consistent with what john was talking about earlier. it is worth talking about. over and over again, these are friendly markets of compatible people. a lot of good political reasons to do this. we are stronger with strong economics, and we are weaker with bad economics. the problems in latin america, the countries that are in trouble, they will affect us because the problems that goes on in those countries will spillover into the stable partners that we need. we need the neighbors to be just as stable. >> think you're absolutely right. i think that the future lies in understanding that despite the

pivot to asia, the intention that is being brought to bear on china, the huge market, the huge challenges and opportunities, the americans are unique. a set of common, core values that bind the americas together. human capital is our most important asset. diversity of that human capital. i was born in mexico. half armenian. i now live in the united states. this human capitol that we had, it's complement's. this is the future promise. that is what we have to bind together, whether it is, you know, through the tpp and expanded trade agreement that will bind the countries that believe in that core set of values. it is providing the issues that are not put on the table in naphtha when it was initiated back in 1993 because

we knew would derail the negotiations . mexico wanted more mobility on the table. we knew that those things are going to torpedo everything, so we left them on the table. what a surprise, 20 years after, the 20-year mark of nafta having been signed, we are back to energy in the americas. so these two issues can have a very profound impact on the hemisphere's ability to grow and to create a greater sense of community which i think is a huge asset of the americas, especially when you look at europe or asia pacific. >> thank you so much, my brilliant trio. i would love not to go to the audience. [applause] who would like to be the first question? over there. okay. shoot.

i'm sorry. would you identify yourself. do you have a mike? is there a microphone? [inaudible question] >> has been a lot of talk of connectivity and being on line. [inaudible question] one of the two pieces -- [inaudible question] >> good question. what is going to happen to privacy, eric? >> so the specific answer to your question is, the devices you are describing have an off.

it's important to turn that off. this the simplest answer. these tools and technologies naturally aggregate data in the normal course of business, you need to know where they are. everyone here has a mobile phone by definition that means that everyone knows exactly where you are. we accept that because it's regulated, not being misused and so forth. you will see a set of privacy rules of that kind of data which will initially be long-term. >> this lady here. >> could you please address the challenges of climate change, the impact.

>> well, we should talk about canada because climate change affects the polls much more than it affects the equator for various physics reasons. so there is an extraordinary change going on in the northern part of canada, especially with the melting of the polar icecap which says affect on wildlife and so forth from a canadian perspective is also an opportunity for new revenue sources. >> also i think it's a relevant question because five of the largest buyer of first countries on the face of the year if are in the americas. and the capitol that that provides the americas is huge. there are also significant challenges. the rise in sea levels, is not an issue of climate change but

national security, survival of a nation state in the caribbean. it would not be hard to imagine huge demographic displacement as a result of climate change of the americas. migrating patterns that have nothing to do with the economy, nothing to do with whether a job can be imported, but could be linked to profound climatic changes that have created everything from hurricanes said -- and so we have to start thinking, as some of these challenges and especially because of the huge natural biodiversity wealth that all of the nations have. it -- >> see you have anything to add? >> clearly we are undergoing climate change. this is going to put pressure on lots of economic systems. agriculture or the impact on

health. the expansion of records of disease from isolated areas, and equatorial areas to moderate climates. yes seeing that, the spreading of various plants confecting funguses and viruses. this is all something that is happening. our ability this low it down or reverse it is in some question, but certainly it is going to put pressure on mankind to adapt and deal with it and slow it down where possible. i think that is sort of the phenomenon we are experiencing right now, and it will have substantial impact on business systems. just health care alone, i think, is going to be substantially affected, as water supply

disappears. it will put a lot of pressure on food supply. just to the pier deterioration of the quality of the soil in the world which now have less than half of the organic matter they had 100 years ago really speaks to productivity of the agricultural sector going forward. lots of problems, folks. you know, hopefully technology will provide answers to some of these problems. >> okay. >> and thank you. >> there we go. i am patricia. welcome to denver. i have a question for you. one woman, three men on the panel. of course operation has been very good. i want to ask a question, what do you think in terms of women's

role in terms of unleashing humans potential for our world? i think we are actually on the cusp of a tipping point in a big global women's business that i am seeing everywhere actually. we are seeing the fruits, and a sense. i think what has been done in the state department with the ambassador had been far more influential than people understood well she was in that position. she is used that sort of a bully pulpit, and a sense, on every single trip she is made in the last four years to talk about the economic boat that would lift everybody which is what we're seeing in many countries. we are seeing incredible things coming out of africa and brazil and also house social media is really changing the game.

issues like domestic violence, which has been such a blight. there is now the convening power in places like india where use of that huge outcry over that young man that brought people out into the street. that would not have happened before. women in india now are motivated and uniting and are absolutely vowing that this will not change. a very exciting moment for women actually a great growth area. a huge commercial up the charity. it's so interesting how this the sector for so long. even today it's called a woman's issue is about economic issues. they've done a good job of reforming that discussion.

we're ignoring half the market in unleashing the potential of women to be a great game ginger internationally. i don't mind being the only woman appeared. any other questions? >> brett taylor, denver, colorado. thank you for doing this last hour and a half. we have been talking about psychological revolution. it will be led by the next generation, handwritten you and i. we talked about the best and brightest people that you'll see all the time. what are american universities doing right and what are they doing wrong to educate the next generation? >> eighteen of the top 20 world research universities are in america. it's fair to say that the universities as a group are standing at the elite level.

the community college system needs a lot of work. it is underfunded. it provides tremendous needed educational services that are ignored and undervalued in my opinion. the core problem in america is not the college system, which is highly competitive, nationally ranked. you know where you are. reasonably well funded. the real problem is k-12. and that is something which we could have a whole afternoon in this session about later authors their friday to my belief. i guess i would suggest that you sort of participate in that. the others are endemic to social culture, unions, work rules to my education standards, measurement testing, all of which is not a problem. >> we have a program here in denver thank step our governor and former mayor called denver

school of science and technology which is a public-private effort . a charter school effort funded similarly to the rest of the public-school education. its predictably is aimed at the inner city youth of denver. the results are nothing short of staggering in terms of the quality of the education that has been provided and the results, the graduation rates, the college. i saw the other day that 92 percent of the kids that into the program are still in college one year after. about 80 percent, there are the first person and their families ago a college. so the results are there. it is a solvable problem. most of these kids choose as a

career path science or technology where they're actually able to find good employment. so when ron. >> to hammer the point away, we were talking earlier about the question of global competitiveness. all of us would agree that free trade especially within the americas is a huge improvement. the core issue we're going to face globally is that the asian models have produced more technically trained adults. whether you like it and not, it is a fact that on a percentage basis they are producing a very large number of scientists and engineers. if that continues and we did not address it through better productivity, creativity, all the things we're talking about and care about, they will start becoming, over decades, places where innovation occurs as opposed to hear. that is a disaster for the american model. >> that is a good place to end.

[laughter] of mourning for call to take away some much of what we have heard today . most of the things, the biggest thing. really what was mentioned, to this excitement and energy is now coming from urban environments like denver, held a vibrant, cultural and ethnic and business and entertainment, all together. so this is what we will be talking about more over the next two days. want to thank you all very, very much for coming in our panelists have been so interesting. [applause] [applause] >> tonight on c-span2, book tv in prime-time with books about the immigrant experience.

>> now rate discussion on human trafficking and the peaceful efforts being used to stop the practice hosted by the center for american progress. this is a little more than an hour. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> good afternoon, everyone. my name is maya soetoro-ng, senior vice president for american values. i wanted thank you all for joining us today for a conversation about a topic that does not get nearly the coverage it deserves, human sex trafficking. an estimated 3 million children are currently exported in to the indian sex trade. the vast majority usually come from the poorest, most disadvantaged backgrounds. every day in india 200 women and girls into prostitution, and 80 percent of them do so against their will as victims of trafficking. the numbers are daunting, and the problem is fast. get work is being done. there are voices out there that refuse to be silent to speak up in the face of persecution and are fighting to save the lives of women and girls. today we will hear not just about the challenges, but also

about the positive stories and about the work yet to be done. we are thrilled to be joined today by dr. maya soetoro-ng, a renowned advocate for global peace as well as improving public education, currently an assistant professor at the university of hawaii college of education where she keeps teaches multi-cultural education she has written a picture book and is currently writing a book about peace education as well as a young adult novel entitled yellow wood. they're copies for sale. she will be signing books. moderating today's consultation, board president of an organization that seeks to create a global movement to combat human trafficking, child exploitation, and sexual violence. before we hear from my and christina, we have a special performance. dedicated his life to inspire all across the globe and take a

stand when that witness and justice. a motivational speaker, trilingual poet, cnn contributor , tv talk-show host. please join me in welcoming him. [applause] >> good morning. part of the reason why we have this issue with sex trafficking in india as well as china is because they're is a great absence of the policies taking place. it's a grow and it speaks to that. 200 million missing. not talking about money, see, talking about something worth more than currency. i'm talking about missing girls, the foundation of a nation, born in india and china, damnation, desperation, having to grow up in segregation. a vigorous bouncing from the wound to the town, delivery

won't delivering genocide to send. however forgotten that the woman is key to open the future store for children to see. the phrase it's a growth should bring cost to rejoice, but we kill innocent victims who have no choice, no say in the way they will die today. we have to tell a world so that parents can say proudly, it's a girl. can't see women as a burden. men have to realize, save the people who hold up half the sky. just because they think have and a girl is a burden. it's not about condemning culture, but saving lives. those left wondering why, why, oh, why cannot not practice safer sex them to look -- kill a child who has nothing to do it this. six should not lead to visits from the grim reaper. india and china, where you going

to do when there's nothing but men in your country? can't import wives like you might to food. the value of your growth. a woman's body is not a factory. we have to give arco's the right to be bored and be free. thank you. [applause] >> thank you for that great performance. please join me in welcoming maya soetoro-ng. [applause] >> thank you. were just talking about how we have some captive sisters in the house. i have a little gap. my husband got an old documentary called captive women. any of you ever seen it? it's about all the cultures in the world that revered the gap.

supposedly the moonlight shines there and gives me a mellifluous voice. they're people who adore the gap. he said, you just have to change the way you see, not the way the look. point taken. so he got me a domain name cap to its common for my 40th birthday. it at any rate, first of want to thank that powerful performance and for the writing, the speaking at the dallas, for being an advocate of multilingual as some and an advocate for women and girls. i do believe that we need more artists and activists willing to address this issue in powerful ways command and know that we both have daughters and that inspires much of the passion that we witness. so thank you.

i want to thank you also for your kind introduction and for the center for american progress in all of the people here who do important and meaningful impact full work. i believe the center for american press is an example for what we need. i'm grateful for the opportunity to get together in the technology that will allow us to ponder the future solution. i would like to also thank the invitation to celebrate this anniversary of restoring, rekindling, renewing, and reeling the survivors of trafficking in india. i'm honored to be in the presence of so many of you who have risked and devoted so much.

some of the residents are watching, and i want to extend gratitude and congratulations to you for your abolitionist work. my brother's administration is committed to addressing this issue, and you can review the policy side of this issue at the white house website. today i would like us to consider the vast rudes, pro-active, preventative, and educational routes rather than policy or in addition to policy because you may have a great deal of expertise in policy that i did not. my feeling is that it is possible, but most for at least many of you have more knowledge about trafficking than, perhaps combined do as a piece educator. but my role today as i see it is to encourage all of you to begin

dialoguing and insist upon a collaborative and inventive vision about how to move forward i would like to begin actually with words because i thought it was appropriate. now was reading this morning. he said that great ideas come into the world as gently as doves. perhaps then if we listen attentively we shall hear amid the uproar, a gentle stirring of hope. some would say that hope lies in the nation. rather it is awakened by millions of solitary individuals whose deeds and work every day negate the crudest implications of this tree as a result their shines forth that truth that each person on the foundation of his or her own suffering enjoy builds for all. i think that is an appropriate

"to begin what i hope will be a discussion as i hope you will also bring forth your ideas and began a conversation with the sitting beside the coast during this event and after. i believe that you are all builders and that important things to contribute. opportunities like this are about building as foundations, collecting the raw materials for the scaffolding and creating both aspiration and the, last year at this and harbor the victims of trafficking. that think that even if you don't have a background in policy on a law enforcement, perhaps you can build greater awareness of our strength in pro bono networks, research centers, training centers. you can do outreach and educate.

a very important to me, you can engage in powerful active storytelling. just reminding that the process, we have information bill we can also get information from a married of resources. given the billions for trafficking in so many millions a impacted, we have to begin facilitating strong relationships between national and international, not just governments, but in zealand business, private and public partnerships as well as educational organizations. i teach peace education every semester. some of what i do is not necessarily relevant to this part. to tell history and current events from multiple

perspectives which said the using the tools we have today to access english-language newspapers and media from all over the world to make comparisons and to reveal a more multifaceted version of the truth or look at textbooks and historical documents from all of the world to show history frorof the world to show history from a multifaceted perspective. instead of structured economic controversies which involve having to argue for one side and then argue the other side and then negotiate an agreement a compromise in order to move forward. those are some of the things that happen. we learn about the great folks engaged in non-violent activism and transformation.

conflicts, current and recent. the role of poverty in the international community. the researcher and a physician, what did they contribute to conflict and solution building. in that sense, when they want to say pretty early as we have to be nuanced and outthinking. trafficking is a complex issue. sometimes the word is used to mean only the movement across borders, sometimes encompassing a large reception of circumstances. we can't simply think about public policy, but we have to be broad minded and look at what

each of us can do and how we can steer contribution from every facet of society. one thing we do is create spaces, external spaces. international peace garden skin the many things, but there has to be a pathway to peace. there has to be a symbol of peace and warns that the present , a bencher trees under which people can set. people can engage in conflict resolution on mediation. perhaps we can think about our role in the environment and have sustainability and farming, things that can airshow buddies. i think the even if we can't

create these, can design them in the small gardens that replace and our classrooms. .. that kind of work i think is

very valuable and can be appealing. you think of any kind of trauma, the natural disaster of bringing aspiration to action and doing things to others i think is very important. one thing i want us to bring together in addition to some external places and spaces we can create i think there are some internal spaces that we can build and nourish it through things like yogo and the spoken word and giving victims and the people around them eight restored a sense of voice and music. there is a limitless set of options.

one thing that has been very effective for me working with the victims of trauma to have them write their own stories someone gave me but yesterday from what i've been able to see called "sold" for young adults and it's about a girl that was trafficked from nepal and very powerful but i want to see the young adults themselves writing the story. and it's amazing way for people of every age to begin that process. or perhaps they can take a story and what i have my students do is changing the ending of stories. give them a sense of empowerment , help them to recognize that they can alter what they perceive to be

inevitable. there's great strength in giving a voice. it's no small matter. there's an indonesian phrase that i have on a regular basis that means to wash the eyes. you will see that phrase in my children's book and in the book that the very talented illustrator opens the book with a view from the earth's perspective and closes with the earth from the moon's perspective and the idea is to constantly shift perspectives not only so that we can empathize and build peace in those ways but also so that we can change the way that we view ourselves. we can name ourselves differently and do identity building and find the future that is more robust and healthy year perhaps by virtue of

changing our own stories. it means to wash the guys. and in indonesia they use that phrase to speak of the need at the end of the workweek to go and get a different view and to relax and recline but it can be used to think of something even more powerful. this notion that we can see ourselves and the world and our own potential and the beauty that presides both within and externally by changing not necessarily the way that we look but the way that we see. it's a state of mind. and it is a powerful part of the work both to prevent and to heal trafficking.

you can see as their bodies become stronger and the people who are yielding work together in one place having an opportunity to find strength through peer research as well as mentorship they can change the way they see. they have been given an opportunity to watch their eyes and i think we can do that on an organizational level as well as an individual level. i often did mediation and we called it a conflict resolution. because some conflict are never resolved but they can be transformed into something more productive and interesting and

useful perhaps. so i would always have the kids that were the bullies and the class clowns the negotiators and the mediators and the reason was because -- has many of you probably know it allowed them to see themselves differently. they were already coming you know, hungry for attention and charismatic and leaders, but the idea of giving them the tools to engage in the leadership to remind them they can do that, too and there are those who will listen and will follow and who will be interested even if they are speaking falsely. and it's to also bring in the

traffickers, the perpetrators. i think it's therefore very important, and we mustn't forget about that. i think that -- i think that is part of the culturally competent work. we need to meet the community where they are on some level and build bridges between schools and organizations and businesses and the community and the families that exist to the and if we are to be culturally responsive, then we have to address the culture that has created this. now, we don't have to be arrogant about it and come down and, you know, tell other cultures what they are doing wrong. the idea is to bring local knowledge as to their. it is also to on the earth and

explore and truly excavate the reasons why you have perpetrators. what is happening here. we in power them to behave differently and to see themselves differently in their task in the world. we all know organizations that have succeeded by virtue of using this method. second chance is one that they have former gang members that go out and persuade. it's not about being scared straight. it's about instilling fear and of really working with clear and powerful knowledge and a deep-rooted knowledge of the problem and then only can we have a full and effective set of solutions. i think that this education and service education has had to

important tools for helping the victims as well as their communities reintegration into the society to feel empowered, to find meaning in helping others, to feel safe in their new circumstances where they will be forever changed. but not necessarily forever damaged. there does need to be i think this work together building bridges to eliminate isolation, alienation, and to find a sort of future orientation. we do need to bring in their own personal history in order to move forward and in order to first grapple with it and then under the something as a

brazilian poet he also invites children's books but he talks about the dates even though we will never meet those better tasting our dates, these ideas of being disciplined about the future and giving to our children something that emerges from our own creative act. and even if we can't see it, this sort of discipline of love as he calls it, what makes profits and revolutionaries so effective they have the courage to dodge of the things they will never see and i'm not asking any of you to margaret yourself but for the cause i am asking you to

perhaps sacrifice and find others also willing to do so and then to work hard to build something and help young people to do something as well, something perhaps we will never see having a long-term vision. so i would like to close as i do believe my time is winding. and we can talk some more after this and conversation. but with a prayer from the navajo tradition because i was just in the four corners area a couple weeks ago and it goes as follows. all day long may i walk through the returning seasons may i walk with grasshoppers may i walk about my feet may i walk with beauty before me.

with beauty above me may i walk with beauty below me? may i walk with beauty all around me wandering on a trail of duty may i walk in old age wandering on the trail living again may i block it is finished in duty. thank you very much and let us help these stories find a different ending and we will help them be finished. thank you for being here and talking to one another and the important work that you do. [applause] >> thank you for all you do. we both practice of yoga. we aren't going to do it right now that we are going to stand and have a moderated discussion because we don't like to sit all the time.

and as maya was saying, we do events and healing through yoga and meditations of it is ironic that in the home of yoga because of the system that still continues, they themselves are not able to participate in yoga. it is ironic that westerners are coming to teach them yoga but this is the paradox of our life. and so, maya and i were doing yoga together and i appreciate that you were speaking about creating the spaces inside through gardens and having a quiet time for healing. can you share your own a personal experience of how that helps you in your very busy life? >> i didn't know what questions you were going to ask me.

i can. i think that we -- there is another phrase which means to be silent in a thousand languages which is sort of beautiful but sad for a very melancholy statement any way. growing up in indonesia, i was granted many gifts of tolerance and artistry and i was there until age 14 though my brother, the president was not. >> for the record again. >> for the record again.

but it was a place of great diversity. a diverse cultures within indonesia and we talk about thousands of islands in each one possessing its own language and cultural artifacts there was a lot of conflict when i was growing up in the 70's before the chinese come indonesians'. my father was melee and they were often scapegoating at because periods of poverty and the perception that they owned businesses and were doing better. it's not an unfamiliar story. but i remember several riots

where the cars would be overturned and i would watch through my window as people would be pulled out of their cars and harmed or stores would have their windows busted. i remembered the next day there would be the paper's. there is a time when folks were not that embarrassed because in the international herald tribune we would have the black boxes like something must have happened. but it was shocking to me the silence that surrounded these

events. and the silence that does surround the trauma when we talk about the gardens there is a youthful silence and stillness that can help us to sort of recognize hour own feelings and thoughts and it wasn't that kind of silence. it was a different sort of silence. and there are many kinds of silence. and i wanted to think about how we can provide laes for reflective silence and then the stories, the imaginings and the activist words that don't necessarily follow rather than the silence of shame. so for me practice like creating this basis are about as

predatory silence at proceed sound and cacophonies and is very useful. so i remember that when my mother came across these unmarked graves from 1965, there was conflict in indonesia and then there was a lot of people the united states went through things in the 50's and obviously there was a lot of silence surrounding that, and my mother wasn't really told when she arrived what had happened. things were whispered and i

think the idea is that we have to be sensitive to why perhaps cultures or individuals do remain silent and we have to do a lot of work to make them feel safe so a lot of practices are about building safety. >> thank you for bringing silence to the very noisy washington, d.c.. this is so refreshing because often we just hear about the policy all day. and it feels -- it's important. i'm not going to put your brother's work down. but we love -- we need to get back to connect and come back to the human heart part of that. i'm learning as an educator the and portents of empathy. and how do you instill that and others who maybe don't want to connect? >> a lot of what i do as an

educator is about building empathy. so we will do things like rather than simply having the facts of the civil war for instance. it's important to building narrative and there are some things that perhaps i'm not saying everything is relative, but what we do is take a picture and build a life where it was an important time and was a document of war and amazing photograph of the war. so i have my students buying the picture and begin to tell the war from the perspective of someone that hasn't been featured in the textbook. and so they will have to imagine

what is this person's greatest fear or desire? what does this person eat for breakfast? so you begin to sort of build flash into the dimension and so rapid is the same thing. you take a story and then ask questions to address the things that are not said. and it's an important way to build history to remember that the real work of an educator is researching and then coming up with understandings and yielding about. so it's where you have a story with additional information and research and the motion. you write about another painting or photograph and the idea is to

begin connecting with history, and one of the things i often do in my classroom is i actually will create a visual bridge so i will do not live from one room to the other and each brick they will write from the perspective of someone who has not seen, someone who has been rendered invisible and will write poetry, letters, journal entries, you name it and then they will put that on the brick and by the end of the semester the bridge is full. it has been finished and it represents a sort of connection between the past and present and future between our lives inside, you know, the hallowed halls of learning and the world outside for school and community became

and residing in the world so those are some ways that we can help with empathy. >> how lucky are those students to have such an amazing teacher? >> thank you. we will have a couple more questions and then open up to the audience. the survivors are always so grateful and amazing that humility that they have so little and you come here and there is so much materialism and there is nothing there and they are so grateful for our presence. what's interesting is when our board members who are back there and you can meet some of them later. we are the ones who are transformed.

we have the reserve component. >> what i was teaching the lower east side of manhattan we would have wednesday morning the states would create service projects and they wouldn't decide what they want to do. some would work and old folks home with the elderly to bring that connection. there is a wonderful thing that happens between the two and we would call the first recycling project in the project in the lower east side or they would go in and read to younger kids school, beautification. we have the project.

there was an abandoned lot next door transferred into a community garden pivotal of the subject space involved and take care of the former panelling and composting. the art teachers would create the murals and english teachers would have workspaces where poetry could be read later and the shop teachers could build the benches and math teachers could figure out how to make a level of basketball courts. i still have the bluster from laying down but these kind of service to our self and service to our community and then service to the world is very important there is a project -- we can have a global collaboration. we are here to -- when we have the japanese tsunami, a lot of our students created projects and plans to think about what would be needed to restore a

sense of strength to that part of japan. their projects were largely isolation all. they didn't have the resources necessarily. these are things that they can do leader. they are the things they could do to reach out and make people feel connected, cared about and they did things about that and help raise money obviously putting it and an important part of service is precisely what christine is talking about. to get kids to do good things is wonderful but you have to have them reflect afterwards. how to degette to scale and how they were impacted by the service that they do and how they were transformed. the idea of kind of looking at that reciprocal of fact i think is very valuable to make service

both relevant and enduring. and we are grateful for your service. you are a tireless leader kimmage she has been nonstop since she has been here. we really appreciate that. so, i want to open it up to the audience. we have some members -- we have a microphone here. >> my name is jenny. before i ask my question i would like to suggest [inaudible] i would also like a bumper sticker. and my question is these that you are currently writing a book.

>> it is called "yellow blood" and it is a novel based on a robert frost book on the two roads diverged and i took the one most travelled and that has made all the difference, so it is about a 16-year-old girl in a world of war and a lot of it looks at the themes of conflict and peace and a lot of it also brings in a sort of eastern narrative images into the western narrative context so i was trying to create a cultural hybrid. and it's hard to finish. you don't want the young adult novels, yet you want them to be instructive and i keep thinking well how much romance do i need

to include for a 14-year-old interested in that tragic finds a 16-year-old with. but i'm also doing some work with a colleague. she does elementary education, and her name is kerry rosevich. ..

>> building moral courage, and the organization is called upstander; right? rather than a by bystander, be n upstander. that's an important part of the work we can do, and if you have educators who leave with portfolios, that's wonderful, and what we do is for parents, we create little refrigerator magnets, reminder of activities, things to do with their kids. you know, the book that i wrote is a book meant to be shared. my 9-year-old daughter was honest as we were walking one day last month, and she asked me to tell a story, which she often does, and i did, and it was fanciful, magic, and she said, write a good book like that, one

kids would like. [laughter] point taken. the idea is that, you know, the book is really meant to be a means for opening -- children like illustrations or images or certain words or phrases in there, but it's meant to open up dialogue with your children and the children in your community about what came before them, about, you know, their own inheritance, about their own power, the strength, ability to impact. in the book, the young protagonist reaches down to help others, go up to the moon, and the moon is a sanctuary, a place of sweetness, connection, and i wrote it because my mother woke me up in the middle of the night to look at the moon, and i really enjoyed the time, and mom

loved the moon because everywhere in the world, the moon is the same, and the constellations change, but the moon that i experienced here is going to be the moon that's the same, you know, and fire escape in new york, in the river, in, you know, on a porch in hawaii, and on any given day, and so the moon became this image of connection. when she wanted ashes scattered into the water because how else can i get to the wonderful places i love so much and see all the people i care about so profoundly, and the moon by virtue of governing the tides is also sort of a -- i think, a connecting force, and so this

book that conjures a lot, i hope the activities that have been most effective, but will, you know, also, i hope inspire other teachers because i can only do so much in terms of pulling, you know, a poem, a phrase, a film clip, a narrative. the stories are endless, and so my hope is that the -- either the book, which emerges from the seeds of peace is just a start to kind of inspire the same level of connection, global competence, sense of fearlessness, doing so that we do a little less otherring and perhaps can offer a, you know, opportunities for international,

national, and, you know, all kinds of collaborations. >> thanks for shouting out to our -- >> [inaudible] >> i have no stage. i'm working on both, simultaneously. i promise you they'll both be birthed, but i can't tell you when, and i hope forward to seeing you, i hope, when the time comes. >> thank you for remembering our folks in hawaii. it's seven o'clock there, and some of them are watching, including my husband. >> thank you very much. i'm with voice of vietnamese americans, and i thank you for your presentation. >> oh, thank you. >> i'm very touched when you talk about empathy and connection and admit a point that i think is very powerful that to put the power into the people who actually out there, the traffickers, the human traffickers, because they are the ones that if we help them to change, just talk about conflict

transformation, and i think that's powerful. i'm from vietnam, vietnamese-american now, and i know you have more soft power than your brother, but help him with the vietnam and human trafficking situation there is horrendous. we very worried, and not only woman, girls, but also men. just two days ago at the center for international strategy, and international studies, the director of the labor -- the international labor organization told us that she knew that there were young men in vietnam, fishermen trafficked because all around the area chinese people, they do not have good fishermen,

and they capture the men and make them slaves. the problem becomes the poverty. people -- and also the power of the, you know, sometimes even the state power that concern us so is there a way, or have there been -- is there any way that we can work with you, collaborate, so that we can build some kind of new program that will help to reduce that involving the stronger nations, india, china, and maybe indonesia in the area because they are a strong country in southeast asia, and i also wanted to ask you a question regarding the economy aspect of it. actually, the main problem is the job situation. many people volunteer to be kidnappedded or sell their own children because of survival and

the lacking abilities. is there a way to turn the human trafficking into a new source to empower the area by equalizing the work force in areas that need younger bullets, younger people, work force, areas in, like, japan, they like a younger generation and areas we can somehow -- you talk about global collaboration and conflict transformation. is there a way to put out the seeds of peace in those thinking? >> i do think you have a lot of good ideas, and i think there should be a lot of conversations, and, you know, in some cases, there can be active partnerships, but in some cases, it's about information sharing, about, you know, finding, you know, those places of innovation

where things are duplicatable. you want to be specific, and you're right. you know, again, we have to be informed so that we have a nuanced and rigorous and vigorous understanding and not simply, you know, a placid and lame one that is not useful, so i think understanding the role of poverty, finding ways to offer economic solution and alternatives is critical. our mother did work with microfinance, and at the time she did it, it was not strong and abun adaptly available the way it is now. it was the solution of that time to, you know, give a sense of strength and fortify economies and people at a time when it was

sorely needed. we have other solutions sorely needed now and culturally relevant, but, also, perhaps have yiewn -- universal, some of them, application, and in terms of economics, i'm definitely not the person who knows the most. i'm sure, in this room. i'm not necessarily the person in the first two rows, but i know there's a lot of very exe tent people, and that we can engage and change both, you know, top up, bottom -- bottom up rather, top down, and we can lead from, you know, beside, around, and behind, and i think that the idea of taking a look at grassroots and educational options and all of those countries and seeing, you know,

building a patterned understanding of what is the same and what is different is something that we should do. to be sure. >> so, to wrap up, we are going to do a little bit of your -- you back to new york, wanting to know more about you, so a quick question, and you can answer stream of consciousness so people can -- it's a segue into the artistic clothing. what is your favorite book? >> >> that is impossible. >> i used to -- i used to really love, you know, a hundred years of solitude. love that book, but i have not read it in so long. sometimes, you know, i love magic realism, the idea of being able to sort of magically move

beyond our physical limitations and guide characters in ways that are astonishing. >> okay. who is your role model? >> my role model? practically speaking or ideally. >> however you want to answer it >> i could never be ghandi or king, you know; right? they are just way more than i can master or muster, but i do see them as sort of idealized role models in the sense that, you know, people who were willing to sacrifice that much, you know, i have my two daughters' love life too much perhaps and i want to see them grow up so i can't quite get there, but this idea of being able to take something soft and

to really make enormous changes to something jagged, sharp, and explosive, i think, is an extraordinary idea. >> the profession other than yours you want to attempt. >> other than mine? >> you're a renaissance woman already, so -- >> i think that we -- you know, i think i would have really loved, you know, my shelly does let's move, and occasionally, i used to teach global dance, and, you know, bring in a little salsa and a little, you know dancing, all that stuff, and i might have liked to have done something very physical. this belly is evidence of too much sedentary -- too much cerebral work, but i think,

gosh, those extraordinary athletes who put in those hours are amazing because they inspired levels and disciplines of a different sort so different from what i possess. i'm an olympic athlete. i'd love to be. >> do it. you still have time. your favorite word, one word. >> one word? >> it changes, but i think -- i know i can't do one word. my current favorite word, a hawaii word, meaning both rights and responsibility, and the idea is that by virtue of our responsibility and caring out responsibility for others, we earn our right. >> tomorrow's my first day, so

what is your favorite birthday activity, and hopefully your husband's watching. [laughter] >> well, i think that, you know, again, that changes, but i think we're doing well if every single day has a little bit of friendship, little bit conversation, some good grub, you know, adventure, novelty, and good words to sit with, i think. i want to do all of those things. tomorrow. >> tomorrow. >> community. >> yes. >> thank you, all, so much for being here, and i'm looking forward to meeting you. >> yeah, thank you. [applause] a small birthday gift we have for you is yoga stop traffic t-shirt, so we do every march, we do a one-day of yoga together

with the survivors in india, and so we'll have you take this, happy birthday, and thank you so much, and we'll close. >> thank you so much. >> thank you. >> thank you, all, for coming out today. we're talking about trafficking in india, and remember, this is an international problem. when you walk out of the door, we're living in a community, in a country that's also dealing with the issue of sex trafficking, and this poem speaks to that called "don't sell bodies." >> you see all she did was run away to get some attention. he said he'd give her love if she did what he mentioned. but what happened next she's embarrassed to mention. he pinned her up and locked her up in detention. this was not to happen to her. she new the guy. she want to cry, fly, die, anything but lie with another stranger violating her thighs.

she was bought on the internet so easy as pie. this country preach freedom, why won't anyone try to free her be, a run away shouldn't be a sex slave, feel she's not just hearing sirens until cops took her and her pimp. she's at arraignment, prosecuting her, letting him good, twice raped, just a kid. what did she do to feel the hate. more enslaved than ever before, most in the sex trade, i deplor. listen closely, we are selling bodies, acting angry to affect everybody. buy a slave, it's ninety bucks to buy a kid in the trade. i'm not talking overseas, but what i say is happening here in the usa. you got to pay more attention to mya for the sake of the children, end this today. how much is your daughter worth for thoughts you can't imagine, but the daughters are stranded.

we import, drugs, girls, whatever's demanded, but slavery ended with the 14th amendment to the constitution, but there's no solution other than to catch the kids and prosecute them for prostitution. we have to do more to protect the children. too many are sex slave, too many missing. we track down bin laden, we can arrest them. it doesn't take magic. the fact i'm writing the song is tragic, you don't understand unless i rap it. 86% of those born in the states are born in the states, not some other place, most of them are also know they are pimped out, sold to all types who want to invest into the destruction of children. what we need to do is invest them in prison. yeah, they are on a mission to liberate all those enslaved on our permission. work together for the sake of the seeds to blossom into flowers, beautiful and free. thank you. [applause]

>> this is a place where you have to know what you're about because there's going ton other people who want to tell you what you're about, and those people don't have the best interests in mind; right? that's where a kind of survivalist manhood becomes insistent about being what i am, being fixed to what i am. i'm -- you know, open question is, you know, how much, you know, is that unique to prisons? is that how most americans are who are, you know, strangely absolutists and pluralists at the same time? like that, you know, my truth is the one true truth, but i recognize your right to some wrong truth? i don't know the answer to that question. >> absolutely. >> joshua dubler on religion and theology at the maximum security prison sunday night at nine on "after words" part of booktv this weekend on c-span2. >> earlier this week, house financial services chairman outlines legislation to change

housing finance by eliminating fannie mae and freddie mack saying the legislation would not end at to-year fixed mortgages. held by the bipartisan policy center, this is 45 minutes. [applause] >> well, thank you, mr. secretary, for the kind introduction. i don't know if you can see me. this is a rather large podium. it reminds me of what i frequently tell my washington colleagues, "everything's bigger in texas, but me." [laughter] if you can't see me, at least you can hear me. anyway, i was delighted to accept the invitation to speak before the bipartisan policy center for a couple reasons. number one, because of the outstanding work that you have done in the housing arena, and number two, i live about three

miles from here, so it took me seven minutes to get here. the truth is as a fairly new chairman of a standing committee of congress, truth be known, i have a number of speaking invitations that come my way, a lot of press interested in speaking to me, but i assure you i don't have to work to remain humble, but because i have a lot of speaking invietnamese-americanation, i accept a number of them, and at this home i have three miles from here, that two months ago i was working on one of those speeches after dinner, and my wife, who helps keep me humble, comes into my study and says, "okay, in washington you may be mr. chairman, but in dallas, you're mr. dishwasher, and they are not getting any cleaner." i took my wife's subtle hint. i dropped the speech, went into the kitchen, and i began to work

on the dishes. a few minutes later, the phone rings. she picked it up. she comes into the kitchen and says, okay, "mr. big shot, "wall street journal" on the phone, and i thought, i wonder how they got my home number, but i guess i'd talk about quantitative easing than washing the dinner's dishes. " i go, pick up the phone, and i said, yeah, this is jeb. this is chuck with the "wall street journal," did you know for $29.95 you, too can -- [laughter] i assure youssef -- you, that ku humble. something else that keeps you humble is trying to reform our nation's housing finance system. it is something that i believe is vital to every homeowner, current and would be vital to

every taxpayer vital to the future of the economy, and now i know if you didn't understand that, you most likely would not be in this room today, so, again, i want to thank the bipartisan center for the work that it has done on housing reform. it's very important work. i especially want to recognize the outstanding leadership in service of people like secretary martinez and secretary, the latter secretary being a fellow texas agy, and as i reminded him, a temporary resident in san antonio in the early 80s, my former mayor as well. i'd like to thank both of you gentlemen for continuing in this facet of public service, and i thank you for solutions you promote for the nation's housing challenge, and i want to thank the center for the work they do in promoting a respectful and

constructive dialogue on what is typically a fairly contentious issue. we know it shares more heat than light. i hope that today we have a little bit more light on this. my public career, and i believe, as you believe, that home ownership is an especially cherished american tradition, and it's a tradition that i think we all believe is far more meaningful than land scaped lots or granite counter tops. home ownership is, indeed, a quality that combines families together, builds financial security, and strengthens our communities, but as cherished as an institution as it may be, home ownership does not, in and of itself, constitute the

american dream. it never has. i think most of us believe that the american dream is something far, far more profound. quite simply, the right to use our god-given talents, to control our own destinies to the end, that our children might have even greater opportunities, greater abundance, and greater freedoms than we have ever enjoyed. it's this understanding of the american dream that receivers as my -- serves as my certainly compass in this debate, but before we can use any compass to chart a path for the future, we have to have a thorough understanding of where we have been, and where we unfortunately find ourselves today. for my work on the congressional oversight panel for the t.a.r.p. program, it was clear to me that the great tragedy of the financial crisis was not that washington failed to prevent the crisis, but instead that washington helped lead us into it.

we were led in on a single good intention that basically every good family should own a home. good intentions do not necessarily lead to good public policy. washington led us here in three ways. first, federal policies designed to expand home ownership in an off budget fashion, and by encouraging lending to those who could not afford to keep, and a federal government living beyond its means in turn encouraged american families to do likewise. washington promoted moral hazard protecting fannie and freddie that privatized their profits and clearly socialized their losses. lastly, the federal reserve had a highly accommodative policy that lowered interest rates, kept them low, and inflated the housing b be #* -- bubble. let's hope history is not repeating itself. the fed set the state for

mortgage borrowing keeping conditions too low for too long. with the bursting of the high-tech bubble in 2000, they lowered rates in early 2001 to cushion the fallout. on inflation adjusted basis, or a real basis, the fed dropped rates from 4% in late 2000 to a negative 11 -- negative 1.5% in early 2003 unleashing a wave of cheap credit on a housing market already experiencing a boom cycling. next, the federal government, for decades, attempted to spur lending and borrowing to expand home ownership without direct taxpayer spending, and in other words, without annual congressional approval. i believe, and i know there's those who disagree, that one of the more damaging initiatives has been the community reinvestment act, which is clearly undertaken with good intentions, but i feel is antiquated and in these of repeal.

proponents of the mandates maintain a small portion of the originations were related to the cra; however, i believe that this misses a fundamental appointment. they are small in vol consume, cra loan mandates are large in precedent. the inherently required lending institutions to abandon their traditional underwriting standards to comply with this government mandate. cra implicitly put the government's good housekeeping seal of approval on low quality loans. finally, fannie mae and freddie mac, companies with powers awarded by congress in exchange for meeting certain affordable housing goals. we all know they exploited the charters to borrow at discounted rates and ultimately dominated our secondary mortgage market, inflating balance sheets and personally enriched their executives, via implicit, now we all know explicit government

backing. did i mention cookbooks that allowed the politically connected executives to make off like bandits with what the regulator describedded as, quote, ill-gotten bonuses in the hundreds of millions of dollars, unquote. begin their prom nensz in the market, they believed they if fannie and freddie touched a loan, it was safe, sound, secured, and sanctioned by the government. more than 70% of sub prime and all mortgages that helped lead to the crisis were backed by fannie, freddie, fha, and other taxpayer-backed programs. if you have to put your finger on the root cause of the crisis, this is it. despite the inherent dangers and transactions, the congressional supporters kept encouraging them to, quote, roll the dice a little bit more, unquote. well, they did. the result is the worst financial crisis since the great depression. the ultimate consequence of the policies was that the average american family watched

heplessly as net worth declinedded by nearly $50,000, wiping out almost two decades of financial progress. ladies and gentlemen, this is where we have been. five years later, where do we find ourselves today? today, there are single moms throughout our economy who are having to work harder than before to just put food on the table, to put a roof over their family's heads. that's unconsciousble. today, taxpayers pay for the mother of all bailoutings, nearly $200 billion for the failed gses. that's unimagine l. today, taxpayers are on the hook for more than 5 trillion, trillion, with a "t," in mortgage guarantees one-third the size of the economy. that's unfathomable. there's a monopoly on the housing finance system. that's unwise. today, due to the dodd-frank act, washington elites decide

who qualifies for a mortgage, putting home ownership out of reach for millions of credit worthy american families. that's unfair. the american people deserve a path forward, they deserve a path to a housing system that's sustainable, fair, and prereceivers the american dream. they deserve a home so every american who works hards, plays by the rules has opportunities and choices to buy homes they can afford to keep and have a system that protecting hard working taxpayers so they never again have to bail out institutions like fannie and freddie. they deserve a system that finally breaks the destructive boom-bust housing cycles that hurt so many working families and brought our economy to its knees. that's why the house financial services committee recently approved hr2767, the path act,

that stands for protecting american taxpayers and homeowners. i believe the path act is the path forward. randy of texas and shelly of west virginia serving as the co-authors. i commend them all for their principled leadership in bringing this landmark legislation to the committee. now, at the core, the housing market is not fundamentally different from the market of any other asset. housing is not immune to the economic laws of supply and demand or risk and reward. thus, the path agent relies upon private capital and market discipline. it includes four fundamental goals essential to the development of any competitive free market. first, the role of government is clearly defined and limited. second, artificial barriers to private capital are removed to attract investment and encourage innovation. third, market participants are

given clear, transparent, and enforcement rules for transactions to foster competition and restore market discipline. lastly, consumers are afforded informed choices in determining which mortgage product best suit their need. the next does the following: ending the bailout, respects and restores the fha by defining its mission, increases mortgage competition and, enhances transparency, maximizes consumer choice, and, again, breaks down barriers for private investment capital. many believe, as i do, that the first step in creating a sustainable housing finance system is to end the costly bailout of fannie and freddy. perm feintly move from a system where the fate of the economy depends upon their success or failure. the path act ends the bailout and gradually winds down both failed companies over a five to seven year time frame, and now

much of this debate has centered around the so-called need to have gses or their equivalent in our housing finance system. first, i think we should recognize the u.s. is practically alone in the modern industrialized world in having government sponsored enterprises directly guaranteeing mortgage securities. we are practically alone in our level of direct government subsidies in intervention and housing markets, and we were also practically alone in the world in the level of turmoil in our housing markets as measured by foreclosures and delinquencies. i believe there's a direct cause of link. by almost any measure, fannie and freddie have not propelled us to anywhere van that. there's other nations like rates of home ownership or spreads in mortgage interest rates and sovereign debt, the u.s. typically is found in the middle

or the bottom of the pact. however, there is one category where the u.s. has clearly led. foreclosure rates. only in america can you subsidize more to get less. we don't have to look overseas for a well-functions housing market without government sponsored enterprises, and we don't have to look further than our own jumbo market that is successfully operated without them. prior to the housing bust, the jumbo market was 20% of the total housing market. there was capital, liquidity, competition, 30-year fixed mortgage, consumer choice, and innovation all right here in america. all of that was delivered for about 7 to 25 basis points or one quarter of 1% difference deferential from what the gses offered. i offer a modest amount to avoid bailouts, government control, and economic catastrophe, and

it's important to note that whatever modest interest rate benefits the gses delivered to home buyers, to some extent; it was upset by the inflation of housing principle for the very same home buyers. in other words, it's not self-evident that the home buyer was any better off. now, at the end of the day, the best arguments i have heard to perpetuate the gses are the following: one, standard setters throughout the underwriting purchase requirements, loan ag gaiters for smaller lenders purchasing loans in the cash window and provided a conduit for smaller originators to access mortgage investors through the issue of mortgage backed securities. these are functions, well worth preserving in some form throughout the new system; thus, the path act has a new system of housing finance that separates out these functions providing clear and transparent disclosure of mortgage data, giving

certainty to contracts in their enforceability, utilizing knowledge and networks of the federal home loan bank system in creating an open access utility for mortgage-backed security issue decoupled from the holding of long term mortgage risk. to ensure smooth transitions, the path act implements several reforms to fannie and freddie in the interim. these reforms include repealing their misguided washington created affordable housing goals that help precipitate the crisis. shrinking their portfolios of mortgage-backed securities and other assets, and eliminating the government granted competitive advantages over the private sector. the path act reforms the fha. you cannot have true housing reform without fha reform. otherwise, you're simply squeezing the balloon on one side only to have it bulge out on another. regrettably, today, the fha is not only broke. it is bailout broke.

over time, fha experienced severe mission creep, and i would argue the two phenomena are directly related. instead of helping those it was intended, today, fha ensures mortgages for millionaires and homes valued as high as $729,750. that's a mansion in most of the fifth congressional of texas and far beyond the reach of those truly earning low and moderate incomes. fha's government privileges, given advantages to allow private competition, and it's no wonder they control 57% of the mortgage insurance market.

>> the path act returns fha to the mission of helping first time home buyers in low and moderate income families. it helps ensure solvency, and bankrupt fha helps no one. rest assured that in times of serious economic downturns, under the path act, they will be able to ensure loans to any borrowers. this means that the path act preserves the fha's existing counter cyclical role which enables the fha to serve as a backstop to keep mortgage credit flowing, promote stability in the housing market, and ensure middle income families can still buy homes. the path act allows for a new, but old method for banks to finance mortgage lending creating a regulatory frame work for covered bonds financing. i say "new," but old because comped bonds existed and have been successfully used in europe

for more than 200 years where they offer a third path way to mortgage financing beyond traditional portfolio lending and securization. when it comes to housing finance, many in washington fight the new and defend the old failed status quo that, again, gave us a government-run monopoly, taxpayer bailout, economic crisis, and delivered only mediocre home ownership rates. the detractors of the path act claimed it will eliminate the 30-year fishingsed d -- fixed rate mortgage, the biggest myth about the path act. in fact, section 2 # 13 of the path act specifically states that, quote, the fha shall provide, among other mortgage insurance products, for the availability of a 30-year fixed rate mortgage, unquote. now, the legislation does not say that fha can provide, may provide, should provide, but

instead shall provide. i would not that section 2213 of the act is the first time the fha has ever been specifically required to offer a 30-year fixed rate insurance product, which is conclusively refuting the argument regarding the 30-year fixed rate mortgage. some people state that the very excise -- existence is due to the fha, and as so, the path act goes to great lengths to strengthen it for future generations granting meaningful autonomy from hud, making it solvent, giving it more flexibility to manage its books. 30-year fixed rate mortgages existed before the financial crisis without a government guarantee, and they are made today without a government guarantee. as the washington post recently editorialized, quote, opponents of the path act argue the lack of a permanent government backing be deprive the market of

liquidity and erpd the 30-year fixed rate mortgage. one answer to that is that some 30-year fixed rate loans exist without government help, unquote. that was the washington post, not national review. home buyer should have the opportunity to acquire a 30-year fixed rate mortgage. it's important to many americans, but washington shouldn't steer people into it, but instead should ensure that our citizens have informed choices about an array of products to meet their needs. as ed demarco, head of the federal housing finance agency stated, quote, one thing i would say about 30-year mortgages, it is not necessarily the best product for a home buyer, especially a first time home buyer. those own a first home for four or five years, and may not be the best for their circumstances if they buy that house with that kind of timeline. there may be a different

mortgage product in which they build equity at a faster rate than a 30-year fixed rate mortgage, unquote. president obama has acknowledged that shorter duration loans hold advantages for many borrowers like proposing last year, expanded loan refinance program where borrowers r quote, must agree to refinance into a loan with no more than a 20-year term, unquote. many americans who seek to own a home find themselves selling their property before they build some, if any, equity in in the property leaving the situation to being akin to being a renter, pays thousands, agrees to do the maintenance, and has to pay the property taxes. there is no one-size-fits all mortgage in america. some opponents claim that sufficient private sector capital does not exist to fill a post-government guarantee void. that begs several questions.

number one, why are equity markets two and a half times the size of our mortgage markets, and yet they exist without any guarantee. government or otherwise. just how much capital is sufficient for housing finance? i don't know the answer to the question, and i suspect no one in this audience does either, but what i know is that whatever the number is is it must be sustainable. that's the key concept. you know, reminding us all, capital has al terntive uses. every dollar that washington artificially has in mortgage finance is a dollar that can no longer be used to promote math tutors for our children or promote our economy's manufacturing sector to give these jobs once they garage way. -- graduate. another important factor to remember in the u.s. mortgage financing market. life insurers, pension,

retirement funds, pension funds, real estate investment trust held 50% of the market share for whole mortgages and mortgage-backed securities by 2010. the u.s. residential market is clearly an ideal investment opportunity given their needs for long-term investments. this housing expert professor of uc berkeley explained winding down the gses need to be accomplished without any major stress in the flow of funds for u.s. mortgages. if we look abroad, there's another modern, industrialized nations that avoided our experience. private capital is willing, ready, and able to fund the market. another fault attack made against the path act is that it will be harder for middle income families to buy homes. no, that distinction belongs to

the dodd-frank act, our current law. chief economists, mark zande of moody analytics testified before our committee that one single dodd-frank rule, qrm, currently in the pipeline, increases mortgage interest rates 1 -- one to four percentage point. core logics, analyzes financial information, says half the mortgage loans made today would not qualify with dodd-frank rules that go into effect this january. in other words, single handedly, the dodd-frank act cuts the number of mortgages in half and doubles the cost of those that remain. it's that bad. perhaps that is why the national association of home builders warned that dodd frank, quote, could grind the housing finance system to a halt. because of the act, washington has more control over who can buy a home than your local banker. the path act addresses

devastating rules head-on, getting washington out of the way to allow banks to lend, builders to build, realtors to sell, and home buyers to buy. path act entirely eliminates the qualified residential mortgage issue by striking dodd-frank's credit risk requirements prohibiting agencies from risk retention or premium capture reserve accounts. it eliminates the troubling ability to pay liability for lenders for mortgages they are willing to hold in their own portfolio or securetized through the platform secured by the path act. lastly, i know some claim that somehow the path act is ideological, a word you hear more often in washington. it seems to me that those who would defend a failed status quo of taxpayer bailouts, economic crisis, and, again, mediocre home ownership rates, perhaps

these are the ones that are being ideological. instead, the path act is sustainable, sustainable, and they can keep it, sustainable for taxpayers so they no longer have to bail out or have the system again, and sustainable for the economy so that we avoid the seemingly never ending cycle of boom-bust in the housing market. again, perhaps in washington, that's ideological, but in the 5th congressional district of texas, it's known as common sense. i spent a lot of time listening to my constituents and their common sense. i heard from diane in dallas who wrote, quote, why should those of us who did the responsible thing and purchase home wes could afford have to pay the freight for those who bought larger more expensive homes they couldn't afford? i heard from steve in jacksonville, texas writing with more common sense, "if it were a mom and pop business that did

what fannie and freddie did, it would have been shut down for poor business practices and even jailed." there's scott from next door says "what american people need is not more washington regulations or subsidies, but give us the opportunity to buy a home, people can afford to keep so we can live and raise our families." so people outside of washington get it. they understand that the system in place today is too often unfair, unaccountable, and unsustainable. clearly, i know there are other voices in this debate besides my own, and that of my constituents. i can want be more -- cannot be more gratified that last week the president finally added his voice to the important debate. although i heard few specifics, i welcome him to the debate. i am encouraged by this, and i reck these that he is indispensable to a solution.

other important voices in this debate besides your own are those of senator corker of tennessee and senator warner of virginia. i comment them for their leadership. someone who worked for years and years on the complicated and contentious issue of housing reform, i salute anyone rolling up their sleeves and produces not just rhetoric, but an actual plan. even today, more and more voices heard in the debate, and this is encouraging. this is good. i stand ready to listen to all and to negotiate in good faith with all, and i do this with an open mind, but i do not do it with an empty mind. thus, i remain skeptical and fearful, and an approach that does not end the permanent guarantee in the secondary mortgage market. if, at the end of the day, taxpayers are still on the hook, i fear all you have done is put fannie and freddie in the federal witness protection

program giving them cosmetic surgery, a new identity, and unleashed them on an unsuspecting public. when government provides guarantees, that means investors buy mortgages and mortgage-backed securities will be protected against loss, not overly concerned about the quality of the mortgages. either way, they'll get paid. not unlike fannie and freddie, it could well perpetuate a system where wall street investors simply offload risk on main street taxpayers. such a system, i fear, can guarantee that america will face another round of boom-bust bailout. there's new federal bureaucracies to improve the players in the housing finance system and fear the prospect of powerful bureaucrats picking winners and losers, and that system, the taxpayer always comes out the loser. in cronnyism has a way of rearing its ugly head. i'm skeptical of ideas to create a new federal mortgage insurance

fund. if there's one thing learned about government and insurance funds, it's that the government cannot or will not properly price for risk. you name it, whether it's the national flood insurance program which is underwater, pun intended, the pension benefit guarantee program, or even the deposit insurance fund from time to time, the government flat got it wrong leaving taxpayers on the hook. i'll conclude with just the last few thoughts. if our nation charts a path forward on housing reform, some say our public policy choices for working american families are between house and no house. i disagree. to have a sustainable housing policy, one, again where people buy homes they can afford to keep, the choice in many respects is between house and more house. will our generation perpetuate a

system that demands more house today only to ensure that our children are confined to less house tomorrow? today's system of boom, bust, and bailout is retarding economic growth and helping fuel what all acknowledge is an unsustainable level of national debt. our spending driven debt crisis is the greatest existential threat facing our nation today. we are borrowing 31 cents on the dollar, much of it from china and sending the bill to our children. children born today are burdened with the debt of more than $52,000 they had nothing to do with creating. our national debt stands at roughly $145,000 per household. for a lot of people i represent in the 5th congressional district of texas, that's more than they will ever amass in savings in their entire lifetimes. david cody, one of the president's own appointees to

simpson-bowles commission, else the ceo of honeywell said, quote, the seeds of the next recession already have been planted. the debt burden accumulated over the next ten years will sink us. the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff said, quote, the single biggest threat to the national security is our debt. i would also offer the single biggest threat to the national housing aspirations too is our debt. if you've ever attended one of our financial services committee hearings on capitol hill, and if you have not, i certainly hope one day you will, you will also see that we run a continuous realtime display of the national debt clock. it serves as a constant and sobering reminder of the very serious and very dangerous threat that faces our nation. a threat that looms large over this debate and should loom large over every debate we engage in. i would also say that as we

think about a housing program for working americans, we've got to remember that the best housing program, at the end of the day, is not a subsidy, not a guarantee, not an interest deduction, and not even a tax credit. it's a job, a job that leads to a rewarding career in a dynamic, growing economy because there has never been a greater or more successful housing program ever devised by the minds of man kind than the american free enterprise system. this is what we should work to strengthen. we should never forget that at the dawn of america's history, it was another crony run government run enterprise needing a bailout, namely, thest india tea company, that sparked a revolution birthing a nation teaming with individuals who decidedded to take control of their own destinies. these patriots risked their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to ensure their children

would have something better in a phrase they risk it all for the american dream. that compass that should guide us all. today in the aftermath of the destruction caused by an unsustainable housing finance system, we find ourselves, again, at another moment in history. it is a moment in history when we have to make a fundamental choice, one that will shape the future of the nation and those who proudly call america home. that's why this debate matters. when you come down to it, it's not a debate about basis points or fixed term loans. it's about freedom. it's about opportunity. it's about taking back control of your lives and your destinies including many here today. you, who are careers in housing finance, to have careers without the interference of big government. i hope we can agree it's time for a new path and time for the generation to preserve for the

children the american dream including that most important dream of home ownership. i welcome your voice, and i thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. thank you. [applause] >> mr. chairman, thank you so much for a very, very thoughtful remarks, and i know we are returning close to the time frame for lunch, so i'll throw a question at you, and maybe a second one, but i think one of the things everyone in the room would love to know is what is your assessment of a timetable by which that with which we all share is a desire to see this reform take place could happen? >> well, you didn't say they would be easy questions. [laughter] the house majority leader is anxious to bring the path act to the floor. again, i have an open mind. we are speaking to many people

now about some revisions and improverments that could be made to the agent before it goes to the floor, and as i look in the audience, i see a few people that we're talking with as we speak today. i do not have a close perm working relationship with senator harry reid, so i'm a little bit ignorant of what the timetable may be over there, but in my discussions with the senate banking chairman, tim johnson, and ranking member mike crapo, i'm cautiously optimistic, they, too, may move some legislation in the fall, and i believe, clearly, as does the majority of the house financial services committee that the path act is the path forward, but the voters spoke, and in the last election, there is divided government, and as i said before, that's why god made conference committees, and i wish to get the path act to conference committee. >> let me say as one in the

senate for better part of a term, i saw one or two conference committees the entire time i was there. that would be, i think, welcomed news to those who study civics in our schools that actually we could come together, and so i guess that would be the follow-up question. .. i became discouraged when it was allowed to gather dust for

roughly two and a half years. had a number of conversations with secretary geithner at the time. i was convinced at the sincerity wanting to move forward. i continue have a good, clear picture. i'm encouraged to the president weighed in. he seemingly wants to get something done. option one is to a great extent what the -- has. i listened to his comments carefully the other day. his wind down for fannie and freddie is sworn to what we have seen in the act. i frequently in my career found myself agreeing with what 80% what the president says. i find myself disagree with 80 percent of what he does. [laughter] >> there's a difference between the two of them. [laughter] one last question. there are a number of things in

your proposal that, you know, was dodd-frank. there is a likelihood, do you know, that is a process that is dodd-frank reform? >> improvement tweaks -- [inaudible] i'm encouraged. it's clear as conservative republican i've not been a fan of dodd-frank although i certainly have incredible great amount of respect for its author chairman frank. clearly one of the smarter people i have met. doesn't mean he's right or correct. i must admit, i believe -- you would have to ask my colleagues on the other side of the aisle it's said in washington. i fear some have a more religious adherence to the brand than perhaps the named authors of the act have. personally, when you look at weather the regulators have done

with qm what is contemplated by qrm. i think that's unsustainable. i do not know how you could ultimately sustain a housing finance market. if you cut the number of mortgages in half, and double the price on the others, which could clearly be the outcome. i think there a number of democrats on the house financial service democratic national committee. they are committed to the -- are certainly looking for room for improvement. so, you know, i've been in congress for a few years, if you're not an optimist, it's not really the job for you. i prefer to remain optimistic about the matters. >> thank you for your generosity with the time. i hope you enjoy the time in your home district, which i know you prefer to washington. we look forward to having you back there for the important work ahead.

thank you. [applause] in sphonts violence in that country. he spoke from where he's vacationing in martha's vineyard. here is part of the remarks. that's why we are so concerned by recent events. we appreciate the complexity of the situation. mohammed morsi was elected president in a democratic lek, his government was not inclusive, and it not respect the view of all jinxes. we know that many egyptiansing with millions of egyptians, perhaps even a majority of egyptians were calling far change in course. while we conot believe that force is the way to resolve political differences, after the military's intervention several weeks ago, there remain a chance

for reconciliation and an opportunity pursue a democratic path. instead we have seen a more dangerous path taken through arbitrary arrests, a broad crackdown on mr. morsi's associations, and supporters and now tragically violence in sake of the lives of hundreds of people and wounded thousand more. the united states strongly condemns the steps that have been taken by egypt's interim government and security forces. we deplore violence against civilians. we support universal right essential to human dignity. including the right to peaceful protest. we oppose the pursuant of marble law, which is denying rights to citizens under the principle that security trumps individual freedom. or that fight makes right. today the united states extends

the condolences to the families of those who were killed and those who were wounded. given the depth of our partnership with egypt, our national security interest in this part of the world and our belief that engagement can support a transition back to a democratically elected civil yab government, we sustained our commit to egypt and its people. while we want to sustain our relationship with egypt, our traditional cooperation continue as usual when civilians are being killed in the streets and rights are being rolled back. as a result, this morning we notified the egyptian government that we are canceling our biannual joint military exercise, which was scheduled for next month. going forward i asked my national security team to seas the implication of the actions taken by the interim government, and further steps that we may take as necessary with respect to the u.s.-egyptian

relationship. let me say that the egyptian people deserve better than what we have seen over the last several days. and to the egyptian people let me say the cycle of violence and escalation needs to stop. that was part of the president's remarks from earlier today. you can see his entire remarks later in the schedule or any time at c-span.org. up next a look at the u.s. meat industry from "washington journal's" spotlight on magazine series. this is forty minutes. continues. host: this week's spotlight on magazine segment looks at harper's magazine, the "the way of all flesh." its author, ted conover, joins us from new york city this morning. thanks for being with us. and start us off by telling us, how and why did you decide to do this piece?

guest: always been interested in places i wasn't supposed to go, i guess. my last book for which i'm well known was about working in a prison for a year. and it just struck me, as a journalist, we should be talking about places like that, and i feel the same way about the origin of the food i eat. i'm a meat eater. there's a lot of attention on meat lately. and i thought the best way to take a look inside a slaughterhouse for an extended period of time would be to become an inspector. host: you talk about participatory journalism and the cover of this story says "under cover," it describes your reporting as being undercover. but in the article, you declare it to be embedded. what's the difference? guest: well, there's a couple of levels here. one is that federal -- usda meat inspectors are, by law, embedded in every slaughterhouse. the slaughterhouse can't operate without federal

inspectors present. so they have to give them space in the factory. they gave us parking places. i had a locker room inside the cargill meat solutions factory in nebraska, along with my cohort, a federal inspector. ut on another level, i am -- i'm embeding myself with those inspectors, without them knowing that my goal is to write about what life is like in there. so there's a couple of layers to that. host: ted conover, before we get more into the piece itself, how did it work for you to get in there, and did you become really part of the team of usda inspectors that was doing the day-to-day work in the slaughterhouse? guest: yeah, exactly, that was my goal. it took me two years to do it, because it wasn't that hard to qualify. you can either get this job by experience. most people in it have worked in the meat industry.

a lot of them on the line or in quality assurance in a big plant. you can also get it by having a four-year college degree with enough math and science. i applied. they told me i lacked some of the math i thought i had, so i took a long-distance learning course. i got four credits. and a couple of years later, there i was out in nebraska. so, yes, i had a badge. i was a federal meat inspector. there was nothing pretend about it. i was fully devoted to the job. it was required -- it required all my attention, especially in the early days, when there's so much to learn. i mean, meat inspectors don't just look. in the beef plant, they use knives and a hook to cut into pieces of meat to look for disease. so it's very participatory, and it's especially demanding, especially at the beginning. host: you mentioned that the plant you worked in was owned by cargill. they have pushed back the lincoln journal star in

nebraska, they say that cargill is calling it a fable-like tale. what it is your response to their concerns? guest: well, it's kind of a funny way to put it. this is a 14,000-word piece. they picked up on a couple of tiny factual inaccuracies. but the funny thing about their response is they likened it to the jungle, which is, of course, the powerful novel that got meat inspections started in this country. i was very flattered. none of us can hope to have that kind of power with our writing these days. within a few weeks of the publication, congress had established a federal meat inspection in this country. that was an incredible and sudden reform. these days, it wasn't like that

at all. i wasn't going after the industry. you know, i wasn't targeting cargill in any way. i didn't see a single rat in the factory. i did not see anybody fall into a grinding machine. you know, as in the jungle. but what i saw was the way industrial slaughter works, the way you can run more than 5,000 head of cattle through a factory in a day and turn them into meat. the ingenious machines that help get that done, the huge corps of workers, mostly latin america, who use knives all day, you know, and get what they consider a fair wage, but at a huge cost to their health, a lot of them. there's an awful lot of repetitive stress injury in these places. i suffered it myself. even though my job wasn't as intensely about cutting as theirs, i got little breaks

during the day, and i got to change positions, because we rotate our posts as we cut into different parts of the animal during the day. the regular workers don't get to do that. anyway, i wanted that kind of overview. i wanted to have, you know, a stake in the whole -- pardon me, in the whole process. i didn't just want to be a casual observer. i wanted to get my hands dirty. host: our guest, ted conover, a ontributor to "harper's" magazine. he has an article about a industrial slaughterhouse. here are the numbers to call. democrats, 202-585-3880. republicans, 202-585-3881. and independents, 202-585-3882. ted conover, give us a sense of the scale of the plans. you mentioned how many head of cattle can come in. who owns these plants, more generally, and where are they in the country? guest: sure, so most of the

nation's beef plants are in that part of the midwest where there are cattle. northern nebraska, texas, out there, and the companies are names you're familiar with. cargill is one of them. tyson, you know, they're big corporations mostly, and there's also some smaller players as well, like kosher meat plants in hastings, nebraska, there's one of those. so this happens on various scales, but usually they're giant, multinational corporations that run these plants. the industry shifted from major cities like chicago to smaller american towns in the middle of the last century. i think largely due to the rise of highways and truck transportation, which was able to move cattle in the ways

trains had before. you didn't need the rail heads in chicago to get the cattle there. you could use trucks to get them anywhere. so there's towns like skylar, which have, you know, for many, many years, been mostly caucasian and english speaking. in the last 20, 25 years, there's a whole group of towns like this that have become largely latino as the wage for meat work fell. so there's been a profound demographic change in the country's midsection, as well as the typical meat factory worker has changed. most of the inspectors i worked with were people who had grown up out there. they were mostly white. though on the day i started, a mexican american woman also started. so i was able to get her perspective on the whole thing as well. host: our first caller is william in jacksonville, florida, independent line. you're on with ted conover.

caller: thank you very much. i appreciate you taking my call. i saw a documentary that basically covers a lot of the areas that this gentleman is talking about. it was called "food inc.." my question is simple -- was there any validity to that? what you're saying sounds very familiar to what you're explaining to everybody as well as our meat source and our food source, that basically four major conglomerates control basically all of our food source. what was your take in your piece, and was it similar to that documentary in regards to validity? thank you. guest: i did watch that documentary, but it was more than a year ago, so i can't remember everything about it. but i am fairly sure that what i saw stands up to my own experience and to other scrutiny. yeah, that's kind of the way food is made in this country. i remember as i flew out to omaha early on, i sat next to a cargill employee who worked in a soft division.

as you know, it is a very big company. he said to me that one out of three products in the supermarket is involved with cargill and one way or another. that said, if you wanted to go see how your meat was made, i would say lots of luck. these plants are surrounded by barbed wire. they are extremely secure. cameras all around and cameras inside. everything i did on the job could have been watched by someone and plant management. those of video feeds are

available at company headquarters in kansas. a lot of surveillance. a lot of secrecy over how meat is made. i do not think it is justifiable. i pray to keep -- i know a journalist will make their way out as we're working our way in. there is a whole set of laws out there. the goal is to try to stop the hidden camera videos from animal rights activists that make the meat industry look so bad. i was afraid those laws were going to make it impossible to do my job as a journalist. nebraska has not passed one yet. attitude ofre is an fear about what is going on there. i think they should be more open.

>> our guest has a cover story in "harpers." the way of all flesh. undercover in a slaughterhouse. he writes a companion piece to this about how he did his reporting. here is that. ofng undercover in the age agriculture had lost. frank tweets in, have always said you do not need the fda, it does make it so that any citizen can view any food establishment during business hours. >> i kind of like that idea -- guest: i kind of like that idea. fat chance of happening, but i do not see why it should not. it gives the sense there is something shameful going on. i appreciate the process of killing animals is not attractive. there is a lot of blood involved. a lot of things that if you are

not used to turn your stomach the first time you see them. one of my job post was of this roundtable where all of the organs that would drop out of the body cavity would pass in front of inspectors. right after lunch to have to stand at that table and watch these steaming piles of organs is not easy. it makes you think hard about this whole process. the first, and online ask me why i have not become a begin as a result of this. result of this. i certainly understand people who do, but fortunately or unfortunately i like meat too much. but i want to eat meat that will not make me sick. there are things that happen in the factories that give cause for concern. when and how is the meat

inspected? guest: sure. at the plant where i worked one of the veterinarian to run the detail of inspectors with that the animals -- looks at the animals when they're ripe. they arrive 40 at a time. they get unloaded, weighed in weight and corrals for their turn in the not box. box. the knock this will reduce anxiety. told me inere spanish that it smelled so bad because they do not want to die. i do not know if that is true or not. most animals do not want to do -- want to die but that is what they're there for. once they get inside, the first team of inspectors looks at heads and tongs.

looking at live notes for infections. signs of tv. b. nodes for at lymph infections. cattle over 30 years of age bse.dered at risk for i am afraid i ever got what it stands for. we checked various parts of the animal at various stages of its disassembly, if you will. then, of different team of inspectors a few days later grades of meat. that is a different process. there will put a usda stamp on it as it is about to leave the factory. other meat then gets tested by grinding plants. that is a different kind of inspection. we look for things like excreta

ingesta,t the -- or things that tau would in just. obviously they're full of bacteria. quality control is really important at that stage to keep the meat clean. later on bacterial logical testing is important to make sure there are not bacteria and the ground meat that is going out to consumers. mount pleasant, mich.. independent line. question abouta the integrity of the journalism you are being involved in. doesn'teemed like --- it seem like a violation of privacy? it kind of seems like howard stern, kind of. undercover reporting, to

me, is a last resort. for journalists it is a nuclear option because some degree of deception is involved. it is different in every case. every journalist in every situation is different and should be judged differently. the first test is the subject important enough to justify an undercover investigation? of meat,he production something we can put in our body with potentially fatal consequences, rarely, think of this, but that is a possibility. on additivesfocus to our food and antibiotic used in the raising of cattle, this is a very important issue. it passed that test for me. is there a way might -- way i could get the same story by not

going undercover? that is the way i could get the next question. i do not think so. i would never be able to do the job myself. the last question is privacy. i changed the names of everybody at work with. with.orked some of them say silly things. i did not want them to suffer personal humiliation because of that. it it will put your mind at ease, let me just say i found the inspectors be conscientious and hard working. i am not caroled how -- that my editors were that i arrived at that conclusion, but i felt part of the process that had integrity. fortunately i did not have to

write about the people i work with. the only thing i did not like is conditions that led my arm swollen and fingertips number and my hand unable to pick up my socks by the end of the second week as my palm was so sore. next call. am ar: my question is i meat cutter and i know where i live here in maryland we have different meats like angus meets and regular. it is about integrity.

people say they are selling things that are simply no kind of drugs put into the week. we put in a black stripe for and is and richard for usda choice. is usda choice. it is really up to the meat cutter. host: before you get off the line, tell us more about how long you have worked in the industry. the you have any of those repetitive motion injuries? >> i started in 1988. i started as a meat wrapper.

i have issues with carpal tunnel. my concern is the company i work for is building a new facility in pennsylvania. at the end of the year we did not know if we will have jobs but everything is being pre- packaged. i just wondered about the integrity. guest: it sounds like he basis choices that would affect his personal integrity for how different meats are labeled. there is a gift -- defining line between meats. what this points to is the key role of federal inspection.

earlier this year there was a fear that funding cuts would shut down the factories across the country for about 11 days because there would not be enough money to pay the inspectors. passed awhole congress law that allowed the usda shuffle -- to shuffled funds of the plants would not have to shut down. meat inspection falls in the same category of air traffic control, national defence -- these are things you have to have a government to do. no matter what some people think, when it comes to greeting meet -- grading meat, certifying the wholesomeness or what was put in, if government will not do it, i am not sure who is. the way it works in a factory is

quality-control is done partly by inspectors. the with the inspectors are helping the meat company by checking. the meat companies do their own checking on top of that. inspectors have a fantastic power, which is to actually -- other workers do, too but infections can stop -- inspectors can stop the line. on a park is one day. my co-workers saw a live bird dropped onto the floor and put dropped onto the floor and put back on to the table in a contaminated states. and a young animal. meat that might have problems with neurological issues.

that could have gotten an if my companion had not pressed the red button. i think americans need this done the in the production of our meat to ensure there is integrity and the idea of a company could do it without an inspection is kind of scary. i set up a google alert for every time the usda does a recall. it is constant. all year long. it is often little companies. the ones that should worry us contaminated meat, it is not fully cooked can kill you.

i have a friend in upstate new york who ate -- whose wife ate undercooked chicken from what he believes is the pain that she got in her stomach and other parts of her body soon after eating that, she said i did not need any attention, i am strong, this will go away. it did not go away and killed her. 3000 people per year are thought to die from food borne illness. conover, a job as a usda inspector at the nebraska slaughterhouse. at least one federal program one -- was able to eat -- beat it. the sequester was supposed to be a budget cut you could not beat. three weeks in the agricultural department food inspectors were part of a spending bill the president signed to get out of the sequester.

the program got $55 million in new money. the sequester was supposed to take that away. looking more at the question of inspection, he writes the usda is responsible for overseeing the slaughter house operations, employing 7500 inspectors throughout the country. and the food and drug administration is responsible for most other areas. fresh produce. the u.s. favors is the fda. here is the budget request for fiscal year 2011. over $22 billion. there is the breakdown for money for federal food safety inspection and inspection at the state level, and also at the international level. from thethis differ

fbi? in the simplest terms the usda monitors the killing of animals. the fda monitors seafood, it ise, processed foods this bifurcated responsibility for the food supply that is being modernized and brought up to date. the fda has gotten the most attention in terms of legislation, food modernization act, which is being slowed down by the sequester, is intended to increase inspection of the increased proportion of the food that originates overseas. 80-90% of our seafood comes from other countries. 20-30% of the produce.

it was not all inspected the way we would have expected things the way we do it it here. the government is a bit behind in doing those kinds of inspections. that is a scary thing. just in a very small nut shell, that is the difference. feet of water is fda. poultry, pork and beef production is usda. is fda.t butter host: here is the difference between the fda requested budget. $4.7 billion. 1.5 billion would go to implementation of the food safety modernization act. and the other monetary breakdowns. mark is our next calller in arizona on the independent line. caller: thank you for c-span. i am glad i got on this morning. caller: i have a strong concern

laws.e baghdad -- ag gag weyou mentioned yourself, need undercover people to go in and see if the animals are being treated humanely. we also need people to fight for the gestation cages to be changed and things along that line. i think it is horrible they're not on the making it illegal for the people to go in but attacking organizations such as cruelty for animals are going and having their people go in. they're calling them eco terrorists. i think it is out of control. agree the opposite should happen, that there should be more openness and the ability to see how the animals are givend and how they are to us for consumption.

tell you a story about that? while i was waiting to get tired, i called the founder of mercy for animals who had just produced another stomach-turning video showing abuse of animals. was and i saidi how do you choose the plants where you send your people to do the hidden videos? i said you pick the most notorious once? he said no, we send people wherever we can get tired and we have found abuse that every single place we work. thate no way of verifying that is true, but i do not doubt it. areink these practices endemic to agriculture. management is officially against abuse. educated people are against abuse but we hire people and put

them in super difficult jobs with little supervision, and not all of them feel the same way we do. the way ourselves do or should about animals. thus, the hidden videos of chickens being lapped against walls and dairy cows hit with canes to get them to move even though they have broken legs. you can go online and just cannot believe what you are seeing. i want to say though that this is not -- i think the attitude way ofanimals is not the the mainstream, even an agricultural america. one day in the break room in nebraska i was looking at the omaha paper with my fellow inspectors and there is an article about the latest mercy for animals video. my supervisor went on line, and we all gathered around a computer to watch it. it was awful what the animals

were going through at the hands of the workers. the inspectors all thought so. none of them said that is b.s. or noise about nothing. people said that should never happen, how can that be allowed to happen? so these humane treatment laws represent a reasonable consensus of how americans think animal should be treated. it does not like city people vs. country people. country people feel the same way. in these environments that things can happen. 30's to the oversight and openness. needs to be oversight and openness. that is whyeets in only order be from amish farmers that i know.

is from grass-k fed, free range cows. you talk about the conversations that go on at the plants among some of the workers. they do perceive this divide. you write that one of your colleagues said she was bothered by the fact that urban consumers with little knowledge of animal husbandry could influence the whole economy simply by hopping on some political correct bandwagon in terms of labeling. what did you learn about labeling and what those mean as consumers go to the store? guest: the most extreme example of that is the so-called pink slime products. that is the phrase used by a usda scientists to describe this product. this is made from parts of a cow that could only debate oblique be called me to --

debateably called meat. iss got a lot of publicity being served in school lunches. suffered nebraska because jobs disappeared. slime, thefor pink demand and strong for it drastically. people that my supervising veterinarian who lost their jobs. he was angry about that. he said this is one of the cleanest thing that comes out of the factory because it has been subjected to pneumonia and other things. in his opinion this was wisteria triumphing over reason in regards to what we put in our god -- bodies for food. define differing opinions about that. canada will not allow meat

products treated with ammonia because of safety concerns. america seems to allow a lot of other things that country's do not. such as the sub-therapeutic use of the levels of antibiotics as cattle are growing up. as they are fed these, even though they're not sick, it helps them grow. there is a lot of concern this weakens the drugs, which are such an amazing -- which are so important to human health that it weakens them when we get sick. you find a lot of differences of onnion about this, depending what part of the country you live in and how connected to the industry you are. host: trying to get more calls than in the last few minutes we have left. jack in georgia. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. first of all, i salute this

gentleman for appearing on your program. i think right now it probably did not take the courage it took years ago if you would have attempted this, god knows what would have happened. there would be ramifications that would have followed him through the streets wherever he goes. the problem as i see it is that the laws written in the books by -- introduced in the past of the legislative power are not stringent enough. you why.ll anything goes in america today. this wonderful country we all share allows perpetrators, especially in the industry.

who knows but the people who are at the head of the table, the kind of meat we are eating. thank you for taking my call. i grew up on an animal feeding operation. at any one time we had 6500 pigs. we were typically a better grow worse than the rest. than the rest. if the pig is being treated for drugs they only have to be off of that drug for 30 days before slaughter. i was wondering if you had seen a claim and sick animals coming in and being slaughtered and the rules are and standards are for that. also, i think the laws are being

pushed because the people really knew how animals are treated and groaned and slaughtered, i think things would quickly change. thank you for taking my call. unfortunately i was posted inside the floor on the kill floor, which is a football-sized fruit were animals on a hoax make their way slowly around being disassembled. just outside the room is where the cattle would arrive. i started around dawn. the cattle have been arriving all night to get ready for their trip to the chain. i did not get to see them, but i veterinarian i work for have high standards and would never allow a down cal to go -- cow to go up that ramp. disturbingyou see things inside. ast the day i was on livers,

i reached for it i saw what looked to be my dog after a bath. i said what is that? people around me chuckle. it was a fetus. supposedly the pepper slaughtered have not had calves, but that is not always the case. a lot of times you see all whole uterus with a fetus inside go by several times per day. their blood is collected by use for laboratories and is quite valuable. there's something pretty upsetting about that. scientista political called every 12 seconds describes cattle occasionally where he worked in nebraska having their babies while they

waited to go in for slaughter, which messes up the whole process, as you can imagine. that seems kind of disturbing, and you like to and especially it was weird because i was in a part of the country where you still see billboards where aborted human fetuses sometimes on the highway. to see that just in front of me inside the factory was upsetting in a way i would never have expected. you get out of the habit of meat unless you are a farm area, and you realize that lives, something important --an animal's life and the labor and pain of all the people who got the animal out there. and it left me appreciating meat

a little more. host: from kansas, a republican, go ahead. caller: yes, i am calling to tell the gentleman i don't suppose he ever read the bible, but if he had read the book of , versus 14-r seven 23, jesus declared all foods fit they are givenf thanks for. and prepared normally. , it you can take a liver can drop on the floor. have you ever heard of washing it off with water? of course. this is the company employees not following the company's own rules, and the company took that liver, put it in a pale, and i am sure dispose of it properly, sent it to cat food,

which is what is done if there were deliver flukes in the bile duct. everything gets used sooner or later. me say, i do heard indeed give thanks when i eat meat. his story is on the front page of "harpers," the way of all flesh do you trust the government to do the right thing most of the time? do you believe publish officials are mostly honest? when we answer yes to the questions like the late '50s and early '60s. we don't kill each other. when we say we don't trust the government the -- >> homicide rate in the united states has been extraordinarily really high compared to the rest of the absolute world for over a

century. compared to most other affluent nations, our homicide rate for most of the 120th century was between say four times to ten times or more the homicide rate in other societies. so we have had a pretty high rate. it doesn't always sound very high when you hear it in the newspaper. for most of the 20th century the homicide rate was somewhere around nine to ten per hundred thousand to a year. it sounds like kind of a small number. so you to multiply it for the life expectancy. you are exposed each year. you have the chance. when you look at the homicide rate that we have for most of the 20th century and multiply by life expectancy. if we torp maintain the rate it would mean roughly one out of 60 children in the united states today would be murdered. it works out to about one out of

460 white female. statistics are by white/nonwhite. it for about one out of every 160 white males, about one out of every 110 nonwhite females. one out of 27 nonwhite males. it's a huge total. when we think about the numbers, it's a really costly thing. now our homicide rate is lower than it was at its peak between the mid '60s and the early 1990s. still at the rates we're running today between 5 and 6 per hundred thousand. we are still talking about about one out of every 200 children born in america roughly will grow up to be murdered. as a matter of fact, we think now that the united states say right after the revolution down say the mexican war look at the noter and the south probably had the lowest homicide rate in the

western world. and if you factor in improvements in emergency care and emergency medicine and think how many people were killed in the period would survive today, it was an extraordinarily lower rate. as low as the lowest rate in the world today. there are periods where it's been very low. you take a look today and african-american are the most likely to commit murder and be murdered today. it wasn't like that in the past. in fact right through to reconstruction from the mid 18th centuries. african-americans were among the least homicide l americans. so something changed in the late 19th century early 20th century to shift those proportions. whites would always be -- european americans were the most homicide murder use became slightly less murder use and african-americans became more likely to kill. that doesn't mean african-americans were not less likely to be murdered.

in fact they were murdered in the very high rate during reconstruction, you know, compared to other americans. but they were not the perpetrators. they were the victims. and african-americans really had a low homicide rate among themselves. if you take a live at clave i are or early reconstruction in the south. african-americans were less likely to kill each other than the whites were. these patterns have changed dramatically over time. i look and say there's hope. because it's not inevitable that the united states is murder use or that a particular group of americans is murderous. figuring out how they go up-and-down is where we try to figure out. where we got out of balance was girning in the 1840 and 1850s when the country fell apart over the issue of slavery. and we're beginning to see is

what drives the homicide rate. it's hard to imagine this whether somebody rapes and murders a young woman they don't know. whether somebody gets in a deadly bar fight and kills their best friend. it has to do with the political system and feelings of belief associated with government and society. when one of the things we see break down. we have a failure of nation building. our nation fall apart. we're thinking over 700,000 people were killed during the time frame. during reconstruction easily 100,000 murders were coming out of that devastating event. when you have that kind of loss, that kind of hemorrhage, when the state breaks down and have political stability. when people lose trust in the government. they don't have a sense of fellow feeling that goes beyond the bound of the family that em passes with a racial group or national group or religious group. the murder rate can skyrocket. it can go to 10 --

some of the places in the united states where the conflict was most intense the rate was getting up over 100,000 a year. up until then i think our homicide rate was lower than dan and lower than england. the can -- canada said we're violent. up until that point it was working well. african-american homicide rates were highest during the nixon administration. when did white homicide peak? 1880. the busing welfare, vietnam, the humiliation of the hostage taking in iran and our inability to do something about it. proactively it lingered. that's when white government went down most. and the white murder rate was

the highest at 7 per 100,000. which was a huge rate. that's just whites. and then ronald reagan comes in and speaks to the concerns of those people, and what happened to the homicide rate? same thing when fdr came in during the depression and said we're going move in another direction. it wasn't the first year of the administration, but the second year people start to trust him and say this is someone who cares. this government cares. i'm empowered. i'm included. i'm mared the. you see -- mattered. you see the homicide rate drop dramatically for all americans. you see the drop under reagan too interestingly enough. it's not a partisan thing, in other words. it has to do with how people feel general about the person. whether they feel connected or included. another thing is how connected we feel to our fellow americans. the best poll i found of a homicide rate in colonial times in the 19th century inspect is a strange one. it's the percentage of new

counties in any decade named after national hero. when we name our counties after national hero, george washington, thomas jefferson. we don't kill each other. when the number is low and it dropped it dropped in the 1840 and 1850 as people start to think we're not a nation anymore. we're deeply divided. and that number went down. and the murder rate went up. the same thing happened in the colonial period. when from say -- glorious revolution of the 1680. that increase trust of government in great britain and the empire. the identification so the number of counties named after british heroes went up to 80 percent. the homicide rate dropped. when the crisis came, that number dropped started to kill each ore. so it's a way of saying, you know, something about sol solidarity. another thing is hate speech. we find we start to be to be map out the use of words now and the

kind of hate speech, and how intense these feelings were. the best you could -- if you map out the use of the n-word in the 19th century, and what percentage, you know, how often it was used in the book that were published, say -- you'll map out the homicide rate. it's scary. the racial hatred comes and section of crisis in the 180 and 1850 the homicide rate moves and goeses up. peaks during the civil war, goes down as reconstruction ends, and the 1890 it goes back up again. it follows that same pattern. and it works the other way, the other ways that the antiabolitionists use is the slave power. in order this is our america. this are not our fellow americans. they are ty rants. they -- ty rants. we want nothing do with them. when the speech we're trying to

look at ways to measure these kinds of emotions. but political instability, break down of national cohe thinks seems to be what we're looking at. if you ask it's something my friend and europe and canada asked me. you americans hate your government. we have never heard so much hatred of government speech. and i'm not talking about that in a partisan way. people get upset. it goes back to the distrust. really gets amplified during the civil war. we're still fighting the civil war. you look at the bush v gore. it's the flip of the electoral. those political divisions are still there. and the feelings are still there. and that's why we think as historians as social scientists, or many of us beginning to think

this is how we got to this i guess the thing i say too the thing i would help liberal -- very constructive. but the theory of violence don't work. i mean, because it's not tenth deterrence. and it's not about the economy working well. extremes the great depression and the homicide rate goes down. the 1960 it goes up. it can't be the economy. we look at religion we're the most church going people of any affluent nation. we have the highest percentage of people who believe in god, you know, and so we kill each other. how can that be? our extraordinary faith doesn't solve this problem. if you think the people doing the murder don't think of themselves as -- most of them do.

they are people who thinks the person deserves to die. we read in the murder -- god told me. he got what he deserves. that doesn't work. ..