with civilian control of the military in particular, that's important. and so that my tendency is not to put these problems on the shoulders of the military officers. that's not really their proper role. that's my opinion. now, people who have military experience on both sides of me may have a slightly different perspective on that. >> well, you know, the role of a service chief to be an advocate for his or her service. and they're going to do that. and ordained military people, they're never going to have enough. you're never going to be ready enough, never going to have enough ammunition, enough armor, enough training funds and so forth. what you expect them to do. and then you go over to the congress, and the congress has to help prioritize things. you need to sort through all that, you know? i only have a finite amount. how do i maintain the balance in this? what is enough? and you have to, you know, military preparedness is not like a bond where you're going to get a return on that, i can

see how well it's going every day. i check my stock market funds. it's like an insurance policy. you're only going to know if it's broken when you do have a fire, and you pull out your insurance policy and find, oh, my gosh, i had a $5,000 deductible on that and so forth. so you have to look at that balance, and the great thing about the united states is we do have that balance. you have a full spectrum of perspectives on things. you have the balance among the different pieces of government and so forth. and at the end of the day, the big thing is to come to coalesce around a general understanding of what you're trying to accomplish and how we maintain that balance. you can't possibly meet all the different requirements. military is, you know, it's just one of those things you can't bankrupt the country ford to have an ironclad military capability, but you have to have sufficient out there so that, you know, if things don't go right, you still have the ability to fix them if they do go wrong. >> let me just make the

gratuitous economic point on that which is that let's be clear here, united states today is not soviet union in the late 1980s. our defense budget is not the source of our economic problems. and i'll just leave it at that. [laughter] >> carey, did you have anything to add to that? >> well, i would say behind clinton back to the folks in uniform and the folks who are civilian who are policymakers, i'm sure there's a lot of vigorous, open and frank discussions going on behind closed doors. with military, their role -- again, to be advisers -- is once a decision's made, is to salute and execute. they may not like it, but it's their job, it's their mission, it's the part of their profession to follow those lawful policies and regular laughses. and so it is rare -- regulations. so it is rare if you see something, you know, someone put their stars on the table and come out pluckily and say -- publicly and say it. you can bet that behind closed

doors they are making the case for what needs to be done from their perspective and being an advocate for the military. >> i can't help myself. i have to answer this one too. [laughter] and i agree with everything and both perspectives of the role of the military in these public discussions, but i, as a former military guy who understands all the constraints, understands all the rules, i was disappointed that prior to the election only one of the chiefs said that sequestration was going to be a problem for his service. and that was general amos, the commandant of the marine corps. everybody else said, oh, yeah, we don't have any problems with this at all. now, to their defense, they were told not to plan for it. just ignore it, it's not going to be a problem. so that was the line they took. and then we had new year, and everyone went, holy smoke, this is really going to ap now.

everybody's screaming bloody murder. i think they're all telling the truth now, but they were either muzzled, or they felt constrained by the policy debates and their role in the military not to speak so that prior to the election that did not come out. and i think that was a mistake. it was a mistake tactically for the chiefs, i think it was a mistake for the nation because it didn't really get the cards out on the table that should have been there. but that's my personal opinion. ore -- other questions. come on, folks, we have lots of good info here. somebody's got to have another question. oh, hiding behind the post, thank you. >> thank you. terry campo, and thank you, gentlemen, for your service. i was fortunate enough to be three weeks too young for vietnam service, and i've never complained about that. i have -- my question is sort of two parking lots, same theme. why is it we need a tale of 10-1 for every soldier in the field, and closely related to that is why as the pentagon and crystal

city do we have uniform personnel trained for for combat performing, essentially, clerical and bureaucratic jobs? thank you. >> well, you're obviously not the first person to ask either of those questions. let me ask the second one is probably a little easier the answer. you know, when you start to cut back on things, a very easy thing to do is to start cutting back on contractors. it was apparent to the military a number of years ago that it was probably more cost efficient to take a retired lieutenant colonel who's working -- had been working at a desk job in the pentagon and take him back as a civilian contractor and have him do that same role rather than having to replace him every two years with another lieutenant colonel and so fort. so this rose to, this led to a significant increase in the number of contractors because that same thing pertains to may maintenance, training at all of

the bases where you're training, you know, radar technicians and all these other folks very complex stuff. so, but that's also very easy to cut, you know? i'm going to cut that number of contractors and so forth. so when you do that, somebody still has to do the job, and you end up with somebody in the military doing it. now, i would also tell you that in some cases those are very important developmental programs. that lieutenant colonel who serves in the pentagon for two years comes away with a better understanding of how the system works. so if he comes back as a colonel or a general and so forth and has to work with congressional committees for dod and so forth, it's a lot better than some guy who spent all his time running around the hindu kush chasing the taliban. so there's that dimension to him. in terms of the tooth versus tail ratio, why do you need all these sustainers and so forth, you really -- there is mathematical approaches to that where you can actually say in order to keep this aircraft flying, i need to have so many

maintenance hours to do it which is so many mechanics and so forth. for each mechanic i need three cooks to keep them fed, for each cook i need to have somebody carrying fuel and so forth. so you can actually do some pretty good mathematical analysis of the tooth to tail ratio that has actually been getting an awful lot better. in vietnam it was something like one guy in the field and nine people in the rear, and i think it was much less in iraq and afghanistan. but, of course, a lot of that is because in iraq and afghanistan you had a lot more contractors doing those things that you had people in uniform doing that. >> that's a good point. one other thing -- great comments. one other thing that strikes me is i'm not sure who exactly you're pointing to and all that, but, you know, on the ground side i've got friends, colleagues, people i know that have done three and four tours in combat and been separated from their families. families need to be healed. so i have no objection when someone comes out of combat for a year putting them in an

assignment where they can be somewhat stable and, you know, meet their kids again. so there's probably an element of that, too, is trying to allow folks to recover from combat operations. it's a multidimensional piece, but that's the piece that rich hadn't touched on. he did a news job. nice job. >> all right. i'm going to ask another one. um, given that -- i took baker's point, that was a really eloquent way to put it, that we're not the soviet union in the '80s. military and military spending is not the genesis of our country's economic problems. that being said, anyone who's ever worked in the pentagon recognizes that it is not the most efficient organization in the world, though i have to tell you for those of you taffe never been in the other parts of the government, it runs like a finely-tuned swiss watch compared to some other parts of the government.

[laughter] but given that we are in a resource-constrained environment regardless of whether it's at sequestration levels, presequestration levels, whatever, we've got resource constraints. what are some of the things -- just a couple of them, quick, you don't have to go into massive depth -- that dod and the nation can do to be more efficient so that we get more bang -- >> right. >> -- for the buck out of our military. >> so the military right now is, has been historically aligned on being effective at the expense of efficiency. being effective. making sure you can get that job done. so sometimes you have a little bit extra, a little bit of redundancy. because if plan a goes down the drain, i need a plan b. and so you have, you have a shift now. so we're now looking for more efficiency. and, of course, information technology allows us to leverage some of that. the biggest thing that strikes me is acquisition reform. this is a strategic opportunity we need to seize. equipment costs more than it

needs to. and procurement's just one piece of the defense budget. there's a lot of other pieces, so i'm honing in on one piece. it takes longer to procure, and it costs more because we smother our acquisition system with a ton of rules and a ton of lawyers, and you get a -- if you're an industry, and i've been both in industry and the military, you get a request for a proposal, document this thick, the first five or six pages tell you what the government wants, and the remaining 95 pages tell you what they're going to do with you if you fail to comply with these thousand laws. and so all of that causes extra people extra work just to try to manage that and make sure you're compliant. and that's what drives up costs and time. because everybody in that acquisition system, many of the stakeholders have the ability to say no and stop something, but nobody owns the whole system. and can say, sit down. drive on, we need to move forward. so, you know, i think one of the

things we can look at, and this will probably create a little bit of a stir, but i think we need to take some of the constraints off of our acquisition officials. we need to empower them. and if you're worried about keeping them honest, let's pay them more, and let's give them a poly every year, a polygraph. so before they get their bonus, they come in to take a poly, okay? i want them to do what's in the best interests of our nation. i heard an interesting analogy the other day in the health care sector. one of the few minimal lu-regulated sectors in the health care sector is laser eye surgery. it is not regulated anything else as fig else is. it is cheap, fast and effective. okay? you've got everybody out of the way, and you let doctors work with people. i think that's kind of instructive. >> yeah. i would they second that with rd to acquisition. i think if we're going to have of a system that that is

reformed, we've got to deregulate to a degree which is counterintuitive from capitol hill's perspective. but i think that that is true. the sheeu in the direction of personnel reform, both civilian and military. and there's a variety of ways to do that. we have a proposal on the military side with regard toremt are focused more on defined contribution plans. that would be, in byjument, fairer for the all the people that serve in the military particularly on the retirement side. as well as reinforcing the same things that i think we need to do as a country with regard to entitlement reform and how we manage issues like health care and retirement for the population as a whole. interestingly enough, i think that you could have significant savings in that and still do right by the people that are serving in the military for those on the military side in

particular, because their programs in these areas are much more a defined benefit approach than even for the civilian public sector. to give them tax benefits. tax benefits that they can carry for life. and the result of that have some outlay savings on the dod side that you could put to better things. >> let me just add a comment on acquisitions having been in the defense industry for about 15 years and trying to watch that operate. the defense industry, as you probably well know, operates under the federal acquisition regulation which is known as the f ark r. far. and the rule of thumb when we were talking about where it worked is that it probably adds 20% to the cost of any particular item that you have. the other thing, too, is, you know, we tend to be very, very inflexible in changing things. and i just afteryou one -- offer

you one example; unmanned systems. unmanned systems particularly on the airborne side creates tremendous efficiencies because you don't have crews, you don't have people you have to pay retirement for, all of those other requirements. so if you're looking to how do i economize and get the most out of the available people i do have, what sort of systems can you, in fact, replace a man in if the cockpit with a computer. and there you really say it's the institutional resistance to change. and i will say it, you can compare the air force's approach to airborne isr with what the navy is doing. one institution is tremendously reus about the to -- resistant to change, but the other institution, the navy, has inducted it pretty much wholeheartedly in some ware areas. and i think they're going to reap benefits if terms of manpower reductions because of that. >> okay. question right here.

>> doug brooks, again, a consultant a with the stability operations industry, and i wonder if we can't revisit how we use contractors and where we should use contractors. and it seems like we've sort of been investigating that. it's been quite controversial, know, the big question here you have ex-military people doing competitive services and offering efficiencies, what about the whole tinker program? i mean, essentially, it's a huge, huge drain on the budget. why not outsource that? we are to a certain extent already, but it's really one of the really big puzzles to me is how much money can we spend on a single program that really is not a combat program, but it's something that i think an off-the-shelf service can provide. i'd be real interested in your perspectives on that. >> i have a, i have, actually, a cousin who's a are refueler, though he probably wants to protect his job. but i'm not a subject matter expert in this. but, you know, there's alternative models to acquiring

capability rather than just buying it. leasing it is an option. of course, the military person thinks when i go to war, do i really own this asset, or now are there contracts between me and tasking somebody to do something? you know? will these contractors and those assets really fly into a hot -- how close do these tankers really get to a fight? they're going to be key targets. our enemies will want to drop those big, flying gas stations. so i'm sure there's a lot of consideration about where they're placed. but that gets into the risk question. in the military person's mind, what services am i willing to outsource like a food service, okay? many i get that. i'd rather have a trigger puller than somebody in the chow hall slinging chow, and so i'll outsource that. in many cases. closer you get to the front lines, then the more question you have. and then it just gets into another policy thing about contractors and civilians on the

battlefield. are they allowed to be armed or not, you know? are they allowed to drink alcohol or not? there's a opportunity of policy issues associated with bringing people closer and closer to the, to where the combat operations are going on. and so all that is part of the calculus. i don't have the answer, but i absolutely agree we need to look at options other than just straight out procurement. leasing should be a consideration or other structures that if they can make us more effective, more agile, you know, and still keep the risks mitigated. >> i'm sorry, go ahead. >> um, i would say that i would certainly start with the things that should be relatively easy which is the question of public/private partnerships and our depots that are maintaining in some cases modestly upgrading the weapons systems that we have under the rubric of performance-based logistics. there are other elements of performance-based logistics that

that do go forward into the field, and then they start into run into the problems that were just described. but at least it seems to me you could start with those easier examples. >> the other thing i would add is, you know, you get back to basic numbers. and i think some good quantitative analysis and a fresh look at the world would be useful in that regard. the number of tankers you have is a function of how many, how many fighter aircraft are required, how many orbits you want, how long is your air bridges that you have to be able to refuel for and so forth. so you really need to kind of look at the front end of that equation to then determine how many tankers of what type that you would need at the back end. and, again, those are some of the sorts of missions that it would make infinite good sense to put a computer in the cockpit rather than the protoplasm, you know, whose computers have very low pension -- [inaudible] [laughter] but, again, it's that sort of out of the box thinking, if you will, that is you run into some

institutional challenges from because the people who fly tankers, you know, they have congress people and everything else. so you run into that institutional change challenge. and the good news is crisis, which is you're a little bit on now in terms of hollowing out the force, can be, in fact, a very impactful impetus for change. >> okay. i'm going to exercise the moderator's prerogative again, and this is going to be your closing remark, so i'm going to just throw this out there. if you want to ignore it, you can and just say whatever you want in closing, i can't stop you. but i have to ask you for captain bucci and all of his mates out there wearing a uniform todayment right now i think everybody, at least at this table, would think that the united states probably has the best military in the world. we've got the best training,he . today. some of them are a little tired, some of the equipment is reaching the ending edge of its lifetime, but it's -- we've still got the best.

but below a certain size and a certain age of that equipment, that elite status, it starts to wear a little thin. i remember my dad telling me when i was in high school that a really good small player in football was always going to get beaten by a really good big player pretty much every time. how do we today husband the advantages that we have, the things we've learned over the last ten years, some of them good, some of them bad, but you learn from both of those. how do we husband that advantage so that as we go forward while we might be surpassed by anybody else, but last time i checked we didn't really like going into fair fights. and we want to keep it that way. and i know i want to keep it that way for captain bucci. so what, with that sort of general thought in mind, you get

two, three minutes each for closing remarks, and we'll wrap it up. >> okay. i'll be the guinea pig here. [laughter] i didn't anticipate this question. should have. i wasn't ready. readiness level was down. [laughter] i like the stool analogy. the three-legged stool, i think it's brilliant. it's very simple. but, you know, when you cut off one leg of the stool to save money, no longer a stool, is it? so what does that tell me? i'm going home and buying four-legged stools, in case i lose one, they'll still stand. but anyway, i think a couple things that haven't been touched on that really need to be part of this because it's really a system, and trying to do band-aid approaches isn't always effective. we touched on it, but policies. policies about recruiting, retirement, compensation, an alignment of the modernized force with the fiscal realities that we have has to be touched. politics is big. politics, we're in washington, d.c., right? that's -- preaching to the

choir. we need to put our national interests ahead of personal interests. it's hard to do. because we all have past experiences, and we all have advocacy and all of that. the military folks generally are better at that because they've taken an oath toport and defend the constitution, and they'll have their own opinions, absolutely. often can't voice them publicly. but we really do need to have more of a viewpoint of doing what's in the national interests rather than personal interest. i think another way to mitigate some of this risk is we're going to rely more on intelligence. better intelligence we have reduces uncertainty, and we can take some more risk. the challenge here is the national and the military intelligence programs are also being squeezed. so, you know, i think one of the key things here is as we go forward, look at what's the end

goal. we've got to have flexible forces that are highly tailorable, they're well trained. but we also need to look at we can't service all of the missions that the government has expected us to do. we've been very good at doing less -- with doing more with less for decades. now we've got to face the reality of doing less with less. because that drives a lot of this. every agreement we sign, every alliance we have around the world has secondary, tertiary impacts about what the costs are. and that drives a lot of that. >> um, i suppose my watch word would be to say as legitimate as they are, don't overlearn the lessons from the unfortunate experience of the past particularly with regard to the 18970s. -- 1970s. obviously, that was the crux of my remarks. i'm a little bit different here

insofar as, um, i think there is a constituency for maintaining readiness, and it consists of the scaredty cat contingency. they look at the 1970s, and they say we're not going to do that again. so i'm afraid what's going to happen is we're going to shrink the force, shrink its capabilities to a certain degree, forgo modernization to make sure a these unit readiness things never occur that we saw in the 1970s while ignoring these problems about criticality on size and modernization, um, and making sure that the force is properly armed and equipped. yeah, you can get down to, you know, some very modest number of army divisions to make sure each of those divisions are really the best we've ever seen, but that's not a real fighting force. and so, again, i think that the watch word that we've seen in all of the presentations today is really more about, um, again,

balance. i'm afraid that -- i'm afraid that in this particular case we're running a greater risk of erring on the side of the a force that's too small and not adequately equipped in the first instance, meaning new generations of weapons and equipment as opposed to one that has poor personnel, low morale and is not being trained properly. that's not to say those aren't really serious concerns in the greater scheme of things, and if they weren't the serious problems about the old low portion in the 1970s. but if all you do is address that nest of issues, then i still think you're going to get it wrong at the end of the day. >> well, this is tough stuff. i mean, if you've been managing to pay attention here for an hour and a half, god mess you. [laughter] these issues will make your hair hurt if you think about them too long. so the challenge, i think, really lies on that side of the podium with you all out there. these are very complex issues,

thai very important. when you deal with things like this, the most important thing the united states has going for it is an informed and engaged citizenry. and so you need to be able to take these very complex things, and we have many people out there. you don't have the percentage of veterans that you used to have in this country, so people don't have a firsthand awareness of what happens when you can't fix your truck, or you don't have ammunition to train with before you're going down -- they don't know that because a very small percentage of our population -- [inaudible] so it really falls upon institutions like heritage and media and the congress and so forth to educate and engage our population. so we understand that, you know, these are important things. they need to be dealt with, they need to be put in proper priorities. we need to look at these particular things, and god bless you. i mean, that's your responsibility out there. we can help, but taking that message and taking it out to our informed and engaged citizens is probably the number one thing that we have to do right now. >> thank you. all right.

well, ladies and gentlemen, hopefully this was an auspicious kickoff for our month. not aha that kind of happy sendoff, but this is serious business. and we do think about this all year round. not just during this month, but in the month of may we try and put a little more emphasis on it. and, again, i'd encourage you to pick up the flier so you know what's going on this month. a lot of good programs, a lot of good discussion, but we want the feedback from you. you are part of this. youyou know, heritage and fine speakers like this do what we do to arm all of you so that you can be that informed citizenry that rich was talking about. because what we're dealing with here is what i think the most precious asset we have in our nation, and that's our young men and women. pause they're the ones who have to go do this stuff we decide they should do, and is we care about that very, very much. please join me in thanking our panel. [applause]

and we hope you'll come back to some of our future events, and there's a lot of stuff outside to pick up as you go out. thank you very much. [inaudible conversations] no, knox. [inaudible conversations]

>> we've got more lye coverage coming up in about an hour from now with the chairman and ceo of goldman sachs, lloyd blankfein, who will speak at the investment company institute. and we'll have that live for you starting at 1:30 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. and in booktv prime time this evening, we'll look at presidents before they made it to the white house. you'll hear from author chris derose on his book, "congressman lincoln." also jeffrey frank in "ike and dick: portrait of a strange political marriage." and author logan we're discusses "lord of tyrants," about george washington. that gets underway tonight at 8 eastern here on c-span2. ..

>> 25 people have been killed, and okay, there were 15 killed. a day after columbine, everybody thought it was 25 because every newspaper ran with the headline because the goof ball sheriff had a wrong before he had a figure. that didn't have staying power. now, how many people here, an educated audience, could be different, but how many think it was largely about, you know,

goths, loners, outcasts from the trench coat mafia op a spree to revenge jocks? how many people believe that? okay. some of you. some of you read the book. i set you up. when i do this at high schools, at all sorts of audiences, like, 90% of the hands go up. people think that's true. that has staying power because narratives and explanation have staying power. once we figure out, oh, i get what's going on here, we remember that forever. 9/11 happened because of osama bin laden. oklahoma city happenedded because of tim mcveigh. those things stay in our mind. furious facts details, no. that's part of tonight's event looking at media coverage of incidents with mass casualties. you can see that at 8 eastern on c-span.

>> ronald reagan, i think, massively made mistakes on defense. the defense budget was not just a waste of money in those eight years, but it's what created the war machine that was used to create so much havoc in the world and create so much, you know, anger and the problems throughout the world that we're totally unnecessary that made us an imperial human being power, and that was a negative. on the other hand, he did, for the first time since eisenhower, stand up for limiting the state. you know, the government, big government, the state, is not the solution to every problem. in fact, it can weigh down the private economy. therefore, the idea of entrepreneurs, the idea of technological change, the idea that people should make their own decisions without some big

nanny in washington, he stood for all those things. i agree with those things, and so that puts the plus in his column, and so the negatives, of course, fiscally, he lost it. he really needed to stand up for closing more of the deficit. the idea that the -- ronald reagan spent a lifetime before 1980 # as the greatest scourge, you know, opponent, of deficit spending there ever was, leaving a legacy of massive deficits permitting his followers to say reagan proved deficits don't matter. that was a historical, you know, error of enormous proportion. >> more with the former reagan budget director and the author, david stockman, sunday, at eight on c-span's "q&a."

>> the head of nih said with all the attention to military suicides, the defense department is leading the way on treating mental health issues. much the same way it led on the issue of desegregation decades ago. the hour long discussion is hosted by the atlantic magazine. >> it's my pleasure to introduce the next panel, how public health attitudes affect care moderated by james hamlin. he was an editor at the atlantic, oversees the health channel on the website as well as contributing to the magazine. he is a doctor, former training

at north western, harvard, and uca health system. the reference is apt. it's my pleasure to introduce james and the panel. thank you. [applause] >> we have three panelists to talk about mental health care. we -- it is a tremendous issue that still is misunderstood and how it's stigmatized. with me here to the right, i have dr. barbara van dalen, a clinical psychologist here in dc, one of "time's" magazine 1

hundred influential people of the year. she provides free services to military service people, veterans, and their loved ones. i have dr. roger ray, executive and vice president and chief medical officer of the carolina health care system, practicing clinical for ten years, providing direction related to performance improvement, equality in the patient system, patient safety. we have dr. thomas, director of the national institute of mental health department, in component to the national institutes of health and generates knowledge needed to understand, treat, and prevent mental disorders. i'd like to get started by just addressing as was mentioned in the writings that 0%, roughly, possibly even more, disability in this country is related to mental health rather than physical issues and how how we

are potentially dealing with and overlooking and addressing those. >> well, happy to jump in, jim, first, thanks for moderating this. we are all delighted to be here. i take good opportunity to talk about a topic that doesn't get enough attention expect when there's a crisis whether it's sandy hook, a university suicide, or an event like that. from the stand point of people who are in the trenches and to think about this all the time, we thought it might be useful to begin with just some numbers and provide for you the context of where the issue is from a public health perspective. jim just mentioned that the mental health versus physical health, we think about that as one thing and have a sense to bend the curve if you pay

attention to mental health issues, and at the same time, similar ri critical issues of overall health department important to help people with serious mental illness. the numbers are striking as mentioned. you used the world health organization approach, which is to measure disability by talking about disability adjusted life years, and the number of years lost to disability, either from preterm mortality, the disability itself, it's pretty clear, especially in the data that we're just released about two months ago that the last decade has seen a transition from infectious diseases, commune diseases to chronic, noncommunicable diseases, the largest source of disability, and when you look within that group, particularly within the ages of 15 to 49 years, which is the year that who breaks up the

life span, it is neuropsychiatric disorders that drive the story. globally, they account for some 30% of.com, but -- disability, but in that age range, it's 40% of all disability, more than all other chronic diseases, and certainly, more than cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and others. this is the number one source of disability, and, yet, we tend not to think of it that way. if anything, we minimize its impact, and it's not just morbidity, but mortality. they kill people at a high rate. suicide has become a major source of mortality in this country. there are 37,000 suicides each year in the united states.

you know, there's four in the hour we talk together, one every 15 minutes. to put that in context, that is more than twice the number of homicides in the united states, about 17,000 a year. it is certainly more than the number of deaths from hiv, which is under 20,000 at this point, and in an amazing way, it's more than the number of traffic fatalities which run 34,000. 37,000 suicides. it's not something you hear about very much. it tends not to be in the morning paper or evening news very a lot of reasons, but it's a huge, huge public health issue that needs a lot more understanding and intervention to bend the curve on that number. it's shameful because at the same time the number of homicides and traffic fatalities and the number of deaths from aids really dropped, in some

cases, 30% to 40 #%, the number of suicides essentially have not changed in three or four decades. it continues to be, if anything, creeping up very gradually. on that, it requires a lot more attention from all of us, so in terms of just framing the issue, in terms of public health issues, morbidity and mortality, talking about a very large part of the challenge for american health care. >> dr. ray, you've seen this increase demand working as medical officer with the carolina health system, which is a vast health system. how have you been working to address this need? how has it manifested in terms of your patient population? >> happy to talk about it, and pleased to be here, and i want to add my thanks to the atlantic and to you for putting this on and giving us a chance to be in the conversation. why are you in the conversation? i'll give you my thought on that.

for those of you who don't know, north carolina's health system, 60,000 team members across largely two states. we saw about 11 million parents last -- patients last year across the continuum. we have 40 hospitals a part of the system, although, the vast majority of patients interacted with every day are not in a hospital anymore, but in some other part of the delivery system. like most, we're focused on where do we go from here? how do we transform care within the communities that we serve and the areas we're responsible for? if you chase any of the information around there's a real cop consumption in health care today, where is there high, possibly a voidable utilization.

you see we're not going anywhere quickly if we don't deal with the behavioral health betterment one in four have a diagnosisble health condition once in our life. if i have another medical condition that i take medication for and i have a substantial with behavioral health issue as well, the chance that i will take my medicine right for my diabetes is cut by 70%. if you look at what are the factors that are in play that add substantially to over consumption, over utilization, and, therefore, a reflection that we have done it badly, behavioral health is part of the conversation. this is not an overall health care transformation and a behavioral health care transformation, they are, in fact, the same gorpny. we are, as a system, doubling down on that notion, and we are doing that in a couple ways. we are building a new behavioral

health in-patient facility outside of charlotte at a time where it is economically challenging to do so. it will never break even from a pure economics point of view, but it is the right thing to do for our communities, and we believe intensity lookout our mission to provide that part of the care, but we're also going upstream. we were just mentioning backstage we have 200 primary care practices in the geography part of the system. if you asked me today, what is their contribution to behavioral health care through the carolinas, i would say not enough. not enough screening, not enough care coordination, not enough community resource channeling, so we have huge opportunities to transform the way we're doing care to be more cognizant of behavioral health, and that's really why we're participating in the conversation. >> so you see that when you address behavioral health

issues, it's been official to not just, in terms of the overall patient's health, but that it actually is beneficial to the system? it's saving money overall to have people compliant with the diabetes medications, showing up for appointments, degreing the whole patient rather than behavioral health side of things? >> absolutely. if any of us today had to go to the emergency room, it would be one of the bigger things, parole, that happened to us this month, if not this year. if you look at parties who went 20 # times or more last year to an emergency room, upwards of 90% chance that's a substantial, unmet need from a behavioral health perspective. it's not necessarily medical illness. if we're going to get at that overall utilization, then we have to focus belter on better

meeting that need. >> absolutely. dr. van dalen, speaking of community resources, you've been working especially with veterans, their families in the communities, and active service mep, service people to address ptsd, which is still a lot of unmet need there. how is the organization been mobilizing, not just doctors, but all sorts of mental health professionals to bring a team effort to the approach? >> that's a great question, and thank you for including me in this conversation, so this began eight years ago with the notion to ask the mental health community to step up, give app hour of week of their time to provide free services to the returning troops, their families, and what happened quickly, which is a wonderful part of the conversation, so as i began to build, given hour,

and i'm a clinical psychologist, my father a veteran of world war ii, i grew up in the vietnam era, and we did such a horrible job of taking care of those men when they came home, and so as i watched these wars unfold eight years ago, it was clear even though the didn't of defense and affairs were doing so much more. the need was luge, was going to continue to be huge, and it is now even larger than i had imagined because none of us knew how long the wars were going to go on, a enso i first -- and so i first started asking people like me, who felt like me, give some of my time, and i assumed others would, and, boy, was a right. mental health professionals, mental health associations, social workers, pastoral counselors were looking for a way to help because they knew they had a specific skill. what we found as we got into this work, and i think it'll be

part of the conversation, that you're already hearing, incredibly complex issues in the mental health arena affecting physical health, physical health affects mental health, and the service members coming home have chronic physical issues that contributes then to depression, anxiety, which often leads to substance abuse to try to deal with the anxiety, the depression, the physical, and then when you add into that post-traumatic stress, which, by the way, is a very understandable reaction, a very understandable human reaction to what they are dealing with, and often now we're seeing, unfortunately, no those who serve and those who never even deployed, an increase in suicide, and we're trying to get in front of that, and so what we've done very early op in the process was to look at, okay, we have all the mental health professionals stepping up to give, how can we start to knit the community together, and

reach out to primary care physicians to teachers, in the primary schools, also in colleges, and how can we reach out to business owners because, as i think you're going to hear from us, there's a drum beat here. mental health is an issue that cuts across all aspects of life, all sectors, and the goal is to how do we put those pieces together to make sure that there's an integrated system of care that helps on this mental health side, but also helps on the physical health side, and everything in between in terms of our lives. that's our work right now. >> and speaking of the integration, we've been hearing so much in the news after sandy hook, after the boston bombings, talking with mental health, the need of preventative services, identifying people who might benefit from earlier access to

care, do you feel like, as a country, where we need policy to address these sorts of issues or what would be a good way to approach getting more resources into the community? >> well, i think there's -- the two pieces two it. we need more in the way of services, and the president has announced an effort to do that, something he calls project aware, which will create services within schools, within communities, begin to knit together just as barbara's talking about, school system and mental health care system in a way that provides, we hope, a better safety net because one of the things that many of you may not realize is that relative to the rest of health care, what makes mental health different in some ways is it's mostly about you so 50% of men mental illness

begins at age 14, 75% by age of 25. that's different than cancer, heart disease, diabetes, you name it. we're talking about young people, and what project aware and other projects like that that will be created in the sort of unfortunate aftermath of sandy hook will help to provide, we hope, a national focus and increased national awareness about the need. the second piece, and it's the one that is more difficult to grapple with, has to do with where i come in, and that is realizing that as with other medical problems, we just don't know enough often. the state of our knowledge here is pretty poor. we have some services we can provide, and we do what we can, currently, but we're also aware that we need to know a lot more about the risks, about

resilience, about who needs what kind of care, about who will just do fine by themselves eventually. a lot of kids run into trouble in adolescence, and they just come out of it without much of a scar, and we don't want to label them or push people into treatment who don't need it. there's a whole range of things that tell me, and tell the people i work with at nimh, that there's a need for sciences and better services, and we have got to get sort of on the bandwagon where we've been for cancer and heart disease which is getting a scientific agenda together to allow us to identify the problems much earlier and know what the right intervention will be so you can preempt psychosis, preempt these worst outcomes because often what we see in the tragedies you read about in the paper.

>> one of the things is you've. talking and speaking that is different in the menial health arein ya, i mean, we've seen it in other health care issues, but not the way that we see it with mental health, and that is a term that i don't really like because it doesn't tell us, but it's what everyone is aware of, this notion of stigma. stigma is really anything that prevents people from getting the care. sometimes stigma is my fear of what you think if you find out i struggle with depression, have bipolar disorder, or my husband came back with post-traumatic stress. sometimes stigma is what i believe about myself, and even if the entire room would stand up and applaud if i got help for substance abuse issue, i'm not willing to do that, and so the work, because we're in having

wonderful conversationings in the notion of awareness, it's awareness, but awareness on different way, whether it's a teacher, employer, a mental health professional, a physician, not only is aware of what they are treating out here, but also who they are as human beings and recognizing where they can intervene in their own family with themselves with coworkers, and so i think we're in a great place for the first time in our history, almost because of the tragedies, because of the last ten years of war, people have a much better understanding of post post-traumatic stress, sadly, because it's in the news. the sandy hook shootings, boston bombing, aurora shooting shoved in our face on mental health issues. i hope we don't lose our

attention span and are willing to tackle what is really a difficult issue. i often say when i speak, if i were to say to everyone here, and you don't have to do this, but, you know, raise your hand, if anyone, either you or anyone in your family is struggling with a mental health issue, people turn white. they are afraid i'm going to ask them to do that. we have a long way to go before people are comfortable saying, you know, my mom was schizophrenic. my mom was. we don't like to share that. anyway, that is occurring to me as a notion of awareness. there's a different kind. >> a wonderful story that the actress tells me, and she's interested in these issue, and a few years ago, she did this public service announcement, psa, to try to increase awareness, and it is a remarkable moment, a dark stage, light comes down on her saying, i'm glenn close, and i have a

mental illness in my family. then she stops, and she says, i want to know what went through your mind in that two seconds between the word "illness," and "in my family," and if you felt different about me between the possibility that i was the one that was ill or that i was caring for someone that was ill. it does make you stop and think, joust as you say, that we have a lot of work to do to make this acceptable in the same way that we've come to accept aids and cancer and, when i was in medical school, there were words you couldn't say. you cont say "cancer" because it was a topic nobody would talk about. we're still struggling with that here, and until we get to a point where we're able to discuss it and be open about it, it's going to be hard to help people get care. it's a little more complicated because part of having these illnesses is often, if you're

depressed, you feel so worth lest. you don't feel you deserve care. you just want to die. it's -- if you're psychotic and paranoid, you're too fearful to go out and get help and don't think you need it because it's everybody else against you, and you know that, and so there's a real problem in the disorders that often prevent or preempts their open treatment. like barr ray, i don't like the term "stigma" because it over simplifies the problem, and, also, it's a victim word. there is a sort of discrimination, which is a little more of an action word that is implicit in the field, and we have a lot of work to do to turn that around from a social policy perspective. >> speaking of the labeling and we have the new addition, the

association, the official book that puts, makes labels for all these illnesses and conditions, and there are a few notable changes, but there's the sense among the world of mental health about what the changes are, whether it's right, whether things should be labeled in certain ways, and whether they shouldn't be, and what's good and bad about that. do you see a positive change coming of this? would you -- would you do things differently? fewer labels, more labels, more names? >> boy, i'm not a fan of this at all. [laughter] you asked the wrong person if they are looking for a positive answer. >> so -- >> the good thing i can say about this process, this diagnostic, statistical process, it made a book to be electronic, and as long as you think the

book as a dictionary, it's useful, so it's made up of a set of categories, defines them, and it allows clinicians to have a common language. that's a good thing because i remember before we had that, and it was really a tower of babe, 4. -- babel. the bad thing is people call this the bible of sike therapy or the bible of psychology or psychiatry. boy, that's a real problem because these are there are categories, they are contrived. these are names put on things that clinicians agree clutter together, and we used to do that in the rest of medicine. something happened #. we figured out actually how to look at the biology under the symptoms, and we were able to

them to come up with precisions. heart pain can be a heart problem, long problem, emotional problem, a lot of them, and developed a set of tests to pull them apart, and the biomarkers and tests gave us a precision to allow us to know which person should be treated for heart disease and which person has pneumonia, although they have similar chest pains. in psychiatry or the dsm process, is just about the chest pain, just about the symptoms and how the symptoms cluster together. that's just useful to know, but it's not, by any means, where we need go. it's 30 years behind. what we really need now is to do what every other area of medicine has done, which is to build not just reliability, not just the ability to have the same language, but validity, bring in something that gives us

an understanding of the underlying biology to tease apart these clusters so that you can begin to realize that depression, which has, you know, nine symptom, and you have to have five of those to meet criteria, meaning you can have two people with the same label who share one of nine. that's not precise from my per speck tie. figure out a way to deconstruct this so that it becomes, you can understand just as we've done with chest pains, what are the different ways of getting to the set of symptoms that we now label as depression? what would be the best treatment for them? that's really the agenda, which i need, and we've created our own effort called the research domain criteria with the attempt to essentially maybe file a seal for dsm six or seven, to give us something that will ultimately

be much more valid as well as reliable. >> no small task. to a lot of primary care physicians, physicians who are not psychiatrists, it can seem like a murky area they are not comfortable addressing with pairnlgts, don't know what to do with behavioral health issues r and dr. ray, you mentioned about 5% of the patients in your health system are seen in hospital. you invest in addressing primary care physicians for mental health first aid, training them better to address the issues, and to maybe recognize the signs that they need to make the refeferls, how have you integrated into this for people who are not psychiatrists? >> a great insider integrated system. there's a whole other book of works that has to do with engaging with others in the

community to bring attributes, skills, or capabilities that we wouldn't. on the primary care side, primary care physicians recognize intuitively in seeing any data fully buy into the contribution, the total health, the behavioral health care makes and can make. if any of you interacted with the hospital or an emergency room or a health care system in the last year, i would bet dollars to donuts that we ask you one to 75 times whether you're allergic to anything. did we ask you any question that might highlight for us a behavioral health need to dive deeper into? not so much, not always, certainly not reliably in every indication. that's the kind of transformation on our side that we have to make. now, to surface something and to

have the primary care physician paralyzed with anything to then do is not fair to them, so we support them with care coordination, treatment algorithms provided, immediate consultation provided if there's circumstance or crisis, so it comes with support, but i believe we certainly can and must get to a place by demystifying, by creating a language and a conversation about what is about talking about the behavioral health side as part of every single health care encounter, anded add to that, them, the issue that are either societal or are multidisciplinary within a community where the whole community can help. getting past stigma if we're going to use that term for today, is all of our jobs. it's not necessarily easy to do,

but it is achievable. as a neurologist, you know, if i felt a lump op the arm, i would be concerned about it, but i don't know that i would be off put by it. same lump in a place that impairs our ability to communicate, all the sudden, that's unsettling; right? it's -- when behavior and communications is affected, subpoena in -- even in a very medical way, that's unsettling, and we have to find a language in a way to reck news that for what it is and deal with it effectively, and i'm encouraged by progress made related to the neurologic or neuropsychologic symptoms we see. i'm encouraged by new relationships available to us by multiple places in the community because this is a moment where we -- it's not just that we can, we really must.

>> yeah. >> bend the cost curve. >> one of the things that you asked about the dsm, and, i, as a mental health professional my whole career, watching the dsms change, what version are we on, and i agree that we need a structure -- because we use language, and we have to be table to communicate with each other, but one of the dangers of those kinds of manuals, especially of people, and often it's the young professionals because they want to grab on to something, and that's their bible because they want to be grounded. we have to be very careful, those of us with the opportunity to men tore and teach, but the danger of that is something that we have come to see very powerfully among our military and military families dealing with these issues. one size doesn't fit all, and even the best, absolute best, evidence based practice currently today in mental health

care will treat the symptoms in "x" percentage of patients if it's post-traumatic stress or anything else, and that's fantastic, we want to hold up, highlight, and have available evidence based approaches, but there's going to be a percentage that does not respond to that, but may respond to other things, and sometimes those other things are really surprising things, which is why now, again, in the veterans space, we're really learning that for some who are struggling, and i would say this goes well beyond our veterans, for some who are struggling with issues of post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety, what's powerful for them is actually being able to continue to do something productive. you get into that cycle where someone who is depressed or arntion, especially the veterans who had a mission that meant so much, serve the country, come home, there's no mission, they work in a job that is an under

employment situation, and it contributes to their depression, and it cycles, and there you go. we have to be careful. whatever tool we use to talk about the issue, and i totally agree about symptoms and different people have the same symptoms may be coming there two different places or two people with the same diagnosis have different symptoms, that's all fine and good, but as a community response, as a public health response, we have to think and be open to whoever is in front of us that we try to help on their johnny, that we're aware of maybe a lot of things that will ultimately leave that person, meaning there's not always one best, not always one right, and we have to be open to looking at the different partners and components, and sometimes we, in the mental health field, drives my husband, also in the space crazy, we in the mental health field forget to look at health issues.

we won't stop to ask the person, coming in to see a psychologist, we forget. we need the health history. depression may be related to a health issue we have not asked about. it's come -- complex, but i, too, after working in the space for eight years, i'm optimistic, hopeful, and excited about where we're headed. >> we came full sierk -- circle in terms of behavioral health issues affecting treatment for physical health issues, and then vice versa as well. following up on the veterans and also in terms of labels, we recently ran a story that was written by a woman whose husband returned from service, was having symptoms of ptsd, violent outbursts, punched through the windshield of their car, and he -- what -- by the time he finally was willing to seek treatment, he didn't feel like he could because he couldn't get anonymous care through tricare

which provides care to veterans and service people. his colleagues and supervisor would have nope within the service he was getting that, but at the same time, could not afford a civilian psychiatrist either, so -- >> and didn't know about us. >> right. convincing him to seek care was a battle in itself, and once he was willing, he couldn't do it. what's the way we can get confidential, anonymous care to the veterans, especially with pdsd? >> well, that's way we do. >> yeah. >> we have nearly 7,000 mental health professionals with other groups as well, and we're constantly talking to the department of defense about this issue, and it is critical because, again, stigma, for some, is a way to not get treatment because they are uncomfortable getting treatment, but it's an, also a real issue for these military families, and

it's not just the service member who can't say that he needs help. if his wife is struggling, she's afraid, or if her kid is struggling, so we're working, and i'm very proud of the relationships within the dod because there's more openness now, a desire where we just saw a whole other world of huge impact on menial health, military sexual trauma, and most of the women who are seen at the va for post-traumatic stress is not for combat exposure, but military sexual trauma. that, literally, i don't know if i saw this, a complete opening up of a really ugly issue in a very open and let's go in here and figure out what to do, so things are changing, but there will not be a change within the system soon enough to meet the need which organizations like ours and others that offer free confidential. here's a little example of how

things have changed. when i started giving out, the message was, oh, thank you very much, you know, for the desire to help the military, but we have it covered; we're okay. others say, you build it, we'll need it. over time, two years, three years, five years, and now within dod in the highest levels of the pentagon where we're talking very high security individuals, they are dlighted that we exist because it's come around now to where the chairman of the joint chiefs, the current chairman, general dempsey, the former chairman, admiral mullen recognize most important, number one, access to care for these men and women, and making sure that it's credible in good care, but access so whether it's tricare, a community mental health center, a prieved insurer, or give an hour, the goal is to get that dope. i read the article. i was so sad because that service member and his family didn't know about using and so

one of the things we're doing is constantly trying to get the information out because it is a critical need. >> so, barbara, i think it's really good to hear you say about the change in dod. i've seen this as well. i work closely with the vice chevre and chief of staff, and we have our there's a collaboration with the department of defense, and also with the secretary of the army to try to come up with a way to bend the curve op suicide, an enormous problem. you think most people known since 2009, there's been more deaths from suicide than combat in the army, and that number is still going up, even though combat is down, we have this problem. we don't understand it. what dod asks for back in 2008 was to get an outside group in to help them try to figure out what are the drivers?

almost everything we assumed for the driver is proven not to be, due to the stress of combat, multiple deployments, the fact there was more waivers, more people coming into the army that wouldn't have been admitted previously, and virtually every one of the factors turned out to be a nonfactor when we really looked at the data. it's shocking. we still don't truly understand what the main drivers are, but what has been extraordinary is to see the way that the leadership has taken this issue on, and if you wanted to test that, the perfect asset is if you were to go to the vice chief of staffs of the army and say, how many suicides have you had so far in 2013 or even if you say how many in april of 2013? it could not only tell you the numbers, but you pull out from the breast pocket the list and talk about every family that he

had spoken to of a soldier who had suicided, and what that was like, so they live with this, and they are living with some 300 or nor suicides per year. if you go to your governor, your mayor, your congressional representative, try it. ask them, how many suicides have we had in our community? how many suicides have we had in our state? they have no idea. how many people have you talked to, how many families have you talked to who have had this experience? they will look at you -- i've done this -- they have a completely blank stare. they don't know it's an issue. in app interesting way, the military and va are beaten up relentlessly for this problem. they have taken it on in a way that has still not happened in civilian society. i often like to say that if you look at this in a particular way, they may be actually paving

the road for the rest of us in reducing this need to make this a priority and helping us to address mental health issues as something we do talk about and we focus on and commit to bending the curve. in the same way that 50 years ago they began to integrate long before the rest of the society did, and they really, in many ways, paveed the way for racial integration in the united states through world war ii and the years therefore, and we may be seeing that again, but i don't think the rest of us have caught on to that yet, and there really needs to be, in a way, showing how this is implemented in the military, and then finding a way to disseminate that broadly, whether it's reducing stigma, increasing access, whatever the names are on it, it's remarkable to see. while we tend to think of that's the problem, in a really

interesting way, they could also point towards the solution. >> yeah. dr. ray, you were telling me about some of the emergency care services that you have, dealing with patients who are potentially suicidal, you're able to provide evaluations now in some of your hospitals, remotely, with video technology where someone is speaking with a psychiatrist 24/7 right away, video conferences and consultation to the emergency physicians on-call, how does that factor into addressing these needs in urgent care for civilians? >> well, i think the stories are incredibly important. we know as moves, move as a society based op our human reaction to human experience, and everybody probably in the room knows that if you csh -- you can't talk very long about

behavioral health crisis in emergency rooms without finding stories that are horrifying and horrible, and so we have, obviously, been focused on it for a while. it's nobody's plan and good for no one that a suicidal patient is in the emergency room, their last place for help, and they stay there days looking for access to any treatment, but with that, understanding that emergency care psychiatrists are a scarce resource that we need to try to effectively spread and leverage best as we can, create virtual links between our behavioral health hospital between the one we currently have in addition to the one we are building that is linked televideo wise to every emergency room in the system around the metro area so that

psychiatrists, 24/7 can interact with patients specifically in the room sets, with other care givers, think through this, what should i do because an interview is better than none, a consultation is better than none, a plan, even if while holding an emergency room, is better than none; not a substitute for enough capacity, which is why we are focused on that as well, but we have found useful the technology that allows us to take expertise in the scarce resource and distribute it more widely than just what you can do in perp. we will do the same thing with care coordination. we will do the same thing with community resource navigation. we will do the same thing with crisis intervention, this extension, and, of course, as a health system, we do it with icu, and, you know, a lot of the

parts of the health care continuum. particularly in that setting, crisis, emergency room related, no capacity, what do we do, we found it so far a useful tool. hundreds of parents a month seen that way. >> that ties to an interesting theme with all this where it just seems like such a daunting task. so much to tackle, and a whole system that needs overhaul, and you're managing it day-to-day, and yet, at the same time, trying to change things, and so implementing that on the day-to-day, at the same time as -- while things are going, while things are still functioning, how do -- how do you implement change and also operate a functioning system at the same time? >> you know, it's the threat of discussions we have every day. we don't have the luxury of calling timeout, and control,

alt, delete does not work. [laughter] the analogy is the plane is flying, how do you fly the plane while it's actually flying? we'll see thousands of patients today and have to do that well while trying to change the course in the ways that we're talking about. at the same time, today, 8,000 more people became 65, and the complexity of their health problems overtime will continue to grow, and we've got that as one more dynamic to throw into the mix, so it is difficult, but i think you've just heard even in this discussion some things that are though daunting seem achievable, you know? some of the things we talk about, we have already done. it's not just might we do it,

but there's tremendous things, done. i think that gives us a lot of optimism. >> and so -- >> i think one of the places that, you know, going -- looking forward is the science that undergirds the way we the about disorders transforms not just diagnosis like dsm, but the treatments as well, and the idea that these are brain disorders, that we can, through the power of jet net -- genetics, neuroscience, and science really begin to understand at a much deeper level than what we have in the past bodes very, very well. i think the opportunities to develop much better treatments is not that far away r and we'll understand these, the level of circuitry, the level of the molecular basis, and we know what that means in medicine, how if transformed cancer care, diabetes, and many other areas.

we're going to be there. we have the tools. we just have to apply them and get the answers. >> and what's exciting, you know, you sort of -- because there is that, those developments, the research, science, and there's, you mentioned cairns, how we transformed patient care, in addition to treating the illness, how are we taking care of the whole being has changed dramatically, and that has to do with the community resources and the way we think about the holistic human being, and we were just talking about suicide in the military, and i've had the great hop nor of working very closely with the commanding general at fort bliss. fort bliss currently has the lowest suicide rate in the army, and when i started visiting, very interesting story because, actually, the commanding general got into a little bit of heat because of comments he made about suicide.

i didn't know him at the time, and i was called to respond to an interview about, well, way do you think about what he said? when i looked at what he said, what it looked to me as a mental health department professional working the space is he was really angry about all these suicides, and he couldn't stop it. when he got wind of how i responded, i didn't pound him like everybody else was doing. i tried to understand and commented on that, and then i got asked to write an article about that, and when he heard about it, he invited me to visit, and what i met was this amazing man, compassionate, intensely caring, wanted to stop these suicides from happening to these men who cared deeply for, and what they've done is almost this amazing community-based response using everything they can in terms of tools they know that work, but they've also done a tremendous amount of education, raising awareness,

and you see these young men, often young men, who are, you know, been in one or two years, 20 years, 24 years old, so proud because of what they learned through the commanding officer's program. they learned that if somebody is talking about running their car into the tree, you should take it seriously, and you should say, hey, what are you talking about? what they taught the young men is to create a community that cares about each other, isn't afraid to step up and respond and they then get people help before it's too late. they have the lowest suicide rate, and so i'm excited because i think what happened now in our country, and globally, i would say, the focus on research, understanding the issues from a neurophysiological, bilogical genetic as well as an understanding of it does take an entire community, we all have to step up in ways that we can, and

that's happening now, to your., we're doing it and seeing the positive impact. even though it's a huge and daunting task, i feel like there's a window open now, and we have the opportunity, the skills. >> yeah, and -- >> sounds like -- >> i have to get more questions in. we could talk for a long time, and we have to give opportunity for someone to ask something of one of us. >> before that, we have a question from the guest watching online, a question via twitter, how will obama's brain mapping initiative affect the future l mental health care? >> i think i might be the one to answer that. [laughter] the president's on the 2nd of april announced what he called brain initiatives, brain stems for brain research, for accelerating innovative neurotechnologies, and so it is an acronym that includes the word "brain," and the acronym is

brain. the concept is that we've had a lot of success in the last decade with technology that helps us to map the brain in a stat pick way so whether it's through neuroimaging or some of the things we can do experimentally, which are really extraordinary some that came out in the last few weeks, and we have a power to do this at a resolution that we couldn't have even imagined a decade ago. what we don't have is the ability to map brain activity in realtime. it's all very dynamic. we have mostly a static picture, but what we want to be able to do is map the brain at the speed of that, actually see what's going on, where it's activated, at a level that is not only got the resolution, but the spatial resolution to understand which cells and which connections really matter for changes in

mood or changes in memory, or any of the things that are important for human behavior or human cognition, so the brain initiative, as the president said, is the next great american project. he was referring to, i think, to the human genome project as the last great american project, and he wants this new project to in connection -- include the nih, defense agencies for the research, projects, defense, advanced research project agency, and the national science foundation, first meeting will be held this week, start to bring people together to map this out and talk about what it looks like. a lot of it, i think, will be focused on developing the tools. it won't immediately lead to cures or diagnostics for mental illness, but over time, the hope is that if these are truly brain disorders, having the tools that allow us to look inside the

brain, to understand how the brain is working in health and disease gives us what we need to be able to do a better job of both more precise diagnosis and also potentially developing new there piewtics as well so i think it impacts not immediately, but the last several years will be about the development of the technologies. >> ties in nicely about what you said about the need for more science. back here, yeah. >> first, a comment to dr. ray. i really, really enjoyed what you're doing in carolina, and just to give you a word of encouragement, in europe, where i worked for a decade, where we had implemented the kind of social psychiatry programs that got people out of emergency rooms, we realized that it also cut the reinvolving door emergency room visits to the medical side of the unit enough to make a lot of physical difference, so hopefully you'll see that in your system, now,

tom, of -- i'm fred, from medical school, and, tom, can you say a word about the pharmaceutical industry's, you know where i'm going. [laughter] ..

>> there's no compelling science that drives them towards a new treatment. they see it in cancer. they see it in to some extent in areas like rheumatoid arthritis and certainly in some areas of infectious disease. but they don't see in neurological or psychiatric disorder. alzheimer's, autism, depression, schizophrenia. so we are trying to figure out ways to get them back into the game. he comes the science is generating new great

opportunities. we think we have antidepressants that will work in four hours instead of four weeks. we have treatments for autism which we think really will make a difference for discord which is increasing and prevalent. with a very, very high rate of disability. we're focused on trying to provide positive tools for people with schizophrenia so they can go back to work and finish school. so i think there really are great opportunities. the way to do this now is through a public-private effort. bringing in industry in a way that helps them to understand where the opportunities are and to work with the fda, to work with the academic sector, bring government into this as well so this happens in a way that it's being done for the public good. and everybody realizes that if we're going to bend that curve, decrease mortality, decrease morbidity, we got to come up with something better than what we have now. we will provide the scientific need, if they provide the

commitment to follow those leads with new interventions. maybe they will be divisive. maybe they will be video games. there's a whole range of things that one can think about. last week amazingly a group of scientists from a pharmaceutical company published a paper on what they call electricity goals, the idea you could develop devices that will help duplicate the same behavior for brain activity in the way that would be so targeted it could be a treatment for depression or for ptsd or something like that. so there is ability to buy into this, but it is a challenge. we have to realize that if it takes a decade to create new intervention, new treatment. and if they leave this territory completely, 2023 we'll feel it because there won't be anything better than what i we have now. we have now just isn't good enough. >> let's hope we keep seeing more innovation.

rectally to on that note. thank you so much. thank you to our panelists, and that's all for us. [applause] >> now goldman sachs ceo lloyd blankfein will have a one-to-one discussion with the organization's president on a number of topics. including the global economic outlook and the impact of new regulations on the financial markets domestically and internationally. while we're waiting for this to begin an update on the president. president obama has named the last two nominations for cabinet

positions. if confirmed, she would be the fourth woman serving as the sector in the president's current cabinet it should also be the wealthiest in the cabinet. forbes as many high net worth at more than $1.80 billion. and mr. obama named a former citigroup executive to serve during president clinton's administration as chief of staff to treasury secretary robert rubin. president obama made his announcement in the white house rose garden just before leaving for mexico and costa rica. he's on a three-day trip to highlight the immigration bill moving through congress. the president is scheduled to arrive in mexico city this afternoon for meetings with president nieto and will cover a joint press conference with the two later date at 5:10 pm eastern. which we will have live over on

c-span. [inaudible conversations] >> [inaudible conversations]

>> [inaudible conversations] >> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome -- [inaudible] ♪ [applause] >> thanks very much. as we get started at our keynote luncheon i would first like to start by thanking very much george and his team from jpmorgan for a wonderful lunch. can you please join me in a round of applause. thank you, jpmorgan. [applause] i would also like to recognize

all members of the gmm planning committee. they did a fabulous job in helping put this conference together but i would also like, i would like to ask them to stem but i also want the ici stafa does such a wonderful job putting on this conference to stand as well. can we please join them in a round of applause. [applause] outstanding work, thank you all very much. before i bring pull out to engage in a very wide-ranging discussion about the financial markets and all things associated in the continued aim of our conference with our keynote speaker, lloyd blankfein, i would like to just spend a minute recognizing paul stevens. his tireless leadership, his inspiring leadership quite frankly and all the things he has done to represent our industry and help us further our duty to shareholders is nothing short of breathtaking.

nobody writes a better letter. quite frankly nobody gives a better interview. where are all going to be funding paul's new newscast program in the future, and we'll be taking orders later. but i just wanted to have you guys give an especially warm welcome to paul stevens, and thank him, along with me, for all the great things he has done for industry. paul, come on out. [applause] >> we have to get a chairman for this means that stays on script. [laughter] but thank you very much, ted. and thanks to one and all. i guess i'm going to keep doing these interviews until i get them right. we were really delighted when lloyd blankfein excepted ici's invitation to participate in issues general membership meeting. as you know, he held the top job

at goldman since june 2006. that means he has led really a storied financial firms through perhaps the most difficult period in its long history. goldmans extraordinary global presence gives lloyd a unique window into markets and economies all around the world, and lloyd looked out at that thw through the prism of his own remarkable career. he hails from brooklyn. he won a scholarship to harvard at the tender age of 16. he continued his studies in cambridge at harvard law school, followed by a stint practicing law in new york city. in 1981, he applied for a position at goldman sachs, and like someone extraordinarily able and talented people before him, he was turned down. [laughter] but luck was on his side. he took a job at a trading firm named j. aaron, which almost

immediately was acquired by goldman sachs. at lunch he said, summing it all up, as far as goldman is concerned, i'm an acquired taste. [laughter] lloyd obviously rose through the ranks at his new employer pick in 2004 he was named president and coo, a post he held until appointed as chairman and ceo when his predecessor, hank paulson, was named secretary of the treasury. there are no doubt many, many factors in lloyd's great success, but his experience on the trading desk and is ability to manage risk much but prominent among them. in comments were newspaper, a story a few years ago one of his colleagues said of lloyd quote, he's a risk taker but a very disciplined one. ladies and gentlemen, please join me in a particularly warm welcome for lloyd blankfein. [applause]

>> well, thank you for that. >> it was reflecting on the luncheon today, and remarking ted's expression of our gratitude to jpmorgan for sponsoring the lunch. it reflects a kinder, gentler wall street, doesn't come that they would sponsor lunch for the head of goldman sachs. [laughter] >> listen, i know it's a big group, but no one tell jamie i'm eating his lunch. he gets very upset. [laughter] [applause] >> we will rely on the honor system. so, let's talk about the u.s. economy, lloyd. as a good place to start.

because with so much else that picture is pretty next. on the one hand, we have seen some improvements. that's got to be admitted. certainly that is reflected in the equity market's recent performance. in addition unemployment although it is unacceptably high, at a four-year low. the market show some sign of recovery. durable goods orders have been increasing. all that good but there it is never assigned. recent job growth house we can. lots of people have stopped looking. consumer confidence numbers have been shaky. so what is your sense of where the economy is today and what are the indicators you are watching most closely about expectations for tomorrow? >> i don't think i'm going to break new ground here. i think, and i think most people think that the recovery is established company can not without risk and we can get, yes with federal reserve policy and sensible things to take the little risk, the highly consequent arrest off the table

or try to, but he think we're going in the right direction. there's a lot of great factors. i can't, i can explain anything that's already happened but he gave me the set of circumstances that the u.s. is living with now, so for example, housing having bottomed and actually going up and being a tailwind instead of a head wind, the energy position out what that does for manufacturing. the deleveraging that took place, amount of cash on the sidelines. i would say this would be a terrific and five and i would say, i project a much higher growth rate than what we are having. knowing what it is i can look back and say, i would say it was such a big trauma, still a lot of uncertainty, regulation. that it's hard to explain. if i laid out the circumstances i would say that the trajectory of growth would be a lot higher it and i think the real reason is that people are nervous about taking risks. there's a huge consequence and fall of the getting things wrong.

nobody agrees on the price of anything. we have a situation where it is cheap yet no one is borrowing. you can borrow debt. does that mean people think they can't get a return out of their own businesses? higher than the cost of funding and cost of money? it seems that might be where we are today. these things are sentiment driven. economics, forget about economics, markets are not science. they are social science and there's a lot of sentiment and d emotion is thinking change and i expected to change but there's a lot of problems that are dogging us. but i think the world models through and the us does better than models through because of all the things i describe to you. >> i don't believe so the peace bill mcnabb had in "the wall street journal" but he's with vanguard and he talked about uncertainty, particularly many uncertainties that are caused by government policy being a huge drag on the economy. do you subscribe to the point of view?

>> yes. but i don't remember a time when i couldn't have said that in a lot of ways. there's always something on -- noorzai with the look on you came to a very dramatically but a lot of that trauma has receded i think we are in a place now where if i didn't, if you set the circumstances to me, i would say this looks a lot like other times when things were stronger. now other times didn't have the history and, therefore, not the reticence of sliding back or the fear and anxiety of making a mistake come which humans -- in the world is a little bit more, yeah, vindictive in one who makes a mistake. and i should take maybe unforgiving is a better word. that's i think there's much more reticence. easy across the board. look at the private equity markets, for example. you have companies that have equity, funding markets that have been easy, a rising equity

market. and not a lot of stuff is getting them. people are not necessary, the buyers and sellers are optimistic. getting the price should be hot and you want to be paid for the risk for taking that position and the other person doesn't want to pay for those risks. so i think there is uncertainty now but i don't think spectacularly more than other periods that i've grown into now. but the recent history is really what's going to get everybody nervous. >> and there are a lot of aftershocks i suppose. >> i think that's a way of looking at it. >> let's talk about monetary policy. this has entered an unprecedented chapter in the federal reserve's interventions, supplying the markets with an unprecedented amount of liquidity to an extraordinary accommodative modern policy. as you well know not only our short-term rates hovering just above zero, but have been doing so for some considerable period of time. the fed is in the third or fourth depending on the account it program of quantitative

easing. how effective do you think the fed's policy has been? whether other alternatives are there other alternatives now we have to be looking at? >> well, sure. look, the fed has to go mandy. erasure hand and you pledge that you going to accomplish both those mandates in the proportion that you think the economy has needs. >> it's kind of a zen exercise. >> there's real consequences and real activity that's get done. not just -- you go in and you look at it and you say what is and what are you most afraid of. i will charge, if i were in charge of the comic will that most different of? i would most afraid of the economy sliding back into deflation agreed to look him in some ways psychologically we are in a bit of deflationary mindset. i just talked about the lack of activity notwithstanding the interest rates and everything your deflationary period means you get up every day and you

have something that you might want to do but instead of doing it to say i wait for tomorrow to get cheaper, or regulations, somehow it will get better tomorrow. the next day you wake up and you say i'll wait for tomorrow and tomorrow, and you strength 20 years worth of tomorrow together into japan. inflation is insidious but you wake up everyday, i better get that done before gets more expensive, before the valley of my money deteriorates further. at the end of the day, i think there's a risk of inflation. there's a risk of deflation, and i would say maybe the balance is shifting where there may be a higher risk inflation long-term even though we are not seeing the signs of it now, but the consequences of deflation are so much more severe. and there's a playbook for inflation. if i were in charge of the tools that the fed is in charge of, i would be doing it, too. i would also be saying one of the other guys going to take them. because now everything about the

tools i have available, once interest rates go to zero, however effective they were yesterday, the returns of those policies are diminishing as you do the same thing for more and more. what's the valley at this point of taking mortgage debt another three basis points. is that going to make people do something they weren't going to do before? what you really need is fiscal policy to kick in and the chances of getting that kind of consensus to legislate our slight. >> i know you are a student of history. what kerry did in the experience of the united states you look to it as comparable that was presented are actually involved that kind of deflation which you think is an appropriate fear today at? >> thinking about it, we are looking to inflation everywhere, you and i, because we growth and inflationary time. >> really in our lifetime never saw to deflation.

>> were haunted by it, started working in a 70 and, of course, he beat inflation and by the way, when you want to say double-digit inflation with double-digit unemployment. so you can imagine -- a lesson that we pass on from my parents are growth and a depression, they wouldn't spend a dime ever. the test they grew up with the depression. they were haunted that we are only got everything to do can't deflate the country forever and ever. there's word the opposite. i'm just saying, it is possible and we come from thing you can't contemplate that it's anything other than the fed's job to shield us from the inevitable inflation that will result from our self-indulgent policies. yet my parents generation grew up in a deflationary violent and that's what they were always repairing themselves for. they were going out of buying assets, items whenever they could because they were holding

on to their money and savings accounts. so sentiment changes and sometimes when the senate changes it takes memory we don't member what we used to think. >> and history teaches us since it took world war ii to get us out of that cycle. >> it took a big change in spend which is held by the fact that it wasn't just a policy shift. you didn't have to argue. but i'm afraid of the other parallels. the late '70s as a parallel when i got out of, times were better can't tell you, i worry. i look out of the corner of my on to the 94 period when you got accustomed to very low interest rates for a long time, and then a shocking and a very large over a short period of time hike in interest rates to have to come even though you think at times that should've been expected, really was a stunning and had a major effect on people's portfolios at the time. we want to think about what to worry about, if we didn't have

enough spin as if we don't have enough to worry about. a large part of this meaning has been focusing, lloyd, on international issues. and i know you and your firm follow developments closely. so i would like to turn now, attention outside the united states, starting first with your. i gather you've just returned from a trip to germany and to the united kingdom, and you have the opportunity to visit policymakers in both countries. with the trip in mind what is your sense of development in europe? have they turned the corner in the eurozone crisis, or are we just on another lull before yet another strong? >> i think the eurozone situation is going to be, is going to be problematic for a long time because they're trying to accomplish something very radical and its a very, very difficult governing model to say the least. that maybe even the biggest problem, not necessary the policy pursued by the ability to

adapt change. the big problem in europe is growth. how do you achieve a growth rate, by having exchange rate, by having interest rate policy that is appropriate for germany and spain? who would've thought in prior generations that spain and germany could have exchange -- the same exchange rate for 15 years with having a prospect for having that changed. it's a difficult situation, but i think that one thing, you know, i would impart, and it gets confusing for americans and less so for the europeans. the willingness of europeans, including germans who have to pay a lot of bills, to actually continue to pay those bills, to support the euro, the european experiment which again is politically motivated, even though it bears on the economy in economic functionality that

is clearly driven. the political will to do that is i believe is absolute. that we sit here a lot of times and say the germans will never go along this, they will never pay for that. the german worker is not going to be so much to support the greeks. but other than the fact that we tried to keep them all hazard out of if i keep going to the brink, i'm convinced that the support for making your work, the alternative or which might be humane a dragon for another 100 years, i think is very, very strong, very, very strong in these places. when people talk to, and people can be cynical about a lot of things but when you talk to you they talk in terms of nobody wanted to repeat the 20th century. is a real political requirement. and i think people should suspend their faculty about whether they keep going along with the sacrifices that are necessary. i think the question you have to go in, at what point regards of

the willingness to do that do they lose the capacity to do it, that the growth, in other words, at what point do you get at that even if germany can't come is going to write the text, they can't, or that even if they can, the world can tolerate a situation where unemployment in spain is so high that their social unrest, which is a fair down the road. you don't see it but it's not remote from people's thought process that it could happen. and how much -- if you want to balance the budget how much tax can you put on the last 50% or 40% of the people that are working in spain. and as you do raise the taxes you put more in more people out of work and get less revenue. it's revenue destructive. so i would say you focus on the capacity issues and not the willingness. they have a capacity for very long time and are focused on a, but the capacity issue any kind of subset of capacity is

governance. at the point where you have to give unanimous, working to belgian. the federal system there is very, very awkward, and very hard to get results bu. you get into a situation where you might have, think about what the fed was doing during the financial crisis where there would be some crisis and the failure, everybody would go over to the fed for a long weekend and before senate avoid killing themselves and coming up with a whole set of proposals, by assets, that didn't work. a couple weeks later part of two. capital injection and all those things. can that system be nimble enough to meet the requirements of a moving market. that's what i think it's a big issue. right now it feels relatively safe because of the work that was done to take that off the table. but it's not result. you have to have growth into it

and just have a growth model that works in the periphery and works in germany. >> it seems to me that the united states has a great deal of stake in seeing the most extraordinary political despair which is the european union succeed. do you think our government has enough to support the europeans in coping, you called the eurozone situation but i use the term crisis. >> well, i stopped calling after the third year of the mortgage crisis i stopped calling it a crisis. i started calling it life. [laughter] i think they will be living with this for a long time so it's not one critical moment. are we doing enough? you know, i think the politics of it and the sociology of it is we want them to succeed, we have

a lot of suggestions. they have their context, we have our context. and we can be a lot of ways and we have different views of our regular should be done or the power of the central government or they have a parliamentary system. we have a divided government. and we have a recent history of the european having the belief that their problems, ground zero for their problems were in the united states. >> there is that narrative. >> you know, certainly a cab list by think the leveraging of their system and the fact that the revenues and the cost of their social system were divergent and those lines would never cross again is a function of european policy, not the united states policy, but there are certain countless that were supplied to the mortgage -- mortgage crisis that helped out situation be realized. the relationship between, very topic it, a lot of it is european.

but that feeling back and forth i don't know how come you know, how receptive the europeans would be interviewed today construction while they're working out the system. so i believe that our folks are being -- in real concrete ways. we maybe don't come don't forget most of it and what is financed through dollars. europe can only print euro. they can't print dollars. when they're going through their problem, our government was taking a lot of credit risk by swapping, giving them dollars in return for the euro so that their banks to function. the banking system could function. we're doing a lot and we do everything. but, you know, something, everybody thinks, everybody is generous with his own advice. >> i've noticed that. >> and tells adverse how lucky they are to get it. >> in the law business wheezes a free advice is worth every penny you pay for it.

>> right. >> so let's move to china, development in asia. another very important -- >> move to china. >> topic for this conference. we heard earlier this morning as you know from the eurasia group founder and president ian brammer on the subject, in a session that i think everyone here greatly enjoyed. we could probably devote an entire conference to this subject, given the complexities and the significance for the future. on the one hand, its economic outlook and growth continue to amaze. and i've seen some of your research publications projecting capital will look like 20 years hence. it's extraordinary. >> pretty impressive. >> impressive indeed but on the other hand, i think the challenges facing the country are striking as well. demographic pressures, including a population that is aging relatively quickly.

the political and economic divide between urban and the role commuters and genre remains an issue. >> infrastructure of the market system not there. >> and ultimately the potential in a large population for social unrest, among a citizenry legitimately yearning for financial opportunity, political accountability and the like. you've traveled to china and done so recently i'm sure, and must be a close observer of the evolution in that nation and its economy. what is your outlook? >> look, the 20th century was americans century and it doesn't mean we own every year of the. there were a couple, a few bad years in the 20th century and a couple of them, you know, your and economic history. 1907 was that you. if you would've shut down then you would have missed the last 93 years of american century. i can't tell you whether this year is china's year or not but i really believe that it could

be the century. i feel very positive about the u.s. there are two places i feel best about for different reasons, but i would rather be a long-term investor for japan -- china, in the short term but i would rather predict five years. i would rather be investing for my kids and investing for the short-term communicable short-term for myself. i think that every problem you mentioned is also an opportuni opportunity, the population means they're going to to go out and create social services which means they'll have to create pools of capital. the pools of capital want of something device so those companies ago to the outside world and issue their dead, issue their equity. on the hong kong market you have to issue, build up equity markets, bigger equity markets in such integrates the security that the pools of capital. the pools of capital in turn will fund chinese growth. we have a remarkable situation

where every chinese can put money and a savings bank with no interest and the only people can invest in china are goldman sachs getting recognized and that has to be, a lot of the problems you mention are the flip side of opportunity. their problems if they don't go well, but as they get worked through will be big opportunities, urbanization if it doesn't go well you can see conflict and dissatisfaction if it doesn't go well but look at how many people are coming in and those all consumers and they are all going to be a fabulous workforce pics i think they will be problems. and it's hard to know because we find out about our problem because the market tells us. they billed as part of their stimulus program and they build something like 80 airports right away. if you build 80 airports at once, maybe 40 of them will be in the wrong place to idaho, maybe 50 will be in the wrong place but if that happens you're nobody goes to them, nobody

supports them. they fall apart, you write them off, you fire 1 million people and, who are coming to, you killed people who made the decision and you move on. they are you don't really know. >> wide-eyed such a good view of how that process works? [laughter] spent i thought wages for low to the faa staff spent i knew every part of that except the moving on part. but in china don't have the mechanism of kind of writing off mistakes but that's a problem. i think we have mistakes and you finally are forced to face them they will be bigger than it otherwise would be if you're facing them all alone. but if you ask me, i would get along with china, that a monster and it works out. new government, this government has a couple years to think about what they want to do. i bet you they have reforms onto my. i expect first as a predicate to other reforms, capital markets reformed should be early in their agenda so that you can achieve those other things by

having capital markets that will allow people to finance and find things. i would be positive, but as a risk manager the next year that confuses me. i don't know. there's a lot of a lot of visibility. the market doesn't do you like it does here. so ourselves we stay invested, but we watch how much we have in. what we don't want to do is have so much in that where there's a problem we have to pull out. and once you are out or start to get out what they look like you're going backwards, it's hard to get that reputation back. so we're being very careful about how much we have been. we are constantly financing people, constantly investing, but when we invest we also sell other things. and trying to keep the level of risk in the country that we think we can support hundred even dire circumstances. >> interesting. so let's come back closer to home again.

you know, this is not news to you nor anybody here, but in recent years the thing that has hit several high water marks in terms of the public antipathy towards financial services sector and -- spent that is like hate, right? [laughter] spent it's like situation crisis. but that's among policymakers and this is important to note on both the right and left. there was a 2010 dow jones story that described just quote the focus of anger about wall street skyhigh bonus culture. and reported that you a quote grilled, actually if you only grilled that was a good experience having testified so many times myself, but grilled by senate subcommittee looking to goldman and the situation of the financial crisis. i do want to dwell on the past. that's not worth taking the question. but where d.c. the temperature levels now in terms of our

industry, the report we have with policymakers? is the grilled still had? is it going down speak with someone once said how better does it feel to be boiled in 450 degrees oil as opposed to 600-degree oil? so the temperature could be done and still might not feel that much differently. i would say things have moved. listen, you can't ignore legacies i will say something about that because in the present we're getting a legacy and having to work through these issues and that's the source of resentment and distrust that we have to grapple with in the present. it was a very big trauma. inherited that got written i think will be expanded over time to include regrettable behavior by a lot of people, including things that we would regret financing in hindsight because of the bubble but a lot of it was a bubble the captured everybody. ever no brilliant actors and everybody got caught up in the

same kind of a credit bubble. but we have to work results through it and it's no shock, shouldn't be a shock that the trauma that big is going to have repercussions for a long time and will have to live -- live with his legacy issues for a while. no surprise there. i think we are on the front foot as an industry going forward. i think people are more interested in how we get this economy going than they are with again, rehashing. you're not abandoning the legacy matters and you are still going to be things have to be settled and there's litigation so there is no abandoning. in terms of mind share, people want them have growth in his giunta, people want a better life. firms like ourselves and firms like yourself to accomplish the purposes we're here for, which is to ultimately finance risk-taking and growth in the system. you accumulate capital. you make decisions. he made this investment and

allocate capital. we help advice in that process, cover you, to share ideas but also force the need for capital and make decisions among who are the best source, sources of the need for capital. that's something that we have to do in earnest, and other things that we have to do with a nod to the legacy issues, i think we have, a lot of regret for not having not have a dialogue with the public. and so we have to do a better job explaining what it means to have come to be able to have a what a blessing it has, to deny states the big pools of capital with professional management with long track records and disciplined financial system that is largely regulated very well. that can go out, capital markets on in the of the world but what does that mean for the real person? how am i better off as a citizen because with great capital markets? look at the growth in the

trendy. look at the innovation, the entrepreneurs. everybody wants to come here and make their fortune here because we have the infrastructure for the. we have to do a better job of explaining our role in that and what a boon to society that is. >> i grant you from the point of view of the rank-and-file americans it's a very abstract concept. a lot of complexity to it, and i think it's even more complicated by the fact that financial services industry is so different. i think of goldman as being in many different spaces but as you know the investment company institute occupies one, sort of the registered investment company, mutual fund space. how do you accommodate within your firm, and think about it today, businesses as diverse as you have, for example, the asset

management business on the one hand, investment banking activities on the other? would've the challenges involved and how do you manage them? >> as a get to the challenge let me say we are not that diverse. we are kind of a big financial institution but we are really to refocus. in other words, we among all others that investment banks at the time we didn't merge with big commercial banks. we don't have the retail business. like one of our nearest competitor, morgan stanley does. we stayed in the wholesale institutional businesses which include advice, market making, financing, and asset management. which we are engaged with the same kind of people, the same kind of infrastructure, the same kind of intellectual capital, technology. and we find those, and by the way, the same culture throughout the firm. we are not combing going a culture, all those people who tend to find those kinds of

businesses tend to be similar kinds of people with similar skill sets. and so i think it was very important to us to maintain that culture and to recruit the kinds of schools we recruit to draw those people and stay in those relatively narrow but i mean dedicated as an energy. we think that we are in all those activities, give us a tremendous, frankly advantage in terms of the investment we make in our technology and new culture of risk management, the way we can attract people who welcome even if people don't intend is different 30 as they don't mind getting trained for three is a golden, and seeing -- some people come for three and stay for 30. we're great recruiters as a result of that synergy. and i think those businesses fit together very well. and within our own organization asset-management has the advantage for us of being a business where we can still grow

without just crossing our fingers and hoping that the market itself gets bigger. we are not -- we try to grow but how much are we going to grow our market share when with a number one player. same thing in the market making. biting asset-management there are successful asset managers that are four times, four times our size. i think i said to you before about the growth and opponent of capital and wealth creation overseas, i think it's a market that's going to grow at a think it's a big opportunity for us and one that gets a very, very high percentage of mind and our board mind share in terms of growing the business and make sure we do in the right, since a very careful about our risk spent you talked about trying to explain to people that are the benefits of the great capital markets that we have, benefits and their own personal lives. those are their family.

the recent experience reinforces the old expression that confidence is a plan to slow growth. what is goldman doing, not only in terms of the firm but think about the industry at large, to increase public confidence, increase customer and client confidence in the firm and in the business that it is engaged in? >> look, the first thing that we focused on i think energy has to focus on is it would be a good thing when you're trying to repair relationship not do anything of that inflames relationships. it would be a very a very good thing for the industry to stop having problems. then obviously, listen, the market had a big trauma and the social system in the country has become the. goldman sachs had a big trauma in this. we determined to use that, as we talk about this before in our culture and partnership culture

which requires us to very introspective and the deep, figure out what we were doing and what we could do better, spent a lot of time on this and publish a lot about some of the things and changes that we made. and begin the very public about these. i think people are living their lives. they're not ups obsessed with watch what we're doing but it is there for people to see. we are going out and doing the best we can in demonstrating through the things that we do for a living how important that is. just in the past couple of days we raised $70 million of debt for apple. we helped jcpenney's, you know, who needed obviously, wanted an infusion of capital for under the circumstances. when i think of the ipos and the things that are important that we do, in other words, what i would like to be able to do is tell people, and not to do this in a second, apart from the special programs and the philanthropic that we do with

the firm, i would like people to understand that the things that we do in the course of our business activities is supportive of the country's economic system and growth, job creation. and that's a big enough gap right there. and then beyond we also tried to do something that operate on humans give. the dissident to us of being a wholesale institutional business is a little bit who are these people? we don't have a dialogue with the public the way consumer from dead. that would hurt us a lot because we didn't participate in the narrative about ourselves we are doing some programs like small business programs where we are taking the theme and the work we do and providing, let's say, advice and education and financing and support in the small business context. we've got a lot of money and a lot of energy and a lot of infrastructure around the

program that operates in several cities. if any of you have crossed it, you know it very well. it would take me to want to explain that has been a very -- again, to do what we do on a level that would be more comprehensible to people. we recognize the need to do that, to bridge that. >> you started out your career as a lawyer, and then became a trader. but as head of the firm most of your focus is on clients. when he became head of the firm, there are a couple of really good years, perhaps looking back crisscross so that because of the next of the bubble. been some kind of tough ones. maybe we are coming out of that now. so it's no doubt tested you as a leader personally. what lessons in leadership as lloyd blankfein learned since becoming chairman of goldman sachs? >> well, i'll tell you, in those good years that we were having where when you look, i didn't

necessary to put. i was looking around every corner. and it's only in hindsight that i consider easy it was. it only feels easy when you know the end here and in the tough years i didn't have designs a lot of critical faculty about how things to work. the next day you sort it out and get two and one do you go out and there's nothing left to sort through and that's how you know it's over. but there's always stuff. so i think when things are going well, you love the hell out of it. and when things are difficult you have your sense of duty. that really takes over. in terms of leadership, i think, one, and this is a virtue but it's also a vice, you have to have a thick skin. if you're oblivious to what's going on around you that's a bad thing. but has to be thick enough to not take all that well intended advice that would have you then to every breeze.

i remember in '08, november '08 and had a research conference where i talked to the analyst community and explained the strategy of goldman sachs, september '08 we had a crisis. november '08 i'm getting question on whether will be in the investment banking. and i said our strategy, we will be a financier, market maker, asset manager, colin fester. they said don't you know? new normal, you will never -- can't do it. november, our year started december 1 in those days. that next year, '09, was the all time record year for goldman sachs in our businesses. >> attend because of market making and we had a higher profile so we're able to accommodate other people's business. as a leader you have to listen, and you can't cross the line into stubborn. but you better stay a little bit thick skin and a little bit

focused on facts and information. we are lawyers. alkaloid i be in this business? in a funny way a lot of different people do well in his visit but lawyers don't is a bad and engineers don't do so badly, and accounts don't is about it. and you know why? all of those groups have the real respect to fax, as opposed to sentiment and impressions. the lawyers are trained for fax. engineers for sure live with facts, and so do accounts. i said that kind of mindset shouldn't be all you are but that's not a bad place to start as opposed to, as opposed to, you know, you know, nerves and advice and short-term is him. >> we are running out of time but i did want to sort in a lightning round just ask you a number things really quickly. double her role. >> i think misplaced and i think

-- the volcker rule. >> well intended but out of place and potentially, potentially harmful to the market. >> too big to fail. >> the appropriately to some extent the current obsession and something that needs to be sorted out to maintain the contract that we want to have with the public. >> money market funds. >> i think they're important sources of excess liquidity for people, but what doesn't get enough attention is very important liquidity for companies, and but for the existence of money markets, to have all that exists on the balance sheets of banks and loans to companies would inflate the balance sheets of banks and create more credit risk than their balance sheet size and a credible risk we are uncomfortable with today. >> transaction financial taxes. >> screwed.

liquidity, liquidity is a virtuous system. antitax liquidity in order to hamper it is going to be a cost that will be realized in a lot of factors in our society that are not anticipated transit a book you would recommend. >> oh, gosh, every book i read i'm in love with that as i'm reading it. one area? >> you choose. history. >> the book on washington. >> i just finished it. >> it was covered a married -- it covered a million things. the end of the book, here's a demagogue washington. know have more prestige in the world. the politics surrounding him were so bitter and horrible, and everyone talks about the world has so changed and nobody had to do with the 24 hour news cycle, things, let me tell you. this is his own delegation arriving pamphlets against him, killing him. it almost gives me some face

that we could survive the bitterness of the current system that these things are all part of the cycle and the fact that we are thinking this is as worse as it can be is only a function that this is a generation where in everything else is so distant a memory. but that book made it vivid and we've gone through the cycles before and if we've gone through them we certainly have gotten out of them. so i feel better about it but who knew that can appoint and time in washington and jefferson never spoke again to each other, right? >> i'm used to every night about 5:00 i get the incoming e-mails which contain the next day's news stories. and i'm thinking, these tracks would take about two months to get printed and they get to them by horseback. does he hold his breath? >> last question. we try to use this conference as a way of maintaining a culture, and not only some more senior

people here but some younger ones as well. and many of us have children. you have three if i'm -- >> i do. >> they are the age when most able to get or looking to begin their careers. >> twenty-seven, 25 and 19 spent what advice would you give to young people starting out the careers in finance or otherwise? >> understand you can never give your own kids advice. >> that i understand. >> so i will take it as a hypothetic. i've learned my lesson. i think people shouldn't, look, i started out, i didn't just go to law school. i practice law. i thought things ended up a lot to me than i thought it would be. i think people should go to places and do something that's for the next bit of their lives and not to be so obsessive about what is going to take in the longer run. the longer run there will be a lot -- not only don't you know the situation, the content you're going to face, you don't

even know yourself. so the idea of planning these things and try to do things on a course and will this be good for me, i think people should take advantage of the fact that in this generation don't have to go, no one is getting drafted in the army. you can have a few years of experimentation that you can be liberated from the need to make sure that everything is taking on some straight-line to someplace. it turns out not to be a straight line anyway. >> and enjoy the ride because you never know what it might take an even to the chairmanship of goldman sachs. >> also don't worry about what the content of the business because to six egypt and the content of what you're doing but yet to be a complete person. i think an early part of your life you should focus a lot on being a complete person. >> agree. ladies and gentlemen, please join me in thanking lloyd blankfein. [applause]

>> a special thanks to ici governors a member -- [inaudible] >> president obama today announced his selection to round out his second term cabinet. the next commerce secretary and the next u.s. trade representative. she is a businesswoman, philanthropist and a high hotel heiress it. if confirmed she would become the fourth woman serving as a secretary in president's current cabinet. meanwhile, michael frome is a former citigroup executive who served in president clinton's administration as chief of staff to treasury secretary. tonight on c-span, columbia university journalism school recently held an all day conference with reporters and activist. discussing lessons learned from the news coverage of the

shootings at columbine and virginia tech and how the media cover the more recent sandy hook elementary school shooting and the boston marathon bombing. here's a look at some of that conversation. >> here we are, we were living in our backyard. it was probably better than what you will experience because i understand there was really just one or two rows and everybody was really close together. virginia tech is a big campus, and also the families were all over virginia and elsewhere. so there were low cal's to go out to. may be a bit more room but other than that the experience seems very, very eerily similar. just a little bit about me. i am not a news report but i've always been a feature writer for my 26 or so years in this, and believe it or not i never had to call a grieving family on the phone. i never had to do it. but the day after i came in and

the editor gave me two names and had to do -- we just released the names. i had to do that story. i actually thought if i quit i won't have to do this. and i said to my friend, i took them over to the corn and i said john, what will i do? he said call them up, tell them you're sorry and see if they want to talk but by that point everybody was calling. the victim, families that i got most attached to was a family in this community that we cover and it's a very rural small town, 2000 people. the community, as the press came in, and they found it. they found the house but they're parked up in front of her house like train cars. embraced her and they told reporters to go away. i remember one of them, i found out later one of the men in our

church went over and said to a "chicago tribune" reporter, i know you think you're from the top down at all, but if you go messing with tracy, you'll see what a tough town is. >> that's part of tonight's event coverage of incidents with mass casualty. you can see that at 8 p.m. eastern over on c-span. >> this year's c-span student cam. we talked with the top three winners about the documentary and why president obama should make it his top award. >> my dad was featured interview. he was unemployed and going through the process of unemployment and everything at the time so i felt he would be a good subject to follow. so i kind of, i kind of followed his life. >> at the time i get introduction to law course and i was learning that it was a double standard for those under 18 and those over it. so i was sort of into children's

rights, if you will. and i realized we don't have a say in the creation of the tech but we will have to pay it off. >> at first we had originally picked our topic, our infrastructure and the growing need for a public transportation in this country, so nolan and austin weren't very, how can i said, excited about the topic. but after i had explained it to them, they kind of got on. and while researching, nolan decided to have high-speed rail as one of the segments israel since that was important to the topic at our country. country. >> more from the winter saturday morning at 10 eastern on c-span. >> you are watching c-span2 with politics and public affairs. weekdays featuring live coverage

of the u.s. senate. on weeknights watch key public policy event. and every weekend the latest nonfiction authors and books on booktv. you can see past programs and get our schedules at our website, and you can join the conversation on social media sites. >> the bipartisan policy center recently created a commission on political reform which is traveling around the country conducting national conversation about ending partisanship and politics in government. up the next a discussion about the future of public service including three former governo governors. >> i adhere to introduce a really stellar panel of people who have thought about and been in public service and to think about the question of are the obstacles we are throwing of the people who want to serve in government, who want to give back in the way, and sort of institutions we might create looking forward. i, too, had a couple of beauties to do. first we will look to make sure

that our online audience gets going with a poll question which we have. that poll question which will put up on the screen is would you consider running for political office in the future? that's a yes or no question. so during the session we will be reporting these results on the screen here. the whole forum is being live stream on the bipartisan policy center website which is bipartisanpolicy.org. and you can send us a tweet using the hashtag engage u.s.a. later in the session we will read some of the twitter comments and questions, some have coming. we will be also taking questions from the audience for the final part of the session. i'm going to introduce the panelists and then we'll get to the questions. to my left, mark is a present of hobart and smith colleges, was also ahead of the peace corps, clinton administration. chris marvin is the founder and

head of the got your fix campaign and opposition that connects fighters to public service in a number of ways. governor of california gray davis. we're going to go down to another governor, governor kempthorne is also served in the cabinet, and the senate. and antonia hernandez, the president and head of the california community foundation. governor jennifer granholm and ambassador bob tuttle who as ambassador to united kingdom as well as head of presidential personnel in the reagan administration and whose library we said as we speak. so i'm going to turn first to the question to mark gearan. and one is coming from twitter already. and that is a question from steamsimivalley. how can young people contribute to government, politics and an uncertain future? if i can just elaborate on the question and ask you more directly. you are the president of a college, and you see the younger

generation today, and at least our sense is when you ask people if you want to serve, if you want to give back, they say yes, and they say i want to do good things that often are more attracted to nonprofits and they're not as interested especially in running for office. is that your sense? what do you see in the younger generation? >> more broadly i would say it's a great question that was formulated. that i am very optimistic about the millennial generation give you the most cynically engaged, service oriented generation, arguably since the greatest generation. you see it with numbers interested in the peace corps, in americorps, teach for america, all the various service. amidst our problems which this great effort is addressing i come to this with great optimism about this generation. i would say it is the generation that brings a sense of idealism as other generations, but a very pragmatic sense of that. what they can do in their

neighborhood and habitat or americorps or peace corps, ways to very tangibly make a difference. the political space i think for all the reasons we are discussing and the genius of the commission on political reform, i think does not attract some of the very talented students. i think i can change. i think our pathways for it. but at the front and i come to with great appreciation, the moto generation and great optimism for the commitment, the service and their sense of engagement. colleges can do more. the political space can do more. innovative programs, all of that can add to the future which from my perspective is bright speck turn to antonia hernandez. we had little conversation yesterday and judge other people and people wanting to do good work with the foundation. what is your sense of the young generation, where they are maybe

what it was made a generation ago? >> i agree with mark. there's a great deal of caring in this young generation. they want to address the difficult issues that are facing the world. they volunteer. they want to work in the not-for-profit sector. they want to volunteer in a food bank, you know, working with youth. but politics, they have turned out politics. they don't see politics as a place where they can make a difference where they are heard, and they don't see the current elected officials behaving in a way of real modeling what good government is. and so they are turned off to politics. but they are very much turned on to doing good. >> i know jennifer granholm as governor, you want to weigh in on this question. you see young people today.

can you give you your prospecti? >> iit was so encouraged by the number of young people who are here in december raised their hands when i asked a question would you consider serving. the full number reflects that 58% would consider serving. i would just say this, you know, we've got veterans appear and many people think of service as a form of giving to our country the way veterans go fight for us overseas. and that is a hugely wonderful and honorable thing, but we all have a duty as citizens to serve, too. and the duty is that you are here on this planet, in this country to make a better then when you arrived. and the duty of service is not just for some. it is for all. and the question for you is, as you've heard all of these political challenges that we discussed today, that that not deter you from serving, but that

fuels your desire to serve so that you can come and make the changes that are necessary for the reforms that we all know need to happen. i teach at berkeley in the graduate school of law and public policy so perhaps my view on this is a little bit warped. but because i'm taking people who also want to serve, but i'm really encouraged. even, even in the political side by those who are willing to raise their hand and say send me. my one piece of advice for you though is for you to recognize that in running it's not about you. that it is not about you. it is about the changes that you want to make in the world. and if you run with that in mind, then it becomes, your focus and your vision and your clarity becomes much more it easy for you to raise your hand in fact when you realize that it is not about you. so go for it and change the

world. >> i knew we wouldn't have a shot panel. governor kempthorne? >> john, between breaks i've enjoyed talking to the young folks here. the fact that a some of you said this is not a field trip. you want to be here and you started this morning with us and you are still here. i mean, i think we all ought to sign a note for you. let's see, simi valley high school, royal high school, grace brethren and valley high school? in the other high schools? its tremendous. [applause] >> and then john come in for good, i'll give you a couple of statistics because here's my point. why we talk about running for public office, it's not for everybody. but i think there are so many examples, citizens are not

sitting around waiting for the government to do something for them. they are doing significant things. there's a young man, andy mccracken, he was student body president american university. lassie organize 125 incumbent university student body president, one of the speakers asked to addressing the i didn't know what, 125 college leaders pick one of the most respectful impressive group of people i've ever seen. the question so insightful and respectful. i mean, i'm the one that went away and decorated. brett gibson did a tour of duty in the middle east comes back, goes to the harvard business school, is elected their class president. and implemented that there must now be public service before you graduate from harvard business school. what do they do? i think they adopted a series of

six great classes are of the region. so you have harvard business school students in the classroom, role models. a former marine started a health clinic in africa. my word, these are young people. somehow somebody didn't tell them they couldn't do it. they just got up and did it. that's what all you can do. that's the greatness of the spirit of america and that's why i'm going to jump back, pardon me for reiterating but i said this morning, that add by budweiser that said name the horse and the number one answer was hope. that's what this country is about, is over i went to a jolt alstyne gathering at yankee stadium, filled with the capacity of every age, ethnicity, socioeconomic level. what was the common denominator? hope.

there's nothing wrong with the system. i think we've got to get the leadership to catch this thing called hope, and then deliver. >> ambassador, he wanted to jump in? >> i agree 100% with both governor said. however, maybe i can speak to a second to those of you who didn't raise your hand this morning. i am one of those, i didn't quite have the gumption or the courage or whatever it was to put my name on the ballot but i've been very fortunate to be one of those lucky people as been able to serve in government. and i served as a non-career or political appointee for 10 years of my life. and i can tell you it has enriched my life. i've gone places and that people i never thought possible. with something very unique in our political system. it's not true of many democracies, and that we have a lot of noncareer up in key positions at the federal level, there's about 3000 full-time and

about 1800 part-time. there's the same in our local and in our state government. so i would encourage those of you who maybe don't want to put a name on the ballot to get involved in a campaign or some way, but to serve in a political or appointed position. they are very, very important. and as i said, in our federal government its 3000 full-time political appointments. it seems ball when you think of the two-and-a-half, 3 million federal employees, but it's much larger than all the other western democracies. and i think in the country as big as ours, i'm an example of someone who came from the west coast, when all the way back to washington, spent six and half years. i think you bring back as much as you possibly give. so please think about serving in a politically appointed position if you would. >> let me follow up with your question i was a player and then returned to governor davis. so you did serve in the office of presidential personnel directing it, signed, find

people who want to serve and the federal government. you are right it is very different from any taxes for most of the government is really career, that people who admire president obama will take time from their private lives, from their careers and spend several years serving their country. people who, present bush has done the same. how did you go about try to find these people? what were the challenges of you seeking out the right people for these complex jobs and bringing them to washington? ..

>> he'll find you people, and sure enough, called the guy, and i got the fellow running app automobile plant in tennessee who turned out to be the one who president reagan selected to run the pva and turned it around, and so with the huge country, there's a lot of people, just tell people you're interested in serving. it's important. >> governor davis? >> first of all, i commend the young people here, and i want to thank the ronald reagan library for being here. i met reagan when i first went to sacramento with jerry brown in 1947. i don't care if you're democrat, republican, independent, green party, aip, you liked reagan. he was a good man, a sunny disposition, liked all people, no malice in his heart. i want politics to get back to that no matter what your point of view to be seen as a good person doing the right thing. we're thrilled this library is

in california. i would encourage anyone who is thinking about running for office to do it. when i was growing up, i was in the tom daschle area, and, you know, great things happen through politics. ronald reagan help end the cold water, eisenhower after seeing sputnik hover over us seen in 1957 with the naked eye said if you want to be an engineer, we have to combat the russian presence in the sky, we'll pay for the education, private, public, funded education. great things happen in government. i signed the first bill in america banning greenhouse gases and other good stuff, but the point is find a way to serve even if it's not in government because today, with the adoption of rapidly evolving technology, there's all kinds of way to serve, and anyone who has been

in the valley in the technology center is impressed with the attitude, and apple, twitter, facebook, they go to work believing they are going to change the world, and guess what? sometimes they do. i mean, there's no question that the kind of change in governments in north africa last year had a lot to do with the google search and twitter because the government could not block all forms of people's ability to communicate. they called meetings, protest, demonstrate, do things that in the past couldn't be done so you can change the world for the better in a whole host of ways, government is one. now switzerland, you think of as always being peaceful, always neutral, and i know israel requires that you, ever man and woman serve the country, and i happen to be a veteran too, i was in vietnam, and i respect

everyone who serves the country in any capacity. in switzerland, you serve for three years, man or woman has to join the service, so i think in our hearts, we ought to have an unwritten rule to give back to america. you are lucky because you have a host of ways, and no one should tell you how to give back. follow your heart. i encourage you to do something. >> we are going to get to the question op the pam, and, also, we go to philadelphia for the next meeting of the commission, think about other institutions of public service that we can create. there's military service and the peace corp. and americorp, but there's other institutions to serve that. do you have a follow-up, governor? if most people ran for governor or senator, started somewhere else, talk about your motivations for running, getting

in at the lower level, and what do you see in california for people today looking to get into politics, but breaking in at a lower level who might then use them as steppingstones to move to higher office? >> my motivation came when i was in vietnam because i believe i read in the newspaper, and when i got there, i found a different situation. first of all, i didn't find anyone from stanford and columbia law school in vietnam. i found mostly southern whites, minorities, and this an era with a draft, presumely everyone had some in the draft, you might be in vietnam whether you wanted to or not, and everyone was under the burden to serve the country. i had app old-fashioned notion of everyone doing their part, which was not the case. that was in the back of the mind when i went back to los angeles, practiced law and was asked initially to help tom bradl ergs y get elected mayor of l.a.,

lost in the close race to the incumbent, won the second time, and i attribute the motivation to not leaving law, but a leave of absence, a way to give back to the experience i had in vietnam. that led me to a succession of different offices and ended up being chief of staff for jerry brown and the legislature. i think there's a sense of having to pay your dues. you can just run for president of the united states you can run for senator, but people want to see you ran for another office first as a demonstration that you accomplish something, win people's confidence, and that might be a promotion to whatever office you run to now, so local school boards, legislature, congress, those are good points of entry, and you'll learn about

the process and you will prove to people that you are willing to do the hard work, pay your due, and wait your turn which still resinates with voters, so it's always fund to start at the top, and i remember being at all the governors appreciate this, and jesse ventura was elected in 1998, a former wrestler in minnesota and was governor for a term, reading my resumé saying, you know, chief of staff, assembly, controller, lieutenant governor, he said, my god, first this, then that, this, then that, and finally governor. i said what should i have done? go to wrestling, get famous, elected governor. [laughter] there are exceptions to the rule, but for most of you, i think, you're going to have coaccommodate to the nation you have to try another office first before running for president of the united states.

not quite. >> they have higher rates in the population, tan what request you say about today's veterans coming back? did they feel less likely to run than an earlier generation? what's the motivation? they clearly served, they want to serve more, what are they thinking? >> well, governor davis mentioned the draft in vietnam, and, of course, that, you know, something like a draft puts skin in the game for everybody, and everybody has to be a part of it, a form of civic engagement in a way, and we don't have that today. there's an all-volunteer military force meaning that every single person serving in the military chose to do it. they signed up to serve, and they have served, and many of them, when they come home, take off the uniform, service doesn't stop. i think contrary to the popular belief in the public, and you

did enough, this was amazing, people are preprogrammed in some way to serve, and a lot of them, you know, may have the volunteer in their communities, boy scouts, girl scouts leading tome this military service, but for many, leads to political. from 197275% of -- 18972, 75% of the congress was veteran. any idea what it is today? it's 19.4% with the recent lost of senator inouye, but it's higher than the distribution of veterans in the adult population, but it's lower than those running for congress so one in four federal congressional races in 2012 had a military veteran, the

primaries, not just the early races, and for 32 # years in a row, we had decrease in veterans in congress, and the lowest rate today since the 1920s with the highest level of hyperpartisanship, and i argue, and others might agree, that while vet raps won't solve the problem and lack of veterans didn't cause the problem, they help. veterans are used to being a part of greater something than themselves, dedicated to service, and there's a democrat and republican who served next to each other in iraq or afghanistan who figure out how to push a bill through despite the partisan tendencies, so my thought is whether we talk about military service, the people who

have served know hows to greater than themselves, and these are the types of people to see in the legislatures. >> so i'm going to turn back to mark, and one of the hats worn that i did not mention was that he was the directer of the transition for the clinton administration, and that, as there are people to bring in government, thousands, and there's the planning from going to the campaign to the administration so what are challenges and ways in which maybe the system, while allowing people to come in, serve the efforts is making it hard for them to do it? >> the ambassador's point is well taken in terms of the ways, and particularly looking at the federal government and the generational shift that we're right on the beginning of in terms of many interesting, very career areas that exist, particularly, fordown people. there's a great deal of

responsibility at a young age. i would say, and while there's recent efforts in the congress to help this, there are incumbents for political appointees in terms of confirmation, people's lives being on hold, and we could do a lot to make it easier. was proud to serve on the corporation for national community service run americorp, vista, and senior corp and meets three times ayear that requires senate cop fir mages, so in my office in new york, as a college president, arrives the fbi for my desk, and i was cleared by the senate to be the director of the peace corp previously, and it just struck me that perhaps the level of detail required for a board that meets three times a year may not necessitate it. one of the questions among the litany asked every -- would like

to speak with your neighbors, the fbi agent, could we talk to your neighbors? i live on campus as the president and live next to a fraternity. [laughter] i had the great image of sending the fbi to go knock op the door of the fraternity next door, but i digress. point is, there are imdumb bents that efforts like this, clearing whether the senate confirmation as as many oi.tees are required could lift fonts in the very long confirmation process that sometimes distracts, delays, and may retard people's interest from serving. >> if i follow along in the process if mark and ambassador were trying to find people to be nominated, to send them to the senate, and you were sitting in the senate, and do you think the point is right that maybe we

want ethics, transparency, and people coming into government and not have conflicts of interest? are we overdoing it, through the ringer, using ethics as a weapon to those who want to serve, and what about the senate? what do you think the senate's role should be? is it performing its proper role in the confirmation process? >> i divide that issue into two. first is, how much information do we need? that is not a political thing. that's a process, a rule, and i believe in the bipartisan fashion. i believe in that. to meet three times a year, my neighbors were visited by the fbi also, and was not as exciting as the fraternity. the other parts are the senate where for prelim reasons, you put a hold on somebody so it may have nothing to do with that appointee, and you can roll it

around, okay, great, i'm going to take the hold off of that nominee. put yours on. we just keep passing it around. this is what it does to the nominee. say it's somebody nominated for u.s. attorney or for judge, and, again, nothing to do with them really, but just you can't bring the judiciary committee's nominee list forward, and so how many months is that person to be put on ice? maybe he or she is a practicing attorney, and while everybody thinks they are going to be confirmed as the next u.s. senator, judge, or who is going to go and sign up with them as the attorney and give them a contract for a year? suddenly, the business drying up. that's the income. at some point, they just say i can't do it. well, i think there was some

individual back in my state, like, two years, i mean, they truly wanted to serve. that's what i think is wrong. you go back, and i know the ambassador feels about it as well as lunch, but when your party has the white house, you are convinced that president has every right to have the nominee voted up or down. that's it, vote up or down, but when you're not in the white house, you'll do whatever's necessary to delay it, use it as leverage, and that's why i think everybody, every party has been on record as saying a president should have nominees voted up or down. they are not consistent or say it all the time, but you've got them on record, put us together, and you have the case and say, all right, we're now going to vote on it making the effective

date five years from now, eight years from now so it does not affect any incumbent administration, so that way it's going to be an advantage for whoever happens to win it. that's the way it can be done. that's part of the reform i suggest. >> first, governor hernandez, the issue that governor davis raised, issue of the yiewn univl service as a draft or think about other institutions of service that we can create? we have the military, the peace corp, americorp, several institutions, but are there others that should be created and people you see in the nonprofit sector longing to do that we should have additional institutions for them to serve? >> well, i mean, there's a lot of institutions to serve on and be volunteers on nonprofit boards, but back to the issue of

government service. a lot of young people want to work in government. i started in the senate judiciary committee, i worked for ted kennedy, and i was one of the people who had to vet the judges, and individuals, and oi will tell you that i love the time that i was in the senate. i work with the senator thurman, hatch, simpson, it was a place where you work together to find solutions. i can tell you, i i would not wk in the senate today because of the fact people go in to make a difference. you know, like i said, it's not about you, but about wanting to change the world. it's been about seeing results, and if you don't see an institution functioning to get to those results, you're not going to be inclined to do that,

and the next question is if it's wonderful that young people want to serve, and we saw the poll, it's wonderful, sort of affirming of the fact that people want to serve, but the question is why? is it to change the world, and if it's the change the world, i tell you young people are turning to other institutions. one of the biggest mistakes, my son went to iraq, and he's in the -- went to the military, and, in fact, still in the reserves, and one of the biggest mistake this country has made is a volunteer military because it's through, you know, sort of mandating to serve your country to meet people from different stratus of society, see you're in the same boat that you have a commitment to the country, part of the whole, and i will tell you that my foundation has been

very involvedded in helping veterans returning from afghanistan and iraq, and one of the things i find, you know, very disturbing to me is the isolation of the folks that serve in the military and the lack of support that's begin to our military individual. they are coming back with immense problems, and the support is not there, and because not everyone has served or the possibility of service, there's not that sense of commitment. we thank them at the airport, thank them when we see them in military, but are we really understanding the sacrifices these military people have made? my thing with young people is there are tons of things that you can do, and this generation's not waiting for us to tell them what to do, but they are doing it, you know, they are developing new nonfor

profits, and we get hundreds of applications to the foundation from young people who started a tutorial in the intercities, and, you know, the food bank, i will tell you, last year we honored a young high school, 17-year-old high school from the age of 14, lived in the san gabriel valley, and probably the same here in simi valley, a lot of fruit trees. he bought the equipment and started knocking on doors saying can i take the fruit? can i take the crop, and them he would deliver it to the food banks so there's not a lack of commitment. it's nots a lack of wanting to do it. it's going back to the issue that we're here today. what is it in our government, whether it's local, whether it's state, whether it's federal, whether it's the assembly, or the senate, are the institutions working? are they solving problems to

convey to the young people that these institutions are worthy because they are solving the issues? i think that's the question about public service and servicing in government. now not whether young people are committed to service. >> governor davis, a quick follow-up. >> yeah, i just wanted to pick up on something antonia said about skip in the game, and i don't think we should have draft, but some implicit understanding that everyone ought to receiver six months doing something, the peace corp, teaching, the homeless, educational institutions, regularize it so you get a certificate of service because it's one thing we can all do together, all americans, no matter how busy, no matter how into our own thing we are, we all give something back to make

the country better, and the advantage of the draft, which i don't propose, is we would not have been in iraq for ten years. might have been there temperature months. everyone gets to weigh in because everyone is concerned that their son or daughter could be forced to go to where they don't want to go. you can't have a world living in relative comfort with 1% or 2% of the country doing the heavy lifting for america. i have great admiration for the young men and women serving multiple deployments. that never happened in vietnam, maybe two, customary to do three and four, but unfair the disproportioned amount of keeping america secure falls on a small part of the population. that said, i think reinstituting the draft is a mistake, but we have to engage middle class america as if they had skin in the game so that they weigh in

if they are not pleased with the way a military adventure is going. >> quickly, i i have a huge plug for those out there for when you graduate from high school or college want to do a year of service, amercorp, city year, or teach for america, as we talked, are fantastic programs, and if i had the pen, i would stein a five to ten-fold increase for the number of slots in the programs because they are incredibly important in teaching leadership and in giving exposure to the country and problems in the country you might not otherwise have seen. i have two daughters gone through city year, assigned to the toughest schools in the toughest districts in the country, and if you want to run for office, you should -- have an experience that fuels a passion for you, and that passion -- i mean, my kids are obsessed now about poverty in

education, they want to make a difference because they are exposed to it now and burning with the desire for change so for all of you, if you want to take a gap or after college, either way, it is a hugely growing experience, and i wish everyone could do it. >> a quick follow-up, i want to go to twitter and poll questions after you. >> john, thanks, john bridgeland, a member of the commission, was going to be here, but of a family issue that he must deal with, but john is working with admiral mullen, general mcchrystal, others, these military leaders who are developing what is an alternative to military service which is civilian service to the country. it's what's discussed here. >> good people. i've been to the meetings.

i think they are affiliated with the aspen institute. there will be a proposal that will come from that, and it will be a call, a call to serve, and the youth of this country, they are ready to stand up. >> let me turn to the twitter results. we've got a question, poll question, and would you consider running for political office in the future? i think there's more spirit than other polls, 58% yes, that's a good thing, and 42% say no. i do have a couple questions that come in from twitter, and we'll turn to the audience for questions. two questions i have, which are similar, put them together, one is from tony p. in southern california which is, what can educators do to help the next generation of public service get beyond gridlock, and another

from shawn k. from california, is unwillingness to serve related to polarization? will only extremists run for office? i want to put questions together to think about some of the motivations for people running for office. some, clearly, always have been in association with the party, finding your way in the republican or democratic party, believing in the issues there, but are we at a point where we've become more ideological in that respect? are we having fewer people just want to give back and not at committed to party and want to find ways? anybody can take this, but what's the relationship between today's people's polarization and the past, yes, governor david? >> well, clearly, since the day that tom daschle was the majority leader and dan glickman in the congress, there's not a sense we can work together on a bipartisan basis. reagan invited tip over to have a drink, work things out, and there's progress. george bush the elder, the same attitude. i don't know when it changed,

but, you know, we pay the salary of all the people we send to washington and saxment -- sacramento, and they work for you. they have to come back and say this is what i did for you, the country, the last two or four years, and not just i have an amendment that failed or i made a speech, but what happened to move the country forward, to give your children more opportunity? i don't know how that is going to change unless america starts voting out incumbents. i don't say that lightly because there's a lot of good incumbents trying hard, doing their best, but somehow the snag has to get back to washington that we're tired of excuses. tired of you telling us we dente do the job. can't, fine, step aside, we'll find someone who can because i don't see how you get past gridlock if gridlock will still keep getting your member of congress reelected. the only thing that getting

their attention is losing or their buddy losing, and then they say, well, maybe i better take another look of what i'm doing here, but just going back here, spending half the time in recess, and raising money in the time, and coming back with excuses, why they couldn't make the country betterings that's not good enough. >> anybody else want to take it? do we have a different type of person running today? are we attracting extremists to run, attracted committed people to ideas? is it a problem today, or is -- where are we? >> john, i'm just going to point out some of the examples, very, very positive examples. it's not that they are sitting on the sidelines. they may not choose to run for office doesn't mean they are not doing tremendous things changing the world. i mean, that -- what -- let me just stand up and cheer those folks, the old individual anyboditives, not waiting for -- initiatives, not waiting for

government to take care of them. pretty awesome. >> but i think for young folks who really are committed, what i would say to you is learn to listen and tolerance is the most important thing eni understand politics is the give and take. you know, it's sausage making, and you don't get everything, but you have to come in with the attitude that you are going to take a little. you're going to give a little, and i think that, you know, coming from extreme positions, you've already come into a system of gridlock, and that's the modeling that you have to do, and i think that the schools, to some degree, are responsible for not teaching civics, not teaching government, not teaching the understanding of how our democracy works. it was made to work on a give and take. it was not -- it's not an absolute, you know, where the that seniority getting

everything, and i think that that's really important, to listen, not to be just, you know, fox orcbc, but to listen to other people, but try to put yourself in their shoes. that's the real art of being a successful leader and understanding that people will vote for you for the values you stand for and the judgment, not because you're promising to vote on a certain issue, a certain way, and you're never going to change. don't sign pledges, never. >> unless it's a pledge to the voters who elected you. >> well, another question from twitter, and that is from brian, brian d. from california, and he asks, how do we get more middle class people to run for office when campaigns are so expensive? is that an obstacle people face today? >> let me -- i would say that seeing the panels, and being somebody who is young, and no political

aspirations right now, but what scares me is theed idea i have to raise millions, and where would that come from? i think that, you know, sort of juxtaposing against the previous question is it's not, treemists running because it's extreme, but it's the same symptoms creating the hyperpartisanship that are also discouraging, you know, causing discouragement for those who run for office, and that might be just the reputation of washington in some circles, the necessity to raise a lot of money that we think are contributing to the hyperpartisanship, contributing to the lack of participation, but that -- we're only measuring that in those woo are winning races; right? we're not measuring that necessarily for those running

for races because there's a lot of people running for races, a democrat and republican district or vice versa who may not see the problems, who are out to serve the public. they are just not winning races. >> governor? >> well, john, to brian's question, i think we, as a panel, and the bipartisan politics, we have to be careful that we don't become so centric that we think every office is federal. it's not. >> right. >> there's a lot of wonderful middle class folks that are running for mayor, city council, county commissioner, governor, and school board. that's where they are. >> absolutely. >> that's a grooming ground where if they have a record, then they can go and offer themselves further. when i first decided to run for mayor of boise, i was 3 3, and

when i went to the political thinkers, they said that is the dumbest idea we've ever heard of because if you were thinking of politics, don't run for mayor, nobody's been able to do anything in this city, you'll be from the biggest city in the state so you'll never be elected to anything beyond that, and i took their council and ran. [laughter] because my motivation was simple. i truly believed in my heart i could be part of a solution for a community that i loved where my children would be born, and if that was the extent of my public service, so be it. every day for the rest of my life, when i would walk down that town, i would know somehow i did something that was good. >> and isn't it true that at the state and local level, that's where compromise happens and where people know how to work together. >> yeah, absolutely, it's -- i believe in it.

>> one quick, then to the audience. >> you can make a difference if your goal is to do that, not to see how long you can stay in office, but it's amazing what you can do if you are willing to risk the office. they sense the passion, know you are genuine and movedded by that because you're vulnerable. sometimes you lose it in office. one of the reasons i was losing the third race for governor in recall was i insisted on raising the vehicle license fee, which should be the public safety tax because that puts a stamp on it and sends the money back to local police and sheriffs, but i was the only governor only to lower the vehicle license fee to 50% of where it was, and i said for a year, i want to raise it back to where it was, and people said, we didn't tell you to give us the money, you did, it's our money, to heck with you, we keep

the money. the point is i raised the tax because i didn't want to short change the safety, important to all of us, and people understood that, and arnold came in and repealed it, but i think most people agree the state would be better off if that tax was there, again, does not go to sacramento, stamp the money, and it goes to local sheriff and police. when people sense passion, they know why you do it, they take a risk, then you make a difference. if you want to hang around for 30 years and make a difference, those are inconsistent goals. >> yeah. >> so i know we're going to be going to philadelphia to think about the questions in the future, so if commissioners have a question, or, if not, audience for a quick question before we wrap up today's program. >> there's a microphone floating around, i'll go to the back left here and identify yourself to the -- when the microphone

comes. >> larry kennedy, ventura community college district trustee. you agree about universal service to the government, different forms, military, vista, peace corp, and i wonder if there's a policy level that could link that with the problem that students are having now with student loan debt, it's so huge, and so how can we incentivize so i, myself, i was strappedded, so, you know, how can we incentivize it so everybody who does serve feels like they got something back? >> mark? >> well, that's a great question, and there are ways. i would observe to governor's point that we have great programs. peace corp, americorp, vista, that are highly applied for

programs. dredger of the peace corp, we had 10,000 applications, and 3500 positions. now, i don't know that the 6500 others were hand fit ready to be volunteers, but why in god's name do we say no? americans who want to go to some of the most desperate places on the planet to serve; right? peace corp. is 1% of 1% of the federal budget. military marching bands, a big fan of, are a bigger part of the budget so there is an imperative. americop, vista, every year, they have challenges hearing that. it's not to the point of incentivizing. what we see is a burgeoning interest of young americans and those not so young wanting to give back in these ways outside the military, but we're not responding to the four to five

fold increase that governor suggested. in addition, individual colleges and universities providing ideas to provide incentives, loans, programs, federal incentives, i think, tied to that for either loan purposes or invent vising on the front end. we have to get here in the back on the right, started on the left, end on the right. >> i was wondering, you said that people that volunteer to go to service are less committed because of the lack of incentive and/or the lack of support from everyone, but if you initiated a draft and there was more than support, don't you think the people who didn't want to be in

service would be less committed? >> is universal service -- i mean, the volunteer army today, people want to be there as chris mentioned, is the idea of universal service really going to bring a lot of people into service who don't want to be there? that's a fair enough summary? >> well, i'll take a crack at that. yeah, the answer is poly k possibly. i think most make a broad enough -- universal service is not just vista. as far as i'm concerned, you can serve your local school board, your church, your synagogue, mosque, your boys club, girls club, whatever, and now some of the people may not be able to compensate you, but hopefully, as mark said, could be worked out so that you can give scholarships, universities, colleges recognize the significance of the service and

other tuition or finds ways to reward you, so i think it's important those who understand the importance of service is recognized for that. we appreciate it. we say one of those options is to go into public office. one of them is to work for a public policy institute, one is to be a mentor to benefit from the expertise. a lot of ways to serve. it's important that we find a way to recognize the service, give people a piece of paper, certificate saying thank you for serving america. >> antonia, want to weigh? >> i would say to the young people is that in this country and in this democracy, you have two r's, it's your right and your responsibilities to the communal, and we all should have a stake in the game whether it's in your school, whether it's in your food bank, but we have to

have a commitment, and i think one of the things that, you know, that, today, is we're not all able to do only what we want to do, and we want to maintain the democracy. if we want a communal sense of, you know, being responsible for the well being of the communal and the communal is the united states of america, so, you know, we all have to do different things, and one of the things is our responsibility is to make the whole a lot better, so people might not want to serve in whatever capacity, but you know what? that's the only way to improve the country. >> i'm going to bring jason up here, president of bipartisan policy center, but can we thank the panel for their service today? [applause] >> thanks, this has been a big

day for everybody, couldn't have done it without all of you. i want to thank john for leading the pam and for all the work that he and michelle and the whole bcp team has done to put this day together. to our commissioners, i want to thank you, all, for joining us, a small apologize to make. we told you it wouldn't take too much of your time, and i fear that might have been a slight understatement because you raised such a profound number of questions, and we now have an obligation to go out and answer some of the questions so you are launched. the next large meeting of 24 gathering of the full commission will be july 23rd in philadelphia. those of yows following us out there in the real world, if you want to learn about what's happening between now and then, hop on to bipartisanpoll --

bipartisanpolicy.org continuing the dialogue. i want to thank you usa today and susan paige for leading off the event, and, really, mostly, in this room, really nice to think and thank the president and legacy of ronald reagan, the spirit of pragmatism, passion, and conviction, i think, inspired the work we intend to do, and it's terrific to be in this library to start the process so tong to the -- so thank you to the reagan library. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> host: what is going on in the congress when it comes to online sales tax? >> guest: well, just before they left for the recess, the senate teed up legislation that would allow states to require

that online retailers charge sales tax for purchase, even for people who buy out of state so essentially app online retailer in dc charges sales tax for state of michigan when somebody from michigan bought a product from them online. >> host: is it going to pass? >> guest: looks likely it will pass the senate. we're almost certain of that because it's passed closer twice and it has about three quarters of the chambers' support. the house is less certain. there are still resistance there, the house leadership is not fond of tax increases or anything perceived as a tax increase. there's concerns about the implementation of the bill itself, how difficult it would be for op line retailers, but i think it's fair to say to say it has momentum, a strong look in the house, and if not this year, it's something we could see in the next year or two. >> host: what is the name of the vehicle or the bill that they are debating, and who are the prime sponsors of it?

>> the market place fairness act, part of the theme, fairness, they say, between online retailers and brick and mortar retailers. senators enze, durbin, and they have been focused on the issue for, like, a dozen years, it's been around since the mid-1990s. senator durbin is passionate advocate, and alexander is newer, but strongly in favor of the bill, and in the house, representative womaack, a republican in favor of the bill. >> host: a republican from arkansas, is there a walmart factor there? >> guest: walmart is strongly in favor of the bill as are most of the major retailers because they have to pay a sales tax. the rule right now is that you have to charge the sales tax if you have a physical presence in the state. walmart has stores in most states, i believe, and, therefore, they have to charge online sales tax for every state, amazon.com opposed this

heavily, but their presence increased, and they had to start charging sales tack in more states so they support the legislation as of last year, and so on, and best buy, big retailers, the retail industry, in general, already collect the sales tax and believe they have a disadvantage to online retailers that don't. >> host: is this considered a revenue bill? wouldn't that have to generate, start in the house before it got debated in the senate? >> guest: that is a point of contention, but the small group of senators who oppose the bill who include mostly senators from states that don't have a sales tax currently, they have actually tried to introduce amendments that would cause a blue slip of the bill, and, therefore, it's a big technical, but, essentially, senator durbin framed it as not a tax or revenue bill. this is, essentially, an administrative bill, give states authority, then it's due to them, but the seams tax is not

new. they owe sales taxes when they buy products on amazon.com. the fact is most consumers do not remit the sales tax as they are supposed to in filing tax returns not changing the fact they owe it. it's the cop tension of the sponsors. it may come up in the house if the opposition there coalesces. >> host: and, what are the arguments against this bill, and who is leading that charge? >> guest: senators from the states that do not have a sales tax oppose this, and that's a broad coalition. senator baucus, who is the finance committee chairman, he says, also, his committee was by passed with the bill, somewhat true, actually, because senator reid brought it directly to the floor rather than sending it to the regular prosays this session; however, as i said, pho cues opposes it, colleague from montana, senator wyden of oregon

is opposed to this. he's, obviously, from the liberal wing of the senate, but it's framed as forces businesses to take over, and oregon does not have a sales tax, sought exemption for the states in the retailers, and the problem with that is that certain states are not forced to comply, by all likelihood, the states will become center of on line retailing because everyone moves there because they don't have to charge sales tax. >> host: an estimate of the revenue that could be raised? >> guest: $23 billion is the number thrown around, those are sales taxes owed, not paid, going to states, counties, localities, whoever clerks taxes. >> host: is there -- there are still companies not charging sales tax on internet purchases? >> guest: absolutely. i think it's fair to say most companies don't -- big companies, big retailers do, and, still, majority of online purchase, maybe not the

majority, but increasing number of online purchases have the sales tax assessed; however, most retailers do not -- are not required to, especially when selling out of state so they only collect from purchases in state. >> host: what about international purchases? >> guest: international purchases, there is the vat in other countries resembling sales tack, and you can have them remitted at customs. that depends. these things are not enforced uniformly. a lot of countries don't have a sales tax. there's the argument that online retailers move abroad if we assess this because that's a 4% to 7% increase which is saved moving offshore. that's a valid concern, and we could see enforcement there also. >> ronald reagan, i think, massively made mistakes on defense. the defense budget was not just a waste of money in the eight years, but what created the war

machine that we've used to create so much havoc in the world and create so much, you know, anger and problems throughout the world that were totally unnecessary that made us an imperial human being rise tick imperial power so that was a negative. on the other hand, he did, for the first time, stand up for limiting the state. you know, the government, big government, the state, is not the solution to every problem, and, in fact; can weigh down the private economy, and the idea of interneuros, idea of technological change, the idea that people should make their own decisions without some big nanny in washington, he stood for those thing, and i agree with those thing, and so that puts the plus in his column, and so the negatives, and face

callly, he lost it, he had to stand up for closing the deficit, and the idea -- ronald reagan spent a lifetime before 1980 as the greatest scourge, you know, opponent, of deficit spending there ever was, and he left a legacy of massive deficits percented his followers to say reagan proved deficits don't matter. naves a historical, you know, era of enormous proportion. >> more with the budget director and deformation author, david stockman, sunday at eight, on c-span's " q&a." supreme court justice thomas sat down for a conversation about his life and career were an audience of about 1200 at due cane university in pittsburgh. he discussed race in america, the interworkings of the supreme court, and gave advice to law school students. this is just over an hour.

[applause] [inaudible] the story of your life growing up is just what he suggested is really a remarkable one, justice thomas. dupe -- do you know which part of west africa your family came from, how they inned -- ended up in georgia? >> i think they lost the itinerary. [laughter] >> no, that was in the 1700s, mid-1700s, so i don't think anyone quite knows anything, and much of -- for those who are

from the deep south, much was unwritten. the, you know, people are into their genealogy now. i have no idea of much of my open, and relatives have told me we don't want to know much about it, but the answer is, no, and it's unfortunate. that is one reason why in the last few years, we have tried to focus on trying to retain some of what is left of that culture. when you look across the country , you see the fine buildings, the sand stone buildings, the beautiful architecture, much of an effort to preserve those things, but there's another part of culture of people who want, preferred of people who, if you have a cast

system, would be the untouchables, and their cultures was just as rich, just as important and central, but the effort to retain that or to record that is not there, so we would spend more time on aristotle, socrates, more time on frank lloyd wright, for example, but none on the unlettered, so i don't think that much time has been spent on that. if you look at the barrier islands like hilton head, i'm from osabau island, that's where my family's from, and some people may have heard of the term "eg," well, that's because those of us who were from the islands, it's bordered north by

the river. the same language in south carolina is known as gulla, but when i went noter, one of the wonderful sort of slurs that were hurled my way was that i was proud to be, and i've never been ashamed of where i'm from. i've -- i think it's a wonderful, wonderful culture, and the people are wonderful people. >> did your family speak the dialect? something you could tell us as an example of something your grandfather would have said? [laughter] >> well, he didn't really speak -- just said they were bad talking, but he hoke the exact same language, but i'm more from pin point, he from liberty county, a separate plantation there, a rice plantation, and that's where we went to live, where his grandmother lived, but

it's hard to really do it. let me give you something. it would be similar to west indian dialect, so when i went north in the 60s, people would ask me was i west indian, of course, i had nod idea what they were talking about. [laughter] not because i traveled to the caribbean or anything. i was out of georgia. [laughter] maybe -- i can drift, but my wife accused me recently on a trip back to savannah for christmas, and i was around a lot of the relatives, and she said, you're beginning to talk your language again, well, anyone who is from that part of the country or from ethnic groups or will know that you don't come back into that group speaking the king's english; otherwise, people say you think you're better than us now. there's always a delicate

balance, and that's one thing when we went north in the 60s, you had to move in and out of cultures. you moved into the white culture, then an urban culture, moved into a northern culture, and then you went back to the home culture and talked to the buddies one way, the parents another way, and you might be speaking three or four different languages every day, and not -- it's a version of english, but different language. >> we have pittsburgh here. >> well, i noticed that. [laughter] >> ha-ha, i was not going to say anything. [laughter] but i'm willing to bet you that you just can't immediately talk, but if you're in a conversation with friends you grew up with, you slide -- >> my wife's nodding her head. >> yes, you suddenly, what language are you talking, but i, you know, i've always been kind of just so respectful of the

people who spoke. i mean, i still -- i love it. i love going home. as soon as i cross the is a van ma river, -- savannah river, finally, i'm home. in washington, d.c., i was going to stay a couple years and go home. i only went to -- i only went to law school to go home, so finally, i was going home, and i've been stuck in this place for 30 years. [laughter] thirty-plus years, it's odd when people tried to prevent me from going on the court. why do i care? [laughter] >> justice, we're fortunate to learn about your home life in georgia through the meme roar, "my grandfather's son," really a very, very touching book. tee the audience who your grandfather was and what he meant to you and why did you write your memoirs?

>> i'll drat the last. the film did a good job of capturing that of the it's embarrassing to sit here and watch that stuff, but, first of all, i did not want to write the meme roar, but people have a tendency to recreate us in public life, and i think we have a record and people around me, causen hattie, cousin robert, all the people who made up this wonderful world that we somehow sweep over because we have to have a narrative of how terrible it was down there. these were good people who tried to lead you to lead a good and decent life, and i told my wife, i owe it to them to leave a record. my initial plan was just to record it and leave it. leave it in the papers. i have the entire script, the

book's only 40% of the script, and it was only to leave an accurate record. eventually, i was told that it's good to put it in the form of a book, and i made a fatal mistake of signing the book contract. that is sentencing yourself. i sentence you to a book contract. [laughter] the -- that was really -- talk about an 8th amendment violation. [laughter] once i got started, it was very, very hard because i fully believe you sit -- it was two pages a day, like k everything you do, it's like your homework, you push yourself, you push yourself, having to relive it, think about things because you haven't thought about it in years, dredging up memories and pains and things to put it on a piece of paper. i mean, i didn't go around with all that naval gazing about my

life. you live your life. you take -- you give it your best shot, and there are things that, you know, we all said it, there's not a person in the room that had not said at some point that i just want to get it behind me. >> uh-huh. >> you know, i'm through that, put it behind me. >> judges say that about writing their opinions. >> well, the we'll res recollect it -- resurrect it. you keep writing, we'll help you with that. [laughter] >> let me ask you, let me ask you specifically about the nones where you were educated. what did you learn from them? >> oh, my goodness, life. the first thing -- sister mary del la rosa. i've been blessed enormously because i've had a chance to go back and thank all teachers who were living and have a totally

separate life with some of those who had terrorized me a little, but, also, the ones so sweet to me like my 7th grade teacher, but my 2 # -- 2nd grade teacher i never made contact, but sister mary said in 1975 when we arrived at st. benedicts, she said the question, she made the whole class, 40 little black kids in there, and those my age remember the little wood and cast iron desks that you lift up and things ideas, and you sat two by two, little tiny desk, and she made us stand and repeat in unison, why did god make you? to know, love, and serve him in this life and to be happy with him in the next. through all the philosophies, the existentialists, neechi, you

come back in life to what system mary said, why are you here? what the nones also taught, they made us believe that we were inherently equal, and that was a mainstay. it's something you see me repeat over and over. we were told urn all circumstances, inherently equal, and that was in the face of segregation and theories that suggested we were inferior, but they held us to that standard, those old enough and who went to parochial schools probably remember those twice a year national catholic exams. they were achievement tests you took at the end of each -- took them in december, and then, again, in may. those -- they measured where you stood with the other schools in the catholic schools in the nations, and so the nones held

our feet to the fire. my favorite none, and i'll just say this, i know you want to ask other questions, but the -- system mary, my 8th grade teacher, probably the toughest, she is still alive, but not doing very well, in new jersey at their retirement home, and she is -- when i was in 1962, i performed very well on the high school entrance exam, always done well academically. that's a blessing. that's god's gift, and when she saw how well i'd done, she looked me in the eye and said you lazy thing you. [laughter] she was right. [laughter] i was sliding by on force power and no work, and i never forget that. she called me out, but then fast forward to ten years ago or so, i was there, actually, visiting

her with a dear friend of mine who is a graduate, undergraduate of duquesne who probably knows more about my confirmation and don more than anyone else and is a very, very dear friend. i met him with tom who graduated, again, from duquesne, a wonderful man, ambassador to the vatican and was with me at the department of education, but we were there with them in the 90s at the time, still is, and she was going through are -- through the items in her l room, and sea shied, when i die, this goes to my sister, my relatives, this goes to this person, and she took a photo of the two of us, and she did this to her chest, comiews -- excuse me, and she said this goes with my coffin with me. you become very quickly the kid they are pushing to grow

suddenly becomes their child, and she, to say this photo that is just of us, is that precious that it will go there, and where she is to last lay. >> you took latin there, i understand? you were good winning the latin bee; correct? >> what a torment. [laughter] >> my children might see this program. >> well, the only latin i remember is always wear underwear. that's all i retained. [laughter] >> oh, boy. [laughter] >> i went to a catholic school. that's what i learned. >> oh, my goodness. i can't believe you just did that. [laughter] that just, as i study here, i see virgil just spinning. >> i was going to say something

else, but the dialogue. >> uh-oh, at any rate, i was required to, in the old days, you had to take latin to go into major seminary, and i was in the minor seminary, and you had to learn latin, and i repeated the 10th grade, and it was a very, very aggressive and quite difficult. i took three years in high school and a year in college, and my only regret about that regimen is that i didn't take greek. if i had to go back to school, i would not -- i'd do not think i took enough stuff. i would take greek, probably more music, more mathematics. i was good in the sciences, but i would proke take another couple courses in physics or semiindustry. the -- i just think that rigorous education and the people who required me or prevented -- required me to

educate the sang thing or prevented me from avoiding education are just fabulous in what they helped me to do because they forced me to be educated, and people don't run out, say, oh, let me take latin. you say you are required to take latin, required to take philosophy of math, required to take metaphysics or ethics, and that's what i got at holy cross, and i simply say, thank god for the people who knew better than i did and required me to do better than i would have without their advice. that is, to me, to be the beginning of my education, and out of that, they taught me to give me the tools to love to further educate myself, to read more books, to think about things, to be listen -- to be willing to listen to people who are thinking about things and to continue the education process,

so latin bee was like a spelling bee. stand around the room, they throw things at you, and it's the last person standing. >> back then, there was an article the faith that if you're going the chance to go to a white school, we could do as well as whites. that's what the nones taught us. we just needed the opportunity opportunity, and we could hold our own. to him, this was proof positive because i was the only black kid in high school for two to three years i was there, and this is in the mid-60s, so his point was, this is exhibit a in proof that we can hold our own. any place, anywhere, or anywhere any time, and so it was important. it was also encouragement to the few people at those meetings that their efforts were worth while. >> uh-huh, and holy cross was a critical aspect of the education, certainly, making that difficult transition up to

massachusetts. you talk about that, and it was a difficult time in america. you describe yourself in the book at that time as an angry young man. what were you angry about at that time? >> well, same thing that just about every other black in the country was angry about. i mean, you have to have problems, a lot of problems, race, and the question is how do you respond to it? how do you deal with it? when you're young like that, you deal with things by what? you lash out, criticize, you say things to people. you do it the way with a lot of emotion and a lot of passion. i think one of the values of being educated is where do you channel that passion? to mature, how do you deal with difficult things in a way that's constructed opposed to the way we dealt with things? >> as all the judges in the room in the lawyers know, we're still

suffering with a lot of angry young men who find themselves in the criminal justice system. do you have any theory as to what the chief contributors are to the national problem that we have? >> you know, i started my career in washington in the early 1980s, pointing out something that really bothered me. it was out of the 1980 accept sus. it was a break down of the black family. it's not because i had a solution. i'm not one of these people who tracks out a theory de jure or each year. i don't do that. i don't claim to be god or anything. ..

our lives, of addictive drugs. virtually when i read some petitions, and i have been reading about 9,000 a year. 9,000 a year for 21 and a half years, and there is a steady, virtually every crime is a drug related. virtually every crime. from here your work as the district judge and appellate judge you see these young people, no families, no education, and we pointed out

those numbers back in the 1980's and in the 1970's but if you do not toe a particular ideological line or uniform matter but york castigated for pointing out that family members were not good deal if a big i was then castigated as blaming the victim but it was a way of dismissing the obvious. we got to the doctor. the doctor you want to have an accurate diagnosis so that you can have a constructive and positive prognosis.

so anyway, i don't have any of the solutions. my heart is broken because i worked in the inner cities and we've been trying for my entire adult life to just be honest about it. look at our neighborhoods. they came in with this program and that solution and this and that. my neighborhood was safe and i can walk to school and i know everybody. and then mr. miller and everybody i would walk to the 6:00 mass three-quarters of a mile in the inner city who would

walk, what a little kid today walk three-quarters of a mile in the inner city to serve the 6:00 maseth? if you can't do that how has it improved? i ask a very simple question i can walk to the 6:00 mass and a little guy with my book bag on and nobody ever bothered me. can you do it today? something has happened. so why don't have a few leavitt i do know that we should at least say something is wrong and then deal with it and then not turn it into some political fodder but turn it into some way to help people. >> you have been open about talking but to this day you still have a 15-cent cigar sticker on your diploma from wall school.

why did you put that sticker there? what was your experience add that time? >> let me say that i probably should have been more respectful of my years at yale that i have some disappointments. the sticker had probably less to do with my experience of them what i thought it would mean then how people would perceive it that when you graduate or of a certain level and of course i think we should be realistic that they were discounted and we know why they were discounted and it's hard to be upset my grandmother used to say some doors closed by god opens other

doors. how could i come plame? yale is with all the things that have been said i know what my experiences were. they were mixed and i have a deeper appreciation for that and i travel should have expressed that earlier. the f-15s and sticker was put there out of frustration. i graduated, i had done everything i was supposed to do and i couldn't get a job. how would you feel? i have a kid and a wife and student loans. i was frustrated and very upset and they didn't make it better. >> you wrote in your case i would like you to comment you wrote, quote, it never ceases to amaze me the courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominantly black must be inferior. >> i think it speaks for itself.

it's true. our schools were closed. i didn't believe any of that stuff. i went to all black schools and neighborhoods. i had a wonderful life in those neighborhoods. people think you're making it up and coming you are trying to paint the south in a way that it wasn't because they have a narrative. i was moving back home when i stopped in d.c.. so in all of my confusion i wanted to get backed. my high school was not inferior. my neighborhood was not inferior, my church was not inferior, i had never believed it and i never will and i don't think you need to start from the premise that if something is predominantly one group or another that you can make these

assumptions about whether or not it is inferior. if i were to ask you today what school, but university produces the largest number of doctors going to medical school what would you say, it is a xavier and it's a predominantly black school. president norman frances, i ask how do you do it -- >> were you thinking it was on their radar screen to go to a historically black college or the cross is a far cry from that? >> yes i was done with all white schools -- i was angry. it was 1968. dr. king had just been

assassinated. i was done with it and i understand people's reaction. i was angry. i got home and my grandfather kicked me out of the house so the only school i applied to buy them as the holy cross. i was going to go to savannah state college. >> and that was based on your catholic school upbringing or how did that connection come about? >> again, the myth makers have come up with all these theories. it was because my chemistry teacher called a friend of mine who was already at holy cross and will told him to send me an application and i took about an hour and filled it out and send it in and then i got accepted. the reason i got accepted is i had almost a straight a average and then they came up with this thing i was recruited.

it was totally providential or serendipity if you are not religious thought i was -- that i wound up at holy cross. >> speaking of myth making. when you go to washington with senator danforth and your career takes off, did you set out to be politically active? did you say to yourself on a may have an opportunity as a young conservative a point that and move up the ladder? >> i never called myself conservative. that was another put down in the 1980's when they started naming as black conservatives to show that we were sort of like, you know, some file but we didn't call ourselves anything. we were just people trying to think about very different things and offer a point of view but suddenly there was a prescribed point of view. >> i found that fascinating if people were told they could only

go to one neighborhood to these schools that's wrong but then it's okay to tell people you only think certain things. it's bizarre. but in any rate, i was never publicly involved. i don't like politics. that's another thing. i think about things. i think about philosophies or ideologies or things that happen in society. i don't like politics but i don't know how you can tell something to somebody that's obviously wrong and you make them believe it and i also don't like -- [applause] and i certainly wasn't republican when i came to the sea. i became a republican to vote for ronald reagan. i was a registered independent, that was about it. i voted in law school and college i voted at 18 because i

voted for humphrey in 1968 and mcgovern in 1972 and i thought that they were too conservative. it was again, trying to think things through. i was a libertarian. i was trying to figure things out but people were telling me we already have the views you're supposed to have. you're not supposed to think about things. that's bizarre but we save a lot of time and read what am i supposed to think today? >> so you went from humphrey to write again. should we anticipate some future transition? >> no. i actually returned to the way that i was raised. the transition was a deviation from the way that i was raised and a return to the way that i

was raised involved in all sorts of radical things in college i didn't raise you to be like that. i didn't raise you to be disrespectful and uneducated etc and when i would come home talking they would call that nonsense he would get up and leave the room because i was so far off the charts in his mind. schenectady ever envision yourself as a judge? >> those of us that were for mercenaries and people are seminaries or religious they understand what i'm saying you think you are called to do

certain things and when you are called you are supposed to do it so i would say to myself just don't call me. two of his aides called me in 1989. i forget, there were two top aides when he was the attorney general and asked me to have breakfast to talk about the administration. so at the end of the breakfast they say some people are interested in your being a judge. that was the beginning of the process. i believe when the president calls you to do a particular job and it's the right thing you are to do and if i had to choose what i wanted to do why wouldn't do this. >> i wanted to be a priest.

>> nope, not really. my wife and i talked about it and pray about it could have made a lot of money, could have done lots of things but i didn't want to do that. i didn't go to law school to make money or to be famous. i went to law school to go back to georgia and do what i wanted to do when i was granted the priest. i wanted to go to my neighborhood and be a leader. the young woman said yesterday she is nine heat you can call the idealistic, eve, what ever. i still believe that you do well in order to do good and when you have a chance to make hard decisions you are bound to do it. you must do it.

did you ever consider just recalling? >> i never run for people from the circumstances i consider were bullies. i don't believe in that. not on the basketball court or playing sports, you are supposed to stand your ground. >> soon after the swearing-in we had the opportunity to visit with justice thurgood marshall can you share some of the things

you spoke with him about? justice marshall was a delight. you know, it was really interesting when people have these narratives about public people and you actually get to meet that person. the man was a delight to me. it was supposed to be a ten minute meeting and it lasted for two and a half hours and anyone if you know him he will regale you in stories both he and his family's have been just delightful. >> what advice did he give you? did he give anything about the interaction of the justices what to expect going into that new

environment? >> kafta noticed when the supreme court justices are nominated the only people who never say anything about what future to become future justices are supposed to do the only people who never say anything are the people who've done the job. nobody who has done the job presumes to tell anyone how to do it. it is a humbling experience. i was looking at those pictures of me when i was nominated. look at what this job has done to me. you crawl away from it. it is -- you do not presume to tell anyone else how to get, and he told me exactly the right thing. i did what i had to do in my time, and you do what you have to do in your time. >> did he tell you anything about collegiality the media

narrative is when the justices, down with 5-for decisions and some of the more hot-button cases that there is tremendous acrimony etc. is the court a collegial place? has always been the same in that regard during your tenure on the court? >> i can only speak from my tenure. for those of you that have been to the court actually those of you that haven't come a walls in that building are masonry and they are about that thick. unless they have an insight that i don't have or an inroad that i don't have i'm not seeing all of this acrimony when you make hard decisions of course there's disappointment, and you are an exasperated. but i've not seen all these fights. i read someplace someone said that justice scalia was yelling

or making a noise or something. he's my next-door neighbor and i saw he was doing fine. but i've not seen all this. the worst that life seen has been in the opinions, the sg opinions, that's about, but i've not seen that there are times people get upset, they feel strongly about their opinions how many of you put nine of you in a row with differing views and it any hot-button issue, pick any of them, pick abortion, put you in the room you have different views how long do you think you all are going to get along? throw in some more issues see

how long can you survive together? and the thing about it is people can't sit in the room and talk about it and they are not even making the decisions. they just have an opinion. they stormed away from the thanksgiving table or dinner table, stormed out of the restaurant, stop speaking to each other and they aren't even making a decision. but the people at the court at least think that the constitution, the process, the court is much more important than they are and they somehow keep it together to decide cases appropriately and to get along with each other in a civil way. >> are the any particularly close friends? >> they are very, very close friends. i tend to be more of an introvert and stick to myself

they will come in early and leave in the afternoon. the justices not nearly as close to him as justice ginsburg. i think justice o'connor was very close, they went to stanford together. but i think people are very respectful, they are very kind but people have different schedules and different lives. [laughter] some people like to go to the kennedy center. ayman nebraska cornhuskers fans, there's not a lot of those around so i sort of fight for my right up there. i like a lot of sports with my kids. i'm very close to my law clerks so if it requires i leave her to do something, that isn't a nonstarter.

>> did you ever expect to see an african-american president during your lifetime is that something you thought would happen? >> i always thought there would be coaches of the university's. as i said, the thing i always knew that it would have to be the president approved by the elite and the media because everybody didn't agree to take part you pick your person who says something that isn't prescribed things they expect would be picked upon.

>> in passing he visited the court. i'm not into politics so there's not that many occasions. i shook hands with him at the inauguration, very polite. >> is that typical of u.s. presidents to do? >> he was personable. we were at yale together so i kind of knew him a little bit better. but it is in recent years they stopped by to shake hands with the members of the court and me to us as a group. >> do you see president obama has a lot of different opinions on things? do you have a common ground on things with him you could share with us?

>> it's hard to say what common ground and i have with president bush 43. i'm not into politics. i don't like politics. i try not to -- i do my job at common ground with some of the appointees say justice ginsburg or justice kagan because we were doing the same thing that i just don't do politics. i don't like politics. >> in terms of the media and things like that that is one thing i found is a lot of judges don't keep up with the news the way they did when they were practicing law. >> i just don't like politics. [laughter] i am just done. i don't like politics. i like history and i like things with substance. i don't understand politics. i don't understand scuba diving. when i think of scuba diving i think of drowning.

[laughter] so, i am not against it. i'm just not going under water. [laughter] >> nm and that we are going to ask some questions that have been supplied by students. i do want to ask you this though, justice thomas. all of the current justices on the court attended a i believe the wall school. do you think you would be helpful to have a little of that kind of diversity with some justices from smaller like duquesne university or something like that? finally you are on things i really like to talk about. i agree with that. we said that people from all other schools. it's harvard and yale and justice ginsburg graduated but also attended harvard. so, they are wonderful, wonderful people. you couldn't ask -- they are

just really talented and good people. but the -- i do think there -- i have been all over this country and there are more people -- there are smart people. this group will start it's like holding for college, there is something valuable about these people who are living in these little neighborhoods and work their way up. i tend to hire kids from modest backgrounds in the schools. as i told you earlier today, my clerk last year was from lsu to get ipad clerks from records, george mason, georgia. i like clerks from modest backgrounds. i'm from a modest background. i truly believe they are special. kids who come for some reason, keep at it every day in spite of the odds, get up every day, nobody gives them a break but they keep going.

there's something special about that kid. this past week i'm very much involved in the organization and one of your students was in that. these students come from very bad circumstances. and yet their grade point average as a group, the 107 scholars that we peck is a 3.97 or something. some verify the grade point average and they live in homeless shelters, parents of drug addicts, some of them in and pay themselves. what kind of a result as it take to keep going? it would be wonderful to have some of those kids as members of the court. and i think that they would have a different perspective and add something to the court. spinning speaking of to kaine as you know the school was founded and run by the spirit priest. you mentioned in the book that you frequently prayed to the police. when you were faced with difficult and challenging times. why was the holy spirit important in your life?

>> it's kind of hard for me when using the priest. i always thought of them as a wholly ghost falter. i'm trying to be modern a pivot [laughter] i'm not trying very hard. although i do have an ipad. that's only because it was foisted upon me. but i just think -- i am one of these people who still believes that it is through grayson that you do lots of things the and it is my grandmother when i would go home and i was angry and upset and fighting with my grandmother she pulled me aside and she said some, say your prayers. or had a big problem and she would say turn it over to the lord. and was always the same answer. and i really mean it. i wasn't being glib and i said to you didn't have any political transformation. i just went back home. if you just read my book, you

see that i had a shoe at the legacy they were giving me and i simply went back and embraced that legacy had a part of that is what we do and the way we do things and the faith that we have. and a part of that of course is the trinity. using what the holy ghost speak through me. we always think that we are in tears and that. i acknowledge the assumption of was all we celebrate on monday. it's usually march 25th, but anyway, i was there, and the theme humility that we have to be humble to receive this and i think it's very important, and so that we do -- in the way that we do things. that is about as deep as i can explain, but it's very important. >> and we have a few questions from some of the students,

justice thomas. i want to read a couple of these. the first is from christine gamble who is one of our all-star students. the question is to the court's recent decision to uphold the affordable care act produce any hard feelings among the justices since there were such strong differing views on the subject? >> no. [laughter] >> we will check that off. >> you know, it would be enormously prideful and presumptuous of me to assume i have the right answer. i have an opinion. i do not have the gospel. i give it my best shot and that is the way that i approach the job. i try to be candid and say yes, you get exasperated. but was there hard feelings? no. i don't have hard feelings about a lot things.

if i was going to have hard feelings would be no solely on race issues, and then you wouldn't even let me in this room. that is the reason that we offload these things. i just don't have enough -- i don't think that it is appropriate for me to be angry with people who have a different opinion. you read my dissent i always say i respect your right to have a different opinion. in this society think about it. in much of these things whenever something is said about me, all of these people, though most of them assume they know what i'm supposed to think because i'm black. isn't that odd to you. they are presumptuous enough to be upset with me because i don't think what they think i should. is that the most bizarre thing that you ever heard? i am not one to follow that to say that i just disrespect justice ginsberg or justice

breyer or the chief justice or whomever, justice scalia if they disagree with me. i respect their right to have a different opinion. >> this is from a second year student i see right there and several others. >> are you out and people? >> yes im [inaudible] >> the media has made a big production about your not speaking in court. a comment that he made made national news what is your philosophy about the will of the justices and the argument? >> its never watching so the first i've heard about that. i don't follow that much of this stuff.

others would listen as that person asked a few questions and succession and had a series of many conversations. and is also allowed people a difference to have a turn to talk. today it is just everybody has a question. i don't have questions about everything there are some things you let go. we should let the cable advocates talk. >> in the 1990's. >> it is true for many years there were far less questions. estimate does it somehow make it impossible to judge? does the argument change? is it more of a show now because i remember being a student at georgetown.

we sit in on a couple of arguments and now when you go down there is a massive humanity and its very formal is that a cultural shift? >> i of said the enough and i do not think what we are doing is necessary to decide the cases. if you go to argentina we were there visiting their supreme court and the members of the courts have decided they would have two arguments a year, to oral arguments in here. so if you look at the courts of appeals, how many, what percentage of the case cited on that argument.

>> you often prayed to st. francis. were you surprised when francis naim and that a judgment was selected. >> i'm more surprised by the latter than the former. [laughter] >> that's why i don't say anything. i can be pretty much a smart alec and that is what got me on the national news. spec ironclad -- i don't know. i just go to church. >> here is a question from bridget daily. without discussing the merits of the same-sex marriage case is argued in the court rather than the legislative branch of the

state's. >> a for effort. [laughter] >> let me try this -- >> let's try this one. >> married to your wife, a white woman and as you know the supreme court struck down a virginia law that prohibited interracial marriage. was the court correct in waiting on that issue? >> that's pretty much eight. it is a racial classification. >> we look at some of the things written and i tried to talk about the racial classification. we have to be really careful because some of the things that we are really comfortable classifying people by race why? because we like a particular

classification. welcome some people particularly like the racial classification of segregation right at the heart of the 14th amendment. >> this is what was meant to deal with. so, anyway i know they are trying to lure me in. >> cause you know i've been doing this a long time. [laughter] you grow up on the inner-city is and people try to sell you a lot of stuff. >> as you mentioned in the those who read the supreme court opinion you are in extremely polite the center perhaps the

most polite in a case called kilo however involving property rights you wrote the following. something has gone seriously wrong with this court's interpretation of the constitution. the citizens are safe from the government in their homes. the homes themselves are not. that struck me as more strident than the typical justice thomas' dissent. was that a case that you felt particularly strongly about? >> i said seriously awry. >> i took a lot of property locmalo law school because property is. i tried to understand the property and taking.

a well-connected businessman and a poor person. where do you think they would build a highway, through a poor neighborhood or rich neighborhood. we should be very careful with words that change when use becomes purpose. what is the purpose verses the use and can the purpose be a bigger tax base? kennedy beautification, kennedy and urban renewal? and you are taking people's property where the constitution uses the word. i was trying to say something is wrong. something does not make sense.

something is wrong with what we are doing. so she didn't have anything. she lived in that house she lived in the house for a hundred years or so. >> i think it is a great question to end our session with you. they are entering the the legal profession today. >> my goodness. the world is different than when i started out and i didn't even have good advice for fais self.

i tried to give advice to my clerks to tell them there are going to be challenges out here. i certainly have my share and i can't claim to have reacted in an appropriate way. it's very negative and very cynical. i listened to a lot of the wrong people and not being well restricted and i just encourage them that no matter what the man positive and remain, remember why you went to law school. i still member sitting on my 30 than the 35th burst birthday in st. louis cataloging what i wanted to do and assuring the things that were not appropriate such as i am in it for the money and looking at the dreams i had

so write down what you went and tried to remember that and try to remain positive and pass the bar exam. [laughter] >> anyway, i know they are going to give me the hook by no c-span won't get in mind and cut you off. [laughter] i just wanted to first of all things to all, and i wanted to say to the students thought sometimes when you get a degree you really don't know what you are going to accomplish. and i mentioned the young man, i mentioned tom. tom introduced me when i was there to a young man, another graduate who was a student here at the time. mark would then go on to be absolutely the key and

instrumental in my confirmation. he was the person with whom i spent the most time, during the most difficult times he was a kid that was educated here, whoever educated him and whatever professors dealt with tom i want to congratulate you. the product of your work, the honesty, the energy, the integrity is all embodied in this young man in the want to thank you all for inviting me here today. i don't do as many speaking engagements as i probably should but it is an opportunity to speak to people who understand why we do well in order to do good and i encourage you to continue thinking that way and doing things that way. thank you for putting up with me this afternoon. [applause]

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we got enough data legislation this morning on the washington journal. >> what is going on in the congress when it comes to online sales tax? >> guest: just before they left for the recess, the senate teed up the legislation that will allow states to require that online retailers charge the sales tax for purchases, even for people who buy out of state. so essentially an online retailer here in d.c. would have to charge a sales tax for michigan when someone bought a product from them all online.

>> is it going to pass? >> guest: it doesn't look very likely it will pass the senate, we are almost certain of that because it has passed cloture twice and has about two quarters of the chamber support. the house is less certain. there is still resistance. the leadership is not fond of tax increases or anything perceived as a tax increase. there are some concern about the implementation of the bill itself, how difficult it would be for online retailers. but i think it is fair to say this is something that has momentum and is planned to get a strong look in the house and if it doesn't happen this year i think it is something we could see in the next year or two. >> host: what is the name of the vehicle of that will the are debating and who are the prime sponsors? >> it's called a marketplace fairness act and that is part of the femur, fairness between online retailers the main sponsors are senators lamar alexander and durbin and the senator enzi in particular has been focused on this issue for something like a dozen years.

this is something that's been around since the mid 90's. he's a very passionate advocate and senator alexander is new to the battle but he's also strongly in favor of the bill and we have the representative republican who is also traced donnelly in favor of the bill. >> he is a republican from arkansas. >> guest: ballart is very much in favor of this bill as our major retailers because they have to pay sales tax. the world right now is you have to charge the seals tax if you have a physical presence in the state. wal-mart has stores in most states therefore they have to charge in online sales tax for every state essentially. amazon used to impose this very heavily. they've seen their physical presence increase and therefore have also started charging a sales tax in more state so we have seen them support this legislation as of last year and so one, the retail industry in general, they are already collecting the sales tax and they believe they are at a

disadvantage to those that don't. >> host: is this considered a revenue bill? what in that have to start in the house before it was debated in the senate? >> guest: that is a point of contention. but a small group of senators that impose the bill to include mostly senators from the states that don't of the sales tax currently, they have actually tried to introduce amendments to would cause a slip of the bill and therefore it is a bit technical but essentially the senator has framed this has not a tax or a revenue bill. this is essentially a administrative bill that gives the states the authority to something because the argument is that the sales tax is not new. consumers own sales taxes when they buy products on anything else they are not charged. the fact is most consumers do not remit that sales tax as they are supposed to when they file their tax returns. that doesn't change the fact and so that is the contention of the

sponsors. we may see that come up in the house in the opposition coalesces. >> host: and what are the arguments against this bill and who is leading that charge? >> guest: as i said, the senators from the estate that do not have a sales tax strongly oppose that and it is a broad coalition. senator baucus who is the finance committee chairman, he says also that his committee was bypassed that is somewhat true because the senate majority leader product directly to the floor rather than sending it through the regular process and this session. however, as i said, bachus opposed the bill and senator wyden of oregon has also been strongly opposed to this and he is obviously from the more liberal wing of the senate. but he has framed in this as forcing businesses to take over government responsibility. again, oregon doesn't have a sales tax. there is a sort of extension from the states and the retailers. the problem with that is that

certain states are not forced to comply, then by all likelihood those states will become the center of retailing because everyone will move where they don't have to charge a sales tax. >> host: is there any estimate of the revenue that could be raised? >> guest: $23 billion is the number being thrown around. that number would be seals text for code that are not being paid, so those to go to states, counties, localities, whoever collect sales tax. >> host: is their -- are there still companies that aren't charging sales tax on the internet purchases? >> guest: absolutely. i think it's fair to say most companies don't. big companies, big retailers to come in and so the majority of online purchases -- maybe not the majority the gradually increasing number of online purchases have a sales tax assessed. however, most retailers still do not -- are not -- they are not required to, especially when sailing out of state, so they generally only collect from purchases and state. >> host: what about international purchases?

>> guest: international purchases there are some things that resemble a sales tax. physically and other countries you can apply to have those related at customs. these things are not enforced uniformly. a lot of countries don't have a sales tax. there is the argument online retailers will move abroad if we assess this because it could be saved by things moving offshore so that is a valid concern and we could see enforcement on that also. we talk with the top three winners about a documentary and why president obama should make it his top priority. my best friend was featured in the video was actually unemployed and going through the process of unemployment at the time, so i thought he would be a good subject to follow. so i kind of followed his life. >> at the time i had an

introduction to the course and i was learning that there was a double standard for those under 18 and those over. so i was sort of into children's rights, if you will, and i realized we didn't have a say in the creation of the debt but we are going to have to pay it off. >> at first when we had our originally picked our topic -- >> which was what? >> infrastructure and the growing need for public transportation in this country. so, they weren't very how can i say excited about the topic, but after i had explained to them, they kind of caught on. while researching, he decided that we should at high speed rail as one of the segments as well since that was very important to the topic and to the country as well. >> more from the top three winners saturday morning at ten eastern on c-span.

the american association for the advanced signs posted a four on earlier today on science and technology policy. part of the event involved a discussion on trends in asia, specifically in china, india and south korea. this is about 90 minutes. [applause] >> the first time i heard it ever been in the business for nearly the 40 years, so we have to say -- >> [inaudible] scaap very much. so, how many of you are alumni? that's a great crowd. thank you for coming. we have some future alumni here. i think we have admitted seven students in the area. are there a few of them here? can you raise your hand? there you are. congratulations. [applause]

we very much hope that we will see you here at columbia. i would say this fall but we start august 1st because there is nothing quite like being in new york city in the middle of august to determine whether journalism is the right thing for you. so, i am going to get a prepared speech today which i don't usually do and i don't have a powerpoint or any slide, so i hope he will forgive me for that. we are -- i will be talking for about half an hour on social media. this isn't a how to session but it's more some thoughts i have on how social media is changing the way journalists think about and do our job and i used to being interrupted so if you have a question that is burning within you and you want to ask it, just go ahead and stand up to the microphone and we will take questions. again, thank you very much for hosting me today. so, i want to start by telling you the story of the two journalists. both of them worked for u.s. publications, both of them based in the middle east.

one is a wall street journal correspondent stationed in baghdad in 2004 and covered from the bloodiest months of the iraq war. the other is a "new york times" bureau chief cent last year to jerusalem and seen in the crisis in gaza. both of them are out of their organization to express their opinion about the conflict as they were covering. both of them came under intense scrutiny for doing this. but eight years separates their time in the spotlight and the difference in the velocity of changing technology and the reaction to the news organizations raised questions that i believe will affect all of those in the digital era. let me start with the first journalist. in the fall of 2004, as the u.s. invasion of iraq was careening a dangerously off course, a woman who was a wall street journal bureau chief said what she thought was a private e-mail to a few of her closest friends.

and i will close at some length because her passion and eloquence are important to what we will be discussing. here is what she wrote. the correspondent in baghdad is like being under house arrest. my most pressing concern every day is sent to write a story but to stay alive and insure that our employees stay alive. in baghdad i am a security personnel first and reporter second. in detail after detail she showed how american policy had gone awry. the insurgency is rampant. if anything is getting stronger. constantly murdered by the dozens every day and the insurgents are infiltrating. he went beyond on what he thought was the comfort zone of

a private e-mail to go beyond standard journalistic norms, and she said this. despite president bush's rosy assessment, iraq remains a disaster. defender saddam hussein a was a potential threat and under the americans it has been transformed to eminent and active threats she called the war a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the united states for decades to come. now, as i said, she wrote this as a private e-mail to a close circle of friends, something she had been doing for several years ever since the september the 11th attack on the new york and washington. i interviewed her a few months ago to ask her how she remembers this and she told me i started it because close friends and family wanted to know what was going on. keep in mind this was 2004 when the social media was in its infancy. marrec just dropped out of harvard and had not created facebook -- can you still hear me?

okay. a was years before twitter would become a social network of billions of instantaneous thoughts. but something happened with her e-mail, something they didn't anticipate. the digital platform acted as an accelerant providing fuel to the spark of her own approach. that combined with the status as a wall street journal journalist covering a controversial war before the hot contested presidential election ensure that her e-mail would move beyond the group she intended it for. indeed it found its way into the increasingly larger concentric circles outside that group. it took a few weeks, but eventually private e-mail would be published in part or in whole and blogs all around the world and an electronic letter that for just a few friends had become a must read for hundreds of thousands of people. as she told me, nothing i had done had ever gone fire will like that. suddenly i was getting the e-mails from south africa and australia.

many of these from her account compelling. in new york university professor jay roseanne wrote this it is really journalism and eyewitness report giving impressions and conclusions about the struggle to prevail in iraq. it wasn't intended for the public but that is different from being unfit for public consumption. similarly, the road is this journalist by yes? perhaps. is that bad? i hope not. are they making all this up? i doubt it. at a point her essay even became the subject of the doonesbury cartoon. but the reaction from the conservatives as well as those that believe journalists have no business expressing personal opinions was very different. ..

her private opinions have, quote, in no way distorted her coverage. he went on to commend her track record as a model of intelligent and courageous reporting. indeed, this is proof not to be a huge obstacle to her career. in the years since, she returned to as a journal spond to iran, lebanon, and many of the most voluntary zones in the middle east. she continues to practice what paul seeinger call at the time intelligent and courageous reporting. she went on to write a book four anars later about the iraq war.