much, which parts are faith and what's not, what this hallway. we have to let go a little bit and in power. i am a big believer that rather than having all of these adults do discipline, the hold each other accountable and they build that culture and when the students are invested there, they are helping to shape their schools, they will take care of them in a different way. >> you mentioned chicago. the mayor is trying to get his arms around it but there's then huge uproar over closing schools the district decided on not needed. the union is now going to court. how do you deal with that evolution in a place like chicago? >> it's been from a distance

hard to watch. there is no educated that weeks of the morning and wants to close schools and there is no upside. kids lose, parents lose, teachers lose so the question i always ask is what is the counterexample where they aren't closing schools. it's right here in d.c.. it's in other places. there was never one simple solution but denver public schools are growing in population and schools they closed years ago are reopening because there is an increased public confidence in the education. union and management collaboration so you don't have to close schools. there's the reality if you live in chicago 500,000 you only have

400,000 a budget shortfall you have to make tough calls. how do we increase public confidence and education and get the teachers and principals to go to the underserved communities. one thing i challenge the country on and not everybody agrees come some teaching jobs are by definition much harder than others. whether it is here versus another community or chicago verses the coast, you are asking different things and as a country we have 15,000 school districts. they are identifying their hardest workers and move them to the disadvantaged communities. if we did that and that became the badge of honor where you need it the most and not please everyone is trying to east cape, the would build public

confidence and education in a different way and the communities where the people are fleeing the would find ways to keep going there because every parent, rich, poor, black, latino, they want to send their child with a great school and principal. if we are serious about reversing the self-destructive fights, we have to think differently about the sense is that we create to give our talents to the kids and the communities that need it the most. >> what should we stop doing because it is not working? >> buying the textbooks, we talked about that. put that money into digital. the other big one -- this isn't news, i've been very public on -- i think we do generally a pretty horrendous job of supporting teachers. we lose far too many young teachers come with the best of intentions and want to make a difference and they feel unsupported and burned out. they don't get the help they

need. they are isolated and lonely. i always give a quick is how much do you think we spend the federal level on the title to professional development each year? the usually say 18 million or 38 million, or whatever. across the country we of the federal level spent $2.5 billion each year if you put in state and local spending it's between five to $6 billion. when i talk to teachers they laugh or cry. they think about how to get new investment but we have to make sure hour current investment is making a difference and this is probably the worst money we spent so we have to stop spending money in ways that are attempting to help teachers having no impact on their lives and using existing resources and a radically different way to in power and support the great

talent we have working hard on the country. >> you touched on this a bit earlier. in what way can technology help to ray imagine and reinvigorate their own teaching skills especially at high school. >> for something as hard and complex and difficult as teaching is, the teachers for decades have been isolating the classroom. this has been something that has been like a solo endeavor and it drives me crazy to give advice and support so we can do a better job of that with reviewed principles but the idea of the physics not being the one having access to the best talent across the nation and the globe but to have students watching the

content with the classrooms at home the night before and coming with real questions i think that is a very empowering things for teachers to have the dashboard and understand it's hard to keep track of each one in your head but if you had that - board and the assessment on the ongoing basis. it's hugely beneficial for the disadvantaged children and i think another benefit that is as important if not more important is technology and in power and teachers to learn from each other and to stay with the profession for the long haul from the ban being burned out and losing it after three, four or five years. so again in teaching. >> we'll have a couple minutes

of time before we go on to talk to students and hear from chris hall. would you like to see in this environment by the time your tenure assumes you can serve these last couple of years. when young people draw out again today there is nothing out there for them. we lose about a million children from the schools each year. in many of the communities it is 60% and we destroy not just kids but families and entire communities paid so for me every imagined high school personalizes learning in such a way that every child whether they are going to an ivy league school or community college or wherever they might be going in the education journey they are starting to see the real connection between what they are doing in high school in their

community. people 15, 16 don't understand today if they drop out how many doors close on them in a very rapid fashion. they are excited about coming to school everyday. i think we would see the dropout rate plummet. we have made some progress. graduation rates are three decades high which is encouraging. we see a pretty significant decline. in that dropout rate down to zero making sure every high school graduate is college and career ready that to me is the goal that we can all unite behind. >> thanks to you, secretary duncan, for all of your time and what you are doing.

out of the business and discussing the fiscal deficit and start talking about things that are important in the long term trend this because right now the fiscal debate is taking all the option out of the room. you are either on this side or the side. they have all kinds of sites about stuff, which is reasonable compromise that hasn't happened. and when you do that, what ends up happening is you don't understand the truly important transitions are taking place because you are focused all day, all the time just on the deficit >> humans are the only species on earth with transmit data consistently to their kids across time. so maybe a dog runs command, the parent reed's words, the whale house songs but there isn't an animal on earth that right on cave walls except a human being.

why is it important to write on the cave walls? this is how we could get this is how we address, this is how many of us there are, these are musical instruments, and you just learned a lot about what was happening a few thousand years ago. as you think about how we transmit knowledge, it isn't enough for an empire. why? because here you have to go to the cave to learn what is going on. an empire on the other hand looks like this. two things have happened. you have put it on paper which means you can transmit data across time and also learned the lesson of why egypt fell. all of you clearly know you can read that, right? it basically says cut the deficit. the new standardized language and put it in 26 letters and looks like this and you have the

data across time and of course you can write little sentences that say cut the deficit. then what's happened over the last 30 years is you've collapsed all language. that is the single greatest creator of wealth that humans have ever seen. it's the country is that understood the transition because they were not focused all the time on current progress but looking at a future that generated an enormous amount of wealth. in taiwan and the boston and korea and singapore and bangalore india is that transition right there.

>> when the attorney general arraigned me in california after the extradition, he indicated he wanted the death penalty on each of the three charges. so he wanted the death penalty three times. that made me realize. and it made me realize that it wasn't about me. first of all i could this be killed, it was about the construction of this imaginary

enemy, and i was the embodiments of that any. >> she wasn't interested in talking about what happened in that period commit the crime, the implications of the fbi. she wasn't in a love story, she wasn't interested in talking about it, shows she's also one of these people you don't go to directly. and i tried to get to her directly. so i figured out that there were important people in her life and i chipped away at the people she knew and trusted and was able to get them involved and let them see my previous work. slowly she came around and she agreed to meet me. >> on wednesday a senior financial regulators from the

government today outlined new programs aimed at helping american face and spend money more wisely. the chairman and consumer financial protection bureau head richard kortright spoke at a forum hosted by george washington university. the event marks the release of a new study on americans' personal finances. this is 45 minutes. >> good morning. it is my special pleasure and honor as the dean of the george washington school business to welcome you all here this morning. this type of event is a dream come true for the dean white me. i can to this school three years ago and i always had the dream of being a part of and helping to build the school that stood at the intersection of business and society and made it clear how the teaching we do any business school is not only relevant for the society at large but also in trouble.

we don't want to be a business school teaching how markets are abstract and exist in people's minds but are actually the individual interactions, institutional interactions that happen on a day-to-day basis. there is no place is more exciting to have that conversation than here in the middle of the nation's capital surrounded by the institutions that really defined the economic structure of the nation. and in many ways of the world. and it's also just a really special opportunity to be doubled to do this, and to be part of the conversation that brings together the research and the passion and things that really matter for people every day. so this program for me is a dream come true. it's really wonderful to have the support of institutions and to see how powerful institutions like the sec and the foundation

and a special thanks to all of the support we have from everybody who is in this room. i do want to give a special thanks to my friend and my colleague who for those of you that know her, you know she's not on the force of nature and somebody whose passions take us far along down the road of really bringing together business and society issues and topics like the financial literacy, this topic in particular is one that she has just shown me how important it is for our economy and for our nation so i want to thank you and wish you a wonderful journey as you go over the course of the morning. let me turn it over. thank you. [applause] >> good morning everyone and thank you for joining us for the launch of the national financial capability study finding.

the investor education foundation was pleased to have done this important research that follows on our 2009 study and it's the first of two releases this year, the data that you'll be seeing today comes from our state-by-state study but in the fall will also be releasing findings from the military financial capability study so stay tuned for batt. we have a packed morning and great speakers and a fabulous panel for you so i would like to get started but first i want to make sure you all knew that we were life tweeting ilyse zandt at hash tag financial capability. so please feel free to tweet away. we thought i would like to invite the first speaker that is the ceo and chairman of finra of the foundation please join me in welcoming rick ketchum triet

[applause] >> thanks very much and all of you for being here today. i'm extremely excited to be here to release the findings in the financial capability study. but i also pleased we are doing it here at the gw global financial literacy excellent center. as you will hear later it has played a large role in the study ended as tremendous work to improve the financial capability in the u.s. and around the world. when we conducted the first wave of the study in 2009 obviously a very difficult time for america and americans at a different time we set out to create the benchmark to measure the progress and the americans have made in improving their financial futures. now with a 2012 study we are seeing interesting changes in the key measures in the financial capability. some that are encouraging and others that tell us that there is a lot more work to do. the study also serves as an invaluable resource for tracking the trends and today i would

like to share a few of them with you and talk about new questions that we've added in this 2012 version but first i want to ignore the partners in the financial studies is a huge undertaking and without the talented burba of the stakeholders. we are grateful for the assistance as with the 2009 study, the treasury department played a large role. this way the study was done in consultation with president obama's advisory capability and we are also assisted by other agencies, organizations and researchers including our friends at the consumer financial protection bureau and the fcc. over the last three years the study has made its mark on the financial literacy world and beyond. the data has been used in more than 20 publications today ranging from the peer reviewed journals to the white papers and issued briefs. and this number continues to grow. stories in the major media outlets as well as government

reports and congressional testimony cite the statistics putative further, the data has been used in international comparisons of financial literacy, health researchers and policy makers to gain a better understanding of how the united states compares to other countries in terms of understanding important financial concepts like compounding investment risks and inflation. we are looking forward to see how the 2012 data will be used to further a hour understanding of the financial capability both on its own and in conjunction with the 2009 data that makes it unusually rich. so what have we learned from the study? the financial capability in the united states has improved in important areas. people are finding it easier to make ends meet, significantly more respondents have rainy day fund that puts them in a position to deal with unexpected events. the improving economic environment has helped in some areas. nearly a quarter told us they

are satisfied with their personal finances from 2,009 but there is still very significant concern. debt continues to be a problem. 40% of the respondents believe they have too much debt and many are not comfortable with this aspect of their financial lives. a percentage of credit card holders carrying the debt has declined from 56% to 49% and nearly half carry the debt and pay interest on their balance. at about 10% use their cards for cash advances. the debt extends well beyond credit cards. when it comes to homeownership, 22% of those that have a mortgage indicate they owe more on their home than they believe it is worth. we ask respondents about medical bills and student loans. 26% have unpaid medical bills that are past due. the number is even higher among 18 to 44-year-olds.

as for student loans, 20% of all respondents and 36% of 18 to 34-year-olds report having student loan debt. more than half of respondents with student loan debt are concerned they will not be able to pay it off. the self reported feelings changed very little cross income brackets. in other words, no matter how much income they earned, a significant number felt that they had too much debt. we took a deeper look at this issue and found all debt isn't created equal. at least in terms of how different forms correlate with respondents perception about it. medical debt, credit card debt and student loans or strongly related to the perceptions whereas mortgage debt and although loans not surprisingly appear to have the weekend relationships as the united states wrestles with its debt

crisis others can be drawn from the study and kim proved useful to practitioners and policy makers. related to the debt is another concept in recent years called financial fragility. financial fragility is the lack of liquidity to deal with an unexpected challenge like a major car were housing repair. when asked if they would be able to come up with $2,000 in the next month, nearly 40% say they could not. the low to moderate income respondents the number rose to nearly 70%. this sheds light on the u.s. households. another important area of the study is financial literacy across the country. financial literacy remains flat or even slightly down by some measures. in 2009 the respondents could answer three to five questions

on the financial literacy quiz and in the 2012 study, that number held steady however another way to look at it is the reclassified 42% of the respondents in 2009 having high financial literacy meaning they could answer four or five of the questions correctly. in 2012 the present in its defeat could present of having high financial literacy dropped slightly to 38%. however we also found some encouraging signs about financial literacy. for example, as with the 2009 way of the study finds financial literacy correlate strongly with behavior that is indicative of the financial capability. specifically those with high illiteracy are more likely to have an emergency fund, and they are less likely to engage in credit card behavior. in addition the new wave of the study we asked respondents if they were offered financial education at any point in their lives and if they answered yes,

we asked if they participated in financial the education. what we found was the respondents who were offered and participated in financial the education could answer more of the literacy questions correctly when compared to the respondents who were not offered financial the education and were offered it but didn't take advantage of it. getting back to my advise the committee cut as a patient, clearly this focus asean a need for policymaking going forward. this is a preliminary finding i have to admit and while more needs to be done to establish the cause of relationship between the financial the education in the inner city, these findings are at least promising in point in what could be very important direction. an enormous amount more of the study let me in deference to what we have here today think you for your time today and for your interest in proving the financial capability in america. i would like to invite jerrie

back to introduce the guests. [applause] >> it's my pleasure to invite up to the podium mr. mokry serves as the assistant secretary for financial institutions. [applause] thanks very much, and the thank you for inviting me to be here. and for leading finra's efforts on the financial and education and financial capability. i am privileged to stand here on behalf of the treasury department but also with a director and others in the private sector that share the treasury commitment promoting the national well-being of americans. the secretary lu i offer congratulations on a command of the finra for conducting the

2012 national capability study. we are pleased to have consulted in defining the underlining research as on the project launched in 2009. i believe the study like its predecessor contains critical insight into the financial practices and attitudes. and as a result it will inform our policy work. i urge policy makers and practitioners to carefully consider the study as the work to improve the capability of america. education helps create new businesses and jobs and supports the middle class and spurs productivity and growth. that is why the obama administration is back to helping young people gain the skills and knowledge they need to pursue successful careers and contribute to our economy. there is no secret we want to expand access to education beyond high school for example because workers with postsecondary training are more likely to be employed for higher wages and the rise of the

economic ladder. as we work to a quote people with in defeat for job skills and learning potential we must not forget how to manage money is as important to the economic well-being as how to make money. the capability is a skill for success in our complex economy. americans understand their personal finances will be better able to make sound choices about paying for education, taking out mortgages, handling credit card debt, purchasing insurance, studying the savings and planning for retirement. that is all of the familiar lead complex decisions we've made to live our present lives, secure our future and an expected defense. these insights are supported by the study i believe and the results showed encouraging signs as was mentioned moments ago. more americans now reporting can cover their monthly expenses as compared with 2,009 and more state they have the rainy day

funds. it the study indicates to many americans feel they have too much debt and studying money aside for their education and to many americans haven't planned for retirement of all. when asked whether commodore employer had offered financial the education, only 29% of the respondents said it did and 19% participated in a financial and education course. 89% of the study of respondents stated that financial the education should be offered in school. consistent with the study, experience in the scholarly research indicates that like most education, building financial skills should begin early in life. underscoring the importance of this matter, the president's advisory council on the capability and many others have recommended that the financial the education be integrated into the school day and. the treasury is working with other financial agencies in the

financial literacy and education commission to focus the combined efforts on building the financial knowledge and skills through an initiative that we call starting early first time financial success. the commission said clear out comes and they include increasing the number of students that get the information they needed that make the informed decisions about how to pay for higher education, second increasing the number of working adults who plan for future and other long-term goals and third, increasing the number that have access to savings accounts as a way to encourage a lifetime of the financial and powering. to all of our efforts we may be mindful to assess evidence as having an impact. the effective strategies are increasing the financial

capability. the commission believes the research is important and we have encouraged the journal of consumer affairs it takes a research volume to this topic in 2014. the call is available if i may say this on the above mymoney.gov website. the administration is working to enhance the affordability of higher education and expand the tools and resources available to help students make choices about college and how to finance the budget to should -- education. to the kawlija scorecard it's helping them to make better decisions about what type of schools would attend, what to study and how to pay for it. the treasury is also reaching out to the state and local governments and private sector partners to take advantage of opportunities to help more americans build financial capabilities. the government efforts to

improve the financial capability can and should be complemented by action in other sectors. state and local policy makers from educators and private sector service providers can use data and other resources to provide consumers with them education and access to appropriate financial products and services they need to manage their money, recover from unexpected in come shocks and plans for the future. we all therefore have an opportunity for the financial legislation whether it is to help working americans manage their hard-earned money without burdening the future and once again for their important work for the collaboration on the subject. thank you very much. [applause]

>> our next speaker will be mary jo white, a chair of the securities and exchange commission. [applause] i know this box is for me but i'm going to make others stand on it like richard. the finra and the foundation 2012 national cable the study really does provide a wealth of data regarding the financial knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of americans. it gives a great sense of what americans know and what they don't know, what they feel coming and how the act when making investments and other financial decisions. as the chair of the sec, the agency whose mission is

protecting investors and promoting cavil formation, the results of the study remind us that we all, all of us need to do more to increase the financial capability of all americans. people who have limited knowledge in the financial system are less likely to invest in the financial markets and are more unlikely to benefit from america's financial and economic growth. this really makes it difficult for the entrepreneurs and dynamic companies to access the capitol they need to thrive and create jobs. many americans may struggle in retirement and miss the chance to purchase a home or right graduate from college debt free. the market's tumble because they fail to diversify their holdings or see their net worth decline

sharply because they engaged in high-risk investment or strategies. at the sec we passionately believe in the importance of improving americans' financial capability. so that they can optimize the chance of reaching the personal savings and investing goals. so for this to happen, more americans need to learn about the magic of compound interest, the virtue of the diversification and the value of planning for retirement. not all investors do what they should to be as informed as possible. few investors pick up the phone or go online to do a simple background checked. it seems that we almost more likely to go on angie's list to check out our plumber than we are to go on the web site to investigate the background of an individual whom we are about to entrust our life savings to. there is obviously something

wrong with this picture. there is, however, as rick and others mentioned some good news in the study as well. investors, stock on this, other securities generally score better than them on investors on the studies of the financial literacy quiz. on the other hand, the study found that even though they did better than them on investors, most investors still are not aware of the basic fundamental that market interest rates and bond prices move in opposite directions. in fact only 43% of investors and 22% of them on investors new prices fall when interest rates rise. this kind of gap of investor knowledge is why the office of investor education and advocacy recently created a series of bulletins on investing bonds to be the study also indicates that despite a troubling lack of basic knowledge, americans now

are willing to take on more risk than they were in 2009. high risk investments can be a very important part of an investor's portfolio as we all know. but the willingness to take on risk without a clear understanding of the potential consequences can obviously also lead to disastrous results. in the powering americans with the tools they need can also produce significant economic and social benefits. individuals with both the opportunity and the ability to invest and use the markets with vital capital resources that help both businesses and the economy to grow stronger. these investments ensure that new and creative technologies had a chance to develop and flourish. that is why our investor education and outreach efforts, all of our efforts are so, so important. at the sec our office of investor education and advocacy

has created a nationwide program focused on investors and giving them better information's a shake & bake delete command better decisions about investing in the capitol markets. and importantly, the service that we provide in investor.gov provides that information and they can use in their everyday life as they make these basic decisions. other things that does for example is in the office investor education we have tens of thousands of investors every year with questions and complaints. we produce a wide variety of useful print publications. obviously they need to get used as well. we needed the bulletins on top of the subjects and even tweets. we do everything we can to

educate investors about how to spot the security walls of we work so hard to uncover, investigate and punish. we also created as i mentioned before an investor web site that is focused exclusively on investor education. on the investor bought of you have other filers using the database. you can find for example the annual corporate filings, mutual-fund prospectus and information on the variable insurance products. less experienced investors can find out how to read these filings and understand them using materials that explain the disclosures in more detail. they can also conduct the background investigations of the financial professionals with whom they are considering working. we provide information that particular investment needs such as members of the military which we will hear more about soon. students, teachers and retirees.

while we don't and can't provide specific investment advice, we do offer an hour classes of different types of investments. the benefits and risks of investment vehicles including stock on this. all on the investor we need to get them to access investor.gov. it's a pillar of the economy as a whole. they are more likely to create wealth for themselves providing for themselves and for the next generation as well. and informed investors help make available the capitol grow and contribute to a healthy and a dynamic economy. the goal of all of us. so let me close by thanking the education foundation for their excellent and extremely important work thank you for having me here today

>> thank you. you reminded us that we are tweeting at hash tag financial capability. all the data that our speakers are talking about is available at usfinancialcapability.org. there you will find the executive summary but also interactive tools to help you analyze the data and the data file so that you can slice and dice the data. the next speaker will be richard kortright, the director of the financial consumer protection bureau. [applause] >> thank you for having us. we are finding finra national cable the study to be a crucial source of information about the habits of american consumers and

the complex decisions they face in the financial marketplace. all of us here today share the same goal of educating and empowering the consumers to help make them make responsible financial decisions the are sustainable over time during a i think we also need to share something else not just the substance of the goal but the sense of its urgency. we suffered the most serious financial crisis the most dislocating economic event since the great depression. families lost trillions of dollars, many lost their homes and life savings. we are slowly recovering but the harm has been deeper and its effect on social and economic behavior may well be a lasting. people have been shaken in their deeply held belief if they work hard and be irresponsibly, they will get ahead and pass on a higher standard of living to their children. out of this crisis lessons must be learned and made. to begin with we need to make sure the consumer financial markets are not raid against

people. at the consumer financial protection bureau we intend on making them work better by providing reasonable rules, consistent oversight and enforcement of the law. people expect and deserve to be treated fairly so we are aiming to make sure they are transparent and of we the predatory teachers and marketing is a deceptive or misleading. consumers should be able to navigate the financial marketplace more easily and exert more control over their economic futures. the best protection is self protection. being able to avoid problems in the first place and to know what you can do about it when you do experience a problem we work with others to help bridge the widening gap between people's financial capability and the increasingly complex financial decisions they have to make. ..

>> they can also look in the marketplace itself, but much of what they find is likely to be skewed by the financial self-interests of other parties. so people need these trusted and impartial resources, and it's difficult for them to know where to turn. along with our partners, we intend to make the consumer bureau itself a source for this kind of information about household finances, and we're working to accomplish this goal in several ways. to begin with, we can readily agree that all consumers need to understand basic information about budgets, savings,

investments and credit. we're working with various partners to provide it such as the sec and the fdic with its money smart curriculum. we're also developing a library of information where we answer frequently-asked questions about issues in the financial market place. but consumers also need to be aware that there are few big moments in their lives where they will confront specific decisions with potentially far-reaching consequences such as paying for school or buying a home. do you go to school here or there? do you buy this house or that one? how much debt do you take on? what kind of debt and how do the alternatives differ? we want people to understand which decisions are the most important ones; not to treat them casually and to know where they can get trusted help when they need it. we've begun to develop modules to address these decision points beginning with our paying for college web tool available at consumerfinance.gov. and we're working with treasury

and the department of education on a variety of these tools. today's finra report underscores the importance of these ongoing efforts. for example, it shows the need to encourage consumers to save in order to protect themselves from the effects of economic shocks. as cyrus mentioned, for people aged 18-34 and for those in the peak earning years of 35-54, only one-third reported they had set aside three months' worth of emergency funds. yet savings matters. savings is critically important in financial health. whether it's a car, a college degree, to home or a stable retirement, getting into a habit of saving money can be integral to financial success. the report also shows a solid baseline that we can and must build on together. as rick noted, by overwhelming numbers, 89% of those surveyed, americans recognize and acknowledge that financial education should be taught in our schools. echoing that sentiment, we

recently unveiled core policy regulations starting in kindergarten and continuing through the end of high school. if these policy recommendations are broadly embraced around the country, we will be better prepared to cope with the kinds of problems that arise in our lives and help stave off the threat of the next financial crisis. first, we recommend that financial education should start early and be continuous. when we do not teach children about personal finance, about managing household budgets, saving for the future or making informed decisions about larger investments in an education or a home, we're failing them in a shameful and costly way. we also need to have integrated curricula in our schools, as cyrus mentioned, where the benefits of compound be interest are understood in math class, and where an essay in english class could explain how we use or protect money or how we take control of our financial lives to achieve our goals. and financial education concepts should be integrated into standardized tests which would

increase incentives for educators to teach them and present opportunities to measure and track student performance on financial education content. standardized tests could easily be reframed to include more consumer finance content. for example, a passage for testing reading comprehension could focus on topics like tips on saving money, developing good credit or applying for student loans. as young people approach the magic threshold of adulthood, we need to require them to spend some time and attention on what this independence will mean from a financial stand point. the question then becomes immediate and insistent for them. how can we take control of our financial lives to achieve our goals. we all need to know why we have bank accounts, why we keep track of our account balances, why we should check our credit reports regularly. of we also know how important it is for students to practice through experiencial learning how to manage their finances. so financial education in our high schools should include practical experience, and it should not be an option that many students can and will avoid.

as cyrus mentioned, 29% of people said that they had had offerings of financial education, only 19% had availed themselves of those offers. regardless of whether children are simulating a banking experience, playing a game that hones financial decision making skills or following the stock market, they will be learning from this experience, and they will take that learning into their lives. we must also engage and support those teachers who are interested in teaching personal financial management. a large majority of k-12 teachers say that personal finance should be taught in school, yet less than a third of them say they have taught lessons about money. and more than half of them report that they feel unqualified to teach their state's financial literacy standards. we want to insure that teachers have the support they need. we want them to have access to high quality, no-cost training and incentives to take part such as continuing education credits. financial education in school is imperative, but there can be enormous benefits when that

education starts at home, as often it does not today. we want parents to feel confidence about talking to their kids about money. and we have resources to help them do just that on our web site at consumerfinance.gov. such engagement has been shown to help people form their financial identities early, and in my experience, this process is often beneficial for parents too. in fact, a surprising number of in-school programs generate a strong response from the parents who want to know where they can get the same kind of information and experience to improve their own financial performance. the united states cannot continue to miss the mark on the importance of financial education. other developed countries around the world, including australia and the united kingdom most recently, now require such instruction in their schools. we cannot afford to fall behind and to fail our young people in this fundamental respect. our democratic system rests on the effective operation of a free market economy. this arrangement demands strong and effective consumers.

just as each citizen's entitled to vote and participate equally in our civic life, each is also expected and required to manage his or her own financial affairs. from the time we become adults, each of us is on our own and responsible for the choices we make. the freedom and liberty that we cherish to direct our lives depends on being able to manage the ways and means of our lives. and so we must arm our fellow citizens with the wherewithal to stand on their own two feet and make sustainable economic choices. we have built the greatest system of economic liberty in the history of mankind. but it will only endure if we take the necessary steps to strengthen that system from the bottom up starting with the individual. by working in coordination with all those who are dedicated to achieving these goals -- many of them in this room -- we can bolster financial capability in this country. we're glad to join with you to do that. thank you. [applause]

>> thank you so much. having heard the perspective of regulators, it's now my pleasure to introduce someone who will bring a perspective from the field. our next speaker will be stacy stewart, united states president of the united way worldwide, who will be talking about some of united way's efforts to foster financial stability. [applause] >> well, thank you, and it's certainly an honor to be with all of you all today. and as the parent of two small kids, i know exactly where to go to get information to help my kids learn more about financial education as well. so thank you, and it's a great honor to be with all of you all today. it's a pleasure to be a part of this very distinguished panel of leaders as we talk about and discuss the importance of financial capability in the united states. united way worldwide is committed to improving the financial stability of low and moderate income families, working families and

individuals. the results of this study are not surprising in light of the weak economy and the persistent challenges that low and moderate income families are facing each and every day. particularly concerned with three aspects of the study and three trends that were noted in the study. first, the ongoing challenge of just making ends meet. second, the continuing news of alternative financial services and products. and, third, the perception of people that they have too much debt. these are very complex issues that education alone can't solve. and while there are great financial education curricula being developed and already available today, the survey also suggests that education alone is not sufficient to change behavior. unfortunately, there is no single financial education program or curriculum, no single financial product or service or policy or regulatory framework that will solve the problems and the challenges that are described today.

reversing these trends will require collective action. those of us here today in the financial services industry, the public sector and financial regular laters will all have to -- regulators will all have to work together in partnership with community practitioners and with consumers to develop a coordinated strategy that increases financial knowledge while also providing access to the tools and resources that promote behavior change. tax time provides one of those great opportunities to combine knowledge with the access to tools that actually do change behavior. tax refunds are the largest lump sum payments that many households receive in a given year and can significantly impact cash flow and debt if used effectively. each year -- and we have 1200 united ways all around this country -- hundreds of united ways lead volunteer income tax assistance efforts. these are also known as vita. these efforts support taxpayers in preparing and filing federal

and state income tax returns. these community-based efforts insure that working families receive all of the tax credits for which they are eligible. and while we're still gathering data for the most recent tax season, we conservatively estimate that united way as helped more than 1.5 million taxpayers prepare and file their federal and state tax returns for free. using historic averages, we estimate the taxpayers will receive approximately $1.7 billion in refunds which includes $500 million in the earned income tax credit. in addition, because the services are provided for free, we estimate that these taxpayers saved approximately $300 million in tax preparation and filing expenses. and while these numbers are significant, they're less than 1% of the total tax returns filed each year. so imagine the impact that we could have if we helped all 143 million taxpayers convert some

of their refund each year into savings. early research on r2s undertaken by washington university suggests that there are ways to frame savings during tax time that actually change behaviors and motivate people to take action to save some part of their total return. so what would it take? first, we would need to work with the various tax preparation software companies and irs and embed those positive consumer frames into the sequences and approaches that people use to prepare and file their taxes. secondly, we would need to work with financial institutions to develop and make available appropriate financial products that that sill tate -- facilitate savings. and we would also need to make sure that the product could be accessed lessly during tax time. -- easily during tax time. we've seen some success with

prepaid cards. these products could support r2s initiatives. and finally, we need to continue to create strong community systems for financial education and capability that bundle and integrate financial services and support the strengthening of financial choices that individuals and families are prepared to make. these same community systems need to promote financial products that benefit their clients, insuring ongoing product developments and implementation. and while i'm sure that there are a number of banking and financial and other regulations that would need to be reviewed and modified to create this kind of environment that supports individuals, this illustration is just one example of how we can work, and we must work collectively to create a consumer-friendly experience that provides stronger financial outcomes for individuals. during this slow economic recovery, we know that low and moderate income families and individuals will continue to face financial challenges and that government and nonprofit

organizations will have limited budgets to address these big issues. we must continue to work to come together and commit collective data-driven strategies that will change the trajectories of these families and individuals. and our communities require it, and our country also requires it and needs it from all of us. so thank you for the opportunity to share some of my thoughts, and i'm grateful for the leadership at the fcc and the treasury that can create and continue to build a strong regulatory environment for this work. i also want to acknowledge the great work that richard cordray and his team are doing at cfpb to address the many different populations of consumers. and finally, i appreciate very much the partnership and the leadership that we've had with the finra foundation, with rick and gerri. their leadership has just been tremendous over these many years. many families and individuals are in a much better financial position because of your work, so thank you so much. [applause]

>> each evening this week in prime time we're featuring booktv on c-span2. tonight's topic, addressing partisanship. at 8 eastern, our "after words" interview with former senator olympia snowe on "fighting for common ground: how we can fix the stalemate in congress." at 9, a panel on politics including michael steele and mickey edwards. and at 10, "two prime ministers are better than one: the case for a bipartisan executive branch." that's all tonight beginning at 8 eastern here on c-span2. and on c-span3 tonight it's american history in prime time with personal accounts of the 1960s civil rights movement. at 8 eastern an oral history interview with civil rights activist and sisters dorie and joyce ladner. then at 10, georgia congressman

john lewis is honored for helping to organize the freedom riders and speaking at the 1963 march on washington. that all begins tonight at 8 eastern over on c-span3. >> the public's fascination with francis cleveland really extended to her clothes, and hee was a real fashion icon. women emulated her hair style, her clothing. she popularized everything she had and did. this is a dress from the second administration, and in a way this is the most prized piece of all, because this is the inaugural gown. this was her inaugural gown from 1893, and it stayed in her family and became the family wedding dress. and this was used by her granddaughters. even francis cleveland's everyday clothes were very stylish. a lot of them look like something you could wear now.

this is a jacket. wonderful bolero jacket, black with this beautiful purple/blue velvet. this is a more evening-appropriate piece. and this is a bodice, would have had a matching skirt. you can see the beautiful lace and sequins, netting, beading. slightly more ornate daytime vest. this would have a matching collar. again, you can wear this with a shirtwaist and skirt. >> our conversation on francis cleveland is now available on our web site, c-span.org/firstladies. and tune in monday for our next program on first lady caroline harrison. >> speaking at a press conference last month, democracy now's amy goodman pushed for journalists to do tear jobs without bias and to dig deep regardless of politics or party affiliation. speaking on the topic of the

media's coverage of war, this event is 90 minutes. >> i want to welcome you all to the session on independent journalism on war, conflict and human rights. i'll introduce our extraordinary panel shortly. i'm jeff cohen, the founder of the media watch group fair and now the director of the center for independent be media at ithaca college. each spring at ithaca we give out an annual award for outstanding achievement in infeint media named after izzie stone, it's called the izzie award. in 12 days we will bestow the izzie award on the fifth annual winner, that's the nonprofit news outlet mother jones. which broke story after story last year including the now- now-infamous mitt romney 47% of american voters are moochers undercover video. [applause]

some of you know i spent years as a political pundit on mainstream television, on cnn, fox, msnbc. i was outnumbered, outshouted, red baited, finally terminated. but now i'm free, and since none of us here are constrained within the mainstream media, we can freely discuss the elephant in the room. the issue that largely explains why other countries can have free college education, universal health care, but we're told that our country can't afford it. it's the problem that may be bigger than all other problems in our country because it so exacerbates all those other problems. it's a problem that martin luther king focused on before he was assassinated 45 years ago this week, and it's only gotten worse since. and that was the height of the vietnam war. i'm talking, of course, about the problem of militarism and perpetual war.

king called the united states, quote: the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. and he said, a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. so we're gathered here today to discuss the unmentionable, the elephant in the room. you know, msnbc hosts can yell at fox news hosts and vice versa about all sorts of issues. but when the obama administration expanded the hopeless, bloody war in afghanistan, the shouting heads on both channels went virtually silent. as obama's drone war expanded, there was little shouting. on either of those channels or cnn or cbs or abc or so-called public broadcasting, npr and pbs. we can have raging debates in the mainstream media on all sorts of issues like gun

control, minimum wage, gay marriage. but when the elites of both major parties agree on a military intervention as they so often do, then anyone in the mainstream media who goes out on the limb to question or even acknowledge that in the middle of the room there is this oversized creature known as militarism or interventionism, well, they're likely to disappear faster than you can say phil donahue. [laughter] i worked with phil donahue, i know a little bit about journalists getting silenced for questioning bipartisan military adventures, because i was with phil at msnbc in 2002 and '3 when bush was revving up the invasion of iraq with the support of democratic leaders joe biden, john kerry, hillary clinton, harry reid, and msnbc terminated us for the crime of jwi. that's not dwi. jwi, that's journalism during

wartime while independent. jwi may be a crime in mainstream media, but it's exactly the kind of unauthorized, unembedded coverage that you get from the authors and the journalists that we've assembled on this panel. it's the kind of coverage you get from the jeremy scahills and the glenn greenwalds, and it's the kind of coverage you get from the independent media outlets that are so featured at this conference this weekend. many liberal journalists who are vocal about war and human rights and civil liberties during the bush era, well, they seem to have lost or muted their voices during the obama era. it says something about the lack of serious national debate about so-called national security that last month one of the loudest mainstream tv news questioners of the president's right to assassinate americans was sean hannity at fox, and that's obscene.

it says something about mainstream tv that the toughest and most consistent questioners of militarism and defenders of civil liberties are not on a news channel. they're on the comedy channel. a few weeks ago i watched a very passionate jon stewart taking on u.s. military spending. he said, quote: we already spend more on defense than the next 12 countries combined, including china, including russia. we're like the lady on jerry springer who can't stop getting breast implants. and, of course, he put up the photo of the jerry springer guest. what our mainstream media so bead cently called -- so obediently calls the war on terror is experienced in other countries as a u.s. war of terror, kidnappings, night raids, torture, drone strikes, the killing and maiming of innocent civilians that just creates more enemies for our country. you know, you can get that reality, ironically, in some of

the mainstream media of our allied countries in europe, but you can't get it in the mainstream media in our country, and it is our country that is waging this global, perpetual war which in a democracy should be the subject of a raging debate. we've assembled this panel because all of our panelists have rigorously subjected u.s. war policies to questioning and debate no matter who was in the white house. they've worked hard to describe and not ignore the elephant in the room. i'm going to introduce them now, and each will make a short opening statement. then we'll have some brief panel discussion here, and then we'll open it up to the whole room, elephants included. [laughter] you can send your questions or comments up on cards. which will be passed out very shortly. i think many of them have been passed out. our first presenter, our first panelist many of you know her as

the host and executive producer of the wonderful program out of kpfk los angeles pacifica, it's the uprising radio show, sonali kohatkar. she's been doing solidarity work with afghan women since 2000, before the 9/11 attacks, before the u.s. invasion and occupation. she's visited afghanistan, and it led to a book called "bleeding afghanistan: washington, warlords and the propaganda of silence." she has a master's of science degree in astrophysics from the university of hawaii. anyone else in the room that has that degree? [laughter] yeah, i didn't think so. she's very unique. she also has a two-month-old baby. let's welcome sonali. [applause] >> thank you, jeff.

a two-month-old and a 5-year-old. so want to address a few of major issues that journalists struggle when covering in particular the afghanistan war, the first of the wars on terror and the longest war that the u.s. has ever fought and the war that i'm most familiar with. and most of the coverage of the afghanistan war isn't terribly unique. it's similar to the coverage, of course, that other u.s. wars have gotten. doesn't question very much the government's rhetoric and motives and doesn't pay much attention to how those most affected by our policies think and feel about the war. we're all familiar today with the case that was made initially for invading and occupying afghanistan. in 2001 we were told it was a moral imperative to free afghans from the tyranny of the taliban while simultaneously exacting revenge for the 9/11 attacks. and at that time, of course, mainstream media did a stellar job of simply echoing the bush administration's line about the invasion and occupation.

and i remember the journal was so thick at the time that an essay published by university of texas journalism professor robert generalson critical of -- general son critical of the war was met with such a mob of angry responses that it threatened to derail his academic career. and his piece was, of course, quite the exception in the main stream media n. the independent media, people like, of course, howard zinn and some others were criticizing the rush to war. but in the mainstream media, that houston chronicle essay by jenson was one of the rare ones. and then they installed the northern alliance warlords into the post-taliban government. if anyone questioned the wisdom of empowering these criminal warlords, they were counter with the the notion of we want peace before justice.

and "the new york times" in particular, i remember, had this glowing piece about the northern alliance and their quest for women's rights, and painted them as feminist compared to the taliban. and we, of course, know how feminist they are today. but there was almost no coverage of what on-the-ground activists inside afghanistan were saying about the northern alliance, about these men that the u.s. was very happy to put into power. there were desperate appeals to not give them government positions. there was a statement put out by the revolutionary association of the women of afghanistan that i've worked closely with since 2000, and they put out a statement right away saying, that was entitled "the people of afghanistan do not accept domination of the northern alliance." and needless to say, of course, they didn't get quoted in the "new york times." near the end of the bush era and the beginning of the obama administration, there was a lot of talk about, of course, increasing troops to afghanistan before we can decrease them. and this troop surge got a lot

of news coverage, it certainly did. it was pretty well discussed in terms of the amount of coverage that it got. but most of the coverage centered on things like how effective the troop surge was going to be, whether there were enough troops that were going to be put in place. there were many examples of that, but one that comes to mind was "the new york times"' publishing of max boot's editorial. went as far as to say that 40,000 extra troops was not nearly enough. there were very few outlets beyond the guardian newspaper in britain as jeff was saying, you know, the mainstream outlets of our allies had much more critical corpsage. "the guard man", in fact, dared to publish the op-ed by the prominent activist -- [inaudible] who also worked closely with, and her op-ed was simply titled "a troop surge can only magnify

the crime against afghanistan." and the u.s. outlets did not publish that. another major strategy of the u.s. government has, of course, that that has significantly marked the afghan war on the ground have been these deadly night raids where american soldiers have gone in and raided a villages, arrested, detained, tortured men and boys and women. and, of course, there was a lot of coverage of the deadly shooting, mass shooting by staff sergeant robert bales that seems to bring to light and open the eyes of the mainstream media that these night raids were even happening. but aside from that one incident, no critical coverage of the vast majority of night raids that terrorize afghans. and the protests against these night raids on the ground, there were exceptions like the independent journalist anna nicole powell who's based, who has been based in afghanistan. he wrote about the chilling effects of the night raid on tom

dispatch.com, another very important independent media outlet. he's been one of the few independent journalists covering directly what ordinary afghan reactions are to the war. and then, of course, we have the drone strikes which once upon a time were common mostly in the border region between afghanistan and pakistan but today are becoming increasingly more and more relied upon inside afghanistan as we begin to draw down troops. and while there has been coverage of the drone program, in fact, there has been extensive coverage of the drone program in mainstream media, most of it has been focused on how effective it is or whether it's legal or not, not whether it's moral or not, or not what the actual effects on those who have these bombs rained upon them has been. there's one exception in the mainstream media that i do want to call out, and that's kathy danon, one of the few journalists who has done very good work on afghanistan, mostly because she's been covering it

for decades in afghanistan and living there. she wrote a piece that was the exception rather than the rule that was titled "afghan villages flee homes, blame u.s. drones." and she actually went as far as quoting ordinary afghans who were living in villages affected by drone strikes. and just for a moment on when afghans are quoted, even when journalists do interview afghans, they often do so with little regard at who they are. i get calls from journalists all the time requesting interor views about what's happening inside afghanistan. often they mistake me for being afghan, and when i tell them, no, i'm indian, simes the interviews get -- sometimes the interviews get canceled. it doesn't matter what kind of afghan voice, any afghan will do. i've sometimes had to correct broadcasters on live programs, but they don't care who they interview. it doesn't matter if it's an

u.s.-educated afghan-american who's worked in the karzai administration versus an afghan activist on the ground living, you know, in their communities and experiencing firsthand the effects of the u.s. policies and organizing with all the risks involved. it doesn't matter, any afghan will do. and that's quite similar to, of course, the u.s. approach to installing afghans in power. any afghan will do, put them in power and call them representative of all afghans. and there's no distinguishing between afghans of different economic classes, different motivations, political motivations, different perspectives. and it leads to a lot of misunderstanding and mistaken reporting on how afghans view the u.s. war and invasion. and it's a form of racism, you know? i mean, if somebody wanted to come and cover the occupy wall street movement from outside and just grab the first american they could find and call their view representative of all americans, it might be a very skewed view of what's actually happening. and finally, one of the most

difficult questions that i think journalists grapple with here is over what the consequences of the impending u.s. withdrawal will be. many of you may be familiar with the infamous "time" hag zien cover -- magazine coffer of august 2010 that gratuitously showed the face of the young woman whose nose had been cut off by the taliban. it should have said what is happening while we are occupying afghanistan? but in any case, it's a question that few journalists have been able to grapple with, and it's true, the misogynysts are going to be emboldened once the u.s. forces leave. but the context of that message is greatly oversimplified. it hasn't taken into account how the u.s. has empowered war lords as a deliberate war strategy on the ground, and it also hasn't taken into account what anti-fuldist activists would like to do and see and do in their own country. and many of the women that i work closely with would rather

achieve women's rights on their own knowing full well the destruction that western emancipation or attempted emancipation of women in afghanistan has really been like. so unless there's deep and nuanced journalism, an investigation of who's supporting whom and for what reasons, what the real effects of our policies are to those who are most directly affected, we're not really going to know what's happening in afghanistan and what will happen in the future. there really needs to be a distinguishing of who -- between those who claim to espouse human rights and women's rights while preserving the status quo and those who actually want freedom for women, men, children, freedom of the press, freedom from foreign occupation and invasion. in other words, real democracy. and those are two different sets of people. with some overlap. but in general, two fairly distinct groups. and that said, of course, the challenges facing afghan journalists inside afghanistan far outweigh any concerns that american journallests face. and i didn't want to end without mentioning how difficult it is

today to be a journalist inside afghanistan. doubly more difficult if you're a woman journalist. afghan journalists who do distinguish between, you know, activists and those who are in power, they live the reality, they see firsthand who the perpetrators of violence are, and they report on it. and for that they face a dizzying array of decrees that make it very difficult for them to do their work. and worse, they're often imprisoned and tortured by the u.s.-backed afghan government or hunted down and murdered by the taliban like a woman journalist who started radio peace in afghanistan. she was shot in bed in the middle of the night with her toddler a few years ago, and it's not clear who assassinated her because she was critical of both the taliban and the u.s.-backed government. and she's one of dozens of journalists that are killed in afghanistan each career. if afghan journalists can courageously cover with depth and few want what's really happening with very real risk to their lives, then i think american journalists can do far better than what they've been doing so far.

thank you. [applause] >> thank you, sonali. our next guest, next speaker is marjorie cohen, columnist, author of on time criminal defense attorney, professor at the thomas jefferson school of law in san diego. she's the past president of the national lawyers' guild, she testified before congress in 2008 about the bush administration's torture policy. she's testified as an expert witness at military hearings about war illegality and the duty to disobey unlawful orders. her latest book is "the united states and torture." and her upcoming book is about drones and so-called targeted killings. marjorie cohn. [applause] >> thank you, jeff, and thank you to all my fellow panelists. i'm just delighted to be here with you all today.

with so many places to get information all claiming to have the truth, there is no objective truth. during the vietnam war there were three networks. there was no cable, there was no internet. every city had a democratic newspaper and a republican newspaper. even if they disagreed, there was a general core belief and perception. until 1968 the media dutifully served the government's narrative of the war. that was until the tet offensive in 1968 when the national liberation front attacked all the major cities and 44 provincial capitals and took over control of two-thirds of the country of vietnam. right after tet was reported, no serious person could believe that the war could be won. walter cronkite went to vietnam and said this war is a stalemate. he was the most trusted man in news. the anti-war movement led to questioning of the entire

society, mores, culture, music, free love, drugs, distribution of power. today the wars in iraq and afghanistan have been monumental failures by any objective standard, but it took years to get a consensus against the iraq war. we've expanded coverage, we've diversified coverage, but so has the other side. with the proliferation of cable tv, the left got more channels, and so did the right. and the channels have become corporate. news has become opinion. analysis has become a cover for opinion. there are big rewards for pundits who are paid by the cable channels, but hard reporting -- journalism -- suffers because it's not as dramatic as taking extreme positions on policy matters. now a reporter covering the war has a harder time creating consensus because the society so polarized. there's such a diversity of

opinions on public issues, there is no truth. the political polarization prevents a national consensus on issues of war and peace. we don't have a draft which made a huge difference in turning public opinion against the vietnam war. the problem is reaching people who don't go on left web sites or tv or radio. in many ways, we're preaching to the choir. but many on the left don't like to hear criticism of obama, and that's another challenge that we face. [applause] lawrence o'donnell pointed out that all of the cable news stations combined are watched by only 1% of the viewers. so the fraction of viewers watching fox, msnbc and cnn, it's kind of a meaningless number in terms of the politics of the country. rachel maddow can't have the

impact of a walter cronkite, because we're talking about one-third of 1%. msnbc generally roughly being one-third of 1%. cronkite would raise issues, and congress would hold hearings. that's both positive and negative, because pushing a story to get those who care about it to pick it up also galvanizes the opposition. an issue resonates with millions of people who see it on the tv news. now it's gone unless it's covered by everyone. the alternative media has some effect on the corporate media. for example, torture led to some hearings, but it never became central on the public agenda. now, as has been mentioned, drones are becoming a big issue not because we're illegally killing people in other countries off the battlefield, but because a white paper was leaked that indicates the government may kill u.s. citizens on u.s. soil. because the bush administration

and now the obama administration through the corporate media have been so successful in terrorizing the american public about the so-called threat of terrorism, most people don't care about foreigners being killed. and much of the terrorism propaganda is fueled by racism. of the 366 u.s. drone attacks that have killed 3581 people in pakistan since 2002, 316 were launched by the obama administration. less than 2% of those killed were high-profile taliban militants. most of them were civilians. since 9/11 there have been no official figures on how many people have been killed by drone strikes, drone strikes and other kinds of targeted killing by other means, because of the extreme secrecy. lindsey graham's figure is 4700 people killed by drone strikes, only four of whom were u.s.

citizens. for a long time, independent media and anti-war activists criticized the drone war. the bureau of investigative journalism documents civilian casualties. gradually, generals like mcchrystal, former diplomats, foreign policy experts are talking about blowback from drones, about the inadvisability, about the political fallout from drones. the leak of the white paper and rand paul's filibuster focused attention on the killing of u.s. citizens, not on the killing of other people. and the house judiciary committee held hearings but, again, just focused on u.s. citizens, although targeted killings, not just drones. a gallup poll that was released about two weeks ago showed that 65% of americans think we should use drone strikes in other countries against suspected terrorists. that number goes down to 41% of people who favor strikes in

other countries against u.s. citizens living abroad, and it goes down to 25% who favor strikes against suspected terrorists living in the united states. but only 13% of the people surveyed believe that we should, we should use drone strikes against u.s. citizens in the united states. but when many americans think of u.s. citizens, they don't think of people who look like al-awlaki and his son, his young son. they think of white people. now, when we -- we all know about the hype of weapons of mass destruction. many of us were covering it at the time saying this is not, this is not a reality, we should not rush to war, we should not go to war, there's no reason to. we're seeing a similar kind of hype with the chemical weapons narrative by the syrian government. and this may well lead to an attack on syria when we saw

obama recently in israel, his big signature victory was getting israel to apologize to turkey for the killing of nine turks in the flotilla. okay, i'm wrapping up. in conclusion, two pieces of advice for independent journalists. keep your head down and don't believe what government officials tell you. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, marjorie. that's also the advice that we got from the late izzie stone. our next panelist is izzie award winner and host and executive producer of democracy now, amy goodman. amy has built up one of the most important daily newscasts in the history of our country. few other news sources cover issues of war and peace, human rights, civil liberties as dog cannedly as democracy now. -- dogged hi.

[applause] democracy now. she also as a weekly column, this one is "is silenced majority." she'll be signing books right after this panel out in the exhibit hall along with dennis moynihan, juan gonzalez and joe torres. amy goodman. [applause] >> thank you, jeff. it's an honor to be here with all of my colleagues and to be here at the national conference on media reform. media reform is critical right now. and especially on in this weekend. 45 years ago april 4, 1968, dr. martin luther king was gunned down in memphis, tennessee. he had gone there to organize with sanitation workers. for that crime, he had lost his life. a year to the day before he was

killed, april 4, 1967, dr. king spoke at riverside church in new york city. and he uttered those words about the country he loved, about the united states, that it's the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. he was speaking out against the vietnam war. something even his closest inner circle warned him against, said you've got the voting rights after the most powerful person on earth on your side, referring to president johnson, you've got the civil rights act, you got him to agree with you. why would you alienate him now? but dr. king said this was all a seamless web. his concern about human rights at home and abroad. and for the next year, he was increasingly outspoken about war. the response be of the immediate -- the response of the media from "the new york times"

to "the washington post" to "time" magazine decrying what he said in that liveside church address -- riverside church address calling it propaganda that sounded like it was from hanoi, and that he was doing a disservice to his people, to his cause. i think we have to look back 45 years ago and assess where we are today 45 years later. where is the media today? how would they cover dr. king's message today? when the iraq war began march 19, 2003, a few weeks before fair -- the organization that jeff cohen founded, co-founded -- did a study of the two weeks around then-secretary of state general colin powell giving his push for war at the

u.n., february 5, 2003. a speech he would later call, general powell would later call a stain on his career. that speech was the final nail in the coffin for so many, because he had been hesitant about the war, so he had a great deal of credibility. and he said, yes, the evidence was in. there was, there were -- there was final proof that there were weapons of mass destruction. f.a.i.r. did a study to have two weeks around that address and looked at the abc world news tonight, cbs evening news, nbc nightly news and the pbs "newshour". in that two-week period six weeks before the occupation, this was extremely significant because this was the period when americans are making up their minds. about half the population was for the war, half opposed to

war. in those two weeks, there were 393 interviews done around war in the four major nightly newscasts. guess how many were with anti-war leaders? well, you figure, you know, half the population for, half against, maybe 200, 150. three. three of almost 400. that is no longer a mainstream media. that's an extreme media beeting the drums for war. that is a disservice to a democratic society. i really do think that those who are deeply concerned about war, those who are concerned about the growing ip equality in this country -- inequality in this country, those who are concerned about climate change, about the fate of the planet are not a fringe minority. not even a silent majority. but the silenced majority, silenced by the corporate media which is why we have to take it back. you know, the democracy now team and my colleagues are here

filming and interviewing people, and it's wonderful to be part of a team of people. and my colleagues in the broader pacifica family like sonali, we came in to denver a few days ago, and we came into the airport. and there were some soldiers there from buckley, and they were picking up a general who was coming into town, and they waved. i thought they were waving at the general behind me. i thought there was a general there. but i came back, and they were in uniform, and i said to them, do you know democracy now? yes, ma'am, they said. i said do you watch? every day, ma'am. i said, why? it's objective, because you're talking about war. it isn't about whether you're for the war or against the war. it's that we cover war. it is on the front pages, if you will, of democracy now even though it is a radio and tv daily grassroots global broadcast. you can read it as well.

there is no more serious decision a country can make than go to war, and whether you agree with it or not, we must cover this every day. every day. you know, yesterday a great heroine was in our midst here, carlotta walz linear. the youngest of the little rock nine. 1957 it was that she and eight other young students -- she was 14 years old -- stood up to an angry mob of a thousand people as she walked into central high in little rock to get an education. surrounded by national guard. and when she was here speaking yesterday, she said she was inspired then. what were the lessons she learned. she was inspired by the story of

emmett till, a young 14-year-old boy, who had died two years before she did this. in the summer of 1955, his mother, mamie, in chicago had sent her son, emmett,. >> years old -- 14 year old, just like carlotta, had sent him to get to the city for the summer. he went to mississippi, he was sleeping, and he was ripped out of bed by a white mob. they tortured him and beat him, and he ended up in the bottom of the river. his body was sent back to chicago for the funeral. his mother, mamie, was not an activist at that time, but she understood something very deep. she said she wanted the casket of emmett open for the wake and the funeral. she wanted the world to see the ravages of racism and the brutality of big oldly. thousands -- bigotry. jet magazine and other black publication, the kinds of

publications that carlotta here yesterday at the national conference for media reform, the same publications that she said were covering her issues, she described a group of black journalists who dared to cover the little rock nine being beaten, one of them almost to death, he died two years later, and he was a former marine because he was black. a black reporter. how brave these reporters were. but here was mamie till. she wasn't a reporter, but she understood how important it was for the world to see the images. and so jet magazine published the images of his distended, mutilated head, and they were actually published, and they were seared into the history and consciousnd of this -- consciousness of this country. mamie till had something very important to teach all of us today, to teach the press today: show the pictures, show the images. could you imagine if for just one week we saw the images of

war? every day, the top of every report we did, the corporate media did, the independent media did, every top of every radio and television newscast, on everyone's facebook wall -- in a sense, everyone is a journalist -- every story was about a soldier dead or dying, a woman with her legs blown off either by a cluster bomb or a drone attack? if the top story above the fold of every surviving newspaper in this country showed a baby dead on the ground with an actual story naming her, telling us the story of her family for just one week, if every tweet, if every e-mail told one of these stories americans are a compassionate people. they would say, no, war is not the answer to conflict in the 21st century. democracy now. [applause]

>> thank you so much, amy. our final panelist is norman solomon, he's the author or co-author of a dozen books including the memoir "made love: got war." and the landmark book, "war made easy." it became a documentary movie. as the founder and director of the institute for public accuracy, norman led three peace-seeking trips to iraq before the u.s. invasion x he also led a couple fact-finding missions to iran and afghanistan. for 17 years he wrote a nationally-syndicated column of media criticism, and now he writes a weekly column focused

on politics for web sites such as common dreams and truth out. in 2010 norman and i co-founded the online activism group rootsaction.org which currently is circulating the petition to the nobel peace prize committee urging that they give this year's peace prize to the military whistleblower bradley manning. [cheers and applause] norman. [applause] >> well, we're gathering here in a political context that includes one major political party has given faith a bad name, and the other major political party has given hope a bad name. [laughter] but the reality is that we can't get very far or move very far forward if we don't have faith,

a secular faith at least, in democracy. and we can't get very far without hope that the human capacity to care for each other and work together is going to create a better world. and i think faith and democracy and hope in the possibility for creating a better world need to imbibe themselves and incubate and grow in journalism and. in journalists and their institutions. war thrives on abstraction and propaganda. sometimes so exciting to work on a story that you can forget that the house is really burning. jackson browne reminded us that there are lives in the balance, that there are people not only under fire, but are suffering and living and dying the

consequences, among other things, of the failures of journalism to serve the interests of the public rather than serving the interests of the state and corporate power. and when we look at the context that we're living in today, it's got to be said and acknowledged and confronted that we live in a warfare state, that contrary to the assertions of claims of aspirations of our current president in his second inaugural address, belief in and commitment to perpetual war is central to what the u.s. government is about. an acceptance of that perpetual war is central to what the mainline media of this country are about. the near virtual consensus that crosses the aisle on capitol hill for the so-called war on

terror mirrors, it is mirrored by the mass media, the corporate-owned media, the purportedly public media that you will hear on all things considered and morning edition and the pbs "newshour". and that so-called war on terror has become the wallpaper of the echo chamber now for almost a dozen years. we've lived, if we've lived very long, through one war after another for decades in this country k aided and abetted by what passes for journalism. and if we go and look at what war thrives on and we look at abstraction, certainly part of that is the basis for the ongoing war on this warfare state which crosses and recognizes no boundaryies or

calendars. war as an abstraction is based on two tiers of grief; theirs and ours. the inconsequential and the profound. an apartheid of emotional valuation of human beings that grinds the lens through which tinted red, white and blue we are encouraged to see the world every day by our mass media. that is a reality that is combined with the propaganda aspect overtly what george orwell described as double think. where what would we think if it was done to us? what would we think of if another country exercised impunity to send cruise and drone aerial vehicles across our

borders to strike at will? the late senator wayne morris who believed in international law was among the few in congress during the buildup to the vietnam war who challenged that kind of impunity. that kind of impunity's been normalized by the warfare state and the state of journalism of the mass media of our country. the media's relationship with the warfare state is central to the plowing of huge quantities of resources; financial, industrial and human into warfare. while meanwhile, our cities are dying as dr. king said. the bombs in vietnam exploded homes. the cruise missile fired in pakistan or exploding in our own country where we can't and don't provide health care education.

housing, helping children, helping the elderly while our lauded president, the neoliberal president now is slashing against the core of a social compact with social security and medicare. part of the warfare state. the antidote to those poisons is independent journalism. well, here at this conference, i believe, and people around the country are working every day very hard to sustain those possibilities, the make them more real, to make them more vibrant. so that we can serve that antidote to the warfare state and create something that is worthy of, worthy of the term "journalism." you know, if you use the metaphor of the body politic, what happens to the human body without circulation? you have blockage. you have coronaries.

and our potential democracy here is suffering grievously from the blockages, the failure of circulation of ideas and information and free wheeling debate. here we are with the imperative to challenge the come pulse, the -- compulsion, the compulsive disorder, the spin cycle for war. and now it's hard to keep track of the various phases that we're in. you can't withdraw from afghanistan, quote-unquote, too fast. that's one part of the spin cycle. another is this slow burn of building the agenda for war or attack on iran. another is the double think that tries to justify the scenario of a possible attack on north korea. can you imagine if war games

were undertaken next to and along the borders of the united states of america including simulating a nuclear attack? what our reaction would be in this country? and yet the paranoia of the north korean regime is being fed and fueled by the double standards that are also inherent in media coverage. whether to iran or north korea, again and again ratified, ratcheted up, amplified by the mainline media in this country. do as we say, not as we do. well i -- and you as well -- have probably encountered that's not very convincing. when i met people in afghanistan and iran, not very convincing do as we say, not as we do. people pay attention not to the rhetoric, but to the reality. and let me close on this note.

a challenge of journalism, a challenge of civic engagement holds a special responsibility to scrutinize the actions of our own government and the consequences. it's not only that we should cover those actions and those consequences, but we have a special responsibility to especially make sure that we cover those actions and those consequences. that we can build attention to independent journalism that says as american journalists, as american citizens we're not going to accept a double standard that we will watchdog and bird dog and scrutinize and challenge the actions of our own government. you know, as we contemplate this war world that we live in, often

i think as we try to track often overwhelming news, it can feel very disoriented sometimes, like maybe we are losing our bearings, losing our sense of core. and quite often we might feel, well, what is the true line? what keeps us going? and i believe that human rights has to be a single standard that helps us to not get lost, to not have the abstractions of coverage or the prop began da of coverage -- propaganda of coverage blow us off course. there's an expression among some knew us ises, you -- musicians, you may feel like you're getting lost, but you won't if you know the blues. and i think we may feel we're getting lost. but we won't if we have a single standard of human rights.

if we remember that when martin luther king jr. denounced the madness of militarism, unfortunately what he spoke of wuss not just -- was not just about what was occurring in 1967, but what's occurring right now. right now the u.s. government continues with impunity to the assert its prerogative with its military might to wage war across boundaries as it wishes. what's up for grabs is whether we can insist on living in a democracy. not as people who tune into the news, but civically engaged people who create it for the better. [applause]

>> thank you, norman solomon. i want to just ask a quick question for final comments. a bunch of us have touched on it already, and that's the problem of journalists putting partisanship ahead of principle. and that's the idea if you have a president that you prefer over the other guy and that president's in power, that perhaps you mute your voice. any final comments on that problem? we're all journalists up here. >> well, i remember -- is this on? i remember when michael moore wrote an open letter to president obama about the escalation of the afghan war as if it was a surprise. and, you know, i, of course, greatly respect michael's work and everything he does, but i think many on the left were mistakenly caught off guard by obama's escalation of the afghanistan war. he campaigned on it. that was the central, central aspect of his foreign policy

platform be when he -- platform went he first ran for office was escalating the afghan war while drawing down the iraq war. and i think, you know, we shouldn't have been in any way surprised, saddened, disappointed when he did exactly that. in that one sense, you know, he's broken many promises, but he kept that one promise that he made. [laughter] and, you know, i also want to mention that when i was talking about the folks who did do very good coverage of the afghanistan war when it was first unfolding and it is still unfolding, i mean, amy interviewed myself and my co-author and pacifica radio was really there among independent journalist who is did the kind of coverage and have continued to do it under obama. >> anyone else want to make a final comment? i know jeremy scahill, at the bottom of his bio he would write

jeremy scahill pledges to be the same journalist under an obama administration as he was under bill clinton and george bush's presidencies. and he talks about how he got some to have most vicious hate mail than all the years he was exposing bush and bush's torture and on and on. all right, question from the audience. >> nobody else wants to -- [inaudible] be critical of the democrats? >> the question. the -- i think everyone here has been critical of the democrats, but the question from the floor is here are active citizens, what do we encourage people here to do to build independent media, to challenge mainstream media? what are specific things that we call on our active people here and our bloggers and our journalists to do? >> to do your job. to dig deep. it is not about a who is

president, whether the president is a republican, democrat, maybe someday in the future an independent or a green, who knows? it's about going beyond the words, and so much of politics today is debating what is meant by particular words. it is our job to evaluate the actions. and also, most importantly, not just to give voice to those in power, but to be there at the target end. especially here in the united states as american journalists of u.s. foreign policy. you know, the week of the tenth anniversary of the iraq war, we did special programming all week. i didn't think what we did would be that revolutionary, to have one day an iraqi-american blogger and the next day an iraqi woman, feminist, activist

deeply concerned about what's happening in her country. and make no mistake about it, for iraqis the war is not over right now. i didn't think that was such a big deal. but when you look at the rest of the media in this country, to hear an iraqi voice was highly unusual. yet that is our job, is to go to where the silence is. what is their assessment of their country right now ten years later? we just have to get back to basic principles of good journalism. let people speak for themselves. provide a forum for hem to debate and discuss -- for them to debate and discuss the most important issues of the day and tell their stories when they cannot until they can tell their own. [applause]

>> and those basic principles have to include independent, independence from the state, from those in the executive, legislative and judicial branches. and the failures have involved just failures to do that. i mean, if you look at what we have suffered from from in terms of journalism in our lifetimes, we've seen perpetual deference to those in power. and it sort of segways back as well to the previous question. it's very difficult sometimes to watch fox news. it's also very difficult sometimes to watch msnbc for the same reasons. because in both cases those networks are dominated by journalists and commentators who genuflect towards the leaders of one major political party and

villainize the leaders of the other. that's not journalism. it's not even a balanced array of any semblance of debate. .. >> if you think that doesn't relate to war, it does because what is the keystone xl pipeline about?

it's about bringing dirty tar sands oil to the gulf. why? it's about the tremendous hunger for fossil fuels and think about why we wage wars. you know, the joke of the little kid talking about a iraq saying what's our oil doing under their sand? if you look at -- just go back a few weeks ago, there was the largest environmental prozest in history in washington, d.c.. i tuned into msnbc that night to look at the coverage. you know, they do, they cover what's happening in the world, and, you know, especially that day each day day digesting the . a reference to the environmental protest was protesting the obama administration.

right now, president obama is deciding whether to allow the pipeline to be built, and there's this oil spill in arkansas. i tune into msnbc how they recover it. they did talk about it. they did talk about the oil spill right outside of little rock, arkansas that drowned a subdivision in mayflower, ors, -- arkansas, but be they talk about the decision about the larger keystone xl pipeline? if you turn to fox, they would cover the environmental protest, but you know what happened. you can read between the lines. [applause] >> yeah, i just want to pick up on what amy talked about in the talk and also in the q&a about

the impact of showing images of people, for example, in iraq being killed and telling the stories showing the targets of the policies and also letting them tell the stories and tells the stories. in the civil rights movement, it was written about the power of television when the -- when people, when black people were hosed down with fire hoses and how that image and image of these very, very peaceful children integrating the high school, and how that really turned public opinion in favor of the civil rights movement. during vietnam, juan of the things in addition to the draft, tremendous appty war movement and gi movement which was central to that movement, what

really affected people were seeing the body bags coming back, and, of course, we have not seen body bags coming back from the iraq and afghan wars. when i got to stanford as a freshman, i was, you know, red hot, pep club, cheerleader, all of that, and my fresh nan year, there was a film, a grainy black and white film, and it was that image of the young girl naked running after she had dropped american bomb, and the decision i made to get involved in the antiwar movement was not intellectual one, but visceral one striking me like, oh, my god, is that what we are doing? we have to tell those stories and images, but not shun away from stories that may not be popular with everyone on the left such as what is real is

doing to the palestinians. [applause] >> that was, indeed, a couple of the comments on the cards, this coverage of israel and palestinians. on the subject of images, let's remember what pushed martin luther king off the edge of breaking silence and speak out against the vietnam war and probably was the most single most powerful individual voice against the war, he saw the images of young kids, victims in nay palm in vietnam and saw those in a magazine called "rampart" and talked about it how he couldn't be silent anymore. when it comes to what people here can do, and that was on the cards. >> yeah, the exact quote, responding to that speech given at riverside church, "time"

calledded the demagogue slander that sound like a script for radio, and it was a cause to the for the country and his people. >> one of the angsts people can take out here are interested in an organized channel of mainstream media bias whether it's israel, palestine, afghanistan, join the activists lists at fair.org, sign up for it, go after media outlets that are moved, national public radio, "new york times," "washington times," and how many are already on the list? if you are interested in activism, you should be on the list. >> how many signed up for democracynow.org? just check it out. it's the transcript where everyone here show uprisings, and it's very important as you talk about building media, jeff is that we take independent --

i'm not -- it's not the at terntive, as i said, the corporate media is the extreme media. i really do think independent media represents the mainstream in this country today. we must protect independent media. [applause] because that is the future. >> how do we get more balanced coverage of israel-palestine issues in mainstream media? for your information, it's strongly tilted to favor of israel, quote-on-quote. [laughter] any comments? you have done great work on the subject. >> it's a standard of human rights, and if you insist on a single standard, the reflexes of palestinian lives for so long perniciously dominated u.s. mass media will be challenged

directly. you know, it's one thing for a president to talk about seeing through somebody else's eyes as a toss off rhetorical statement. another saying too on a day in, day out basis, not through platitudes, but public discourse to say we have way single standard of human rights and of grief, a suffering of a palestinian is just as important as the suffering of an israeli. >> i want to add, actually -- [applause] i think the tide is turning. we may not see it in our media, but public opinion has actually probably shifted significantly in terms of how palestinians are viewed and oppression of palestinians are viewed. there's incredible successes on college campuses in particular with the diversement movement, and even if they are not covering it, the public is getting it through social media networks. the challenge is, of course,

getting our politicians to change the way they vote, and convincing them that, you know, there's not necessarily a political price for standing up to israel, but i think public opinion, on that one issue is seeing some slow change of in a way that's not really happened in a long time, especially after the incuring'ses and various invasions in the past few years of lebanon and palestinian territories. >> a few of us talked about it that led to a question. do we think the mainstream network news contributed to ending the vietnam war, and if so, what changed in the intervening decades? >> you know, one of the great myths is that the mass media of the united states somehow led the way to ending the vietnam war. au contraire as they say with a better french accent than i do. the reality is that the mass

media of the united states was dragged kicking and screaming by the antiwar movement to do coverage of the vietnam war as has been the case in the last decade for the proliferating wars. dan howlen in the book "uncensoredded war" documents that, and the my tholing, you know, it -- mytology, you know, is something we have to challenge because it somehow gets us, i think, into a misleading frame of mind that if we only convince the mass media to operate properly that our job is done. we have to insist they do the job properly, but that's in tandem with building strong antiwar movements. >> i think amy's reading of the quote of how the mainstream media reacted when king was against the war is overriding bias until 1968 or later. there was no antiwar voices allowed in the mainstream. i think the best way -- >> one thing, danny glover who

jokes, but i think it's serious. he wonders if dr. martin luther king would be invited to the celebrations of his life anywhere in the country today. [laughter] when, you know, the federal holiday that people fought so hard for for years. >> another similar bulge of the decline in mainstream media. think how they reacted to the military whistle blower in 1971 bringing forward the documents. if you saw the movie, the documentary, it almost amounted to civil disobedience. when one mainstream daily was stopped by a judge from publishing the papers another daily picked it up, they were stopped a third picked it up. now, today, how they react to the military whistle-blower with documents named bradley manning, a 25-year-old facing life in

prison with documents current that were broad, the afghan war logs, u.s. state department, and the role they play in atrocities or covering up prosecutions in europe against cia officers who have engaged in torture and engaged in kidnapping. it's like night and day the reactions of u.s. media to the whistle-blowers. >> it's important to talk about bradley manning. think about this. this was a young man who was in the army in iraq who now has said he did download these documents and give them to wick wikileaks. he's held for three years without a trial, three years. when was the last time you heard his voice? well, if you tune into democracynow, you had to struggle to hear it, but that's because we got a secret recording of him speaking in the courtroom. why is his voice forbidden from being heard? he's behind bars.

what threat is he in terms of u.s. government? why can't you hear what it is he has to say? why is it so radical to bring you his voice someone bravely in the courtroom, you know, secretly recording his statement to the judge about why he did what he did. bradley manning and julian assange in the embassy in london who is facing extradition to sweden, but he says he's not concerned about going to sweden as the possibility of then being extradited to the united states. why would he be concerned? well, the words "bradley manning" ring a bell. it's an extremely serious situation when you think of the stories that came from the documents in a country where we see a crack down on information like we have not seen before. the number of whistle-blowers prosecuted under the obama

administration, more whistle blowers prosecuted today than in all past presidential administrations combined. the story of bradley manning is more than the story of the one young man. it is a message to all whistle-blowerrings, and particularly, i think, young people in the military who went, km back, and saw atrocities, terrified to speak out because they are afraid, could they face the same fate? it is our job as journalists to bring you this information, and so for all the bloggers, the journalists who are listening, watching, who are seeing us on c-span and other global and national outlets, we have a responsibility. it is extremely serious. [applause] just -- [applause] >> you know, the effort to

silence bradley manning effectively for the good of, quote, national security, are metaphorically both not allowing as much as possible as the government would have it his voice to be heard, but also, of course, his crime, quote-on-quote, was to inform the american public and the world about information that's supposed to be available to the consent of the governed; right? we're supposed to know what our government's doing in our name with a tax dollars. when it comes to media coverage with rare exceptions very dismissive in this country's main line media towards bradley manning, i want to mention that about ten days ago, rootfaction.org launched a petition asking the nor wee january nobel committee to award the nobel peace prize to bradley manning. [applause] and we got coverage of that

launch on specific radio in the country, and none of the main line media, national public radio would not touch it, overseas media contacted us, and at this point, we have 40,000 people who went to rootfaction.org, and i won't be offended if you do it now with your remote phone here, went to rootfaction.org to sign the petition. bradley manning epitomizes the meaning of the nobel peace prize like martin luther king did. [applause] >> i just wants to touch on what you said earlier in terms of what changed with media landscape between then and now, and, certainly, as our mainstream media is more and more consolidated, the views are narrower, but what has else changed is our ability to be parts of the media, and we shouldn't lose sight of that. forty years ago we couldn't communicate with one another in

the way we can now. believe it or not, journalists patrol our facebook pages on what's trending and what fellow activists see as important or reporting, and the nature of journalism completely changed. every single one of you in the room is capable of spreading a story, of sparking, you know, the light under a media outlet to get the story heard. i mean, i have, on my facebook page, not just fellow activists, but moms and dads from my kids' schools, and oftentimes stuff i post, these folks who don't consider themselves activists pick up and, you know, say here, here, pass it on, and we have all of those have the ability to do that that has not happened before. rootfaction.org is a website that got lou dobbs off the air, web-based strategies that blur the line between advocacy and journalism if there was a line to begin with, and i think that's something we should really not forget.

i mean despite how dismal the land scape is, the landscape of public media and what's considered citizen journalism today is more exciting than ever. >> which is why we have to keep the internet open and free. and not let the cable companies and the telecoms write legislation that would privatize this global, invalue l resource that allows us to communicate with each other all over the world, and i also want to point out why it's so focused because in here, in denver, colorado i mean, it's not just a figment of our optimistic imaginations that's there's independent media. this is a hot bed of independent media, denver, as are many places around the country. you got the wonderful community radio station, kgnu -- [applause] you have got colorado public television and denver open media

which is pioneering ways to put together interpret and public access. you got, ompt western slope, an amazing array of commune stations from kbut and today, well, i'll be going to a fundraiser for a new radio station about to be establishedded, kfsr, and we'll be there from 5:30 to seven at city of cities six blocks from here during the mcr dinner break. new ones established, free speech tv based right here in denver and there's link tv, that's based in los angeles. working now with kcep, but all of this commune media, colorado independent, i mean, here in denver, you had rocky mountain news, 150-year-old media institution that died. it becomes a one paper town, "the denver post," but no, a

colorado independent pops up. i think this is not even unique. all over the country we have to occupy our eyes and work together and join the independent media spaces. >> and while we're talking about colorado independent media, don't forget alternative radio in there. >> oh, my gosh, that's right. [applause] >> yeah, i want to make an announcement the freedom of press foundation is having an event on wikileak's bradley manning and press freedom today at one o'clock. it's at the plaza court 2 in this building, and i think amy said something so important as one of the centerpieces of the conference which is the need to fight for net neutrality so these four companies that bring us our interpret, which is at&t, verizon wireless, comcast, and time warner, those four companies need to have legislation passed so that those

four companies cannot have a two-tiered system where the website that they make money from or the websites they own are in the fast lane, and democracy now's uprising is pushed off into a slow lane. when he was campaigning for president, candidate barack obama said he would -- i take a backseat to no one on the issue of net neutrality. we've had five years, and his ftc commission chair has basically punted on the issue. it's one of the most important issues we have if we care about building up independent media. [applause] let's do a round of a few quick questions. there's the guantanamo hunger strike, a central place in the war on terror, so-called. the u.s. military denying

reporters access to the prison for at least a montes. anyone want to comment on that? >> [inaudible] >> you need a microphone. real short comment. >> yes, david is one of our coattorneys assisting us with the trial of the century, how many here are familiar with hedges? that is fright ping folks. that is not been in our mass media. it's been covered on the front page over in the u.k. and the guardian, and yet our papers have not covered this vital trial that some of the best journalists imaginable are multiplaintiffs in the suit. plus, a member of parliament who

protected julien assange, and we have had a judge ruling in our favor, and guess what last may happened? the judge was removed from the courtroom by navy seals protecting her, and from the courthouse, no surprise. our plaintiffs have had all kinds of threats, and we are holding firm. what must we do as journalists and people who are active? we must support, as david does, in guantanamo, very effectively, and he is now saying that it is increasing and that the starvation protests is increasing, and he feels that perhaps coverage is increasing also, so, yeah, please, hang in there, hang tough, raise hell.

>> okay. >> very quickly. 166 men held at gawp gawp, the majority of them cleared for release, a number of held for more than a decade. we have reports that more, perhaps nearly more, perhaps a hundred on hunger strike and have been for many, many weeks now. you know, this, again, is our responsibility to cover. what message does it send to countries, repressive regimes around the world that the united states is holding scores of prisoners without charge who have been cleared by the u.s. for release, and yet are held indefinitely. check out democracynow.org for the latest. we cover this extensively, and, also, i had the remarkable experience of interviewing one in person when we went to the climate change summit. we bent there, and he is the

only journalist held in guantanamo held by the u.s. government for seven years. he was never charged, and he was interrogated more than a hundred times. he was a camera man going from afghanistan to pakistan when he was picked up. most of the time he was interrogated, he was questioned about the leadership of al al jazeera. there's the big ones, how much dupe about your leaders? the fact that this happened over and over again is our job to cover it. >> the hunger strikers are force fed where they take a tube, stick it in the nose and down into the throats, excruciatingly painful, no an thee sha, and in the bush administration, they

didn't sterilize it so there was the blood in the vile from the previous prisoner going in your nose and force feeding a person who understands the consequences of refusing food amounts to torture. this is going on now under the obama administration. >> okay, here's what we are going to do. norman has the floor, quick final statements up the panel, and thank you so much for coming out to this session. >> what we heard about is part of a hugely important, yet relatively small part of what's called now the war on terror, and whether it's counterinsurgency or national security, this has to do with profound decisions that are being made through occasion or commission. it has to do with the world that's going to be existing for

the next generation, and i want to announce here plans for the tribunal on the war on terror under the spot soreship of an organization that i'm part of, the institute for public accuracy. i want to ask everybody in this room, and everybody not in the room who is hearing the forum to consider helping us launch the tribunal on the war on terror. go to what we do at the institute, and you can contact us that way, and also in the room, we have some fliers. bottom line is we want to do a huge tribunal with documentary testimony on every aspect of the war on terror, and let us use our own capacity to research, organize, and publicize to challenge policies. >> okay, thank you. amy good mapp? >> two quick thoughts. one thing, i'll be on c-span

tomorrow from noon eastern standard time to three for an "in-depth" interview for three hours are e-mails and call-in, i hope you do weigh in. it's a great forum around the country for different voices to be heard. two things. you know, during the time of the iraq war, secretary of state helped lead that war, and his son, michael powell, head of the fcc, leading a war on diversity of voices here at home pushing for deregulation of media. the current share of the fcc and the response unbelievable, millions of people wrote in, this obscure, at the time, agency suddenly people became aware, and, yes, when people learn about what's happening, they respond and understand having newspaper radio tv in one town owned by the same media moe gel is a threat to the

democracy. right now, they just announced he's leaving, and another of the five commissioners has now says he's leaving. there's just five commissioners. who heads the agency and what direction is president obama giving them makes an enormous difference for the media land scape in this country. you know, we, i see the media as a huge kitchen table across the globe we all sit around and debate and discuss the most important issues of the day, war and peace, life and death, and anything less than that is a disservice to the servicemen and women of the country. they can't have debates on military bases and rely on us in civilian society to have the discussions that lead to the decisions about whether they live or die, whether they are sent to kill or be killed. anything less than that is a disservice to a democratic society. >> thank you, amy goodman, now margerie, concluding thoughts?

>> yes, bradley manning was tortured for nine months, held in solitary confinement, and experts have called that torture, lead to hallucinations and suicide, and it was after there was a great public outcry and a letter to the obama administration from many people from civil society including 250 law professors that he was moved out and into fort lebanworth in the general population now. he revealed classified information, but not top secret information. dan eelsberg revealed top secret information, and dan said bradley manning had access to top secret information, but refrained from divulging it. now they are going after wikileaks. they are not going after the ne- "new york times" and the guardian who picked up the story, just wikileaks. as amy said, the secrecy in the

obama administration is unprecedented. james madison said sunshine is the best antedote to tyranny, and it's up to us to shed light on what the government is doing in our name. [applause] >> thank you,. >> yeah, i just want to call attention to the fact that because today we have, for now, the ability to hear stories directly by the people who are affected through their own words on websites like you can go and see what those people who are affected by the afghanistan war are saying, thinking and feeling. go there, go to the website and see statements out and see the photographs used to document the

war. do it yourself because when the war was at its peak five to six years ago, there was such a clear correlation in my book, my coauthor and i did a study of how media coverage of the afghanistan war correlated strongly with pension paid to groups, and even if those stories were not covering those people directly. people went online and gist looked up what was happening in afghanistan more and found the website that the organizations and women, and thereby supported them, heards the stories, and when the media doesn't cover them, the attention of the groups and activists get falls. as we begin withdrawal of troops from afghanistan, it doesn't mean the war is ending or forget about the people whose lives our tax dollars directly affected so, reallyings in addition to supporting independent media, the continued coverage long after the troops have gone,

support the people oven the ground themselves who are making change. find out what they are doing, what they are saying, what they are going to share their documents, statements, interviews on your social networks and keep the word out about how their dealing with the very, very real effects of our drone attacks, the night raids, all of these droughtive policies that have affected ordinary men, women, and children, and we may never get to know their faces and their names and their families, but those who do represent them, some of them are out there, and they are reaching out to us via the internet and as long as the internet is free, you and i do have access to that. please do, you know, explore that, share that, visit their websites, ect.. >> okay, thank you. [applause]

i want to thank you all for being here, thank you for watching op television, and most of all, i want to thank free press for organizing this successful national conference on media reform. thank you. [applause]

>> out of the business of discussing the fiscal deficit and talk about things that are important, which are the long term trends because right now the fiscal debate is taking the oxygen out of the room. you're on this side or this side, and you have all kinds of fights about stuff which is reasonable compromises that have not happened, and when you do that, what ends up happening is you don't understand the truly important transitions taking place because you are focused all day, all the time, just on the deficit. you might be missing the big picture.

here's what the big picture looks like. humans are the only species on earth that transmit data consistently to their kids across time. maybe a dog learns commands, maybe a parrot learns words, maybe whales have fun, but there's not app animal op earth that writes on cables other than a human being. why is it so important to write on cave walls? look, this is how you have a baby, this is a fish weed, this is how you cook it. this is how we dress. this is how many of us there are. these are our instruments. you learned about what was happening in argentina 2,000 years ago. as you think about how we transmilt knowledge, that's enough for a tribe, by not an empire. why? because here you have to go to the cave to learn what's going op. an empire, on the other hand, looks like this. two things happened here. you standardized the language and you put it op paper or clay to transmit data across time,

and you can also learn theless sops of why egypt fell. all of you clearly know that you can read that; right? it basically says cut the deficit. right? what you do is standardize language, make it abstract, put it in 26 letters, and it looks like this. you can have huge libraries, and you can write sentences that say cut the deficit. over the last 30 years, you collapsed all language into 1 #'s and 0's. that's the sing the greatest creator of wealth. it's the countries that underthe transition because they were not focused on current problems, but looking at the future that generated an enormous amount of wealth. you want to understand the rise of taiwan, boston, korea, singapore, of india, it's that

transition right there. >> watch the entire remarks tonight at eight eastern pohled at 8:30 with live call-in taking questions and comments starting again tonight at eight o'clock over on our companion network, c-span. >> when arraigned in california after the extradition, he indicated he wanted the death punishment on three charges. he wanted the death punishment three times. that made me realize how serious they were, and, again, it made me realize defense not about me because first of all, i couldn't be killed three times. it was about the construction of this imaginary enemy, and, you know, i was the embodiment of that enemy. >> she was not that interested in talking about what happened, this period, the crime, the

implications being chased by the fbi, she was not, you know, the love story, not interested in talking about it, and so she's also one of the people you don't necessarily go to directly, and i was trying to get to her directly, and so i figured out that there were very important people in her life, and i chipped away at the people she knew and trusted, was able to get letters, get them involved, let them see my previous work, and slowly, she came around, and she agreed to meet me. >> filmmaker on the life of 60s activist and radical angela davis sunday at eight on c-span's "q&a." >> the bipartisan policy center hosted a discussion yesterday on how the so-called gang of 8 senate immigration bill recently approved in committee will impact the federal budget and wider economy. among the pammists was former

bush administration congressional budget office director douglas holtz-eakin. this is 90 minutes. >> hi, so i'm going to introduce the panel here starting with dr. lynch on my right, sorry, my left, the professor of economics at washington college where he's taught since 1998. he's also a senior research fellow at the center for american process, a nonpartisan national educational institute dedicated to progressive ideas, and research associate with the institute, a nonpartisan think tank exploring economic policy on low and middle income workers. dr. lynch's recent report entitled the economic effects of granting legal status and citizenship to undocumented immigrants concluded legalizing undocumented imgrants boosts gdp from $832 billion to 1.4 trillion depending on the time frame for grantings citizenship increasing incomes, tax revenue, and creating new jobs graduating

with a ba degree in economics from georgetown, university, masters in economics from the state university of new york, and received a ph.d. in economics from stoney brook. to the left is douglas holtz-eakin, the president of the american action forum, a nonpartisan policy institute seeking out ideas consistent with the center right values, a former director of the congressional budget office and was a commissioner on the congressionally chartered financial crisis inquiry commission. previously, he served as the chief economist of the president's council of economic advisers under former president george w. bush, and in 2007-2008 was director of the domestic and economic policy for the john mccain presidential campaign, helped several think tanks and academia applying policy, methods, and entrepreneurship. he's the author of the april 2013 people "immigration reform, economic growth, and the fiscal

challenge" arguing immigration reform raises gdp per capita by more than $1500 and reduce the accumulative federal deficit by more than $2.5 trillion. to his left, the director of research for the center for immigration studies, the washington, d.c. based research institute that examines consequences of legal and illegal immigration on the united states. he's written and testified before congress extensively on the fiscal impact of immigration including the 2004 paper "the high cost of cheap labor" estimating legalizing illegal imgrants of a net benefit of $29 million. he has a masters degree in political science from the university of pennsylvania and a doctor's degree from the university of virginia of public policy and analyst. we have robert rector, from the heritage foundation, a con seventive research think tank based in washington, d.c., three decades of experience studying poverty, welfare programs, and

immigration in america, heavily involved in the 1996 welfare reform bill and examines the cost of welfare to u.s. taxpayers and impact on the strength of families. he's also focused on how to fix america's broken immigration system today and last time congress considered a broad overall in 2007 looking at the long term fiscal cost to taxpayers of legalizing the estimated 11 million imimrants living unlawfully in the united states. the recent paper concludes the lifetime fiscal deficit created by the program would be 6.3 trillion. he holds a bachelor degree from the college of william and mary and master's degree in political science from johns hopkins university. now i would like to turn it over to our panelists for brief opening sometimes, and then we'll have an interesting discussion about where they agree and disagree on the costs and benefits of immigration

reform. start with you. >> okay. the basis of my analysis starts from an understanding of the redistricted nature of government. the type of analysis i do doesn't apply only to immigration, but to government in general. i look at the total taxes paid in in every category of taxation, and all the benefits receivedded by individuals excluding interest and national defense, and i measure socially how much income is redistricted from the upper middle class to basically the bottom half of the population, and my calculations, which i've done for over half a decade show that there's roughly a trillion dollars transferred from the top to the bottom, not particularly controversial. the second thing i show, which is also not controversial, but it's startling news that the government is a lot larger than people imagine. the average household in the

united states received over $31,000 a year in all government benefits excluding interest and national defense. that would imply they pay $31,000 a year in taxes in order to break even. not very many households pay $31,000 in taxes, but the issue is stronger because when you look at the lease advantaged households, the lowest levels of education, for example, a household, head of the household does not have a high school degree, they receive over $48,000 a year in government benefits and only pay around $12,000 a year in taxes. there's a net deficit there, benefits minus taxes of $30,000 a year. look at the other end, households headed by someone with a college degree, they are exactly the opposite. they pay about 30,000 a year more in taxes than they take in benefits. overall, there's a massive system of redistribution in which we provide lots and lots

of benefits to the least advantaged americans and don't ask much of them in taxes, although they do. they pay taxes. they pay, and i look at that, calculate how much lottery tax and how much tobacco excise tax, and we have over 70 categories of spending and over 30 individual categories of taxation, and overall, total government spending comes up to equal total government spending according to the government accounts, and the same thing for taxes so it's a whole list of analysis. now, the question vis-a-vis amnesty 1 that you are looking at around 11 million people who have an average education level of 10th grade, and despite what anyone would say in this bill, the core of the bill is once you get beyond the deceptive ten year cbo budget window, all of those amnesty recipients are going to be eligible for over 80 means tested welfare programs, be eligible for obamacare, the cost of that alone, i estimate

at $28 billion a year, and they will also be eligible for social security and medicare when they retire. recognizing that, in fact, these individuals have on average a 10th grade education, access to all the benefits is extremely expensive, and it is not going to be financed by those individuals themselves. they are, in fact, in deficit in each stage along their life cycle. they will always receive more in benefits than they pay in in taxes. that's not necessarily a bad thing at all, but it's the nature of the thing, and when you have to understand the fiscal consequences, understand that the current nature of redistribution. now, i then look and say, well, what happened if you granted these 11, 10 or 11 million people access to all the benefits? i use a simple methodology to do that. i look at the current unlawful immigrants, and i assume once they have access to all benefits, they will pay taxes

and receive benefits in the same way that a current legal immigrant receives them at the present time who has the same education level and the same age, so i look at, for example, an illegal imgrant who does not have a high school degree and half of them don't, and then i look at -- and is 35 years old -- and then i look at a legal immigrant who is exactly like that, and i measure what the fiscal deficit is. the reality is, then, that these individuals, each household, once they gain access to all these programs, which they do under this legislation, each household is going to run a deficit of around $23,000 a year, benefits minus taxes, and once they hit retierm, the deficit is around $22,000 per person. it's not farfetchedded because all i'm doing is saying, look, once you legalize, then the illegal is going to receive benefits, the same way that a

similar legal immigrant currently does, and that's a lot of benefits. it's a lot of transfer. the bottom line is simple. the united states -- conservatives don't want a cradle to grave welfare state. we've had that for 50 years, okay? we have the largest and most expensive government retirement system through social security and medicare on the globe or in the top five with the most expensive public education system at $12,300 per people per year which is largely free or nearly free to low income households. they get the service, and they don't pay much in taxes for exchange for the service sm now we take a population of roughly 10 million people with an average education level of 10th grade, and we plug them into all those benefits. they are already partially plugged in, but we fully plug them in.

i'm asking the question, what does that cost? the average illegal immigrant is 34 years old, and under this bill, you grant them lifetime entitlements to the benefits the rest of their lives, and on average, live an additional 50 years. that's the time frame in which costs are imposed on the taxpayer. once you look at the analysis and assume the unlawful imgrants once legalized have the same deficit status as the current legal immigrant at the same educational level, the costs unfold year after year after year, and over, of course, the course of 50 years, they receive $9 # trillion in government benefits, pay $3 trillion in taxes during that period, and for a net deficit of $6 trillion. someone else pays for that or else it has to be funded by increasing the deficit. it doesn't mean that these people are bad or evil or anything or that they are lazy.

the myth is people think, well, if somebody comes here and works, they inevitably must be net taxpayers, must pay more in taxes than received in benefits. that's not been true to since te 1920s, okay? people who work don't get welfare. the largest cash well fair program in the united states today is the earned income tax credit, only available to parents that work, okay? there's a lot of myths out here that people do not understand the nature of the redrirks state because they really have not caught up with what government's been doing the last 40 years or so. i think it's unfortunate, but given the fiscal status of our country, we cannot afford to throw away $6 trillion on individuals whose claim to those resources is simply they came here and violated our laws. we can't afford to do that as a nation. it's an unnecessary thing. it's an unnecessary burden on u.s. taxpayers which we

shouldn't create. >> well, i want to thank you for inviting here at the bipartisan policy committee. let me start by saying that when you think about the issue of immigration, there are economics and fiscal, three basic issues that are confused, but they are not the same thing. let me run through them briefly to think about it. one, there's the impact of immigration on the aggregate, the overall size of the u.s. economy, and there's simply no question the immigration makes the economy better by well over a trillion dollars a yeah by having extra immigrant labor in the united states. if anyone says that immigration doesn't make the gdp larger, then that's false. is certainly is the case that gdp is larger, again, by over a trillion dollars, no question about that. however, an overall larger need is not necessarily a benefit to

the interesting population to the native born population. pakistan has a larger gdp than ireland, but nobody says, therefore, pakistan is a richer country, a more prosperous country. what matter is per capita gdp and income. there is a way to try to estimate immigration's impact on the per capita income of the native born. it's a well developed methodology with that. disagree with it, but it's called the immigrant surplus showing that 98% of the extra added to the economy goes to the immigrants themselveses in the form of wages and benefits. it is equal to 2% of the total or three tenths of 1 #% of gdp called the immigrant surplus. good news is you argue that immigration does create a

benefit for the native born, but it's very small relative to the native born and size of the u.s. economy. that's the issue. if you accept the idea there's an immigrant surplus, you have to accept the redistribution of income that immigration creates. this has to do with them saying, and it's redistributing clr $400 billion in the economy, and it's doing it from the less educates to more educated workers and owners of capital. here's a quick way to think about it. imgrants are not evenly districted, and there's idea of the labor shot there, but 49% of the hotel maids in the united states are foreign born. for the 850,000 u.s. born hotel

maids, immigration creates a lot of job competition as it does for the million meat poultry processers in the united states, native born because 60% are u.s. born, but 40% are imgrants. for journalists, there's another low, and only 10e% are foreign born, english language journalists are lower, so they don't face competition, but for nannies, maids, the competition is large, and they are the losers from immigration, the ones who lose, and the winners from immigration are the more skilled and the owners of capital, and now the fact that is business community in the united states fights hard to keep immigration high and have a relatively last and unenforced immigration law suggests, but doesn't prove, that a large fraction of that redistribution goes to them or at least they perceive that it does. they pay lower wages and retain if in the form of higher

profits. there's the impact on the overall size of the economy, which is almost irrelevant to whether it best of my -- -- benefits natives, there's a surplus that should be positive coming with redrix, and you decide how you feel about taking income away from the less educated and the poor and giving it to employers and more educated workers. that's an open question. one of the groups that benefit is the immigrants themselves. there's the third issue, the fiscal impact. when we think about the fiscal impact of immigrants, again, we shouldn't generalize. there's three things that mainly matter. the educational level of the imgrants and the education level of the immigrants, and the educationallal level of the imgrants. it depends very heavily on the education of the imgrant. immigrants who come to the united states with very little education tend to be a large

fiscal drain. this is what robert found this research, but that confirms what the national academy of science found in its research more than a decade ago estimating an immigrant without a high school education is a net drain of $95,000, and one who comes with only a high school education is a net drain paid minus services used of $35,000 in the lifetime. the numbers would be larger adjusting for inflation. what we see here is exactly the same phenomena. we see that 59% of households headed by immigrants use one of major welfare programs. by the way, i have not included the earned income tax credit and child credit, but cash welfare, food assistance programs, public housing, and medicaid. we also see that households headed by imgrants have low tax liabilities. about 7 # 0% have zero federal income tax little. it's not a fully developed model, but what it tells you is that when thinking about

immigration at the educational level matters, and all of the research, my research, hispanic cementer, piewg center, a -- and others estimate legal imgrants in particularly are unskilled, about 75% of illegal immigrants are thought to have no education beyond high school. 25% of only high school education and half, about 50%, have less than a high school education. all of research shows that people with that skill level cannot come close to paying enough in taxes to cover their consumption of the public services. it's important to note, however, this fiscal receive deficit is not result of the unwillingness to work or because they are lazy or came to get welfare, but in the modern american economy, people with little education don't make very much. education, as you know, has becomed increasingly important. it turns out your mother was right when she told you to stay in school because what you make in life is very much determined

by education, and what you pay in taxes reflexes your income, and, of course, your eligibility for you and your children also reflects your income. anyone who argues less educated immigrants ornative -- or natives pay enough to cover services does not know what the data shows or they are disinjen ewous, but a final statistic to highlight the fact this is not caused by a lack of work. if you look at immigrant households receiving one or more welfare programs, 86% of the households had at least one worker join in the year. this is not caused by that. what is suggested is that we're going to have a large welfare state, and i don't see any desire to fundamentally and completely change that. you have to have an immigration system that reflects that reality, and select skilled immigrants who do not create the fiscal costs. the immigration reform bill, briefly, increases skilled immigration in the future because it doubles legal

immigration, takes in instead of 1 million green cards under this bill, goes to 2 million, and about half that increase is about half the increase is skilled or put another way, we accelerate family immigration, and we create new avenue news for unskilled immigration. it's not clear if the bill changes the skills mix of immigrants very much, and in the past, it looks like half of all legal immigrants have not had -- have only had a high school education. ..

and if we let them all stay in the costs are quite large so that is the thing we have to think about when we try to weave our way through this but in conclusion it's important not to think of these has just some kind of a moral defect or deficit on the part of the immigrants would rather than the reality will come of the educational attainment of illegal immigrants and the existence of the well-developed welfare state. >> i want to thank the bipartisan policy center for having this event, and letting me just say i want to take a moment to applaud the commission to a five worked with the bbc in the past and it is a place that fosters this kind of dialogue on very tough issues and make sure the plans get represented and i

think that is something to be applauded in this town. this is a difficult set of issues and you can look at it from a couple of different dimensions. one set of dimensions -- my favorite senator. one set of dimensions goes against the policies and those are important issues in security with of the border or internally and the exit visas and a second set of issues has to do with the legality of actions and can we keep them on the right side when they are trying to hire the future of those that reside illegally. a third set has to do with dollars and cents and economic issues, federal budget issues that is an important set of

issues i want to come back to. it's also important when we talk about the cost and to recognize this raises difficult issues and evaluation. what is the border security worth that is a fundamental issue that we face when we talk about the defense budget. what is the value that we place on having a secure niche in. the same will be true for the evaluation of the legal issues come internal security, the dittman debate could diminishment that might come from a sensible immigration reform those are tough valuation issues and i want to recognize that at the outset because we don't want to hijack on the things of that we can measure and there are lots of things that are difficult and may be comparable or more important in the end that we can measure some things about the budget and economics. the debate that we are having for the first time is that we are recognizing the importance

of immigration as an economic policy. it is a demographic fact the native-born population in the absence of immigration will shrink as a population we are choosing the labor force how fast it will grow and what will look like as a nation. that is in the tradition of the u.s. immigration. that is and how we thought about it and we base our law on the principles of the family unification, political asylum and refugee status and we are now as a result we have less than 10% of the visas for economic reasons, the competitors nations recognize immigration as a powerful tool policy and have moved away from that we should, too. we are seeing a shift in the court priorities away from the

reliance on the previous including economic consideration. i applaud that. we need to grow more rapidly as a nation and there are tremendous benefits to that. we know that compared to the native born in population immigrants work more, they work longer, they have more small businesses, they demonstrate the trades of entrepreneurial upward mobility that we have valued as a nation and those are economic benefits. we can put some numbers on that. i've done some calculations and others have as well. that is a key part of the debate is to have that opportunity. it brings with it other parts of the fiscal copulation. we have heard some of that already. i just want to emphasize that to me all we have seen in the discussion so far is we have proven an unsustainable would be unsustainable if we put more body in it. social security is broken.

the current plan that keeps it sound is to cut benefits 25% across the board and 3033. putting this plan for the development by the way no private company can get away with it. that is what needs to be fixed. right now the gap between the medicare payroll taxes, 300 billion a year. 10,000 of the beneficiaries are going to follow the own financial aid. it means to be fixed. medicaid, horrific system, for the beneficiaries of the rate of the injured and working on the state budgets. these are fundamentally broken systems that will not survive. and they certainly are not going to survive if we put more people into them and that has nothing to do with immigration and nothing to do with decisions we make on immigration. if we have a baby boom and we put more americans in that

system we will fall apart in the same way. and so that is something that should be recognized to get it needs to be fixed to be a big problem with. but it's not an immigration problem and we need to ask the questions about the immigration system, what are the things we can accomplish on security and on our economic growth and what will we want the future of the american economy to look at. those are the questions that need to be addressed. >> i am delighted to be here and i want to think the bipartisan policy center and mica panelists for participating. my work has focused on what are the economic and texas of providing the legal status and the pathway to citizenship for the undocumented or the illegal immigrants here in the united states. and i want to tell you a little bit about what we know about

this. what is indisputable is the undocumented immigrants right now are earning far less paying much in taxes and the u.s. economy has the potential the cut. what we know is that if we granted them the legal status and have a right to citizenship, we would see a tremendous increase in gdp, productivity, earnings and taxes paid. it's important to note that the earnings of both native americans and the undocumented increase while that is primarily the taxes of the undocumented the would come out dramatically. there are three questions we should be asking. first, how do we know that these economic effects would happen? we know this because there has been a lot of research that has followed millions of undocumented immigrants from before they were legal.

the best study and all of these studies have shown significant improvements in productivity. the best is that the department of labor that analyzed what happened to the roughly 3 million undocumented immigrants granted legal status back in 1986 under president ronald reagan they were given the status five years thereafter and within five years after they got legal status the was productivity is an increase of 15%. other studies look at what happens once you go from the legal status to citizen and they found an economic boost. when you go from legal status to citizenship another ten to 12% increase in the productivity of those workers. succumb a second question that we should be asking and answering is okay when does that happen? why is changing one's legal status boost a person's

productivity? and we actually know that quite well. there are different reasons and i will mention three of them. one is that we see when the illegal immigrants acquire the legal status we see dramatic changes in the behavior and primarily one of the key things we see is a significant increase in their investment in education and training and improving their english-language ability which dramatically increases to productivity. number two, we know that before someone is illegal, they are at risk of apprehension and deportation. and therefore, we know that regardless of the skill level with an agricultural worker were college degree they tend to pursue occupations that are low-paying and low-profile where they are less likely to be discovered. that's why we know the going to agriculture cleaning services and child care services. and we know what happens once the acquire the legal status. many of them move into jobs

which are more closely match in their skill sets. for example, you may have the nurse from bolivia that can hear that is working as a nanny and she then applies for a job at the hospital and is now earning three to four times as much producing three to four times as much as before. succumb of the legalization because the whole american labor market more efficient and more productive. one of the things that happened is the key to creating jobs and starting businesses you get access to licenses and insurance and credit that you cannot get when you are illegal. the immigrants are much more entrepreneurial than the native-born. they create more businesses and hire more workers so any

litigation reform that unleashes his entrepreneurial potential is going to boost the u.s. economy and productivity and create more jobs. the third question you should be asking, we know what's going to happen and we know why it's going to happen so what is the economic and hecht? in my research, and not only that but important for this discussion as well what are the budgetary implications of that impact? in my own research, i was looking at the economic impact of one aspect of comprehensive immigration reform that is what happens when you legalize the 11 million undocumented and provided capri to citizenship. and i found that as a bottom line the productivity would increase after the legalization 25%. i met the very bottom of the study. my study that i did with my

co-author we actually did not calculate the budgetary impact but for the sake of today's discussion i went back and i did some calculations and i came up with a number that is to be compared to mr. rector's number that he just mentioned. if we provide legal citizenship what will happen to their earnings and the taxes they paid and the services they have access to. i find it will have an effect of $200 billion in the first ten years at a minimum and you can compare that to the astonishing $6.3 trillion that mr. rector just mentioned. mr. rector's study is riddled with methodological errors and when you correct these, you

actually reverse his results. 1i would be happy to discuss in the question and answer period. the immigration reform would be a huge financial boom in the united states to be the opposite of what he thinks it proves. >> thank you to the also want to think becky for allowing me to moderate. i want to open up for q&a and give dr. rector the chance to respond as well. but, first off i wanted to start us off with a set back because this debate is in the here and now. it came out of the fiduciary committee. i would like all of you to step back and talk about who has done this well in the past whether here or around the world in minimizing economic costs and maximizing economic benefit and

is their anything to be learned from that experience that we can sort of look at and apply? >> i would say policy makers are increasing the understanding that each modern economy is highly redistributive and that in those economies essentially the government is going to redistribute from the better educated to the less educated. there is no fault to the ones that are the recipient but that is just what the government has done for the 20 a century and it's doing it increasingly. then when they recognize that, most of these governments are than saying we have to tailor our immigration system to reflect that distribution. we don't want to bring people in who will be a net fiscal cost. and in the context of the united states, it's not all that rocket science to understand the college-educated person pays about $37 more than they receive in benefits. someone who doesn't have a high

school degree does pretty much the opposite if you bring people to pay for the fiscal cost i have yet to meet any citizen if i ask the question do you believe a person who doesn't have a degree pays more in taxes than government benefits? everybody understands we have a protective system where we support the least a advantage american workers by giving them a lot of government benefits and services and not asking them to pay very much in taxes. the public generally accepted that. the problem is when you try to apply the same system of generous redistribution and support to a population that is overwhelmingly poorly educated, and i would make a comment about we would have the same cost if it was a baby boom growth. we wouldn't because if you had a general u.s. population only 10%

of the people of grow up wouldn't have a high school degree. it's over 50% said the fiscal redistribution is massively different and with immigration in general even the illegal immigration our system uniquely our system has allowed a disproportionate number of people who have low levels of education compared to those that are better into the coveted educated than are largely unnecessary. >> the other places? >> we know the industry's worst practice is japan. do not integrate and shrink. so put that one aside. we have seen in other countries if you look at recent reforms in increasing emphasis on skills and economic considerations. but the reality will be that every country faces its own

politics and one of the things important to recognize we don't have a debate about skill based immigration reform for the core of view of the system. we don't have a debate just about the presence and what will be earned. we aren't having a debate about these things. the character of u.s. politics that we do bipartisan reform especially this big they have to be bipartisan and if they are going to be as a result the questions we have to answer as a result is not what we think of those pieces but the impact of the legislation and how it changes the lay of the land and that is between the u.s. as well. >> let me follow on that and ask if you look at the current bill as well as the legalization peace the new worker programs

for the high school and low-skilled agricultural workers how well do you feel those programs as written in the bill which has strict limits on the visa numbers and the like respond to the needs the united states is facing right now? >> it is entirely out of touch with the actual reality american workers are experiencing. right now we have 10 million job deficits if you take the existing population and want to get back to where it was by 2007 you need 10 million jobs. in the next ten years natural population growth without immigration we would need about another 7 million. so the next decade we need 17 million jobs just to get back to 2007. this bill legalizes 8 million workers and put those aside it doubles the legal permanent emigration from 1 million to 2 million a year to about 20 million so about 14 or 15 million of those individuals

are going to be looking at jobs with a 70 million of the existing. in addition to that it creates huge guest worker programs that will admit several hundred thousand new people. if this decade is in the greatest job bonanza in american history, what we are going to see is what we've seen the last decade the kind of increase in the mom worked persistently high unemployment. some might say it's a problem that there are no jobs but what we give you an example. between 2002, 2007 to 2012, there was a loss of about 4 million jobs. we still give a 5 million green cards. between 2000 to 2013 the long period the new census has shown 16 million new immigrants came in and we have a gain of 4 million jobs over that time period. what that tells us is you can stimulate a lot of immigration because life is better here than in the country's but it doesn't necessarily result in job growth

it hasn't in the last 13 years perhaps in the future it might but we know it doesn't have to and what we have seen is low wages in the united states relatively little no wage growth for the rest of the workers and a dramatic increase in the non-work and these huge increases in the legal immigration in this bill are likely to exacerbate that problem even more. islamic there are problems with the numbers being thrown around and it's not clear that there will be an increase under the current bill that is being proposed. also, he's using the numbers how many jobs we've created and how many have come, he thought we lost 4 million but talked about starting in 2013 the job loss in 2007 and 2006 it wasn't, but that is when the bulk of the immigrants came in and the green cards we issued 5 million common people apply for their green cards five, ten, 1520 years ago when they happened to get them is irrelevant to the situation

at that time because the nature of the systems of those numbers are sort of, not very reflective of what is going on in the economy. >> i think it's important to take the long view. there's been a lot of criticisms, myself included in the work but i think something that is important to recognize is over a long period of time that is the right thing to do. we don't do immigration reform every year in the united states as you may have noticed we do it once every 30 years if things break the right way. psychiatry evaluate reform legislation on the basis of the market condition i think is fundamentally a mistake. it is the case of the american economy is a remarkable thing. it has on average over hundreds of years even though we get bigger and bigger and bigger all the time, so immigration and childbirth and that is the nature of the successful economies. it employs people and i have little doubt about the capacity

to of a sore and employee people from both fronts in the future. i think that's important. second let's get the metrics right. that's 2 million immigrants a year and 20 million immigrants legally. that is an important number that gets us want in the ten or 11 door here is illegal so let's evaluate the legislation on the basis of what it will do over the long haul and the core is what happens to be program and most importantly what happens in the core visa system and what does it do for our economy. >> that is a very important. the bill is very complicated and i will say right now what i'm going to say here is my initial list of the bill but when i look at the high skilled visas in the bill and then essentially all of

those different low-skilled categories, it is extremely complicated. what i basically am seeing roughly about the two low-skilled workers coming in for every one that is added on in this bill may be dead is not if but to characterize the bill as a high skilled bill isn't true. i think of only what amnesty cost money but also potentially all of the low-skilled illegal immigration but would come in would come in and we have these guest worker programs and we have the track to the visa. all of those guest workers to have access to their green cards and they can become citizens in the long term and they get to bring their dependants with them so they would impose the fiscal cost very seller to because similar. all those things have to be factored in. again i think a very simple rule of understanding is in our

society we expect the better educated people to pay much more in taxes than they receive in benefits and we transfer that surplus to others. unless the -- therefore the college educated immigrants coming in creates a surplus of around $30,000 a year. most of the other immigrants particularly those that have a high school degree or less or the opposite in the net tax consumers. their costs have to be subsidized by someone else. the other thing i would say is the high levels of the immigration that we have had over the last 15 years both legal and illegal has driven down the wages i believe by $2,600 a year. this is supported by the work of the immigration economist at harvard who i think is the expert in the country and i would say as someone that works

with the poor and the welfare cost and those issues, the last thing in the world we should do as a nation is have an immigration policy that drives down the wages of the these that have hitched vulnerable american workers. we await to them as american citizens and we shouldn't be using the immigration policy that makes it more difficult for them to participate in the american dream. >> these are tough issues when you think about this. on the sort of substance it's important to recognize the market to value skills with a grain of salt we notice that high school, college all those categories don't actually turn into the market valuation. we have found in the recent years we don't write down welders as the high school application. they make lots of money so we will find out in the future we

better than we will face right now. second i would say from the economic bill i am not fond of the committees and commerce dictating and the less we do that and the more we make these responsive, the better. that brings up the first reality of politics which is none of us are going to like everything about this bill. so i feel the major legislation in the united states as the art of getting together a coalition of the disgruntled to vote yes and that is what this is. it isn't grant be perfect in every dimension for everybody. and this bill i think is on track to disgruntled many. >> usually when we do that it costs the taxpayers a fortune. >> on this issue, this is just

completely misplaced. the reality is that they are competing with low-wage people all across the globe and it doesn't matter whether they are across the street, across the state, across the country or the ocean the competition is already there. then moving doesn't change the nature of the wages they will receive one of the competition. it is a complete. >> i want to add two points to that issue of. the leading comments in this area is true about 20 years ago. it has been surpassed since then by better m methodologies and data sets and many other researchers who've done papah braking work. if you look at the latest research starting in 2000 like in the recent times and the analyze a specific issue is that true when immigrants come in the

answer is no they didn't find any such effect and it's not an increase in the wages of the low-skilled american workers so they cite a study and work that's more than 20 years out of date and its techniques and the data set that it uses either no effect or positive effect. >> five contributed and perry's work has been shredded in the most recent issue of the journal of european economic studies there's an article explaining the methodological mistakes and why his finding isn't right so we have to agree to disagree strongly. >> it is dozens of scholars. >> he's at the federal reserve and d.c. looking at the job displacement effect of immigration on workers. there is a lot of stuff out there. you and i may disagree on what

it shows coming and that is partly i think reflecting just how contentious this is. most economists find that it does adversely affect both the and when that opportunity and the wages. exactly what you would think with common sense that there's a debate about that and it isn't entirely settled so maybe we can at least agreed. >> if i can just jump in with all respect there is a disagreement here but i think that we need to understand where people are coming from. david is a very distinguished economist, but his chief fame to claim has no effect on jobs for low-skilled workers. most people on the conservative side of the spectrum would find that really not very good research. it's essentially the same issue here. >> i want to move on to one other issue before we open up to questions from the audience. i'm just going to raise health care and then if you would like to respond with more debate

about who benefits from the economic growth that comes from immigration you can do that. but i want to, you know, as you are well aware as the director and you are all well aware they score things over ten years and the doctor has looked over a much larger time horizon but clearly one of the hugely substantial costs here beyond the window is going to be health care so i wonder if you can all talk about how you expect the costs to look and how much of that comes from the affordable care act and how big a factor that is and is going to be in getting this bill through congress. we of the house that is working on this has been hamstrung over this issue. we've all been looking at what to do in the absence of giving the affordable care act benefits to the undocumented immigrants when they are in their provisional status. so if you can talk about the cost of granting them access eventually to the affordable

care act benefits and also the cost of the alternative, what would happen in the absence of that in terms of the emergency medical care or whatever the alternative might be. >> i think that basically people need to understand the budget. every one of these comprehensive immigration bills as a very fundamental principle which is designed to deceive legislators and the american public -- on a reserve time. >> the name of that game is the tenure budget window and attempt to focus the debate. in each of these bills, what you find is that individuals are granted legal status but are not given access to government benefits in this case the exception for ten or 12 years so they move beyond the ten year budget window and therefore the budget picture looks very bright and we actually predict the deficits will go down.

they will pay a lot more in taxes. we agree with that so for the first ten years there isn't a lot of cars but once you get out another year 12 or so they become eligible for all these including obamacare at that point. we predict that the obamacare cost will be $28 billion a year. they will also receive a substantial amount of medicaid now as some of them become disabled and then when they retire they will get about $11,000 per year in medicare benefits and those are just in constant $2,010. the actual cost will probably be higher because they go up faster than the general inflation and it's part of the fact that i think that the legislators can't actually faced the cost everyone is acknowledging. we have over 80 different programs to assist poor people. the illegal immigrants don't get those programs now.

they don't get obamacare or social security or medicare. those are expensive programs when you put them into them because the costs over the long term are very large. >> let's clarify what actually goes on. they don't think the budget window. we budgeted for two years, seven years, ten years, 13 years in the past 15 years in the united states and that is dictated by the traces of the congress and the office of management. they simply follow their wishes and so the budget window has nothing to do with -- it has to do with what congress wants to do and then they write the law which in some cases takes advantage of the budget window and i would say the leading practitioner would be the affordable care act itself which was riddled with the mix over the tenure budget window so this isn't a problem this is your congress at work and you can like it or not like it but that's that. the second thing, the 100 your

forecast, long-term budget out looks in every case it is important to give some perspective to those numbers. it's very different among the fundamental things you need to do is either show that different discount and show how little it is now or do it relative to the size of the economy. so if you look at the kind of spending that we are worried about in the heritage study its 2% at the federal spending in the horizon so get some perspective and scale it by something people understand. when you get to the affordable care act itself i just want to say i have a pretty reasonable track record of thinking this wasn't the best move the united states ever made and i think that every immigrant should be exempt from it. it's an inhospitable way to greet people on the shores. but that is not the case.

we have a law that is fundamentally unsustainable and which will have to be changed as well medicare and as well social security and medicaid. as i said that isn't an immigration debate. that is about the fact that we have over committed in these programs. the only way it shows up is if you go past ten years and start trying to do the calculations which is something that is sensible, you have to then make some tough calls. are you going to recognize it's going to get cut in half by 25%? i don't think that you said you are assuming some sort of a social security tax. are you going to somehow keep medicare from going bankrupt? the first trust round goes bankrupt so you are not recognizing those cuts you are assuming some sort of a reform and we will put the analyst in the position of being a future congress and ragin howard will get fixed and that just tells you that we really don't know what these things are going to look like because we really do need an entitlement reform.

>> but it creates a bigger fiscal problem. >> but you don't know the numbers and the point is you cannot count number when it relies on the future reform. >> you cut the social security by 25%. i don't think the congress is going to do that but what i do think -- >> what i do think based on the historical example is when those programs go to be reformed, and they do come the people what the very bottom and the social security minimum benefits will basically get something very similar to that. the basic medicare benefits for the poorest americans i predict will not be cut. i think that we can assume that and in social security and medicare in the future i think

that this population with an average tenth grade education is largely going to be protected from those cuts and they will impose greater costs of other people have to bear more sacrifices in order for those costs to be born. we don't know what is going to happen but we do know that amnesty would make all the trees is in the future more difficult. islamic to do proper fiscal analysis, what you have to do is compare what happened to the budget in the future to what will happen in the budget if we do immigration reform. so for example if by doing nothing we are going to run a $7.3 trillion deficit in the future and then we will then have a $6.3 trillion deficit then you have to conclude it will have a huge positive impact on the u.s. budget.

he doesn't do it that way. he does a very different thing. he doesn't do the counterfactual he estimates will cost to cover the illegal immigrants without talking about what it will cost if we do know immigration reform. it is true. >> it's on page 29 of his report and what he tells you for the first time that in fact his $6.3 trillion number doesn't represent the next cost and then he explains on page 30 in order to do it properly you have to subtract the cost of the on lawful immigrant under no reform. then he says that isn't a serious oversight on my part because in fact the cost of doing nothing is not a very significant. it's only about $1 trillion. you have to ask yourself the question right away. how is it possible if we do know immigration reform.

a stunning difference. and it's a very good reason why because of the assumption he makes will. he assumes at age of 55 all illegal immigrants in america return to their country of origin. the self deport and in the last 30 years of the windel analysis there is zero cost. zero cost. the next he acknowledges that will not have been. why? because he acknowledges something every researcher can tell you. right now the vast majority of the illegal immigrants that are adults in america have u.s.-born children who are u.s. citizens and who at age 21 had asked for residency for their parents and in fact that residency is almost automatically granted so he acknowledges in fact they will laugh and then in a throwaway sentence the cost is something

with many trillions but he never calculates with those will be. he tells you it is 6.3 and then tells you it is only 1 trillion if we do nothing and that makes it isn't 1 trillion, then he never calculates what they are. i used his methodology which i do not endorse and i calculated what would it cost if we did nothing and compared it to what it does if we do immigration reform. 36.3 trillion the effect was a savings of over $1 trillion so his study and properly shows that there was a huge financial blow to the united states of immigration reform. >> my report makes it clear that the illegals after amnesty or 6.3 trillion. it also very clearly spells out that i think the baseline cost

of the current loss is a trillions of the cost of msd is about 5.3 trillion. >> because he was soon at age 55 to be inspected is because i assume they wouldn't get social security and medicare. >> it doesn't really matter because if they stay here and they don't get those benefits -- >> i assume under the baseline they do not get social security and medicare, they do not get medicaid and things like that. so, if you do that then the cost is the age up not that large. however as i acknowledge in the report, and i'm glad you know this because very few people in congress know in this particular point which is there is a loophole in all that allows an illegal immigrant when their

kids hit age 21 to basically get a pair and visa and green card which eventually would give them access to all of those things, and what i say is depending on how many people access that loophole, the baseline cost will be very -- the bottom line is they are very expensive and may be expensive under the current law. we don't know. half of them have u.s. born children. we don't have a lot of bad acting as the loophole now. we may have a huge amount in the future. the bottom line is they are very costly. they may be more costly under the even under the current law as most people understand i can't see how if half of them get access to social security and medicare through the visa i don't see how you can reverse that. the net cost of amnesty might be

a couple trillion. at the bottom line i recommend in the report is if you are interested in saving the u.s. taxpayer trillions of dollars do not allow what were people to say because i came here i had a child born in the united states i then have access to become a u.s. citizen because i came here and have a child and get a huge cash benefit as a result of that. i can guarantee that i have yet to meet a single member of the senate or the congress who understands that it was there and if we are interested in protecting the u.s. taxpayer we shouldn't grant amnesty but regional so close that loophole. >> i want to open up to questions for the audience. do we have a microphone circulating? right here in the front. >> you were talking about redistribution and it's true the

country that has the greatest amount of redistribution has the strictest immigration law. take denmark for example, in denmark the of legal immigration law and we aren't even talking about if you are in the country, but that is because in denmark wants you are a legal resident you have access to the generous benefits of college subsidized housing day care and those kind of things. and as i say, we are talking about legal immigration. in this country back in the days of ellis island, one of the considerations was if you are going to be a burden on the country coming you were not allowed to come in. you had to be able to prove that he would be contributing to the economy. so i wanted to see your reaction about that. but what is interesting is all of these discussions usually are

about legal immigration around the world. it is a different topic when you talk about people that are here. it's interesting that they wrote the law and we are trying to figure out how they can help the country. i think it is interesting. >> that is an important point. this old plant in vlore you can't come into the country of you will yen a public charge. no one has a public charge today. it is a completely void. some people in congress think that this is the reality. in fact you can come into the country and get different welfare programs. you can access all these different programs and so forth but if you are legal you can also get welfare as an adult no one is dismissed as a public charge. the difference is there's the time and ellis island we didn't have a 2 trillion-dollar redistributed state. it's true denmark has the distributed state but most people don't realize we spend close to a trillion dollars, 80

different programs. who are the beneficiaries of that? is it people with 80 hd? no, it isn't true anymore all visa it is not because they are bad people and not because they don't work, but because we support vulnerable individuals to the massive redistribution. we can barely afford to do that for the u.s. foreign citizens. but to try to apply this massive system of redistribution for people whose only claim to u.s. taxpayers resources is that they came here and broke along i think that is a travesty and i think it is an assault on the u.s. taxpayer. >> do you want to respond to that quickly? >> it's obviously an important one, but the key is that our system is broken, period. it was broken before we started talking about immigration reform and will be broken after we finish talking about immigration reform. we are going to have to fix

that. it would be way easier to fix that problem, which is going to bid the oldest democracy for a decade at least giving it will be way easier to deal with that in a more rapidly growing more vibrant economy giving it and we should remember that in evaluating the cost and benefits that that is the crucial core element that we need to imply in doing this immigration reform. >> i just want to add that this whole discussion of the redistribution i think is not being framed properly or correctly. if you look at the numbers you will see that his numbers suggest that 70% of the american population on not paying their way. all of those that have less than a college degree are takers and malt makers and i actually calculated using his methodology lets look at the fiscal impact of two entered something million americans and a keen not to - $66 trillion because of the way

that he assumed the redistribution occurs. i was having a discussion recently with a senior executive of a high-tech company who talked about the fact that he would rather pay $40,000 a year to indian computer scientists and 80,000 american computer scientists and he told me that those indian computer scientists almost are as productive or just about as productive. i would much rather pay than the 40,000 of them the 80,004 american ones and then you can pocket the difference. than 40,000, 40 million in his pocket. what just happened to the productivity if you do that? nothing. it's the same but you are and 40 million more. it took 40 million of income away from american workers. they didn't become less productive but there is no change of who got that income so

he assumes that wan for example the wall street bankers, when they pay themselves $20 million to create an 8 trillion-dollar hold in the economy, that reflects the productivity. hundreds of millions of people who are doing cleaning services, child care services, ph.d. teaching from all of us working together and producing in output and how we distribute that outcome does not always reflect accurately the productivity of the workers when he assumes the current distribution perfectly reflects the people in this society and that isn't true. >> i think we have one in the front here or there is a gentleman all the way back. >> i am the u.s. correspondent from the austrian newspaper and

it's ironic that it's not for the labor rights that is just an aside. as a question to each one of you, you have a population in this country about the size of the republic of portugal that is undocumented. they will be deported as much as the obama administration is putting into that any way. so we would like to get one answer from each of you for what should be done to improve the economic prospect of these people here now but in 20 or 30 years but now and what can be done that they would stop paying taxes, get access to the health care system and the education system. what can be done and i'm not interested in whose study is more correct and more precise. i am not an economist. please give one thing that can be done to improve things right

now for these people and also for the overall american economy and the society. >> i'm interested in protecting the interest of the u.s. taxpayer and in order to do that, the first thing i would say is do not give people access to social security, medicare, obamacare and any different welfare programs because they came here and brought here illegally. that is a very bad way to use the taxpayers' funds. the second thing i think we need to do is to keep the promise we made the last time we did amnesty. in 1986 we get amnesty and promised it would be a one time amnesty and we would never do this again. they are not even promising that this time. we are on the amnesty here, okay? but we promised in 1986 that we would do the one time amnesty and in exchange we promised the u.s. electorate that we would make it illegal to hire illegal

immigrants. it wasn't before that. most people don't know that and that we would enforce the rule that you can't hire. that hasn't been enforced for a single day since 1986. not for one day or one hour by either the republican or democratic administrations and this bill makes it dramatically worse and it takes the current employment verification system called e-verify which works very well and prohibits the states from utilizing it and requiring the employers to use it it puts it on the shelf and promises they will propose the new system they are going to be developed in the future. if you follow this from 1986, that is what they say every time. we will do employment verifications' next year. these trust it. that's with a 76. amnesty now. we will do employment verification in the future.

it's now 25 years later and they've never done at. they are offering the same deal to the american electorate it again. rac fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice -- fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me to the it's exactly the same charade and a the same bogus deal that was offered in 86. >> it is a replay of 86. we gave up the green cards and 86 to the immigrants and we promised absolutely from now one that we but in four small and we didn't. this is set for another replete. some things that the obama administration is really enforcing the law but to the truth is the have had the high deportation numbers coming out mainly with what is called the secure community program could get so we are identifying people in jail. they are not going after the employers to get it's basically that and then they give some

very significant shenanigans. a daily classified people may be at the border and then moved it to the interior. the obama administration hasn't departed more people than anyone else but even though that community has produced a significant number it's everything else that's been allowed to languish accepted the border so for example you can still work in the united states very easily. we still don't have an entry exit system to keep track of people who come in on temporary visas. the bill doesn't even contemplate a system. the land borders are exempt. so we try to track people that come to the airports but at the land borders where most of the overstaying goes on and is entirely exempt. we promised we would use e-verify but we are going to get rid of that and create something new and not for five years. but it is still never applied to the existing workers so this bill isn't even a very serious problem to enforce the law in

the future. all of the immigrants get amnesty a pound and by that i mean they get the authorization, social security numbers, travel login space driver's licenses, everything. now it is true we will make them wait to go from the slight degette initially to the full green card in about ten years so 3 million look like they can get it in a few years and people who would be recipients but the bottom line is the same thing. amnesty first with a promise of enforcement in the future and that isn't even very good it is another replay because the special interests will slow the enforcement the business communities say you can't enforce it on this group and you can't do it now employers say you can't enforce it on us and will be put back and put back and so we are set up for another replay the that anyone who thinks it is going to actually be enforced i have a bridge to

sell. there's no possibility of that happening so how can we treat the incredibly? do it for several years, good for the employers that hire illegal immigrants, deport them from within the united states, monitor them and actually control the border and create an entry exit system and then come back and tell the american people okay we have done all this and what is a fraction of illegal immigrants we think we should give a legal status to. i could conceivably set without but not this. this is exactly 86 all over again. >> the question as those that are here is a legal. take away the ever present criminal element and would make their lives better. to give them the standard labor force protection of every american worker it would allow them to exceed on the playing field. those are the benefits the would be realized for those individuals. there is no question. allow them to take advantage of the right opportunity for

themself. that is the skill in the job. there is no question of the benefits of art. for the nation we would benefit from more effectively utilizing the sleeper rather than having it locked away in the inefficient occupations but we will also have to -- and you've heard of the skepticism pass a law that could be enforced and there might thereby make good on the promise that we are not going to be a nation that advocates for implicitly illegal immigration and that is the great challenge of the debate. there is no question about. they just can't get done and cloud will hang over the united states but this is a nation that has proven to be quite practical on its ability to rise to the challenge and that when faced with something that grows in the magnitude that this has the will put on the books a lot of things on this panel and that is what

we have on this panel. >> for the immigrants themselves by providing the legal status and the protection. a lot of them go beyond that. a large number. there is no decision of their own raised here and and what we would call the dreamers. they are as american as we should allow them to stay. on top of that we should also recognize it's hardly about benefits for the illegal immigrants. it's about the benefits for the whole nation.

.. so it is elderly americans are most in need. and once they come in here and see this explosion in productivity will be good for the economy. it will begin for the native born as well as the undocumented >> at think we have time for one more question. of oil in the back.

-- all the way in the back. >> bob shoemaker with the american council for immigration reform. i learned when i was a freshman in college, economics one-on-one , that supplied l.a. she increase supply cover any of the factors of production without increasing demand, wages or cost of that factory production has to get out . i find myself and a never never land here we're talking about huge an implied already in you want to add millions of more workers at the same time as your having helluva time competing with our -- countries and third worlds who are moving of the latter. we have a crisis facing a so long term. how can you conclude by bringing in more arrogance, especially low income, low-skilled immigrants you will make things better. he just makes no sense. >> first, thank you for taking

economics, one. second, i don't think, as i said before, you should evaluate and immigration system that you expect to be verbal enough to last for decades by 2013 with an implied problems. if we get to 2018 and unemployment rate of over 17 percent commemoration reform is not going to be a problem. let's evaluate this one. back to full employment as a shed. hopefully it does so rapidly. third -- [inaudible] >> your talk about employment. we get to the wage peace, the third day want to say, you said yourself. we are competing with developing countries. the competition is already there. keychains the supplies allocation and put different model on said. u.s. residents or u.s. place verses norwegian or brazilian or indonesian, moving the supply in its physical location does not

matter. the total supply is already there. the competition is there, and alleges that come out of there. that's a serious problem for low-skilled workers in the global economy. that is a fact. and it means we need to do better on education and skills in the united states as a generic matter, but again, changing the location which is what immigration reform is about is not that issue. >> for a large part of the immigration reform, it does not even change the location. it just changes the legal status the 11 million undocumented are already here. they're already part of the u.s. labor supply. but changing you do zero, nothing to the supply of labor. you increase the productivity. we increased dramatically the production of goods and services in this country which benefits all us.

>> the less educated in this country, i will argue that emigration has played a role that is not the only factor. i also disagree strongly that it does not matter where the immigrants are. construction is a job done by people here. russia work is a job done by people here. cleaning of tolerance a down @booktv job done by people here. if you allow the immigrants and makes an enormous difference of the biblical in its arms to do construction work. construction markers in the in as many don't compete. let me give you a couple statistics.

how many chador and people have been a lifetime without arrogance. the american community surveys in the current survey let us do this. if you look at the fertility into a dozen 11 kamal told the average woman had one. ninety-eight children. if you take out all the immigrants it drops one-tenth. if you had twice the level of emigration that the census bureau projects now, that just released estimates last week showing that, all @booktv ration can change the ratio workers for people who are too old and young to work by maybe one percentage point. no serious demographer is going to argue that the immigration rejuvenates an aging population because the immigrants age just like everyone else. the average age of an immigrant in america is 43 years. the average age for native born person is 36 years. immigrants a side everyone else, and their families are not big enough to change the age structure in the united states.

as the census bureau concluded in 2000, immigration is a highly inefficient means for changing the ratio of workers to the ratio of everybody else. it's just not going to do it, and there is no possibility. we have to think about how to deal with an aging society. immigration is a trivial part of it. as you point out, we have a surplus. lots of people not working, record rates of non work and unemployment and declining wages. >> one point on the fiscal krauss of los colorants. we have a problem with our entitlement system. if you look at the u.s. born population, only about 10 percent of the people don't have a high school degree. when you look at illegal immigrants, its 50%. you look at legal evidence about 20%. and so because they have the lowest ratio them make all the

problems of the welfare state, particularly the illegals make it dramatically worse because they tend to beat these that beneficiaries. in my analysis i do assume that legalization causes a connectivity boost. we work through the literature. we concluded based on the same study is that there would be a boost of maybe 10 percent of which is going up. let's say is 25%. total taxes go up by 25%. the amnesty recipients would get about $4 in government benefits for every dollar that they pay in taxes. a few boos the texas but 25 percent the ratios still $4.74 to one.

i agree that taxes will go up. tax payments during the first ten years. though pay the taxes. i. that is 14-$15 billion a year. we grant them immediately. tax credit was the cost of that. about 12 billion per year. so they will work more, pay more in taxes. but the increase in the benefits that they get access to are going to overwhelm that, particularly when you get beyond the tenure wind up. >> that is quite the feisty

discussion. i like to think our panelists for joining us here today. thanks tough all of those who are watching. if you would like to join in that conversation feel free to join us on twitter. you can also leave comments on the website. thank you for being with us and participating today. >> each evening this week in prime time we are featuring book tv on c-span2. tonight's topic, undressing partisanship. at 8:00 eastern hour after words interview with former senator olympia snowe on fighting for, ground, how we can fix this damning congress. at 9:00, a panel on american politics teaching former republican national committee chairman michael steele. former congressman mickey edwards. at 10:00 p.m., david a. talks

about two presidents are better than one, a case for a bipartisan executive branch of tonight at 8:00 eastern here on c-span2. throughout the week we have been covering book expo america in new york city. the panel discussions from authors, journalists, and members of the publishing industry. this morning talk-show host chelsea handler moderate one of the sessions and spoke about her new book, you done that be o kidding me. here's a look. i'm v >> and very grateful to everyer individual your goes out and ast books s in your stores. everything you do for the booko community. is not to be here. i am not sure how the publishing industry is going or whatdirectg direction it is going in, but i would like nothing more than to be somebody who is involved in keeping alive. and i alehouse was first asked

to come here in person.pe figured i would just appear on kindle. goio they said no. your you're going to have to set your alarm to be funny, which have never had to do be there.p.m. o from 3:00 p.m. on.se bowing to release my fifth books ndis year. and it is about all of my child and -- trials and tribulations traveling. places i have no business being in. five-star safaris asking whereca rican hunt live lobster. i was thinking about callinger t a are you there, vodka, it's me. then i realized a aggressions and i don't know medco gorbachev. >> c-span continues its live coverage this week from book expo america in new york city tomorrow with a panel discussion titled self publishing,

destructor or defender of the book business. that is at 2:00 p.m. eastern. then at 330 a look at what those new to the publishing industry think about its future, a panel of graduate students in the new york university publishing program will share their thoughts on the industry. follow our live coverage of book expo america through the weekend here on c-span2. >> the public's fascination really extended. she was a real fashion icon. they emulated her hair sell-off, her clothing. this is the event from 1893, and the state and her family and became a family wedding dress. there it every day clothes are stylish.

then even inappropriate piece. a matching skirt with a bodice. even see the beautiful sequence netting, beating. more ornate, daytime. this would have a matching caller. again, made this with a short waisted skirts. >> the conversation on frances cleveland is now available on our website, c-span.org / first ladies. and monday for our next program on first lady caroline harrison. this year's profile in courage award ceremony hosted by the jfk presidential library hosted -- honored former arizona congress woman gabrielle giffords in recognition of a political,

fiscal, and personal sacrifices in advocating for a reduction in gun violence. gabbie giffords was seriously injured in a 2011 shooting w gabbie giffords was seriously injured in a 2011 shooting when a lone gunman opened fire in a meeting constituents in tucson, arizona. from boston, this is 20 minutes. >> we have a very high-powered committee which we noted earlier, senators and house members, republicans, democrats, ceos, some of america's greatest lawyers, the most distinguished law school. even newspaper editors, not distinguished, but never in doubt. but all of this to all of us know who our leader is. she inherited her father and mother is intelligence, charm, grace, and diplomacy. her heart and soul, this magnificent place and this marvelous aboard, caroline kennedy.

[applause] >> thank you. thank you. i was told that can would introduce me, but that was so much nicer than anything that can ever says. [laughter] thank you. thank you, chris, as well. thank you all for coming. this is always a special day for my family and for the kennemag library as we commemorate my father's birthday and honor those who possess the indispensable virtue that he most admired, courage. this year it is even more special for as we remember his life and his 50th anniversary of his presidency, we also remember his death. our family is still suffering from the hard break of gun violence. no one should have to lose a husband, wife, father, child to a senseless murder. but as our honoree has shown come out of that pain and tragedy we must find the

strength to carry-on, to give meaning to our lives and build a more just and peaceful world. the work that might uncle teddy did year in and year out to carry forward my father's vision for america, the heroic and selfless acts of the first responders and citizens during the rispent events in boston, ad the unity courageous woman that we honor today remind us all how prispious life is and how the human spirit can triumph over hatred and violence. before we begin to this presentation, the ceremony honoring courage, i would like to salute the first responders and citizens of boston, americans have been inspired by the countless acts of bravery and compassion that we saw during the violence that struck the city on. today we pray for those who lost their lives and those who are fighting to rispover. and we give thanks for the men and women who eliminated a pass to help win this city was gripped by fear. my family in this library are

proud to call boston home. now we honor of woman who inspires the entire world. gathankielle gi0tords has joinea person -- turned a personal nightmare into a movement for political change. after an assassination attempt and other congressional career and left her with great injuries, she feauteessly returned to public life as an advocate for new legislation to prevent gun violence. when others would have withdrawn from public life she has challenged as psaltery engage in a political process. and others would have given up hope, she has been unwavering in her belief that politics can solve problems. when others would have look for excuses, she has inspired action even before she was wounded on that terrible january date, and she was a profile in courage. she was outspoken in her commitment to civil public discourse, despite threats from angry partisans over votes she had cast as a legislature.

since then, with the support of her remarkable husband, mark, getty has not fallen silen new she understanthis l that this it spared to be easy and it is not can't hamerpen qmocckly, but its the right thing to do. she perseveres, not just for herself, but for newtoand, and overwrought, chicago, and tucson her courage has already changed the way we look at guns in this country. her work will spare countless families from the pain and loss caused by gun violence. as she wrote in the new york times just a fit i week do nothing while others are in danger is not the american wing. get the giffords lived those words every day. it is my profound honor to present her now with the 2013 profile in courage award. ifipplause]

[applause] [applause] ifipplausmar ifipplausmar ifipplausmar >> thank you, carolyn. thank you so much for recognca,ing my wife's extraordinary courage. to be honored along with people she ed meyers deeply like congressman john lewis or your own senator edward kennedy is

amazing to gebbie, ihrinow that. >> yes. >> but i have to say, not to me, the determination and the valor of my wife, gabbie giffords, displays every single day has redefined the word courage for me. we have spent a lot of time at another place that honors president jo caro f.hriennemag,d that is the kennedy space center in florida. the only place on the globe from which he uans have departed a planet of a trip to the men and from where i commanded of space shuttles discovery and also endeavored. and while it is not our first time here at thehriennemag libry in boston, we're glad to be back. we are so sorry for the violence and terror that all of you have endured. reno what that is like.

i saw comerint in two wars and e lived through a mass shooting. reno held violence changes lives. wehrinow that for those touched by violence it matters less what you call it. crime, terrorism, war, or madness because violence defies categories. it simply and brutally draws a line in the sand of time before and after. it bfe sore when gaby could rofe her motorcycle around the foothills of those southern arca,ona mountains and speak easily and o joen tear neighbors and after. before when christina taylor greearks parents and tucson r martin richards parents here in dorchester, they could go to empeep wondering what a wonderfl thing their child would say when

he woke up the next morning and 0toter. for the victims of boston, of the boston marathon bombing here we spent time with today at sprawling rehab before when they gathered on a sunny day to demonstrate, to celhonrate the demonstration of an amazing physical strength and determination watching the violinaer's bmocld line after. and they must find the physical strength and determination necessary for their own recovery we extend our deepest sympathies to all of you who have endured violence and loss. but courage for us is about the 0toter. courage is doing everything that we can, everything we possibly can to make sure that your parents fle de the loss. for me it meant learning more

about politics. previously by handled the space flig fa travel responsibilities in our marriage. [laughter] and can be han@ bed the politics. but now we have to do the politics to get. lessrther gabrielle, are courage is the equivalent of a lunar mission. she has set his sig fas on a distanqm distant horca,on, a country that will be dramatically safer from gun violence, and she work each and every day with physical therapy, speech therapy, and also a litcene bit of yoga to make sure she is in shape to get there. and there are many doubters, many think that the nra and the rest of the gun lobby is simply too powerlessl. matry here thi lo our deep and rich red support of the second amendment, which, by the way, we share will prevent us from making progress.

many here saw the failure of the senate to pass expanded ble dkground checks last week, i just thrown up their hands in anger and disdo st. that's fine. our friend, jim lovell, the commander of apollo 13, reme, ters bsandng amazee ca he was amazed in 1971 when president kennedy said we would get to the man. ond was impossible. then, as many as youhrinow, he couragit i there twice. jim says, and i quote, there are people who make things hamerpen, ths, the me pe touple who watchs happen, and there are people who wondered what hamerpened. ssiaughtely to be successful you need to be a person who makes things happen . can whie -- gan whie giffords aa person in makes things happen. [applause]

quo, tia's chosen to help inspi, organize, and motivate and nation that is fed up with violence and fed up with congressional inaction. and she is in shows of -- chosen to focus of some coming tn. . i know she was inspired by the courage of those who came bfe se , those cement today, and those hundreds of thousands of americans all across the country who are joining her ele dh and every day, those who are sending checks for five or $10, mons, that they may need in tough times to help us carry those who are taking to fle dhonoompl twi, this band shoulder to shoulder. those are talking to their friends vigorish restore and of

the water cooler and on playgrounds and sang, we can do better in, and i'm standing with quon whie giffords to get it do. >> thank you. >> i know she is ins hred don the courage of her friend and stafford : david zimmerman who ran toward her and towarthis l danger during that terrible shooting in tucson and lost his life trying to help. presof ent kennemag said, the stories of past courage can teach, they can offer hope, they can provide ins hration, but they cannot supply courage and self. for this ele dh man or woman mut look into his oerr soul. her courage is limitless command it is powerlessday w we tha lo you so much for recognizing and honoring that, and we ask for your courage in joining us to meache sure we

achieve our goal of a safer america for all this. i would like to introduce you to the woman who reminds me each and every day to denying the le dceptance of f thanr, my beal wife, gabrielle giffords. [applause] >> tha lo you to theabouennemag fablly for this award. i appreciated very on edge. i believe one we all have kurdish insof e. i wisiththere was more courage n congress. [laughtely sometimes it hard to e nrress i. i know. it has been of hard to years for

me, but i want to meache the wod a better place. more than ever. thank you. thank you. she ispplaushat, >> thank you. thank you, everybody. >> thank you. >> tha lo you. >> tha lo you. thank you very much. [applause] >> ele dh evening this week in prime time, we are featuring book tv on c-span2. tonight's topic, addressing partisanship. at 8:00 eastern our interview with former senator led thes, aa f he is no on fig faing for common ground, how we can fix

the stalemate in congress. 9:00 a panel of american politics featuring former republican national committee ch than the an michael steele and fo the er congressman mickey edwards. two presidents are better than one. it is for bipartisan executive branch. that's all tonig fa starting at reaf eastern. >> he indicated that he wanted that estimates to be on ele dh f the three charts. he wanted the death penalty three times. that mindie me realifai how sers ths, were. it wasn't about me. it's the first of all, i could not beabouilled three times. it is about the construction of this imaginary enemy. i was the e, todiment of the enmoty in the.

, the crime, the implications being taped by the fmer. the lead story, was not that interested in talking about it. what these people you dos, t necessarily go to diroriceny. i was trying to 60's activist and radical angela davis sunday at 8:00 on a c-span q&a polk -- >> no conversation for new york city police commissioner raymond kelly. he spoke at that idea festival about that tears spots in new

york city that have been foiled. >> good morning, everybody. >> commissioner kelly, welcome. it's wonderful to have you here this morning. we will get right into it. i think we should start with boston. we are -- it was certainly a wake-up call for a lot of us. maybe not for you, but for a lot of us who maybe have taken for granted changes a you have made here in new york. tell us what your take away is. >> first of all, we are not surprised that something like this happened. quite frankly, we thought it would happen sooner. people talk about the new normal. the new normal is our old normal after september 11th when mayor bloomberg came and we knew that we had to supplement, we had to do more to protect the city that just rely on the federal government, so we have

invested heavily. we have invested in personnel, money, and certainly we have been able to receive federal money that has helped us but in a defensive system that i believe is more than anything that i'm aware of. we have a thousand police officers that work on our efforts. that is a major commitment for us because we are down 6,000 police officers from where we were 11 years ago. but we have been -- >> just due to budget cuts. >> yes, budget cuts. we have been the victim of too successful attacks by terrorists we had 16 plots against the city since that time. they had been thwarted as a result of luck, good work on the part of the fbi, good work on the part of the nypd. no other city has had that target, you might say come on its back, like we have.

we have made that investment. we are going to continue to do it. >> is there one thing more i'm sure there is more than one thing. what are you worrying about most , being under threat in this city, subways, landmarks, what keeps you up at night? >> i don't think we can sigalert out. this is what is called a target rich environment. we have a lot of iconic targets. we have a lot of fence where large numbers of people come together. we are concerned about -- 70 what happened in boston. we have had these types of disaffected, radicalized young men tried to attack this year in the city. the brothers scouting out targets in new york city. received very little press but it happened this year. we had that man who was arrested

for and convicted for because he pled guilty to attempting to blow up that the reserve bank. he thought he was donating a thousand pounds of campeau when it was an fbi sting. he was just convicted in february. so it is sort of a constant stream of individuals trying to come here and kill us. when you say what you worry about? we worry about the whole spectrum. we have to worry. we are paid to think the unthinkable. we have to worry about a nuclear event happening in new york. we have worked with the federal government. a program called securing the city's. it jurisdictions in the area that we signed on to provide a sort of radiological detection during a run new york city. when that it will to say we're worried about that only. it's already of threats that are

out there. we don't see any diminishment. recede as being relatively constant. has not changed since the aftermath of 9/11. >> can you be specific about what you are doing, what measures you are taking in this city that other cities could implemented at boston could be doing? what measures have been in place that you think have been the most effective? >> we are not in a position to advise anybody. they have to make their own decisions. it depends on the level of the perceived threat. it depends on the culture. it depends a lot of things. as i said, we have done more here in any other city because we felt we had to. no, we have beat security initiative. south of canal street, thousands of cameras. license plate readers, radiation detectors. those cameras are both public

and private sector cameras that have been tied in and come into several locations, "one primary location in lower manhattan where we monitor with public and private sector people , stakeholders if you want to call it. we have taken that concept and migrated it up to midtown manhattan, 30th and 60th street where we are increasing the number of cameras that we have in place there. now we are tying in cameras from other parts of the city. we have our own investigations, no question about it. we have the most diverse police department probably anywhere now. and just to highlight that, last seven police academy class is -- 1,000 or more recruits come each one of those glasses and recruits born in 51 more countries. so that diversity gives us a lot of flexibility and it helps us certainly interact with the

many, many communities that we see and also enables us to do investigations in an effective manner. so we have personnel and we have technology, certainly committed to the issue. we all see uniformed personnel. we call in the critical response vehicles a you will see deploy and iconic locations and other sensitive locations. we do it on a daily basis, a couple of hundred of those officers, eat mostly in manhattan, but not only in manhattan. uniform, plainclothed, technology, and we are working closely with the federal authorities. september 11th, 2001, we had 17 investigators working with the joint terrorist task force. now we have over 120. we have our own personnel stationed abroad in 11 cities that act as tripwires and listening posts for us. ibook debbie, jordan, tel aviv,

paris, london, madrid. ♪ is that repetitive with what the cia is doing? do you feel like you need to do it yourself? it be the federal government is in providing new information as timely as he needed given what you're trying to do? >> chair supplementing, not supplanting. many the federal government to continue. but we see ourselves at a higher risk than other cities. these officers are funded by the police foundation. is a unique relationship. an officer to officer relationship, officers are embedded in these police departments. they're not in the u.s. embassy. so it is a unique experience for our officers and very much welcome on the part of the host countries. they send officers here and retraining with them. a lot of interaction takes place >> you mentioned radiation

detectors commit their weapons, dirty bomb being a potential threat, something your obviously thinking about. port security has always been an issue, and i know that is something that you spend a lot of time thinking about and marking down over the last few years. you think there has been progress? is is still a huge concern? >> there has been progress. i was undersecretary of u.s. customs commissioner became -- before i became a customs and border protection, and we were concerned about it than it. and this was pre katie perry some progress has been made, but the vast majority of goods that come into our country simply are not searched. we will be impossible. so there is, think, certainly more effective than when i was there a risk analysis regiment, you might say, that is in place. but i think it is helpful. now, some items and some shipping in tennis are being checked in other cities. all other airports like that before goods come to the united

states. so has there been progress in that area? yes. still a lot more needs to be done. in hong kong, for instance, there is an x-ray of all goods going in and out. there is a major, major undertaking that would be expensive, but it is something that should be examined. >> i was talking to the guys backstage about crowd sourcing and the impact that had, particularly in boston and the investigation of those 48 hours right after the bombings happened. talk a little bit about that, but how you are using trip technology on that front two, when you know there's a threat in the plot to address it? >> you mean in the aftermath of the boston bombing, looking in film, that sort of thing? >> yes. or the engagement to my guess, of a community through the

social that for a and that took place. there are pros and cons. a lot of affirmation was a vial that was good soprano. social networking is a major, major factor. it's something in this is the gullets time. it was examined right away after the boston bombings. the camera work is important. all cameras, many of the matter measured our weather cold slop -- spot cameras. can the video analytics. we can put in a formula that will set off an alarm if the package is put down for a set amount of time school -- we can see somebody three weeks ago at the front of a particular camera. a red shirt at 2:00 in the afternoon. we can do that. we can do it very quickly.

that is where the technology is moving, getting smarter and smarter. and, of course, you know, more and more private-sector companies have cameras. more public cameras are out there as well. will we have done is tied them together. technology has been a major factor in allowing us to operate with 6,000 police officers. crime continues to get down here. part of it certainly is the result of the technology. >> but this city is also facing enormous budget crisis, and this stuff is not cheap. >> it is not cheap. and thankfully the federal government has helped certainly with lower manhattan security initiative, what the federal government has its own problems, as we know, with the sequestered. i believe that other cities will -- i know, they're coming here not to take a closer look at what we're doing, but it is not

cheap. it is an expensive undertaking. i think more and more people will look at aspects of what we do. >> so even putting cost aside for a second, let's talk a little bit about what you are up against. every day you are under fire from members of the government, the city council, civil-rights organizations, almost every candid who is running for mayor. it you make no apologies for aggressive policing, for counter terror measures that you have taken. talk about stop and frisk, targetting loss for intelligence gathering, go through those. what the city a critics? >> well, let me give you a number that i think is important in the 11 years, the first 11 years of near blumberg's administration there were 7,346

fewer murders than there were in the previous 11 years. now, those life's, la -- flights the people of color, if history is any guide. we think we are saving lives. we know we're saving lives. stop and frisk is something, that practice has been embedded in law enforcement's throughout the world, not just throw the country. was validated by the supreme court decision in 1968. legislation, the laws offering that exempted all 50 states in the country, so it is a practice but not invented here. one of the things that has happened is we have started to record it more accurately. as a result their is a perception that the numbers have

gone up dramatically. they really haven't. people will realize that it was not accurately recorded. we have done a lot of training. we are not unaware of the controversy. of course, we have done all lot of training. ongoing training program for police officers. we think it is a tool. it is only a tool in the toolbox. it is not to be -- the be all and all. we are doing a lot more to address the problems of crime. last year was the lowest year for mergers in the city in at least 52 years, and the lowest year for shootings. in 20 years since we started to measure. this year we are running 30% below that number. so something right is going on here. and we understand that people are running for office. there is a perception that an error number of people will vote

in the primary and that their views are very much against this type of activity. that is how you get the nomination. but we are going to continue to do, as long as i'm around we will continue to do what we think is the right thing, pursuant to law, according to law. as far as the allegations, spine , we have here very closely to the law. we have a can't rate of first-rate attorneys that monitor everything that we do. and we had ted -- there was a series of articles put up by the associated press, about 50 articles complaining about what we do. i believe those writers messed the authorization to do what we do. under a modification of an agreement that we agreed to in

1985, a handshake agreement, in 2002 we petitioned the federal court to change the agreement. it was too restrictive. the one in 1984. they did change it. allows the new york city police department to go any place where there's a public meeting, to get to any website that is available to the public, and to do studies and reports that are going to help us better protect the city. so, you know, this is the most litigious environment in the world. i get sued literally every day. [laughter] so it is a fact that we are being sued, it's nothing new. we believe we're doing our work according to law and will continue. >> but they are trying to change the law. for example, creating an inspector general for the nypd with china you think is a terrible idea. why? >> it think it is unwise. sort of an editorial in the "wall street journal" saying

that. we had more oversight and a police department. we have five district attorneys in the city, like most cities that have one. we have to u.s. attorneys, like most cities that have one. we have a civilian complaint review board that exists totally to oversee some functions of the nypd. we have the mayor's commission to combat police corruption which is headed by general counsel. a look at every case of corruption allegations that comes in. we have an awful lot of oversight, another layer of oversight, don't believe is needed. think it will cause confusion to the rank-and-file. and it may have a chilling effect on legitimate law-enforcement practices. >> so if we're to believe the polls right now, and i know it is early, there's pretty good chance that come november we will have a mayor who envy says or at least is saying now that they want to undo a lot of what

you have done. how worried are you? >> how what? >> how worried are you? >> well, i'm doing my job. the citizens are the ones that are going to have said take all of this into account and go and vote accordingly. >> it is not too late to run. >> you know, i don't necessarily -- i'm sorry. >> is out front of me ask this question. is not too late to run for mayor yourself. [applause] have you ruled it out? >> i'm focused on my job right now. >> classic politician not answer. i think a lot of people may be glad to hear it. let me just say, i guess how did you -- boston i think has made a lot of stink about this. so much time has passed and nothing happened post september september 11th. in boston come along. audi's dave vigilant? county you keep the nypd vigilant, your officers.

we go through these : *, and you know all this are. our memories are very short. >> well, there really has not been called. sixteen different plots against the city. >> does it is felt like, because you stop them. >> that's the point. if in fact it is progressive it is a one day story. and in many in the media will say, well, what could it have done? they were entrapped, that sort of thing. like in boston, right away, looking at law-enforcement, looking at the fbi he should have done x, y, and z. that is the world that in which we live and understand. we are vigilant and have to be vigilant partly because of the number of cases that we have seen. we have someone you can turn 2009 he was going to blow and self up on the rush-hour subway trains. we have had someone who drove in

said times square and tried to detonate a bomb. he'd done his formula down because he was afraid of being recognized before the event took place. we had jose panatella, using the inspire magazine that is on the internet that we have talked about a lot, he built three bombs right here. he was arrested by our intelligence division. now, these don't get much press, granted. so therefore the public instincts are, you know, pretty good. and when boston happens it is a huge shock to the public psyche. not to us. we can see where these things could easily happen. we have these disaffected young men. actually, two of our intelligence analysts did an outstanding steady in 2007 on the radicalization process.

these two young men fit into it very neatly. eleven locations, australia, canada, where there were terrorist plots, and they put together sort of a schematic, if you will, of the process of radicalization. the pre radicalization time with the people are described as on remarkable young man. then there is the self identification with a start to explore is on. then they indoctrinate themselves. oftentimes they meet a sanction there. and in the boston case the sanction their is believed to be anwar alaki. an american killed by a draw on strike in 2011 his information is all over the internet. then very quickly may decide to act. so we have been looking at this

issue for a long time. yes. we are alert. i hope we continue to be alert. but new york is the number one target in this country. why? is the communications capitol, the financial capital. if you accept the proposition that all terrorism is theater, this is the world's biggest age. this is where they want to act it out. now, if they can't do it here they may go someplace else. that is our job, to prevent them from doing it and doing it here. so far so good, but no guarantees. >> commissioner kelly, we appreciate your vigilance and your time this morning. thank you. [applause] >> each evening this week in prime time, we are featuring book tv on c-span2.

tonight's topic, addressing partisanship. at 8:00 eastern, our interview with former senator olympia snowe. fighting for common ground, how we can fix the stalemate in congress. at 9:00, panel on american politics featuring former republican national committee chairman michael steele and former congressman mickey edwards. and at 10:00 p.m. david or liquor talks about two presidents are better than one, the case for a bipartisan executive branch. that is all tonight beginning at 8:00 eastern here on c-span2. >> the public's france -- fascination really expanded. she was a fashion icon. women emulated her hairstyle, our clothing. she populates everything that she had ended. this is a dress from the second administration, and in no way this is the most prized piece of all because this is the inaugural gown. this was her inaugural gown from

1893, and is dated her family and became a family wedding dress. and this was used by her granddaughters. these everyday clothes were stylish. a lot of them look like something you could wear now. this is a jacket. this is black with this beautiful purple blue velvet. this is a more evening-appropriate piece. a bodice that would have a matching skirt. you can see the beautiful lace and sequence netting, beating. more ornate daytime fast. this would have a matching caller. again, a short waisted skirts. >> our conversation is now available on our website, c-span.org / first ladies. tune in monday for our next program on first lady caroline harrison.

>> the carnegie endowment for international peace yesterday hosted a discussion on the arab sprain on the new governments in egypt, libya, and tunisia. this is an hour and a half. >> good evening. welcome, again, to another event of the middle east program at the carnegie endowment. i am vice-president for studies at the carnegie endowment. as arab political positions stumble all over the place in the direction of reform we are largely focused on differences between political actors. and the implication.

but critics argue that this trying to understand the critical destitution of change under way in these countries. we are fortunate today to have three excellent scholars and the people who have studied the region for quite some time. they're here to talk about these institutions and changes in three key arab countries that are undergoing transition today, egypt, tunisia, and lybia. associate professor of political science and also a dear friend. the founding associate editor of the journal of middle east law and government and has lived, study, conducted research and the lead freedom and alumni

tourists in egypt palestine, morocco, and tunisia. she is also offering -- co offering a book with our next speaker, jacob whitman, the founder of a management consulting agency that specializes with countries in transition, conflict and social and political research. founded in 2011, the national ngo in the emerging democracies in the middle east and north africa. and fred has focused on political reform and security issues in the arab gulf states, libya and the u.s. policy in the least more broadly. he has just returned from libya where he has spent three weeks two weeks. and he has very fresh

information coming back from that country. they have conducted surveys and studies internees and egypt and will also commented on their work. with that we will have check ago first. >> thank you very much. i am jacob, and i will talk about going back to the first elections, the first post revolutionary elections and tunisia and egypt looking at the role of religion there. ..

so what we present here today just -- is collaborative effort and not solely our. i'll go over the slides very briefly. firs