fied athletes and most university do good job. the ncaa does well. they are also athletes. they work 40 or 60 hours a week as athletes. they have to work as students. a lot that well endowed for the ones that perform as students and athletes, they deserve enormous respect beyond the accolades they get on the field. what we give them is con descending shutup you're lucky to get the scholarship. we'll show you more of uva student cheating. it all starts at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. . .

>> government unions. unions use their power to press government to put their interests first. in contact negotiations, unions insist on seniority based layoffs giving job security to senior members, but it also means that school districts are forced to lay off new hires first, even if they are star performers. parents object, but the unions decided they accept that.

unions also want, understandably, very generous retirement benefits for their members. in michigan, 27% of school districts' budgets are going to provide pensions and health benefits. it's not hard to see why. in this state, you can retire after 25 years on the job. a lot retire in their late 40s or early 50s. if you want dollars spent in the classroom, that's a problem in a state facing a tremendous budget crunch like michigan. when they wanted to raise the age, not to 65, the social security age, but to 60, the michigan education association used their political tout to cut the bill. if they were going to be cult, they wanted the cuts to be elsewhere or taxes to go up. that's what's been happening in wisconsin. in wisconsin, school districts and municipalities didn't have the power to roll back union benefits so the only solution to

keep services going was higher taxes. the unions were fine with that. it was not until scott walker reforms which they protested that the school districts and municipalities gained control of the budgets to bring costs down. that's when we saw property taxes fall. government exists to serve the people, protecting the public, giving children a good education, and not needlessly cutting into family's take home pay. the common good has to take priority over the greases -- interests of any interest group. government unions make this impossible. think about what collective bargaining powers do. that means the people's elected representatives have to sit down with government unions and bargain with them as equals over how to spend taxes, how is the government operated? unless the government's unions agree, the public policy can't be enacted. if you have a school district elected overwhelmingly the school board members on a

platform of, say, ending tenure, and instead of evaluating teachers object -- on the value of preference and, that school board does not have the power in our democracy to enact that platform. they have to sit with the unions, and the unions say no, and that's that. the school board does not have the power to implement reforms. that's not democratic. that's something the union movement, itself,ments recognized. a half century ago in 1959, the afl-cio quoted "in terms of bargaining procedures, government workers have no right beyond the authority of congress, a right to available to every citizen." since then, the union changed its mind. states have given them collective bargaining powers in government. the results are disastrous. i'm delighted to welcome mallory

to talk about his book, "shadow bosses," how they twisted the government from serving the public goods to their own interests. he has the expertise to write the book, professor of international politics, and he's a member of the council on foreign relations who is frequently testified before congress on financial regulations and other economic issues. he's the senior editor of money and politics for thestreet.com, and wrote on publications like the "wall street journal, "forbes," and many other papers. he's in a tank that advocated limited government and the same institution that brought the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of sarbanes-ox xley to the supreme court. he was a senior fellow, and

chaired the economic round table for the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in 2009. join me in welcoming him to the heritage foundation. [applause] >> thank you so much. [applause] thank you so much. wow. this is thrilling. what an honor to be here. there's so many people to thank that helped with this book, but imfer i do that, i want to thank heritage, the heritage people have just been outstanding, and i am just honored to have their leader and president and mr. heritage over there, thank you so much for being here, and thank you for joining me in this today. also, john hillbolt, i don't know if he's here, but he set it up. what a delight. how easy this is to do this because of a person like john. i am also intimidated a little bit to have james here. a number of things in this book ray in there because of him. we quote him extensively, and

the work he does is truly important for america. take a couple more seconds to thank my publishers in the audience to kate hartson and a couple others who are so important to the book, one in particular, don louis, sitting over there, who has been just an absolute god send in terms of the amount of help and amount of work he put into it. this book is their book as well as our book. i'm going to share with you a little bit about why i wrote this book. i started working on this project with my wife about a year ago. for years, i've written and spoken about growing the growing national debt, and investigated why government is growing beyond its means. i've been sounding that alarm for years, and i spent a lot of time looking at the root causes of the excessive spending. what i discovered is that shadowbosses are setting the

agenda. they are setting the agenda in congress. they are setting it in our state houses. they are setting the agenda if -- in our city council and school boards. it's about our government spending too much on government employees, hiring too many and paying them too much. this is how i got to the subject of government employee unions. i began exploring how these government employee unions lobby our government to increase spending on government employees, which, by the way, increases their dues income and gives them more money to spend on politics. it's this cycle, this corrupt cycle of political spending, that benefits government employee unions far more than it benefits the government employees. it drives our nation into debt. that's why i explored this topic

and how the book came about. somebody came into the room and said, "what is a shadow boss?" i'll take two minutes to explain it and what's it have to do with unions? in our lives, our shadowbosses are the people that we really work for, the people who hold us accountable for the decisions that we make in our lives. it's our fathers telling us to study harder to have a chance for a bright future. it's our mothers pressing us to stay out of trouble. it's our football coaches sending plays in from the sidelines. for many of us, god is our shadowboss giving us a plan of action to take and the consequences if we don't. unfortunately, as i found writing this book, for many of our political leaders, their shadowbosses are the government

employee union bosses. these bosses tell them what to do, which legislation to support, and when to bend to the demands of the unions in contract negotiations. the shadowbosses are there to pat politicians on the back and to tear them down when they don't do things in their interest. it is shocking to me, but not to people like james over here, that over 20 million people work for government, and 41% of those people are represented by a union. government workers are five times as unionized as private employees. only 7.6% of private sector workers are represented by a union, and far less than that

are actually union members. the rate of unionization, interestingly enough, varies by state and profession. in 20 states, less than 20% of government employee unions are members, but in 15 states, more than 50% are union members. now, who are these union members? police, firemen, postal workers, but government unions remit almost every type of government worker including federal border control agents, civilian employees in the military, office workers, university professors, graduate student assistants, and even zoo keepers. government is the growth area for unions. when you -- compared with the private sector, of course, and just to give you some kind of an

idea, and these are the numbers mr. shirk developed here at heritage. there are over 200,000 private sector union workers in the auto industry, as a matter of fact, 2 # -- 219,000. in the post office, there's 477,000 unions, almost two and a half times the entire auto industry in just the post office. what does this mean for our nation? many americans feel that we've lost control of governments and politicians no longer answer to the american people, and there's a good reason they feel this way. government employee unions have a huge influence over our political system, and they are driving big government spending and over regulation of our economy. in the little time we have remaining, because i want to have it open for questions and answers, i'm going to give you seven of the policy concerns that we've raised in

shadowbosses about unionism. there's more, but i'll hit on seven of them. number one, unions drive excessive spending on government employees. i don't know if you realize this, but the private sector yiewn -- unions have to make sure their demands are not so great that the private employer goes out of business; right? well, outrageous concessions to unions don't drive the government out of business. they -- they don't make union members lose their jobs. the government will always be in business. unwieldy union contacts make government immensely bigger, more expensive, create debt, and bankrupt our city states, and ultimately, our federal government, and they are more burdensome on taxpayers. two, unions are private organizations, and we give them special benefits and treatment

from our government. it's important to realize that they are private organizations. they are not there for the public good. government employee unions get their business directly from our government, but they are not part of the government themselves. unions represent government employees because it's their business to represent them, not because they are working for the public good. the problem is that our government elevates one private group -- government employee unions -- out of proportion of anyone else, taxpayers, citizens, even union members. we all know, and we all believe strongly in our right to speak under the first amendment. would you agree with me? but you don't have a right to be listened to unless you're a government employee union. when you petition the government, for example, you have a right to talk, but the

government does not have a right to listen to you, does not have the right to listen to you. there's a group that does have that right from government to be listen to. with collective bargaining, public officials are forced to bargain with the unions. they can't just ignore their demands and walk away. they -- they don't have to bargain with taxpayers. they don't have to bargain with any other group, but they have to bargain with the unions. we must never forget that unions are businesses that are run for the benefit of their members. union bosses, not american workers, is who they run it for. our nation is in deep trouble because of this. government unions even get subsidies from taxpayers. the american taxpayer unwittingly is paying government workers for huge amounts of time to do government work while they

do union work. in "shadowbosses," we put the numbers together, and according to official government reports, federal employees spend over 3 million hours -- this is 2010 statistics on official time -- meaning they are paid to work for the government, but they are doing union work instead. that cost the taxpayers $137 million, but when you put it in state, local, and county, you are looking at 23 million man hours a year at a cost of over $1 billion. that's a direct subsidy. that's not including others like office space, copiers, letting them use telephones as well as a number of other items that we subsidize them with. in this time when we are cutting

back teachers, when we are cutting back workers, high unemployment, why are we spending a billion dollars a year just to subsidize unions who take in multiple billions of dollars a year? interesting facts we found -- even most of you know that tsa was recently unionized. before tsa was unionized, we found reports in minutes of homeland security. homeland security, alone, before tsa, had 62 members of homeland security full-time working on union business getting paid to do home land security work. comes right if their own notes. that is just shocking. now, the reason i'm not revealing other agencies' numbers is because they don't reveal them. they don't talk about how many

employees. nationwide, that 23 million man hours is just staggering, and i'm being redundant because it's mind boggling at this time in our society that we do this. it's called official time, and it is part of the u.s. code. by the way, for those of you who want to know, it's five usc3171 on a federal basis. number four, unions corrupt our political process. government unions aren't just bankrupting our country. they are also compromising our system of free elections. government unions use bought and paid for politicians to pass legislation granting them unending benefits. government employee unions like to say they get to, and i quote them, "legislate their own bosses." they actually put into power people who will make all of the

decisions about their salaries, benefits, work rules, and they -- laws, regulations that govern themselves. if these politicians don't perform, guess what? they throw them out and put their money behind somebody else. these unions will do anything in their power to elect politicians who will serve their interests. they'll spend hundreds of millions of dollars, even billions of their members' dues on politics. they'll send in political ground troops which will include paid volunteers to get out the vote. they'll form alliances with and donate to leftist organizations who will support a pro-union agenda. money flows, my friends., from government employee unions to politicians, back to the same unions in a never ending cycle

of greed and corruption. politicians know that union money cycles back to them in return of their pro-union votes, and if they cross those unions, the unions throw them right out of office. unions reward their friends. and punish their enemies very effectively. the amount of money they bring to bear is staggering. the unions today collect over $14 billion in dues just the teachers' unions alone as we talk about in the book collect $2 billion a year just in dues. again, we lay out figures had great details. in their filings, the unions spend 20% of the dues income on political activity, close to the

percentage spent on their members, but administrative overhead and other issues, i think if we looked into it carefully, a lot of that is also spent on various forms of political activity. five, government unions are bankrupting our states. states with the longest and strongest history of government employee unions are as the states with the worst budget crisis. government employee unions are a major contributing factor. perhaps thee major contributing factor to our state and local budgetary crisis. they are bankrupting our states with outrageous salaries, outrageous over time, and outrageous pensions for government employees, and they are crowding out other spending in state and local budgets. other spending which we may

disagree on, but liberals watching this, progressives, should be agreeing with us that they are being crowded out of the programs they want as well. interestingly enough, the ten states with the highest debt per capita in 2010, all of them are heavily unionized, and none of them, none of them are right-to-work states. taxpayers are fleeing unionized states for the greener and freer pastures of the less unionized states. america's becoming two distinct nations. the unionized nation and the free nation. six, my friends, government unions promote leftism. while i was working on "shadowbosses," i was able to prove what i schted, but never -- suspected, but never known, that unions legislate friendly

politicians to office, but they not only get pro-union votes, but they also get reliable leftist votes on a whole host of issues. our research has thoan that the most labor supported members of congress have a dismal voting records on all types of votes that matter to their members and conservatives. vote against business, against family values, vote against life, vote against second amendment. we have a chart that i could share with you if you or interested on www.shadowbosses.com, showing these politicians and the money spent. interestingly enough, their members don't agree with the ways these union bosses spend money on the res. the members are not knowledge l about it, and in many cases, it's hidden from them.

in this immense spending my government employee unions on politics matters to every single one of us, but it matters to members, and the members do not get to see it. the government employee unions give millions in charitable organizations and other leftist organizations with the goal to build alliances with like-minded political groups to support the unions on these issues. it's a very effective technique to hold it together, the vast left wing conspiracy. finally, what's the next frontiers for unions? government unions, no question about it, in the growth area. now that out of control budgets are causing the government to contract, unions are looking for new frontiers. unions have been working to

organize new groups of workers who are not employees, but who receive subsidies from government. in the book, we detail how ten states, government employee unions forced home care workers, including parents who care for their disabled children, and people who care for aging parents, they forced them into unions, and they forcibly take dues out. what's the next step? my, friends, the next step is to expand the organizing model to new groups of americans. disability recipients, veterans, other groups that receive government funds and benefits such as social security recipients. already, unions like to promote

retirement unions. they are doing this already. what they will do is they will leadership government for social security and medicare. see, one trend is the unions are turning from organizations that represent their members in contact negotiations into and grievances into lobbying organizations. as our nanny state, which heritage fights against so well, becomes more common place, it'll be easier for government to force groups of americans into accept forced lobbying on their behalf. just like they force american workers to accept forced representation now. think about it, my friends. 20.5 billion government employeings, and government represents 41% of them.

there's tens of millions of americans who receive some form of benefit or entitlement from government who could be unionized with a few tweaks of the law. imagine how much more income could be generated by representing them? i don't know if you all realize this, but every million workers is about a billion dollars in dues to the shadowbosses. every million workers is a billion dollars in dues to support political activity, to help leftist organizations. government employee unions have been winning. the union power and privilege have been wratch eted up, never down, and it's ratched up towards greater union power, never less. it's our job to reverse that

pattern and restore sanity and fiscal policy to our country. i thank you for being here today and listening to me. i thank you for hearing about shadowbosses. it's been a two year work for us, and i hope it'll make some difference in helping people understand government employee unions, thank you. [applause] >> before we go into questions to the crowd, i have a question i wanted to bring up. you have government employee unions that represent government employees. what fraction of government employees actually voted for this union that speaks in their name and collects dues from them? >> in some states, under a couple percent, and across the board, less than 10%. a lot of people get a job, and the next thing they know, they have to be member of a union and pay dues to keep the job. they never had the opportunity. less than 10% of union members

have ever voted for a union. when they have that opportunity, like the teachers did in wisconsin, half of them drop out almost immediately. yes, sir? >> hi, i'm lex, and i'm unaffiliated. enjoyed the talk very much and agree wholehearted by with the premise. i was surprised you never once mentioned the "d word," and in this case, democrat. it should not be surprised unions pursue their own self-interests feathering their own nests, but there's officials who work with them, predominantly from the democratic party. isn't that the case? >> well, i go further. a lot of people say the democrat

party has a subsidiary called unions. i believe today government employee unions have a subsidiary called the democrat party. if you look at that chart i was talking about you can find on www.shadowbosses.com, if you look at the charts, you see all the top ten house and senate candidates they contribute to. they are all democrats. next question. yes, sir? >> larry, this couldn't be more timely. i just think that it could have an impact on what we do in the next few months in decision on this issue. let me ask you this. by the way, on the issue of the parties, the federal level, what you said is absolutely accurate. my experience in the state level, and whether state legislative ratings, and springfield, illinois today, for

example, where a lot of the success of unions in illinois have been through much to the republican party as the democratic party, but in in case, let me ask you this, about the states. do you see a wide variety of states in the way they handle -- the way states handle this, and do you go into in the book what -- where the successes and failures have. in the states? >> well, larry, thank you so much for that question. you do a great job at the acu, and i really appreciate what you do. we all think that there are 23 right-to-works states. well, there are. what is a right-to-work state mean? that you're free to petition government? sell your own labor? no. there's only seven states you are not forced under collective bargaining. there are 23 # states where you don't have to pay, but in the differential, in terms of union

memberships between the seven states and the other 16 states that are right-to-work states, but you can be forced under collective bargaining, there's 60% more union members per capita. it's not just a matter of right-to-work. it's a matter of being forced into collective bargaining which that means you don't have the right to petition your employer. you don't have the right to sell your own labor freely. there are only seven states where you do have that right. thank you for the question. next question? yes, ma'am? audrey? >> those people who oh -- opposed obamacare were focused on the constitutionality or, you know, the cost to employers and small businesses. could you -- i thought it was really interesting you exploredded the relationship between unions and promoting

obamacare. can you describe what that will mean? >> well, right now, there's -- thank you for the question -- there's about a million and a half union members in the health care sector. there are about 17 million roughly workers in health care. under obamacare, that goes up to 21 million. just on a percentage basis, you kept the same percentage, you that lot moreup yon members, but with government giving money, there will be various ways that they will be able to unionize. a good animal sigh is that in can -- analogy is that in canada now where they have socialized medicine, which obamacare is, you have 60% unionization of health care when they had far less before it was socialized. you'll see huge qupt --

quantities of people being unionized under obamacare. that's why the unions supported it. nothing to do with deferrals on the cadillac plans. that was a smoke screen. they supported it because they know they get more members because of that, and they'll get a billion dollars in dues for every million members, and there's 20 million approximately potential new members. you do the math. the numbers are just staggering. next question. yes, sir? >> can you talk a little about the pr difficulties, about selling this problem to the public when unions and liberal politicians are so good about portraying it against war against our teachers and policemen and our firefighters? can you talk about the pr battle? >> great question. yes, anything you say about education, i mean, the retort is

you're against children. we went over the past few decades from 18-to-1 teacher to student -- students to teacher ratio to 8-to-1. we've done no better. what the problem is is that the teachers unions won't allow us to get rid of the bad teachers. the best example of this is in new jersey and nevada teachers of the year were fired. teachers of the year were fired? why? because they were new teachers doing a great job, and union rules said they are the runs to go. the bad teachers, you can't get rid of them. the teachers who are not doing a good job, you can't get rid of if you could get rid of the bottom 10%, you can make our education system, our k-12 education system much more effective.

why going to school 170-180 # days a year when many other countries are doing 220 and doing more hours per day? why can't you do it? teacher unions won't let you. why can't you get good physics and math teachers? you can only pay the same, and that skill set is much more needed in the private sector, as you pay for a physical ed or english teacher, i'm not besmurnlging them. you can't pay more, unions don't allow you to. you can't reward teachers with bonuses. if you have a teacher with an art degree, she gets money for being an english teacher. you are paid by the number of degrees. they are union rules, not -- i

love this quote from albert, and some say he didn't say it; others say he did. it gives you a feel for what this is all about when school children pay dues, that's what we will represent them. [laughter] yes, sir? >> david with the heritage foundation. in terms of thinking through how to undo this, can you give us a crash history of how we got to this point? i guess there is certain changes th must have been made in labor laws in order to allow government employees to unionize. can you -- >> started with executive order -- well, it goes way back, but the big change was executive order by jfk, but i'll give you a crash course in how you change this. it's really simple. really simple to change it.

number one, you don't force workers to pay dues to keep a job. period. a worker does not have to pay dues to keep a job he has. he can join the union, but he does not have to. he does not have to pay dues to keep a job. number two, we do not -- we should stop subsidizing government employee unions. very simple. we should change the law to do it, and i have been told by some of the people a lot smarter than we are that are involved in the movement, vice president for a long time, going to be legislation forthcoming in the house and senate to say, hey, unions, if you want to people working full-time, you are taking in $14 billion a year, pay them. don't ask us to pay for them. don't ask the tags payers to do union work. three, dues checkoff.

it's basically meaning taking out money from your paycheck like you do withholding tax. the government should not be taking out money from people's paychecks automatically. four, people should have the right to be represented by a union or not be represented by a union. in 43 states, that right doesn't exist. people should have the right to sell their labor. people should have the right to petition their employer. forty-three states don't give us that freedom. lastly, millions and millions of government workers that never voted for a union should have the right to vote, and i think union facts has been advocating a bill to that effect and working hard to get that changed.

every union member should have the right to vote for or against in a secret ballot. in a secret bam -- ballot. those are the five quick ideas on how to change things. just giving workers and union members more freedom. that's what it's about. freedom. next question, if i may? yes, oh, sorry, didn't see you sir, i apologize. >> [inaudible] i'm from italy, university professor. listening at your speech, i was telling myself, oh, you're still lucky because compared with the situation that we have in italy, concerning the activities of the

-- >> don't worry, we're getting there. [laughter] >> well, italy, for instance, smart businessmen, italian businessmen very more popular here, no? they -- the boss of fiat -- sorry -- >> one of the union bosses telling you not to ask the question. [laughter] >> well, prized by the u.s. trade union for what he's doing with chrysler, but he has problems in italy not allowed at all by the trade unions. if i look at the privileges,

almost impossible to eliminate. government, not even try to -- like could make you a longer list of the privilege of the paid unions. more or less, i heard similar things in your speech so my question timely is in case the republican will win the race to the white house, you think they could somehow change the situation that you have described in your speech? do they have any program in the sense that you indicate? >> i hope so. i hope so. the candidates are very good republican candidates, very good conservatives. they believe in freedom and values, and i have not seen enough about them in terms of their beliefs in the union

issues. by the way, keep in mind, you're looking at less than 7% of the workers. it's a small amount of people looking at the total united states, but the amount of power and the amount of influence that they project into politics is just astoppedding, and they do it -- astounding, and they do it all behind closed doors. we go into that in great detail in the book where we got information from the freedom of information act from secret meetings that went on. the other thing about union heads that people don't realize is they are truly the 1%. they talk about -- unions talk about the 1% and occupy wall street, but the guys are making huge amounts of money. huge ams. the secretary treasure makes $845,000. many employees make over $# --

$200,000. it is astounding, truly the 1% spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on private planes, ready access to the white house. they are invited to the best events at the white house. these are not little guys that work their way up. i mean these are truely the 1 #% that they talk bo their members about. >> [inaudible] >> the boilermaker union, a private sector, if you use their logo on an article as i did, we get something from their law firm, which by some strange coincidence occupies the same office address in kansas city, kansas, and i was writing basically a summary of kansas

city star long piece on how these guys live the life of luxury spending, you know, receive 400,000 a year in salary or retirement benefits. each one of these executives, they have very powerful lawyers, and they know how to intimidate. true for the public sector, too. maybe you can -- i won't assume anything. do you have any cases in where law firms of public sector unions intimidate people for any reason in any context? >> i don't off the top of my head, but there are many cases that have been brought. i am not a lawyer. my co-author, my wife is a lawyer, and i wish she was here next to me. she would be able to rattle those off, but there are a number of them. >> [inaudible] the lawyers are as crooked as the guys they represent? >> drop us a note on

www.shadowbosses.com, and we'll get back to you. >> okay, great. >> next. yes, ma'am? >> i'm alex with the association of american educators. i thank you for mentioning us in the book being the largest non-union association. >> you guys do a great job. we mentioned you because you deserve to be mentioned. >> well, thank you very much. i was wondering if you could speak on the union ranking file. we talked about the salaries and the teachers we speak with every day, you know, randy and dennis president of the two largest teach everies unions making $400,000 a year. the transparency and how much do you think that, you know, the actual union member, how important it is to get that type of information out because it's really union member getting the raw deal in this, and they do a lot of work to ensure these are the benefits that you get, and i

venture to say if they knew what was going on, they would play a huge component in bringing down the system. >> you're absolutely right. thank you for that question. thank you for all you do. the president makes $400,000 a year. american federation of teachers, $425,000. over half the employees make over $75,000. substantially more than teachers make. >> the president of the alabama education association makes $500,000 a year. in alabama, i mean, that's, you know -- >> it's good to be a shadowboss. >> exactly. >> it's good to. life is good. that's not including benefits. or expenses. these unions owned hotels. big hotel in the bell harbor area in florida, golf courses, country clubs. it's good to be a union boss. it's just not good to be a union

member. particularly if you don't want to be because it's almost impossible to get out of it. if you do get out of unions, they charge you money in those 22 states that are forced dues to keep a job. you cannot be a part of the union, and what happens then is you have to pay the union still a fee, very close to the dues, and then you can't even have any say whatsoever in what goes on in the unions. you have to pay and still not have any say. it's just -- it's -- as somebody said, i agree with you. yes, sir? >> competitive enterprise institute. could you discuss the role of pensions in the deficits that affects states and cities. >> you're asking me a question that i know very well you could discuss far better than i could, but i thank you.

i'm on the podium, and i thank you for that. [laughter] he's done a great job in putting the numbers together. i mean, i couldn't have the figures at the top of my tongue, but we know that's what is bankrupting our cities, our states, our counties. the pension costs are ridiculous. the scam going on with the last three years where everybody allowed people to just run up huge amounts of over time so the pensions are astronomical. we cannot afford to do that. the private sector's being shut out of people because of this. they are bankrupting our country. we do have the numbers in the book. i don't know them offhe top of my head like you do, but, no, that is the pblem with our state and local governments. no question about that. yes, sir? >> the industrial unions traditionally were, if not controlled by, certainly ill

filtrated heavily by organized crime. the teamsters, the long shoreman, operating engineers, a lot controlled by it. is there any evidence that organized crime is involved in public sector unions? >> not really. they have become very legitimate. a lot of -- a number of union heads are referred to as the ivy league amigos. craig becker, the famous lawyer of sciu, a recess appointee, i mean, he's a yale law school grad. he was not going to law school at night. these are very highly trained business people. they are not union members who worked their way up. head of the american federation of teachers is a very -- has a strong academic background, but teaching was just a very minor part of it, enough to get

started in the union, but she was never a classic teacher working her way up. these are professionals running large organizations. if you took the amount of money they take in annually, that these unions take in, they would be in the top fortune 500. you're talking about huge, massive organizations. i don't see a lot of the influence of organized crime. i will -- we go into some of that in "shadowbosses" in the book, and if there is any, and i don't really -- i can't go into detail because i'm not sure, but the traditional unions, like the teamsters, are now going into government employees because that's the growth area. they know if they are going to continue to grow and take in lots of dues, they have to go into government, remitting government employees, and they are fighting over it too. >> time for one more question.

>> yes, sir? >> rob louis with the heritage foundation. >> congratulations on your new appointment. >> thank you. are you positive about the debate in wisconsin over the course of the last year there? >> you know, that's a great question. we all look at wisconsin, and we say, wow, we won. it's over. the government employee unions are dead, but just a couple months before, what happened in ohio? let me ask you something. do any of you realize that in wisconsin, firefighters, policemen, they were all excluded from that. he didn't want to have to do battle with them because he was afraid to. the power that these unions hold and the massive amount of money that they control is just mind

boggling, and this battle for freedom in america has just begun. it is far from over. the shadowbosses do not want to lose their power and their influence and their way of life. they want to still be that 1%. i thank you so much. i thank heritage. [applause] just been fabulous. >> the u.n., the u.s., our government and mine, can be power if the governments want it to be, and sometimes we talk about the u.n. and it, as distancing ourselves.

by doing that, we are giving the governments who are ultimately responsible for action or inaction in some of these situations, an alibi, an alibi in blaming them. one of my predecessors used do say that we often refer to the secretary general as chief for short. it doesn't stand secretary general, but scapegoat. there is a scapegoat function of the u.n., but member states, and the media have to be very careful not to dampen it so much that we wouldn't be useful as an alibi. >> more with former u.n. secretary general interviewed by bbc america on "afterwords" tonight at 10 p.m. on booktv.

>> so my history of financial institutions is history of learning. for example, in 1811, new york, the state of new york, created a new securities law which did two things. first -- i mean, corporate law -- allowing anybody to set up a course with minimal restrictions. you used to have to go to the legislature and get special permission. secondly, they created limited liability for investors, and what that meant is if you invested in a company, and the company was later accused of wrong doing, the complaint, the lawsuit could never go after your assets because you invested in the company. before that, people were afraid to invest in companies they didn't really know, and so it made everything like a family business. you had to have people you

trust. the law changed everything. it was copied all over the world. david moss, who studied these carefully, what i think it did is it created a sense of pleasure in investing. it made -- people used to invest in lotteries. they loved to gamble. that's another human trait, lovable of loving the excitement if your number came out. creating limited liability, it was fun, the same way a lottery is fun. i mean, people have to enjoy life; right? there has to be something that makes you get out of bed in the morning and gives you excitement. we design things that give you that feeling. that securities law has been the source of a lot of our innovations because now investors -- looks like they play a game, looks a little selfish, but that drives our economy. carl marx said it was gambling, and we should shut it down, worse than that, worse than

that, but after years of experimenting with that people think, well, maybe we have to let people indulge in these feelings, and so they -- okay -- so let me move. i have another -- another 10-15 minutes. i wanted to talk about the future and about some of the ideas that i talk about. i'm going to start from tomorrow, and then move a little bit more and more into the wild future. what happens tomorrow is president obama has said that he be sign the jobs act. that name is a little bit misleading, maybe for political reasons. it's not about jobs. it's called jump start our business startups. that spells jobs. [laughter] what it is is it's controversial. i like it, though. notably, as an experiment, it

may or may not work well. i'll tell you the most interesting part of the jobs act. the jobs act was created in response to requests from internet website providers who wanted to create a crowd funding website for entrepreneurs. if you're trying to start a business, you can put it up on their website and say i'm looking for money, and then thousands of investors or millions all over the world can send money, and you can start a business. this is a wild sounding idea, isn't it? it's endorsed by a lot of interpret -- internet people. i think it's just about as wild as wick peed -- wikipedia. before wikipedia started and said i'm going to open an online encyclopedia and anybody in the world can add to it.

my first reaction would have been that's a dumb idea; right? it's not going to be a good encyclopedia, but it's just -- we learned something about how people can work together through wikipedia. i think this is a good experiment. now, what congress has done is they are worried that there's a lot of cheats out there unfortunately, and someone is going to steal money from sw -- someone else this way. one thing they've done in the legislation is you have to document your income to the website, and for people with incomes up to $40,000, you can't invest more than 2% of your income which is, what, $800? it's small for each individual. that protects people; right? it can't go that bad. i think the maximum is $10,000 that you can put in if you have a higher income. it's designed to protect people, but, you know, even if people with only invest $800, if you get enough of