it's not easy. people deal with food addictions. it's not like they can shift overnight. over time we are educating people to make different choices. i would like nothing better than the customers to vote the less healthy stuff out of the store because they stop buying it. until they do that, we're in business to serve them. >> host: let me ask you about that. you talk about food addiction. one thing that struck me in the weak, i'm trying -- dying for you to explain it. you talk about in the book in the beginning when you talk about capitalism, voluntary exchange. the fact it's one of the win-win of capitalism. people want to buy something. everyone benefits in the end. i was struck by the fact later in the book you are yo are critical of some companies who usably do not think are doing the right thing. they exist to provide products to people you think are unhealthy and you talk about tobacco companies and junk food

companies. it's interesting to me. it's something you care deeply about. it's an aspect of your life that you are devoted to making sure that people eat or trying to encourage people to eat more healthyfully. you think the companies are not right. the only problem i have with this. this is what i would like you to explain that right is; of course, in the eye of the beholder. and, you know, i can go out and find five environmental activists who think that all companies are not right. because they produce a product that pollute the environment. or i can find concerned mothers who think that knick load began should be shut down because they don't like the programming. or feminists who think mattell should be -- >> host: you can eliminate everything. >> we're not we don't suggest in the book that tobacco companies

should be made illegal or junction food companies should be fore bidden to trade. it's based on voluntary exchange. and maltly businesses there to satisfy the food and desires of the customer base. fast food companies, for example, they have served a historic useful purpose. the products obviously over indulge in. they provide -- when you look at historically they provide expense, consistency, and affordability for many people. where those are things that people prefer. so the challenge, of course, if i was running a fast food company would be how do we provide affordability, convenience, quality, and consistency while upgrading and educating our customers to make choices that healthier for them. i think even a fast food company

can begin to nudge the customer base. not command them to do so. but can help over time race conscious pes. i think they have a responsibility to do so over time. the tobacco industry is a tougher case. >> guest: the conscious capitalist company? >> guest: i think they could be if you look historically the way tobacco was thought about for a long time. tobacco was something that calmed people, helped them concentrate, help them relax. so i think the challenge for tobacco companies is there a way to evolve the products overtime? to keep the good call qualities that people seek out when they use the products without the damaging impacts. maybe that's not possible. but that's what they could be aspiring to. and that being said, again, people have the right to smoke, in my opinion, if they wish to. i'm not urging that tobacco be

outlawed or we go to prohibition of tobacco use. it would turn a huge percentage of our population to criminals with the negative thing prohibition causes in term of criminal society. i think it's a bad idea. that being said, again, you can see i'm somebody who believes in voluntary exchange and people making choices. at the same time, attempting to race consciousness and educate people to make better choices about their health and well being. >> guest: we only have a few minutes left. you are a ceo you spend lot of time doing the things that the whole foods store and what was it like to write a book? what was the process? did you sit in bed at night with the laptop and eat snacks? did you devote time in your day? >> guest: yeah. i ate fast food. candy bars. [laughter] >> host: smoked cigarettes. >> guest: yeah. really a bad boy. i learned how to write a book.

my coauthor, this was the seventh book. i'm excited. i think i have at least three more books in me. i'm already plotting them out. the first thing was he taught me how to -- we did a technology called mind mapping. we were able to take the idea that we wanted to get put forth in the book and organize them in a brain-storming type fashion through software called mind map. you get get it on the computer. it helped us organize our book. we can add or subtract. it's kind of the big picture for the book. then when it came to do in the chapter, we used dictation software. dragon dictation. hooked up to our computers. i would look at the mind map and i would basically just talk through the chapter. >> you talked your book. >> guest: i talked the book. the initial rough draft was verbally spoken. you don't have writer's block. you have 5,000 words con in

chapter pretty quickly. you feel pretty good about it. then you have to do research, you have to obviously edit it and polish it. the other person comes in and puts the input in to it. >> is it mostly your voice or his? >> guest: we made a decision for it to be mostly my voice. raj did more work on the book than i did. he has a higher standard of what is acceptable as a writer than i am. so we were a great team. i really enjoyed working with him and the next book or two we're going team up to do those as well. >> host: thank you so much for taking the time do this. it was great to see you. >> guest: great to see you too. thanks so much. glmpleght next on c-span2 we'll discuss the state of the american work force with "the wall street journal" reporter ben castleman and hendrix smith

"whole stole the american dream ." a discussion of the news of the newtown school shootings and boston bombings were reported on social media websites. >> we believe that the opening up the gate of our memory you are bringing people together. [inaudible] of realization what a perfect human being -- a person. any individual can do. and i think of those who save lives. all of these who save live while lifting their own. every one of them is a hero. >> the 20th anniversary i ask you to recommit to replace the direct memory of those who are still with us, thank god. with the records of this museum

so that no one can ever forgot the story and lessons. and i i ask you to think about how the historic slaughter and suffering of the holocaust reflects a human disease that takes different forms. the idea that our differences are more important than our common humanity. >> this weekend on c-span, bill clinton and nobel peace prize winner mark the 120th anniversary of the holocaust museum. the national rifle association annual meeting with nra executive chris cox and wayne lapierre. on booktv this weekend your questions for the world turned upside down author. ib depth live sunday at noon eastern. and at 6:00. booktv in london.

politics, war, history, religion and culture. as we start a twelve-week series with british authors. and on c-span three the 1963 birmingham race riot. part of american history tv saturday at 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. you're windchilling c-span2 with politics and public affairs weekday featuring live coverage of the u.s. senate. the latest non-fiction author and books on booktv. you can see past program and get our schedule at our website. you can join on the conversation on social media sites. next, issues facing american workers. with "the wall street journal" reporter. he's followed by hendrix smith, author of "who stole the american dream" from washington journal. an hour and a half.

>> i want to focus on jobs and the economy. joining us from new york is ben castleman who cover it is for the "the wall street journal." thank you for being with us. >> guest: >> host: a lot to talk about. let begin with a recent story you posted about americans leaving the work force. what is happening? >> guest: it's been a trend we've been watching for quite awhile now. the labor force. people who are either wok working or looking for work is shrinking. at the lowest level since 1979. it's both effected a recession and a long-term term trend we've been watch for awhile now. >> what are the factors in this? >> we have a short term issue and long-term. the short term is probably we're too familiar with is the economy has been weak, job growth has been slow. and a lot of people who want jobs have been giving up

looking. they have been dropping out of labor force and no longer searching for work. it's a major factor. we have a longer term issue. the share of the population that is working has actually been declining since 2000. there are a couple of things going on there. the biggest is the baby boom generation. people don't work as much in the late 50s and 60s as they do in the prime of their working lives. that's a major factor. we have seen young people get a later start to career. they are staying in school people longer. you put all that have together and end up with a long-term decline in the share of the population as works. >> host: there's this summary on the recent story, which is available online at wsj.com. you point, first of all, with regard to the falling participation rate two leading factor. it would suggest there's a labor market is weaker than appears. and secondly, unemployed workers are giving up finding the jobs. they could drift so far from the

labor market they will unlikely even return when the hiring picks up. >> guest: yeah. we talk about a short term and long-term. the real risk is the short term problem turns to long-term problem. as people give up looking for work and drift away with he never really get them back even when the economy improves. if we think about giving up looking for work. maybe they end up deciding to say hey, i'm retired now. maybe they end up going on disability insurance. maybe they drift toward the grey market or the black market and work under the table. those people with the fear is that not only are they out of the labor force right now, but they may not return to the labor force when the economy improves. and so that can affect our long-term growth potential not just our immediate issue that we're facing right now. >> host: let's put in term of numbers. ting according to the public cayings. 6.4 million.

two and a half million were job less the month before. put this number if perspective of the timeline. month to month who is entering the work force and leaving the work force? >> it's a little bit of a tricky point. the number we usually hear when we get the monthly jobs report are the net numbers for the month. the number of people who found jobs say 100,000 people found jobs in a month or half a million people left the labor force. the numbers are net numbers. that's saying that 100,000 more people found jobs than lost them. the numbers we're showing in a chart there are the total gross numbers. this is how many people left the labor force regardless of how many people might have returned to the labor force. so 6.4 million people actually left the labor force from february to march. the think that is critical to understand there is well over half of those people had jobs the month before.

those aren't people who are unemployed and giving up looking for work, those are people who are retiring mostly or people who decided to go back to school. say home and raise a family. it's the other group that 3.something million that were unemployed the month before or we have to be concerned. they are dropping out. the numbers which continue to show the unemployment rate. the basic is as follows. butter ore the summer with four conservative months of job losses.

zero net jobs last august. >> we heard the narrative of the swing swoon for awhile now. it started in 2010 then 2011 and 2012 when we got a lousy job number in march. people were worried it's happening again. i wrote the piece calling it a myth. i'm skeptical of the idea that there's really some seasonal pattern that is going on here. if you look at the numbers a lot of numbers you read were the preliminary numbers. we that zero jobs in august of 2011. one they went back and updated the number, we actually added 132,000 jobs. if you dig down, the reality is different.

realtively steady recovery. we think we are maybe starting to gain momentum and fall back a little bit. we worry we're losing momentum. then we pick up a little bit. it's better than europe. certainly better than what we saw during the recession. but just isn't enough to make a good about the economy or put people back to work. if grow are currently employed the phone number to call is heard coast to coast and we have this from darryl ridge who on the issue of no longer working how can these people give up and afford to live?

ben, what are those individuals doing? >> guest: that's one of the key mystery that we've been looking at here. when we hear about the people who are dropping out you say what are they doing? the answer is part behalf we're getting at when we say that the problem is maybe not quite what people often think what it is. a lot of people who are dropping out are effectively retiring. a lot of people who are dropping out are choosing to go back to school. maybe i can't find a job now. i'm going go and get a new education or go and build new skills. those people are a little bit different from the people that we worry about who are truly just dropping out sitting by the way side. and we don't know that much about what is happening to them. we suspect that certainly some of them end up on disability insurance. we suspect that some of them end up working in the gray market economy. some of them end up homeless and

in poverty. what we don't have a strong sense of is how the numbers break down. and that's one of the things that the economists are now trying to research. if you google ben's name you'll see he's been in what jim of the washington is calling -- [inaudible] i'm going ask you about it. where the wall "the wall street journal" is wrong about labor force participation. he's been sending e-mail back and forth. there's an been an exchange over the last four or five days. his point is while your information is interesting, it's not accurate. i think we disagree on the interpretation on the numbers than the numbers themselves. it was certainly a good natured feud. jim's take, and i'm sympathetic to this that this long-term decline in how many people are working or looking for work is more worrisome than maybe i've been given credit for. it's not about what happening

over the last couple of years. but long-term decline is the result of a slowdown of the american labor force. and we have seen not only people retiring and young people staying in school but also even people in the prime of their working lives choosing not to work. and that reflects how weak the economy has been from a jobs stand point dating all the way back to the early 2000s. that's absolutely true. and absolutely worrisome. the only thing i ended up disagreeing with him on is a lot of this is also sort of these expected demographic trends. one thing i think has been maybe underappreciated is the extend which our careers are shifting. people are entering the work force later because they are spending longer in school and working longer because they live longer, because pensions aren't what they once. app lot more of us are doing white collar job where we're not on our feet all day and able to work longer. what we're seeing here is long-term shift where you might

have been used to work from 18 to 60 and now you're working from 25 to 65 to 70. that's a little bit different from the impact of a recession that is hitting right now and more immediate concern. let me just conclude with what he writes in one of his blog. for "the washington post, he said this, the difference between the rate and reality is about 7 million workers, not 3 million. it means a lost of growth in the economy and alarming rate for the unemployment nothing to do with baby boomers or demographic shifts. >> yeah. we're all trying to do here is come up with numbers for how they should should be any economy that aren't.

i saw some folks came up with a number of around four and a half million. we saw the congressional budget office come up. how the labor force ought to be. four million larger than it really is. the point to all of this is there are clearly millions of people out there who ought to be in the labor force and who aren't. and if you add those people back to the unemployment rate, if you consider them unemployed, then our unemployment rate is significantly higher than the 7.6% reported by the government. and so we have a jobs crisis.

we are four years nearly to the recovery. after the supposened end of the recession. there are nearly 3 million fewer people working than when the recession began. 2007 was not a particularly great time for the economy to start with. i think all of the discussions back and forth about how we count this can't lose site of the fact that clearly the job market is not as strong as we want it to be. >> host: the job picture and declining u.s. work force in term of those participating in the employment john joining us. he stopped looking for a job. he's on the phone from new mexico. good morning. >> caller: hi. good morning, steve. thank you for pronouncing my city correctly.

i'm taking a -- i had a college class, i'm officially a senior. and i was a realtor for a long time. i sold cars, i was a mortgage loan office when i moved here. and i ran my own business. i ran and entertainment agency for awhile. i had three or four djs running around doing shows and a lot of work for myself for ten years. it twinninged down to very few calls. i stopped doing that a year ago. when you haven't had a real job you're pretty much unemployability.

then the manage yearial is no longer necessary. >> host: how would are you, by the way? >> caller: i just turned 50 in april. how likely is it you're going to be able to find a job in the next four or five years. or go back to an earlier point. how are you surviving? >> host: my wife is an accountant. i'm fortunate in that regard. i have, you know, -- i go to college. i'm a full time student. once i graduate -- and i'll be able to go to the real estate industry. which i really did enjoy in the real estate industry. before it collapsed.

but it's just slow right now. i think we have to hang in there. we outsourced all of the manufacturing job and then -- the white collar jobs just for -- [inaudible] >> host: i'll stop you there. thank you for the call. we'll get a response from our guest. >> guest: i think this is the tragedy of the economy right now. the issue of long-term unemployment. we've been talking about people in the labor force or out of the labor force. to some extent that's a question of semantic. woo do you count being in the labor force. there are clearly a lot of people out there whether or not they meet the technical definition of unemployment who have been out of work for a long time. what we know from economic research is once you have been out of work for a long time. it becomes incredibly different to find work. i saw research recently by a couple of researchers at the federal reserve of boston who

didn't experiment. they sent out identical résume to areas postings. the only difference was how much of a gap there had been. once had somebody had a six month cap. they gefer tsh never got any call back. no matter the skills or experiences, can't gate chance once they have been out for work for a long time. the caller, to be in school is a smart idea. you're not unemployed when you go and sit down at the job interview if you can get one. they say what have you been doing for the last few years you're able to say i've been in school. i've been in class. this is what i was doing. rather than i've been trying to apply for jobs. that issue of a long-term unemployment especially among people in their later 0u and 50s and early 60s a huge challenge we're seeing. it's concentrated among people in the career are trying to make

a shift and up against the clock of being able to find a job so they can rebuilt the retirement savings. we can retire at some point. and nothing that has happened in the job market over the last few years have helped those people. >> that's the point from edward christian who points out on the twitter page more people over the age of 50 are dropping out because they are considered a big risk to hire because they are too old. >> guest: yeah. it's true that we hear rampant tails of -- tales of discrimination. you hear tremendous evidence. there's little question that people in the 50s are finding it difficult to get calls back.

the people struggling the most right now. who are in better shape. although unemployment is high even among that group. ben the economic report -- john is joining us from brooklyn, new york. john, how long have you been out of work. >> caller: good morning, thank you, c-span for taking my call. i've been out for three years now. >> host: how many places have you been sending resumes or going for interviews? >> caller: basically i've continually sent my résume to various professional companies directly. i am an engineer from my background, and i am in my 50s and one thing i notice is that for people my age past

confessional who would like to continue working not on a full-time basis. either part time basis to add to the quality of having free time. that companies are not very flexible accepting, you know, professionals experience in working on a part-time consulting or contract basis. and i'm really surprised at that. not taking opportunity of the skills that people in the 50s have even on a part-time basis. that could be a win-win for people that want to have extra time in addition to continue to provide the professional services. ..

>> i think that will be on the focus of unemployment so much is that people who are completely out of work are kind of sitting on the sidelines of the economy and that ends up driving down the economy, but it also ends up being a huge human tragedy for those people. i think that sometimes we can get lost in the macroeconomics of this and ignore the human story that is so real. >> i was just going to say that the wages have been fabulous for this recovery. that is connected to unemployment as well. if companies can hire at a number of workers come and they don't have the motivation to offer more money. >> as you point out, 22.9%, that is the unemployment when you take into account the decline in the labor force in the official

unemployment rate. >> yes, in order to count as unemployed, you have to be out of work and actively looking for work and be available for work. if you graduate from high school and you want to find a job and you discover you can't find work, so you go to college, you're not in school. and then you decide, well, i'll go to graduate school, i'll go to law school. they choose to stay in school

longer. if you account for the way the patterns have changed, the unemployment rate is significantly higher and that already very high number. >> did they finish graduate school of loans? than they are looking for jobs at wages lower than they had originally expected. is that correct? >> yes, that is correct. the thing is that being in school looks a lot better on a resume than being unemployed. in some of these cases, people will still benefit.

they are struggling to pay that off with the jobs that are available to them. we know from economic research that those scars can last a lifetime. that can have an impact on how much we earn for years down the line. >> bill is joining us from miami, florida. how long have you been out of work. >> i would say probably for the last four years. how old are you? >> well, i would say that when they said that the future conversation is created, we will

more than likely be creating in spanish. the thing is you cannot find a job unless you speak spanish. you must be bilingual. so why would i need to speak spanish, they say. well, because so many can't find a job, you have to speak spanish, or so they say. i sell hawaiian shirts, vintage ones online. but i enjoyed the conversation

off-line. >> host: there you go, 62 years old, trying to do something on his own. >> we know that it is extremely difficult for people. especially for people who are older and people that are looking for lower skilled jobs and lower education jobs it seems that that predated the recession a housing bubble kind of created, a little bit of a time when things look better. once the housing bubble bursts, we are back where we started. so how we create jobs, for how

we create jobs of the lower level of the economy that is a huge long-term challenge that goes beyond his these immediate challenges we are facing in the economy. >> what effect, if any, would this have on unemployment and or the economy? >> well, there are a lot of economists who are very critical of the way that the stimulus was carried out.

what is really interesting with relatively little pain, the discussion in washington over the last few years, the jobs picture has kind of disappeared from that conversation to some degree. we heard the fed talk a lot about jobs and enact a lot of policies to try to create them. you don't hear a debate now about what real government policies can create for jobs or whether that is a powerful role for government. so even as we have this huge issue, it is sometimes part of the conversation.

>> host: the book is entitled, two americas, we i no longer one mirkin family. we are today divided by power and money and ideology. thank you so much for being with us. >> guest: it is always good to be with you. >> host: how do we get to this point today? >> the problems we're looking at today, this has been going on the last 30 or 40 years. there was a time when the american middle middle-class ensuring the prosperity of the country. when it doubled between 1945 and 1975. dollar for dollar. in the last 30 or 40 years. it has gone up 80% of the average household income.

it has gone up to 10%. at the top, an increase of 600%. people in the middle. by looking at this recession, getting people back to work, that would be a good thing. >> that is the two americas, that is what i am talking about. the question of how does this

have been, that is not just about the latest thing, the latest election. all of these things even. but the problems are much deeper. >> to also point out what the ceos earned compared to what they are earning today. what are these boards doing, providing these multimillion dollar packages to ceos charlie wilson at general motors, others

throughout the country, they all believe in what they called stakeholder capitalism, that is sharing the prosperity and the growth in the process. the owners and shareholders. managers, the executors, the creditors, the banks, the money. they believed it was wrong for ceos to profit on inside knowledge about the stock of the company. what happened since then is the focus of the board and the focus of the ceos. what that means is, we are making the ceo get the highest possible return with the shareholders and owners.

many capital gains go to the top 10% and about 85% go to the others. even other people have 401ks. the median balance is $18,000. you're not getting much return error. so that whole pay, paying the ceo and the executives with stock, giving them stock options. it shocked the top ceo not into just a 1%, but the top 0.1% in america. the top three or 4000 families. that is it. so the change was enormous from the attitude of share the wealth and by the way, it was smart business to share the wealth.

but workers are not being paid enough. people are scared now because of the downturn. they're more careful about their spending. this is in just a matter of what is fair to the middle class, that is important. so the economics we are seeing today, at least by my reporting, and i'm not an economic expert myself, i'm just a reporter, but the evidence is clear. we are pursuing economic policies that make it harder and harder for us to get out of each recession. you can take is 19 and 20 months to get out of this recession. early 2000, 46 months.

forty-eight and 49 months, each time it took us longer and that was a structural problem. it says we should be investing in the future. would it be smart to invest in infrastructure and rebuild the transportation system? well, countries like china have much more modern ports. i have been to china so investment in that kind of thing, investment in education, investment in infrastructure, those are things we've done in the past.

they built the inland waterways in this country. so the economy that we are building are not building, the economic strategy and people are washington are arguing about the market. i'm talking about big fundamentals, if you go back and look at history, this is american capitalism. >> host: for the full hour you can join us. you can send us a tweet or an e-mail. or you can pick up the phone and make a phone call. this is the memo.

eugene scheider is the chair of the u.s. chamber of commerce and in essence, he said this. you write about in your book. there is a wide range of critics that have been ineffective, indeed it is long overdue for the wisdom and the ingenuity to be marshaled against those who would destroy. >> well, it is interesting. she was a supreme court justice in 1972. he wasn't advocate of the enterprise system and a regular flow of the trade unions. what he is talking about is very interesting. prosperity in america, it had its long heyday. dependent on middle-class power.

it was a consumer's movement led by ralph nader. it started about 50 years ago. an environmental movement. it is amazing that happened. 1 million americans on college campuses and shopping malls. demonstrating the waterways in america. this includes seven major environmental votes. clean water, safe water drinking act, and the substances act, all signed by richard nixon, a friend of ceos.

the practical politics were that way. one individual talk to me about it and i said, do you really care about the environment and they said yes, but i never once was asked about it. he said by the way, don't get captured by those bureaucrats. it is just unbelievable. the point was there was this consumer movement, the environmental movement, the labor movement. the middle-class pressure on american corporate leaders. he goes on at some length. it is amazing what happens. with him for five months of that memo, the business roundtable

was established the number of corporations that have offices in washington, from the 175 up to 2075, there are 50,000 people working for business trade associations. so what they did was trickle this revolt and we shifted the power from the middle-class to business interests and financial interests to capture control of the government. and people from wall street going in, secretary of the treasury in the democratic administration. and today, we are talking about

immigration and the tax system and you name the issues, it is a matter the issues. it was obviously enormous. it started with what you said. not because they were so powerful, but because it struck a chord in the message was part of businesses. >> guest: our guest is hedrick smith, the author of "who stole the american dream?." also, the author of the power game and the russians. our phone lines are open. let's share one a portion from the book. they here at a defining moment for america and we cannot allow

our degradation of our democracy continue. we have jerry from des moines. >> caller: good morning. i agree with mr. smith in what he says. or something i have to say, this is when it has a clear understanding of what is going on. i have been unemployed for about a year. but i think that a lot of americans, they understand the reason why the jobs keeping outsource is because they make such little money. and i want to remind anybody of that money is just an idea. it is based on gold, originally, goldie shiny and pretty, but it

is a little bit different. we can solve our problems if we were willing to understand that money is just an idea. if you have to use that as an excuse to be happy that is all. >> okay, michael, very sorry to hear about your story. we're talking about this recently in the last segment that it is hard for people to get back in the job market. but one reason there are so many jobs offshore. but the jobs and the banks and internet jobs. we have a tax system that is a bit crazy companies pay lower tax rates than companies that operate entirely inside the united states.

we have 78 major corporations in america from 2008 until 2010 that made billions of dollars in paid zero taxes. goldman sachs, you name it, some of the biggest in america. investing in research and development if they make their profits they don't pay taxes. they are bleeding money and jobs and taking them overseas. >> the latest unemployment rate is 7.5%. the economy added about 165,000 jobs.

those are the official numbers. >> another eight or 9 million people are working part-time the size of our workforce is growing. people are, you know, they are looking. if they are not actively looking, then the later department doesn't count as unemployed.

so the numbers are considerably higher. >> rick is joining us from fairfax virginia. >> caller: the cbo includes corporate taxation within their populations. the tax increase that we had increased last year we spent $5.6 trillion according to the dea those who are approximately about 2.5 trillion, we had about 8 trillion total in government related costs. now, let's say -- and i believe

this to be the correct number, about 25% of that is wasted. each year we are wasting $2 trillion. you want to increase taxes again on anybody, we already had a tax increase that increased the overall effective program. we should cut the waste. when that be a better idea? remap the idea of cutting waste has been around for 30 or 40 years. everybody is unhappy with the government that wastes. but it rarely ever happens. we set up screaming why. because the weapons

manufacturers in america by the production of this or any kind of weapon system. every state and every congressional district is lobbying members of congress and thing if you can't live, or you may just make them for $400 instead of $600 come in and you're going to lose jobs in your district. and you know, the american tax system today is taking the lowest percentage of taxes if we

have an economy that is growing better, it would support more competitiveness. the american dream, our game has become a documentation. why have you made this the bigger question? >> i think we have to be curious. you have to really want to try to understand.

when you mention moscow, of course, i was part of those peace talks. it is a little ironic i think the result is that we don't get as much stuff today. and i'm thinking that we really need to be working on that as a profession and a craft. you know, people don't understand what is going on.

so connecting the dots is important. what makes that society were? i think that it is my job. the way they work, their mindset, americans can

understand who they are dealing with. yes, we need to go after the bad guys, put them in jail, but we also need to get at the problems underneath that are causing that. >> when you write about the problems, it is part of the political culture. let's just share one of the statements. they dictate all or nothing tactics. it is a sign of the trail, a sign of gridlock. >> welcome a change in our political system, we used to have bipartisan politics that

work in this country. after the deadlines passed, what has happened here is that it is not fully realized. >> we have computer software that can design things how to tell you how you can squeeze out

the maximum numbers so that when the house goes into an election, only about 10% are contested. the press doesn't pay much attention to it. when you have that, the offices and parties give out the moderate voters who don't vote, they don't get to vote. and you get extreme candidates on both sides. they get elected, they to come to washington, and they shout at each other. it is like the warfare in world war i. they obviously have philosophical differences. we have not institutionalized it to the point where we are frozen and paralyzed. we finally said, okay, how do we get to a compromise?

this immigration bill could be a great thing. people are going to say, okay, this is going to have an impact, we haven't been doing that. and it is enormous. but it is reinforcing the divisions and high-quality that we have in gridlock is the status quo. and if you look at the tax cuts that were passed under reagan, it added a chilly in dollars to the wealth over the decade over the top one or 2% and the bush tax cuts, $4 trillion, i give you all of those numbers.

even the wealthy people over the long run and eventually it will come by everybody. so our politics, gridlock is stopping this from happening remark you can get more information about this website. >> caller: the best people i know say that a interest rate should never drop below a certain percentage. because of the percent, lenders

are putting the money out. the problem is that one clinton was elected, the interest rates were lowered from 10.526. when he did that, we have the economy. we are spending a lot of money and 6% and it didn't cover inflation. one of the things you have to understand is that. is that in 1945, it's from japan.

>> host: one is risky nosh, which is what we are talking about, and 50-year-old bonds. is this creating a nosh? in the late 1980s, american homeowners own -- [inaudible] the value shifted from the bank accounts and the wealth of the middle class and homeowners to

the 6 trillion-dollar mark. the $6 trillion is going from the wealth of ordinary families. the mississippi river, those families were up as well. the reason is the economy was not generating growth. but if you got people to bow on their hormones, take out second loans, we are pulling $750 billion out of the housing stock. in consumer demand is what drives the american economy.

they weren't being paid well during the 80s and 90s in particular. that gave the job the american economy. it was a handful of smoke. even with the interest rates you are talking about, they were generating this. we need to talk about this across the board. bank debt is high. we need to pay more attention to the banks and wall street and what they did.

>> caller: we are taking these jobs out of state and shipping them for cheap labor. that is the problem. no one. >> thank you very much.

>> guest: is just the companies. it is tremendous subsidies from places like japan so there is a new computer chip fabrication and china. no american administration,

clinton, bush, obama, they had never said you need to do something that violates the free trade lots. >> isn't that the debt that we owe china? >> there is no question about it. of the most important things that i learned in this book, you don't have to have a trade deficit if you are in an advanced economy. we had a trade deficit and at the same time, germany, with high-tech, advanced, well-educated.

we are not looking at the world to learn from other people it has been getting is deeper and deeper. >> host: if you are just joining us, we welcome you. our guest is the author of the latest book "who stole the american dream?", hedrick smith. one guest said if the american dream was stolen, why all the immigration? we have a guest on the republican line. >> caller: good morning.

hello? >> in volume turn the volume down. go ahead with your question. >> caller: there is not one single person in america that is poor because someone else is wealthy, to respond to your last caller. i design on a mated machinery for a living. one reason productivity is up is because of technology there are ways for automated machinery to be sent. one of the biggest problems we have is not addressed outside of the problem that people are responsible. they want their ipods and phones and they can afford the housing crisis.

>> guest: people are responsible for the same situation. people are looking for work today. 22 million people are looking for jobs today. another 3 million people are left out of the system because they can't find work. they drop out of the system due to this. we have a systemic problem. people have to take care of themselves. you are absolutely right, what you deal is very important.

it is making america more competitive. the productivity in the american were close and trim workforce doubled. that is not a question of technology. that is a question of the decisions being made in american life and that is a result of the laws in congress. that is not technology that is not something about enforcement. that is a human decision. technology and the average workers, the savings being made within that society, they had other decisions in that society. it's very interesting. the big german trade union, we can either have high unemployment, there are millions

of people out of work, or we can do it they call a shorter week. everybody can take part of this. we can share the pain, and that way we won't have a lot of people not being able to pay for their health care. and the economy in the tank. the human decisions and are responsible for a lot of the problems we have today, we can do something about that. >> host: they're talking about

middle-class people, slipping backward late in life. can you answer that question? >> guest: i have been in southeastern ohio a dozen years ago. at the time they were working and they came out of high school in 1971. they had been working there for 35 years. this was the last caller suggested they should do. they are making $5,060,000 per year. the plant closed down and global competition took place.

we did get some training for a while. we try to get jobs, the economy was going through a tailspin. even with new training and skills, [inaudible] if his wife was working, i haven't talked to her senses sequester took place, but if it weren't for them, they would be absolutely under. this is a guy who had a solid, conscientious middle-class life, they own their own homes, and so there is some security there. but i can't afford to retire.

his wife was unemployed for a couple of years, very interesting comment that she made. she said, you know, the best thing about this, it is very terrible to be unemployed. if you work all your life you feel useless. the psychological toll is bad if not worse than the financial toll. those of us who are fortunate to have steady work and to do well and to make a household income of $75,000 or $125,000 and up, you don't realize what it's like for people to live through these kind of experiences.

it isn't just the people at the bottom. it isn't just people who honor winner, it's people that are hard-working, conscientious, and now they are stuck. it isn't their fault. the economy is in there. it is very difficult to do, they are hoping to get social security someday. we are not facing the situation and the way the experts tell us. part of our problem is people are living mess. the average life span up to that in 17 years. now, that is how the people in

america. they are going to live on social security. >> host: the average 401k is about $18,000? >> guest: if your income is $50,000 from you need at least 500 and $6000 to make it to meet your basic financial need. >> the infrastructure of the future is broadband. she says we are falling behind. join us on the phone, hedrick smith, author of the book "who stole the american dream?." good morning. >> thank you for taking my call.

i graduated college with an engineering degree into the post-9/11 world. before this, i was literally packing and backing dog food and stacking it. since that time, i have had a different jobs. >> host: are you still with us? >> caller: sorry, i have bounced around the country. it hasn't been engineering work. to hear the president talking about the need for more needs, that is a slap in the face, if you have the opportunity, they

want three to five years of experience. you know, it is not there to be had. i have sacrificed a lot. and i have been doing the diligent pain. in pursuing this dream. and it is just out of reach. >> guest: it is a terrible story, people are trying to get a college education. we are losing them. people are coming from other countries to this country. be very careful. it will have an expansion. this allows them, to import college educated workers mainly from india but also from the

philippines. the department of homeland security, roughly a million people in america with college degrees like yours are now working in american jobs is against the law, but the laws not very well enforced so there will be more working in those jobs. those jobs are of moderate skill. you should let us bring those people with advanced college baccalaureate degrees and a bachelor of science degrees. people like you with an american degree, the only reason for that is that companies want to pay lower pay. it is cheaper.

in the meantime, there are jobs that americans can have and should have. but not a lot of people have the skills. washington is powerful. they say jobs and growth and opportunities are what we want. the same way they were organized in the 60s and 70s,

representing high wages for women, it is going to continue to be part of this i have gone back and looked at the record. >> guest: your guest is hedrick smith. author of "who stole the american dream?." i would like to direct people to your website.

number one, infrastructure jobs, number two, push innovation in science and high-tech research. number three, generate and manufacture renaissance. number four, make the u.s. tax code fairer. corporate tax codes to promote jobs. and living up to fair trade. number seven, saving on war and weapons, number eight, protecting the safety net. number nine, rebuilding the political center. number 10 is mobilizing middle-class. >> thank you for taking my call. something has been wrong for years, and now you have figured this out. the labeling, or trying to step back. i do feel for the baby boomer

generation. i think the wake-up times are ahead. i think you for caring about them as well. but one huge concern i have with the government is that lobbyists, to me, our taxation without representation. ..

i don't think this is a partisan problem. i think that the moment, the tea party people in the house republicans, who by the way most are millionaires, ordinary folks like everybody else is wrong. the people elected to the tea party to search in 2010 are millionaires. by the way, 49% of the members of congress are millionaires, which is why congress is not in tandem with the country as a whole. but i don't if this is fundamentally a partisan problem. they fight against each other and can't get anything done. we've got a structural problem here in both parties need to do with it. i am utterly amazed we've been talking about on programs like yours and washington in general since the election.

i keep wondering whether the election of 12 compared to 1912 or 18 told because the agenda at the election is held in the middle class and growth in the economy and that is not what we been talking about. we are not even close to me. this is where we need to get the politicians and policymakers, whether they're in washington or sacramento or indianapolis engaged in focusing on how to build jobs behind and make america market that it is. as a whole bunch of things family to business and this is only my agenda. i am a reporter. i just looked at the number of hideous people have it seemed sensible in terms of the problems i've seen of the country. >> host: big u.s. tax code fairer. corporate tax code should be designed to create jobs. when they get very little on the phone from lebanon, tennessee. good morning.

>> host: when i taught about as higher and lower reach people, it happened to notch his another country. not only that, financial institutions are going to profit from all of this, to because when a lot of people can't get jobs, their credit is destroyed. when they finally find jobs, they need to go i think it is line or something like that. what are these faces going to do? been a priest in the interest rate on an because their credit is no good. not only that, these businesses that go and check the credit euro for credit history, every time somebody goes to check their credit, your score goes down and that is not fair to the

people. >> guest: this is a terrible problem. the banks have learned they can make more money on people with bad credit records. it used to be that banks in london people with bad credit records. smart thinking, sensible baking. if that name discovered in the 80s and 90s they could make much higher profit if they would want to people with bad credit records because those people never got out of debt. they were always paid the minimum. they're always pay the penalties and the high fees. people who pay off their credit though totally every month, it's nice for the banks to get paid, but they want you not to pay it off so the banking system is turned around. they want to keep you in debt. it was banks and credit card companies for sending out

multibillion dollars worth of offers to open credit card accounts because they wanted people to go into that in the way the banking system, and with the housing markets is the marks that turned upside down. i didn't understand so i started doing the research. people discovered with more profit with the age-old way and people inside the banks. he said this is crazy. were going to get caught, washington mutual bank. eventually voted. this guy was in charge of the credit safety for the bank. good morning to people who are going to pay back. were going to get stuck in this. are making more money now, this is the way we go. by the way up there about and months, will sell them to wall street. will make the profit on the front nine. as a whole system that turned around and this woman is straight, talking about a problem designed to keep people

like that in debt. >> host: let me conclude where you begin those books. he must make our choice. we may have wealth in a few but we cannot have both. >> host: that is almost worth reading again because that's where we are. another quote and i really goes to heart out what bothers me. i am worried about our country. this isn't just about me. it scared me a lot more than anything i was reading about the recession. there's a quote in there from john gardner two pages further. that's it right there. civilizations that disenchantment. if enough people this state, the whole venture falls apart. i got into history. the great british historian studied 21 civilization talks

about how civilizations get in trouble when they have schism in the soul the society, schisms and the politics of a divided country. lincoln warned us house divided unless we come together and start to heal, start a can of ourselves as again, start pulling together a caring about something beyond their own short-term profit. we are in deep, deep trouble as a country. >> host: the author of the power gain and the russians come his way this book, "who stole the american dream?." pulitzer prize-winning author, hedrick smith. >> guest: steve, thank you. appreciate the opportunity.

>> my dads friend who is in the video is actually unemployed and going through the process of unemployment and everything at the time, so i thought it would be a good subject to follow. so i kind of followed his life. >> at the time i had introduction to flout court and was learning there is a doubles entered for those under 18 of those over. so i was sent to children's rights if he will. i realize, we don't have a say in the creation of the debt, but we have to pay it off. >> occurs to me originally picked her topic, our

infrastructure and growing it for public transportation in this country. so knowledge and austin weren't very -- how can i say it, excited about the topic. after i explain it to them, they kind of con on. while researching common knowledge decided we should have high speed rail in front of the segments as well as the is very to the topic in our country as well. >> mrs. grant is also interesting. you know, they had this extraordinary role of government exists then. for most of their lives, was regarded as an object failure and able to provide his own family. and almost no time at all,

suddenly he was the most popular man in the country come the man who saved the union on the battlefield and president of the united states. >> julia loved her time in the white house. she said in her memoirs, it was like a braid in beautiful dream. quite the most wonderful time of my life. that gives you some idea of how much he enjoyed being first lady and how she felt that her husband had finally achieved the recognition he deserved. >> a recent conference at columbia university school of journalism and what the coverage of the sandy hook elementary school are reading in the

marathon bombings at this panel focused on how news and rumors disseminated in social media in the aftermath. this is an hour. >> hi, everyone. welcome back to the afternoon session where were going to be talking about a social media and we have a great deal to discuss, not just about the sandy hook incident, but also subsequently last week we had a number of lessons that were probably being discussed as well. joining me today i'm delighted to say is trained for who it is a senior strategist from npr. he has lost the written media

from its title which is a picture because when that goes away, it is no longer am not sure to what you do. essential to the operation. the author of the buck about his experiences of aggregating and treating the arab spring, where he established a protocol to use the real-time social web for a more conversational linked approach to news verification and reporting. on my immediate left is shipped in may, principal of newtown high school. ship was one of the most consistent and calm presence on social media throughout india. i know many people not just in the community, but journalists and other people outside newtown

knew him as a source. and i wanted to start with you. and again, just going back to that day because you had already established yourself as an educator who uses technology. you have presence already in social media. he used it to communicate with your students and the wider community. get on that day, you became somebody who's known within a small community someone his identifiable to a much wider community. can you talk us through what happened on that day and where you were and what you are doing and what happened at yours cool? >> on the 14th i was not in the district. i was not say a professional development seminar and received a phone call from school that

there had been an incident at sandy hook. server returning to the school arrived at newtown high school as were all the other schools in the district. so we have lockdown drills. they usually don't last very long. this is not a drill and is last in a considerable time. so as far as information coming out, we didn't do any treaty and at that time or send anything out. at least the administration did not. as much as we try to keep the flow of information at a minimum during the lockdown because it doesn't contribute to much positive and that happens. that kind of stuff leaks out as well as leaks in. so people know building were receiving information from the outside and there was that much people in my could say other

than they were in lockdown. the first message greeted and out with this sense of newtown high schoolers date. >> what time was that? >> wire to the end of the school day. i guess somewhere between 11:00 and 12:00. >> braid. you have information linking in making out. you are very measured press and an anthology or twitter feed. somebody who gave out information. lots of other public officials may have had a presence on the social media, quite understandable reasons disappeared. did you suddenly find your inundated with questions people identify not anything this? >> there are lots of questions. i think our role as far as

communicating was one of reassuring the community and the families much more than delivering information. we weren't at sandy hook. we were more concerned with how we were going to demonstrate to the world that we were strong and resilient. so during that time, if you go back and read them, were thank you because as much as it was import for our healing, and about like this affects the world. one of the challenges we've had even at the high school is how do we help? tickets at the high school or very can earn about how they. they wanted to, just as much as the yankees wanted to help sandy hook, every kid in high school wanted to help sandy hook. those things are difficult

because sandy hook is inundated with people who want to help, even within the community. so we received lots and lots of support from around the world we wanted people to recognize the hurt them and appreciated. >> was there a point at which you thought you had gone from being somebody who is just -- not just, bigger principle looking off to the small community. did you feel any of the pressure we were hearing about -- we personally followed ensued by the press in the same way this morning? >> i'm sure pack up far more attention than i did. i responsibility was to protect the kids from the media. the fans at runtime or parked across the street from the high

school for days and as respectful as they were at the school grounds and not been on school grounds, traffic at newtown high school is just like traffic at every other high school. when traffic was backed up, reporters at approach cars come as administrators and the police to try to help kids get into school without having to do that. i think at that point, most of our communication was to help with the healing. >> how did you deal with high schools in his? did you say they were source material for the press as well? they are notoriously familiar with expressing themselves as social media, maybe a little too frequent week? they're obviously going to talk about the incident. did you talk to them about that and how the communications might

be perceived and how to handle the press? >> students were fantastic. the students continue to be fantastic. the staff really were the ones we address the media issue so they can communicate on a one-on-one basis with student. very few issues arose other than being approached at home are being approached as they left school. those are the major issues. other than not, the students were so deeply hurt that they understood very clearly what would be helpful for them to talk about and what would not be helpful to talk about. >> you're talking about strength and yet powerful support throughout. how did you maintain the right emotional balance intones?

you are remarkably measured throughout all this, which must've been extremely difficult because he knew the staff and some of the big guns and was, very close to your community. >> people in schools care very much about kids. that is something we always talk about it i'll think of things that kids and families always say to the degree that it really takes place. this was an opportunity to let families know the school cared very much about their kids. hudson coaching, you know, during these types of events, it is important to get out and perspectives on what's going on. it's not something there is a planned book for her. navigating the situation means talking with people who are well-versed in trauma and this type of situation.

dr. john woodall is a resource that values personally and professionally to these situations. >> what advice would you give to others who would be your situation where principals who are not thinking about how do you communicate more broadly within and outside school because i hope nobody else is put in your position, but they might be. >> we were very lucky the structures were in place ahead of time. this could not be developed on spur of the moment. as far as establishing a blog that even if students don't go there for information, a parent go for information regularly at the school. soa sent home in addition to automated phone calls and twitter, but have a nice structure of éclairs system of

communication and pieces of communication that overlaps. we didn't do any one form of communication. the calls were repeated with the blog, repeatedly twitter so the message assert to get there. >> it's maybe a beside the point question, but we were curious what your policy is about phones in school. are they banned? today used them when they shouldn't? >> i don't think it's so much a question of whether they have been. it's a question of when to use the phone and how to use the phones. so we encourage the teachers to find ways to take advantage of students at ologies. the times that i will take away phones is when students lacking to me in the hallways as they are doing that.

but we care about students safe in rocky mount stairwells using the phone is not a good idea, but to share information ascent they were promoting. >> were now approaching kind of six-month the incident. is it something which because you're so public and still open about your work in what you're doing, do you find are frequently contacted by people still to talk about sandy hook possessors of information. >> we still get contacted as a school and as i was saying earlier to somebody, the key for us in terms of interaction during this event was we were more than welcome to speak with anybody who is as concerned about our healing as we were. if there was some that would

facilitate students and staff in the community, we were glad to do it. >> i want to go to you now. your words are really hailed a recognize throughout the arabs sprang a somebody who got a new technique to journalists. there are so during sandy hook are your also tweaking regularly throughout the day, he attracted a certain amount of criticism. wrote a column about you or the guardian, saying that he was spreading too much false information asking for verification. european overemotional comment saturday. looking back now, can you tell me again a little about their day in what you are doing and how you are thinking through that process and maybe talk at

the end of that about some of the pushback you've got from other journalists in the community. >> sometime around 10:00 a.m. that day i receive tweets from random people that follow me, asking if i heard a shooting at the school. they were getting reports of it. so that when i'm twitter and you can do a search around a particular geographic area, they started monitoring the traffic and one of the first thing i saw were twitter accounts from first responders. some official comes dumpers told her she didn't see them and they didn't have the details. as time went by a started seeing trees and family members and students in lockdown trying to figure out what was going on. as they begin to capture those come you started seeing

television networks picking them out. local level to nationally and internationally. i basically began maundering as many as possible at the same time being part of a core group of people, focusing solely on the event that day. we essentially had e-mail they could confirm or could not confirm come we shared with each other as quickly as possible so we know what to keep close and also share what we felt confident about. so i spent the day pricing information from the outside to get a better understanding of the. my twitter account is different from a typical newsletter account in the sense it doesn't service a newsletter. i work with twitter followers to collect information from a variety of sources and hash out what happened like a newsroom

was. i've got about 90,000 twitter followers and during the arab spring they were able to translate content from every arabic dialect in the region. they would track shipping lancing flavors and identify weapons and munitions, put together background materials on the political leaders, protesters said the lake. so i have an army of people who followed me and volunteer to do research roles. so i began asking people to do the same based on what we were hearing. one of the things they did was that i heard other news organizations make certain claims such as a second shooter or a purple van somehow involved, i cited a news organization and ask followers that they'd seen any other news organization offering independent confirmation. sometimes they would say yes. we know that strew.

by the southern is other news organizations speculated, but we see nothing else. so we would hash that out in a sickly but so we did all day. in the case of michael wolff and they can count on one hand the journalists over the next 24 hours about what it is doing. their argument as i was using social media to propagate rumors, whereas if you look at my tweets, each one that contained questionable information was in the context of so-and-so is claiming this. what do we know, how has it been sourced and how we put this to rest or figure it out? of course there's times if a person drops into a twitter stream or a biased news broadcast for one or two minutes, they may not get the full context, but my twitter followers follow me for a specific reason because they try to use techniques to work with

and and they know i'm not just some random twitter account. >> is that the case to say we've seen in the past week as well the act of asking for verification inadvertently push incorrect information a little further for his son say do not tweet it unless he reported. >> news organizations are being naïve as to how much of her mission is propagated. last week in austin tracy jan, there were hundreds of thousands of people who are simultaneous listeners to the traffic intent of thousands were posting face the and twitter and most news organizations generally ignored it. what was discussed was about 15 minutes to sometimes 30 minutes ahead of the news organizations in terms of getting this writing getting a strong. whenever i see a bit of buckling

up of information is clearly brimmer, people don't necessarily know what they're talking about, but it's spreading like wildfire. it's my responsibility to say hang on a second. what is your source? pretournament journalistic jargon is that the way you think we talk? or jihads is confirmed by talking to multiple independent sources? news organizations operate in a world where we used to be the sole arbiters of information peony breaking news story would have been, we sort through the rumors, the facts. remiss to the floor and the public would be none the wiser. the social media today, the public is completely aware of rumors and reports and play a better rule is spreading them for better go. we can pretend it's not going on or acknowledge and try to chime in with them and say you may want to pull back on this or that sparse one because we hear

the same thing. there needs to be a new role in journalism where certain staff during breaking news know what's going on in the newsroom. they know people are discussing online and may serve as a facilitator and whatever appropriate way. >> you mentioned the police scanner. how much has changed even in the six months between sandia and boston because this is something we were discussing previously to the panel, where you said there was a quantity of different now. >> i think that sandy had happened, plenty people are aware how to access scanner traffic online. i'd still say it was essentially the daily wicked peaks. as a core group of people interested in the scanner

traffic. dispute logicism following live streams. they promulgated because we were discussing scanner traffic that day and had to deal with the rumors spread that way. compare that to last week, were very, very quickly the first day people started spreading their major social mathworks is on facebook and twitter or define access to scanners. whether specifically by stan for cpd, whichever one it was, does that out quickly. at the time we reached friday, literally hundreds of thousands were listening to so many there had to be volunteers which emulated the idea of inmates in available elsewhere because some sites couldn't handle the traffic. the public is getting a much stronger sense of the possibilities of how to monitor

official channels in real-time. the challenges just because it's official they don't necessarily know what is true and what's not and they don't know whose voices are talking in the codes being is. they don't always realize there's tactical channels the new scum or the most information is going back and forth and they don't want that aired publicly. so again, the situation where they almost must know a little too much for their own good and so they realize it's there. they try to utilize it. they share with friends, but don't always understand the implications of what they are sharing. why are more of us playing a role in helping them parse that? >> everybody we've heard from from the newtown community today is top of the singularity focus

looking after people within the community, protecting them. how aware were you of how the story was being reported as it was unfolding? where are you getting your sources of the donation what did you at any point look at the social media traffic in the news coverage of the day? >> i didn't see the news for the week probably. >> so you have no sense of whether the schools -- what about the students? did you have a sense of where they get their information from or how they were being affect did i have a story was reported? >> not so much. i think again they were in a real serious state of shock and some of them were probably for

very good reasons for avoiding. >> just talking about the problem of the speed and the distance that incorrect information now reaches, we've heard this morning reporters on the other side of the world bring out reporters and newtown and asking for them to verify her concern is completely wild. tell us about that dynamic and again it's our job to intervene in influence it. how can we do something which positively affects the speed of the spread of that information. >> social media combined with 24 hour news is created with telefon run amok. people pass along information. even that may start his

information meta-tannic is through, there's the possibility of won't be in any context. unfortunately, some bad actors who purposely take information and spread it just to see how far they can get it to spread. people have no shame in situations like this. what is interesting is comparing wiki news versus a situation like sandy hook or by and for that honor, the chatter is very different because in the case of the middle east come you have a smaller number of people who are eyewitnesses and that's getting passed along through literally a larger geographic area. the average person in america doesn't know that much about egypt whereby rain or what other, so there's more listening going on then ask enough questions, whereas when you have a situation in your backyard and even if you're a couple states

away, everyone is talking to everyone immediately. do you know anyone there? are they okay? the chatter explodes because people have much more in the best interest. ultimately, the u.s. is made -- a community small communities in the same way fewer stories that of boston, so many people make of it is. i have friends and colleagues who were there needs of the dam are one of the suspects. his fastball in the town even i were talking about a metropolitan area of a million people. so information and connections have been very, very quickly. someone explain real-time much closer, the scale of that chatter is bigger, broader and much more intense and makes it all the harder to sort through.

>> advancement in states like sandy hook out and, with a slightly different responsibility, that actually being quiet rather than noisy is a better response. >> well, for a while now, like many people i've had mike turns with the 24 hour news cycle. you don't allow dead air on television during breaking news. it's just not acceptable as a people keep talking and talking and sometimes allows mistakes to be a major information shared possibly faster than it should. we saw examples of past week, especially wednesday with numerous news organizations reporting suspects were in custody. that was the furthest thing from the truth. so it's a difficult dynamic because even if you set aside television news, online news,

for print papers, people as part of their jobs use twitter and facebook for reporting. thanks be to faster and faster than ever before. i like to argue in certain cases, if you are able to get followers in social media to get used to it, you can exercise the right to slow down. so there were times during sandy hook as was the past week in boston where twitter followers were e-mailing some particular question. rather than me blathering every single thing i knew, i would say let me get back to you and i would go silent for a while. a while. i would check sources and go turn on the local affiliates and see what they were reporting. if there is something reported differently by two different news organizations, rather than stick with one because they

seemed more credible, i would share both in and ask my twitter followers to debate how these resource and why. by creating situations where you can scrutinize things and so thanks to a certain extent because no one says social media has to be fast. they made a habit of it being fast and wants to breaking news first happened, even while it's taking place we could pull back a little bit because the difference between tweaking something in five seconds and 50 seconds for five minutes can be a huge difference. >> it's not something you put into it yourself. you moderate your own behavior. >> someone asked me how much stuff i were sharing that day. if that i'm holding back 75% of what i hear because there's too much noise. too many things seem strange like for example anything about the face page that turned out to be the brother's page.

it seemed too easy at that point and also the fact he wasn't in a specific location in new jersey. i just thought, let's see if we can contact someone or find someone who knows him. meanwhile the news organizations went with it. it appeared on facebook, twitter and elsewhere and not long after you started to see outlets having to retract because the brother posted a message finally. he went public and said stop harassing me. i'm not there. that was one of the most egregious stakes -- mistakes that day because not only was he finding out his mother was dead, brothers said, the brother was likely responsible for the atrocity and now people are pointing fingers him. i can only imagine what that felt like. the closest thing you compare it to is the north african boys who appeared on the cover of the

post a few days ago because users with a collection of photos from the scene of boston and parse it out based on that tax, looking in other directions. they happen to have brown skin. >> this raises the question, which i think started this seemed a hook and became clear during boston that we hadn't found an adequate answer to it, which is how does one influence those communities of people who may think they are doing the right thing are actually doing a culpable damage by ms. identification of individuals is absolutely key to that. >> more people involved in the news business have to take a greater stake in these communities than themselves. i feel personally responsible on twitter because that is a community where a group of

followers join me in a pulpit and in all sorts of ways. it could've easily been faced back or google or something else. that happens to be the one that worked for me. for example: the folks for diving in headfirst, they were using interesting tech geeks to examine these photos. it shows the lack a lot of the contacts and certain people were willing to share it without reminding people we don't know anything about these folks and we need to assume they are innocent until proven guilty. i think there's something to be said about having people who do work like me in more communities, paying closer attention. by the time i found out what was going on, it is today, irony already out there. they dirty down all of this work. i wish i could've spent the time earlier on that space. i can't be everywhere at once. so i think they do need to be

more people in my position or react as journalists, but also iciness resident and members of communities and can develop credibility. if we raise their hands and say hang on a sec, folks, enough will take it seriously at the path for a moment. >> what advice would you give because you are somebody who says i'm not a journalist. i started off as an activist and now you work for journalist organizations. what advice would you give for people in the communities, let's say someone who did a very public, but very measured job. you are now a source at the center of the story in your identifiable through public office. a god, what is the role of somebody in that position if they themselves are a publisher

now? >> is it important for public officials and others who are potential in the spotlight for whatever reason they go beyond the usual journalistic hombres of who they get to know in the business. the first example is bloggers covering local community news stories and the like. they may be fakes in the community. you don't necessarily have to become the next you're. and colic should be aware they are out there in developing and developed a relationship in the same way organizations need to do a better job of cultivating sources and communities elsewhere. i've been able to cover a number of stories because before he came to npr, usage of online

work, bringing together volunteers to natural disasters such as the synonymy and hurricane katrina. i had a network of first response there's at the national level who knew i was. when twitter came along, i certified in who their friends were at the state and local level. it's not unusual for one to alert me to say this is going on here. tell your local npr affiliates or whatever. the world was a bigger place in a smaller place than ever before and we have these niche communities online that may not seem relevant right now, but they're extremely relevant members of your community because that's where they're going to talk about your community. the more time to invest in getting to know, the better off you are in terms of getting the right information out there and mobilizing as volunteers said they can help you rather than be it. >> i want to ask both of you in

terms of emotional response and social media. you very much where your heart in your sleep when you're treating. >> when it's appropriate. i don't always. i travel a lot for work and i was the first i've been able to go to school and walk in the door and dropped him off. my daughters in elementary school and she was six. i felt like qaeda reaction that day the same way i did to boston because i am from boston. they used to walk two blocks to the marathon line at the 23rd mile marker to cheer everyone on. i'm not going to hype that. that doesn't necessarily mean it will diving and start saying, isn't it time for congress to do this or that or why haven't we invaded this particular country to stop that dictator? i feel like without getting

involved with the politics and many journalists think if you can't do when you can't do the other. i'm not saying you have to be sitting there and shrieking and having all the histrionics of things are going on because you can't function. acknowledging this is a stressful and upsetting situation, when you reported your social media, that makes you human. if you start behaving like a robot using social media, that some people get skeptical. >> what about you? how do you feel about emotional responses online? >> i think part of our job in communicating does not necessarily have to do with the news. there are a couple reasons for doing it. the primary reason is so parents and community members feel comfortable knowing they are taking care of their kids.

a big part of the message is in the town and a big part of the messages in the delivery. when we talk about the time, as ms. lowe drew aside, new town doesn't have who does them indications, nor does the high school. the challenge is to get information out quickly, but at the same time doing the work. so we try hard to make sure the message communicates as much in town as it does in the words. >> do you think you are usual in high use communications? i looked at the school are retrospectively and you seem to be quite advanced in terms of techniques you're deploying and how comes you either. >> i do think there may be a difference in the media or the type knowledge it, but there is not a difference in the level of

caring on the level of communication. >> i want to take a couple questions -- several questions from the floor. one question here which is come through twitter. you say its journalists have a job to get involved with ac information proliferated in stopping it. somebody would like to know how you did that dealing with this quite opinionated communities. as you say, spreads like wildfire. is there a way of doing not in developing young nerds for verifying or not verifying information. >> it would be tough if you're not respected within that community. if i said a drop twitter and say hang on, folks. i don't know if i could've got enough attention because there's not enough quantity they are. some people know me, but it's not my name and i think that's

part of the problem, whereas there's enough people on twitter that if i said it received reports, they take cause and spread treats around quickly because they know that's one of the roles i play there. the challenge is with twitter it's kind of an ecosystem of everything. everything you see in real life is perfect and some aren't twitter, whereas a very specific communication with norms and mores and may treat outsiders in ways that are welcoming, at least in from the perspective of outsiders. so it can be harder to go when i'm put in a more measured journalistic response. having said that, it's possible. i've been tempted by the idea of creating a set community that's

basically where npr staff accountable to talk about raking news. as part of that to tell them when they're doing a good job in doing some very good is not injurious. and so, it depends on the community. >> is a hard question to ask about sandy hook because there was a more detailed discussion about boston, but some journalists raised that make it very hard question of the course is going to be misinformation early in this worry and you talked about was there a second shooter, someone has been arrested and they haven't been arrested. this identification. doesn't really matter? ultimately it's a terrible, terrible tragedy. this 26 people dead yet that doesn't change.

the rest of the speculation ultimately will go away. what is the real damage done when you have people are running amok on social media? >> well, one of the clear examples of that would be last wednesday with reports that went on for some time that suspects were in custody. even though people were staying closer to home at that point, it was in lockdown the same when it was on friday. concrete is something that happened during those hours were news organizations are reporting suspects had been captured and people went out and something had happened. of course this is all hypothetical and thankfully we haven't seen a situation where social media has caused -- as the people's lives in danger. you could argue in smaller cases they pass. one of the moroccan boys who was

on the cover of the post and circulated on read it in twitter before that by saying he was afraid to go to school. his parents or read someone will show up and shoot them. even if it's clear he didn't do it, some person who doesn't like arabs for north africa and may take them out because they are aware. there are consequences, but the consequences about all of us getting it wrong. it didn't happen because social media said it was wrong. a feedback loop was created between media and social media world with information is bubbling to the top of nasa would need to figure out how to avoid. >> i want to go to the idea to take questions. we have the mics if you have hands up in the air. look over here first. >> hi, mike patrick from

waterbury, connecticut. true, but i also urge you we are the conservatives as well and it's traditionally been idealistically than rumor, heard such and such is true. can you confirm that? little bit and that is a positive or negative thing to say that? >> what is different now if you think about the word media, what does that mean? middle. the information is on one side. this is for the event happen and murmurs are all tossed around.

the public is somewhere over here and it is our job to parse the returned sorted out and make sure whatever the public perceives is the best representation possible what happened to be more informed because of it. i think that's an ideal journalism that's been around. the reality is now anyone who's on the public side and we ran around me feel like it because people over here observed the event. they've got their camera phones out, talking among themselves. so there are times when i worry the media feels like it's talking to itself, while the internet is doing its own thing. so i think -- i think we can see ourselves as custodians of truth and trying to get the most accurate narrative possible. at the same time, it's a missed opportunity if we ignore the chatter taking place because not everyone will see reporting for

the final version of the story. if you look at you see research on people's literacies and news topics,, whatever, it can be extremely dismal at times. they can't get worse because people think they know what they are talking about. some of them do, some of them don't. while we are continuing to do that one aspect of our job that's always been there, there is this evolving role. npr's mission says to create a more firm public. i think that's actually dissing from informing people because it is giving them the tools they need to be more informed were better informed or better citizens in the process. i think if we try to take a more traditional approach of what it needs to be a journalist, were missing opportunities to civil

society. >> question over there. >> hi, ilia merits from nyc radio station here in new york city. my question is for you. i'm really intrigued you are such an active presence on twitter, but i'm curious because twitter has the effect of leveling the playing field, making everyone equal regardless of how many followers each party may have. do you have conversations with students on your twitter feed? if so, what is that like? how do you determine the tone and particularly around the time of sandy hook, we talking astuteness that way as well as in the halls and school? >> you said something interesting when you're talking about different levels, whether it be community member or principal or parent or student.

during a tragedy like this, all of those things dissolve and everybody is on the same level. so everybody heard the same and everybody needed to get the same message. i communicate with students whenever they are willing to admit to the road on twitter that they are talking to their principal. >> at talking to your principal is like talking to your mom on twitter, not some vague you want to be seen doing. i won't friend you on facebook. i feel there's another question of a share, maybe not. start at the back of not come just said, where do you see the

medium-term -- what do you see as the medium term future. is it over social media mainly an idc is shaking out? ..

as. >> one and people unfortunately presume it is generational and i have dealt with in turn set npr that are very much social media when it comes to journalism and some have retired because they're so good at it but the difference is the ones who really get social media are the ones you know, and be

good listeners in public. not everyone is comfortable with that. it is not a natural part of the way journalism has worked in the past. medium term, we will figure that out how do we find the right people who have that level of comfort and confidence with the journalistic chops that they can add to the quality of our reporting with. >> aryan the business manager. we represent most of the broadcast television in unions in new england. we have a lot of people going crazy in boston. i am curious, your opinion to the new phase of

journalism, it feels like the wild west all over again. they don't know how to continue the business model because there is no real business model on the internet. and reporters are getting jumped by the public in the media fights it out. what you see as a future mix how journalism will survive as opposed to the novice people getting this story because every time? >> given new the pitcher answer i would take a venture capitalist out for a ginger -- dinner to work on something. is not that journalism is dying it is the business model the platform is evolving. we have not figured out how

to sustain ourselves and thrive given those changes. honestly, i don't know how. coming from public radio, we had 40 years of experience to be part of our community to the point* people feel comfortable donating to the member station. we would not exist without the number stations upwards of 4 million people. it is a model that works for us but the same time at npr we rely on a certain amount of sponsorship and online sponsorship that we call advertising but it is done differently. it is not. everyone is figuring out what type of new business ventures, partnerships, a nonprofit journalism more entrepreneurial journalism this is not my area of

expertise. so journalists are notoriously bad at business. so i think that will leave my predictions that that. but no matter where the business models go more people will be online than ever before more information can be tracked and less information is private and this will all be out there with the matrix that some of us will know how to process for good or evil. >> but with the strategic aspect talking to the public that is not always the case but but even for public officials we can change this as well we see public officials presenting

themselves and of course, the best way to do that? >> especially for politicians cory booker is an example how to use social media and is comfortable with twitter and has a following on twitter i'd like any other local politician i have never seen before. that does not necessarily mean they will go under to create a twitter account but in his case is it matches his pat -- personality very well. whether this officials or staff for a combination they have to figure out who was most comfortable informal conversations. and being part of a level playing field. some people are better than others. >> one of the things that is very striking about the

events that have been now that his project to a striking the least dramatic event is that so much of what was happening at the time is left there. there is an archive that is immediately accessible with everything going on that day and as well as a newspaper clipping. to go back and review with the archives as well and is grieving but also wanting to move on and not be a defining part to and what is the effect of that? >> i think not so much to read the archives but i tried to remember it will be

in the archives everytime write something. >> one thing i am amazed to go back and look at the archive to grab social materials to create a story is i am amazed how much i did not remember the way i thought i did. even was twitter online there is a fog of war that happens is breaking news when the adrenaline is rushing and people are hurt all of around you and i think it is quite important minor and major stories it is healthy to go back and review what you said and what you didn't say. for example, on the day of sandy hook i knew people would not be happy so the first thing i did was take a copy very thing i treated on

day to publish on line as a batch 71 wanted to scrutinize there have to point* exactly to what i did right or wrong. on the one hand i a did it to steel myself from the criticism but i knew there will be things i could have handled a lot better in reading through it i could see the mistakes and that is something we should be more comfortable doing. >> you basically said the same thing can think about where you are doing because it will be viewed in retrospect to see how you might improve for change that. >> always reflected my you have done and the fact you have a paper trail makes the reflection much easier. >> may be just a couple other questions? >> i was wondering.

>> i am a reporter for the baltimore sun. have you used facebook to try and prevent attacks like the one that took place? i covered in incident in my a jurisdiction where the shooter actually posted on facebook page he would do it the morning before and i just wonder if you thought about trying to use social media as a way to get information more quickly or to get other students to tell you things they might be afraid to walk into your office to tell you but who would be willing to sheriff social media? >> the last part was the most important. with a new town there are a

lot of questions about safe schools and whether or not we should have armed guards and was a viscose are the climates where people speak up so creating avenues for students to be able to communicate with the school is the most important thing regardless of corer twitter or the message box in the main office. >> if you like that brodeur idea of awareness, not only for the principle of newtown but that type of dialogue where the trouble begi begins, and those who should be paying attention. >> schools need to focus on

two things. building relationships and resiliency in young people. if we do that, we are far more likely to prevent anything like this from happening. >> we're slightly over time. i want to thank you very much. it was a great discussion with a lot of issues raised their. just before we finished i do want to ask, is their hope in the system that these things are getting better because of rebates is collectively learning from each other? we hear bad things happen with the coverage of sandy hook and that things are happening here. are they getting worse?

>> this situation is a solid kyle. some things that happened the journalistically last week are low points, a significant blow points in recent years by get beyond that generally speaking a lot of the work that happened as long as we're willing to reflect rather than simply seiche social media edge journalism is good or bad that we are in a more constructive and thoughtful way that this was a good idea but it was a terrible idea and let's not do it that way again. unfortunately there are ideologues that are involved in social media and cultural wars whereas if we could be more nuanced then maybe we can improve these things over time. >> thank you very much.

we will of reconvene after a 50 minute break finley will be back for the 3:00 session. thank you very much. [applause] >> we believe in opening the gates of our memories will bring us closer to gather to the realization of what a human being or individual can do and for those whose save lives of the christians who saved lives by risking

their own. everyone of them is a hero. >> on the 20th anniversary i ask you to recommit to replace the direct memories of those who are still with us thank god. with the records of this museum so no one can ever forget the stories or less since. i ask you to think about how the historic slaughters and suffering of the holocaust reflects a human disease that takes different forms the idea that our differences are more important than our common humanity.

finn [applause] >> union membership pit

adjacent not -- many said then space that is fewer than roosevelt signed the national labor relations act only six .6% one out of 15 will belong to a union. in large part this is because of the economy has changed radically unions have not. however they don't see it that way. that offer a product that is fine and employers are not buying is a labor movement is trying to reverse a decline not by a redesigning carmaking unique membership more relevant than making it difficult for employees and employers to decline services. this is what we see with the nlrb attempt to sure to an election in time frames to less than three weeks and to decide in as little as 18 days if they want to be in

the union and the gerrymandering that allows you to selectively form unions of their supporters while excluding employees that do not pay for the decision to unionize but it is not just at that level but the individual campaign they're moving more and more to pressure the employer rather than persuading employees it is in their best interest. this is not just me but the words of union organizers. consider the former secretary of treasury local my 51 in kalamazoo wrote for the labor research review with a sympathetic argument says who do we really need to have the advantages of being union? employees or employers? with the nlrb puts enough pressure on employers and

costing them time energy and money to eliminate them or get them to surrender. this is what they call the pressure campaign. we'll have the luxury to note that employees are in the union free environment come knocking on the door looking for a solution if organizing is the lifeblood of the labor movement we have to create a reality to make our own breaks focusing on nonunion employers to make them pay for operating nonunion. when concerned they may have is that it might turn employees against the union. i look at it this way if you had massive employee support you probably would be conducting a traditional campaign besides the advantages over weld whenever problems you may think of for example, you don't need them majority. a few people inside and out are all that is necessary. that is the attitude of many

union organizers the way to organize workers is to put enough pressure on the company to force them to surrender to shake the employs out of the process. here to discuss that today not in theory the real life is david bego president of executive management services a company that employs over 5,000 workers over 38 states. since 2006 his company has been in a battle with seiu to persuade not his employees but him to surrender power employees' rights to the secret ballot election to become unionized. we also have here diana furchtgott-roth s senior fellow at the manhattan institute and before that chief economist at the department of labor and chief of staff with bush's council of economic advisers. also russ brown with the vice president of that labor

relations institute. >>. >> thank-you for having me here today. thank you for being here today. i want you to know this is not something i ever envisioned happening is something that i ever wanted to do to be traveling around the country talking about a topic like this. quite candidly and was put in this position by the sdi you and i was put in this position of the indiscriminate attack on my company, my employees my customers and family. i will tell you about that story in the background because i think it is important to hear this for what has transpired with the unions called a corporate campaign, death by 1,000 cuts.

when i came out of school, i was going to be a doctor. didn't quite get there so when to work for a company ran the plans for them in the reason this is important i became the turnaround specialist. i would go into the plant that was failing to make them successful. i did it by appealing to the employees and getting the management to understand the employees are the biggest asset. i did that for almost 10 years and i left because i get tired of traveling around the country. went to work for cleaning company and became the general manager in indianapolis are left that guy after three and a half years he was the antithesis of what i thought good management should be. he treated people for lee. quite honestly those people deserve to be unionized. when i left that company

company, about 3-1/2 years from my left my previous job and my wife was scared to death about our future. i eight decided to restore executive management services. i do get emotional at times. bear with me. when we started i was committed to the fact we would take care are our employees come and make sure there's safe and do the right thing. we we do business with integrity. and that is how we built the company we started in 1989 started cleaning small buildings myself and barbara back to work as a legal secretary then we offered our people benefits including health care which quite honestly does not happen a lot in our industry but we wanted to do the right thing as we continue

to grow across the country by 2006 we were 33 states with 4,000 employees at that time. we we're doing the right thing when of the lowest turnover rates in the industry than all of a sudden the seiu appeared and they sent me a letter saying we want to help your employees. so i sat down and talk to them. of their money to do was signed the neutrality agreement. there is some upside you can pick up after the meeting. in this agreement if i sign it i would have to give up my employees' rights to the secret ballot election i would have to give them a list of all my employees and home addresses. because card check would be in place they would use

those names and addresses to go to their homes to intimidate them to sign union cards. all they had to do was get the bare majority of 50 percent plus one. the last meeting i said i cannot sign that. they said mr. bego we enjoy a conversation that we embrace come up confrontation we will attack you and your customers and everyone related to you. i said i will not sign it and it is morally wrong. they started a corporate campaign immediately death by 1,000 tests. they distributed fliers and intimidated by employees and and 1 gallon indianapolis came out every night they tried to force her they even

tried to give her money and intimidating her and they did this for one month and she said she was happy then one of the city will like it if you like it or not and so she signed. we know this to be true because we have her affidavit from the appeals hearings that we won when we finally beat the seiu. these types of things went on all over the midwest columbus, louis cincinnati daily it was something different they used clergy people against us. they actually had clergy people shut down buildings by blocking the doors during the day. they would send letters to customers telling them how bad we were in treated our employs are bad and make and use hazardous chemicals. they wrote letters and gave them to the press that were

published and use the united states senator to call one of the largest customers asking to have our contract canceled unless i signed this agreement. day after day these attacks with ochre. and you don't hear about this in the press today by an here to tell you it is true. it is happening every day it is sad and needs to be stopped and the unions realize they are dinosaurs and they don't want to compete in the free market. they understand that is what they have to do instead they go to intimidation tactics pushing for carjack in this administration is helping them through the nlrb the new posting rules with the elections and many other regulations are all designed

to allow the unions to implement the corporate campaign to be successful within a short period of time. that is what they try to do that is the endgame and the goal. and i was going through this and i realized it and i was looking in all my office window one day and i said to myself and passed to stop. we cannot let these police when. -- bullies win. they cannot continue to abuse my employees, customers, and my family. we are going to punch them in the nose. and we did. not before they had a few more tricks up their sleeves. i will show you some. this is a flyer.

that they distributed in my neighborhood halloween 2007 and used a little kids to go around to give candy, a church retreat and as the kids got the candy they would hand these fires to my neighbors then they had union thugs drive up and down the the street in the cars and their friends and neighbors were terrified. these are the things they do. i don't know if you remember the rallies in wisconsin. when they had a recall election there but this is downtown indianapolis against mccann -- company. this is my company. it is sad they have to do these things. it is sad and it is wrong. if they had something to

sell the people would listen. so on that day's sitting in my office i decided it was time to talk to my people, it is time to go on the offensive, and we did. i went to every building that was attacked as it down to my people about what was going on. and here is the amazing thing. i don't care what their background is. wanted them to know i cared and i was in cincinnati talking to a group of 40 full-time employees. want to talk about the intimidation, the promises you will get double wages and not have to work as hard. before i got that out of my eight mouth there was a black lady who waved her hand negative me and said mr. bego may i