joke making for us became a model for creativity for breaking out of what you usually expect from any kind of art institution. then in 2009 with the popularity of the labs programming's as alexis mentioned i was offered the position of the director of the museum. now the class clown becomes the class president. at mca denver we are a contemporary art museum but we added the dog to our logo because we believe we both are a museum preserving the tradition of art but also we are a lab, laboratory for experiments and with the future of art is and what the future of the museum might be.

and in that we try to develop a new language for contemporary art that would be outside of a traditional museums tend to do. this is our program, art fitness training. waiver program feminism and company were for example this is let by julian silverman and hear a sample program would be were repaired a woman who is the leading salesperson of toys at passion parties and paired her with a leading tupperware sales person and followed by a sociologist who studies women's -- and there was a kind of ringing together of the cultural right -- richness and understanding the various ways. there is a kind of understanding of our culture that is very fabric, the very fabric of our lives and that is both commercial culture and not really looked out on a normal

basis. we did a program called art meets these were we had an artisan butcher who fabricated a carcass in front of an audience. meanwhile we had a guy named roger green playing guitar who is a vegetarian so we called the vegetarian option. and we had sarah rich and nicola doing talks going everywhere from the animal itself all the way to the restaurant in the city. the point is to connect art to those creative forces that actually make up our civilization. through these live programs life programs we become as an institution, coproducers with these other creative people out there who produces with the artist as well so his co-authors in a sense we developed our own unique voice as an institution. but i think more than anything else though we had to relying upon the creativity of our staff, the people who want to work at an art museum or people

who are attracted to creative endeavors. these are incredibly creative people and we have a young generation of folks who work there, who you have to actually work to keep down their creative spirits, which actually most cultural institutions do. we tried to do the opposite. here is sarah and brett. but, so for example we did an exhibition called energy effects, which feature your thermonuclear weapons paired alongside a video work by gonzalez and when our exhibition manager went to return those weapons to the air and museum he decided he would wear a bunny suit. there you see him with his assistant, and he drove around in a flatbed truck wearing a bunny suit and the rest of the staff wanted to play a prank on him and wanted to have him

arrested and called the cops on him which was funny. nothing happened. he is an artist, but this is something, this is kind of like the creative spirit that takes place within the organization that i think is not about our. it's about energy. energy has this natural gravitational pull to it. it's not even something that is marketed. is something that becomes an attractive force. there you have my assistant at the time aaron, who for our event dressed as a taco and played the trumpet and the donkey is also carrying a tropics during the fund-raiser. we have our graphic designer alec stevens who cannot do anything without being fabulous. this is our visitor services director who organizes -- andy lyons who organizes a friday night event called black sheep friday and one night he organized an event for example called museum professional wrestling where he invited

museum professionals to engage in thumb wrestling competitions. and we still do mix to taste at the program, mixed taste. sarah and by the way these crowds now are like 300 plus people at these events. we have to use in industrial space across the street becerra who produces these programs, she likes to -- so we giveaway a raffle and in this case what we did once, we gave away free tickets to the king tut exhibition at the denver art museum and the winner had to redeem these two used tires at the art museum to collect their winning tickets but we didn't tell the art museum that. [laughter] so we never did that again. so anyway the point of all of this is that why do we have art? why do we have art if we cannot

ourselves learn from the artists who break the rules? to find new patterns of thinking and doing things through play, and to connect to each other as human beings through laughter, through sort of somehow shaking things up and sort of not being as professionals to each other as an institution to a visitor but actually as being human to each other. we do exhibitions of art, but as a museum will do, but the important thing is by modeling creativity for our visitors we hope that they will be able to see our exhibitions in a different light. we want them to be actually inspired by our artist so themselves be creative. we wanted them to believe that they too can re-create the world so we believe in masterworks. this is not to say oh yeah to wear a bunny suit is the same as

to make a masterwork of our. the core of every art is the authentic creative act which is common to everyone and to do that you need to do it yourself. you can't just say it. you need to do it as an institution. that is what inspires other people to do a too. then there are a couple of institutions i will end with which are crucial to our attitude about art and culture. one is an exhibition that i co-authored focused on the american counterculture of the 1960's and seventies. this is a crucial one called west of center and it's a large-scale exhibition. what it does is it looks at certain creative individuals in the 60's and seventies and why it is interesting is these people i believe have to find an alternative legacy for a culture that actually continues to exist today. these are people and here's a

picture of trinidad colorado a geo-descent commune and these are people who didn't necessarily define themselves as artists but set out to live artistically and do so in sort of set out to make the world that they wanted to live in and so they inspired other people to do the same. and that was an attitude you also found in the punk era which followed and this was an exit vision we did centered around the work of bruce conner who you see here where we explored in this exhibition this idea which is again the opposite of what is that the mainstream of cultural institutions today. the attitude is when i see somebody on stage doing something creative and expressive, the feeling that is cultivated in punk rock is i can do that too and those early days formed bands themselves. bad along with the counterculture is the origins effectively the origins of the

diy culture that is everywhere today, especially amongst youth culture. that is the origins of the spirit you see amongst my staff, the people who sort of belief that they are not trying necessarily to find what they're doing as art but to do things more interestingly in the world. they try to live in the world that they feel is more interesting place to live in. and the question is to let that happen so the diy attitude i believe now dominates youth culture. more partly i think it's everywhere and our culture and society and those people who are the leaders of i think actually the future of our culture and society are those people who actually are identifying those creative forces within themselves in any field, in any profession. and at some level what they are doing is modeling themselves after artists and using art as the archetype for innovation, for risk-taking, for creative

thinking so it's up to the cultural institutions now to begin to understand that too. thanks. [applause] >> i have to wear the rare opportunity of getting to query a man do about her insights in the future and we are going to interview each other little bit. before we start talking about the future, think we want to put it into context a little bit. in 2008, you were at "the huffington post." you are now at the guardian and in between you are at the public eye, three very different places. when you think about what the campaign environment was like in 2008 what has changed since? >> there has been a radical shift. it largely is because more of us have our lives on line.

i was hired to by "the huffington post." it's kind of like calling hardball show, not softball but the basic premise was to get her readers engaged in a campaign coverage and as much as possible to make sure that the campaign coverage wasn't so focused on the actual race, so the barbs that were tossed back and forth to train the candidates and to really try and understand what was happening on the ground in communities around the country. now what was so interesting to me, what is very interesting to me looking back is how formalized. we recruited people at "the huffington post" to be what they called citizen journalist. it's a very professional in his effort. the idea was to sign up you have your full-time job. you you are in some ways to embody the life of a journalist. now it turns out we had a project that went on for a year and a half and they wrote some very big stories. we piloted lots of different

features on the site that we found out something most people and maybe recognize today and at the 20,000 people or participate are participate in the part checked i know 14% were interested in writing full-length pieces and doing reporting on their own but for many of the people they wanted to dip in and out of the process. now when you look on line or you look at different news sites, i'm sure you have had this experience, most all of them are asking readers, take a look at this, what do you see? here is how to contribute your photos and a formalized approach we took in 2000 is largely been accepted as sort of an everyday practice for most media institution so at the time i think we were very romantic about the approach and now it it is very commonplace. the big shift in campaign coverage that we are experiencing now and it is really a big challenge for reporters, is, to the campaigns now rely on data to do the campaigning. i am going to tell you a little sort of story. earlier this year a lot of

reporters and political analysts were pointing their fingers at that romney and how is he really going to -- if he has these few offices people can walk into? what a lot of us hadn't buzz hadn't realized was several years before the people who worked with romney had helped identified using data and using records that his campaign had, a small percentage of people who are die-hard romney supporters and they asked him to call it of the supporters who then i.d. that there potentially die-hard romney supporters to then call others and affect a lot of their campaign work in iowa was done largely through the internet, through on line call centers. if you flash back to 2000 think about the millions of people on line who were making t-shirts, putting up their own posters and making media constantly now in effect what you have especially in the campaign in which frankly can say there is there's a bit of lackluster interest on both

sides, a lot of the activity the engine driving the campaigns is largely and of the. if your reporter and you're trying to make sense of this you don't actually have the benefit that you had in 2008, which is the sort of outpouring of local support on line. you are really trying to find out the imaginations of campaigns by watching to see for example what e-mails they may send where and what subject lines because you are using that kind of information to understand their strategy. as a profound difference and a profound challenge. >> i think when i look at user behavior and i look at how the folks that we are reporting for and telling stories to, how they have changed their behavior has changed, the thing that sticks out to me is the new ubiquity of media. but i mean we have had cell phones, mobile phones and mobile devices for a long time now, the better part of the last decade.

the iphone was introduced in 2007. in the time since, in those five years, smartphones, 50% of the u.s. population has a smartphone. it's insane how much people have now worked the media into the fabric of everyday life. caeser did a study called generation it m2 just last year in which they went out to 18-year-olds and surveyed how much time they were spending with the media on a given day and their dramatic uptick. it actually doubled if you go back to 2004. it's about 350 minutes a day. now it is approaching 700 minutes a day that folks are spending with media. that is not they are just watching tv for 700 minutes in a day. it is now the media is a layer on top of everyone's daily experience. so, i have a good friend that i

believe alexis had mentioned named robin sloan. he is a media inventor and writer. a few years ago we created a video looking out at the future of the media and what will happen over the next 10 years back in 2004. we reconvened last year for the society for news design to take a whack at this question of okay in the years since what has changed and what is changing? the way we chose to tackle that question was we wanted to take a common story that would be told across the media, across as long as humankind has been telling itself stories so we told the story of the storm which is a new story of a storm destroying a town or severely damaging a town which is a news story not only which has been told since time eternal since the flood of course that is one that we tell with increasing frequency today. and so, when you look at that,

as many examples as we can find from across time going back to ancient greek emperor that depicted this tale of a storm, a giant storm wiping away of town and we fast-forwarded through town through telegraphs in newspapers and ultimately today to social media and then beyond. and this week, when you collect all of that, all of those forms of telling the story altogether the single thing that stood out was, we have gone from having media, these appointment moments, media as something you go to at 6:30 after you are finished with your work day and watching the evening news with your family around the television to media as this texture, this thing that you are constantly both suckered by and also buffeted by a near daily life. that ubiquity i think is one of the biggest changes, and we

still are struggling i think to grapple with how that changes what we should be saying and how we should be telling stories. >> completely and i think that is fined 2000 we were using these formalized approach is asking people to sign up and giving writers assignments and now i think a lot of people know if they go to a campaign event they expect themselves to take pitchers or to post something on facebook. before we will asking people to to do that in a much more sort of formal approach. but i think you know the last few years we have also seen other big shifts. we have seen i think in many instances grassroots communities organizing themselves for the purposes of clinical power. you can look at sopa and you can look at pipa and i'm really curious to hear from you and your vantage point at national public media how is the dynamic between media and citizens changed, in what ways? >> i think that one of the fundamental shifts has been we used to be a broadcasting

organization. we used to send out messages to people and this is no longer a relation that we sit alongside people talking to one another. what they use these mobile devices to do is not actually to listen to us but to talk with each other and now we sit in that space. we are there right alongside them as they are on twitter, talking with their friends about what they are going to do tonight. then there is the morning edition sending out a tweet about what is happening in serious. that space and that juxtaposition is actually for us i think at npr quite sweet. we consider ourselves to have this uniquely intimate medium of the radio. we are whispering in your ear and now coupled with that notion of ubiquity before the fact that an increasing part of our audience or listenership for npr has been growing over the past several years in contrast to

what's happening with a lot of the media and part of that is because people can now carry us with them places. they can carry us with them on their run or at the gym. while they are cooking in a way that was more difficult to do before. so that intimacy of being in a communication medium and the slippages between people talking to one another and people being spoken to by the media has a thing created a drastically new dynamic for us. i am curious -- do you have done a lot of efforts working with citizens in all contexts of producing journalism. how has that changed for you? >> so when i was at propublica we spent the year focusing on what we called explainers and the idea was you know we can cover the story. we can take up the details and do a six-month, 12 month monthlong investigation but sometimes people have questions that are pressing, much like the questions, we know that because we asked them of ourselves in at

some of our friends. what does this really mean? what is the significance of this bill? we found actually working on very simple pieces that we are aiming to answer the questions we might see people asking asking in their facebook feed, asking on twitter, were actually the kind supposed to get a tremendous resonance among people in the feedback we got from our readers is that they were tremendously useful. for myself i'm particularly interested in ways in which readers and which citizens can help frankly hold those empowered accountable. i spend my time thinking about where are their collective action problems that exist out there in the world? in a project that i did at propublica which we called the stimulus check, shortly after the recovery act had come through. there were lots of big promises about what sort of jobs we could expect and what sort of transformation we would see economically in our communities. the question that we pose to our readers was, well can we really

tell what's going on? one of the leading indicators that biden pointed everyone to work construction site they were going to be hiring people to work on sites around the country and that is one of the ways in which we can sort of get back on our feet. less actually find out if that is happening so i put up a post on propublica thing we can either wait for the administration to release figures -- this was in the early summer, and early fall and trust they got the measurements right or we can take matters in our own hands. i asked readers to help us identify the progress that was made and about 550 sites around the country which propublica's statistician told me was 4.5% of the construction sites around the country which gave us the statistical soundness that we would need. and what did people do? they called their local d.o.t. offices, department of transportation offices and they would stop at different sites. what we found actually that gusher of work was further down

the pipeline than we expected. for me though what was most valuable about this were the kinds of conversations i had with my readers like oh, it was actually you know sometimes a hassle to get this information. i made five, six, seven phonecalls but i got the information that i wanted. two, people would actually say oh, journalism is hard and annoying. and i think especially in these days a lot of times we are trying to make the case for the work that we do. a lot of the cost of journalism and especially the place like propublica in which reporters, they go down the rabbit hole but that is after they have found the rabbit hole. if you're an investigative reporter you have to find that story and can it can take you months. ringing read -- readers into the process was one of the transformative ways of making the case for journalism. how artists who actually make sense of what is happening out there in the world. now the real challenge in doing these sorts of projects is you

need certain kinds of skills like you have to know how to organize information in people and i think actually some of the more dramatic instances we have seen in which people have held power and count whether it's for journalistic purposes or not have actually been largely spontaneous. there is a fantastic example actually in germany in which a major politician was found to have plagiarized a lot in his thesis and people discovered this because someone put up a wiki and essentially active researchers and academics began copying and pasting part of his thesis on line and finding out where he had pulled the copy from. so, i think the big challenge for media institutions frankly is to really keep their eye on the ball because like you are saying matt the ubiquity of media because sometimes you have the false impression that you know what's happening in the world because it's very easy to point to a tweet here and they treat there and pull up facebook post, what is coming up that i

can easily see i have an answer but the truth is a lot of stories of our much more difficult to find and there are plenty of people too who don't have a voice. so, i think the futurist -- >> i reject to that title. >> in your position at npr in which you are working side-by-side with reporters and editors and largely helping people see the skills that they need to learn and the ways in which they need to look at things differently, what do you see coming down the pipeline? >> when we think about storytelling particularly and when i'm working with the reporters that i work with, one of the essential and central concepts that i have tried to wrap my head around and that i try to work through with the journalist that i collaborate with is this notion that we are moving from stories towards streams, that this notion, we

will always -- we have told each other stories as humans. we have told each other stories forever and we will tell each other stories forever. stories are powerful concepts but this notion of the classic story, the big inning, the middle, the end with a little spike of catharsis before you reach that finish, that is being augmented by this constant stream, this flow of information. we have a reporter, our senior editor for social media, andy carvin, who is tracking constantly the events that are happening right now in the middle east over twitter and he has created quite a profile and quite a crowd for himself, people who follow this constant stream, this flow of tweets from all over the middle east from libya, tunisia and syria and egypt. is a very different experience,

experiencing a story in that fashion that is not really with a beginning point or an ending point. clive thompson who is a technology writer who i really like once likened this dreamlike experience to proprioception come this ambient awareness, the fact that proprioception that we know where our arms are and our limbs and appendages are in space at any given time, that notion that something like twitter gives you the sense of the texture of the lives of the people that you follow and another different way than ever before that you actually kind of to dip into these lives over 24 hours. that idea of how we tell stories or the question of how we tell stories gwen as the writer paul ford put it, we are encountering and in two innings, the epiphany that we seek in every media story that we come across. it says this is what this is about. we no longer have that moring. how we tell stories in that age,

in my universe part of what we are doing is trying -- trying to pull back the lens a little bit and zoom out and actually tell a larger story over time, to hook people into an ongoing narrative, to if you will, ring them along with us on a quest. a lot of the reporters i work with one of the things that has long been true of good journalism is great journalism often does not start with an answer. it starts with a great question. it's something that you don't know, that process of discovery, that quest of trying to figure something out is a key part of doing fantastic journalism and i encourage our journalist to share that question, to start and hook their audience into that overarching question of for example how will the pacific northwest meet the renewable energy targets by 2020? it's a question we don't know the answer to.

it has a lot of complex parts but every day over the course of a year, we can start attacking different parts of that question, which produces great stories that are part of this unending stream, this flow that i think actually can make people both more engaged in these types of questions and more informed. how do you approach this question of how storytelling will change? >> i think what we pointed to is there is this real need to as you put it, to get context because we all see the sort of abbreviated lips and bytes that are just sort of running by my question is how do we really make sense of something that is greater? i think some of the other trends we have talked about are things like the visual, that more and more we are going to be making sense of the world through video and images and they think you can look at a place like facebook and no it's a massive photo album but far more often telling stories by taking pictures. a photo has a masterful way of

setting a scene as a short video clip. a lot of people talk about whether or not we have actually been come existing in a time which morality, the written word is that we are going to move much -- much more towards the spoken word but also this image. i think, certainly for the journalists that the guardian one of the real challenges in one of the thing we focused on the lot is frankly not saying how to actually bring people along an ongoing story because some of them make a lot of sense like the article. every texan over production process in which we sat down, had your morning paper and then moved on but the question is how to tether things together. if you are dipping in -- in a old way. i see alexis flashing at us so i we have to.

>> show we go to q&a? thank you. [applause] >> be will start to q&a after -- [inaudible] >> awesome. since i am the chief tequila to all this fine morning i'm going to be short, sweet into the point but no lime wedge, sorry. my name is gustavo arellano nine the editor of the "oc weekly." in alternative newspaper, the sister paper of the village voice, seattle weekly and we specialize in yellow journalism. we specialize in inconvenient truth. we get politicians in jail and get innocent people out of jail. we have an obsession with neo-nazis and genocide deniers and all these horrible people and do my job specific he i tell the inconvenient truth of

perhaps the most vexing problems, the mostexin suppose of problem affecng the united states today. what are we going to do with all these dam mexicans? there are so many mexicans here. that is all we care about in the media. so far this year would have we had? we have one story that minority births, minority births are now the majority. in other words wide earth are you climbing while minority births of going off of course because of that latin for blood and enough fecundity that never stops. we also have, what was that other big thing? the 2012 election, oh the latino vote, the swing state barack obama needs to appeal to them. is made romney going to get marco rubio to get that swing vote because it's all about the latino. recently at the supreme court decision talking about arizona s.b. 70 surprising a lot of people really come a knocking down three of the four things that s.b. 1070 proposed and all along though you have this, this

is something i've been dealing with my entire life not just as a child of nixon immigrants when he came to this country in the trunk of a chevy in 1968 but also as a reporter again and again what are latinos and when we are talking about latinos than one worries about puerto ricans anymore or cubans or dominicans. we are wearing about mexicans. what on earth are mexicans going to do to this country? in a way i speak to you from the present that in a way speak to you from the future because with the birthrates, with demographic changes on in the future and i'm speaking from the future to the present. multilingual, multicultural, mexican. and so i am one one of those invading hoards. i'm here to tell you everything is going to be okay. [laughter] now, thank you. alright. [applause] everything is going to be alright and i have proof. tacos. you know when i was talking to

alexis what am i going to talk about, i gave him some titles and one of them i said, should i talk about the taco as oracle so he insisted i do that so i'm going to talk about tacos but before talk about above me talk about what gets me the most notoriety given back to the inconvenient truth. i write a column called asking mexican. people asking questions about mexicans and i answer them and does not matter what the questions may be. i have answer questions on everything from why do mexicans have so many babies to what part of illegal don't we understand, to why don't mexicans pay any taxes and we do actually ended and in fact some studies show we are supporting social security as we know it because of all the undocumented folks paying into the social security system with fake social security numbers that they they're never going to get back to why are mexicans always so dam happy? i have answered all of that and more so. the column is now around 39

newspapers across the country and a best-selling book in 2007. you could find it on line ask a mexican.net. the reason i do the column is to debunk and deconstruct and destroy stereotypes and misconceptions that people have about mexicans. using the prism of satire but really using the effects. my background as i said earlier is an investigative reporters when people ask me question for instance my favorite question anybody asks me, somebody asked me why don't you mexicans ever learn to speak english? are you too stupid, you cannot learn two or three words a day? what is going on with you guys? it was a nice question. all it had to do to answer that question with the facts. i went to them and i said the american government shares your concerns. they shoot a study saying that this new wave of immigrants are idiots. they are not like the previous wave of immigrants who came to this country to learn and become americans, you know that rhetoric you hear so much including from the right but

also from the left sometimes and that we should have the policy of stopping immigration deporting those immigrants because all they want to do is take our money, take our jobs and send them back. that report wasn't for in the modern day. it was in 1911 dillingham. at the time they were some of your ancestors in this room. italians, greeks, polls, not spaniards to a lesser extent, bulgarians etc. and immigrants we lionized in the past you are the swedes, the french and english. all i had to do is insert the fact and of course at the end i put a whole bunch of -- and that is your answer. the column of course is not without its critics. may be at another time i can tell you about how my column got a man suspended from work for five days for reading it at work. you can find it on line. in my job is trying to let people know it's okay, mexicans

are perfectly fine in this country is going to be as great as it has been with us being the majority in some places, i decided to go with my most recent book on something that everyone could understand, mexican food. my new book, "taco usa" how mexican food conquered america, i love titles. i tell you everything you need to know from the subtitle and that is exactly what it is. how mexican food conquered america. of course the relationship between the united states in mexico as we all know, it's like the ultimate bad romance really. you know we share a border yet we have got into three official wars, god knows how many on facial wars. america is dependent on mexican cheap labor. mexico is dependent upon all those remittances going back into mexico. we have the drug war and we have all sorts of nasty battles that we always fight that we have made our peace on one thing and that is food.

in fact more than made our peace. i would argue we are showing you the future. mexicans will be on top because we have already conquered your stomach's. [laughter] so the book really briefly i will talk about the book and that i'm going to talk specifically about tacos. it goes to the 125 year history of mexican food in this country. there's a misconception that mexican food really didn't become popular until the 1950's in the 1960's with the spread of fast food mexican joints like taco bell, taco john's around these areas and other taco empires going up on the east coast but from the moment americans have even heard about mexican food, we have been obsessed. so what has happened ever since the 1880s there has been the cycle that continues to repeat itself every single decade. and americans hear about mexican food, whether reading it, rather hearing about it from people that tried it. they seek it when they are going on vacation, cooking it from

cookbooks, waiting for someone to make it in front of them at a restaurant or at home. they be it, they assimilated and then they say what's next? give us the next great dish so from the 1880s and 1890s the two great mexican foods america fell in love with were not tacos, but what it used to be called chile con carne which we now know as chile. and tamales. tamales, the great nexus point was the 1893 chicago world's fair for you had tamales and from san francisco go to the chicago world fair and selling their tamales from the steam buckets. yet the texas delegation to the chicago world's fair go and start selling their chile con carnet. of course at the time chicago was the centerpoint of the book, the canning industry and the meatpacking industry and they decided to put this mexican food in a can. they saw it as being from a can,

cheap with a long shelf life. after that you had chile. tamales you can still find them but at this point in time i would not be tamales in a can. from their on, mexican food has conquered the united states again and again. the 1900 cc this bread of chile powder right outside of san antonio. in the 1920 cc gebhardt's printing of a quarter million cookbooks a year going across the united states and teaching people how to make mexican food. the 1930s to start seeing the spread of talk is the 1940s and fifties for furthermore the actual mexican restaurants. the 60's and 70's you start seeing the spread of what is known as sitdown mexican restaurants and some of you may remember a restaurant chain called chi-chi's, which would never work in southern california because that is slang for female.

and onward and onward we see the spread or the creation of a multibillion-dollar mexican food industry. not just in its totality but individual segments. alcohol, hot sauce. may be of her the fact, i think it's this year the 20th anniversary of salsa outselling ketchup, which is true. taco bell, multibillion-dollar empire, mexican candy and so on and so forth. with the shows to me and it's been a americans by the way. it's been americans who have been pushing and making all these foods popular. mexicans have always been being them of course but if it wasn't for the widescale embrace of americans of mexican food and that this would have happened. so for me that shows the future is bright. the future is positive because we all know especially when it comes to humanizing other cultures the first thing we demonize besides the way maybe that we look is there for.

you still see some remnants of that when it comes to mexican food. you might've heard's although that is the 1950's and i don't know why people still use that. in fact the first dispatches, the first writings of mexican food goes back to the 1830s and there were scouts for the american army going through texas and mexico to conquer the area for the united states and they were saying how all that mexican food was horrible. ..

>> it starts with breakfast burritos in space. astronauts love tortillos.ye if you eat bread, crumbs go intg the equipment, but the tortillat is god's vessel. it happened in 1978 in new mexico, it happened.pear i see a positive future. what's important to think about with mexican food, at argument ofg authenticity, none of the mexican food is authentic.food you have seen food change authe. .

but the first mexican tacos were hard shell tacos. in other words come you might've heard somewhere along the lines that mexicans donate for a tacos. those are the first tacos that came into this country. the first to come in with something called tacky terrace. hopefully most of you have had this at this point in time. we'll tortilla aside with the beads inside. eventually, remember the migration to the united states outside the southwest after 265. even before then was demand for tacos. read the 1950s the gentleman from el paso is most famous for

inventing tortilla is an icann, which i want to taste because they are now extinct because no one should eat tortillas in a canned again. if you send me a little shall. you put these tortillas and aluminum shells and fry them and make tacos and became the multimillionaire added that. all the talk about fame riding the idea for his restaurant for his tacos of a small restaurant which of course he created a multibillion dollars empire. so you have a hard shell taco passed off for the longest time. but what happened of course if they started changing. in 1980s that is what is now saying as taco, corn tortilla with something inside. right now in southern california you see the spread of korea and

tacos. turkey is a korean made. and i see better tacos from mexico. basically a pita, which actually comes from lebanese. you are starting to see battleship tacos from the state of war to back out. you see also sorts of tacos. probably the most glorious creation, tater tot tacos. they appear in the upper midwest as a mexican cabinet from california at cub years ago, neediness mexican food in sandy's tater tot tacos, i just shook my head and sat by and earth are americans so afraid of us? they've tater tots and tacos now. thank you so much. [applause]

>> so we obviously have runover. it's pouring rain. if you want to stand where a strike for questioning. i know that we need to use a microphone. there is someone with a microphone. like we said, this is a q&a. so you can ask questions of anyone, multiple people. anyone out there? >> yeah, ratepayer. >> jacob gordon. this is farmout digests. but any of buddie of course can chime in. you talk about people becoming more participant journalists themselves and as you mentioned and tech knowledge is part of your background and passion as well click >> i think it's hard to be involved in digital journalism and not get a little bit into the code. i have only deployed my first

working with replication this year, but since i started in newspapers i've been making things with code and i think that's a pattern for a lot of digital journalists. >> i wonder, do you see that happening to people contributing content? in new york we have a group called hackers in both technologists and content creators. do you see the people who are empowering themselves also willing to hack and people hacking not necessarily because they're passionate about writing, reporting, creating video content but because they want to build applications and things to say twitter api and things like that? >> i told especially aspiring young journalists and college from increase in the news organization for folks who are making decisions that ultimately shape the stories that we tell are increasingly not editorial

folks, but code and technology of people who can understand the data possibilities in a particular story and can actually do things with the database. have a huge sway that we can tell what we develop. and you see the sort of confluence between technology and media, where what we thought of as companies are becoming media companies. we have the other day i was supposed to give a type with a fellow named mark waukee a fellow for the "washington post" that days before attack began as announced is going to work i twitter. we've journalists now working at google and facebook and all over the taxpayer. conversely we've got technologies. >> adam, do you see emerging

artists codeine and working with hardware and things that are really, really valuable within contemporary art? >> yes, of course. i think there a lot of artists who were with technology and coding. data visualization with art and data. it is funny because 10 years ago when i would give the example in the exact opposite of art, i would've said gather. it's not just data, it are. but what is amazing is how we understand data is actually a visual phenomenon. and yes, there's a lot of people with rates and artists who work in that area, based in l.a. on the subject. but i think what's really amazing to me as most academic environments are now people who

sort of see almost their job as hard as as chess like experimental, like working in the laboratory and away with data, with different technologies. they may never even think about the museum context, but will they resemble montrealer who created the interactive plan so you can touch the plan and electronically transmitting, those kinds of things are the experimentation. >> just to get a sense of numbers, the guardian office in new york has about 30 people and i think four or five of them are programmers through data visualization peirce is a very high percentage. compared to some other newsrooms is growing.

i think there are for programmers on staff who are in charge of finding ways to scrape data entered into the official forum for readers. >> hi, rebecca allen. this is to add him or anyone. so i started working as an artist of the digital technology in the 70s and it's amazing to me in the traditional art world that may be in the last two years is starting to be accepted. i've been shocked at the art world has been so basically afraid to embrace digital art or understand it or figure out how to critique it. you know, video seem to sneak into the art world. do you have any sense of why it's been so long in coming and the art world? >> i think you probably know the answer to that yourself, right?

bucci suggested be the answer? >> i'm not sure. >> it seems to me obviously would be related to the marketplace, that actually it is so hard to modify. >> you don't have the original necessarily the one precious object. >> that's what i think it is. >> still videos the same kind of situation that has been accepted way back in the 60s he then. >> but a lot of video artists have done is as much as possible to make better video art much like a painting as possible. make it rare, and make it in addition work. even the package around video art is beautiful, gemlike packages and getting an object. not just a video. but he actually think is truly

because a lot of people looking at knowledge here on the borderline. the data visualization and that amanda was talking about in the world of fine art is actually like that boundary. the art world, like some boundaries, but it doesn't like the boundary between what is ours and what is life in the world. that's actually pretty scary. >> said the artwork is kept itself fixed in the past, which is disappointing when you expect our two latest into the future. >> good question. one more question. >> mary houston speaking here. listening to all of you as

entertainers in your fields and also very aware of the interdisciplinary nature of your discipline, as someone having a 15-year-old son who is in the digital world, often times i worry not only for myself, there's a lot of noise. so as people we need to figure out what is the most important part to listen to. the streaming was talked about. changing kind of the venue of museums and making them participatory, unveiling the snobbery, making it a conversation in politics and journalism, talking, you seem to people, your listeners asked

messengers really. but how do you view the creation of classic journalism? i mean, what is going to live on in your lifetime? which pieces? >> the story. especially being part of the world we always focus on the story. it doesn't matter if you read a book or you ready to eat, if it is not something one way or another it's not going to stick around anywhere. i always tell my fighters that whatever you do, make sure you able to stand by it and say this is the best thing i was able to do in whatever form your eye. so going on twitter and facebook, i don't fire things off randomly. and make sure everything i do

precisely. there's twitter where you have 140 characters or something where you can make your own video or take a picture. as a reporter, you have to make sure. you have to trust in what you're going to do that is going to grab you. really you jump into -- you just jump into the abyss and hope for the past. >> i was going to invoke our mutual friend again who wrote this great post actually impart a response, where he sighed the master of media metaphors of our time in stock and vote, which he appropriated from economics. in a new media environment we find ourselves constantly and flow and the real challenge is how to figure out the goods and stories. second, everything you said about the real challenge is frankly it's not easy and it's very much in comments on a been a survey responsibility.

there's different ways of going about it. the shortcuts may be finding people who cover issues that you care about and think are important and you trust their analysis? and they become in ways your world. there's no easy solution. >> i just like to say thank you for creating the intro this morning. birkeland to talk about bad at kinds of answers or six-year question the sense that the point of that story as he is saying you can't always be inside of the flow of that digital overload. you have to only step out to be a creator of this status and you have to find the balance between those things. so i think that

>> thank you, linda. i just want to go over a little bit about what the police department has done to prepare for the event. before i do that, i want everyone to know that the first element of any special event deployment is that we cover the neighborhood. we want to make sure there is no reduction in service to any of our neighborhoods, and the rnc is no different in that. every neighborhood has the same number of officers that you have any other day of the year, and then we'll use all of the officers that, in addition to that, to function within the rnc, and this takes about 3500 to 4,000 police officers in order to secure an event of this magnitude. obviously, we don't have the number within hillsboro county or the tampa bay area so we partnered with other law enforcement agencies throughout the state to come here and

assist us with this event. now, there are two events that are going op. you have the political event inside the secure zone, and that is controlled by matt miller and the secret service. that process is to legislate a candidate for presidency. then you have the event on the outside of the secure zone that we're responsible for, and that is where people will be able to come and express their view points and exercise first amendment rights. both of those processes equally as important, and it's our job to ensure everyone has a safe platform on which to express their views. the community oriented policing is not a division, a bureau within the tampa bay police department. it is our philosophy, way of life, that defines the tampa police department. that's the way we've. able to reduce crime

dramatically over nine years. we reducedded crime by 64.3%. we reduced auto theft by over 90%, and we've done that through this community policing approach. we are going to use the same approach with the rnc. all of you have seen the map of the event zone. the event zone, broken into four smaller geographic areas. each of those areas will be overseen by a commander from the police department or hulls borrow county police office. within those areas, there's smaller gee graffing areas, -- geographic areas, especially in the downtown of several blocks that officers will be assigned to. they will be assigned throughout the rnc so that everybody gets to know them. the business owners, the residents, the visitors, they'll get to know officers in the area. the officers get to know their area as well, and we believe that will be very, very

successful. we have the ability to expand and contract upon that. if we had crowd issues in a particular area, we have the ability to send officers in there. i'll show you a photograph on the next slide of the uniforms you'll see. i know everybody loves this beautiful 100% dark blue uniform we use, but we will be using a tan, it's cotton, and the reason we chose it is because it's cooler for the officers. number two, it's more approachable, a friendlier look so people don't hesitate to come forward to the police officers and approach them. the crowd management gear with the gear, turtle gear, there's a photograph of that ease well. that will be dawned whenever there's an issue of public safety or a large crowd we have to deal with. it's our hope that no one will

see that, but that's probably unrealistic on our part. our job is to identify individuals that are bent on disrings or destruction and remove them from the crowd as quickly as possible so that we can restore that peaceful environment in which individuals will be able to demonstrate. vast majorities coming to tampa to express their point of view, to demonstrate will do so peacefully. it's a small group that will be, as i said, bent on disruption and destruction, and we will be dealing with those individuals. now, we have done a great deal to communicate with all levels of individuals that are involved with the rnc. for example, the town hall meetings. we have had meetings with the business managers or building managers in the downtown area. we met with harbor island, davis

island. we've met with a lot of individuals to communicate exactly what to expect and what to see during the event. we've also communicated with the individuals that are coming to tampa to demonstrate. we've participated in two panels with the aclu, and i participated in an hour and a half national webinar call-in dealing with the rnc that was hosted by the aclu. the aclu was singing our song. they do not support any criminal activity, and their expectation that is everybody follows by the lawful orders of police officers, and they also said there will be individuals in the crowd whose job it is to insight everyone into taking actions that they normally wouldn't take, and they cautioned individuals throughout the hour and a half to not get involved in that or not fall prey to

that. again, it's our job to ensure that everybody has safe time and that everybody gets to express their view points. as was stated by lin doe carlo, there are events and we are developing a route and process that's advantageed to everyone. we expect that as well. here's the uniforms. on the left, this is what you see on a day-to-day basis, and on the bottom, that's what we refer to as our turtle gear. now, we have done a great deal of training for the rnc. officers get ten days of training. we have intensive crowd management training put on by the department of homeland security involving three days of training that every officer is

involved in crowd management has gone through. we've done a great deal of training on the philosophy of enforcement and first amendment training. one of the -- what i call the golden rule at the table of the police department is that everyone is treated with dignity and respect, everyone, no exception to the rule. that's the same thing with the rnc. obviously, that is a corner stone of law enforcement and all officers would be expected to treat everyone with dignity and respect, but, again, we're reenforcing this with all officers that are coming to assist us with this event. we've done five sessions of two day long supervisor and commander training. this is not your every day policing where an officer deals one-op-one with a witness, a victim, a suspect. this is group policing. the officers will be expected to act as a group on the

commander's instruction and not act individually, and we have -- we have trained all of the supervisors and commanders and let them know that we have set the bar very high and our expectations of their leadership in these incidents that they are to ensure that the officers are showing restraint, that they bring an extra supply of patients with them, and that they only act on the commander's orders, and then sheriff david g. and myself did a tape message that re-enforces tone and philosophy for every officer coming here so that if that was not enough, we wanted this to stick with every officer so there's an e-learning test that all the officers have been obligated to take and pass. we have done a great deal of training. we believe that everyone will be

prepared, frankly, everyone is prepared for this event and to ensure that it is a positively reflects on the city of tampa. >> now, democracy is a difficult subject to measure, but there are ways to do that. there's measures of competition and participation. the most obvious measure of participation is voter turn out. as it turns out, voters are far less likely to show up at the polls in the united states than in other wealthy countries. we had a far lower performance than the rest of the competition. now, voter turn out being low is an indication of many things. it may be that voters don't trust the system works well for them, and it may be there are higher barriers to show up to vote. it may be other issues about the process itself. let's take that as a symptom of an issue in democracy. we know we have this data point here. the other couple data points

we'll talk about come from the world bank. the world bank has a series of measurements of democracy, and in each one of them, they have consistency. countries like australia come out at the top. united states consistently comes out somewhere in the middle. not the best, not the worst of the comparison group. there's measures from freedom house, and, again, countries like australia and canada near the top. the united states? somewhere in the middle not doing as strong as we would have expected. this is very interesting because like in health where we used to be a leading country, if we think back to democracy, we created the declaration of independence. our constitution was a leading document at the time. we were a leader in representative democracy. if you think about it, we have not made a tremendous amount of change to our structure. the way we elect people has not

evolved much over time. .. india. it states that china will have 200 million college graduates by 2030. is an h and good morning, everyone. i'm of president for american center of progress.

thank you so much for beingev here.e we are very excited aboutis today's defense and reports.ents i wanted to have a special thank you i wanted to have a special introduction to the group but we are working with over the last year. which is a new organization that is really dedicated to ensuring that we are tackling those issues that really ensure that our next generation will be successful. i can think of no better topic than today's. next gene center r amer which really matters, which detailse the strategies of those and other countries and investing people to ensure they are competitive in the decades

to come. we have a lot of conversation about economic competitivenessie for today and in the future and the center for american progress an hasd devoted a lot of resources to that work. but we take on this subjectsourt work. we took on the subject because we recognize that other countries were not just looking at competitiveness today. but they are looking at competitiveness for the next several decades. they have real strategies that they developed shootout. in the center of the strategies is looking at the resources. the area in which they can affect human resources the most is always for the education of the children. not only children in public schools and public education, but in later years as well. when we think about competitiveness and economic growth, we should recognize that

other countries have expansive view of that and that takes human resources and education as well. that is at the heart of what this reporter is talking about. both china and india have increasing investments in young people. in school and pre-k, and what policies are for their families. i would say that both parties have to ensure that their wtewardship of the in the long-term and that's why it is important for both parties to look at the issue of human-resources resources. we need to look up the heat that

our policies will take on the next several decades. i want to say a few words about the authors of this report. we are very excited about it. it has been a long-term effort. believe me, getting data from china and india is not such an easy task. i really want to thank adam hershel and ann o'leary. it is my task now to introduce matt james. he has worked on a whole range of issues that are really critical to economic competitive topics. from education to health care, and he's an expert on so many of these issues. also, the franklin center looked at what is at stake in his work. children and their needs. it is my great honor to introduce matt james.

[applause] good morning, everyone. this is a great day for us. a big day for the center of the next generation. this is a release of our first big report. let me first of all thank neera tanden for her work in the early days when the senate for the next generation was operating in my family room. they were constant colleagues who helped me think through the issues about how to set up the center and how to get started. and we cannot be could not be here without their advice or counsel. we also like to thank adam hirsch and donna cooper. this was not an easy report to put together. it is very tough. the quality of the work is absolutely fantastic and we are proud to be releasing it today. i would like to also thank my colleague, ann o'leary. she was on the first hires at the center for the next generation. i said to my wife, i think i just hired the smartest person i

ever worked with. and i have worked with a lot of smart people. she has been a terrific colleague and friend. let me just quickly talk about what the center is about. it is a partnership between me, tom stier, who was a businessman in california, and also his brother, jim stier, a children's advocate who started a number of organizations. we came together to try to make a new organization that will be focused on the primary issues that will effect the next generation of young americans. our first program areas are sustainability and children and families issues. and we offer you both here and on a national basis, and also in her home state of california. the way to think about it is a strategic beauticians organization, which will be bringing these issues with the centers for american progress.

and also instituting some of the very best policy and research material. let me also thank to the bipartisan polling research and bob carpenter, a consultant. their work on running together a fascinating survey. it is clear from the survey that americans want their political leaders to be focusing on education and global competitiveness. they've actually won governors to spend a lot of time thinking about this. clearly this will within the next set of elections, they are hoping will be a strong focus on. we are here today to focus on what we think is the nation's greatest asset. our young people. what the future holds for them in the face of intense challenges from china, india and elsewhere. those countries are aggressively scanning opportunities for young

people. to the degree that they will have millions of more people competing for the best jobs in a global economy in two years. were we going to do about it? how can we maintain the competitiveness of the united states? our report from the competition that really matters, but sees things into perspective. the key findings. china and india have embarked on a vicious program. the challenges and well-paying jobs of the marketplace. by 2030, china will have 200 million college graduates. one of the entire u.s. workforce. by 2020, india will be graduating four times as many college graduates as the united states. part of this disparity is obvious we related to human capacity of china and india. each with populations four times greater than the united states. but it is more than just the numbers of people. china and india are investing in their future, more than ever before and while the united states is fighting to keep up.

frankly, we are doing a poor job in this country of educating and training all of our young children who want to compete for the great jobs that will be coming in the global economy. the united states cannot afford to squander the talents of young people if we hope to compete. it is one of the united states doesn't perform as well as students in other developed countries and standardized test. out of 34 developed countries, we are 14th in reading, we are 25th in math. what is less well-known is that if you compare reading scores of students only from our wealthiest schools, from our wealthiest schools -- they would outperform students from all 34 countries measured. but students from our poorest schools would rank 33rd, trailing only mexico. if you look at mathematics, all of our students from wealthy and poor schools are basically emulating my academic record, which was mediocre. what exactly are china and india doing to prepare more of their young people graduate from

college and thrive in the workforce? three things. first, they start early. by 2020, china will provide 70% of children with three years of preschool. india plans to increase the number of children entering school ready to learn from 26% to 60% by 2018. while the united states, half of our children received note early childhood education and we lacked a national strategy to increase enrollment. they educate their young people for the jobs of the future. especially in the critical needs of science, technology, engineering and math. china has already graduated over 1 million college graduates a year. in the areas of science, technology, and mathematics. while the united states graduates fewer than half that number. what we are doing now is clearly not enough, and imagine what will happen in the years, to come if investments in our children continue to decline. thirdly, they ensure that students are taught by highly effective teachers. china is improving the quality

even as the number they are training slows. the number with bachelors degrees has increased 66% in just eight years, with almost two thirds of primary school teachers having an advanced degree. our teaching corps is filled with degreed professionals. but it is not attracting the best and brightest on average. in the united states on average, high school students who choose to enter undergraduate programs for education have sat scores in the bottom third of all students tested. this stands in sharp contrast to nations with impressive student results. which successfully pervert teachers from the top high school graduates. here to make a commitment our competitors are making, we need strong political leadership to move forward. and the will to make education a national priority again, which we have done in the past. for today, at least, luckily we don't have to look very far to find political leadership and

commitment to improving education. i am honored now to turn this over to jack markell, governor of delaware. governor markell is a national leader in school reform. he is a chair of the national governors association. and he is the cochair of the common core standards initiative. he led delaware's efforts to when the race to the top competition. it is a pleasure to have you here today, governor jack markell. [applause] >> thank you, it is great to be here. i want to thank matt and neera tanden and chennai. i believe this is the defining issue of the day and this is really just a terrific, terrific rapport. businesses have more choices than ever about where they are born to look for candidates for jobs. there are 3 billion people in the world looking for jobs. and there are 1.2 billion jobs available. so we are truly in the global

war for jobs, which means we are in a global war. the jobs are going to go where the talent is. the numbers show in this report are absolutely stunning in terms of the investments in the results in india and china, and they are not the only two. so this report outlines the need for comprehensive national strategy. in the absence of such a movement, we have some incredible work underway in our state that i would like to show you today. there are several efforts underway in delaware. they began to address the competitiveness of jobs. it really starts with the recognition, if we sleep on my part, that what we have been doing in the last several years is the academic equivalent of having our kids learn to play basketball by shooting at an 8-foot basket. you can get very good shooting at an 8-foot basket. when you get into the game and you are competing against players who have been shooting a

regulation basket, which is tempe. every state is required under federal law to administer a state standardized tests. these tests don't have anything to each other from one state to do next. they don't have to measure the same things or use the same measurement scale. so what we end up with, is that every kid is about average. the result of these state tests, when you compare them to the nation's report card for the international report card, the results tend to be high. if you tell a kid that they are proficient based on a test that is administered only within their borders, but then they have to go compete for college and jobs and people who are not within the borders, you are not being very honest with them. i believe that a dose of honesty is in order. one of the very first things that we did in our state, shortly after he took office is we we've raised the bar. and we literally said to parents

and teachers and students across the state, that even though kids don't know anything less than they knew before, fewer of them will be judged to be proficient. that is not a very popular message to deliver. but again, we thought it was one that was important and one that we thought was honest. number one, we are raising expectations for students with higher standards and with a world-class cricketer. we are also providing high-quality early childhood opportunities, especially to the high-speed students. we are striving to transform the education profession with more meaningful evaluations and professional development, and we are using data in a whole new way. i want to touch on each of these. let me start out raising expectations. when it comes to raising the bar for all students, beyond raising the bar what needs of what needs to be profession, we also focused on the adoption of common core. and we thought that that was a necessary first step. i had the privilege of starting with the former republican

georgia governor. the standards are fewer, higher, and clearer and make it easier for states to share resources. in delaware we are focused on making sure that all educators understand how instructions should change with common core. developing systems and accountabilities to make sure that those shifts are underway. it was difficult enough to get all the states to sign on, but as with most things, it is difficult when you get to the implementation part. by now, we are heavy-duty into the implementation mode, and across the country, we are learning what it is really going to take to make common core real. we are also raising the bar to students by expanding our world in which opportunities. i'm particularly excited about this initiative. over the next five years, we are opening up schools and our in our state. these will be schools within schools are students spent half

of the day learning in a different language. we are starting with 340 kindergartner students across our state. half of them doing chinese and half of them doing spanish. not only will they be learning those languages in their class, but science and social studies and math in that target language. frankly, there was a fair bit of pushback at first. this really matters as an education issue and an economic issue. .. one over the next ten years. by fourth grade, and these are kindergarten students who literally will be starting in the next couple of weeks by the time they are in fourth grade they will be able to take their

families had to a country that speaks either spanish or chinese and navigate. by ninth grade, they will be a will to pass and pass well their class. and of course this initiative capitalizes on a very well known fact, which is students early years are critical for and learning, which aere is sort of leads me to talk about our early childhood investments. there is clear research the the det childhood effective andvothers are geekied their peers, who has a significant and vocabulary, that's a tragedy every single time. so we are tackling this head on in our proving of access to and the quality of early childhood education programs. so in 2011, we did have some additional money come on the. essentially had room for one new investment. but that it's taken a lot of

time, i decided to focus on early childhood education. again, a lot of research, some as referenced in today's report comes out as federal reserve bank of minnesota, gave sharon must affect of economic development a state can make is in early childhood education. so we invested state resources and were fortunate to bring this back and rested atop early learning grants. as a result, we are going to increase from 22 a.d., from 22 a.d., the percentage of four kids in delaware who were enrolled in a quality preschool program. in my view is that it's a true game changer. we are really, really excited about it. our effort will focus focus on four main pillars. one, a land of birth approach to school readiness. secondly though strengthening the quality rating program. this is not just about throwing money -- we have a terrific program and delaware called our

stars program for early childhood centers noted their extra milestones they have to be to get a certain stars rating. we have a very clear transparent process, so we are focusing that as well. we are addressing health and development of the whole chat and building professional in effect to really chat at work force it and of course this is one of the real challenges because so many senators don't have resources they need to invest in quality status or materials. our program is going to change that. we are also focusing on working with teaching professionals in taking that to the next level. we obviously know are focused on building a professional workforce has to go beyond early childhood gum which is why the third after we are focused on is transforming the education professional. as today's report clearly shows, the top-performing systems around the world are those that recruit and retain

top-performing educators. in delaware, we are focused on a number of things. number one commit conducting meaningful evaluations of educator performance and developing new leadership opportunities for most effective educators. were committed to opportunities for best educators to take on more responsibilities, earned her compensation while still staying in the classroom. around the country this is one of the day challenges. teachers say that they have to move on and get out of the classroom to earn more and build their career and more focused on changing that. we are also adding some coaching initiatives for principles. we talked to teachers as they do all the time and asked them if they cared most about, they care about compensation, but also the working environment within schools is a collaborative environment. and so much of our principles time is taken up in administrative matters. if you have it in any school recently, you'd be surprised by how much time they are focused

on dealing with the bus company because the bus is late, chilling with folks into service because the parent complained that it is cold, whatever it is. with several initiatives underway to transition our principles to be more of instructional leaders. we've also got additional pathways to get into teaching positions, things like tsa as well so the colors stand residency program as well. finally, we are focused on improving professional development in our schools. i think a lot of teachers around the country feel the money we spend on professional development is often money that is not very well spent and so we think we've got to ramp that up significantly, which leads us to the last area i want to talk about, which has to do with user data. it is absolutely stunning how little good data at the educational community has had historically in terms of

understanding how students are doing and giving good information on a timely basis to teachers and principals and other staff so that they can change their approach. so we believe we are at the cutting edge of changing none in delaware. it is about a new focus on transparency and performance in using data throughout the system to determine what is working and to challenge your thinking about what is not working. this is all possible because two years ago we introduced a new assessment. before that it is typically administered in the spring. results came back in the summer. this is absolutely no use to teachers who may want to say okay, i'll make doing? what can i change? that is all changed in its really change within the last year because we had this new assessment. we just finished the second year and it suffers several times a year.

teachers can see in real times what kind of progress their kids are making. and if you link that was not only teachers see it, but principles than others. the kind of conversations this opens up some of the kind of dialogue among educators is powerful. we've just got every public school teacher in delaware now sits down several times a month with five of their peers. he said at a table of five people and drilling to put the data is telling them about student performance. i sat in the elements are not teachers who teach kids to add numbers. the data assignment kids are not making the game to get in the performance had expected is that they reached out, teachers took it upon themselves to reach out to the school having better results, to assist teachers in a school what kind of worksheets are using, what kind of approach are using a fortnight he seen

here. similarly, we have our superintendence get-together amongst themselves once a month and periodically they get together and sit down in groups of four or five. he figures that were doing in high school not the middle-school reading. they dated is very clear. we look at the same data and not making the progress we felt we were making a middle-school reading. what can i learn from the other superintendent over here? and said this ties back to the professional development issue because many teachers in our state are telling us that they hands-on -- these hands-on meetings that they have several times a month as some of the best professional developments they have ever done. they have periodic meetings between our department of education and our districts, where we essentially share the data with each other and ask questions about what they're doing to improve. they come at the superintendent, board members, local teacher

union have a representative from that district so everyone is operating from the same set of facts. these are very powerful conversations than we think disorientation is very transparent is just an incredibly useful tool. i had the opportunity a week ago to sit down with delaware's teacher of the year from this year. she's a fifth-grade teacher and our smartest school district and she was telling us how powerful desire to sit down to drill into the data mbo to talk with her peers about what they could be doing differently. so we are proud of the work underway in our state every game for a the earliest of data to working to teachers, but we also know we have a lot to do in the report today clearly says even the states doing it fast have a long way to go. none of us can sit still because it's very clear that all these countries around the world are doing quite the opposite. they're investing massively into

human capital. and so, we know that identifying what comes off the plate at the state level is also very important because we can't afford to do everything, which is why i try to drill and an figure out what is working and what is now quirkiness critically important so they can do less of what is not working. to address that challenge, the leadership in our department of education is examining how we can organize the department, trying to transition from a department historically focused on compliance to a department focused on support. it is my view that some day and the secretary duncan has done nationally. he's been absolutely terrific with the support of states. i also in that area have figured out what is now working. i recently signed a two weeks ago an executive order requiring state agencies to hold public hearings and all three accounts

so we can hear directly from the public, teachers, parents and everybody else but is not working to the extent we impose regulations that don't have any benefit to kids. we better hear about it because we can't afford to keep doing that. finally the last thing and maybe this is easier to do in a state of delaware size. we work really, really hard to keep everybody at the table. that includes business community, teachers union, and includes principles, disability community, parents. we don't have any luxury to have any finger pointing going on. to the extent we are getting something wrong, the best 86 it is fixed it is for us to talk together were getting wrong. so we have spent a lot of time on collaboration and keeping people at the table and i think that's invaluable. so that is sort of my message. i wanted to give a vocal sense from the perspective of the governor and i think a lot of

great work is going on in many states across the country. as you have the privilege of working and serving as the chair of the national governors association. i can tell you the issue of competitiveness is not just to think the issue of the day. we spent a lot of time trying to compete to get the job spear but companies have to decide first they want to be in this country before they decide wednesday person either. we have a lot of work to do together. i appreciate the next generation irking the center for american progress on this report, highlighting the critical issue and i worked forward to working with all of you. thank you so much. [applause] >> governor coming thank you so much. we all appreciate your leadership on education. next up we hear from eric hanushek in our neck of the west, stanford university from my house.

he is a renowned education economist and as we've discussed, this is not just about money. he has made a critical contribution by focusing on what policymakers and political leaders, how they can widely as resources for education. after that, we'll hear from jonathan baas, for the center of the next generation looks at voters attitudes on competitiveness and education. rick. >> thank you very much for having me. and thanks to the two organizations that sponsored this great report. when i look at this report, i think that it is starting to move the discussion in exactly the right way. the talk is not about tomorrow. it is about decades from now. it is about our children.

it's not about what's going on today. it is what we are going to look like in the future. i wanted to run through a few things. i should say also the governor leaves, delaware is one of the top three states in terms of improvements, measure performance in math and science at the last two decades. so you should put a little extra weight on his comments. let me see if i can -- but i want to start with is a very simple syllogism. and that is that the future of the united states in the long run depends upon his economic growth. if we remain the same, were pleasantly doing all right. everybody else is going to move

past. that is one of the arguments about this report. the second thing is a statement they could see a lot of lipservice, but i think it needs more than lip service. that is the only thing, in my opinion, that matters for long-run growth is the human capital of the work force in the united states. that is what has led to our success and that is what will propel us in the future. this report has made a great contribution in pointing out that it is the broad investment in our youth that is going to make the difference in the country. it is not whether we regulate this in the marketplace or whether the tax rate notes by 1% or she present or that. what is going to matter is whether we in fact and best in our youth and make it the

results. and then finally, i will put in a remark their brands through this report that is not going to be so central to my talk, but it is absolutely clear that we've had a lot of discussion about distributional issues in recent time and the only way that we're going to follow our distributional problem is by thinking about good investments and are used and what that means. so let me fill in a few details. this report is important because it makes a statement that their nations recognize what has made the united states strong, which is our investment in human capital. and in particular, what is highlighted in this report as china and india, which are not very good economies right now. but in 20 years, malic and tiredly different.

and that is the message here. so what we want to think about here is not how they are investing. there is a lot of that in the report. it is what they are doing. in particular, they are models of commitment to the future that we don't quite see it and the same regard in the united states. and i think they point out it is the challenge of the united states future. it is not that our nation will fall out a vocal into a long recession. is that we will not keep pace. we will not have the standard of living at the forefront. we will not be doing the kinds of jobs we are used to in terms of technological leadership and that is the key. so let me try to simply

-underscore what investments in human capital needs. but i'm going to try to do is talk about the value of increasing the skills of our workforce. we have measures of the math and science ability of our students and pens that we see regularly is that the government mentioned and so are. what is less recognized is that performance on these tests is an extraordinarily powerful predictor of what economic growth looks like in the future. i mean, extraordinarily powerful. this is the thing that matters. and what is man is if the magnitude of this economic facts, that if you just sit back

and say oh yeah, we know education is important. let's do some more. you're missing the point. so let me put this in a simple table that comes from some work in germany and economic growth than the day in the future. in particular, i am going to say, what would the u.s. future look like if we could be at the level of germany, canada or finland, which is that both of us? or what would it be if we actually meet no child left behind work? i will give you all four of those. what i am going to do is say at the future looks like the past 50 years, then we know that improving performance at two levels levels that these other countries will change our growth rate, which will change the future gdp of the u.s. and we

can calculate in dollar terms, in current dollar terms what would be the impact. here's a table table you won't believe. i hope you can see this. the first row of this is calculating the present value of the added genes to our gdp over the next 80 years, which is the lifetime of someone born today. the expected lifetime of someone born today, look at the expected gdp. the columns are germany, kennedy, finland and then onto to ncrp ncrp in a second. these are the levels of performance increase family further from it. the first number -- i don't know that i have it. the first number on that chart

in the upper left-hand corner says getting up for the level of germany as a present value of $43.8 trillion. that is on a 15 or $16 trillion gdp that we have today. are attacking about three times the current gdp as the present value of getting up to germany. now, think of canada. when i was going to graduate school, we used to refer to as the 13 federal reserve district. it's kind of like the u.s. a little colder, but kind of like the u.s. if we could get our performance level, which is an index of the quality of our labor force, a to the level of canada, it is easy to trillion dollars. and then finland, the eye of everyone in the world, but it is too cold.

except for being too cold, it is $112 trillion in present value compare each worth 15 or $16 trillion gdp today. now, if we could actually make an clb work, which is operationally get everybody had two basic levels on this international math and science tests, that is what $86 trillion. it is not a trivial matter. now, the second row of this size, what proportion that says is that the future gdp because gdp gets and so forth, so trillions of dollars don't mean anything to you. germany is like adding an increase in gdp of 6% every year for the next 80 years. canada is 11.4%.

finland is 15.8%. nclb is 12%. so let me translate that into another thing that might make sense to you. about half of our population draw salaries. so what these numbers say are these percentages and this is the average increase in the paycheck of every worker in the united states for the next 80 years. so just getting up to germany is sent too far ahead of last, but they're pulling away from us. it is like a 12% across-the-board increase in salary for every worker in the united states for the next 80 years. can you do to canada is a 20% pay increase, nothing else.

in my sort of reckoning from california, that looks like it's worth it, worth doing something. we notice other countries are doing it. first, the report underscores how canada and india are manichaean the u.s. investment in human capital that is made as strong in the past. secondly, there's this other aspect that canada and india had the world's most messed up economy for a very long period of time and all of a sudden they say well, all make our institutions, economic institutions, too, was to make these investments in human capital more productive and they are doing now. quite dramatically. all these other countries have now surpassed the u.s. in terms of the school attainment with

higher quality. very few people at least outside of this realm, the round understands that, but very few people understand that today the u.s. has a lower completion rate in high school than the average oecd country, the average developed country. if you go down the street, i think if we walk down to teach street and asked somebody, they would say were probably first in the world in terms of the art of education. that's not true, either in quantity or quality. this report is really important in my opinion because it says that we have to think of a broad investment in our youth. we have to worry about the family that they are helping out because they're extraordinarily important in education.

we have to worry about the support network, the early childhood development and the school. in the past, we've done two things. first, everybody in the united states, including people down on each street say we've got to do more about our schools. but it's more that service. and if anything, it calls for a deepening the upper doing now. so we'll have slightly smaller class sizes. we'll have this, that were the other thing. a little extra program for reading. without thinking about what it is that creates higher achieving a better performance. and i will go in terms of saying the essential component at least

in terms of the school and part is the quality of teacher. but that is not doing more and it's making better choices, getting better people and getting rid of bad people. every time i say getting better for a people, it is a combination of making better choices to ensure that the quality of our teachers is higher. if the need to do something different rather than more. we've tried the more strategy. genetically and consistently over the last 40 years and more has blessed us flat in terms of performance and outcomes. we have to do something different. and this is the line that was for the governor. you know, which is the political

leadership here and we need governors to stop saying we've got to do more and get governors to say we've got to do better. that is where we are at in my opinion. [applause] >> thank you, eric. my name is jonathan boss and i want to thank ann and not at the center for american progress further issues. it's fun to work with folks committed to the next generation. we want to conduct research and see how they perceive america stand the world in education relative to this report. the one thing i would differ with what eric said is if he went to that person on h. street, they would want america to be the leader in the world on education, but they are not necessary sure we are at the moment. we asked a question, and

methodology of over 1200 registered voters, likely the 2012 general election voters. samples of african-americans, latinos to the survey was conducted at the end of july. one of the questions we asked was a follow-up for a question asked in 2011. once again we found plurality of americans do in fact think the united states is falling behind other countries when it comes to education. we asked the question in another way some voters believe that other countries are surpassing the united states when it comes to education. we ask in a couple of playful ways they show you as well, we see the majority of americans think future innovators come from other countries. voters want leaders to prioritize restoring leadership and increase investment education, particularly executives. the next president states of governor, more so than leaders in congress.

they're interestingly for us, they are willing to pay more in taxes if those funds are dedicated to his education, k-12 education. majorities to pay more in taxes for pre-k, k-12 and higher education and majorities would also pay more in tax personally reduce spending in other areas of the sons were dedicated across education levels. the parkway tolls, we found across lines are going to pay more in taxes. so on the left side, we we asked this question from 2011. in 2011, 40% of voters thought united states is behind other countries. 22% about even in 22% ahead. today 46% say we are behind, 25% had an 25 about even. on the right inside our schools in china and india catching up with surpassing, but the same or behind your schools. 14% say they are catching up. 44% say they are passing schools

in the united states be 13% about the same in 10% falling behind. two different approaches at this question with very similar results. these numbers are consistent across state lines. asked in a different way, the left and said we asked where will the next bill gates come from. on the right-hand side to more of a scientist to cure cancer come from? more people say the united states is any one country, 35% say the united states will produce the next bill gates and we explained to that list. the founder of microsoft and 31% believe the united states will produce a scientistic cures cancer. we see the majority and left inside, 52% of voters say the next innovative leader that the gates will come from another country. 25% china, 15% india, 3% 0.9% somewhere else. on the right-hand side, where will the scientistic cures cancer come from? 40% say no.

in terms of the priority voters face on this issue, the high one good 70% of voters want the next president, whether it's barack obama or mitt romney to meet restoring america's leadership in education and increasing investments in education a top priority. 42% a top priority, 36% a high, but not necessarily top priority. these are consistent across party lines as well. among democrats for the president they would like 90% to be a top for education. among independents is 80% of republican voters is 61%. the governor's level is 85%. 69% of republicans. and the next congress, 77%, 70% of advance. so at least two thirds of voters across party lines for restoring america's leadership in education to be a top or a high priority.

and not only do they want it to be a priority for leaders, they are willing to put their money where their mouth is. we asked this in two different ways. going to pay more for education programs for pre-k, k-12 and higher education and we also one half of the sample if they do want to pay more in taxes and reduce spending and other programs and majorities across the levels so they would be willing to. the dark lubar means they were very willing to pay more in taxes for the life of ours somewhat willing. total numbers k-12, 68% of voters are going to pay more in taxes and those funds are dedicated to education. that's 81% of democrats, 59% independents and 57% of republicans. the pre-k level is more consolidated around democrats going to pay more in taxes. lower levels of independents and republicans. k-12 across party lines is a desire to personally pay more in

taxes at the center dedicated to education. pay more in taxes or reduce spending for other domestic programs. majorities of voters would do so for all three education levels. again, the partisan dynamic is very similar. by party, the consensus is around k-12. 76% democrats, 64 independence and 55% republicans are very somewhat willing to pay more in taxes or reduce spending in other areas if funds are dedicated to programs. that is where voters come out on these issues. i'll turn this back to ann o'leary. [applause]

>> thank you very much. i'd ann o'leary, director of the family program for the center for the next generation and i want to just say i'm delighted to be back in d.c. that is my home base at the center for american progress. i'm wearing my new hat. is not set from the center a think tank based in san francisco, dedicated to improving investment in children and families and investing wisely in children and families and gaining the political will. we are focused on looking now at a new strategic communication to get people focusing and thinking about issues that are high quality research quality research and melissa were doing today. i'm delighted to be joined on the stage by rick hanushek, bob carpenter, one of the new authors of the survey that jonathan voss just presented. is the chesapeake beaked consulting and a long time, very well respect his survey researcher, poster, particularly

republican surveys. were pleased to have him in a bipartisan survey us. and marilyn reznick with at&t and executive director of educational leadership at at&t a lot of work in educational leadership on the business side. i'm really delighted the maryland sfs. before starting the discussion, i would want to reiterate my thanks for the american progress and anita cooper, in amherst, co-authors on the report, terrific work taking hard at data from china and india. we appreciate that. and thanks to michael allender who provided a lot of guidance and leadership throughout. i really appreciate their help. let me start with maryland who we haven't heard from yet. how to go back and save more about one one of the things refining. what we see in the business community. matt started by telling you one

fact i want to reiterate. in china by 2030, were going to have 200 million college graduates coming out of china. that is more than the entire united states labor force. the other fact that as we highlighted in the report that is quite interesting is that we look at the u.s. labor force. one of the things happening is that people are retired wicked new individuals, we see that we have a less educated labor force today there are new entrance, less educated than those retiring from the u.s. labor force. so really a change in how we're doing things in the united states. marilyn was mentioned at the beginning the commitment that at&t is made to the type of people they feel they need to hire in the workforce, which is the only hire people who have those secondary education or training in terms of new entrants into at&t. they do this at a time in which there is a scarcity in terms of individuals who are and all

jobs. so i'd like to turn to you and have you stay up a bit about what type of commitment to think business community is making enemies to make of it is sure as you look at what the global competitors says. >> thank you. at&t, like every company invests in education because you need you need a smart scout work for us be successful in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. we know that education is directly tied to growth and development. in fact, investing in education may be the most important thing we can do to help america remain a leader in a global economy. we invest a lot in education to increase high school graduation rates and better prepares students for college and career. a lot of companies are investing in education. and yet, in spite of those investments, in spite of other

good efforts that are going on in this country to improve education and workforce development, we still are not able to find enough workers with the skills we need to fill the jobs that are available today. and then if you look at the graduation rates in this country in both high school and postsecondary education, those numbers are only going to get worse. then when you look at what china and in you are doing, that is real cause for concern and that is why we need to do more. >> rate, while thank you. can you see a little more about the type of investments you see the other worker community investing? for many years we've had the business roundtable and other stepping up to the plate. we have the governor of delaware today saying they want to make sure businesses off the table. what d.c. in terms of how we get businesses like at&t more involved in this debate in the public way? >> i think we do have to do that

we have to engage a broader part of the business community. it can't just be a handful of companies that are always the leaders. it can't just be the business roundtable. it needs to be all business is a minitour card to work hard to engage more of an. we have chosen to focus on that particular problem in the country, but other companies are looking at k-12 education, early childhood education. and in fact i think there's a real growing sense of urgency in the business community, particularly around k-12 education, but i think we have to be careful that it's not just k-12 education. by the time i get the students out of high school, we need to make sure that postsecondary institutions are prepared to accept those statements, graduate more of them faster and have them prepared to enter the workforce. >> welcome upgrade. when they take take up on something you said he had one of

the things they found in the poll is that there is this very strong commitment to k-12 commandment. as jonathan just presented, 68% of voters said the willing to increase taxes in order to commit more k-12 education. 57% of republicans would increase taxes to those dedicated to k-12 education, but not the same robust numbers that early childhood that we look at how you read. can you say a little bit more about what it's going to take in terms of the political will and some of these issues? one of the things we found is reported. in some sense we know what to do, but what we need is a robust number you see in k-12. maybe if you could speak to what we found in the k-12 numbers. >> certainly. just to follow up on one dating marilyn said. the public is ready to follow investment education.

we are willing to pay more in taxes more in taxes across the board, whether it's democrat, republican or independent and we see slightly higher numbers add up parents on the same question, which is really not surprising. in terms of how we move forward in terms of here, the public again as john pointed out, the public has believed that high priority or a top priority, that their governor as well as the next president and congress should be focused on education. and when you think about the high versus top it all the things that a governor or member of congress or president has done his or her plays, to make it a high priority and a top priority is still a very important statement. when you're in the 80% and 90%

of the public lending to focus on education, and that speaks volumes for what are the officials should be doing. in terms of moving forward, it is really convincing it is a priority, not just of those in the room around the city, but it's the public is ready. voting members that are likely to vote in the 2012 presidential election. onecompany focused on education it.are willing to pay for .. pay more for a commitment to education. >> is a fascinating number and i want to highlight two things you just said. one is i want to highlight survey were voters and the next election and that's really

important. but the other thing is that the parents are higher in some of these numbers, not the pricing. but one of the things that is so fascinating is the last several weeks facing a very big shift and focusing on medicare and talking about what we need to be doing for seniors and that's obviously a very critical part of who we are and that we want to make sure that our seniors have the greatest generation do not live in poverty were committed to medicare and social security. one of the things that is frustrating is how do we have that debate, but also ensure that we have the type of commitment to the next generation to her young people. one of the things about bob is always the in the commandments in how we may be able to build on that to get our politicians and voting on these issues. in fact they do care about this.

they also care about medicare, but this is a top priority, high priority and they should be talking about it. >> let me share some additional numbers in terms of the clash and where we rank as a remember, jonathan pointed out among all respondents, the u.s.a. that had, 25% said it had, 46% and 21% at about even. perez, 21 ahead, 55, difference of nine points behind and 16 about even. so across the board we see parents believing that the u.s. and other countries is falling behind. a majority believe that peer to the question you think schools in china and india catch up at u.s. schools are passing u.s. schools is about the same or falling behind. we see about the same numbers. 14% among all respondents catching up. 44% surpassing, among all 46%

among parents and 13 about the same among both. but when you look at making the commandments, how willing the gb to pay more taxes if the funds raised were dedicated to kindergarten through 12th grade education programs. among all respondents, 60% were among willing, among parents 75% were somewhat willing. how willing would you be to pay my taxes as well as reduce spending among all respondents, 65% area or willing among parents. so you see a greater commitment to non-parents. one of the caps i do politics is encouraging to get out of the. and they develop a message that they're going to hone their

elect officials accountable. when you look at the questions relating to the priority for the next president among all respondents, 70% there is a top or high priority among parents 80%. what 88% of, in particular, voting bloc is saying something, it is incumbent on any of the official, or someone who wants to be an elected official to certainly within. the next congress among all respondents, 72% for high priority, 75%. how much of a difference. over 75% or even 72% of the public expressing a particular point of view, it is important to obviously pay attention. restate governor bob all respondents, you have priority.

so again, a difference of eight points, 85% of parents are saying to their governor, pay attention. so you know, make it either a top priority or a high priority. again, when you think all that is on the governor's plate or president's plate to 5% focusing on a single issue at the top or her priority, that's a pretty strong message that if i were governor, i would be rewriting the state speech right now. >> so they heard from maryland about the business leaders available and we see there is critical well to do this. and then the question, what do we do? brick touched on that in the remarks that happens a little more. i want to highlight one piece of this report and i noticed some of the ideas to help this report is americana, a research associate.

and as he dug the numbers. one thing she brought forth is this issue that if you look at reading scores, one of the things that happened is that we're doing quite mediocre with regard to international comparison. the students who go to our most wealthy schools, the way we measure that is less than 10% of the students get free and reduced price point, it will cure school, poor schools for 90% aren't free and reduced price lunch. you see a huge gap. so you see wealthy students are number one in reading compared to these other countries, where poor students were only second to mexico. so a huge difference. not so much of the different is not pointed out at the beginning were all doing mediocre in terms of math. but you have really focused on looking out what it would mean if we actually made some improvements, both in our math assessment, but also if a close

some of these inequities that we have overall. can you say a little bit more about that in terms of we could have the political will, what would we be able to see? >> we really talk about changing changing -- you introduce the discussion of medicare that the current debate, the paul ryan budget is all about what is the balance between future revenues and future expenditures of the federal government trying to take care of the fiscal problems you see. they all go away with a slightly higher growth rate. they go away. and we don't have those discussions if in fact we can improve the quality of our schools. now, the problem with improving the quality, i think we have from washington d.c., the unfortunate part of this meeting is in washington d.c. gives you

the sense that washington d.c. has much to do with education in the u.s., whereas it's actually different states that are the key to education. i think we've had two terrific presidents in terms of education policy in a row. i think george bush and barack obama has been terrific on education issues. but it is whether you can get the state to in fact changed dramatically. if you go out into the country, countryside outside of his district, you see that there's a real battle going on. we all witnessed this constant and saw it was in a lot of turmoil about how state laws should have sat should have sat should have sat should have sat

they changed the labor laws or the pension system or what have you trained to deal with education. none of the states quite know what to do. we don't have a lot and it's all a great experiment. i happen to think it's a good experiment because it is moving states to consider first and foremost issues of the pay of teachers and evaluation of teachers and how those go together, which is the secret to changing anything. >> right, what one of the other seekers of changing anything is also investing early in early childhood that i want to raise that because one thing fascinating look at the maryland and the work he did on the survey is that we see in the

business community and the voting public a strong commitment from k-12, but not a strong commitment to early learning and necessarily to higher education. i think it's important to recognize what we are doing. so china and india, not noted at the beginning china has said are going and make sure 27% of our population gets three years of preschool education. 3-year-olds, 4-year-old on the account of kindergarten so their 5-year-old would get three years of data. for us, our three and 4-year-old, only about 50%. it's quite a significant difference. india is also recognized that will make sure 60% of our kids are ready when they enter primary school by 2018. again a different commandment. but many people know is we've made a commitment and many states have made a commitment to preschool education. we've seen the repossession and

the impact on our economy, does have the robot for they perceive they had to rollback and we are -- i think this is concerning. i do it for you to say a word about the economic commitment. if you want to add anything to that. >> have been a good start through preschool education is an extraordinarily important. what we do see the schools in the sixth grade are the ones behind in kindergarten. and we have to deal with this issue from not only equity and fairness kind of data, but also from where our country is going to go, because these are resources being left behind. much of this discussion of preschool actually can be traced back to a colleague of mine, and noble laureate in economics from

chicago who has done a lot of work on preschool. and the simple line that he had said they think should run through all of this discussion is fat burning beget learned. when you start better off, you learn more in third grade if you start ahead. when you know more in ninth grade, you do better in college and the colleges and universities can build upon the stronger base. and it starts early and our nation to the extent that our european nations has done and that is to try to ensure a solid starting point. and a part of this and the statistics that we have before for that upper income, middle class and upper income parents know the story that she start

early. i remember a psychologist friend of mine said well, you know, when we had a head start comment really about nutrition, how penetration because it's not developmentally appropriate for kids to learn things. and then you look at every middle class parents in the country who is making sure that their child is learning way before they get into any kind of school and you realize that this is not the right thing, that she really have to start early and in particular are most vulnerable populations have to be helped. >> i think this report is really sobering. i think we've all got some notion that china and india, yeah, they're really big, but when you see the numbers, it's really struggling. when you put their investments, starting early, we are not.

it doesn't take a lot of math to figure out where we're going to end up. and i just think the report is very important for putting real numbers, real data behind that rather then yeah, we start having to worry about them because they're sort of big and growing. this is real data, real numbers and that is really alarming. >> i want to make the point that the public, while perhaps not quite as committed to spending money are being taxed for k-12 education, it is still supported that being taxed for pre-k and for higher education. when you see a number like 60%, which is the number willing to pay more in taxes for k-12 education committee think wow,

68%, two thirds or to put ip willing to be taxed to pay for more. it's important to point out that 60% of the same voters said they would gain more for pre-k education and 55% said they would pay more for higher ed. and i don't know of a single politician in this country who would take 55% job approval are we elect scored 55% of the ballot or 56% and not be happy. so while 68 is a great number and another was focused on, to 55 and 56 or higher ed in pre-k respectively are important numbers to remember and to think about because the public is committed to spending more of their tax dollars on education across the board. k-12 certainly comes in first, but the other two are not far

behind. >> i'm going to a question for a moment. rick had one more point he wanted to make. >> i want to add a couple and it does. i'm not really a reckless person by birth, but the two stories that, thayer, first is the importance of the imported labor into silicon valley, which is a reflection of the fact that many of the firms in silicon valley look more to h. one v. says teenagers to our k-12 education system. and that is key. the second man is to try to keep my body going. i play with some other people around stanford. one of my long-term opponents as someone who's getting a phd in electrical at the university

comes out and says, i'm going back to indiana. the opportunities are better there for me than they are to the con valley. and that is the part that brings someone would talk about china and india and not only developing their own, but having the opportunities for educated people. >> using our world-class education system to then import back to the transpacific is another point. several more questions. in the pink right there. >> thank you. i'm a correspondent for macedonia television for macedonia, europe. talking about competition from china and yeah 10, 22 now, what about now?

between september the european countries like spain, portugal, italy, ireland, are you ready for the high skilled personnel coming to this day when you talk about high school personnel and not taken a college graduates. pentax zoom out dr. of science -- okay, people who speak at least two foreign languages. >> yes, i think one of the things that is very evident is in this particular report we focus on competitors in china in the future. there are real competitions in terms of what's going on right now in bringing up the issue of hero. i think one of the things we recognize that some underwear was a camp right now, the united states is preparing our children for today or tomorrow, certainly not for tomorrow and even today we are stretched in terms of how we prepared our young people.

i was looking at some data is not in the report, the to send data to foreign languages, one of the issues you just mentioned. i took a redeye last night because my daughter started demanding it to be there for her first at kindergarten. she started adding mandarin kindergarten called fuming charter school. i was curious how many children are learning mandarin. it turns out the last time they collected data about four years ago, only 60,000 kids in the entire united states for only. the entire country of china is teaching english. only one of five children learn another language. so we really are behind in terms of a whole plethora of issues, including foreign languages. i think you make a good point, which is the need to look both today and tomorrow. >> we are going to take advantage of this many europeans highly trained as we can.

and actually i think this is from a very parochial u.s. view, this is one of the ways we can bridge to a better educated labor force by a in the short run borrowing people that are trained in major education systems abroad. >> let's see, we have in the purple and then in the pink. >> hi, thank you. alyssa schwenk from change the equation. one of the tenets mentioned at the beginning of the presentation terms of where china and india are investing their resources and strategies regarding education a stand. we also spoke a little less about teacher quality. i'm just wondering what investments are china and india make you that are interesting in terms of science and technology he? >> i'll say something and turn

to rick, the first of all, congratulations with your great work your great organization focusing on not on the same subjects. what we know at the beginning is that china and the right now, china in particular is graduating over a million people and half a million people are investing tremendously in making sure their population in higher education are trained in those subjects. india is making the same type of investment. we make investments much, much smaller, much larger scale. one problem facing the united states will you get to, and i know you know this wasn't anybody, but because we don't start early, by the time students get to college, they are not able to participate because they haven't received the baseline they need in their early ad in case all of

education. marilyn, did you want to make a comment? >> we to. not surprised that an at&t would care about stand. those disciplines are at the height of our business. increasingly we think this disciplines will be important to every industry and every business. stan drives innovation. innovation drives the economy and i think that his wife so important. >> this is sort of a simple global answer. the other nations pay attention to whether their teachers know matt before they teach it. and we don't pay as much attention to that in the u.s. so that the stem problems that are often talked about our middle-school math and so forth. i think they're actually a third and fourth grade math where we are preparing a and even deeper than that. we have to make a commitment

that knowledge and results are important. >> let's see. the blue here and orange in the back. i'm calling you out by your color today. if you stand up, i'll repeat your question. ibm back [laughter] [inaudible] >> to two observations i want to offer them like to have the reaction of the panelists if possible, as number one, when we talk about quality in the context, the danger i perceive is that we may have already used the ground to those competing

with death at area. i.e. we want to model quality within 30 years about what china and india and other countries in finland and canada and germany are doing. the questions that arises is observation is what atrocities do you see in place for us globally to define? apple is now the largest capitalized company and somehow the company has to find quality of globally. they've managed to do that and it's an american company. so i would like to hear some observations about how do we go about really thinking about 30 years ahead from now, not in an american context, but a global context. the second question i have is icy and place it and what it's been said and i haven't had the benefit, that we will lose part of the population regardless of what we do. i would like for the panelists

to talk about what assumptions have gone into the study. you talked about the results, the methodology, what assumptions have gone into it when he started out on this process to define the study? thank you very much. >> so, let me turn to the panel to think a little bit about quality. i know a number of people are working on an effort in the states to define some of our national goals of how we are preparing children in terms of being ready for postsecondary training or for college or postsecondary education through something called a common core initiative to make sure that we do have an understanding in all of our states. marilyn, i don't know if at&t is banned about, but you have to see to that effort? >> yes, we are very involved and committed to helping the states now implement the common core standards and does not an english-language art as governor

markell said earlier, the real heart part comes now and implementation. we have states agreeing to that, but implementing that and join with the results of the assessment when those come in 2014. but for us, we are going to be the recipients of the outcomes of that, if you will. that is going to form our workforce. we must adhere to higher standards, to higher quality so we can remain a competitive force. >> i think that to your first question, quality is going to be very hard to measure because then, for instance, the business community and the quality of employees and how they perform his or her job is the measurement. to a parent, the quality of education is going to be so their child has a little better, it's not a lot better than they have.

.. >> i want to do what i can, paying taxes, encouraging my governor or congress member to be more out front and involved in pushing the education agenda at all levels. ultimately, that's going to be my measurement in terms of quality because my child or my

grandchild is better off, a little better educated, has a better life than i do, and soani the -- again, 200 million is san astounding figure, but you have to put it in a sense of the entire person's existence and how that's going to be measured and affected. >> anything to add? >> i have a slightly different take on this for the first policy decisions that we're making, we have a measure of quality meaning we can measureth theat skills and thinking aboutf people fairly well with assessments that we have around and that's fine. there's a much broader sense that everybody thinks about with quality of life and for me, it's

not necessary that every person in the room knows the advanced econnics, but in small areas, that's important, and there's going to be nuances and so forth, but for the kinds of broad policy decisions and the broad competition in terms ofs f the development of world economy in the future, i think we do okay right now.in we know how to do it. >> let me just say one thing about the assumptions made as ws took on the report. one thing i want to make sure, to be really clear, is that obviously global competition isr not allea bad, and having china and india with educated work forces is a good thing, and we want them to be educated and contributing to solving thet mo world's problems, you know, if the cure for cancer comes from china and the united states, we all will benefit. it's a good thing to improve the

education of the work force, but what we don't want to see happeg is for the united states to be in a lackluster economy with a poorlyn educated citizenry. we look add what happened, and numbers of in terms of the world economic output, and what you are seeing is from 1980-2011, china increased output from 2% to 14% of the world's economic output. the united states decreased its world economic output from a 25% to 19%. we're going in different directions. that's the assumption and how do we reverse the trend to compete on an even keel with the competitors and continue to go up. that's where we really started. i have called on the woman, in fact, that's the last question, and eni want to put down d -- and then i want to make some

closing remarks. >> is this working? it is. i'm a sociologist, workeder, internationally -- [inaudible] institutions are really diploma mills that we have in this country. other campuses overseas, universities with great salaries, high-tech all over the world, campuses and the gulf states and elsewhere. they are available internationally from an i.t. has some a lot of that. some of the opportunities to learn and grow are now diffusing

internationally come even though you can get a degree. my question is, i would like to ask you a little but more specifically about the world business universities that i'm talking about. there is motorola university, gallup university. how are you perceiving this? as at&t have university? and of course, cisco does a lot. is their association there association bring them to the front? can you tell us what kind of training at&t does provide? in terms of its workforce. >> my observations in terms of what that means. [inaudible question] >> her microphone wasn't working very well, so they're probably a couple of questions in their

current one is the quality of higher education. some things are not as good as they could be. what implication does not have. the implication of businesses that have their own universities and trainings. the third one, [inaudible] let me talk to maryland. we have to universities, which are owned internal education and training organization for our employees. and we provide a really broad array of coursework for our employees, everything from basic management courses to hire technical courses, and that changes as the needs of our work force changes that is one of the things that we need to worry about. in terms of education, generally in this country. technology is changing our jobs and changing the nature of the work force faster than we can

prepare people. how do you educate and train people for that kind of a workplace. at at&t, for us, it is ongoing all the time. we can go and take courses for our own edification to change jobs and reach skills so we as we can be competitive within our own workforce. and i think we need to keep up. we talked to other corporations, obviously, who have their own workforce and training programs. i don't know of an association that brings us all together. >> sing a couple things about higher education come i think higher education is going to go through an enormous transformation in the next two years. the best example other than mit is to stanford courses and artificial intelligence and

database management. that were offered to over 100,000 registered students in the world. all of a sudden, we should not monopolize this whole tier. part of this is also a story that there are students in other countries that are more hungry than our students. that are out there trying to work harder. that is part of what china and india is. they are just not at the level of even california schools. but what you see there is with 1.2 to 1.4 billion people, there are a large number that are working very hard on their own,

to get to the point where they will be at the highest level in their own countries and to move into the u.s. universities and so forth. >> well, i would like to think the panelists, not only for their contributions today, but for the ongoing work that they do on these issues. please join me in thanking the panelists. >> i will be quite brief. i want to thank you for your participation today and hopefully you will take this report and help us all raise the flags for public attention on this issue. when we started to this report, remember the first day that i walked over to my colleague, adam hersh, and i said to him that i that we will find out

those crazy chinese over there, they are teaching their kids multiplication before they start school. i was joking. only two weeks later, there were experts who pointed out to me that the chinese have just changed the preschool curriculum. they used to teach three digit multiplication by entry to kindergarten. predigital tradition. but they tested 90,000 pre-k students in china, a couple of years ago, and realize that they couldn't use three digits, so they are bringing down our standard 22 digit multiplication. by the time that you enter kindergarten. so what middle-class parents know, one of the things that we see around the quality deficit in india and china is that they are mimicking what middle-class parents know in america need to happen for their children to have the skills to compete in the global economy. that is one of the points that we make and support heavily.

we look at the patterns that have served to middle-class and upper-class families well over several decades. they have focused on volunteering in their children's schools and they have focused on making sure that children have jobs before they graduate high school come so they have some work experience. the outcome of those patterns of behavior are markedly different for children who have those and those who don't. even for poor kids, whether they are able to take advantage of early childhood, parental volunteerism, quality schools and employment, they also do better as adults. it is not a surprise that china and india are limiting our behavior. what is surprising is the pace at which they are doing this and the scale. the biggest echo is china has 1.1 million students graduating with degrees.

that number will rise dramatically as they get towards their college completion goals over the next 10 years. in india, they have increased in seven years by 200% from the number of graduates. about 220,000 spam graduates compared to our half a million. in that same seven years, our number of spam graduates only grew by 24%. in fact from the last year, in 2010 from the number of graduates declined a little bit. sort trajectory of projects may not be anywhere near where we needed to be. so when you think about it, 33 -- for every 100 kids that enter elementary school, 33 kids in america are graduating from college. our assumption in this report is that we change that. not every kid has to go to college, but in order to get a job at at&t, every kid has to be able to get a postsecondary credential or degree. for that reason, we also looked

at the american history and we saw that when ronald reagan was president from there was a very telling report called the nation at risk. barack obama brought together the nation's governors. the goal of that summit remains the goals that we have today. we have not yet achieved them. as bill clinton, raise the red flag again, calling the nation to focus on improving the outcomes of our children. none of those presidents gave lip service. all of them focused on investment, as did george w. bush and has barack obama. but what we learned by doing this research was that china and india approaches unturned approach the state differently. they have a plan. they don't just have goals, they

have a plan. that plan started from pre-k and goes through college. how many pre-k slots do i need? how many qualified teachers do i need? how i get qualified teachers, how do i keep them. how many was secondary. >> what our report calls for is for the next president, to look specifically at how we create new goals and put plans behind them. how we expand assets to early childhood education and ensure that it is high-quality how we

ensure that americans competitiveness is advanced by improving the future of our children. the olympics ended a week ago and we wanted the most medals. four years ago, china vetoes by 11 gold medals. that is a sign that the u.s. is getting more focused on quality. but we believe that the competition that really matters is the competition of what happens when children go back to school. this week and over the next two weeks, children are going back to school. this is a call for the next president to go back to school and take us all back to school and improve america's competitiveness by improving the outcomes of our schools and what they deliver. we invite you to be part of that challenge and encourage members of congress and governors of the next president to leave for america's competitiveness and leave for our children. thank you very much for coming and thank you to the cent

we are introducing our new web site. today it is being unveiled here in c-span is going to introduce it to us. >> guest: hello, how are you? >> host: what have you got to show us? >> guest: since 1984 c-span has covered every convention minute to minute, gavel-to-gavel and this year will be no different on the c-span convention hub, viewers can really engage in the content and with other viewers during the conventions have. so if you go to the homepage it

is c-span.org/campaign2012 you'll find all sorts of things. at the top of the page you'll see life and featured video. this is a new thing for c-span we shall live video every single day and it's all archived in the c-span and video library but if you scroll down you will see new things. the first thing or the user generated eclipsed every video in the library for the convention and every video feed before that you can clip just certain segments of the video so rather than sharing an entire five hour session, you can share just 30 seconds or two minutes, however long you see fit and share that on the various social media networks or on your blog or website. below that you are going to see that water streams, these come from two sources. one, the viewers. anyone using the hashed had c-spanrnc or c-span dnc for the democratic convention in charlotte the tweet is in to end up on the left. on the right we have compiled a

list of delegates were going to be tweeting from each conventions on the republican side, which is life now, you'll see all of the speed at the convention we've already targeted. next week when the democrats start, actually the week after next we will have their tweets as well. >> host: so, jeremy, everything is available at c-sapn.org. people can watch the conventions live from the kanwit speakers have already spoken on line. they will see the viewers, political tweets. what about facebook? >> guest: all of this is going to be shareable on facebook. we have infographics with tax and figures that is actually something new for us at c-span that people are going to be able to share and the site includes quotes, links, members from the speech. we are going to be doing those

day-by-day and those are going to be shareable on facebook and really easy to share on facebook and other networks as well. >> host: people want to goo hey? >> guest: c-span.org/campaign2 012, where you can find every single speaker from governor mitt romney and president obama down to the mayors, members of congress and and when speaking of the convention and as well as touts at the convention. democracy is a difficult subject to measure quantitatively. but there are ways to do that. there's measures of competition and participation. the most obvious measure of participation is voter turnout. and as it turns out, voters are far less likely to show that the polls in the united states than in other wealthy countries. we had a far slower performance than the rest of the competition now voter turnout is an indication there are barriers to showing up to vote. maybe some other issue about the

process. but let's look at the symptom of the issue and democracy. we know we have a data point. the other couple of data points come from the world bank. the world bank has a measurement of democracy and in each one of them there is consistency such as lacasa dalia out of the top. the united states comes down somewhere in the middle. not the best, not the worst of the comparison group. there's also measures from freedom, and once again, countries like australia and canada are near the top. the united states more in the middle not doing as strong as we would have liked to expect. this is very interesting because just like where we used to be a leading country if we think back to democracy, we've created the declaration of independence. our constitution was a leading document at the time. we were a leader in

representative democracies. but if you think about, is made a tremendous amount of change to our structure. the way that we elect people 't evo much overtime. in the other countries we have used more modern voter technology. >> see how the u.s. measures of on a number of different topics including education, health care and criminal justice. >> they thought the president was not going to be a strong defender of american values and american principles. human rights, democracy, free enterprise, those words of apology in a statement have emboldened those who find there

is a weekend enemy. a recent conference of radical and policy analysts in washington explore ways to fight obesity and the african-american community. one of the discussions focused on health disparities and what can be done to close with a term the obesity gap between african-americans and other demographic groups. panelists discuss the cultural and environmental factors that can influence behavior. the media's coverage of the issue hosted by the online magazine the route is just over an hour. >> we were participating in a series in the health disparities panel. for the next hour we will

discuss solutions to eliminating the health issues as far as obesity on the community's, and our esteemed experts are jerry cruce, an award winning writer and editor of the public health topics and specializing the consumer multi-cultural health. the veteran journalist and contributor to the route she was the editor and first publication focused on health and she had literally threatened a book. next we have eleanor, president and ceo of the 2007 she has been committed to advance in the core values in reducing health inequities, and aging black women to be advocates in the fight against hiv and breast cancer and advancing black women's well-being by promoting recut of the cut reproductive health care, access and

improving healthy sexual behavior. finally, we have the ceo of meshaal borodin and sissies that creates policy solutions and improves the health of underserved communities, the author of reclaiming health african-american will miss a graduate at the johns hopkins school of medicine she's a clinical professor of the university maryland school of medicine and the johns hopkins school and the former deputy secretary of health. thank you all so much for joining the panel. we really appreciate it. [applause] first and foremost all free if you cover a wide range of health issues and the work that you do. can you explain how you are addressing your work? eleanor, do you want to start?

>> -- this is certainly an issue that we have worked with an almost 30 years of being in existence making sure that we are the voice for black women's health and dealing with this experience that black women have over read and obesity is part of our cultural heritage, so what we tried to do is hear the stories and be the voice at the kitchen table, everybody's kitchen table from congress and the administration policy makers and others organizations so that we can move this issue beyond the individual women to take into consideration the social health determinants but also the

environmental industry. so, one, we are the voice. number two, weak here and share the stories. you'd be surprised of how many stories we have. we get the black women who can't get care who are refused care and certainly can't get quality care. a third, we have worked very hard on the affirmative care act making sure that there were provisions that took the preventive measures that you now find in the affordable care act, the aca that will provide a low-cost or no cost, no cost beginning in 2014, but low-cost certainly for many of the essentials of the preventive service benefits. >> we also feel that obesity through our self-help circle --

i will pause there because i know people do much more. but one of the things that we understand is that weight is not leave in itself. you have to deal with some of the social psychological barriers that exist as well as the impairment of coming and we deal with some of the environmental change such as working with mma for doctors to be more sensitive and we talked about that in our briefing. so, we have something called the self-help sister service so people can share their pain and shame and the trauma of being either refused care by some physicians were not getting the kind of care by some physicians and also the shame of being black and female as well as big.

>> just to add on to that on the line in all of the things i've done in my career i am a doctor, and so initially my job was to diagnose and treat some of the outcomes, if you will, of carrying extra weight. the high blood pressure, the diabetes, etc.. what is unfortunate is i'm a pediatrician, so i was treating those conditions in my patience. in fact more and more we begin to see children with adult medical problems. a disease we used to call when i was in medical school and adult onset diabetes. we no longer call it that because we are seeing it in younger children. so i got to the point where i was frankly tired of trying to patch up sort of what was happening in the after effects of obesity and the latest condition and wanted to do something to help people live healthier lives and not get sick in the first place, not have to come to the doctor in the first

place to be treated. so my whole in writing reclaiming our health and the policy work that i do is to fold one, to provide education that talks about that this morning about the need for all of us to understand what it means to live healthier, but it goes beyond because you have to call what i have the resources we need to be healthy. you have to have access to the healthy food and the ability for your children to be able to go outside and play and get adequate exercise. you have to be able to have health insurance so that you can see the doctor in the enforcement you do need to see the doctor to read life happens, and sometimes we need to do that but we also need to understand the underlying issues like eleanor touched on briefly. stress, stress is a huge issue in our society and we don't talk enough about that and i'm sure we will get more into that as we given to the panel. but understanding those issues

and then translating what is happening on the ground in our community into language and policy options and solutions and policymakers and elected officials can understand and development policies that transform our communities and transfer of our society's as to environments that he'll rather than environments that second. so that is what i try to every day. >> i would say my approach is a little bit different as a communicator and someone who works for the media my personal position in the recent years has become to try to find a way to communicate about all of the health care disparities that effect african-americans, but in particular, african-american women who've written about most of the career in a way this fair and balanced, respectful, and does not stigmatize us were perpetually stereotypes that are

unhelpful in the struggle to try to address the health problems that we face. i have attempted through my own work but also for talks with much larger groups of reporters through organizations like the association of health care journalists to try to help them understand ways to cover some of the unique issues that both dr. gourdine and eleanor touch on just now, which is many of the people that write about our health issues in national magazines and on the news don't know of, don't know those issues, don't know our community, don't know our culture and so they often create things that are not constructive, positive, inspiring and may even add to the stress that you just mentioned, and to the cell was the issues that have also been mentioned, and also women have access to resources. ..

>> i know how we are trained. doctors are essentially trained to diagnose and treat disease which basically means that for most people when you encounter a doctor you are already sick. we are not necessary trained on how to keep people well. that's something that i had to learn along the way of my career. it's something that i think that our medical school is sort of

evolving in attempting to teach that but we have a long way to go. that's one issue, teaching people how to be well. dealing with the individual issues that impact an individual's behavior. because when it boils down to it, we are talking that eating any particular way, or getting a particular amount of exercise, it requires a level of motivation and desire on the part of the individual in order to do that. that's not something you can get somebody but that's something you can facilitate. that's not something we have learned how to teach people through. if there was something that i would say is lacking and that needs to be nurtured in terms of training up her health care professionals, is teaching people, coaching people. the root of the word doctor in latin is teacher. were supposed to teach, and we have not been doing a very good job of doing that. so i think that that's a really, really important aspect of what

we do is to begin to teach and to coach. not to be paternalistic. sometimes we tend to be a bit paternalistic where we are looking almost directly down at the patient and saying, you should do this and you should do that. and then i heard colleagues of mine say well you know, these patients or those patients, sort of in very stereotypical ways. they won't do what i tell them to do. who are you to tell anybody to do anything? and so that's one issue. the other important issue, and i talk a lot about this in my book, is that we don't have a good understanding of the cultural and environmental factors that played into individuals making decisions about their health. sheree was in, you know, individuals who don't know us, but don't know our culture may not be able to relate in such a way that would encourage people to want to eat better or to understand how people eat. i will give you one example and then i will be quite.

i'm a southern girl. i'm from jackson, mississippi, and i remember when i was practicing, and one of the patrician is he was not black, was giving a sample diet plan to one of the patients. and i took a look at him and i chuckled because the mother took it and just kind of threw it in the back but i knew she was going to pay attention to it again. and i said i wouldn't follow this is a. when i grew up in mississippi, right, wrong or indifferent, when i ate vegetables like string beans they were cooked unique. they were. and so we used the wrong kind of neat. we use hemlocks which we now know are not healthy, and understanding of that culture from which i came and perhaps the patient he might have allowed the nutritionist to provide a more culturally appropriate healthier option for the individual. we need to be able to understand the culture in which people live, which influence how people

live and then we can be more effective as health care providers in helping people to live better. [applause] >> michelle is coming this from the doctor's perspective and i would assume eleanor come use would have, know about this from the patient's perspective. >> yeah, which is very important. and i do appreciate, i love doctors. and yet i also recognize their limitations. and that's a we have to do because doctors are not doing so well themselves. particularly black women doctors. so we shouldn't depend on them all to guide us in this. but we should enter, i believe come into a partnership that it has to be a partnership. and the other thing come in addition to doctors not being good health caregivers, and i have friends here are not good health caregivers and/or overweight and obese, they also

need to be good learners. because they have, many of them have forgotten, you know, where they came from. and many of them internalize some of the serious difficult images and are very judgmental. and this is not an it don't, or what i'm telling you what the black women see. 160,000 people in our database of the black women's health imperative, we have those and if we don't have them written, they tell us whenever we have gathered. but in addition to that i think the one thing that i'm hoping that the affordable care act that you can see i'm a big proponent of it, because i think this is our one chance if we can ever figure out what it does, what it has and what it will mean for our community and for our population, that this is the

one opportunity that we will be able to shift the dialogue from disparity to equity. because it has obesity. obesity counseling. it has diabetes screening, even for kids, and that's the good news. it has mental health counseling in it. it has all of the preventive health services screening for gestational diabetes. and so that catches it soon and that's one of the things that we try to do is to relate obesity to the diseases of weight. if you know what i mean. diabetes and heart disease and cancer. all related, directly and indirectly, related to obesity. doctors don't have a good job at relating, at making, you know, make sure that we understand

that in a relationship. so that's why i'm pleased to what a lot of the medical profession, professional groups, so that we can help them understand some of the cultural dynamics, as well as some of the gender specific issues that are going with the black women who struggle daily in maintaining certain lifestyle, including healthy weight management. >> i'm glad you mentioned the affordable care act. it's a big story, was mentioned earlier today on our earlier panel. the big story is kind of the battle around it, not so much what's in it. and you sort of mentioned that, once we find out what's in it we can use it. what, you mentioned a few of them, but what are some of the things in the affordable care act that could help to combat obesity, sheree? >> well, there is a significant

prevention and obesity fund which probably could not find a number in my lap. it's i believe in the range of $74 million, but targeted specifically to obesity and fitness. and includes i believe michelle obama's initiative. there's also a significant prevention fund that is larger than that that has an obesity component. obviously, coming at it from a media perspective and looking at the coverage that i've seen, most of the coach is very political right now. what he doesn't talk about is a grassroots organizations that i know they are many grassroots organization people here in the room, i've talked to some of them today, it doesn't really talk, the media coverage hasn't talked about how you can get to that money, how that money can be brought to low income african-american women and other communities so they can be put to good use. but it is there. so any of you who have say legislative departments or connections in local government, i would take it on the phone

because it's a big pot of money. it's a complex hot of money, but it is there and so it's better to be had. >> let me just speak to that. this is so very important, because in many ways, organizations will not be able to get to the money. it's 16 million, for obesity and hypertension. and we decided as a national organization not to go for it because guess what? the american heart association and all of the other big boys are going for. and i know it. in fact, i was talking to one community organization whose husband is care of one of the forums, and she said well, no, i can't agree. i may not be able to agree to partner with you because my husband 51 megabucks organizations are going to do. so we are competing with the big boys.

so that's 60 million for obesity and hypertension, specifically. then there is a 74 million retention fund which includes a obesity as it relates to our disease and diabetes. and we are going for those. we have a good chance for the diabetes because we've had it before and it's limited to nonprofit organizations. we have less of a chance of getting the cardiovascular because it's open to everybody. and that's 20 million. $3 million per grant, up to 10, eight to 10 grants. and so to answer your question, sheree, of how does he get, we are writing the proposal. i mean, i have someone in my office writing as we speak. and so we are partnering with the range, requirement is from 10 to 15 organizations.

we are trying to partner with 15 community-based organizations, and about five media and national organizations. so we will be giving sub grants from 100,000, to 200,000, depending on their beach. and most of them, and so that is -- their reach. that is the only way committee base organizations can get that money, unfortunately. the good news, however, is that if we get the grant and the national organization, and only national faith-based for profit, and academic institutions and research institutions qualified, so we compete every grant, we compete with johns hopkins. vacated, we don't, even though the black women and baltimore ask us to come in and partner with them. so that's the politics of it. and so i will be calling you and

all of you when we don't get it, because if only white organizations get these grants, they can't -- they can't focus on the black community. we need to raise hell. and i know i'm on tv. aspect. >> -- [laughter] >> speaking of being on tv and raising hell, sheree, we talked a little earlier about how may be cultural differences are affecting coverage of black obesity and lack health in the media you obviously very well put to talk about this as a health writer. what you think of how black obesity is covered? >> i have to say obviously i'm here today because i'm not at all happy with how it's covered. i think there are many people in this room have spoken to already who are familiar with the very same -- famous piece now that

was in the near a, by an academic and professor named alex randall. who wrote an article about how black women like to be or were happy to be fat, to please our men, and to be larger for the sake, to honor our large grandmothers. "the new york times" has quite a bully pulpit. it has quite a reach. i realize i'm saying that, but it's pretty significant. and i think it was an interesting choice to choose to put that piece out there that way. another piece followed in three weeks from a university in england, which dr. gourdine had mentioned. it was a study that said that at a loss of black girls not benefit from exercise in the fight against obesity. the analysis of this research, if it was accurate, is important but there critical questions that none of the coverage asked. they did not mention that the

data on diet and exercise was self-reported by the teenage girls. they did not discuss the fact that they were basing their analysis on race, for which there is no genetic basis. and they didn't talk about the other benefits these young ladies might have gotten from exercise. but these two articles, along with one on child abuse, childhood sexual abuse being hired in black women and being linked to obesity, they forgot to mention that that is the same relationship for white women and women of other races, received coverage in abc news, nbc news, the "huffington post," the "l.a. times," u.s. news and world report. that let me tell you what came out at the same time during that week that didn't make any of those publications. descriptive study of educated african-american women, successful at weight loss maintenance through lifestyle changes.

this study was done at the college of medicine, and it was also released in june. it was mentioned in the last paragraph in a single sentence of the "huffington post" article on a study. it had no independent coverage. it was covered mostly on small blogs, and i guess we have to ask ourselves why. and how we can change this conversation. there are obviously people here in this room, and "the root" is holding this wonderful conference because they want to have this conversation. in my opinion this is not the way our story should be told. it is not helpful in respectful way for our story to be told. >> you raised some very, very critical issues. i don't even know where to start. as you all know, in our pre-called the article about the black girls not benefiting from exercise is one that is really raised my blood pressure tremendously. i had major problems with it.

and let me give you the punchline first. we have to learn how to be critical thinkers. we need to learn to think for ourselves, be careful where you future information from, questioned the motives behind the people who are providing that information. so having said that, this particular article was brought to my attention by my husband. he snipped it out of newspaper and brought home and threw it in front of me. headline stood out. black girls don't benefit as much from exercise as white girls. what? and the article was very general in what it said. it didn't provide a lot of details, so i went to a computer and i pulled a research paper because i wanted to see exactly what was going on with this particular article. as sheree pointed out there are so many issues with this article network and accurate, but i don't even know where to begin. but they tend to point to a number of stereotype and probably contribute to either

covert or overt bias, that we experience as african-americans when we encounter for health care system. the first issue has to do with the fact that the information, the data that was reviewed and evaluated in the study is what we called secondary data, which means data that was not even collected for the purpose of the study but collected for some other reason, and they pulled it up and analyzed it and came to certain conclusion. secondly, as sheree stated, it was self-reported data about physical activity. the bottom line, conclusion of the study, which i don't agree with, is that they looked at black girls and white girls who got the same level of physical like to be over a years time, and found at the end of that year by girls are more likely to be obese than white girls. most of the data except for three days, three days out of the year, were self-reported data. how accurate would your db if

you self-reported ever take what i don't remember what i had for breakfast this morning. so self-report in and of itself lends to the possibility for inaccuracy. the issue of benefiting from exercise was limited in this study to weight loss. we know that exercise helps lower blood pressure but it helps lower blood sugar. it helps with mental-health issues. it lowers your bad cholesterol and raises your good cholesterol. the list goes on and on and on and on. there's more than one benefit. as a doctor, what am i supposed to do with that conclusion? am i supposed to look at patients and pick out the ones who think our black? and by the way, race is not genetic. that's another issue that tends to play into people's thoughts about race, and i will get back to that but am i supposed to look at people and pick out the ones who think i'm black and if they're black the know say honey, don't worry about exercise because it's not going

to do any good anyway? what am i supposed to do with that? finally the whole issue of race in genetic and implication that there is a genetic inferiority among african-american girls, really irritates me. because first of all, race is social. race is based on physical characteristics. race is no genetic basis whatsoever. if you all don't get anything else out of this conference today, please understand that. because if you look back at the days of jim crow, there are a lot of so-called research papers being written, and scientists making proclamations about the genetic inferiority and the proclivity towards disease of african-americans, which is not true, but some of us have internalized that. some of our providers have internalized that. and his paper tends to feed upon that, and for those who might be inclined to think that way, then this paper and its conclusion tends to support that erroneous train of thought. and so again, we need to be very, very careful about the

coverage that we pay attention to, as journalists. i would hope that everyone is conscientious of the journalists in this room, and providing coverage that is accurate, and information that is accurate. because people will walk away with that information and they can cause a great deal of harm. and that's the last thing we need when we are trying to fight this major health crisis called obesity in our community. [applause] >> so, the point of this whole day is solution oriented, and figure out how to move forward. we've identified some the problems on the first panel, but can any of you shoot any examples of organization for health care providers who are winning, who have found a way, an innovative way to break through some of these barriers?

>> well, the first thing i want to say is yes, there is a national movement of smart young black women who are fighting obesity in black communities and among black women in america. i just want to acknowledge one of those young ladies is sitting right there in the second row. she's from an organization called girl track. her organization is i believe 10,000 strong? [inaudible] okay. this is a national organization that brings black women together to walk. have to make an initial commitment to walk five days a week for 30 minutes i believe for 10 weeks to get started. they also have a division would ask black woman to go into their committees and talk about healthy living. they also have a discover division which is my favorite part, which sends young fellow to out into the world to

discover adventure and fitness vacations. i think vanessa dover they now have a young african-american girl who was hiking in alaska, after commitment is to come back and to tell other young black girls in her community what that experience is like. >> [inaudible] >> yes. [applause] there is another organization called black women do work out. at the start but a trainer called crystal. she is on, they have their own website. she is 16,000 members. of women who share their workout tips, their success stories, their pictures, their dietary stories on our website. or facebook page has 268,000 plus likes. she's been in business for three years. you have to ask itself how come she didn't get the page in the times, right? and the mission of her organization is for black women to commit to not being part of the obesity epidemic. and that is black girls walk,

which is also centered here i believe in d.c., 44,000 members around the country who meet up to do what the funds different cities. and black girls walk founders said to me, she was i believe, she said a size 22 in junior high school. she's now a 12, maybe. and she says she goes into communities that she meets black woman in a very low self-esteem and a very uncomfortable about being out with their bodies. and she said their motivation is to give black women together, publicly, to support each other in this effort to be fit and to be strong and to be accepted in any way, and to move towards a positive goal. those are just three of the solutions organizations that are out there. you can find them all on the web, and three of the stories that i hope people will start to tell and start to share. >> we have had a program walk to

wealth on 10 health -- blog to health, for about 20 years, and it sort of, you know, but one of the things we justify to get a great nonprofit award about a month ago. we asked people, we sent out to our database and asked people to tell us what you think is good about our organization. and one woman wrote me and said, walking for wellness saved my life 20 years ago. i was 300 pounds, and i am now 160 and proud of it. and so that's an example of some the things that are going on all over the country. we have one program in boston, with the boston women's health institute, a slimmed-down sister that just in boston, over 1000

women meet and give support to each other. and it's not just about weight. it is about supporting each other in a healthy lifestyle. so we are talking about lifestyle changes. and these are the stories that we need to get out. and i encourage those of you. we have a website, an incredible website. we would like to feature you on our website so that our members can know that you're out there doing that. but i'd like to just take a moment to switch from the individual and sort of center this discussion were i think it ought to be which is at the societal level. i know that cheryl mentioned earlier in her introduction about health initiative, and that's where we need to go. talking about and been involved in healthy communities. making sure we have more farmers markets in urban and the food

deserts many to make sure we can walk to grocery stores which means you've got to come to the table and in a grocery store. making sure that our policymakers can put street lights and walking paths and bike paths in your communities so that people can feel safe and comfortable to go out with others, or alone, in order to be fit, to have that healthy lifestyle. to reduce secondary smoking, which deals and has a direct impact on cardiovascular disease and diabetes. and most of all i think is that we have to move it from the individual, and with all of these clubs and walking groups and running groups, to bring you together so that you can figure out how you can transform your

community into a thriving healthy and safe community. and then take on the food industry. we are not fat because want to be that big corporations have supersized us. >> i have one other suggestion, too. if i was due of the world and had a magic wand and had one wish that i could command, and it would happen, it would be for us to slow down. and here's why i say that. the obesity epidemic in our community is not limited, although it is definitely concentrated. it's not limited to any particular income or socioeconomic class. it transcends all of us. we are all impacted one way or another. and one of the things that sort of complicated all of that is our complicated lives. you know, we are running 24/7

all the time, constantly. and that creates within is an environment where we are under a chronic level of stress. and i cannot begin to emphasize to you how damaging having that chronic level of stress and chronic elevation of stress hormones in our bodies is to us. and it does contribute to obesity. you know, it's not only if you are living in a community where there's a lot of violence and we are concerned about your safety, but it's also if you are in a white-collar job and you've got a blackberry and it's going off 24 hours a day and you're expected to jump and respond every time it goes off, or do any community where you have to drive, you know, what are two hours round-trip in traffic and you're stuck in traffic jams and a road rage and everything else begins to build up. or you've got multiple obligations where you are taking care of her children and your

take care of her elderly parents, and you've got church obligations and you've got civic obligations and all of this stuff going on contribute to chronic stress. i once told my kids, and they didn't leave me. i said you know, when i was growing up around midnight when you are watching tv, you hear the national anthem played and you see the flag waving back and forth, and then the tv would go off. [laughter] and they were amazed. really? and now it doesn't. it's on 24/7, and that's almost like a metaphor for our lives. and really is creating problems, and compounding this we were talking that african-american women who are the most impacted group when it comes to obesity. african-american women are impacted by this issue more than any other group in this country. but we look at how in general, and again i know that not all

people fit in this category, we are a culture and acclimated. we tend to take on this, this persona with his big red s. on our chest and we tend to be very independent, and we tend to be caretakers to everybody, except ourselves. and so creating an environment, however we do that, via the workplace or at home or in the community, where we allow and say it's okay for us to take some time out for ourselves to refill our tanks, because you really can't give what you don't have, right? and to allow was to begin to realize that we deserve to be healthier than are, i really think that that is a significant role to play in the whole obesity epidemic, especially as it pertains to black women. and so yes, all of the issues are extremely important to that's what i work on every single day. we have to do that. but we also need to look at what

we need to do to be able to support and nurture ourselves and create a space in which we can slow down and which we can actually begin to think about how we're going to take care of ourselves. and actually believe that it's okay to think about it. self-care is not -- yet many of us have grown up as atmospheres where you are either in sicily or explicitly told that. and so if we could just slow it down a notch, and if we could allow each other to slow down a notch, if you're abbas at a job, you know, allow an opportunity for your employees to kind of -- don't tax them and e-mail them at 3:00 in the morning like some people i know do, and expect them to answer. so that would be my wish if i were able to have one wish. >> thank you so much. we will open up to question any audience now, if anyone has any questions.

>> can you hear me? can you speak a little bit more about the role of, say, an insurance reimbursement and they diagnose and treat that, are the providers incentivize properly to prevent this issue? >> no, they are not. as a matter fact reimbursement is a huge issue. at some point we need to begin to address in this whole dialogue. what we are talking about is how doctors get paid and what doctors get paid for. to be very simplistic about it, you either get paid for procedures, if you're a doctor, a specialist to do some type of a procedure like an operation or something along those lines before you get paid for volume which is why when you go and see

your primary care doctor usually get 15 minutes to get in and get out. because that is how doctors are reimbursed. answer is a fundamental flaw within that system that you don't necessarily get reimbursed for providing the ongoing counseling that's needed in order to help people through whatever lifestyle changes they need to make. and we actually know from research that has been done that were the most effective ways to help people lose weight and keep it off is multiple opportunities to be engaged in counseling that sort of walks them through the process. not going to the doctor and a doctor saying you need to lose weight, come back and seen in six months and i will way you. are checking in on you, are biding that counseling. first of all, figuring out where you are at the moment. you've got to meet people where they are. so you may have individual who needs to lose weight and, of course, they need to eat better and they need to exercise.

but what they know they're capable of doing right now perhaps is getting 10 minutes in of walking a day. so start there and you walk into the. but to answer your question, currently the reimbursement system does not support nor does it reward our ability to do that. and that's something from a policy standpoint that we need to begin to work on. >> who do we have first? >> you know, i just want to take the opportunity and just tip my hat off to you incredible women. thank you, ms. eleanor, for talking about the silent conspiracy that black women, black people walk around in and

creating those sacred circles to address the issues. because obesity a lot of times has a lot to do with what you are holding. and what your feeling that you don't have. and thank you for being very vigilant, doctor gordon. i mean i definitely would like to ask you many questions but i know that this is not the former. and thank you for being revolutionary. you know, in the medical field. because we need more physicians like you that it's actually transitioning into teaching. you know, because that's what doctors, that's what it means. so thank you very much. and thank you very much and thank you very much. >> i'm with safe shores.

we work with child victims of physical and sexual abuse and i like your little bit about the relationship between obesity and unresolved sexual abuse in the black community. we know that people self medicate and lots of different ways, particularly in terms of food and black women, and so i wonder if there's research that you've seen and the total, but we think that there is a relationship. >> i'll let dr. gourdine take the sub i want to give you the reference to the black women's health study which were familiar with, the people kind of current research on childhood sexual abuse and the obesity link in black women. i think it's on their website. >> and in very general terms related to the, you're absolutely correct. we do know about the link between abuse and obesity, which honestly is not surprising. given the fact that other stressors can even though it

sounds really community to call it stress. this is a major issue in individuals lives, cause people to deal with the pain that results from that, in ways that might not be healthy. we know that there are many, many different causes of abuse. one of them of pain in individuals lives that they choose to self medicate through what we call emotional eating. emotional eating is a major, major issue in our community. and basically people are eating food to try to stuff the feelings back down again as opposed to bring them up in dealing with a. another issue that might be related to that is cultural. many of us grew up, i did what you don't put your business out industry. industry. you don't want talk to just anybody. so that perhaps least reluctance to seek the attention and the counseling and the conversations that need to be had to be able to bring all this stuff up and bring it out. so in short, absolutely that's a

major, major issue, especially among black women that we've just barely scratched the surface on. >> i'm really interested in looking at how we can feel businesses behind health it because a lot of black women have a lot of -- we bought mac, we buy clothing, we buy shoes but we won't take 10 bucks to go to your class or 20 bucks to get their best. so the issue i'm curious about is how can we use the business world comforts w. can go to georgetown and hit 900 pilates studios, but if you go there you can go to beauty supply stores and chicken wing shacks. what are you doing with your money? >> i can repeat myself in terms of i think we are just beginning

to do that. i'm not sure that it's going to be easy to change the behavior, in terms of how we spend our money. i think that's deeply rooted that our hair, or lack thereof, or -- [laughter] means something to us. because the media also plays into how we think of ourselves. they control the whole beauty, the notion of duty and color. and so i think that's one thing. and we talk about it a lot but i would suggest also that you go on our website, www.blackwomenshealth.org, and go into some of our podcasts. we've had major, many, many discussions on black hair and emotional eating and find a good black women service and counseling and mental health in

the past, over the past three years. but i think, i really truly believe if we are going to achieve equity, because i am so tired of talking about disparate age, which means differences between black and white it and when i'm talking to women's groups, i always encourage us to help white women understand that they shouldn't lead the gold standard by which we are compared. because they are not doing that good either. and so what we, if we shift that dialogue and talk about building healthy families and healthy communities and healthy cities and "the root" is doing, then we can play a different and better part in solving some of these problems. because in my neighborhood you don't have the chicken shack.

you don't have, you know, you don't have the liquor stores. and so i'm looking forward to moving into d.c., during my later years, my mature years moving into the district. and i want to be part of the solution of giving the billboards and getting the liquor stores out of georgia avenue. so people can feel safe. i really truly believe that the standard to be healthy cities, healthy communities, healthy families and equal, healthy women who have healthy babies. >> so, my question, i'm with the

national wildlife federation, and a lot of the work i do is focus on outsourcing to people outside. document healthy cities and communities and i just wanted to ask all of you, in terms of when we tell people to exercise and tell people to take the stairs and there are a lot of different ways we tell people to get fit. but we never really talk about the outdoors as a free solution to get fit. so i just wanted to know your thoughts, you know, as a doctor and a health writer and being a part of the black women's health institute, like what you think about utilizing the outdoors and how to get more african-american women and people outside and active. >> i think the outdoors presents a wonderful opportunity because we need to make sure that everybody is outdoors is equally safe. and actually one of the major problems. you know, we need to pay much

more attention to community design than we do. so that people don't have to get into a car to be able to drive somewhere to get to a safe part of the outdoors, or drive somewhere to find sidewalks that they can walk on our adequate street lighting, or all those amenities that make it more attractive for people to come outside. so i think with a bit of a ways to go in terms of equalizing that. especially when you're talking about the lower income communities try to get them outside. we really do have to make sure that the safety issue is addressed. because right now we've got some issues. you know, i used to work in east baltimore, and my parents were reluctant to let their children go outside. it was not safe. so once we work on those issues i think it is important for us to emphasize that you should not have to pay in order to be able to be physically active.

what we resort to doing this commuters were is not necessary feasible or safe to go outside this offer indoor options, but wouldn't it be great if were able to offer those outdoor options everywhere? >> incented cisco i believe and/or physician called outdoor afro. have you ever heard of an? >> yeah. >> black people living in nature. letting people know more -- everyone is smiling. but the people know more about organizations like that, and i think it's also part of not biting stereotypes when you write about them and talk about the fact we do enjoy nature. it can be part of our lives and it is a natural thing for us to do to track and hike in rockland and all those sorts of things. >> we can take one more. >> we don't have one more. all, we do. we do, over here.

>> i didn't recall if i got a response to the earlier panel because i got a little bit emotional, but i am called a down. i live in -- my goal is to become a dietitian and you made a great point, being from oklahoma is what motivated me to become an rd was need to have culturally competent nutritionist out there who are serving their communities. and so i'm just curious about you all incorporate nutritionist in the work that you will do as a partnership. because reality is i have good friends that are surgeons and they're not doing self-care and i am having to provide personal chef to them because they can't get right. and so we'll need to work in partnership. and i just, i know that there's one group with them that is a group of black nutritionists that i just recently joined, but

i know that they haven't been a part of the conversation. and even questioned the leadership, where are you on this? do i need to be your rep here or something? so i'm just curious about how can we create these partnershi partnerships, or shall we create another group that targets black attrition is and get them involved in? >> well, i must say that we do partner with nutritionists, and all of our chronic disease programs, and we have our health experts. in fact, in our previous diabetes program, i think i'm right, valerie, most of our experts work with nutritionists, as dietitians, and you can be an expert. but also pharmacists. we partner with them. and so don't assume that community and national organizations are not partnering

and building the team in order to bring about change. because they are there and we do work with them. >> but having said that there is room for improvement, definitely. there's a great need for nutritionists. and i think is the medical profession, we have not would lead on you enough, honestly. and again that gets back to the attention being paid to helping people change their behaviors. one of the things that the mayor brought up which really hit home with me, because i have seen it come is when he was talking about how we lost three generations to crack and with kids who apparently is in essence and have not learned from their parents, and one of the things that not learned how to cook. that is absolutely true. that's absolutely true. i was speaking to an audience several months ago, and one of the persons in the oddest was saying it's so expensive to eat healthy. so i was giving an example. it doesn't hazard have to be.

look, you can go and buy a bag of beans for $1.29 that will last you two or three or more dates in on how many you are feeding. you can see the quizzical look on the persons face like, beans, how do you cook beans? agenda, it's true. we've got a generation of individuals are now parents have lost their cooking skills that we learned from our parents back in the day. i can mississippi i used to hate when my mother would bring home a bushel of peace. we would sit in the middle of the floor and shell them, snap the beans and all that stuff. it drove me crazy but i learned from watching her how to prepare those meals. that's almost sort of a lost art now, and being able to cook for yourself is so essential to eating healthy. because you control what you are eating. you're not at the mercy of others who are preparing your food. so yeah, we definitely need to talk more.

>> i just found that we have time for more questions. over here. >> i write for jack and jill politics, and a little shout out for afro because we feature outdoor afro on our blog. and that's how i found out about glancing i guess. glamorous camping. but i guess one of the things that i just want to throw to the entire panel, there was some discussion about being culturally sensitive, that doctors being culturally sensitive. and one of the things i did when i lived in services and were 44 but of health, we had to develop cultural and linguistic competent programs for our health care provider contractors. and one of the things that we really had to emphasize was how to culturally deal with the

diverse community that we served. and is there any type of initiative that is being done here in d.c., especially with regard to how medical professionals should talk to black women, make them feel comfortable? because a lot of them don't like going to the doctors and less the absolute have to. because one of the things that we had to do, we have a large arab community out in san francisco. it was right on the heels of 9/11 and a lot of people did want to go to the doctor. so we had to tell doctors, you can't just tell a muslim woman to take her clothes off so she can be examined, because in their culture being asked to disrobe like that, you're shaming them in essence. so we had to do that type of education. and i just wanted to know if that type of initiative is being done here? >> you know, i can't speak specifically to d.c. because i'm baltimore-based but i can tell

in general that been initiatives of the type that have attempted to teach medical professionals about different cultures. and i think that there is some value to the. i think that's limited though because i think what it causes able to do is to assume that everyone who identifies with a particular group is sort of monolithic. and that's not too. what i try to emphasize when talking to people about this are a couple of things. number one, mutual respect is the foundation of relating to anyone of any culture. and in that been able to communicate with them and listen more than talk, to hear what's important to them. but the other thing that i try to put it to everyone and all of us are guilty of this in some way or another is that we tend to underline cross and assumptions about particular cultures. and if we hear about a particular practice or belief

that we don't agree with we tend to be judgmental about that case in point. i guess this may be a year and a half to two years ago now, this gets back to the black women's hair and exercise thing, the surgeon general was down in atlanta at the big hair convention, the gold hair shows down in atlanta. [inaudible] >> she spoke to the group about the importance of not letting your hair stuck in the way of their health, essentially. and there was a strong reaction from some individuals in the public health community, namely one individual who was a white male who basically said that the are much more important issues and that the surgeon general should not tarnish the status of her position by commenting on something as unimportant as this. that's what happens when you

tend to make judgments and value statements about an individual's belief. rather than accepting what an individual values, understanding how that might create a barrier to adopting a healthy lifestyle and helping them get beyond that. we've got to learn, i think this is top seed in my view. we've got to be able to extend the cultural value in place of other people without judgment. and beyond learning all the important things about how to treat people of certain cultural's -- cultures when they come and and county of, and not being able to accept their cultural values and help them to get beyond whatever bears might be blocking them from attaining ultimate and maximum health is what's really, really important. >> one of the things that we do, particularly as it relates to reproductive justice issues,

primarily contraceptives and working with diverse populations, particularly non-english-speaking populations and those with those cultural values of disrobing openly with people that you don't know, and so what we try to do is to integrate those standards that are hhs. i think was the office of minority health, or cdc, seal asb is the acronym, instituted. trying to make sure that we acknowledge without judgment the cultural and linguistic differences. and once again because we are part of the women's -- once again we integrated into the affordable care act those measures that would help with the language. also when we do focus groups and

roundtables and we want to know about issues, the latest was on contraceptive, use and compliance and noncompliance. we had, we translated into spanish, but we also had latina and black young girls of 18-29. so you will find pockets of it all over, but particularly i think where you find your best practices and best examples, practice rather than evidence-based practices would be as it relates to reproductive health. >> well, thank you so much, doctor michelle 14, eleanor hinton hoytt and sheree crute. really appreciate your appreciation -- participation in this panel. [applause] there will be a short break before the other panel and their

snacks and refreshments in the corner. [inaudible conversations] >> we will reconvene in about five minutes. >> [inaudible conversations] >> letter today eric holder will

discuss gay and lesbian civil rights. he speaking to the national lgbt bar association's annual lavender law conference and career fair. that's live at 7:30 p.m. eastern on c-span. tonight at eight from the c-span video library, republican vice presidential candidate paul ryan in his own words. will have a look back at his comment on some of the major issues from the more than 400 appearances he has made on c-span. >> democracy is a difficult subject to measure quantitatively. but there are ways to do that. there's measures of competence in and participation but the most obvious measure of participation is voter turnout. and as it turns out, voters are far less likely to show up at the polls of the united states than in other wealthy countries. >> we have a far lower performance than the rest of the competition. now, voter turnout below is an indication of many things. it may be that voters don't

trust a system that works well for the. it's that there may be higher barriers to showing up to vote and in other countries. it may be some other issues about the process itself. but let's take that as a symptom of an issue in democracy. so we know we have this data point here. the other couple data points we will talk about come from the world bank. the world bank has a series of measurements of democracy and each one of them they have some consistency. countries like australia come out at the top. the united states consistently comes out somewhere in the middle. not the best, not the worst, of our comparison group. there's also measures for freedom house. and once again, countries like australia and canada on to the top. and the united states, somewhere in the middle. not doing as strong as we would have expected. this is very interesting because just like in health where we used to be a leading country, if we think back to democracy, we

created the declaration of independence. our constitution was a leading document at the time. we were aided in representative democracies. but if you think about, we haven't made a 10 minute amount of change to our structure. the way we elect people hasn't really evolved much over time. in these other countries that it is what i call more modern voter technology. >> to see him talk of how to use measures up on a number of different topics, including education, health care and criminal justice, watched the whole event tonight at 8 p.m. eastern on c-span2. >> this weekend on the tv, beginning sunday at 4 p.m. eastern, from this 2010 afterwards interview with juan williams, mitt romney from his book no apology. >> the president was not going to be a strong defender of american values and american principles, human rights,