the individual period of the country's history it has not been presented with a history that it deserves it is very rigorous and scholastic but it is the reid and tends to be a simple narrative without analysis and attention that the personalities that would make it interesting. that is what i try to do. >> host: flights of the eagle is the name of the book, conrad black is the author. the subtitle the grand strategy that brought america from colonial independence to world souders ships and in bookstores now. thank you for your time from toronto. >> guest: thank you so much peter. thank you for having me.

>> faq is nice to be here at politics & prose after all these years and thank you for coming, c-span that demonstrates how one person can make a difference the idea of brian lamb persuaded the cable industry to make that immediate unedited coverage of events.

there are many good people here who might have worked with and are active citizens in their own rights. market is here and has been known to advocate statehood once in awhile. [laughter] for the district of columbia , and in writing the book for the people which is a cookbook for civic action and very concrete and editor of the corporate crime reporter never runs out of material. [laughter] and howard d.c. library rasons project starting at 10 years ago it rated the worst library system of any major city now new branch libraries and there is definitely a renaissance. and the great courageous human rights advocate and

john richard does is a sin that worker is here as well. and many others. thank you for coming. this book has a provocative title and it is called "told you so' but i did wait 42 years before i said it. [laughter] some say how can you be right so often, empirically? as well as the enormity chifley and my answer is it is pretty easy. first, you do not since yourself. second, make sure you have a sense of spurgeons see about improving the life of people on our planet and the third combination you don't have an ax to grind which distorts or covers of reality and to if you have any of those three the will

pretty much figure when corporate crime started to surge in the nixon of frustration with creative violations and you can predict if the president doesn't do anything about it it will get worse for you can predict the results of the trade agreements from president clinton and robert rubin and others and how it will unemployed zero lot of workers and circumvent democratically our institutions of regulatory in on negative agencies to a concentrated form of power in geneva switzerland that operates in secret that we have to adhere to. it is not a prophetic voice but looking at reality to make sure you get your facts

straight and you want to convey it to people. a lot of things we can predict and it is important because forsythe is important andover's people as early as possible i was quoted in the '70s during the surgeons -- sudden surge of oil prices and the geological survey said we will run out of oil by the year 2000 and i said the world is drowning in wheel. where did that come from? as the price goes up you get more and more economic retrieval of hydrocarbon no matter what disaster is for the environment and the world is full of hydrocarbons. just like the iraq war and unprecedented over 300 retired admirals admirals, generals, colonels admirals, generals, colonels

, national security chief and diplomat spoke up to write articles and letters to the editor to stop the invasion and they knew the pentagon was against it in contrast to the airforce and the navy and with those who were ignored predicting the repeal of glass eagle under mr. clinton in which shatter the new deal reform that led to the binge of speculation that ended up in the 2008 crash. i urge you to apply those three little standards and he will be known as a profit in your circle and that would give you more credibility. i would like the memory of this nice guy to revolve

around one statement, it is easier than we think to turn the country around. i will repeat that. it is easier than we think we have concentrated power and we read the expos say the bookstore is full of them. we live in the golden age of documentary and article expos a with less and less effect on change for two centuries since. one, the concentration of power is ruthlessly efficient in this country. they have taken away the freedom of contract that take away the right even to go to court but the corporation can do that credit card companies and mortgage companies and so one -- so on compulsory arbitration the blocky from your full day in court. it is called for reform.

you don't restrict someone to call a reform after of the seventh amendment is still in tact to right of trial by jury and take away the value of your vote by putting the electoral process with huge amounts of money from commercial interest and by restricting competition blocking third parties and independent candidates to harass the petitioners filing frivolous suits somehow i have a little experience with that. [laughter] one seal have access to the regulatory agency and it is hard just to reach a member of congress. not just a half more and more members you get voice mail if you don't happen to be on the campaign contribution list, it is hard to get an audience with

one of the 535 men and women whom we should focus on relentlessly with all civic action so if there are rallies in south dakota or a margin los angeles in order not to go into the third day will zero back with peyser focus on those who had enormous power given to them under the constitution that they have surrendered to the corporatist government in washington one and even in the media for example, but look what has happened to pbs lately. it is quite remarkable to gets on charlie rose. it has concrete on 70 times.

more than all combined and he had david sanger on and it is a bizarre combination that excludes voters and you see it on the sunday show so saying it is easier than we think is a reflection that only a fraction of 1% of the people in this country spend any time on civic engagement. they do volunteer and charity work, a country that has more justice so with every community those to try to uphold the retention of a civic culture and actually spend time on it. what if it goes to imagine

what would happen? organizing themselves in every congressional district on 13 directions in our country that have majority support with the hospital cracking down on corporate crime and living wage and labor reforms and the kind of changes that we would all like to see a majority of people would like to see in this country to change the tax code is not just a hypothesis but the greatest changes for justice have all started with water to people by definition the woman suffrage movement the famous meeting in upstate new york

the abolition movement, the civil-rights movement with rosa parks and a few other stalwarts and time and time again and then it united autoworkers in the '30's start with a few farmers in east texas 1886 and 87 spread over the entire country and outside this seacoast and again and again we don't learn from them. because most americans and have given up on themselves and they make excuses for themselves that they cannot show that a town meeting

locally or a member of congress to start a new citizen group and it is easy now to rationalize futility because let's face it, there isn't one and it does have a huge amount of wealth and power and it is blurred the difference between local, state, federal government and corporate power which is called corporatism and also has 100 ways to tell young people and children, i don't bother. they do with destruction entertainment, a pharmaceuticals, reprimands pharmaceuticals, reprimands, third grade, a fifth grade, those that do not grow up learning about civic history or voluntary history

of the two-party tear in a but they don't learn about the city's history the struggle for justice with those human beings on earth would i would like to do is to a few excerpts of some of the columns and the nice thing about a weekly column it meshes beautifully with a low and attention span of the culture. [laughter] and i will only read half of one column april 18, 2011 called waiting for this park. -- the sparked. although there into the

narrative they run out of time before they say to people, what do you thank you can do about it? so i will start with waiting for the spark. >> what could top -- or about the resurgence against the abuses of concentrated corporatism? imagine the arrogance passing on an enormous corporate losses to already cheated working people this is achieved through government bailouts and tax escapes. this teaches us this park is smaller than expected and of a nature that is wholly unpredicted or unimaginable but if the dry tinder is all around as many real, the spark, no matter how small can turn into a raging inferno. . .

>> a few weeks ago, this is, again, in april 2011, many progressives and quite a few pundits believed the rallies in wisconsin by workers, students, and others against the governors and the legislator's attack on public employee unions and social services following earlier blatant corporate welfare enactments would be the long awaited spark. it doesn't turn out that way.

the -- the massive rally culminated in washington, d.c., never did materialize. in authoritarian regimes there's few options to air one's grievances so when the park occurs, it's fertile for outrages. meanwhile, back home the inequality gouging political exclusions and top gaps of the top 1% and the rest tightened the grip of the al gar ky and the empire. loss of control over everything that matters is on people's minds including their children, loss of control over their children todayly direct corporate marketing of junk food and violent programming that's rampant. over 70% polled told business week they believe corporations had, quote, too much control over their lives, quote, and that was in 2000 before

conditions and controls and the wall street collapse worsened. the american people don't see much to counter pressures of greed and power that tracks them daily from debt to debt, lower standards of living and denial of critical health care to the iron collar of the cruel credit score from the computerized bills and fine print contracts trapping their sense of unfairness into waves of frustration. being put on hold by the companies until they are told on the telephone, no, no, no or penalty, punishment, pent. how do we break the psych dish cycle of betrayal by those begin the authority to bring down the exploiters and oppressors to lawful accountability? that's the congress, for example. again, you see -- you go where the pivot is, where the -- where

the fulcrum is, and the branch with the most authority under the constitution by far is the congress, doesn't use it on behalf of the people and give it to the presidency like the war power, but it's still in the constitution, and it's the most personal branch of government. they have to go back to the district, and it's not all skype, and they can be accessible, and the empire rips up the constitution, takes the reserve army of the young unemployed to kill and die in aggressive wars of the white house's choice with congress watching from the sidelines. the only rail is to funnel trillions of dollars, unadd -- unauditble budgets and has been for years according to the

government accountability office. president eisenhower wanted us to control what he called the complex, and it grew out of control. eisenhower's grave warning as expressed in the farewell address in 1961 was precedent. the spark can come from a recurrent sequence of abuses that strike a special court of deeply felt injustice or it could be a unique episode or bullying that tolls the feeling enough already throughout the land. such sparks cannot be manufactured, and the power to arouse and break people's routines is spontaneous. when that moment comes, millions of americans who self-respect and keen sense of wrong will remind them precisely why our constitution begins with "we the people," and not "we the

corporations," and they realize the necessity for a jeffersonian revolution. that's the end of that. i just want to give you a flavor of the kind of levers that can be developed. did you know there's no website for civil servants crossing departments and agencies? where they compare ideas, frustrations, support each other, department of interior, civil servants, defense department, agriculture, fda, and i got the idea for this because there is some young foresters in the national forest service years ago who were being told by politically attunedded superiors to approve clear cutting, against their professional judgment, and so they organized a group that is

called peer, and it stands for public employees for environmental responsibility. it has a nice office with 15-20 full-time staff near dupont circle and also in eugene, oregon, and they have done great work, and yet most of the civil servants i've spoken to in seminars, ect., outside of agriculture and interior and epa, have never heard of them. they file prominent lawsuits, they testify, they put out great reports. it's peer.org, peer.org. imagine if that spread? our politicians make a practice when they want to run to take control of our government in elections of degrading civil servants. that's a way to promote civility and bring up qualities, and

civil servants can do something about it. nobody can stop them from doing this. when you hear the statement, it's easier than we think, it starts with doing things that nobody stops you from doing. gets you to second base and then it's heavier in the opposition, but nobody can stop you from doing, nobody can stop people from signing petitions, summoning their member of congress in the august recess to a town meeting exclusively on catching up with 1968 minimum wage, 30 million workers making less today than workers made in 1968, adjusted for inflation, including a million walmart workers while the boss of walmart is making $11,000 an hour eight hours a day plus benefits. see the difference? who can stop people from doing that? nobody. the first thing is in trying to get substance to the concept, it's easier than you think, it's not just a read from history as

to how movement starts with very small number of people who often don't have many resources and contacts, but bringing it up to today, one of the things we can do that, you know, nobody's stopped us from doing to get the ball rolling for many needed redirections in our country. now, i mentioned earlier corporate crime. i did a column on corporate crime back in the early 70s, and i wanted to urge nixon to make an issue out of it. nixon was the last president afraid of liberals, the last republican president. he still heard the rumble from the people in the 60s, and he just signed. he had an automatic pen. he signed ep organization. he signed osha. he signed a bill or proposed a health insurance bill that was better than clinton's, which the

congress didn't pass. he was for voting power for the people of the district of columbia in the congress. he wanted a drug policy that focused on rebill -- rehabilitation, not incarceration. he had an incomes policy to abolish poverty in the united states. that was written for him when he was in the white house. can you imagine? here we are in 2013 regaling richard nixon. [laughter] some of you were around then to say, what's going on? what happened since then? you know? to give that frame of reference. so i have a column on about 12 ways to curb corporate crime, and one way is simple. have the justice department start a corporate crime data base which they refuse to do.

also, they have to update penalties, but there's a lot of ways, very, very gran nuclear ways to reduce the kind of crime that's stealing from people as workers as consumers, stealing from them, harming their health and safety, pollution, occupational hazard, and in effect blocking them from accessing institutions fostered by our constitution so that they can fight back. one example of that, which no presidential candidate of the two parties has mentioned, this is this one. the government accountability office was called the general accounting office in 1990 estimated that 10% of the entire health expenditures of our country goes down the drain due to computer fraud and computerized billing fraud and abuse. that's $270 billion today, this year, $270 billion, billion, and

it's not a campaign issue. that would almost covered the unensured, and yet it's not talked about but regularly documented by professor malcolm spar row at harvard, an applied mathematician as in the expert on billing fraud in this area. corporate crime. our health research group headed by dr. side wolff in the 70s had a book called "pills that don't work," and over-the-counter pills" don't work, and there were a thousand pills you could have prescribed or buy in the drugstore that didn't work for the purposes for which they were advertised. i mean, that's pretty fraudulent stuff. well, they are almost all gone now, in no small part due to public citizens' work in this area and relentless barrage of medical journal articles

invalidating these drugs. that's another form of corporate crime junk science style. i mentioned pbs, and i do want to express dismay what happens when pbs increasingly has to rely on commercial donors as the public funding shrinks, and that is that progressives who have proven their merit in writings and activities very rarely get on the -- on those talk shows, and i just want to elaborate pbs's charlie rose. he had war-loving william crystal on 31 times, henry kissinger 55 times, richard pearl 10 times, the global cheerleader for globalism, tom friedman, 70 time, and compare that with rose's interviews of widely published left of center

groups as guests. norm, two times, william, two times, jim two times, charlie peters two times, louis let, three times, bob herbert six time, and pall crudeman 21 times, victor one time, and once a frequent guest has not been on since january 2005. this was written in 2011. do you know how few over the air interview shows there are in this country? i mean, you can't count them. they are less than fingers on one hamid. you have amy goodman, charlie rose and bill moyers, it's almost zero so when one of the three has this tilt, not to mention the ceos that get on that show, it's not a minor derivation of the public's right to know a variety of viewpoints. frustration leads to creativity when you are a columnist.

how many times have we heard the words "war on terrorism"? endless. it's the big business. trillions of dollars are in contracts and all kinds of things. i mean, it's a huge pump of the gdp. instead of public works, we have a war on terrorism, and except that the -- if you define "terrorism" as in discriminate attacks on civilian population, there's another form of terrorism that almost gets no attention, and so i wrote a letter to president obama in june 2011 from an e. coli. [laughter] i figured he'd get the letter from an e. coli, and it was a special type of e. coli, h104h4, that was giving people in western europe a highly bacteria

strain in the food, and he called oven a pea tree dish, and the days were numbered. it was a letter to president obama and basically say, you think you're going after terrorists? how about the viruses? how about bacteria, elaborating it, and just for try to veer vasty purposes, e. coli ends this way. mr. president, you are hung up on certain kinds of preventable violence without risk-benefit analysis. you should agree it's irrational and not care where the violence comes from except to focus on its range of devastation and susceptibility to prevention or cure. you know, meaning millions of people can die from an influenza, bacteria, or

infection. according to the center of disease control, 200 people die every die from hospital induced infection, preventable, 250 every day. imagine what that adds up to over a year, and so this was what motivated e. coli, but e. coli ends this way. well, here they come to my pea tree dish for more waterboarding. one last item, mr. president, you may wonder how tiny bacterial me, probably not even harboring a virus, can send you such a letter. my oozing sense is that i'm just a carrier, being used by oodles of scientists taking advantage of a high profile infectious outbreak in europe to catch your attention. whatever the how, does it really matter to the need to act now? e. cologicaaly yours, e. coli4

coli4124 for the time being. we spend many time on outbreaks, you know, two billion a week on afghanistan's war, and we don't spend that on the whole thing, and as you know, the articles are bigger from china, saudi arabia, in terms of two different viruses. i have something on the over use of antibiotics. 200 americans die from antibiotic resistance a year. we've known this for 30 years, and we still have not done much about it. we are getting antibiotics by the meat in poultry that reconsume. we are getting overuse of antibiotics for colds without

determining whether they are viral or bacteria, and it's leading to extreme serious problems of resistance, and it's not a priority politically, economically, or in terms of public policy. i have one on an open letter to president elect obama that i sent him right after he was elected, and it was january 9th, 2009, and the last paragraph read this way, "the bush lawlessness and state terrorism are like a contagious disease. if you do not remove their sprawling incidents, you will become their carrier. this means you must move fast to eject the mantle of war criminality and repeated up constitutional outrages committed in the name of the american people here and abroad. sincerely --" you can see how that turned out.

i have another column called "hail to thee," a wonderful story that can never be repeated too often. i have an article on harry kelber who just passed away at 98 years old, new york city, one man advocate for working people in this country, and the labor unions who are run bureaucratically instead of with a sense of mission, and he had his own website, and he produced three articles a week at age 96, 97, 98. when i recommended to aarp that he be put on the cover, he's also distinguished in many ways. he started the cornell labor university unit with some others, ph.d., written explanatory pamphlets with huge distribution, an organizer on the ground, and so i recommended aarp.

well, aarp doesn't put older accomplished people anymore on their magazines. [laughter] they want, you know, 55-year-old tanned athletic people trying to behave like they are 30, and i said, well, you know, that's not the real life of your readers. that's a fantasy life. the real life is can they actually improve things as they go into their 80s and 90s, and these are role models. in terms of organizing democratic institutions, i have coal l line ups on how inserts in utility bills or bank statements inviting people to ban together in nonprofit groups with champions of -- for their causes to have a seat at the table when the lobbying starts or the litigation starts, and these actually started where wisconsin and illinois before it ran into a terrible supreme

court decision, but the point is that you can have rights and remedies in a society, but if you don't have facilities to make it easy to band together as workers, consumers, taxpayers, whatever, the rights and remedies don't get really implemented. i have a column on cooperatives and the al terntive economy. there's no better magazine in the country than "yes" magazine to tell you there's a burgeoning alternative economy expanding in the united states locally controlled, not just co-ops, but community banks instead of city banks, credit unions instead of bank of america, farmer to consumer markets are 8,000 and growing all over the country, renewable energy locally, and many other local efforts that speak the strategy of displacement of large multinational corporations by

getting their customers to move into the community economics world, and just a couple more, and then we can have a good discussion. i have columns on very enlightened ceos, and my favorite is the late ray anderson of interface corporation who decided in 1994 for the company's biggest carpet tile manufacturer in the world out of atlanta, georgia. i heard a lecture on industrial ecology by paul hopkins, and he was a man changed calling himself a recovering plundering of the planet. [laughter] and he swore he was going to turn his entire company around so that within 20 years or so, it would have zero pollution and 100% recycling of the carpets. he would actually represent out the carpets, and he was moving towards the goal with brilliance keeping the costs lower and

lower, and out competing his competitors and providing a great place to work because it was such a mission-oriented -- and he wrote several books, and you ask yourself, you know, you are permitted to stereotype ceos 95% of the time, but don't stereotype them all the time, and i also have columns on people, civic leaders, and one from japan, a world war ii widow in japan, and was a tremendous advocate and consumer add cocat and translated report and worked up to her 90ings, agitating, never got bureaucratic or anything, a terrific stump speaker, and "ladies home

journal" wrote a piece on her once. i have a column called "remember zen," howard zen, by organizing. the thesis of the column is to say when prominent people -- or not prominent people, but just people who achieved things regardless of their prominence pass away, we shouldn't lose the opportunity to establish in their memory carried toward legacies. could be a fellow or a group, and when paul passed with his wife in the crash, the children did something wonderful. they started a significantly sized well-stone institute which trains citizens and does good things. they could have done to them the same thing, but every day in the country, wonderful people finish lives and are fargten when their

lives are surrounded by well wishers who need to increase imagination as to establish legacies and improve the firmment of the democratic society. yeah, just got one more here. >> okay. >> this is -- >> [inaudible] >> yeah, i know. this is a memorable occasion when i was campaigning in 2004 in chicago and i heard from a 5th grade class, one of the poorest schools in chicago, doing something extraordinary. i went there right now cabrini green, some of you know about that, and the school had no stage or auditorium, dirty restrooms with broken plumbing, no lunch room, they ate in the hallway, and the heat often

didn't work, they needed to wear coats in the winter, there was no air-conditioning when it was hot, and bullet holes and cracks in the windows, few books in the library, broken fences outside, no attached gym. in the distance, you can see the skyscrapers of the alogarchs under paying property taxes and forgetting about these kids, and the teacher, brian, who wrote a book on this decided and persuade the the principal to have a yearlong project and said to the students, what would you like to study? they said, our school. our delap dated school, and they studied it in sophisticated ways where money would come to build a new school, who is responsible for the breakdowns and lack of repairs and they went to see

city hall, and this did not make "60 minutes," but it illustrates that there's model of superior performance in every serious context. if you name a problem, someone solved it significantly in one place or another, but it's not been diffused widely at all, and, again, that is where we can learn instead of reinventing the wheel, learn from the improvements and in every possible place. let me just end with the theme that runs through the book of the yardstick of evaluation, and that is why don't we have patriotic standards for unpatriotic u.s. corporations? they want to be known as persons, judge them as persons. if they don't want to fund

research for malaria and the second leading cause of hospitalization in vietnam for our soldiers was malaria, is that patriotic? when they run and don't pay taxes and yet they want all the services, is that patriotic? when they export our drug industry to china and i india where 80% of the active ingredients now are not well tested or surveyed by the food and drug administrations are in our med sips after we give them tax credits and give the companies free research and development of drugs up to the clinical level from nih, and this is what they do? we need a yardstick to turn the tide of public opinion in the framework of patriotism applied to the fleeing global corporations. anybody want to get involved in

the minimum wage campaign? we want town meetings in august and congressional districts all over the country, go to nader.org, and you'll get the form of how to send a petition. we call it a summons, to your member of congress. it takes 300 to 400 names, no big deal. we'll often get a town meeting by your representative, and so few people show up if they get 300 to 400 names, it gets their attention, and you can download it and then get back to us. if we cannot bring 30 million workers to earn what workers made in 1968 adjusted for inflation, is there anything that we can do? comes in at 70% approval in the polls. thank you very much. [applause]

>> if you have a question, approach the microphone as we are regarding this for c-span, so, please, come to one of the microphones, and just briefly state jr. question. thank you. >> you identified a number of people whose infrequency on the charlie rose show was embarrassing, but you negligented to name yourself. is that because you've never been on the show or being modest? >> well, i've known him for many years. the last time i was on his show was 2004. >> your book is full of brilliant ideas, and you, obviously, have the best

interest of the country and people at heart, and given that fact, how in the world do you justify jr. -- justify your disastrous decision to run for president and enable eight years of george bush. >> here, here, and a war. >> see this? unfortunately, this is a very important constitutional point, and that is -- i mean, i have a lot of answers to that, obviously, but one is last i heard george bush got more votes from gore than i did, and if we have a right to run for election, and running for election is the first amendment right, petition, speech, and assembly, all three, to say to anybody, even somebody you dislike enormously do not run so to say do not speak, do know petition, do not assemble. you may oppose them. that's part of the constitutional structure, but to say to them, do not write, do not run is the equivalent of saying i don't like what you are

saying, do not say it. that's number one. number two, if you ask al gore, he'll say he lost the election for a number of reasons. one, it was stolen from him, so blame the thieves in florida. [applause] >> here, here. [applause] >> two, 5-4 decision of the supreme court, clearly a plail decision, put him in office, bush, and then there's all the subsequent ones like he didn't win his tennessee home state and so forth, and so he -- it's -- he's quite gracious about it. he does not quote, blame the green party, but think of the offensiveness of that to someone who is more concerned about

people arm harmed, and we are listening to the commercial dollars ignoring workplace death and injuries and ignoring protections, whatever the rhetoric, ignoring controls over wars of aggression, ignoring cutting the bloated military budget, ignoring the role of big money corrupting politics, and, in fact, reveling in it, competing with the republicans, what's the frame of reference? is it the people back there to try to break a two-party tyranny? i think oliver hall, are you here? oliver? oliver runs the center for competitive democracy. isn't that a nice name? don't we want a competitive democracy? here's the final response. i say to them, aren't you glad there's few people who cut out of the two parties in 1840 and voted for the liberal party out of slavery? aren't you thankful for that that set the process in motion?

how about those who voted for the people's party or the greenback party or the populist party? those are the people pioneered the agendas the one or two of the major parties timely adopted, and we now take for granted, progressive taxation, 40-hour weeks, medicare, social security, and so forth, so it's an unfortunate response because it plays right in the hands of the trap by each party which says you have to vote for us no matter how much you disagree because the other party's worse, and every four years, both parties get worse. [applause] go ahead. >> i'm also in favor of third parties. i was expecting you to talk about environmental issues, so if you could talk about environmental issues, specifically global warming and

the new program, and thank you. >> yeah, well, again, the good solutions are not the runs commercially attractive to the large corporations, so they like energy sources to access. you can want dig your own coal mine, oil, nuclear plant, capital concentration there that gives great political power in washington, but the sun, sun is accessible in all kinds of ways, and it goes back to 2,000 years, and so that is what we have to get over. it's not a economic problem, but it's a matter of political power, and the solar industry powers are getting influential so i think it's not going to be reversible. i think we're going to move towards renewable energy and energy conservation. that said, the fracking, which

is now opening up all over the world, they are going to poke holes in the earth like crazy all over the world now, and it's just -- it's likely that mr. obama's going to improve a pipeline and try to nullify the anger of the environmentalists saying, well, maybe i'll go for a carbon tax or some other thing to set it off, but the idea that we waste over half our energy, far more waste of energy than europe or japan, and we are building a huge pipeline with dirty fuel that we're going to bring from canada to the gulf port to export, and it's like a dirty passthrough, and it's going to be approved, so, obviously, the renewable people and the conservative conservation people are not strong enough to counter act that, even though bill set the all-time record with 1500 arrests around the white house,

and i don't think that has happened in decades, but -- [applause] it's -- so it's -- environmental pollution should be viewed as a form of silent violence. we have to change words to apply them more accurately, and instead of talking environment talk answer, talk respiratory, unusable contaminated property, and talk how many square miles a fukushima-type disaster, chernobyl renders uninhabitable or how impossible it is to evacuate. you can't get oh of new york city on a friday amp. you will e activate 30 miles aaround? that's impossible. it's viewed at possible as a condition of the license. we need to use new language in that respect. >> i think the current and

political discourse in people's views are based on the narrow window the media places on the acceptable range of ideas. is there any ideas you have to allow more progressives views to go back into the public discourse and reframe the issue based on -- basically more leftist or progressive ideas? >> well, one, i mean, i have coined phrases in that direction like corporate welfare, corporate crime is catching on, crime in the suites is catching on. [laughter] you have that parallel of street crime. why cut down on the number of federal cops on the corporate crime beat, and so that's one. we have a more thoroughly

empirical language. the second is something that's becoming more interesting, and that is you have libertarians and progressives agreeing on more and more things, progressives and libertarians. for example, there's more and more converging agreements and efforts to cut back on the empire. libertarians don't like the empire. look at the american conservative magazine. they have articles that could be printed. left, right don't like corporate welfare, the patriot act, wto, and nafta. one way to give creeps is -- credence is to show on the other side of the political spectrum where you have conservatives who are not corporatists and libertarians who are not corporatists, they agree. these are not minor things, are

they? you know, civil liberties, corporate welfare, wars, bloated military budgets, pull down trade agreements, and i think there's a great possibility for taking it from verbal agreement into institutional collaboration, and i got that idea when we stopped the clinch breeder reactor in tennessee, and the environmentalists got somewhere in congress. this is a terrible cost overrun breeder reactor, and then the conservative groups came in on economic ground, a waste of taxpayer money, had the environment issue, and then it wonk. the senate dropped it. it stunnedded howard baker. he was not ready for the vote. hey, mark. >> you're a national figure, but it's not my character to thank

politicians. this is the second time i've thanked a politician. olympia snowe, and then you have not neglected this place where you live for a long time, and there's 630,000 people who don't have a vote. now, not even statehood or autonomy or sovereignty. they just don't have a vote. this is a very accepting population. i lived here now 50 years. i came from chicago where we vote more than once in an election. [laughter] will you explain the psychology of accommodation and acceptance by, really, this group of very informed and otherwise enlightened people to accept their second or third class citizenship? timely, where's the spark to propel the citizens of the district of columbia to claim their american citizenship smit >> it's interesting. if they had the volt and you try

to take it from them, there would be opposition. like, if you try toe take the vote away from texans or virginians, you know. [laughter] this is something we all pondered. we're not getting much else from the political science profession. i think one reason is that the well-to-do don't see any necessary benefit from having votes, and the poor always feel powerless, so the idea of the statehood advocates trying to spell out the benefits of statehood, and what gets in the way is a rather low regard for the past 25 years of the district government so they say, you know, if you want to give them more power, some people say that, and i think spelling out the benefits when you can have your own budget, and referendums

are not overturned by a committee of congress, and then developing a vision on district of columbia is not so full of poverty and derivation among many thousands or others pushing poor people out. we have a vision maintaining a federal district, and you have to maintain a little in the constitution, maybe that will do it. my favorite way of doing it is if some rich person said here's 11 million bucks, get statehood, what would you do with it? here's what i would do with it. first of all, i publicize the effort. [laughter] second, i would rigorously find three dc citizens and back up with infrastructure and media for every member of congress so that the member of congress doesn't go to dinner without finding someone next to him. what about statehood?

[laughter] maybe a third are ready for statehood. what would you say, at least? if you had a voting congress, a third, you'd say? >> a third what? >> of the people there would be for statehood? >> well, there was one vote on statehood in 1993. >> yeah. >> there were 152 republican -- democrats, one republican, wayne gilcrist, and that's it. 153 out of 435. there is a dc statehood bill that was introduced, my form of civic activist. it's been introduced by tom carper. it goes to his committee. he introduced it on january 24th, durbin, boxer, murray, the two maryland senatorrings endorsed it. had goes to his committee, he authored the bill, and he refuses to hold hearings on his own bill. maybe you can address that. >> the idea is to have three people well supported on every member where they know

everything about the member, back home, here, there, everywhere, and they coordinate with each other, and there's 1500 people whose hobby would be to keep. every month they say how many more do you have; right? how many more do you have? in other words, you have to have a laser beam. you have presidents -- i guess president obama, when you questioned him, did he say he was forit? >> he's never said he's for it, and it took him four years to put the license plate op. >> i don't think he'd veto it; right? >> i don't think he'd veto it, but do it at midnight. [laughter] >> anyway, we need the exercises. there's $11 million, get statehood in two years, what would you do? so much of the imagination is stifled because of the resource question. you don't think of what to do because the first question is who is going to pay for the organizers? who is going to do this and

that, you see? any -- a lot of rich people here, you know, 11 million bucks? my guess 11 million bucks would do it. you'd have the people so trained. first of all, they would be tremendously motivated. they would be half as motivated as mark means they are freely motivated. [laughter] they would be connecting with each other, and each one has an an assignment. good luck. [laughter] >> i said no senator should be safe at the safeway. [laughter] >> rock, we just have one more question. two? somebody behind? i think it's just this one last gentleman. >> okay, good. >> unless there is somebody i don't see, but -- and them we'll finish up and do the book signing. >> okay. >> thank you very much. >> i want to know what course of action would you suggest to stop

the hijacking of the agricultural system and food safety system by the gmo technology? >> one, obviously, is to expand the work of the counsel on responsible genetics set up by harvard and mit scientists and the group holding the fort with litigation, and they won the battle against genetic discrimination by insurance companies. there's a lot of mischief in that. that's been prohibited. we need more civic action. relaying scientific analysis, and, for example, on the gmo foods, monsanto cannot control migration to a farm who doesn't want to use it, but nay say, too bad, and, in fact, they sued some farmers who have been exposed to the migration of the

gmocs to a farm next to it. supposed to be an adequate buffer under the law, and the second is to focus on monsanto very, very comprehensibly with a campaign, and they've done a lot of very bad things, and india and elsewhere, and 90% of the people want disclosure and monsanto doesn't, and who wins here? monsanto wins. they are organized to the t, but the people are not yet organized. the next thing is -- the next thing is, genetically engineered food, and the next thing is the states where it happens. california almost got it, and it's now in a couple states, washington state, and the more states who put it on the referendum for vote, the more the resources of the gmo lobby is spread out, and they will not

be able to overwhelm them as easily. >> how can you break the strangle hold of corporate cronnyism here which enabled the monopoly to happen? >> define gmos. >> genetically modified seeds where unlike the traditional way of hybrid seeds, they are cross-species so you put in a particular seed for a tomato a gene from a mouse, and that's the difference between, you know, traditional hybrid corn and genetically modified corn. the idea is to make the plant itself impervious to herbicides compared to the weeds around it to flood the field with the herbicides, kill the weeds, but they can't harm the plant. now, what's happening is that the weeds now are mutating, and they are becoming resistant so

monsanto has to find stronger or more herbicides to sell to the farmers. what they sold to the farmers really was convenience. one farmer in iowa had 5,000 acres. why did you do gmo corn? he said, i can spend more time with the family. it's really no overall benefit to the crops; although, they have tremendous propaganda machine about how it feeds millions of famine-exposed people, so i think it's going to start at the state level with the referendum, activity now in connecticut and the legislature so i think it's only a matter of couple years before the tipping point happens just on disclosure. it's it interesting? monsanto is proud of the gmocs they don't want anybody to know about it. >> that's right. >> and the products. [laughter] yes? >> well -- >> yeah? >> the super rich -- you have not talked about that, and that

-- >> [inaudible] >> the -- >> this is political fiction. i deposit the following. what if 17 super rich americans and they were real americans in knicksal roles, and what if they got together and in one year, top-down, bottom-up, put the resources and smarts and found thousands of local community leaders, started a clean elections party, did all kinds of innovative things, could they turn the country around? i -- i put it in great realistic detail of how they started and by renting a hotel in hawaii on a mountain, got together, and they planned it, and how far they got before the corporate moguls learned of what they were doing by may of that year or

april, the techniques they used, how they used the money, and the whole thing was done with $15 billion, and warren buffet is coming back from one of the trips as saying to the aide, you know, we did this on a third of my fortune; right? you turned around, and when i signed the book, i always say to imagine is to end vision. we don't do that anymore. there was a book 15 years ago called "the end of utopia," and he met the academic world does not imagine new possibilities much anymore. we are not talking about, you know, south sea thomas moore utopia, but fundamental redirections that's within our capability and within the natural rhythms of the country, and within the sport of the public sentiment as abraham longes said, with a public sentiment, you can do anything. in that sense, i wanted to be

realistic, and most people don't want to do that. it's a good doorstop; however, it's interesting that when looking back ward by edward -- how many of you read that in college? came out in 1886, sold a million copies in hardback, and the country of a fourth of the size of population, and eugene and the rest would cite it. it's exciting because projected forward to america in 2,000ad where it was milk and honey, you know, poverty's gone, health, and so on, and they are really excited in those days in the populist progressive movement. we don't live in that age anymore. we have science fiction and all that, but we don't imagine real possibilities so i had to do it by fiction. i couldn't do it with, you know, here's a hundred-point program,

but i held my fictional feet to the fire. there was not an easy walk in terms of the collision and the drama and how it ended up in congress and the white house. >> thank you very much for taking the time. [applause]

>> first ladies have a capacity to personify if they so choose, and this is a pattern in

american women and politics famous or not. there's two things. one is that there are women, real people, who actually do things, but then there's this also secondary capacity of being a personifying figure, charismatic figure, and i think many a first lady has become to become a first lady and realizing this thing was larger than life, and that was something dolly figured out. she becomes a figure head for her husband's administration, and she makes the white house into a symbol and she fosters the attachment to the capital city, and this happens in 1808. she does not know this, but in 1814, the britishs burn the capitol city, and all the work put into helping the public identify with this house that they called the white house under her term, is going to pay off, and because it's going to give the syringe of nationalism around the world. >> our focus on first ladies continues every monday night and the next program features

katherine algore on why we study first ladies, monday night at nine eastern on c-span. what are you reading this summer in booktv wants to know. >> the first book on my summer reading list is something i'm guilty, i have not read already called "the victory lap: the secret science of winning campaigns," and it's about how political campaigns are run and how they use data and analytics to make all the decisions, and so it's a political reporter, we cover how campaigns work in terms of talking and communications, and this is the hidden side. really, the doing that happens, and it seems like an important book to read. that's the first thing op the summer reading list. the second book on my list is another political book, the biography of tip o'neill, a terrific writer, an older book, but i cover congress, and this seems like the perfect thing to read. the democratic sen tryst, a

terrific book that won awards. the third is "lean in," and this is a book that needs no introduction, it's about women in the workplace and how to succeed or should succeed, seems like an important book to try to read. a huge baseball fan, can't did a summer without a baseball book, one of which is the art of fielding, not just about baseball, but a novel. if i'm going to read a novel, i want baseball stories inside of it, and the fifth book is sort of guilty pleasure reading that i have not done yet and put off which is "game of thrones"," the popular tv show, and i have to have time, but i'll tackle the first one this summer. >> let us know what you are reading, tweet us @booktv, go

to our facebook page, or e-mail us at booktv activity c-span.org. .. >>