>> at its annual meeting in san francisco last month. then a discussion on the future of egypt and how the nation can engage the international community to help it achieve economic and political stability. and be later, live remarks by former treasury secretary hank paulson and former congressman barney frank on some of the lessons learned from the 2008 financial crisis. >> the senate returns today at 2 p.m. eastern for general speeches. later, members resume work on a

bill aimed at encouraging the development of energy-efficient technologies for use in both commercial and residential buildings. senate majority leader harry reid expressed dismay that efforts had failed to yield an overall agreement on amendments to move the bill forward, but he says he's hopeful members can regroup this week to advance the measure. today they'll also debate and vote on two judicial nominations to the u.s. court of federal claims. over in the house, there's a brief pro forma session at 2 eastern, no legislative business expected. a comprehensive forest management bill that would direct the agricultural department to establish timber harvesting zones, also to resize and renew nutrition assistance programs that were not included in the farm bill. follow the house live on c-span and the senate on c-span2. >> c-span, created by america's cable companies in 1979, brought to you as a public service by your television provider.

>> host: well, it was in 2010 that the federal communications commission issued and approved an open internet order prohibiting broadband providers from discriminating against internet content. here's former chairman of the fcc, julius genachowski, talking about that open internet order. >> today we're adopting a set of high-level rules of the road that strikes the right balance between these imperatives. we're adopting a framework that will increase certainty for businesses, investors and entrepreneurs. in key respects, the interest of edge innovators, the entrepreneurs creating internet content services and applications, their interests, the interests of broadband providers and of american consumers are aligned. innovation at the edge catalyzes

consumer demand for broadband, consumer demand spurs private investment and innovation and faster broadband networks and faster networks sparks ever-cooler innovation at the edge. i believe our action today will foster an ongoing cycle of massive investment, innovation and consumer demand both at the edge and in the core of broadband networks. our action will strengthen the internet job creation engine. our action will advance our goal of having america's broadband networks be the freest and the fastest in the world. >> host: and that open internet order was the topic of a court case heard this week in d.c., verizon v. the fcc. former republican commissioner robert mcdowell, who is the top republican on the commission in 2010, joins us by phone. commissioner mcdowell, what was the argument that was heard at the commission about this

open internet order? >> guest: well, first of all, peter, thank you for having me, and this is a very important topic, and you're covering it at a very good time. so the court arguments earlier this week went on for two hours even though the original schedule, i think, was about 45 minutes. so that shows you just how interested the judges were in the subject matter at hand. and it's complex. it's complex legally, it's complex factually, and one of my concerns is that here we had a room full of lawyers -- i am a lawyer, so i can say that -- and are they determining the fate of how the internet should evolve. and that could be a little disheartening when up til now we've had the internet grow and prosper and blossom because of engineers and academics and user groups and the prix market. free market. so what's really at the heart of

the court case is whether or not the fcc had the legal authority to do what it did. and there are lots of different legal theories there, different layers of the statutes. but a threshold question for me back in 2010 is what is broken in the marketplace that the fcc was trying to fix? the fcc did not do a bona fide or peer-reviewed market study of the broadband market before leaping, and i think that was a mistake. so, first of all, nothing was broken to be fixed and, second of all, i didn't think the fcc had the legal authority to do what it did. having said all that, i'll conclude this part by saying there are plenty of other laws on the books that will protect consumers. there's no dispute, at least for me, that the internet should be open and freedom enhancing and a permissionless place for all of us to improve our lives. in an unfettered way.

but there are antitrust laws and consumer protection laws and the potential for class action lawsuits should internet service providers ever discriminate in an anticompetitive way that harms consumers. so i think there are plenty of laws on the books, but if not, then congress needs to address this, and the fcc just can't legislate the way it tried to do. >> host: commissioner mcdowell, how long did the fcc grapple with this issue of net neutrality? >> guest: a long time, actually, even going back to the early days of the bush administration when the fcc chairman at the time, michael powell, came out with his internet freedoms statement. because academically or in theory people could see or contemplate whether or not there would be an economic incentive for internet service providers to discriminate in an anticompetitive way against content or applications. i think, though, as we've seen, first of all, more in broadband

and the higher use in wireless broadband which is the fastest growing segment of the market and quickly becoming the first screen for consumer, i think that we have a new, the new market, a new era here and those concerns really hold up the way they did ten years ago. >> host: and that was robert mcdowell, former republican commissioner on the fcc. thanks for joining us on "the communicators". and now joining us at our table here at c-span is randolph may who is president of the free state foundation and gigi zone, president and ceo of a group called public knowledge. ms. sohn, first of all, what is public knowledge in position with regard to verizon v. the fcc case? >> guest: it's an advocacy organization that represents the rights of internet users and the desire of internet users to have an open, unfettered internet

that is not controlled by gatekeepers like the cable and telephone companies that provide internet access to the world, the internet that we've come to love, the one that drives economic growth, free speech, democracy, innovation, creativity. we were interveners on side of the federal communications commission in this case. so we were supporting the fcc's determination that there was a concern with these bot with lneck companies -- bottleneck companies controlling who are the winners and losers on the internet and that they had the right, both the legal authority and the authority under the first amendment and elsewhere in the communications act, to protect consumers and protect competition by prohibiting these gatekeepers from favoring certain content services and applications over others. >> host: and, randy may, same question. free states position and involvement in this case. >> guest: well, peter, thanks for having me, first of all, and

gigi and i are longtime friends and even though we disagree a lot, we always enjoy discussing these issues. the free state foundation is a nonprofit educational and research institution as well. we're nonpartisan. we're a free market-oriented organization. we primarily focus on communications policy and internet issues. we do a few other issues as well, but that's our primary focus. and i've been involved in the net neutrality issue since the very beginning, as commissioner mcdowell said. that goes back a long way. so our position has been to oppose the adoption of net neutrality rules on both policy and legal grounds. i think, as commissioner mcdowell said -- and this is a very important point just in terms of the policy issue -- there was really no evidence,

and the commission itself didn't make any findings that the internet providers actually have market power. gigi already several times has referred to their bottleneck, but that's really inconsistent with the commission's own findings or lack of findings regarding their market powers. so i really start from the propositioning as well -- proposition as well if there's not a market failure and if consumers aren't being harmed f there's no demonstrable evidence of consumer harm, then there's no reason for the commission to regulate in an anticipatory fashion. now, as to the legal question, i think the commission lacks legal authority. i think the -- we also were interveners in this case, and we argued that the commission's rule even violates the first amendment. but aside from that, i think the

court will hold -- and this has been my position all along -- that the fcc doesn't have the authority to regulate these internet providers essentially as common carriers. and what the commission's rule actually does. and i think that the court's decision will turn largely on the fact that what the fcc has done is say we're going to regulate you just as we regulated common carriers back in theold monopoly telephone era. >> guest: so there's good news and bad news about what happened on monday. so let's talk about the good news. to the extent that the telephone -- verizon in this case and people like randy and commissioner mcdowell said that there, that congress never gave the federal communications commission, the fcc, the power to regulate broadband internet

access, there didn't seem to be much question among the judges that they did have that authority, that they did have that power. so that's good news because if they were to rule otherwise -- and i just want to make the caveat that you can never tell 100% from an oral argument in a court what the ultimate outcome is going to be. >> guest: and i'll agree with that caveat right up front as well. [laughter] >> guest: but it appeared, and i was in the courtroom, it appeared that the judges basically took as a given that the fcc had the authority to adopt these rules under a particular provision of the communications act. so that's the good news, because that question doesn't just go to whether they can adopt net neutrality rules, it also goes to whether the fcc could stop fraudulent billing of broadband providers, whether they can protect the privacy be of consumers of broadband, whether they can promote universal access to broadband among all americans. so it really was a core question

of will the fcc be relevant at all when it comes to the communications system in the 21st century. so that's the good, again, assuming that the oral argument foreshadows what's to come. what's not so good is what randy was talking about, that two of the judges -- judge hate l and judge silverman -- seemed to be very concerned, they didn't seem to be concerned, they were concerned, that the fcc by prohibiting discrimination against edge providers was treating internet access providers like telephone companies, like common carriers. so under the law common carriers have to serve everybody indiscriminately, they cannot discriminate in their rates, in their conditions, in their terms. and the judges felt that this is exactly what the net neutrality rules did. and the communications act says point-blank you cannot treat

non-common carriers like common carriers. and the fcc has classified broadband access, broadband are common carriers. now, let me tell you why the judges shouldn't -- let me just finish one point -- why they should not find these regulations are common carriers. for two reasons. number one, the common carrier relationship is formed when an internet access provider has a customer, all right? so under the net neutrality rules, let's say i'm verizon and you're a verizon customer. i can refuse to serve you, okay? i can absolutely just say, peter, i don't want to serve you, or i'm going to charge you more than i charge randy. but that's not what the net neutrality rules do, okay? there is no customer relationship between the edge provider and my internet access provider. and what the net neutrality rules do is say internet access

provider of swri i-'s, you cannot -- gigi's, you cannot charge the edge provider twice. you cannot charge them twice for coming to gigi. so there's no relationship between the edge provider and the internet access provider many that case. that one's very complicated, so let me make the easier point. the easier point, and, in fact, one of judges said it himself, when it comes to determining the common carrier and what is not, the expert agency should get deference from the court. and that's what was so shocking about the oral argument. you had two judges telling the fcc general counsel, no, this is not how common carriage works, this is how it works. and it is in flat contradiction to its precedent and to common sense, because you ought to let the expert agency determine what common carriage is and what it isn't. >> host: randy may. >> guest: look, there's a hot to unpack there, you know, and i'm happy that gigi found some good news in this oral argument,

because most people walked away from the oral argument -- myself included -- thinking, and, again, i just will add the caveat that you never can be sure, but thinking that the fcc is going to suffer probably an important defeat here. and here's the reason why. gigi asserts that it seems like there's not a question that the court will say the fcc has some authority over broadband internet providers, and that's probably true. i think they might well do that. but i think the more important point is that the net, this net neutrality regulation that the commission adopted under chairman genachowski was really the fcc's central effort to exercise that regulatory

authority over broadband providers. sure, there are some other things it may do like enforce transparency rules with regard to internet providers. but the whole thrust of this regulation, as gigi alluded to, was to prevent discrimination. that's really at the heart of it. but the reality is that it's that discrimination prohibition that, in effect, converts the internet providers into common carriers, i think as gigi recognized or at least as she recognizes that the court seems to believe and as i believe. and so if the court writes a decision which strikes the antidiscrimination part of the rule which most observers took to be the central part of the commission's rule, it's really

eviscerated as a practical matter apart from sort of parsing theoretically what might remain as a legal matter, it's eviscerated a good part of the commission's authority. i mean, it's one thing to say the commission has some authority, but if the most important thing the commission was trying to do is held unlawful, then, you know, from my point of view that's the good news really. [laughter] let me just say and i think this'll introduce another part of the conversation, a good part of the argument during the court argument had to do with whether the fcc's rule which the fcc said prohibited internet providers from charging what are referred to as edge providers -- those are the content providers, googles and facebooks and whatever -- charging them a

price for reaching their customers or is sending traffic to the broadband provider whether, in fact, that was illegal. and the court, you know, whether the fcc could prohibit that. i think it's pretty clear that the court's going to say that that part of the rule is unlawful and strike that down. and, you know, i think from the point of view of the internet providers and what they say they want to do and what verizon said it wanted to do at the oral argument, that, you know, that rule against so-called two-sided pricing is probably at the heart of what the whole battle is really about. and i think gigi may well agree with that. >> guest: yeah, i definitely do agree with that. and i also agree with randy to the extent that it will be

somewhat of a victory for our side if the fcc lands up having authority but that they can't actually exercise that authority in the most meaningful way possible. i mean, verizon admitted, verizon's counsel who was fantastic and a friend of mine, she basically said verizon wants to force edge providers to pay a second toll in order to get priority service or better quality of service. so that's what they want to do. and that fundamentally changes what the internet looks like. and if i could address what commissioner mcdowell talked about as antitrust can solve all. because this is the new -- it's not such a new mean, but it's within the new mean of the cable companies. in fact, "the washington post" has a story about it today. we don't need the fcc to deal with broadband, let the ftc do it, let the antitrust authorities do it. let me make a couple points in

that regard. number one, when it comes to antitrust, consumers -- and this is, unfortunately, because of supreme court precedent -- consumers don't have a hot of rights and ability -- a lot of rights and ability to bring antitrust cases, okay? it's all about the competition. so maybe a google which, by the way, could pay for the priority, could bring an antitrust lawsuit. but consumers are very, very constrained. and antitrust law is very constrained. it doesn't get to basic consumer harms. and let me give you the ideal example of where antitrust law would not apply. so in the kevin martin era, the george bush fcc era, his fcc found that comcast was blocking peer-to-peer traffic for no good reason, okay? and found be it illegal. and that led to a court case, but that's not what i'm talking about. that kind of case would not be one where antitrust would reach it, because it was not a

competitive issue, okay? it was just an issue where they felt that it was full of pirated movies, was a bandwidth hog and so they just blocked it. so that's the ideal case, and the case which could come up again and again and again. and by the way, getting back to the evidence, the fcc did have evidence that internet access providers were favoring or blocking or discriminating -- there weren't a lot of them, there were a handful of them, but it was still evidence, and an agency like the fcc has the right to make predictive judgments. those are the kind of judgments that courts are supposed to defer to. so antitrust law really is not a strong enough tool, and the ftc, the federal trade commission, in particular the law that it operates under would not get to a lot of the concerns that organizations like mine care a lot about. >> guest: can, you know, in this point i don't even want to address whether the fcc should

have absolutely no jurisdiction over broadband providers going forward or whether, you know, as gigi says some people want all of that should be over in the antitrust realm. you know, it may be that ultimately that's where it should be in my view, but let's put that aside for a moment. a fundamental problem with this whole proceeding, and i think a difference between gigi and i is, certainly myself and the fcc, despite pointing to, i think, four isolated incidents that could be characterized as potential net neutrality violations or incidents had the rules been in place, there really wasn't evidence of any, you know, widespread or even non-widespread consumer harm. and a problem with the way -- and that's a fundamental problem with the way the fcc approached this case, because it didn't say, in fact, in paragraph 78 of

its order it explicitly acknowledged that these rules would be put in place regardless of whether any of the isps had market power, regardless of whether it made any market power finding. this goes to judge silverman's conversation that he had. right in paragraph 78 it said these net neutrality rules are good in and of itself because we believe in openness, okay? now, that sounds good, you know? openness per se sounds attractive, and it makes a nice slogan. and the fact is right now the internet, and i think we all would agree, is basically open. but the other side of that is and the problem with the way the fcc approached it, when you put in place a regulation that has the flat prohibition against

discrimination -- again, which was the core of the fcc's regulation -- you have to recognize that there may be cost to that, and there may be trade-offs. now, we can even talk about balancing the benefits of openness against the cost, but you have to recognize that. and the cost, you know, can be real. and they can go to the deterrent to new business models, to innovation and the willingness to invest if you, if the broadband provider believes that the only thing that it can offer is going to be just like the next broadband provider. but the fcc really didn't wrestle at all with these trade-offs because it said openness is good in and of itself. so you have to be willing to acknowledge that there's some trade-offs, and you have to understand regardless of how you balance it they could be a deterrence to innovation and investment.

>> guest: i have two points about this. number one, i think the fcc did recognize it. you heard the former chairman, genachowski, what he just said. he said when edge providers thrive, that's good for the network and for the consumers. so you have this sort of virtual cycle, virtuous cycle, excuse me, of, you know, the growth in these apps and the content and the services, and that helps -- that makes consumers wants to buy internet access, okay? makes the comcasts and the verizons, the at&ts of the world very, very wealthy. comcast has 97% profit margins, that's the second point. so these rules have been in place since the beginning of 2011. not only has the world not fallen apart for the internet access providers, they're investing more. at&t announced it was going to invest $21 billion in its broadband. so these companies are not suffering. and they can do innovative business models. there's just one business model they can't do, and that's one that picks winners and losers over the internet.

so it's not the fcc saying you can't innovate, you can't do new things. the fcc's not even saying you can't have your own content. if verizon wants to have its own content, comcast obviously does, it owns nbc and a bunch of other channels. but they're saying in this one place you can't have that two-sided market, that double toll on the edge provider, and they have thrived. >> host: and we are almost out of time. very quickly, randy may, when and what will be the decision by the court of appeals? >> guest: well, predicting a win is very difficult, but my guess is it would be three or four months would be my best guess, and i believe that the fcc is going to suffer a defeat that will be meaningful in the sense that it will, i believe, eviscerate the core of the net neutrality rule which was this anti-discrimination provision. there may be something left of the fcc's authority, but i think

the fcc will suffer defeat. and then let me just add that i hope then that if that's the case, the fcc will not rush to try and reinitiate another proceeding to put in place net neutrality rules again, but it will just engage in watchful waiting and see what happens in the marketplace. >> guest: so if the oral argument's any indication, the fcc's authority to regulate broadband to protect consumers and promote competition with regard to broadband internet access will be preserved. the anti-discrimination rule, part of the rule will probably be sent back to the fcc, and i fully expect the fcc to try again to make sure that it doesn't have the indicia of common carriage that the court may be concerned about, the anti-blocking rule which says that internet access providers cannot plain off block edge providers will probably be maintained. but i do hope and i do pray that there was one judge who didn't talk about it, judge rogers, who is likely to uphold the fcc's

jurisdiction and also the rules as a, and defer to the fcc on their determination of what is common carriage. i'm hoping that she can convince judge, tatel. >> host: our two guests are lawyers, it may come as no surprise. [laughter] gigi sohn from the university of pennsylvania, randy may at duke. this has been "the communicators" on c-span. >> c-span, created by america's cable companies in 1979, brought to you as a public service by your television provider. >> coming up next, the american bar association hosts a public hearing on stand your ground laws following the trayvon martin case. after that, american and egyptian analysts discuss strategies for engaging the international community to help egypt achieve economic and political stability. and then we'll be be live from the council on foreign relations

to hear remarks by former treasury secretary hank paulson and former congressman and house financial services committee chairman barney frank on some of the lessons learned from the 2008 financial crisis. and later the senate will be gaveling in, 2 p.m. eastern for two hours of general speeches before resuming debate on the energy bill and judicial nominations to the u.s. court of federal claims. roll call votes on the nominations are expected at 5:30 p.m. eastern. >> a look now at stand your ground laws that currently exist in more than 25 states. the american bar association held public hearings last month examining the laws in the wake of the trayvon martin case. legal professionals, journalists and representatives of various advocacy groups were among those who testified at the two-and-a-half hour hearing. the american bar association plans to issue a report next year. the hearing took place during

the group's annual meeting in san francisco. >> i am the chair of the coalition of racial and ethnic justice. my name is michael hyman, and i'm from chicago. the coalition works with aba and non-aba entities on social justice issues involving equality, inclusion and tolerance. our major effort this past bar year was the formation and facilitation of the task force on stand your ground laws. the task force came about because we felt it necessary to look deeply at the effects of stand your ground laws across the nation following the national conversation on their merits and on their

consequences. i want to thank the dedicated co-chairs, leigh-anne buchanan of miami and jack middleton of new hampshire, for their leadership. leigh-anne is often sending e-mails at 3:30 or 4:30 in the morning. i also wish to thank rachel patrick, our executive director, for her conscious effort and work on behalf of the coalition. this is the task force's fourth public hearing. we've already had very successful hearings in dallas, philadelphia and chicago. the hearings have solicited voices from all sides to insure the critical examination of perspectives without regard to political ideology. ultimately though, it'll be the citizens of the states that have

various versions of stand your ground laws to decide the fate of tear own stand your -- of their own stand your ground law. it is my hope that the task force's report will be a catalyst for a reasonable discussion of the issues and be able to make reasoned decision making. before we begin, we have the honor this morning of having the president of the american bar association, a fellow chicagoan and a mentor of mine, laura bell loss, with us, and i would ask president bellos to, please, step forward to welcome everyone. [applause] >> [inaudible]

[inaudible conversations] >> well, now that the important things are over, right? this is quite a serious event, as you all know. the aba and our country have a responsibility to scrutinize any law with life or death consequences, and this is such a law. thank you, judge michael hyman, not only because i can root for chicago to say we're there, right? as chair of the coalition on racial and ethnic justice, and rachel, again, rachel patrick for leading this from the inside to make certain that we are including the right people, that means everyone, all right? into this discussion. and jack middleton and leigh-anne buchanan, again, for leading as co-chairs of the stand your ground task force. and aba national conversation on

this issue. and as judge hyman has just told you, this is the fourth hearing. the aba has no policy on stand your ground laws. that's exactly the point of these four hearings, it's to aerofrom the community. we want -- hear from the community. we want to examine the impact of stand your ground laws on public safety. we need to talk about the impact of stand your ground laws on racial and ethnic minority communities in this country. and we want to know what the impact is of stand your ground laws on criminal justice system. these are not easy questions, but we've brought the experts to the table from all over the country over the last year, and we will be issuing a report in 2014. but meanwhile, the task force is expected to look at the terrible violence that we have seen in newtown, connecticut, aurora, colorado. because this stand your ground examination also gives us a chance to have a national conversation about gun violence.

and we know that three people are killed every hour by a gun, seven people are injured every hour by a gun in this country. so it's time for us to look at stand your ground laws, it's time for us to have a national conversation on gun violation. this isn't -- gun violence. this isn't anish sue to be talked about by only lawyers. this is not an issue to be talked about by only our legislators and congressional representatives. this is a community, national, opinion leader conversation and a conversation that has to take place with our communities, and that's what this is about. that's why it's so exciting. so on an upbeat note, all right? we've jumped into this conversation with all the aba feet we could muster, all the experts that we could bring to the table, and we really hope to have a resolution to a problem that is touching every person in this country as of this minute. so thank you again to the task force, and a particular thank you to jack middleton and

leigh-anne buchanan for leading this task force, and i'm looking forward to hearing the results of this hearing and also reading your report in the near future. thank you all. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> so, all right, so this is leigh-anne buchanan, all right? the fabulous co-chair of this committee, and she has been a leader of leaders, right? and not afraid to take on this tough issue. not many people -- jack middleton has, but not many people are willing to jump in an issue that we know is controversial. but those are the issues that the aba is more powerful to bring a voice on these issues, and leigh-anne has been right in front. so i congratulate you. go for it. >> thank you, laurel. thank you. come, everybody, to the westen regional hearing of the aba

national task force on stand your ground laws. as you heard, i'm the co-chair of the task force. first of all, i would like to thank all of you who are present here today because your presence demonstrates that you're committed to addressing and participating in the dialogue of a very important issues. indeed, it was just last month that president barack obama and attorney general eric holder called for more attention and scrutiny and analysis and assessment to be paid to the stand your ground laws which exist in states across the united states. until recently, little to no attention has been paid to stand your ground laws. these laws are self-defense laws which expand the parameters of self-defense and protections that can be used when one uses deadly force against another. these laws exist on the books in over 25 states across the united states of america and, indeed,

have ignited a national debate and forced individuals, communities, scholars, policymakers and even the aba to grapple with many very important questions, questions such as whether the policy concerns which underscored the enactment of stand your ground laws were justified, whether stand your ground laws strike the correct balance between public safety and individual liberties, what impact, if any, do stand your ground laws have on the criminal justice system, have these laws altered general perceptions concerning the acceptable use of force? do stand your ground laws encourage or discourage violence? do stand your ground laws make communities safer? these are very important questions and issues that the aba's coalition on racial and ethic justice and the task force thought the aba should look into

by holding a series of public hearings and embarking upon a national comprehensive study of the impact of these laws. during today's hearing you will hear testimony from a variety of experts and stake holders, community leaders and elected officials who will offer their very diverse perspectives on the areas that we heard laurel and judge hyman just mention. but before i turn to the speakers, i would like to acknowledge the task force members and members of the advisory committee who are present today. so i would like to acknowledge josh harris who is our appointee who's an assistant district attorney from never, our task -- from philadelphia, our task force reporterrer, tamara -- [inaudible] my co-chair, jack middleton, the managing partner of the mcclain law firm, and i would like to thank rachel patrick, and i believe she stepped out. but she is the staff director of the coalition, and and she has

put in countless hours and time and energy into making this project a success. so i hope that you enjoy the testimony here today. i hope that the questions and issues that are raised by our speakers cause you to think a little bit more about the impact of stand your ground laws. and i would like to introduce our first speaker, our keynote speaker, ms. eva paterson, a civil rights attorney, and the cofounder and president of the equal justice society. she's a leader of a national strategy group that focuses on reclaiming the 14th amendment and its constitutional safeguards against discrimination. she previously served as the executive director of the lawyers' committee for civil rights, and she was part of a broad coalition that filed the ground-breaking anti-discrimination suit against race and gender discrimination by the san francisco fire department. i am very pleased to present eva paterson. [applause]

>> good morning. how's everybody doing? >> good morning. >> welcome to san francisco. the weather will clear up by afternoon, don't worry, don't worry. um, i'd like to say thank you to president bellows, to justice hyman, to ms. buchanan, to the other presenters who are really a cavalcade of just first rate people who know a lot of things about the law and justice and the like. i think it's fair to say that the reason that we're here today is because of the murder of, as his mother calls him, trayvon benjamin martin. that was very disturbing for many reasons. it raised, once again, the issue of the great racial divide in this country, and it's highlighted the notion of stand your ground laws which i really had not paid much attention to until they were discussed in the case. many people wrongfully say that stand your ground was not an issue in the murder trial, but if you'd followed the trial, you will notice that the judge did

mention stand your ground in the jury instructions, and if you listen to the reporting of some of the jurors, they said that stand your ground really did enter their minds in terms of whether or not to determine if mr. zimmerman was guilty or not. so i'll start with what stand your ground laws are, and i have to thank paul henderson and mr. attorney, you should give him a raise. he did a great job of commentating on cnn and other stations during the trial. i'm not a criminal lawyer, and he was able to make things very clear, and he helped me a lot in this presentation. and my summer intern, thomas cochran, did a lot of work for him as well, so i want to acknowledge their help. stand your ground laws were first passed in florida in 2005. i was listening to msnbc this morning, and apparently there was pan in his trailer -- a man in his trailer during hurricane isaac, and he shot an intruder. and it took months and months and months for him to determine whether or not to prosecute him.

and this single incident led to the passage of stand your ground laws in florida. they're now, apparently, in this 30 states. there were seven states where the laws were pending, but after the murder of trayvon martin, everything kind of came to a screeching halt on the advancement of these misguided laws. so i hope that will give the aba some firepower, so to speak, in terms of stopping these laws, the murder and the subsequent acquittal of george zimmerman has made people really think twice about this. as ms. buchanan has pointed out, stand your ground laws make legitimate use of deadly force if you feel threatened in a place that one has a right to be. and i think the important term for what i'm going to talk about, or the important phrase for what i want to focus on later is if you feel threatened. instead of having a duty to retreat from a dangerous situation, a person is justified in using dead he force when he or she reasonably believes it is

necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm or to prevent the commission of a felony. now, there are lots of problems with this type of a haw, and there are going to be -- a law, and there are going to be people who are more in tune with law enforcement who will give more texture to the problems with stand your ground laws, but here are just a few of the problems. it encourages vigilante law. george zimmerman was the judge, jury and executioner of mr. trayvon martin, and the stand your ground laws allow that to happen. i was listening to msnbc this morning, and apparently there was another incident of stand your ground where there were a bunch of people who ran across a person who apparently had a stick, and he was threatening with the stick. most of the people left, one person stayed and ended up shooting and killing the threatening person. that person will not be prosecuted for murder, because he can say he felt threatened. so one of the critical problems with the stand your ground law

is that before that person be would have had the -- that person would have had the impetus to leave, to go away. he could have safely gotten away as mr. george zimmerman could have as well. but the stand your ground laws allow people to stand, shoot and murder with no consequences. another problem with the stand your ground laws is they apparently do not have a deterrent effect. a study was done by texas a&m that found in stand your ground states murders and manslaughters actually increased by 7-9%. so it doesn't deter crime at all, it actually results in more crime. another problem with the stand your ground law is that self-defense laws were adequate before the passage of the stand your ground statutes. you were able to use lethal force and self-defense if you felt pinned down or cornered, but you had the obligation to leave if you could leave safely. and if you could retreat from easily-escapable situations.

the stand your ground law now allows people to just stand, fire, shoot, murder and be out on the street with no consequences whatsoever. .. >> even though he didn't use it as a defense, as i said before, the judge gave its weight credence and the jury instructions and the jury was moved by that. so what i really want to spend time on, but there will be two really amazing speakers later today the way hold in extreme

high regard will go into more detail on this, john powell and jennifer eberhardt, who are incredible scholars in the area of racial bias, on conscious racism and the like. but i want to talk about racial bias and the impact racially that the stand your ground laws have. what i really want to do is commend the aba and commend this task force because one of the things are looking at explicitly is the impact of stand your ground laws on communities of color. that's what i'm here today. i'm not a criminal lawyer. i'm a civil lawyer, but all of us were riveted on the trayvon martin case. we were heartbroken and angry and upset, and the implication and connections to stand your ground laws and the racial impact is why we are here today. when they come to speak at events like this, i feel very privileged because i feel like i get to be rooms were a lot of my community are not. i get to chile things that

you're probably not going to hear in polite conversation. i'm able to convey anger and dismay and sadness over what happened and the implication of the stand your ground law. so as us think about this that's what i wanted to do was capture hearts and your mind, and activate your and your continued efforts to do something about these stand your ground laws. now, a researcher named dr. john breaux and who's a senior fellow at the justice policy center at the urban institute released a report last july. here are the statistics in stand your ground states. as i was rehearsing my remarks last night to myself to make sure i didn't run over time, i found myself pounding on my desk with anger, and you'll understand why. in homicides where the shooter is white, and the victim is black, it's found to be justified in 17% of the cases. white shooter, black victim,

justified 17%. black shooter, white victim justified 1.4%. like sugar, white victim, justified homicide 1.4%. in non-stand your ground states if there's a white shooter and a black victim, it's justified only 9%. so where you have stand your ground laws, 17% justified. white shooter, black victim not in stand your ground state only 9%. here's the other statistic that had me very angry. this is fbi data that was provided by paul henderson. when an older white man kills a younger black man, older white man kills younger black men, it is deemed justifiable 49%. if an older black man kills a younger white man, it is deemed justifiable 9% of the time.

so it's not just black people feeling all sensitive and we are feeling so victimized, as we often hear in these debates. i don't feel like a victim. i'm up here at the aba talking to lawyers and judges. i do not feel like a victim, but these statistics are troubling and/or wipe out most of your black friends and people are care about black people were so devastated after the trayvon martin situation. basically we felt like the zimmerman verdict give a license to kill black people. i wrote a piece about howard wrote i've been with a bunch of my black friends in a reading group, and we heard the verdict. i was upset but i felt very safe but i came back down to the greater society, visited a bunch of folks. today and not feel they could shoot me and they could get away with it? if i'm a young lack man or an older black man, i'm going to feel that more poignantly. now, why has this happened?

the two scholars for reference, professor powell and everhart will undoubtedly talk about this more, but a lot of this has to do with how black people are perceived. there's the scientists out there that says if you look at my face, the association you have is with criminality or aggression. jennifer eberhardt has researched the break my heart every time i hear about it, but apparently if you're walking down the street as a black person, people who look at you will associate you -- this is verifiable. the part of your brain, i'm going to go over, the part of your brain that lights up when you see a snake or spider is the same part of your brain that lights up if you see a black person. jesse jackson said when he was walking down the street and hears footsteps behind them, and he turns around and there are black kids, he's nervous. if you turned your and our white

kids, he relaxes. this isn't about, you white devils. this isn't about that. it's about the associations we have in our brains with black faces, black men and the like. you remember the person pulling out his wallet and which shot 41 times. there's been social science research that shows that will happen not just with him but with black people generally. anveronica, john and i were at a conference in chicago in april. our friend philip showed a very disturbing video where police are looking at a simulation of person who is threatening to the person has a stake and the police officers tell the person to stop. when the person is white, the police officers talk, talk, talk. when a person is black, the police officers unload their guns into the black person.

this is what's going on. is why stand your ground laws are so important in terms of being stopped. and if you are allowed to use deadly force when you feel threatened, and when most people feel threatened just by a black person showing up, then stand your ground laws are going to result in the loss of black life. how many of the black men in this room feel that they have been stopped for no good reason by police or other people, all profiled in stores? is there any black man here who does not feel that has happened to him? these are some of the most distinguished black people you're going to find. this is how it is. imagine how a young boy in a hoodie is going to be treated. let's put i this all together, d i am almost done. this information is what had me pounding my hand in anger on the table, in anger and pain. in florida, less than 30% of the victims of a justified homicide

were armed. let me say that again. less than 30% of the victims of justified homicide were armed. less than 26% of the victims were committing a crime that led to the confrontation. in more than 30 -- in more than 63% of these cases they were given in dispute opportunity for the attacker to retrieve. despite these facts, the homicide was still justified according to the law. those statistics were borne out by the horrible reality with the murder of trayvon martin. and the stand your ground laws i believe have that effect. this morning once again, on msnbc, another incident happened in florida. any of us felt that this legalizes a form of lynching against black people. so i want to return to where i started, it's so important and we're so grateful that the aba is taking this on. i feel like we're not out here by ourselves as black folks. but there's a larger issue, and

that is the state of the judicial system and the legal system that black people mainly don't have. the pew study that i'm sure you've heard said that only 30% of white people were dissatisfied with the zimmerman verdict. 86% of black people were dissatisfied. we often are told we live in two different americas, and that statistic, those statistics bear that out. to just go to another level of this affiliation, and bad feelings that black people have about the justice system, we saw the shelby county voting rights case. we saw that two hours after the case came down, texas was rushing to pass more restrictive voting rights laws. we know what that's all about. we know that the supreme court, the highest court in the country, a sickly sanctioned moves that will keep us from voting. so the aba, in part, is to get

people confidence in the legal system. we don't have confidence in the legal system. we see that stand your ground laws are used against us. we see that george zimmerman is free. erisa alexander who fired a gun into the air, because she was being beaten, got 20 years but should also prosecuted by the same person who moved to george zimmerman trial. where's the fairness? so we can afford, i was talking to commissioner yockey of the civil rights commission. you need to be very strategic about what state you go after. it's clear that the trayvon martin case has changed people's consciousness about stand your ground laws. bunch of a very formative any me on this ground and the national rifle association. we saw how upset i but it was after sandy hook. we saw that the nra is relentless. we hope the aba is as well. one kind of bright light in all of this is the fact that many, many artists are refusing to perform in florida until the

stand your ground laws are revised. we have young people sitting in and sleeping in at the state legislature. young people actually started the whole heightened consciousness about trayvon martin. somebody sent me an e-mail about it, i thought, okay, i know lots of this goes on, but young people understood this was a problem and they mobilized and got people going. so thank you for having me here. i didn't curse or cried like i thought i might last night when i was preparing. want to want me to do is kind of set the stage. i'm not an expert in this but an expert in being black. thank you very much. [applause] >> eva, thank you kindly for your presentation. we very much appreciate you for highlighting the important considerations that the task force should take into consideration when looking at the impact of stand your ground

laws on committees of colors. commissioner yaki is indeed present and so i would like to acknowledge him and thank him for being a. commissioner yaki is leading -- [applause] commissioner yaki is leading the u.s. commission on civil rights efforts into investigating the potential impact of stand your ground laws on racial and ethnic minorities. our next speaker is the president of the national bar association, which is the largest organization of african-american attorneys, ms. patricia rosier. she is a former staff attorney for the u.s. securities and exchange commission and also the current and general counsel for american general security, the national bar association has been on the forefront -- the forefront in addressing some issuetheissues the stand your gd i'm looking forward to hearing from her now. [applause]

>> good morning. >> good morning. >> okay, it's on now. ms. paterson described and told about a lot of the things and facts that i was going to testify on. so now i'm going to kind of alter my testimony to let you know how the national bar feels about the stand your ground laws. in case you don't know, a national bar recently celebrated its 88th anniversary last week. we were founded in 1925, and among many of our missions, primarily we have the administration of justice as protection of civil rights of all citizens in the united states. we are very, very disturbed by the stand your ground laws, and

as you know there've been many people who have been killed and the killer is free using the stand your ground defense. however, it wasn't until the trayvon martin case that these laws really came to national attention. the two lawyers involved primarily in that case were national bar association members. one being the past president, dale parks. we do pretty much these laws as a license to kill. mainly because the reason to establish the law is totally subjective, meaning if a person feels threatened, that's, how do you quantify that? how do you know what one person is going to be threatened by and another not? so if you feel threatened, you can just kill someone and say i felt threatened? during the trayvon martin case,

again as ms. paterson said, there wasn't a s% again as ms. paterson said, there wasn't a stand your ground defense but instructions were given, et cetera, and the jury testified or made statements afterwards that they did consider the stand your ground. but it's interesting that no one talked about trayvon martin's right to stand his ground. george zimmerman apparently, you know, followed him and did all these things, and then he was attacked, or they got into an altercation. but at one point, if you were walking around and someone was following you and then approached you, maybe you may want to defend yourself. but it's never been considered the trayvon martin might have had a right to stand his ground. these laws legally allow, kind of like a bully law. like i can bully you come then when you want to defend yourself, i can say i'm so afraid, i think you're going to hurt me so i'm going to kill

you. that's just totally wrong. and, of course, communities of color, dick lit african-americans as ms. paterson pointed out, are disproportionately affected by these laws. we believe that stand your ground laws have to be appealed and amended if they're allowed to stand. there were no problems with the self-defense law that every jurisdiction had. the right to retreat, the obligation to retreat is what's now the problem. you don't have an obligation to retreat. so in other words, you can be like a superhero, oh come on, get them to engage it and then say, i'm afraid for my life so i'm going to just shoot you and then i will be able to get away with it. it's much worse than the lynching that happened earlier in our history.

because now it ca openly done and more than likely, according to statistics, when it's a racially mixed victim and aggressor, the aggressor, if the aggressor is white, the victim is black, they are more than likely going to have a justified killing. not true on the other side. we believe that the civil rights of all people are adversely affected by the stand your ground laws. we will do everything that we can to help unnamed and/or repeal these laws and had equal justice. this is very, very important for all of us because if one of us is not allowed to have justice, then none of us will. we as black people are singled out particularly, but we're just the first ones.

once we allow this type of racial profiling and discrimination to occur against black people, it's just a matter of time it's going to start affecting other people. we have to stop it. we have to protect all people. and these stand your ground laws are the exact opposite of giving and allowing civil liberties. the national bar association stands with you, and we applaud your efforts in this regard of having your hearings and addressing what policies may come out of the hearings. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, patricia rosier. the next biggest yolanda jackson who was the executive directory diversity director of the bar association of san francisco. ms. jackson is a seasoned litigator, mediator, arbitrator, consulting trade and facilitator

at and is well-versed in issues relating to diversity. ms. jackson has also served on the board in various legal and professional organizations throughout the country. ms. jackson. >> thank you very much, again. good morning. thank you for coming up so early to grapple with such comfortable yet important topic. i'm really pleased to be on behalf of the bar association of san francisco, which is an organization that is 141 years old, and as far back as -- we've always been involved in controversial and tough issues that are then import to preserve equal justice, equality and diversity, not only in the legal profession, but in society more broadly. so that is why we're here today, to be part of this hearing. i would like to thank the aba coalition on racial and ethnic justice. and just by the nature of its name, they are a group that focuses on race and ethnic

justice. and so thank you for being brave enough to have this conversation on a national level in front of a mixed crowd, and with a lot of thought leaders at this table on the topic. my remarks will focus on four things. the first being race. and we must recognize that that is a huge factor in these discussions that we are having. the second will be on the unequal application of the laws that exist throughout the country. the third will be to make a very strong statement that we need to study this problem, and not shy away from it. and the fourth is that we need to solve the problem. so those will be the framework. that will be the framework for my comments. as you've heard a little bit about historically the trend has mandated a duty to retreat in cases such as this. that requires a person facing immediate danger to retreat before resorting to violence self-defense but essentially

what stand your ground laws did was revoke that treaty -- duty to retreat instead allow the use of force without the initial attempt to retreat. so in many states, stand your ground laws offer immunity from prosecution. and, in fact, a person could avoid trial altogether under stand your ground laws. in some states, although law enforcement can investigate the situation, the law states that no arrests can be made unless it is proven. and please listen to this carefully, unless it is proven that force was unnecessary. so talked about having to prove a negative. as leigh-anne mention, their 26 states and the united states that is either stand your ground laws or stand your ground doctrine. since the trayvon martin case, it's the one that sparked this discussion and the need for this discussion, i think it is important to note that they were the first state to have stand

your ground laws back in 2005. the impact of these stand your ground laws has been to send a message to our society that in our community, someone who's armed potentially has the right to use firearms, even if there is a way to exit from the situation. setting a more relaxed standard of self-defense encourages tragic mistakes, poor judgment, and perhaps even vigilante -ism. some of these state laws have taken a historical legal doctrine that made it okay to use force to protect yourself in your space, that means from or your car. as eva mentioned, it is important to look at the notion of what it means to feel threatened when you're analyzing these laws, i think of it also is equally important to look at where these stand your ground laws apply, and again, traditionally used to be okay if

you protected yourself with force, if you're at home or in your car, or as i'm calling it, in your space. but now these laws have allowed people to respond with deadly force and reaction by taking to the streets. that's i think where we are seeing a lot of our problems. in 2010, five years after the first stand your ground laws were enacted in florida, justifiable homicides by civilians using firearms doubled in states that have stand your ground laws. where as definable homicides fell remained about the same in states without these same laws. the top law enforcement officer of this country attorney general eric holder stated, these laws expand the concept of self-defense by allowing and perhaps encouraging violent situations to escalate in public, such laws undermine public safety. president barack obama said it best. it is time to examine the state

and local laws to see if encourage the kind of altercations and tragedies that we saw in the trayvon martin florida case, rather than to diffuse potential altercations. stand your ground laws encourage violence by the use of deadly force which leads to a disproportionate impact on african-americans in our communities. we recognize that many of the problems with stand your ground laws lie in how they are applied. how they are applied when people are rested, when they are charged, when they are prosecuted them when the jury verdict comes down, now they are actually sensed. so what actions can we take? although this is not a practical problem, our recommendation by the bar association of san francisco are very practical. first, we need to study the problem. state-by-state we need to consider whether certain stand your ground laws need to be repealed or modified and amended.

review the impact of on racial lines, study the problem. look at various levels whether the prosecution from verdict through sentencing has been applied equally across racial lines or put another way, whether these laws have a disparate impact on african-americans and other racial minority groups. this includes reviewing anecdotal outcomes like the marissa alexander case that eva referenced. review the impact of these laws on whether or not they increase homicides. you can call them justifiable homicides if you like, but look at the impact they've had on killing. mandate a gathering of data in order to assess whether these laws have had an increase on justifiable homicide. conduct a national investigation, have the department of justice or other appropriate u.s. commissions such as the commission on civil rights, and thank you, michael yockey, for taking a leadership role on the, to look at the

problem. and i'm very happy to hear that michael pointed out to me before we start our panel this morning that they believed built the effective because they have subpoena power and they can get the information that they need in order to make the right decisions. where appropriate, modify stand your ground laws to restrict or prohibit where individuals have the right to defend themselves. for example, in north carolina, they printed the use of deadly force against law enforcement, bill sponsors and landlords. and wisconsin version, the wisconsin version does not extend to public spaces. a discussion of possible modification which would severely restrict or prohibit where individuals have the right to defend themselves with deadly force. and, finally, where appropriate, repeal of stand your ground laws in those states where it is found that stand your ground laws have led to an increase in homicide where disparate application of the laws across racial lines exist.

thank you very much for inviting us to speak with you this morning, and i am rolling up my sleeves and getting great for this fight so we can get to the core of what the issues are and begin to solve the problem. so thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, ms. jackson, for highlighting a very comprehensive plan of action it will take all of your comments and suggestions into consideration. our next speaker is judge arthur burnett. judge arthur burnett is a retired judge and is the national executive director of the national african-american drug policy coalition. judge burnett is the former judge of the district of columbia superior court and also a former adjunct professor of law at catholic university and howard university. judge burnett. >> good morning. >> good morning. >> i come before you this morning, it's almost 55 years at

the bench, 55 years as a lawyer, 40 years on the bench, but i have a disclosure to make that is probably more valuable than that. in that at 17 years of age as a bus boy at howard johnson restaurants, i was suspected of being a burglar, breaking into howard johnson restaurants at 11:00 at night when i was a bus boy, was left by the owner to clean up the place and lock up. fortunately, the officers arrested me but to me to the home of the owner first. and the owner said, i was the best employee he had. but if i had been belligerent or reacted in an oppositional matter, these two police officers who jumped out of a squad car pointing guns at me, i may not be here live today talking to you. and telling you about my career. but i was compliant and they

lived to see another day. that story is told in the henry gates book. second incident, as a pledge sheet to a fraternity at howard university in a scavenger hunt, at 1:00 in the morning, with a colleague or another trend for with borrowed a car from his father's garage but, unfortunately, did not have the registration for it, i spent three hours in custody of the police again because they did not think black boys were even college students. that we were pledgee's and the car was not stolen but, in fact, the driver's father was working on the car as repairman. we were released into police custody until 4:00 in the morning. i tell that story when i talk across the country. two youngsters about not being oppositional or defined and belligerent. or disorderly.

at age 33, i became the first general counsel over the metropolitan police department to put a lid back on washington following the assassination of martin luther king. i hope i'm not biased because of my own practical experience, but i tell you that, i ended up in the justice department in the attorney generals on this program. i ended up being advisor to bobby kennedy and to the martin luther king movement to make sure it wasn't sabotaged, or that it was subject to intrusion by the commons party to overtake it. so i tried to teach young black boys about how to react to police authority across this country. 14 years, or more than tenures, i served as a prosecutor for the u.s. attorney's office at the justice department. and then age 34, became first

african-american united states magistrate judge in the history of the nation. serving as deputy judge in handling the watergate cases that led to the impeachment of nixon. i also look back and say how many young black boys lives were lost who could've had a promising career like i had? then served on the superior court for 25 years. after about 10 or 11 years on the superior court, i was persuaded to retire to become the judge in resident. i then went on to help found the national african-american drug policy coalition, the catalyst for his creation be the national bar association, to create a conglomerate of black american conglomerate of black american organizations, working together in unison. and today, we are 25

organization strong, representing over 1 million lakh professionals to deal with the problems of substance abuse in america and criminal justice reform, and juvenile justice reforms in this country. and one of the issues that concerns us, criminal justice reform of course is subject of this discussion today. based on my 10 years or more as a prosecutor, and 40 years on the bench, i've handled hundreds of homicide cases both as a prosecutor and as a judge. the self defense, law approach and duty to retreat is adequate and all the cases i've been dealt with, by the hundreds. and, indeed, when we snuffed out a person's life and death results, that's a revocable. -- a revocable.

and i wonder as a result of this law how much capital and probably from people are exact killed. another focus of this problem in this trayvon martin case if the composition of the jury. was to put a true -- supreme court is justified six person juries but that's merely the floor of what jury composition can be and not in capital cases. citizens of this country can vote to put legislators in office to require 12 persons juries where people with life express and backgrounds that understand the black extremes, the negro of colored experience in this country. they could assess credibility of the witnesses perhaps different than the five white women and the one lefty no woman who served on a jury in the trayvon martin case. and, indeed, i've advocated and within your program booklet that

we abolish the challenges because preemptory challenges frequently or use as ways of getting rid of people by way of code profiling that may be federal to black defendants. so, therefore, we need to look at those questions and jury compositions in this country. and i've taught law school at to two law schools for a total of about 25 years, and i urge i had my black law students to contemplate public interest and running and becoming legislators and encouraging all eligible people who can vote to vote. there are no more to import goods under the american constitution and a duty to vote and the duty to serve on juries. so we need to convince, give civic lessons, that if a person is summoned to jury duty shouldn't try to get out of it or try to usurp jury duty. jury duty to protect the very life and liberty of individuals. and, finally, on the issue of

gun violence. it may be that back when we found it, the bill of rights, there's the question of concern about the government and people have guns in homes to protect themselves against a radical government. by two days democracy and the demographics of this country raises the question, whether the the fear of tyranny of the government and maintaining a national certification record for who holds a gun justifies the life of laws in this country and the capital potential callous and those of people who were killed i gun violence in this nation. the national african-american drug policy coalition worked with the national bar association as its callous but also cleared the national medical association, dentist, psychiatrist, black school educators, all of these are positions are working in unison to speak with a united voice to address not only the issues of stand your ground laws, but jury

composition to respect a true cross-section of the american public. and to do with a gun violence issue with reference the national certification to make sure that we keep guns out of hands of people who would deprive this nation of its capital investment and all its citizens. thank you very much. [applause] >> and thank you, judge burnett. and i will note that judge burnett's article that he referenced, a judicial perspective on needed reforms, can be found on page 19 of your program books that you all should have received when you registered. our next speaker is marc philpart. marc is a senior associate who supports the boys and men of color at policylink. marc is, codirects the leadership and sustainability

institute for black male achievement, and marc has specific expertise in supporting and developing networks that advance policy and practice to strengthen the field and further race and gender equity in the areas of health, employment, education and juvenile justice. marc. >> thank you. good morning, everyone. if i would've known my picture was going to be plastered up there, i might have given you a different one. [laughter] >> so thank you, ms. buchanan, for inviting me and hosting this convening at policylink at policylink is a national nonprofit research and advocacy or recession that focus on advancing social and economic equity. we are headquartered in oakland, california, but we are a national entity, and in our work we are specifically focused on

working on behalf of low income people and people of color. and this issue of stand your ground laws specifically touches at the core of what we are about. i'm going to frame my remarks into specific areas and talk a little bit about how we got here and what's happening within the advocacy landscape. in it, i'm not an attorney. many of the issues that we touch on our legal issues, or related to legal institutions. but what we really do is focus on policy advocacy. and so in that vein, i want to share a little bit about what i think is happening, and how these stand your ground laws have essentially been proliferator across the country. ms. paterson mentioned the nra earlier, and you know, at a high level i think she characterized it rightly, but there's so much

more behind in her 80s involvement with stand your ground that i want to share. so mary can hammer, she's an nra lobbyist and the first single president wrote and lobbied for florida stand your ground law. after florida stand your ground law was implemented, the nra declared it was such a success that they want to spread it throughout the country. and in doing that come in seeking the spread of these stand your ground laws, generate begin to partner with the american legislative exchange counsel in order to do this. alec is essentially a conservative right wing entity that is basically implementing the right wing agenda in several states throughout the country. and so they essentially develop model policy that fits within the right wing or conservative framework. and then help with legislators,

help legislators implement that policy in certain places. they also assist legislators or candid% they also assist legislators or candidates that sort of fit their profile to run for office. this is a huge mechanism, if you will, that the conservatives in this country have essentially used as a tool to advance their agenda. and it's one that i think we need to be very mindful of. and so as you think about these stand your ground laws and how do you begin to be advanced in different parts of the country, i think we really need to think about the political nature of what's happening here. and so according to several news articles like the "washington post," alex was thought to distance himself from the martin case thing was not involved in drafting the florida law, but

minutes of public meetings describe something different. they have described that the continued success of the doctrine act throughout the state and alec 2007 i just their scorecard highlights the introduction and adoption of florida law as one of the groups successes. these aren't actual minutes of alec meetings. after the passage of florida's law, the nra and other conservative groups have worked in many other places as i said earlier to advance these laws. there are estimates that, we have heard varying numbers, from 26 to 30. there some estimates as a stand your ground laws are passed in at least 32 places, including alabama, arizona, florida, georgia, indiana, kansas, kentucky, louisiana, mississippi, et cetera, et cetera. and so we think about all of this, i think it's important to note that these are entities

that are not necessarily working alone. they're working in tandem with corporations. they're working in partnership with other professional associations such as yourself. and so we need a coordinated strategy and approach in order to repeal them, and bring them down in terms of fostering justice in our society. in terms of the current advocacy efforts that are underway, there are several things that are happening throughout the country, several bright spots as i like to call them. and commissioner yaki's investigation i think is one of them, so thank you for that. the city of ann arbor, michigan, is also trying to do something about this. the city council voted on augu august 8 to approve a resolution asking the michigan legislature to repeal the state's stand your ground laws. so at a very basic level

something can be done within cities, even though these are state laws. the national bar association has called on, called a special legislative session of florida in march of 2013, new hampshire's house of representatives voted to repeal the state's stand your ground law by a narrow vote of 189 votes for yes on repealing the 184. the status of the repeal effort is not clear, but on march 27, a march 27 article indicated that the odds of the repeal passing in the state republican controlled senate would be low. and then beyond that there are online civil rights organizations like the color of change that are working to actively deconstruct alec and reduce its power by calling on regular citizens to stand up and

vote against the work that alec is doing. and say that, you know, this should not happen in our country. and effort to share our replicate policies that tear at the very social fabric of our country shouldn't be allowed in institutions that do that should be deconstructed. so i want to encourage all of us here, and the aba, the nba, the aba and nba, i'm sorry, to actively consider what an agenda might be that extends beyond the sort of legal purview and analysis that you may tradition be used to come and that falls more into a political advocacy strategy because i think that's what's really needed as we move forward. the nra and alec didn't do a

legal analysis on, to test stand your ground law. this is a political effort. this was a power play on their part, and so i think that's what it will take in order to counter that. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much, marc, and you're going to do a bit of a switcheroo and have the next key speaker come to the dais. david muhammad come district attorney george, bob, and judge shelton. and as our next speaker come forth i do want to highlight some of the important takeaways were heard from our first five presenters. marc just mentioned it's important to consider what policymakers are doing and what grassroots organizations are doing to address some of the issues concerning the impact of stand your ground laws on communities and jurisdictions where they exist. eva can send us to consider the statistics and how they bear out

in our analysis, not only in communism of cholera but the specific routes such as the african-american group and particularly black males who may be disparately impacted by stand your ground laws. ms. jackson also encouraged us to conduct a very comprehensive legal analysis, and also to take into consideration the empirical data that may support the policies that are enacted at the state level. it's been said that oftentimes criminal justice policy and social policy should be well supported by empirical support, well thought out before such legislation is enacted, and the task force will certainly endeavor to do that in its analysis. i see that our next set of speakers have now sat down, and our first presenter is going to be david muhammad. david is a leader in the field of criminal justice, violence prevention, and youth development.

david is the ceo of solutions inc. which is a consulting firm that provides technical assistance to philanthropic foundations, government agencies on issues of juvenile and criminal justice. and david is also the coordinator for the statewide coalition on juvenile justice advocates. the california alliance for use and kennedy justice. david. >> thank you. good morning. first, i want to thank the american bar association and the stand your ground task force for inviting me to be a part of this important discussion, and most important hearing. the tragedy of the murder of 17 year-old unarmed trayvon martin has sparked wide and needed debate about race, guns, and the proliferation of state policies that encourage violence. i would be remiss if i did not state and repeat the obvious. trayvon martin, a teenager walking home from the store, was racially profiled, stock,

confronted, shot and killed. the asset was let free and that's one of the jurors said themselves, zimmerman quote got away with murder. one of the reasons and the main reason that there's been no justice in the murder of trayvon is because of the so-called stand your ground laws. these laws in encourage violence and have not come about because of the citizens of the states in which they have been adopted want them, but because of the injection of big money from the destructive gun lobbyists. the nra and alec as my friend and colleague marc philpart talk about, has spent millions of dollars in florida and other states to pass laws that promote guns and violence. again lobby instantly trying to sell more guns. i actually don't see a deeper conspiracy than that, other than simply the gun lobbyists are trying to sell more guns, and spending millions and millions of dollars to pass laws that

encourage it. since the sandy hook shooting and the verdict, the zimmerman verdict, gun sales have reached incredible proportions throughout the country, but particularly in stand your ground states. this is, there's actually no concern for public safety. it's simply concern for-profits and the policies of the gun lobby. i want to go a little bit beyond stand your ground and my discussion as well. another reason trayvon was killed because he was black. had trayvon been white, he would probably not have been profiled, stalked and shot. and avi, george zimmerman certainly would be in prison today. -- and if he had, george zimmerman would be in prison today. black america should focus on the senseless violence and the black community, not on the races going of trayvon martin. that is an absurd assumption, assertion. but we must focus on, be

passionate about and worked to stop both. we must highlight and work to end all gun violence. therefore, we do need sensible gun safety legislation. and we were a lot about this after sandy hook and after several other mass shootings, but they bear repeating. we need universal background checks and sensible waiting periods on gun purchases. we needed and the military type assault weapons that have no place in the public and outside of a war zone. we need to limit the size of firearm magazines. something that hasn't gotten enough attention, we need to significantly increase federal research into gun violence. the center for disease control -- a public health crisis, another result of the gun lobbies huge and destructive reach. they specifically try to reduce the budget fcc in regards to research on gun violence, and they've been successful and this is the area that needs much, much more attention. in addition to passing

commonsense gun safety legislation, and policies, we must urgently address the daily carnage of gun violence in cities across america. although we should acknowledge and celebrate current historic low rate of violence, special homicides in america, there remains an epidemic level amount of shooting, particularly in places like oakland and chicago. we must increase the level of services and support of opportunity that are available to those living in neighborhoods to cease by violence. must also fundamentally change these neighborhoods. we must alleviate concentrated poverty and the resulting blight. we need to improve the schools and the quality of education. we must invest and develop in these communities in real and meaningful ways so that they are not places with and for your schools and a liquor store in every corner, drugs readily available and guns easily accessible.

we must reverse the decades old trend of spending billions of dollars on ineffective, harmful and racially disproportionate incarceration. and and families with and redirect those funds on developing neighborhoods and families with interventions that are innovators and proven effective. there are blocks in america that are the most impoverished with crumbling infrastructure, but where the government literally spins millions of dollars every year to incarcerate individuals from those blocks. and there's been a project called the million dollar block project which shows these most impoverished neighborhoods with millions and billions, not just neighborhoods, but blocks, single blocks, millions of dollars being spent by government on an incarceration. if these funds were used for better education them to create jobs, to support families and to improve infrastructure in all of the same neighborhoods, we would see a massive difference and for the decreases of violence. the good news is we know what

works and we know it doesn't. mass incarceration is harmful, it's ineffective, and it's excessively expensive. if we stopped wasting resources on what does not work and we begin to invest in what does work, we will see significant change and improvement. the challenge is it takes political will. most of the current politicians don't seem to have the will to do the right thing. thankfully, the american people do. we must marry the will of the people with those who make and governmental laws and policies in our cities, states, and federal government. i want to highlight a few things, particularly in california, but for the country. one is there is building momentum to have a valid initiative or state legislation to put back in the hands of the judiciary the decision to charge used as an adult. most of our das, like my good friend and colleague here who make life decisions, probably one in the state to make the right decision on charging them

as a dual. we need to put back in hands of judges. who look at the evidence and make good decisions because the evidence that young people's brain development and decision-making is clear that we shouldn't be wholesaling charging in people as adults. this is one major piece of policies that we will be working on in california, and there's many to divert young people from a detention. there's an enormous amount of research that shows controlling for other factors, that incarceration decreases the likelihood of high school graduation and increases the likelihood of later adult incarceration. why am i talking all of this in the stand your ground hearing? one, because the issue of gun violence, yes, is absurd when you have a george zimmerman, when you have, who killed oscar grant on a platform when he was laying face down. but we also have a daily carnage that took the life of a 20

year-old father and is one year old son two days ago in oakland. we must intervene in the daily carnage, and what's often causes it, the racially disproportionate in just administration of the criminal justice policies in america. so i want to thank the aba coalition on racial and ethnic coalition but i hope we take away some things to do today, of action that we can improve our criminal justice system, and give hope and opportunity for our young men. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, david. our next speaker is george gascon. george is the district attorney for the city and county of san francisco. is the first latino to hold the office in san francisco, and is the nation's first police chief to become district attorney.

district attorney has over 30 year career in law enforcement and have successfully lowered from -- crime rate in all his positions. he has created three groundbreaking initiatives which have caught the attention of commuters across the united states and others government. dealt with and sensing program, the neighborhood courts, and neighbors prosecution programs, and the county level sentencing commission to begin addressing the high rate of recidivism rate in california. district attorney gascon. >> thank you, and good morning, everyone. >> good morning. >> thank you, your honor. [laughter] so could have the judge in the room, you know? this is all a line very quickly. you know, it's hard coming to the discussion here after so many very well-informed speakers have already covered it so much ground.

and i want to begin by saying that i think yolanda jackson and david who just spoke to what i believe is the primary problem here, and that its race in america and the unequal application of the law. but having said that i believe that there is a secondary issue, and david talked a great deal about it and i'm going to continue the dialogue, and that has to do with guns. the accessibiaccessibi lity of guns and gun lobbying. because i have to tell you that the stand your ground laws, while they are taking certainly a different configuration in the last few years, the reality is there on our books in one way or another for many menus. in fact, i think some of you may be surprised here, but actually california as very, very similar laws that have been on the books for many years. now, the difference between what occurred in california and what occurred in florida and several

other states am a 20 some states at this point, i think it ought to be the focus of attention here. because it has been the path, the journey as to how these laws have become effective and how they're being implemented, that i believe has led not only to the outcome in the tragic events involving trayvon martin, but, frankly, many of the tragic events, that we are not talking about here today. and that has to do with who is supporting the law and in how the law actually gets implemented. ..

difference is the laws in the state of california and other places would result of the judicial decisions clearly coming back to the common law and while we mr. this self-defense the common law had the duty to retreat and it has been removed by the judicial decisions also. many years and many places. but we haven't seen the outcomes that we are seeing of this 20 some states where we have legislation that was created as a result of the gun industry and the consequences of that. if you look at the 20 some states where the stand your

ground law or legislatively and implemented through gun lobbying, this is a place we are seeing very different results. we are seeing as a was stated earlier, and there was a texas a&m study that indicated homicide in the state has gone up by roughly 8%. so between 70 and 9%. and obviously what has been said by many speakers earlier the unequal application of law where african-americans tend to be generally impacted negatively more so than any other group when this law first applied. i think that it's important to recognize that it is not so much the stand your ground laws that have given us the problems that we have today but it is the gun lobbying and the promotion of guns in our culture because as i indicated before, you can go

back decades in california, and you have very similar laws but you have the impact and the outcome fill all is having is very different. i believe that in order for us to address this issue and again, i'm going to say something that i said at the beginning because they think it bares repeating, putting aside the fact that i personally have the conviction that race and the unequal application of law are the 500-pound gorilla in the room. but understanding that that is the very complicated issue that i don't believe this group is going to be able to fix overnight. i want to focus on the second part under one that i think we could have a greater impact and that is that we need to deal with a lawful gun legislation in conjunction with dealing with the stand your ground laws because the tools are so well connected. and i don't think that you can address one without addressing

the other. certainly in the legal profession we have a morally imperative and we have legal obligation to continue to raise this issue and continue to hop about it. i don't think it's good enough to see the gun lobbying is so strong that we aren't going to be able to deal with that issue. we need to continue to deal with that issue because it is so when pretend that we do so. and i think if we take the gun on lobbying and deal with the issue of stand your ground conjunctive flee i think that we will eventually be able to have a better result and for that for debate, is the reason i'm here today and certainly being around people that can speak to this issue better than i ever could. thank you so much. [applause] thank you, district attorney gascon. our next speaker is bob at the

san francisco chronicle who did pass the bar so he is among us attorneys in the room. and he's also scheduled to receive a very prestigious award in a few hours. he is going to be the corecipient of the tony house award for legal journalism from the american society. bob, congratulations. [applause] >> thank you. i want to elaborate a little bit on the california law that the the district attorney gascon was just elaborating on. i would be encouraged to look into it in the wake of the trayvon martin shooting. do we have anything like that? it turns out that we do. as a product of a judicial interpretation, i think about a

justifiable homicide and goes back to the 19th century. but the instruction if i can get it here for 3470 it says in the case of a defendant that says he or she acted in self-defense because the reasonable belief of danger and death of serious bodily injury he or she is entitled to stand your ground but defend yourself for himself and if reasonably necessary pursue an assailant until the danger of death and great bodily injury has passed. even that safety could have been achieved to pursue an assailant as a district attorney said. this has been a fixture of california jury instructions apparently since the 19th century or at least 1897 california supreme court language addressing this. we are not a state where it's been passed by legislation and

response by the deanne ra. what are the differences between california and florida and the post 2005 legislation that has taken effect in more than 20 states? one is that the legislation entitles a defendant to a pretrial hearing. mr. zimmerman didn't avail themselves of that but it's possible to go before a judge and get the charges dismissed and basically await immunity from civil litigation as well. we don't have that here. there's a more practical difference. it's the culture. maybe shown by the fact that florida's law was passed by legislative action, buy lobbying and it sends a message to courts to show great deference to defenders claim self-defense. it's also the availability of

guns. in the florida there is little restriction to carry a concealed weapon in california as a great deal of difficulty the laws under the second amendment challenge we don't know how that is going to turn out. but the fact is the stand or ground law in california is little known and hasn't had a lot of an impact in the been interpreted much by the courts but it exists. when i found out it exists i tried to find out if somebody wanted to do anything about it and was a logical place to asked. a legislator named chris is somebody from southern california and announced about a month ago that he was going to sponsor a resolution to boycott florida. for california atta boy caps loretta on behalf of the black caucus until they repealed the changes on stand your ground. so i thought why not start close

to home. i called the office to see if they might want to do something about the california legislation, the california law. and i'm still waiting for a response not surprisingly, because i don't think that subject had come up. and there's still the possibility that there will be some action. but it's the legislative session it may be the chances for a little less and perhaps this is a symbolic action that is easy to take in the target 3,000 miles away than it is closer to home and you might have to take on the gun lobby. the other thing i wanted talk about has to do with labels. these laws are called stand your ground laws by and large, and as you can see the jury instruction refers just in those terms. but it's the kind of law that could be labeled third described as any number of things to

prevent gun violence. stand your ground appeals to the person that it's addressed to is to put yourself in the position of the defendant. so of course we can identify with that and stand your ground. the other person is the one who constitutes the threat. this sort of thing comes up a lot particularly for journalists. remember the victim's bill of rights. and there's been several called that. in 1982 and originally was the people's bill of rights and originally was an initiative to make it more difficult to challenge the legal. how about marcy's law largesse at kutz law. all of these laws named after the victim's. they don't have much to do with the individuals but the laws sponsored by prosecutors to expand the prosecution and limit

the defense and the like. i guess i'm just saying that the journalists in particular and in the public discussion it's probably a good idea to the date. i don't have a substitute legal for stand your ground in particular. i just want to raise the subject there might be a more neutral way to describe some of these. the obamacare de beta do we want to refer to the federal health care law or do we want to call it v affordable care act probably neither one. but we want to describe what he's doing and i guess i would suggest as my contribution to today that this ought to be an element that we can discuss rather than just refer lively to stand your ground, and if course people want to stand your ground. it will be a little easier to analyze them and think about changing.

thanks. [applause] thank you very much. our next speaker is dmitry shelton who serves as a judge for the city of oakland. he has an extensive service representing governmental entities as he formerly served as the deputy city attorney for the city of oakland for 11 years and also served as the special counsel to the oakland police department and the lead counsel and policy adviser to a number of city agencies. judge shelton? >> thank you. good morning everyone. national bar association president patricia, justice chair person buchanan and members of the task force and others gathered here today. thank you for allowing me this brief opportunity to address you this morning on this issue of most importance. and i think the leadership for

convening this forum and the prior speakers for their backrub and losses and testimony for which i will try not to repeat. i am demetrius shaheen administrative law judge for the state of california, past president of the national bar association and former vice president of the state bar of california, the oldest and largest mandatory bar association in the country, past president of the california association of black lawyers, past president of the houston bar association and member of the 100 black men of america. and i come before you this morning a reflection of many in this assembly to join bar associations across the nation, other lawyers, judges, legal analysts, members of the legislature and the president of the united states along with attorney general eric holder calling for an immediate fix to these often failed stand your

ground laws. having good intent the airfield consequences and one that we must not ignore. highlighting these problematic laws is the fact that we have a law in place that has allowed a young innocent child to be unlawfully killed and a murderer set free. colleagues, we cannot stand for this. but lawyers and lawmakers representing some of the best and brightest legal minds this nation has gathered here on this date august 9th, 2007, and again i emphasize 2013. we cannot sit back and ignore the ignorant to the faq to allow such tragedies to continue. these laws must be addressed and fixed and an aggressor cannot hide behind these laws.

they have utility of some have suggested and i not sure they do as we already have the defense of self-defense. they are the state your grout laws as we reflected lee refer to them must be amended to fix this loophole. i submit to you that in many states as written, an analysis of the laws suggested they do no more than to promote vigilante's and protect the aggressors. it is a stain on our legal history to have such outcomes as that in the case of trayvon martin. and even more outrageous yet telling is when you have cases as in colombia south carolina where a burglar murders the man whose home he invaded and his lawyers argue stand your ground as a defense as a they said the burglar fewer for his life. surely this is not the originators had in mind but it does evidence the stretch that the current language allows and

surely this is not what we as the gatekeepers of justice will stand for and we must put a halt to such a detrimental evolution and application of these laws. i've had the privilege of listening and meeting with the martin family, the proud father tacey martin, the strong mother, sabrina fulton and the brother. and i stand with them in this struggle as should we all. we should all keep them in our prayers. most parents want their child to leave their mark on the ball and go down in history but not in this way. i ask we keep them in mind as we battled this issue. these are real people, real times and not just textbooks or academic the date. i was at the national bar association dinner last week when i was announced that

trayvon martin's brother announced that he wants to be an attorney and plans to go to law school to get and i looked directly across at him and i felt pride eventually in that moment and realizing the promise made and bear witness to the strong resilience that hysterically so many have had. i agree saddened and that not one but both brothers should be here before us a disbelieving their gift and promise. many questions came to mind at the moment, two of which were how can we approach if we don't first protect it and lumber to, our thoughts have so many. what happened to trayvon martin happened to me or my brother, but if other teenagers during my many walks to the corner store for soda pop, can candy someone

stalked and frightened me and in the end i was left dead for no reason and he wasn't held responsible? s yourselves if this was your child, your loved one, would you want the killer, the aggressor, the vigilante to walk free then ask yourself if you think the stand your ground laws promote justice and fairness? i commit that they do not and ask that we, all of us today from our varied backgrounds and disciplines, john altogether our belief in the rule of law, justice and equal the application of law send a united message to the members of the legislature and congress to fix the broken laws. i ask that we do this with one voice, one message. platts show our respect and fix the laws as we would any law that demonstrates it does not further just to see equity and fairness of the law.

cleaves come thank you for your time and consideration of my request. [applause] >> thank you very much, judge shelton. we are going to bring the next four speakers, dr. jenifer everhart and jeff adachi. while the speakers come forward i would like to recognize one of the task force advisory members who has joined us. professor cynthia lee. if you would stand. she is a well-known expert in the area of criminal law and the author of murder and reasonable men. professor lee is a professor of law at george washington university and published several articles and also implicit racial bias. the take away from the last

group of speakers as they raise very important points but i wish to reiterate bob encouraged us to think about the specific labels on legislation and how these labels because the public to maybe misunderstand how and when the laws operate so that's an important when the task force is going to look at and the other take away is to scrutinize whether they may promote vigilantes' or aggression in public spaces. so thank you to the last group of speakers. first the individual presenters could be dr. jenifer everhart is from stanford university and received her ph.d. in harvard. she conducts research on racial stereotyping, prejudice and in her most recent work she's examined how stereotypes',

stereotypical associations of black americans may interplay with criminality and can influence visual perception, attention and memory. she looks for this topic not only with members of the public but also with law enforcement agencies to help them in making their determinations when they respond to incidents. dr. eberhardt? >> thank you. thank you for inviting me at all of you for coming. for many decades now, social psychologists have studied the association between blacks and crime. in the 1940's, gordon conduct a classic study. they showed people, and the image of a black man and a white man standing in the middle of a subway car in a discussion. the white man held a razor in his hand. later in the study when their research removed this image from the site and asked the study

participants to try to remember what it was that they saw, many of them remembered the black man holding the razor to get and in fact the described him as brandishing of this weapon wildly. the association between blacks and violence and crime was so strong that it changed their memory of what they saw. in contemporary studies across the country, researchers have shown that blacks are associated with crime, with threat, aggression, violence. the stand your ground laws give a leeway of what constitutes a threat and how to act upon those threats. such can easily render them vulnerable. the association between blacks

and threats not only influences people's memories but it can influence what they see, where they look and how they respond. so for example in my lab at stanford, we found that simply exposing people to black faces facilitates their ability to see weapons. when you bring people into the lab and show them the greatest images of guns on a computer screen, exposing them to black faces before hand help them detect those images better. this isn't only for people - prejudice but this is for people who are low when prejudice because the same effect regardless of the prejudice level. the association between black and threats not only influences the weapon detections but it can influence the decisions to shoot. the researchers have examined

this in what they call the computer simulations. and in the studies, the researchers showed a study participants images of black and white people holding guns and harmless object to the end of the participants are asked to press a computer keyboard key to shoot if they see a person holding a gun or to press the keen label don't shoot if they see that person holding the object. the joshua and others have found that people are faster to shoot black men with guns than they are to shoot white men with guns. when people make an error on this they are more likely to shoot a black person who has no guns than they are to shoot a white person who has no guns.

not only the weapons detection but also it influences the use of force. in our lab, we found that simply having people think about crime can produce this by yes that causes people to shift their attention to words faces and away from white faces. so if we found that simply getting people to think of crime , black faces under surveillance. wheat devotees of fact with the students that served as our study participants, but we also found these effects with police officers. when police officers think of capturing, shooting. the judge told the story earlier this morning that inspired me to

tell my own story i'm going to stop here for a second and talk about this. my husband who is a law professor at stanford one year he was invited to teach a two week class at harvard during the winter break. so we went there as a family and my husband stayed behind to teach this class and i was on a plane going back home to california with my son who was 5-years-old at the time. so we were on the plane and my son looks up and he sees this guy and he says that the guy looks like a daddy. so we look at him and he is the only black guy on this plane. i look at him and i'd like i don't see the resemblance at all. he's like 4 inches shorter than my husband sky and the facial

features, no resemblance there. i look at the complexion. she has these long dreadlocks rolling down his back and my husband is bold. [laughter] i like okay i'm going to confront my son on this. before i can utter a word my son looks up again and he says i hope he doesn't fall of the plane. i said what did you say? he said it again i hope he doesn't rob the play in a. i said why would you say that? you know daddy wouldn't rob a plane to the he said i know. i said why would you say that? and he looked at me with a sad face and he said i don't know, i don't know why i said that. i don't know why i was thinking that. we are living with such racial stratification that even a

fight-year-old can tell you what is supposed to happen next. even with no racial animus, the black crime association remains to read it creeps in affecting how will we see the world, how we act upon that, how we make sense of it. it can also influence what crime policies we see as appropriate. one last study i would like to tell you about, my collaborators and i presented people with the crime of policy and ask them whether they supported it and we told them about a supreme court case that the court was deciding on at the time, and it was a case that involved sentencing them to life in prison without the possibility of parole and we

conducted the study as the court was actually deciding on this issue but before the had actually issued a ruling. and we took the case is the lawyers presented in court. we took the case of a 14-year-old named joe sullivan, and we described the participants and outline the key features of the crime and we only change one word in the entire study. we described joe sullivan as a black juvenile defendant or we describe him as a white juvenile defendant. when joe sullivan was described as black, our study participants viewed them in general as more similar to adults in their culpability. therefore they were more inclined to support sending the

juveniles to prison for life with no possibility of parole. so one critical word led people to see the people differently. it led them to see law differently. in the absence of law that constrained the use of force blacks are more likely to draw our attention and be perceived as threatening and to be retaliated against. and in fact blackness can even leave our children vulnerable. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, dr. eberhardt. the next speaker is john lakin who is a circuit court judge for

the 12th judicial circuit of florida which covers sarasota, manatee. judge lakin started in criminal defense in boston and has served as the council and over 50 civil and criminal trials. >> i hate to say i may florida judge given the response. [laughter] >> i followed that with a tremendous story. i was coming from the hotel the taxi driver pulled me over and you can hear my boston accent now a judge in florida. from the way over he goes to the western st. francis and on the way over the market the police pull us over and said florida judge this mentioned really tremendous -- i want to thank my resident for all of her help in asking me to come on board here.

this is difficult stuff. there is no choice about it today and in the courtroom as a judge and take those experiences with you on the bench every single day. it's not easy work to be indicted triangle career this is not easy. it takes a lot of ability to do this kind of work. we talk about the political will. i can go back to the partner in boston with some of the law and of running at the massachusetts house of representatives and he was on for 40 years and became the chair of the criminal justice committee and is one of the minority stakes in the nation where 11 states have appointed judges 39 and he did a tremendous good at that job. he was tremendous in terms of his influence as a legislator. our hands are tied laws and

florida? i've done hearings on the stand your ground law, where you have a very limited standard because of the preponderant standard. but when i tell you how long it takes for us to review the evidence in this case, this is not something that can be reduced to a journalist writing something in five sentences, this is detailed information about what will the circumstances, what were the circumstances of the use of this weapon and the confines of the law. there's about 4,000 circuit court judges in the 67 counties and 18 million citizens, the biggest state in the nation there's a lot going on and my courtroom on a west coast of florida we are making a difference and every one of those lawyers says you better be repaired and tell me what is the basis that you see is immune for

this person but is the circumstance, put them on the witness stand and cross-examine these people. let's get to the bottom of this so i don't take that lightly. i understand of the enormity of that. the judge made some good points as well about the enormous emotional toll. i see this and the victim impact statements in my courtroom so therefore you need to take into consideration the lawyers on the bench we have people that have been down this road to the understand the circumstances that we have to follow the law. that is my obligation. i cannot inject my feelings as a proceeding in the court judge i can't do that so therefore going to this case on the standard for the instruction of self-defense nothing good is going to happen when you bring a gun to a fight and it's a fight that never should have happened to begin with. it was almost like a perfect

storm. people didn't know one another and lead to a horrible tragedy. but when you get an instruction and i talked to jurors all the time and they give me their feedback for the citizens of the community and i listen to them. we have a situation where it his mind he believed he may die. is that an enormous overreaction and if he didn't have a weapon, trayvon martin would be alive. it would have been a fight like i was in high school. it would be the end of it to the you lose a tooth or something would have happened but trayvon martin would be alive. the district attorney talked about guns. that's the problem. that's the problem that i see in my courtroom. i just had someone to weeks ago when the jury trial that we thought the case never should have gone to trial but if you

talk to the lawyers on the west coast up for the they will tell you judge lakin is good when it comes to sentencing people. i mean reasonable person and i listen to the arguments but this person was from california and had ten felony convictions, came to california and was arrested within one year then came to sarasota and was arrested again on christmas eve when he goes in the middle of the street, of rips off his shirt on the crowded street and then has the unmitigated when he's taken into custody to yell out to his brother i will take this one meaning it's implying the brother took the shots and when the brother came to trial on the witness stand i was pretty bad about that and at the hearing he was facing under the guide lines three to seven years and i gave him seven years. you know why? because i believe he will shoot and kill somebody in the next seven years. that's what i believe and i have an obligation as i say to the lawyers in my courtroom every

day when they come in the courtroom be prepared there's a 50% rule judge lakin house, 50% to protect the citizens by the representatives of the district attorney's office at this 50% is about to defend the constitutional rights that i take very seriously that he has the right to a fair trial. an absolute right to prevent evidence to this jury. they will decide the outcome of this case. they will make that decision, not be. so i just want to be clear not to demonize the judiciary or the judges. it's our job to do what we are handed. a political process is the root to resolve these issues because if i tell you my hands are tied they are tied. jul agree with some of the things going on in the nation? i have serious and trepidation about it and it's very concerning to me.

but in the west coast of florida it's a pretty mellow place and in my part of the world we are doing everything we can to protect individuals and i do it every day. thank you. [applause] >> thank you judge lakin. our next speaker is juliet leftwich to prevent gun violence. the organization was formally known as the legal community against violence which is the national law center that provides legal assistance and expertise to the legislators seeking to advance legally defensible violence. she's also a member of the american bar association's standing committee on gun violence which is one of the co-sponsors of the task force on the stand your ground ball and she has worked extensively on the development and the drafting of the stadium of local gun walls throughout the united states. julie? >> good morning, everyone.

i first got involved in the issue of gun violence on july 1st, 1993. that was the date of the assault weapons massacre at 101 california st. which is a few blocks from here. on that day a disgruntled client of the law firm walked into the building armed with assault weapons and a handgun and rode up the elevator to the floor and began opening fire. ultimately he killed eight people and injured six and then committed suicide in the stairwell. on that day my firm was on the 23rd floor. fortunately i was one of the lucky ones. i didn't tell anyone who was injured or hurt. since then i've become quite close with the families of those people though and the shooting affected me both personally and

professionally. as mentioned we provide several services. we tracked in the draft model laws and second amendment litigation nationwide and provide and file an amicus briefs with the attorneys across the country. we were aware of stand your ground or we call them shoot first laws because terminology is important. we were aware of these before the trayvon martin shooting but we weren't focusing on them. once we looked at them, we realized that the law enforcement efforts encouraged vigilante behavior and deprive the victim's of recourse. these don't exist in a vacuum forever. we need to look at them and the context of other laws. we need to look at them in the context of federal and state gun

laws which are weak. the u.s. as the weakest on walls of many of the nations in the world. and we also have the highest rate of death. our federal walls are filled with loopholes. the biggest is the private loophole that has been in the news over the last six months because of the failure to pass a very watered-down bill. under that loophole to federally licensed firearms have to conduct background checks but individuals don't and you don't need to have a federal license to sell the guns under the federal law. 40% of all purchasers buy guns from unlicensed people which makes it very easy for criminals to get guns for mentally ill people and for underage people to get guns. we also have no licensing of the federal level. we have no registration to make it very difficult for the law enforcement to trace the guns.

because of the nra the federal law prohibits the registry of gun owners and those records are destroyed. we don't ban assault weapons or large capacity magazines. we have no waiting period. they are exempt from the product safety act and that covers all products now that consumers use to be getting used to the cigarettes were also exempt. but now they are covered. so guns are the only product so you get the ridiculous situation where the federal government can oversee the manufacturer of toy guns but not real guns. we also have a federal immunity law that immunizes the dealers from the reckless and negligent behavior. no other industry is afforded such protection. states of course are free to adopt stronger walls but most have not. in fact because of the nra most

of the state done laws have gotten week in the recent decades. since the 1980's the lobby has pushed legislation nationwide for example to weaken the laws regarding the carrying of concealed weapons in public. the nra began began pushing in 2005 and as other speakers have noted, most states now have those laws. a point that i think is important to make is also the shoot first half public safety is the combination of those and of the concealed carry laws that are particularly deadly. as judge lakin mentioned, if george zimmerman hadn't been carrying a gun that night and he was carrying it legally, trayvon martin would still be alive. fortunately when you look at the big picture, things finally seem to be changing nationwide. the trayvon martin and newton

shootings have changed the way that we view gun violence. the polls show americans are sick of the bloodshed and want legislators to do something. the show 90% of the public support universal background checks. 90%. try to think of what other policy had that kind of support. 80% of gun owners support background checks paid 70 percent of the nra members said the leadership is out touch with america and completely out of touch with its own members. california velo is a great example of what can be done when a state that optus law. the state has adopted more than 30 of these strong loss since 1993. we've closed the loopholes in the federal law and adopted many innovative lolls. these have had a huge impact between 1993 to 2010 california's gone death rate has dropped by 56% and that is at a

27% higher rate than the drop nationwide. the final point i would like to make is that the second amendment is not an obstacle to the common sense to reduce gun violence. there is so much misinformation about the second amendment when i go to harangues at the state and local levels the opponents are always saying they violate the second amendment and the legislators are confused about it. i watched the closing arguments in the trayvon martin case and i thought the prosecutors did a pretty decent job in closing arguments he is saying that george zimmerman had the right because of the second amendment. but that isn't what the supreme court has said. in the heller case in 2008 and in a very narrow decision, the supreme court held that the second amendment guarantees the right to possess a handgun in the home for self-defense.

it was the extent of the ruling. the court made it very clear the second amendment is not absolute and that it's consistent with a wide variety of the gun law. the bad news is that a decision which was a poorly written decision opened the floodgates for litigation of of the world. fortunately the rest of the world doesn't have the second amendment. they're not country challenging the gun law. those challenges have been overwhelmingly on successful. we have reviewed over 700 decisions and the courts have consistently upheld the nation's gun laws including restricting the carrying of concealed weapons in public. the bottom line is the second amendment doesn't have anything to do with stand your ground or should first laws or any other laws that don't provide a law-abiding person from protecting for self-defense. the gun laws were unconstitutional. they simply require political

will. the idea that the nra is just a matter of perception. and fortunately that perception is changing. americans are finally speaking out about this issue and the banding the change that we all deserve -- demanding the change that we all deserve. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, julie. i will note that she has provided the supplemental materials and they can be found on page 58 of the program books. the next speaker is jeff adachi was the public defender of the city and county of san francisco jeff has also served on the american bar association standing committee on legal aid and indigence and is a member of the national board of trial advocacy to be if he currently sits on the board of the california public defender's association and is a past board member of the california attorneys for criminal justice and the some francisco bar association public defender jeff

adachi. >> thank you. good morning everyone. thank you for inviting me to testify at this hearing. i have to say that i deeply agree with all of the objectives that were talked about this morning in terms of the outcomes that we as a society want to achieve. as a public defender in saying that i do not believe it is self-defense laws should be changed. there is no question that what happened to trayvon martin was a horrible injustice and it never should have happened. with that in justice i do not believe it is a result of self-defense laws. i believe it is a result of racism and it's the same racism that causes disparities in every

stage of a criminal or juvenile justice proceeding. as public defenders, we witness the inequities that build at each stage of the criminal proceeding from arrests, profiling, charging by the district attorney, please bargaining, deciding what cases proceed to trial and which are charged as death with the cases. every aspect of the criminal justice system is grounded in the racial bias. that means african-americans are more likely to be detained, to be searched, to be charged in the adult courses, denied access to quality representation, community resources and treatment and put at a

disadvantage. when we look at the trayvon martin case and what happened to him, it is a case of racial profiling their resulted in murder, racial profiling the resulted in murder. in the call, george zimmerman said that trayvon martin looks like he's up to no good come on drugs or something. he also said he looks black. he saw trayvon martin as threatening even though he had done nothing to threaten him. these punks, they always get away, george zimmerman said. and even though trayvon was on his way home from the store with skills and iced tea he wasn't able to convince george zimmerman that he was just walking down the street. that's where racism comes in. it's not always gracious -- conscious racism.

it's insidious throughout the justice system. people will say i'm not racist. i'm not by yes. i don't hold any prejudice. yet their actions speak otherwise. as patterson mentioned earlier the brain activation matters mass the racial bias in all of us. if someone sees a threat that is implicit bias will increase the threat that they feel and as a result of someone sees an african-american male they feel he is a threat simply because he's african-american and they become overly aggressive towards him. this is something they may not be conscious of. we have to ask how does it affect the police investigations in the case as witnesses testified the police immediately acted to protect george zimmerman and they summarized his actions were justified and that he acted in self-defense without even an investigation. they identified more with his

predicament than they did with trayvon martin. his parents were not contacted for three days. they worked with george zimmerman and they got statements so that it fell within a self-defense stand your ground narrative. during the trial that prosecutors didn't mention, not one prosecutor of color among them. the only mention i heard of races that the defense had the strategic idea to have an african-american female intern at the table to show that george zimmerman wasn't racist. at the american bar association wants to focus on this problem we have to eradicate implicit bias within our profession because unless we do that we are going to continue to see the

just results. earlier we talked about with the self-defense law says in california. and i just want to clarify that. that in california by the lid is true that you can pursue your attacker if it means that you will save a life and you can only do that through the dangerous past there are conditions that come with that. you must not be the aggressor and strike first and you have to believe that your life is an eminent danger. believing that your attacker is going to kill you at some point is not sufficient justification. finally you have to believe the deadly force is necessary and only to use that amount of force which is needed to defend yourself it allows a person whose life is threatened not to be placed in a situation where if you believe your life is still in danger. when that danger passes so does

your right of self-defense. the reality is that implicit bias is everywhere. it's not uncommon that thousands of black men are presumed to be criminals. look at the stop first and how those have been implemented in places like new york. they're innocent behavior or their minor infractions can be used as profound. while all of them are not shot white trayvon martin, the are more disciplined, expelled from school, relegated to the juvenile halls not tired, quickly fired or forced to watch as people across the other side of the street walking their car doors or clutching their purses. in addition to increasing the understanding of the implicit

bias there is so much that needs to be done to curtail the racial injustice. we can start by requiring the cultural competency for the law enforcement and prosecutors to reduce racial profiling and even public defenders and defense attorneys to be we have to ensure that people of color have access to qualify and well funded representation and we have to work to change the legislation that targets minorities. all of these things in my opinion are more important than changing the self-defense law. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much for the remarks. our next speaker is professor john powell who is the executive director of the institute for fair and it was of society and was also the robert chancellor's chair of the university of california berkeley.

professor paul is a well-known scholar in the race and poverty and is the author of the book entitled "racing to justice transforming our concept of self and others to build an inclusive society." professor powell. [applause] >> i want to join with others in thanking the american bar association bringing us together for this very important discussion. much of what i was going to say has already been said so i have some prepared remarks as well as a powerpoint that i will make available to the record. i want to thank my staff particularly elizabeth who is here and in terms of preparing me. since much of what has been set buy not going to cover everything that is in my

powerpoint. i will touch on a few things dr. eberhardt touched on that and you've heard of some of the history. i'm not going to dwell on it because it's already been talked about and i have limited time to a i want to ask a couple things. you just heard about the overall issue of race in america and held that impacts what happened to trayvon martin. i was reading earlier this morning an article in "the new york times" about a young man in new york who the police chased him into his house, in his bathroom. he had no weapon but the shot and killed him and the police isn't being charged with murder. the reason is although new york doesn't have a stand your ground law, the police what he had a

weapon. jennifer dhaka that if you are black you are likely to have seen a weapon. he didn't have this weapon so we have a saying if a person thinks they are in danger they have the right in many states to actually use deadly force. so what does this mean in the context of this discussion? prez deval let's back up in volume during the week from my remarks so bear with me for a benet. one of the things we looked at is there is a steady and the words we use in our society in our lifetime we look at associations with those words. this is actually very robust science and when we find that in this country the word black most

americans find its poverty. the next word is dangerous and the third word is sleazy. those are the most associations americans have with black and these are cultural associations. those are not these individuals that are in the normal sense racist or prejudice. then we can show that those associations have an impact in how we perceive black people, how we judge them especially under stress so in a stressful situation they are more likely to come on line and affect how we perceive someone. you have heard dr. eberhardt talk about when we see a person that might have begun, we are more likely to see the with a gun. i will tell you a personal story i have two sons, 32-years-old

when he was in high school cell phones were becoming a big thing and he said i want a cell phone, too. i want to be quote just like everybody else. i was a little concerned slide a little research and in that year when he was about 15-years-old so you can do the math there had been a number of killings of young black men when the police stopped them and cars and a number of times they wrongly assumed when they were picking up their cell phone that they actually had a gun. during that same period there hadn't been one killing of the white young man making that mistake. i told my son you cannot get a cell phone and he was pissed. i haven't done anything wrong. you're black in america. there is a deadly perception that you've done something

wrong. so think about this. in these states the very in terms of how the employment and talk about stand your ground laws and i agree that we should think about how we call what shoot first laws. part of it as the subject of the assumption that your life is in danger. there is a study out that white america has a growing anxiety about race that this anxiety is showing the implicit and explicit racial anxiety is increasing and the majority think the number one problem with race in america is discrimination by white people. so you start off with a background assumption that white people are already afraid of

what people especially young black men. then you see if you are afraid for your life do you have the right to defend yourself? we are halfway there. a black person with a hoodie is already dangerous. someone in california is addressing this in terms of did you start the fight. did you start the fight? if you start a fight and then say i'm afraid this black person might kill me and going to kill them and the stand your ground laws in florida would justify that. oddly enough, if trayvon martin had a gun he could under the florida law could have killed george zimmerman. his life was in danger. my time is up but the point i

want to make and it's already been made that america is afraid of black people. america is afraid of my 15 year old black son. we say in new york city to the men and new york city you go outside and the mayor of new york says you're dangerous. you haven't done anything people and what have you done? you are black, latino, you won't be long. you're not seen as human. then we pass these laws to institutionalize the fear of white america. we legalize the fear of white america and i'm going to stop because my time is up but i want to end with two quick comments. i appreciate the judge's constraint and by california berkeley even by the justice

society. we all have constraints. i did a lot of work in africa when south africa existed under apartheid of the country and interaction. we have to look at these. we institutionalize the fear of white people when we look at where these balzar, who pass them. frankly they are passed most likely when there is a republican governor in the most pernicious form and the same laws we have concealed laws, the proliferation of guns. all those things coming together. we have a sort of institutional last year of black people so i would say -- and there's an article in the l.a. times saying that the number one problem in this country as we talk about demographic change is actually the growing anxiety and fear of the racial other. robert putnam and noted

researcher at harvard has argued that may be the most frightening thing to our society is the growing anxiety about the racial other. so i think we will see a lot of proliferation of bad the action unless we deal with this head on. and this is partially the work that jennifer and others have done but not to talk about race exactly backfires and increases racial anxiety and increase the set of symbolic racism that some other groups can use in terms of pushing forward for things like the stand your ground laws peery i hope that we will take this head on a sense it is the start of a much larger discussion. hoodie. [applause] >> hoodie, professor powell. we are over time but i would

like to take the opportunity to allow the commissioner to come up and give a few remarks if you would like to do that. >> hoodie very much and when the aba for holding and supporting this important group. let me tell you briefly the civil rights voted and began an investigation into the racial bias on the stand your ground laws. it's the first time we had a bipartisan vote on anything in a long time. it's the first investigation on its own without any preconceived notions that the commissioner has undertaken probably in decades and the reason i wanted to do this is after the trayvon martin shooting and after all of the attention on stand your ground i wanted to make sure the understood what was going on with these laws. i understand, and i think no one can argue that the combination not permissive gun laws and laws

such as stand your ground or a deadly cocktail throughout the country and especially for young african-american males. but a lot to make sure we have the fact to back it up. the commission has always been the backbone for congress in the third jurisdictions and did so when it went down to the south to investigate the jim crow law and the reporters became the basis for the civil rights act of '64 and '65 and the aba violence against women. this i hope possibly with the right help and with the right information could rise that kind of level to impact the public policy debate and the reason it's important for us is that as someone mentioned, we have the ability to go and live beyond just what is given to you because you and by all know that crime reports and the statistics that are out there are only as good as the laws require them to be reported and the fact of the matter remains that if george

zimmerman walked free and stayed free as he did the night that he killed trayvon martin, that statistic would never have been reported anywhere. there would have been no requirement to go to any data base that we would be able to look at today. so we are going to try to go beyond that, under that and get to the prosecutors and get to the criminal courts and take a good hard look at how this is being enforced because whether or not they tend to be neutral on their face but we all know they can be very racist in their applications. and laws that have that are laws that must be examined and must be reviewed. with the help of people like you and that have spoken here today can be moved out of the public domain and began a real discussion in the context of these kind of tragedies over and over again.

thank you very much. >> thank you, commissioner taki. we are going to forgo on additional closing remarks because we are out of time but i would like to think to the opportunity to thank all of the speakers we have received a wealth of information in some key areas we are going to investigate and look into further in the investment of the stand your ground laws and i would like to thank you all of you that attended i hope that you have received some great information and i hope he will follow the dialogue on the impact stand your ground laws. with that, the hearing is adjourned. [inaudible conversations]

there's been a shooting at the washington navy yard. president barack obama giving frequent briefings on the incident. the navy says shots were fired this morning at the systems command headquarters. "washington post" reports ten people have been shot and the associated press is reporting that several people have been killed. the white house says president obama directed his team to stay in touch with of the needy, fbi and local officials. so far the president is continuing his schedule. and this morning he is to mark the fifth anniversary of the collapse of the lehman brothers investment bank by highlighting signs of recovery to be the seceded report he will warn against fights over the federal budget and the nation's debt ceiling. you can see the president's

comments law yvette 11:40 eastern on c-span, our companion network. we've been getting your comments on the fifth anniversary of the 2008 financial collapse. our question today what is the economy like for you? let us know at facebook.com/c-span. united nations secretary general received a chemical weapons report and syria over the weekend. u.n. inspectors say there is convincing evidence that, quote, a chemical weapons were used on a relatively large scale in an attack last month in syria that killed hundreds of people. u.n. secretary-general ban ki moon will address the press this afternoon and we are covering that live on c-span3 and that is expected to begin at 12:50 p.m. this afternoon. coming up next a discussion about the role of the future of

the international community to help egypt achieve economic and political stability. she was a woman of firsts, a woman of combination. what symbolizes all of that is her inaugural gown. she marked this occasion with her entry into the white house about then added it as a mark of

first ladies on the united states when she became the first first lady to donate her down to the institution. she is the founding patron for the collection and established a tradition the first lady's would donate the downs to collections. .. whether or not the u.s. should continue sending aid, and that

egypt can engage the world community to help it achieve political and economic stability. the forum runs about an hour and 35 minutes. >> good afternoon, everybody. if you could please take your seat. we are starting the fourth panel today. we've got a lot to discuss. i'm kate seelye with the middle east institute. welcome. welcome back to the last and one of the most interesting panels of today. we've talked, everybody, if you could please sit down. we've talked about the day but what egyptians can do to move forward on their political path. to work towards greater stability, greater democracy, greater prosperity. we call with egyptian can do to work towards national

reconciliation, healing the wounds, healing the divide. we talked about how egyptians can work to meet the demands, the needs of its people for bread, freedom and social justice. now we want to change happened had all but about what the international community's can do to help egypt upon on its path toward greater stability, prosperity and democracy. we have with us today a panel of academics and analysts who have been writing ostensibly on the u.s.-egyptian relationship, and our where placed -- to discuss her topic with us today. i will start on our moderators left, we have amy hawthorne, senior fellow at the atlantic council where she's been writing on egypt before joining the atlantic council she was an appointee at the u.s. department of state, advising on u.s. policy towards the air this

brings -- arab spring country. next to her is mohamed elmenshawy, director of languages, also a scholar at any eye and he's a very well known columnist for the egyptian paper auch aruba. next and we have doctor abdel monem said who is chairman of the board, chairman of the board and ceo of a publishing house and director of the regional center for strategic studies in cairo and then jaso jason browne can associate jason brownlee can associate jason brownlee can associate professor of government at university of texas at austin where he teaches mideast politics. the panel is in a very capable hands of michael hanna who is a senior fellow at the century foundation where he has written extensively on the u.s.-egyptian relationship. so michael, i would like to hand the panel over to you. thank you so much for joining us. it's a real privilege and honor. >> thank you, kate, and thank you for persevering to the end

of the day. it will be my job to agitate our panelists so maybe we'll get a little argument to keep you awake as well. egypt from the start of the arab uprising was seen as the sort of center of gravity, and the outside world belief that what happened in egypt because of its demographic weight, historical role in the arab world would have profound implications not just for egypt but for the region. and for that reason singled out the transition in egypt and its potential success is something that the international community wanted to prioritize. the international team in the and the united states has not always been able to a just to these changing times and the result of international interaction and engagement with egypt are clearly something of a mixed bag, and the times have

yielded very disappointing results from the perspective of the international community. i would like to start with abdel monem said announce whether egypt once international suppo support. in the wake of a popular uprising of june 30, the military intervention on july 3. we have seen a nude of hyper nationalism sweep across the country, where state media and has stigmatized foreign countries, chief among them the united states. has stigmatized contacts with those countries, and has suggested far-flung conspiracies about the rest of the world come and intentions of the rest of the world, vis-à-vis egypt. this suggests a somewhat complicated picture, based on this current mood, does egypt think that its relations with the outside world are important? and does it care about outside international support?

>> let me start by thanking the middle eastern institute for inviting me here, and thank you for letting me start this discussion. and i will tell you that egypt cannot stay away from the rest of the international community. i'm sure a lot of egyptians got a lot of problems, that will need in some way or another to have a good relations with other countries. basically, this was the framework we're talking about. what kind of relations that we won't with the united states in particular. which by some egyptians will do and say, if remember the fellow on the roof in the 1970s in which the gentleman at the time said, you know, long live the czar, i keep them away from us. so there is that fear that to have international community using the opportunity of egyptian mounting problem, in

order to take off what the most important thing that egyptians like to have, which is their independence, and that kind of independence, that would be translated into a certain framework. and i will emphasize egyptian american relationship. someone said recently that we cannot keep the relationship with egypt as business as usual. the business as usual never was defined. do we have business or do we have a number of values that the united states wants to implement any get? and i think a long list of businesses that we have often completely ignores. i mean, here when we talk about the united states in particular and other international community, if you want to make it in the frame of our

relationship, it is based on reciprocity of interest. and in the case of the united states, there is a long list of american interests in egypt as well. i mean, usually the debate about egypt and relationship with the united states is centered around the eight. should we cut off aid? i never thought in my life, -- [inaudible]. however, that was an exchange of a lot of interest in egypt. part of the business and egypt called overflight. and the country that made two major wars and lastly, overflight was an important interest for the united states and egypt. having access, easy access and in a way, you know, to run access to the canal was an important interest for the country that has lots of great ships and nuclear ship's.

and i country that's making egypt a surplus in the bowels trait of $4 billion, that is also an interest. so in the american debate actually, some of it i hear today, was completely different from the kind of debate that we had back in cairo. and regarding this particular point, that this relationship got to be, a, builds on interest, too, reciprocity. and in that sense i think i called there, i used the opportunity, that we need a series of deal about egyptian american relations. that has been enduring for about 40 years now, and it was helping the interests of both countries. but finally and the last few weeks, probably couple months, that this relationship is coming into a stage attention that's got to be explored.

>> jason, maybe even touched on perhaps what you think those interests are and perhaps what they should be. and assess for us with his bilateral relationship -- this bilateral relationship looks like and where it's going wrong on both sides. >> regarding relationship should go from here and want international actors can be doing, i think answer that question begins with a sober assessment of what the united states has done in the past and what it's done wrong in the past when it comes to egypt. i think there are two key areas, two big mistakes the u.s. has historically made in its relationships with egypt. one of them is to minimize and neglect and not take seriously public opinion inside of egypt. and the second is to support the kind of the really that was talked about in the first panel, because it's kind of convenient from authoritarian civility and

not take seriously the long-term risks of that type of an arrangement. when we talk of business as usual between u.s. and egypt, i'm not sure at this point has really changed although obama has said it's going to change. this is as usual between egypt and the u.s. means basically what martin indicted called the bargain, which is the u.s. supports authored 10 rulers in egypt and they in turn suppressed extremists islamists. and the problem with that bargain during the past 40 years is that it produces people like omar. it produces people like i was awarded. and it produces people like mohammad doctor. so i think the strategic benefit that abdel monem said races, they are actually much less

viable than they were during the cold war. i think the importance of bright star has shrunk significantly, for example. be bilinear wargames between egypt, that egypt and the u.s. participate in. and i think if we do a fresh cost-benefit analysis of the traditional u.s.-egyptian partnership, we may find from just a reality perspective on the american side, that it would make sense to change things. >> in the midst of what is obviously and nationalistic moment, there's been a contradiction in the sense that suggestions that the aid relationship be reformed or changed are also met with nationalistic fury. and yet this is obviously a type of dependent relationship. there's a bit of a contradiction there. mom but, maybe you can touch upon the sort of nature of the complicated relationship, where

you have a military who's the biggest beneficiary of american ate, and yet a broader of the local climate where foreign entanglements are being stigmatized. clearly a strange dichotomy. >> sure. let's just remind everybody that egypt received about 32 or three figures, about $76 billion in aid, economic it. average egyptian won't get any of the $76 billion because most went to the military and we don't always know exactly have and with it. we have a strong military but we don't see in daily life. this equation between egyptian and the american relations was based on aid for cooperation. that's been since 1979. i believe in the last two months through this equation needs to

be revisited completely. and business as usual which it for cooperation doesn't work anymore in this changing dynamic of egyptian policy. it was not so significant to the relation between the two sides. as jason said, the public opinion of egyptians was not on the table for american-egyptian side as well. now it is a big factor for everybody, even for the military, for the muslim brotherhood, for the liberals. egyptian voice is to be here. and 82% of egyptians don't want any kind of aid from the united states. so if we are to reflect, reflecting the view of the egyptian people, they should to stop because that is what the egyptians one. i believe there is one request, the equation should be changed. the relation was based on three foundations. business security. egypt played important role in israeli conflict yet it is a

much marginalize recently. played important role against iran, u.s. interest in this topic. that doesn't work anymore. egypt is not a strong ally. egypt is a third country after israel and the united states doesn't have a formation with iran as of today. second, what -- the second foundation for the relation was military tourist relation picture, the u.s. public i believe they thought we're serious leverage and influence over egyptian military. plus to two months experience ss that to be a wrong assumption. when the missile defense chuck hagel called each other, counterpart, clearly don't use violence -- [inaudible]. it did exactly the opposite and nothing happening in terms of the change of equation of the

relation of the f-16 jets and attack helicopters but in this discussion in washington of stopping the age. -- stopping the aid. egyptian military said nine months condition, we are full democracy by that time. so i was just going to freeze this aid for nine months. no contact on both sides which very much send message to egypt, it's this is not as usual. that should include u.s. entities -- for what it means for the region, for the regional security and excluding islamists. you will not have a stable egypt. it will be in damage to interest and they would want to freeze the aid unless we have a condition.

several months left, announcing in cairo. i would like to see conclusive -- and then i will resume the aid and change the structure because the old revolution doesn't work anymore. >> so on one level years has shown it has limited influence on a fence in egypt, and so in your estimation, amy, if, in fact, aid was suspended, one, with the u.s. have influence? and what it actually change the direction, the trajectory of little events in the country? >> i don't think that the united states -- [inaudible] >> is that better? i don't think that if the u.s. is making decisions to suspend military or economic aid, inaction will have any short-term influence over the decision making of the egyptian authority. they're going to do what they think is in the best interests of their country. but over the longer term i think

it could make a contribution to egypt's political evolution, which is a very complex process that is mainly dependent on domestic factors, but international factors always played a role in every country's internal political development, whether the country wants to knowledge that or not. how's that? so i think what's important for the united states right now is to actually take steps that makes its own positions and its policy our policy much more clear, even if in doing so we don't have an immediate effect on egyptian -- [inaudible] i think that u.s.-egyptian relationship -- [inaudible] [laughter] >> okay. >> i think u.s.-egyptian

relationship has been adrift and has been lacking in clarity and lacking in strategic focus for a long time. at the time of a january 25 revolution, that was a moment for the united states and egypt to try to refashion the relationship into something that made more sense with a new egypt and made more sense for u.s. interests that go beyond security and strategic interest. the foundational events, they key elements of u.s.-egyptian relationship, the camp david followed by the peace treaty, is something that is really a distant memory now for the vast majority of egyptians who are much too young to remember it. it's not a really meaningful event in egyptian public consciousness, and it doesn't mean somewhat for the united states in a daily wait either. of course, it's very important to use interest but it no longer serves as an animating force, a real strategic guiding partnership for the u.s. and

egypt. so i think that at the time of the revolution, the united states should have started to restructure its relationship with egypt, to haven't include goals that go got security and strategic cooperation. that didn't happen, for reasons that we can discuss later on the panel, but now i think the united states faces a real moment of truth where we have to make a decision about what is really important to us with respect to egypt. and for that reason i think we shoulshould suspend aid until et is much more clearly on a democratic path, as i will at least make it clear that the u.s. long-term interest in egypt includes a successful democratic process, that that is something that is in the u.s. interest. and that if we continue merrill will carry -- military aid count this as usual, it signals we'll be sending is that we accept with egyptians government are doing. and i don't think the united states government should send that signal. i think we should send a different signal. >> yeah, i think, i mean just to continue on this line of

thinking, just ask the question what does, u.s. focus right now. what does the u.s., what does washington want from egypt right now? and it doesn't have much to do with the peace treaty because that's basically self-sustaining at this point. it doesn't have much to do with overflight through the suez canal because just think lee is not a big priority. the main priority was to be two sec, one request. please do not create more terrorists. please stop. did not create more terrorists. do not re-create exact domestic policies and repression of the mubarak air that we went through in the 1990s and that led to such a horrible spiral of violence. so i would say come to come if you list our serious about china fighting a war on terrorism that would be the top priority. >> this kind of talk that i just

heard it enough to -- a lot of egyptians and rarely will make a lot of -- is much more tense than it is just now. one factor that completely excluded from that type of logic, that there's something on the egyptian bath. country as old as egypt, the revolution, talk about human dignity. the idea that, you know, the defense of the united states call the minister of defense of egypt, and asked them to stop doing that are doing that. i think that's exactly what egypt witnessed for 70 years, and with privileges for big in foreign countries. that is, some say, is not come i don't think it's not in the agenda in egypt right now. either for the revolutions or for the reformers, are not

considered well nowadays. however, i have another suggestion, that we need to define our relationship. are we partners? are we strategic allies? are we enemies? are we friends? these terms i know, these things, you know, i can define what the relationship is between the united states in italy, or the united states and turkey, or the united states and thailand but with any other country. that's what i want the egyptian american relationship to be exactly like. i mean we don't want privileges relationship that leads to -- [inaudible]. we can talk, we can negotiate. we can ask and seek a common interest. actually many of the facts that was sent can we in the 1990s warned the united states over and over and over again, how te and actually

a cold war event called the war in afghanistan began in russia. so there was a cooperation and there was together jihadists in afghanistan. we cooperated with that with the united states, but as we get to the '90s we were hit in egypt by a wave of terror, and we warned and warned and warned the united states of these terrorists, and the result was the united states invited him to come to new york and to live in new jersey and start his first bombardment of the center. that was not our duty to give them a visa to the united states but it was not that mohamed on the was living in hampton. he was in hamburg when it was formulated. the international committee for reasons, a lot of hours to discuss, that helped in creating the band of people that we think of as we can change the world

into a better place or an islamic place or, if these people are after us now. again, you, i was one of the people who came to washington in february, 2003, and warned against the war. many of the lectures we made, kind of messages, that it shouldn't happen. that the issue between the united states and egypt is like this, either be considered egypt as state or consider it to be a kind of a centralized country. >> there are warnings not coming from the other side, those warnings were not listened to from the united states. we saw a very disastrous decade of foreign policy in the region by the united states. but now there are warnings coming from the united states. clearly the u.s. has a divergence of opinion about what is happening in egypt, and understanding of the dangers represented by the current.

it is a relationship of equals, isn't your ally and friend kevin a fair hearing, why did he complete divergence and understand the objective reality? when you see the theory of the case on the united states side, and any of its allies in the western world, you come away with a very different fundamental reading about the basic dynamics in egypt and have on egyptian site. we have two quite different narratives about what's happening in egypt spent if you allow me a couple minutes just to define what are the lines here. the united states looks at egypt like a crisis like syria or somalia we have authorities and you've got to be inclusive with each other and live happily ever after. that's not the case in egypt. in egypt, it is a very existential issue. i mean, we're talking about the

moment in which abraham lincoln faced before the civil war. in which the united states lost 600,000 people. the identity of the state, the declaration, the severe threats from the southern states. in egypt is living exactly in a moment of 1953, in germany, of 19 to nine in iran and which countries are facing the historical existential moment in which you have to decide what to do with the state. luckily, the basic value of what we have in egypt, the basic values of what people are trying to do, succeeding or failing will depend on a lot of factors. not one of them is the united states. but that is the egyptian movement, the revolution, whatever you call it, is seeking a democratic, civic and modern state. that is idea that the founding

fathers of egypt in 1922 vote for egypt. since then we have failed and succeeded, and the revolution of that will live through history. however, i don't think that there's any question of the united states about these three goals. and i think if we are as partners, not as defenders or anything, we can come into terms of what should be done in egypt. we hear today that, you know, there is a roadmap and this roadmap could be, you know, the proof in the pudding. i've would not say that the united states will have a saying in egypt if it cuts the military eight or whatever aid for any period of time. i said in beginning that i was never enthusiastic about the american aid for economic and other reasons. but i found that we used to

pressure them come to make them do the right thing. make sure to do something that would guarantee a backlash. don't forget the 1960s. spent mohamed, do you agree with that general description of -- [applause] >> unfortunately not. generally i don't agree with it. the state of egypt is a mess. the republic of 1952, military -- they owe him the incentives. they owe him the starting of the republic. the state of the last 50 years. and 2015, arab language is about 40%. in 2015, 40% of egyptians can't speak or write their name. they can't write -- the bus number. they are non-functional and that is a lot of the state. the states he talked about i

believe i will call it the cairo elite. the state serves them. none of them go to public school. states go, public system or public transportation. right now financially, my son will never ride the bus like most cairo elite who control the state. now we want this revision of this state to face the same kind of heat again. i believe it failed but it's time for change. we are wasting time. the revolution against mubarak will change but we fail. mubarak failed us as well and that we are returning back. we need -- it's a mess. it's not norway. is cairo, egypt, they can't even communicate if you're from sinai. that's why we have this in sinai. the last chapter of this crisis,

i'm from cairo. i'm very fortunate to live. these people and sinai can't own land, can't work, can't go to public speeches. cairo owns everything. [inaudible] more smart army because they learn, and now we want to defend the state. the egyptian people don't understand. 8 million egyptians are broad because of this failed state. [applause] >> is this working? okay, good. with all due respect, from where i sit i think the real existential threat to egypt is

not islamist. it's not the most brother. it's not withstanding the disaster, but complete disaster that was morsi's tenure in power. the real existential threat is poverty, ignorance, underdevelopment, egyptians were not treated with dignity and respect, or tortured and abused by their government, w who don't have jobs, whose government doesn't make efforts to build a better life for them. all the things that mohammad mission. that is the real existential threat to egypt and that is the crime that egyptians have suffered under for decades. this is not the responsibility of the united states to solve its problem. in my view there are things that we can do to help but there are things we can do to hurt. it's really egyptians responsibly but i think we should be clear on what the real problems facing egypt are. and in that regard, yes, egypt and the united states will continue to cooperate going forward, on security and strategic matters. those are very important interest to the united states. they're very important to the

egyptian government and they have been for a long time and they will continue to be. but in my view we can't have with this egyptian government is a partnership. in my view, when there's an egyptian government that takes genuine steps towards a democratic civic state and a humane state and a state that respects the rights of its citizens, that is the kind of egyptians state that the united states can build a partnership, a close relationship with come with all the benefits that brings. in the meantime, i would never argue for cutting relations but i don't even esso think we should permit cut our aid program and we will have close strategic cooperation between each of doesn't do those things because it's a client state of the tourney to egypt as a proud country and it knows what it's strategic answers are and it cooperates with the united states on the things that are in its own interest and that's how it should be. egypt doesn't pursue counterterrorism in the sinai or peace with israel because of a billion dollars in u.s. military aid.

no. egypt doesn't sing because its leadership thinks that's in egypt interest. so those will continue but beyond that i think this is the moment where the united states should pull back, should reassess, should stop and think about how it wants to position itself with the egypt that is emerging. i think it's also clear from what my colleague said that most of egyptians at this moment don't want the united states to pursue a close partnership with the. i think both sides at this point me to kind of step back and take stalk and take a deep breath and that's why think we are. >> if we are thinking about a retooled bilateral relationship, what are the strategic interests that underpin it? wants this relationship about? u.s.-egyptian relations can't be about the bilateral relationship. there has to be something undergirding that. so what is it? what are the convergences of interest that can sustain this bilateral relationship going forward? and i put that -- >> i will just say, i mean, we

are having a productive disagreement on this panel and it relates to a perception of what is going on right now in terms of the road map. and maybe also in terms of our interpretation of what egypt and u.s. came in the past 40 years. but my concern, i completely agree with you that people in washington shouldn't be sending orders to cairo. and that's exactly why in my writings i call for the u.s. just to stop participating, and what is basically the reproduction of authoritarianism in egypt it is not to say that egypt should an independent. to the contrary it actually should be independent, that it is going to be a master taking place, if there's another -- another repression of activists across the whole political spectrum, i don't want the teargas canisters with made in u.s.a. landing there. and i don't want my tax dollars in aid money from the u.s. going

to do. i wanted to pull out, defense and authoritarian egypt. >> well, to follow up on that, does the united states have interest in maintaining relationships? and the reverse, as egypt, what are egypt's interest in maintaining and continuing perhaps a different kind of relationship? what are egypt's interest? clearly, this isn't a case of charity. egypt have strategic interests. what are those interest and why would this relationship continue into the future? >> well, i think we're not talking but egypt in particular. egypt as part of a region and since second world war, we have a number of things that made united states interested in the region. certainly we have all the old ways, the suez canal and other areas. there's also the american nation

in order to make the world safe for stability in many ways. and i think the egypt -- in doing this. let me say something. egypt has done a lot of cents. we didn't manage the country very well. but the picture i'm hearing here, there's another reason the left. cairo has about 50 million people in it. there's other quarters in cairo. even the number we got 25%. that means with 75% that are not out of 85 many people who say they're in egypt and libya. i know there's a very spotlight and everything that's batting egypt, and i know more than what you know, about egypt but i

think there's a lot of good things in egypt as well. and egyptians have tried to deal with underdevelopment and other problems. they did better than some countries and they did worse than other countries. so there's nothing -- it will remain the business of egyptians. that is the point. are we capable, and we can talk about a number of important interests that we have in the region. one interest, how to look at the middle east after the arab spring, all coming, are we going to move from one revolution to another? i hear in the last panel about, you know, judging the government, judging the muslim brothers. one beverage into another to another, is that the cycle that can work it out in terms of under very normal and very important and very respectable

kinds of values, but in reality it took the country don't help. it took us to the moslem brothers. it took us to the regime the that's how we will look at the region. at syria, at iraq, as jim and, at libya, and we now, the entire region is in fire in many ways. a second important i thought until very recently was the united states is interested not to have another -- [inaudible]. i'm afraid that we are not the one who is writing or fertilizing the ground for terrorism. terrorists are there. many of them are trained by the cia in afghanistan. they came back under morsi and morsi releases them from prison, and they came out of sinai in order to blow up a gas pipeline

between us and israel, and also to kill in egyptians who were very minority because of the peace treaty between us and israel. so here, you know, that is the interest because we like it or not, and certainly having care as a discipline of its own based on rita disclaims, religious value, i really something of a whole interest. number three, i think egypt is always very good for american investment and economic valley. we have the fifth biggest general motors fifth biggest general motors factory worker at the time general motors was going through, actually it was making money out of egypt. so here, you know, there's a lot of economic interest but egypt has a geopolitical as well as strategic value in the region. egyptian military was not given the money.

it was to make the united states on to work an work in middle ean environment. and that was every two years in which one of the largest maneuvers made in the entire world after nato. so here we have, we cannot have it both ways, talk about, we talk about strategic issues if you were strategic means are important, very important goal, very important strategic. but then we say these guys have got to follow that one. don't take me wrong, i mean, we want to work very hard to reach into a civic democratic and modern country. that's why we are fighting people who did actually tried to take the country to the middle ages. they want to meet egypt and other iraqi. i am surprised totally that they didn't find one study in the united states about the revolution of 2012 with

explosives that's very close and data from the iranian regime. spin on this point, i had huge problems i wrote extensively about my problems with the constitution, but, frankly, it was a constitution not supported by the united states. it was a constitution written by egypt elected representatives and pass in a referendum. i was quite dismayed, but the notion that this is the fault of the international community, i mean, it is a disconnect where these are the actions of egyptian. of want to talk about incentives to our these are the results of independent democratic processes in egypt, as much as we might be dismayed by the outcome? >> it has doubled. number one, the outcome at the institution remind i disagree that it was going to be direction of the religious state. second, restitution. therefore, they refuse to

supervise. only the muslim brother members who made the supervision of the referendum. number two, that there was an actual -- that took place. and never the constitution have simply that made that constitution, barely it was a rule about constitutions of course. number three, president morsi himself, the day he got the constitution, he said will make a commission to amend it. that is the first time in history that the day the constitution was made, the constitution was voted for was the same day in which the president is telling his people we need to amend the constitution. because he knows that egyptian people would get angry because of the constitution and it was the first of the revolt on june 15, that was a result of the constitution in that way.

it was not criticized it was not evaluated. it was not followed our friends here in washington. >> amy, there's a lot of talk about aid, having just recently turned from egypt and having a pretty wide range of media, it's clear the diplomatic community and international commuting more broadly is out of ideas, not knowing really what to do next. in your estimation, and thinking beyond simply the question of foreign military, what is the sort of near-term agenda for the united states, and more broadly for the international community. >> i think it has a positive and maybe we could say a negative element. first, the positive element could be the united states and other international actors laying out much more clearly in a way that egyptians could understand but i think we've really failed to do this so far,

what is possible and close relationship with the united states. what the international community can offer to egypt. far beyond foreign aid, which i agree very much that is not something that is would have beneficial to egypt anymore and is already a bit on autopilot at the time of agenda -- january 25 revolution. what are all the other things the international commuting and in particular the west can offer egypt? investment, technical support, trade, all kind of things that are what egypt really, really needs to see. not more foreign aid, whether it's from the goal for the united states. that creates that kind depends in egypt i think egyptian don't really want. it's unhealthy in the long run. so first i think the international community, especially the united states, should lay out a vision of what we can really offer in egypt that is moving in a positive direction politically and economically. in my view we haven't done it. we didn't have clearly after january 25, and we haven't done it now. so that's the first thing.

that's a positive vision of what's at stake, what can the benefits be of strong relationship with a democratizing egypt and i egypt that is modernizing and moving in a positive direction, respecting the rights of all its citizens. in a more negative sense, my view is very important right now that the united states government doesn't do anything, say anything, take any steps that would lend support or condone or endorse in any way what's going on right now in egypt are i think we should just step back, say a lot less, be much more quiet. doesn't necessarily mean criticizing every moment. that's not necessarily appropriate and it's not even penetrating into egyptian public opinion or consciousness. i do think egyptians want to do that right now, but we should definitely avoid lending our support or endorsement to what's going on. which unfortunately includes a lot of very troubling things. the reinstatement of the state of emergency, a wide crackdown on egyptian could not only the

muslim brotherhood and morsi supporters, but others as well. many troubling development. i think that many in egypt want that united states to support the road map and endorse what's happening in egypt right now. and i don't think the united states should, so i think that should be our sort of near-term horizon, pulling back and saying when you're on a clear democratic path, we will acknowledge it. we will recognize it and we will congratulate you. at any time when going to kind of tort ourselves to adjust and except for what's going on when it's not a democratic path right now. so right now it's not. >> just one way to help in terms of aid would be debt relief for the united states to completely forgive all the debt that egypt accumulated, especially during the mubarak years. that's something you essentially not put on the table. only time that obama did it was to offer a million dollars in debt relief at a time coincide

with additional bone of a billion dollars to essentially the debt load remained the same. so i think debt relief is a basic idea and something that egyptians have called for that the u.s. could do to help. >> just to quickly jump in on it but actually, the united states did offer debt relief, and this is something that was very, very unpopular with the united states congress and it took a lot of work for the obama administration to get congress to agree to a debt swap which essential would relieve $1 billion a egyp egypt's debt e united states and use those resources for development process in the interest of egyptian people. so it actually would have worked out very well for egypt. it's just not possible. it cost the u.s. money to do this but it's not just running off of the debt. it cost the u.s. treasury money, and in this fiscal environment with was going on in egypt now, how much do i want to do that, i can assure you the u.s. congress is just not going to support that kind of initiative.

>> but i think that is very instructive and. if you're not willing to suspend money in such a basic way that egyptians are going forward that something would help relieve the burden and the economy, then what does that say about all the other stuff at we are willing to do? >> we did offer that. the arthritis -- the congress authorized the debt swap and egyptian governments have what they would like more because of their fiscal situation was immediate budget support. that's what the united states propose to do and that is now what is held up in congress but it was the egyptian government has said they didn't want debt relief. >> if i may say one more here. i think it's premature to question aid. why the situation is in -- what egypt is doing now our roadmaps -- [inaudible] an alternate election wasn't. this is a dilemma for nightmare. we're talking investment and political situation is more

important for most egyptians. and there is no severe crisis in egypt. [inaudible] popular support of muslim brotherhood leading to disaster, direction of terrorists and on the table not only egypt. >> one of the immediate effects and this one last question and i'll open it up for questions from the audience, when the immediate effects of morsi with the reconfiguration of regional relationships. with the uae and saudi stepping in to provide come and kuwait stepping in almost immediately to provide aid to egypt and a different relationship emerging with qatar and turkey. do you think, doctor, that this is representative of a new regional alignment?

is this sort of a set of relationships you and you were going forward? are you concerned that despite the talk of independence and pictures is a nationalism that a new kind of dependency is now emerging? >> well, i certainly am worried about any kind of dependency. and i wish the new air that we are starting in june 30 will go a long. and as everybody to be concerned about emergency situations. in a, but also understand the current situation were on a couple months. we're not talking about decades. situation is quite different. however, i want to just get back direction to point, that that is regional allies. that was the alliance of the united states to egypt with the gulf countries with morocco, and now with libya. and these countries supported

egypt. and that is the moderation alliance that was working on the united states on the issues with israel, on how to deal with the iranian state. and also with the situation that the united states got in trouble with like an iraq war in afghanistan and other places, i mean, extended to the whole greater middle east. that was the anchor. and then came the changes that took place in january 2011, and what happened later. and we started to have a very strange another configuration of our in which a country like egypt, with all the problems we have, you know, became like a satellite of the country like, you know, with all due respect, like qatar. and then turkey start to talk about coming back to kind of turkish, you know, kind of, i

will say dominance but i will say and attempt to repeat history in one or another. but that was something that, you come about something that was out split. the original that we are coming, why the saudis, the kuwaitis, the libyans, the moroccans and others. because we are on the front line. we are on the front lines as we were in the 1990s, and we're now on the frontline of fighting terrorism. actually a lot of egyptians voted for morsi. most of the revolutionaries stood by him. he signed with them something called an agreement in which he agreed that he would change the constitutional assembly. he didn't. he signed with them that he would make a coalition government of all include some new, political forces. he didn't. he started a process of

brotherhood in egypt and now we're in the process of -- of egypt. the freedom and justice party is included. he will not be the sole. he will be part of the coming election. and we have the full right to give the vote and compare and go through the process. to veto the process, and look over all the strategic interest we're talking about. i think it will have a local lack of wisdom. >> let's turn to -- let me turn to the crowd. is a microphone that will be passed around. please state your name and affiliation. i know there's a good number of egyptians in the ground so i will make this morning real. please, questions and not speeches. so please keep it to a question. i'll start off right here in the

front row. >> i'm from georgetown university. this question is directed to dr. monem said. being the prominent figure in the feed of journalism in egypt, to what extent do you think that there is now a strong movement for the freedom of the press, along with the other freedoms, political freedoms, economic freedoms, social freedoms that -- [inaudible] used to call her majesty journalism. to what extent there is no movement in egypt, whether among those who are drafting the

constitution, to what extent there is a strong movement towards the freedom of press in egypt? >> well, the egyptian press and egyptian media changed drastically since the beginning of this century. and one of the major changes that took place, you know, at first there was an explosion of technology. so something like television and data cloning, and also the printing press. the movement from the state to the individual sectors. that happened in the late years of mubarak, by the way, and it was not him totally. then came the revolution and the whole explosion began doubling. and so it took kind of a variation in the relationship to constitution of 2012, and then in the current state in egypt. however, i must say that the

majority of egyptian media now, and this is mostly private and independent, i mean, nobody sees government egyptian television. will have many of the so-called national press, but it is the private press. there's a very strong coalition that's not understood also in the united states. now, if the egyptian people who came out in tens of millions in june 30 and july 26, and those people, and institutions of the country, which everybody was just the remnants of the past. that's a we can't. the judiciary, the media, the army, intelligence and security community, the christian church, also the civil society saved some, an in these kind of coalitions decided that egypt is not going to be another iran. that's not the direction we

started with a 1922. so i think the media now, most of those in the media is taking, i will say, double positions in the way. supporting the roadmap, almost all of it. second, they are taking an attempt, as his attempt not through movement and ascents coming through the streets, riding the article that related to the freedom of the press, for instance. so the freedom of the press, the press syndicate, and any of the others started to suggest what kind of changes that will happen on that section of the constitution. others are doing the same in other fields. so there's not much more organized institutions alive way of having freedom of expression, and freedom of the press will be

like in the coming constitution. >> a quick follow-up on this and i will take my prerogative as moderator. on the issue of the press, one of the most dismaying developments for me is to see the role of the press on both sides. i don't distinguish either side here. entrance of obligating conspiracy theories, the idea that ambassador and patterson is supporting armed terrorism in egypt, that the united states is actively plotting to partition the country. and these ideas are being touted, the role of the press in stigmatizing defense. in the magazine this weekend now as on the front the fifth column with pictures, people that might have different views about the current transitional process but clearly are not traitors to their country. and so how exactly is egypt going to democratize with a press that is oftentimes conspiratorial and a

responsible? [applause] -- irresponsible. >> that's shameful and i will agree with you totally, you know. when you are in a period of political mobility through the most acute state for about three years, i'm not making any justification, it's just simply shameful. and i'm glad -- [inaudible] >> question right over here. >> hi. i'm with you led the council. i wanted to approach this idea of, go back to this idea foreign funding. mohamed, you mentioned that we can't talk about investment and so forth with political stagnation. one of the things that count as political stagnation is an active civil society, yet civil society in egypt lacks a lot of

times the resources and capabilities to act on domestic funding. and so i wanted to get each of your perspectives on the situation of foreign funded ngos today. i mean, i know there were reports of activists who are being investigated, which were subsequently denied. what is that state now? is, does foreign funding to ngos in egypt today still make sense? >> let's remember what happened in december 29 of 2011. egyptian security orchestrated several offices of ngos, mostly foreign funded ngo, and they have this famous trial and i believe 19 people -- average nine years and jails.

[inaudible] but i would like to establish between the government correspond and non-government correspond. [inaudible] i believe the outcomes of this conduct and the ways to reduce report and do some investigation, however it doesn't make them depend on local funded. ..

60 years and outside of cairo and pakistan. the security was non-- because they are not the government. it is very problematic and i believe it makes more hurt than more help to most egyptians. >> anybody else want to touch on that? >> sure. i agree with mohamed that foreign funding of egyptian ngos is very controversial and it's not widely popular in egypt to say the least however it is part of international law and norms that ngos have the right to associate with and receive funding from any partners around the world as long as that funding does not promote terrorism or violence. even though it may be very unpopular it still is part of the freedom of association and something that the united states

and other countries should defend in my view. in that regard i think that the verdict in the ngo trial convicting 43 americans to the egyptians and other nationals working for u.s. and german funded democracy organizations in egypt really is a thorn in the side of u.s. egyptian relations and certainly is in the front runner issue. it's not something that is driving calculations of how the relationship going forward at the fact that this verdict is handed down an american citizens and others were convicted for basically carrying out please pull democracy education activities with the full knowledge of the egyptian government is something that is really really shameful and until of -- is corrected them some way this will be a full and strong relationship with egypt. and that regard i wanted to follow on what you said about the press.

it's been incredibly disturbing in these recent weeks to see what has been in the press about the united states government or president or ambassador or other officials. this is another reason why think the united states can continue business as usual with egypt right now. these articles are in a state-owned press and on privately-owned media as well. i very much appreciate and welcome what you said to condemn this but intel and egyptian officials says this in egypt to egyptians then i won't really believe that this isn't going to stop anytime soon. it's very very disturbing and it actually doesn't bring credit to egypt. >> all the way to the back of the room. >> hi. mohamed from the dash organization. amy this question is for you. i notice you ended your last point on what gives credit to egypt. i think here in washington we have a tendency to focus on what

egypt is doing wrong which is very fair and i think there are a lot of mistakes being made. the sentiment in the region is that the obama -- has dropped the ball on the arab spring. they do not have a clear vision and position on what the u.s. government role should be in the region particularly with egypt. could you specifically share with us what you think the obama administration from today moving forward should do to rehabilitate that image collection of a try to rehabilitate that image as a think when you say stepping back a lot of us who have been following egypt closely feel like that's stepping back happen probably 18 to 20 months ago. there hasn't been sort of a clear position on a lot of the things that have happened in egypt coming out of the u.s. government. with this idea that we are no longer the central player in egypt and the egyptian sort of this is their process and they need to own it. moving forward specifically

would you think -- what do you think president obama should be doing and saying to the egyptian people? >> as i said at this very moment i don't think the united states states -- i think we should say a lot less. i think our messages are getting lost in egypt. i don't think they are penetrating. i don't think they are getting through. as i said i think the immediate things the united states should do is to suspend our aid program and until egypt is clearly returning to a democratic path. i think we should speak out at the appropriate time forthrightly about the things in egypt we think are concerning in terms of democracy and human rights. i think we should offer as a set a clear vision of what the united states could provide or could work with egypt on one's relations are on a better path in egypt is more clearly on a trajectory to democracy. this was actually something i thought we should've done under morsi. it's not limited to this new egyptian government. i thought we should've done something earlier to offer

something to provide an incentive to show what's at stake in terms of a good relationship with the united states. those are the things i think we should do. i think what we shouldn't do is rush to kind of embrace or approval or sort of accept exactly what's going on in egypt now politically. that's for egyptians to decide and they are going to do what they want to do but the united states doesn't necessarily need to be actively supporting it in anyway in my view. it's not in our strategic interests. >> the left-hand side. >> hi. i have a question for the panel regarding what's going on in egypt right now and our relation with egypt vis-à-vis the rise of the russian and china in terms of the region. so -- >> let me tell you something.

the egyptian military officials love the united states. they love to come here. they love to come here and spend time. if you asked them would you prefer to spend months in moscow or the united states and they would say boldly know. i believe it's a mess. there is not a relation between egypt and united the united states that will change anytime soon. [inaudible] >> he i love both countries. what i'm saying here is i'm saying the u.s. influence is diminishing a lot for so many reasons and at the same time you have other players like china. first of all --. >> i got it. are russia and china going to

play bigger role in egypt going forward? >> i would agree u.s. and -- is declining and the entire region not just egypt however there is is not a directive by other forces meaning u.s. and china. more influence of china and russia in the region is not real. there is a huge distance between the political culture and the establishment between the two countries. russia and china and most arab countries. the military elite are all -- and there is no threat toward russia or china anytime soon. the elite egyptian, as i said. >> aside from you know the nice inclinations of the egyptians to come to the united states to this great country, outside of

that i don't think only it was morsi who started to come back to the game with russia china brazil and india and there is some school of thought in egypt we have to diversify our relationship. let us have a good relationship with everybody particularly with the united states. and in that sense you know i am saying that is a school of thought that deals with not much. there is very little in russia and very little in china for egypt. the egyptian army and all the trade banking investments schools are much more attuned to the american and western alliance at large. in the last four decades as i said we have a very neat kind of a relationship that i thought

was helping both sides, egypt and the west as well. egypt no matter what it is faced with the problem. it's a very important delegitimizing factor. who has a good relationship with egypt is ultimately who will have the good relationship with the rest of the nation. >> the woman on the right-hand side here. >> hi. i can see from our composition here that there is a link between the media in egypt and the democracy and a lot of people here are really bothered by our media, the private one. but i just want you to come and and -- comments on what is the media here in the united states doing?

i see the media here is bashing the administration and they are sending egypt -- so i would like to know your comment and if you would like to link it to democracy in the world. thanks. >> i'm not a chairman of the "washington post" unfortunately so don't look at me. [laughter] [applause] >> i have something to say about the american media. i believe most american media in egypt are from egypt-based american journalist and they report in my opinion what they see and what they witnessed. the big story of egypt in the last two months is the killing of the rebels and it is big news around the world. when you kill a few hundred people or 1600 as some people have accounted its huge front-page news anywhere on the

face of the earth. it doesn't matter who kills them were they armed or not, was fair political scenarios? that is not important for reporters. i do some reporting as well. especially when it is security its huge news. that is why most egyptians criticize american coverage which i believe reading it from here is very balanced and wise. they criticize morsi. they criticize the killing and they criticize every -- everybody who is and western oriented using western standards. applying the egyptian standard for american reporting is mistaken that is what most egyptians are doing. the egyptian sun journalist to america and don't have information to control american media. here is a station you can't get and that is not the case in united states.

[inaudible] [applause] [inaudible] 's's been no, no i say what i believe him. >> you no, know we have to move on. we are not going to take speeches from the floor. >> you the whole media is talking about their signature. >> is widely reported in the american media. [inaudible] 's been nothing was mentioned. >> it was widely reported as well. >> they are unfair and you know it. [applause]

>> i want to put in my panel but i couldn't. our first priority was the economy, the economy come for the economy and the u.s. did not support the economy. in our perspective that means they did not support the revolution so when do you think actually -- i'm optimistic about egypt's future no matter what and i know we will do it anyways but the u.s. are they going to ever agree seriously decide to push for an invest in egypt and support the economy in egypt? there other ways than the u.s. and you understand what they mean or are they going to wait to see whoever's going to come into power? >> is anyone in the international community have a real plan to support its? >> i agree with that very much. they are two things the united states can offer to egypt that would really make a difference to egypt's future.

trade and investment. investment really has to do with how business people perceive the political and security environment in egypt. there isn't that much the united states government can do that really is in the hands of egyptian so there's actually a lot of american businesses that were interested in investing in egypt and in fact almost exactly a year ago the u.s. chamber of commerce organized one of the largest business allegations ever in the world to egypt. 100 ceos and top leaders and top american business went to egypt. they had a very productive week there. as they were giving their press conference a mob of protesters was breaking into the u.s. embassy the egyptian security forces were unfortunately nowhere to be seen. that's a terrible message and it actually undid the positive messages that those business leaders had taken away and they were very reluctant to invest.

this is something the u.s. would very much like to encourage. egypt has so much going for it in terms of talent and human capital and resources and strategic look -- but when businesses look at each if they want to see security stability and that is not happening right now. in terms of trade i think the obama administration made a big mistake in my view by deciding not to offer a free trade agreement to put that on the table is something that egypt and the u.s. could work together toward. it's a very complex trust us and it's very hard and difficult but for a variety of reasons the mostly having to do with domestic politics the obama administration decided not to offer that to egypt early on and i think that was a mistake. that would have been something very positive for egypt to work toward and i hope in the future that might be back on the table if conditions change. >> if i could respond to the question. i find myself being in the position of the debbie downer on this panel but so be it.

the quick answer to your question is no. within the u.s. government they are not the kinds of incentives to provide serious economic relief to egypt. regardless of what type of regime is in control the u.s. enjoyed friendly relationships with mubarak at the structural investment programs didn't go very far. they weren't helpful for the kind of egyptians you are working with. and i don't think we are going to see a free trade agreement. that didn't happen under the bush administration and research from mike luck david explained to me very plainly. he said if you look around the region the u.s. signs free trade agreements with countries with which it does not trade. so that is when you are going to get a free trade agreement when there is no trade to begin with. with egypt the u.s. has a trade surplus of there is no real incentive there for the kinds of trade that would be beneficial.

i think that's important to clarify because otherwise they there is a risk of moral hazard in which egyptians might keep expecting somehow usaid is going to bring a bailout or is going to bring relief. although i deliver a dismal message and i hope to some extent clarity can be helpful. >> there is another way i suggested before and many times i came here to washington was that americans -- to american corporations and instead of the monies going to egypt we use it as an incentive to american business to do business in egypt particularly as i said we have a lot of success stories. so that is the kind of relationship that i look for and which we will have a win-win situation. the united states has got the surplus and also our exports and the united states improved by

the agreement which was a quasi-kind of free trade area and a certain kind of commodities that are made by idget shins but with an israeli component. so we got actually billion dollars of exports with this kind of an agreement. that is one of the ways in which if you are giving to anybody else you are giving to your own workers your own investors. >> let me take two questions together because we are running out of time. the gentleman in the middle. wait for the microphone please. thank you. >> you my question is taking into consideration three different facts that currently right now which number one shutting down the media channels.

all the media channels that i'd have a different opinion from all the media channels that are currently being permitted to work. second, having taken into consideration the arrest of the young women in egypt where a few days ago the youngest 6-year-old girl in cairo last week. this was the youngest detained ever in egyptian history because of her political opinion or being out. >> let's get to the question. >> the third one classifying egypt as a second worst country in journalism. what is wrong with the current media with all its different types and protecting the civil rights of the egyptian's? >> we will take one more question and we will bundle them

together. right here in the middle. >> my question is -- i like the goal you articulated that we should ask the regime in egypt to at least stop producing more terrorists. how to personalize that? what would you be your plan to do that after 3000 or 4000 killed? >> we will start without question. i think it begins with something something -- a theme that has run through several panels today which would be an inclusive political process which would mean ending immediately the crackdown against the muslim brotherhood releasing muslim brotherhood leaders allowing figures who in self-imposed exile to return, basically

getting them to buy into the political process so they and their counters will feel included so you will not not have a return to the 1990s were you just basically have a single party state with nominal participation for nonislamist movements and then you have the muslim brotherhood basically in jail. so i think that would be a basic step. it does not require -- it doesn't require a magic wand. it just requires clinical will. >> anybody else have thoughts on the first comment? >> i asked many of my american friends to tell me what the united states is doing or can do with a secret organization that nobody knows about its membership or its finances or its international connections. also if it is proven in the entire history of it that it is keen on keeping -- [inaudible] i agree that we have to be inclusive and in this way we can

apply it to anyone who disturbs the process of democracy. at the same time we should not allow again, and i'm repeating here how existential is it. what happened in germany? what what happened and iran? fascist organizations and the capabilities of impeding the future of countries and they pay at the end a very heavy price. the freedom and justice party will participate in the coming elections of egyptian parliament and i agree that people will say even with all the martyrdom kind of talk and the religious challenges it should be allowed. i think body politic the current balance of power in egypt allows it and no one should be taken

out of freedom of expression and getting the word out. >> two last questions. we will start in the back over here. okay, go first. >> thank you. this is a question for dr. said. after january 2007 he wrote a series of articles on why we failed or how we failed and i think you were probably end you still are the only senior figure of mubarak's regime who has actually attempted and this is introspection and i'm not talking about an apology but at least an acknowledgment on the failure. your analysis was based on staying within the regime there were the forces to which he belongs and they were the forces

of the status quo. so my question now is now that these forces two years later has the balance shifted at all? have the forces of the status quo and particularly this status of the military establishment have they changed positions on any of the issues you try to push within mubarak's party and failed? >> we will get to two last questions and we will start here over here and we will take your question to wrap it up. >> i'm from the arab league in d.c.. engaging the international community so i would like to pick the panel's mind. what should we do in a nutshell to engage the international community in just one, two, three steps? >> the last question over here. one second for the microphone.

>> thank you very much. a very quick question. the statement that the egyptian american relations cannot go as business as usual because i really believe that the u.s. is taking too much for too little. $1.3 billion a year for eight and most of it is f-16 fighter jets that are obsolete the u.s. army is not using our plans to retire in future years. the rest is m-1 tanks, a all these reports we are seeing right now in the egyptian military. in contrast the u.s. is getting things like -- and other benefits in egypt so i really believe and i'm also tired of whatever the u.s. egyptian relation people talk about the aid is that this is the only thing. what i would like to hear from now on from you is the government administration is

talking about things like investment in egypt, mutual relation, trade and free trade is what we should be talking about. my question is do you think in the foreseeable future we will start hearing from the egyptian administration that we are sick and tired of this and this relation cannot be going as usual? spank you. >> why don't we start from the end jason. >> to respond to the prior question as it relates to this last question i guess if you are asking how i would -- my recommendations for engaging the international community and engaging the united states i would offer one recommendation which would be start refusing usaid and all the strings that, attached with it. >> i just called at the beginning for a serious assessment including the aid issue. we should not outright talk

about the f-16 and all of the military. it depends on many strategic balances so i think we need an assessment for sure but to this assessment should he based on 40 years of friendship and even human being to human being alliance between the americans and the egyptians. all of the polls made by measuring american corporations and the public polls are favorably replaced by the american public. as sam beckett was saying i did write a series of articles about why did we fail during the mubarak era in this situation. now it's very difficult to make another assessment and died due make some assessments but it can be wrong as anything i write. because the situation is very

fluent. for three years and now everybody is in many ways moving and we have been too long and we have been -- we have been too wrong and we have been to write. between these two polls i think it's time now for egyptians. that is why foreign help will do little except in technical issues. i was very much -- the indian government is offering us in lectures -- electronic system they used in india to make sure the of the integrity of the election process for example. that is the kind of help -- providing monitors for the election and also assessments of our institution build up. all these are things that can be help will and for a country that we might not be in complete admiration of it but at least can achieve you know, some of

the most important things that we want to have particularly as i said sipc, democratic and moderate. >> i believe the structure of the aid as we know now was in relation between the u.s. and egypt. as long as it's there it will still bolster the relation between the two sides. if you don't have a good relationship between cairo and washington this is a way of. [inaudible] it is very poor and there is not any public school in operation. most egyptians would value that highly. you would be highly appreciated by most egyptians but given the aid as it is the u.s. congress believe they are entitled to

what they should do. the egyptian government from its side doesn't indicate american public and policy in the house especially what the u.s. gets in return. air flight space meaning three-point five a day and that is huge. most people in the congress don't know that and egyptian state does not promote it here in washington for a lot of reasons which i fail to understand. the it's the only way to have a relationship between the two countries. >> in terms of what egypt can do to position itself to attract support from the international community if it wants that support and egypt that is open to the world not seen the phobic , and egypt that is tolerant, and egypt that is trying to promote and activate the talents of its youth that make up the bulk of its

population. and egypt that is clearly on a path to political stability that is a more stable environment where investors can calm and there are reliable rules of the game and processes in place. and egypt that doesn't resort to violence to solve its political problems. this is the kind of egypt that the world will want to support and look favorably upon. the egypt that has unfolded in the past past couple years unfortunately is not that egypt and i think the real egypt is struggling to get out and it's along the lines of a vision that i pointed out but unfortunately it's not the egypt we see today. >> thanks for the questions and thank you to the panel. [applause] >> just to wrap up there have been a lot of differences of opinion expressed here today but i think one thing we can all agree upon is that this conference has been exceptional in terms of the diversity of views and opinions expressed here today and i want to thank all of our panelists and all of our moderators who have come

from cairo and canada texas and elsewhere for sharing their views and insights. this conference has been on twitter with many people in egypt tweeting they wish this kind of conference could take place in cairo. we hope they can in the future but in the meantime i am deeply honored to have hosted the step of commerce edition about a country that is dear to all of us here so thank you all for joining us and i look forward to you coming to our next conference. >> former treasury secretary henry paulson and former house financial services committee chair arnie frank talk about the 2008 initial crisis five years after the collapse of lehman brothers. the two are partners in writing the 2010 dodd-frank adds changing the number of financial rules as a result of the crisis. "the wall street journal"'s david wessel moderates. this is just beginning.

>> we will start with a question on the minds of a lot of people in the public. when you look at the entire picture the number of prosecutions and the sec charges and executive compensation combat the public statements of contrition or lack thereof for the leaders of wall street do you think that the people who are responsible for the decisions that led to this devastating crisis have been held fully accountable? >> well, i sure know that is the question on the public's mind and i am going to say something that may not resonate a lot publicly. but, if you accept my explanation of the crisis which is the excesses have been building for years and that a giant credit bubble burst, that the definition of a bubble is

something that the market never fully understand until it worst and my explanation that every financial crisis in history has its roots in government policies and then when it verse it manifests itself in the financial system no matter how it's structured. then, iq may accept my answer which is the banks made a lot of mistakes, that there is nothing wrong and we should focus on those mistakes and correct those mistakes but that the men who were running these banks in the people who were running these banks conquered the men and women working in these banks were dealing with a 100 year storm something the likes of which they have never seen before and the country where they have to go back to the great depression seeing something like that. they would try to blow their entities up.

so i am assuming that given all the investigations that have gone on that when people broke the law and they are being held accountable but i understand that few out there exist. >> first he is not the justice department. we had a very important job which was 1-800-prevents things from falling apart totally in 2008 and then trying hard to keep them from recurring. i don't speak to you from direct involvement in that. secondly i want to talk to some of my liberal friends about this. one of the reasons we had the new laws was a lot of stuff that was bad was not illegal and i want to talk to liberals in particular. a central element in due process is that you do not criminally prosecute someone unless he or she had good reason to know that

was illegal and there were ambiguities. people said well -- if you don't win. earl warren wouldn't let us do that. i said wouldn't have. i do think this. that's a major issue and you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that people did things knowing that they were against the law. that doesn't mean ignorance but it was illegal. on the other hand i have to say i am very disappointed. i think they are acting many of them -- if you look at the law and look at what we did we didn't stop them from doing other things. people want psychic income from the government and their a lot of these guys that are still making a lot of money. >> as a former banker i was disgusted by a lot of the things i saw you know.

disgusted by the mistakes that were made and the behaviors and so on. but you can be disgusted, you can be disappointed but you can still take the basic view that barney and i have taken at least i'm assuming that the legal system is working. >> barney frank lehman brothers. he tried to say that he couldn't and they didn't have the legal authority to do it because they were in such bad shape. you once had a great line where you said that was national free-market day the day that lehman went down. >> i had a very good relationship with the secretary and by the way what happened to bipartisanship and where did it go? since september 2008 it was alive and well. when a republican president and then midst of an election came

to democratic congress and said you guys work this out with paulson and bernanke and we did. we were working closely them. then. i was in new york for the democratic campaign fund-raiser the week that lehman went out there -- under. the phone would ring and he would be calling up to tell me about a new disaster. most of the markets had closed so we were talking about lehman brothers and i knew he was doing everything possible to keep it going. i went home and i said to my husband -- then might date barclays bank is going to buy lehman brothers and paulson told me that. it turned out they pull the plug so i know he tried very hard to do that. my comment was because a lot of my conservative friends that said let them go bankrupt. let it fall so lehman was allowed to fall and of course the consequences were so terrible that consensus came

that it happened again. that is why it was national free-market day. >> the other thing which barney allowed me to tell the story and the poll has come out with their reissue was it wasn't too long after lehman went down -- excuse me that there stearns went down that the markets and again with bear stearns bear stearns had only been saved because a buyer in the forms of jpmorgan emerged and the fed has assisted that by your. we had learned at that time that we didn't have the necessary authorities to save a failing investment bank without a buyer. ben bernanke went and talked with barney when he chaired the house financial services committee which we didn't have the emergency powers.

to wind them down outside of the bankruptcy process and barney explained what we knew was true after he explained it that we weren't going to be able to get those authorities from congress. maybe lehman would fail but they ended up enacting those as part of it. >> let me say making a partisan point a strong wing of the republican subcommittee let it happen. i didn't fully answer your question. hank convinced me and ben bernanke that here was the problem. if an institution that failed they had one of two choices. they could either pay all of the debts or none of the deaths.

lehman they paid none of the debts. aig paid all of the debts and everybody is in a bad mood so what we did in the bill. [laughter] what we did in the bill was to give them the authority when an institution fell. we had death panels in our bill in 2010. they were put out of business and then the authorities can step in and pay only as much of the debt as they think is necessary to avoid further contagion recovering it from financial -- but that was in the bill -- it was in the bill because hank asked us to put it there and he had no legal authority. it was all or nothing and we said do as much as you have to but no more. >> i would say even just on lehman we didn't even have all

because we couldn't guarantee or put in capital. aig the fed was able to make a loan because it was secured by insurance. >> that was the other thing though. herbert hoover had signed a bill giving the fed the power essentially to give money to anybody that felt they needed it to keep the economy going. that we repealed so you don't have that unrestricted power anymore. >> a number of people from bob diamond the former ceo of barclays to elizabeth warren the senator from massachusetts have said we did a lot of nice things in dodd-frank and i'm glad that the banks have more capital but we haven't solved the problems. do you think we have sought -- salted? >> here's what i will say. i haven't no doubt too big to fail this is not the thing that i am most about because as a result of dodd-frank regulators now have the tools to manage the

failure of any large financial institution and to keep it out of bankruptcy. so, what i said is too big to fail is a misnomer anyway because it's not just size. its complexity and interconnectedness number one. i go on to say that no bank is to bid to liquidate. almost any bank of sizes too big to liquidate in the middle of a crisis. in terms of a week into is what we have in the u.s. and regulators i wish we would have had that in much better tools to work with. if you are asking me whether those tools have been performing globally i would say the answer is that there is more that needs

to be done. the financial markets are global but they are integrated. they are not regulated nationally. i don't think we can never get there. we can do a better job of harmonizing it. we don't have a perfect regulatory system in the u.s.. we have five different regulators arguing and fighting with each other. it's even more problematic globally so is it perfect? no, but dodd-frank you know as required in the living wills but plans to liquidate these large institutions has given regulators the authority to do so and i think the reason that the things we did, a lot of the reasons for the things we did were unpopular but one of the reasons they were unpopular is that as barney says if an institution fails they should not be propped up to conform. that is what we were forced to

do. >> let me say here is the way the bill clearly works. there are institutions that are too big to fail and endure the consequences. that means there are institutions which is a failing cannot pay their debts it will have these negative effects. what is different is you can no longer legally -- no one in the federal government not the fed or the secretary of treasury -- no one can advance such an institution which cannot pay its debts and keep it alive. the prerequisite is the institution is put out of business. the shareholders are gone and the board of directors have dissolved. the fdic takes it over. in financial terms means to solve but they get rid of it. what happened is the secretary of treasury may find there are not enough assets in the bank and not enough money from the shareholders to pay enough of the debts or enough to stop

things but the secretary of the treasury and the law is mandated to recover every penny by assessing financial institutions over $50 billion so my question to people is what did they think is going to go wrong? one group says you know what, a major financial and sisters was in trouble there were the overwhelming political pressure not to put it out of business but to keep it going. in what country? in america with george bush and barack obama and all the congressional leadership and everybody else we were barely able to get to talk to them. the notion that the american public would demand that we go to the rescue of a big bank and keep it going. dimon didn't have -- what about internationally? what if a bank somewhere else -- massive failure people said what if they said what a fail fail? remember in 2008 lehman was in

trouble. lehman went under and aig was in trouble in a couple of others were but goldman and wells fargo and jpmorgan chase i think we had to force them to take the money. they didn't need the money. we insisted they take it so as not to stigmatize the others that needed it. yes it could be if there was a massive drop -- i want to quote yet sick carbine. he was once asked what it plans of the soviet union invades israel? >> said that something you cannot plan. >> paulsen asked me to do this. you are not going to get a word in edgewise with barney on the panel and he said don't worry i'm really aggressive. >> to me where politics could enter and so i agree with barney we have a lot of tools that we need and on top of that the banks are better capitalized than better regulated and so on and as you know my focus is on other issues. now that the big banks aren't a

problem and not that we don't have more to deal with a big banks but i'm much more focused on fannie and freddie and the shadow banking markets and so on. i do want to say we will know how these things work when we have a crisis and when the people are sitting in their seats of authority. again, the place where politics could come in is partly -- because the things we did were so unpopular. really unpopular. there were polls when i left office that showed they showed more favorable than the tarp. it was funny now but at the time i got to tell you. >> and you weren't up for re-election. >> those who voted for it were more concerned about the polls than i was that i was plenty concerned. so the deal is i think

regulators have got the tools they need but as i said -- and they have the emergency authorities to guarantee liabilities to putting capital everything that i think they need, but i think there may be pressure to liquidate these banks and not prop them up too quickly. >> the question is what if too many of them failed? we can't guarantee that none of them will fail but what hank just outlined showed if one does fail the others will be in stronger condition and the likelihood of them being blown over evenly by the wind is diminished by the fact that they had to add strength for themselves. >> if you were to add one more title to dodd-frank what would it equips? >> i would have merged the sec and ftc. the only problem is the cftc is

the funds and the fcc is the east coast and west coast financial. would have been politically difficult. we would have had shays rebellion breakout. >> you would have had rebellion on the east coast and the west coast. it would would have been in con. >> the cftc when it was started dealt with corn and pork etc.. then what happened was the financial derivatives cause the confusion. before you had financial derivatives. ice or post a solution at one point which is that we should give the cftc jurisdiction over everything edible and the fcc had everything else. the agriculture people wouldn't give it up. [laughter] >> fannie and freddie. you mentioned family in -- fannie and freddie. we now basically nationalized the mortgage market. what should we do? what are the principles we should use?

>> i just want to say the first thing that barney and democrats and republicans worked on in getting done was these extraordinary authorities of fannie and freddie and i don't think they got as much attention as they might have because before they became unglued these organizations were in totality nine times larger than lehman brothers and they were in the market auctioning $20 billion in securities. if one of those auctions had gone bad and people started dumping the securities it would have been terrible. can you imagine home prices would have gone and the defaults we would have had if those institutions were put into conservatorship. i think they are about as effective as anything we did during the crisis and its the biggest untold story. now i am very concerned because right now roughly 90%, maybe not

quite that roughly 90% in america middle residential mortgages have gotten some kind of government support so i argue that means that government subsidies are setting the price in the terms, not the private marketplace. so my thought is i am no longer treasury secretary. i don't have to come up with a specific proposal but what i do say is come up with principles. i do like the corker warner bill but we could have anything that shrunk their mission. i'm not someone that says they shouldn't exist but i would phase them out and then have some clear roadmap for what will succeed them and i think anything we do should have

private market participants should be at risk and any government entity should be very explicit. the government should be paid for that guarantee and the price should be sufficient that there is room for a private mortgage market and then i would limit the mission in terms of either the size of qualifying mortgages , the income to the borrower or first-time homeowners are all of the above. >> but they are doing all the things you always wanted them to do. they are making homeownership available. >> i've been very skeptical of homeownership. in the first place they say you liberals let them run out of control. from 1995 -- 1994 the congress passed something called the homeowners equity protection act that said to the federal reserve please regulate mortgages and don't let mortgages be given out improperly.

he rejected that authority and said it was an intrusion into the market. he did not think this would go out of control and from 95 to 2006 i was in the minority. a republican congress i was originally too sanguine about fannie mae and freddie mac. he became secretary in 2006 and it looked like we were going to be in the majority. he called me and we began working together and the first serious legislation reining in fannie mae and freddie mac came in 2007 when i was the chairman. we did it. i don't think the hybrid private sure holder of public mission is too much tension there. here's the policy debate. some of the free-market conservative purists believe just pull it out altogether. people in the housing business say to us luck if you want a 30-year fixed-rate mortgages to be available there has to be a government guarantee. the government should not be

guaranteed credit risk. it should be available for people to buy some kind of interest rate risk if they're going to commit for 30 years. that is what we are talking about. my piece of this and this is what i have always felt. i think people oversold the importance of homeownership onto people. i want to see the affordable housing trust fund we put into our bill funded and what i believe we need to do is first of all when you shut down mortgages we should build outlaw the bad mortgages and replace them with decent affordable housing. >> do think the bush and obama administration did as much as they could have to help people that were underwater? >> no but here's part of the problem. it was not either the bush administration or the obama administration. it was the none of the above administration. this is the first time since the great depression that we had a serious problem to deal with during a presidential transition. even though they moved it from

march 4 to january 20, and hank and i talked about this. i remember this clearly. the first 350 billion of the tarp went out and we argued about that. hank did say to me i have another -- i can draw another 350. if obama oks it i will ask for it. i asked the obama administration to locate and they said we are not charging and neither bush nor obama frankly was willing to getting gauged. the obama administration said we only have one president at a time that i got in trouble by saying i thought that overestimated the number of presidents that we have. [laughter] we lost an opportunity and i honestly believe that i hope political scientists will study this. this is the first cave -- case where he had a negative impact of the transition. >> i would say one thing though in all seriousness. i think george bush was a great

president during this period and the way he dealt with the fact that he didn't worry about public sentiment and he was determined to do what was right. i do think that we had housing and we could spend a lot of time talking about housing finance. i wasn't able to come up with a way to limit the amount of foreclosures although i do think the fannie and freddie actually did more than anything else that was done. i regret that and it alluded the obama administration also but i think the level -- as i look back at it now despite some of the angst i felt during that transition, as a look back at it now the policy continuity was extraordinary. because president obama -- ben

bernanke was still there and barney was still there. chris dodd was still there and so they picked tim geithner. geithner worked hand in glove in designing these programs that was capital market stabilization programs, they had the programs they needed and they were in place when they got there. they managed it well. there was pressure. no doubt there was pressure but does every new president there is pressure from the base to get rid of what the other guys had just done to disavow it but they basically kept the programs and they manage the wealth. >> i agree and bush did deserve a lot of credit. we did have one difference of opinion because we had written into the tarp bill the mortgage relief. i know he believed there was

such an urgency to get the first money out that he couldn't wait for some of that. he did say to me he was willing to ask for the second tranche of money and that would have been used were mortgages. the money had to come from somewhere. ..

they might have been the logical one greenspan and others always said we can't do monetary policy without some insight. when it came out that what aig had been the recipient paid back in when it came out that they had given a very large bonuses

to people the pitch forks were out in the industry and there was a white heat of anger i actually feared at that time that we were going to lose the capacity for a coherent government. we go back and i sure this is the case that's when the fed got demonized. first they gave the money to people than they gave all these bonuses but chris dodd to put a bill to restrict the bonuses got in political trouble because he had constitutionally not tried for the bonus is. so the fed was weaker but i don't think this added to it. i think it happened from the reaction because they had the major political blame for the balance. >> do you think the fed has been hurt by this? by the storm of who should replace ben bernanke? >> i agree with barney that it is accentuated by the fire and the storm of the unpopularity of

the actions that we had to take which was very unpopular and the american people never understood. we did these to prevent a disaster. something barney and bayh understood. something that could have rivaled the great depression. but barney was the first one that explained to me. it was counterfactual. you're never going to get counterfactual credit for the disaster that you avoided. and i agreed with him that the bonuses, legal though they were, they infuriated the american public. but this last thing to get to your specific question i just hate the political turmoil that we have seen and the politics around the appointment with the next chairman of the fed. i don't like the way that this has been handled. i would like to have this

decision made quickly. we have got good people. larry summers is a really good man. he's highly regarded and able. i don't -- you know, if janet outstanding, john cohen, outstanding. we have good candidates. this is a very good decision president obama has got to make. i've always argued that president bush made some important decisions. i think that picking ben bernanke was a good one and a very important one. and i think this one is important and one of the things that really bothers me about washington is sometimes people disagree with you on policy they go after you then on all kind of other issues and personalize it and so on. >> one of the most distressing things about this -- i'm very

critical of the fed. what you see is the bankers and the investment people. the fed has been under very unfair us all. people come planning when the fed sweatband with de swap to help europe from avoiding disaster and the role of what's happened is some on the left but even more on the right have now turned on the fed and i think the failure of the finance committee which knows better than to defend the fed against the irresponsible attacks on the institution is very, very discouraging and it is ultimately coming back to hurt them. they might think somebody else is going to do it but they have a responsibility not to allow the fed to be as attacked and i think as damaged as it has been. >> you may be right. i agree with everything you've

said but i wonder if right now the finance community what help. >> in this case it well. here's what they say they want to say yes, congressman from here is you're $5,000 but would you please ease up on the fed [laughter] >> the pragmatic recommendations. now to turn to questions here are the rules. you can ask a question. a question in this with a question mark. no speeches. these guys think the speech is to be speaking to the mic and say to you are because this is on c-span and everything. and again, keep your questions short. i have an ipad and apparently there are some corporate members that may also have a question. so can we get a mic in the front? there is a woman in the front. >> i work for the naval funds graduate school. i've been struggling since we

felt hard to understand how it happened. i never studied economics. but the things that puzzled me is no one was concerned as it appeared that giving loans to people that had no money and that the assumption was they were going to have it for a few months and then sell it and the price would go up i guess that was nuts. why didn't anybody raise that question? >> by the way come here is what happened to get 50 years ago most people who borrowed money were going to have to pay back, and then thanks to the liquidity coming from the non-bank sources and from information technology, and you are able to get into securitization. it's the one difference with the way they are administering the bill now. so people began to make loans, sell the loans and not have any further responsibility. the lender borrower discipline to do it one of the substances to that is the rating agency of

which no one has done a worse job in my memory. and so, that is essentially what happened. that it was this people gave loans who shouldn't have gotten loans because the worry that they wouldn't be repaid was a problem. one of the things we put into the bill and this is my one criticism of the administration's implementation we put in the requirement for the risk retention the idea would be that if you made the mortgage loan the person that brought those of and securitized them in the general public had to maintain some of the risk to get 60 votes in the senate we have to agree to an exception for that for the really good loans. the regulators to my dismay and i wrote an article about this collapse those two categories so now there are some loans we did ban and the other thing if you make the loan for the mortgages, you don't have to have this risk retention. that is my most serious complaint.

>> i would agree with everything barney has said that i'm going to add two additional things. the first is ever since world war ii, the plethora of policies that we have had in the u.s., not just fannin or friday that the home mortgage interest rate, all of the difference attended to -- intended to promote home ownership to degette as barney said you can't have too much of a good thing. a residential home prices tended to go up in the united states so all the models people looked at didn't foresee a big drop in residential mortgages. if you are an investor and you owned a residential mortgage, the biggest risk wasn't historical you wouldn't get your money back. was he wouldn't get it back too soon. the other thing i would like to say that disappointed me in terms of dodd-frank and the way that was watered down, the

regulators allowed this exception if the mortgage was a qualified mortgage and the new consumer finance protection bureau originally had regulations that said the wire had to be able to afford the home and put 20% down. there is a huge resistance. so, the affordability is important and the ability to pay and willingness to pay is also important. and the only way you get the willingness to pay is the 20% down. so even on that there is no consumer finance protection bureau to my judgment to the political pressure -- >> if the cfpb -- >> it didn't get to the cfpb. by the way i don't think it had to be 20% down. there were other ways. again, there were supposed to be three categories of mortgages. mortgages were so bad you can't make them. they are not enforcing it.

you can't make them. then there were two others paid the average mortgage where there was risk retention securitized and then a small number of really good mortgages. we didn't have that exception. but a couple of senators wanted and the one thing about this a blockbuster -- filibuster, you want 60 you're going to give me this. so what the regulator did come everybody else did and they had the banks. i'm critical of this. the only solace i have is the statutory authority is still there. i hope and a few years they would reconsider that you get >> there is a gentleman here on the left. right here. and then in the green. yes. >> you mentioned earlier that there is a lot to be done

abroad. is there or should there be a contingency plan in case for the chinese banks if they run into trouble? >> should there be a contingency plan in case one of the big chinese banks fail? that will be popular. [laughter] >> what barney said there are some things that are very hard to plan for. but there is certainly a contingency planning when i was treasury secretary and ensure they do the planning for the big global banks and for the crises starting in other places. our financial crisis i maintain wasn't a u.s. financial crisis but was year of u.s. and european. they had at least as big a problem. they didn't deal with it the way that we dealt with it. so you look at the timeliness

and the effectiveness it was better in terms of getting capital. but yes, i am sure that the regulators have contingency problems for the things that happened globally. but as he said in answer to david's questions, we don't have control in terms of what foreign countries do. we just have to coordinate. >> can i ask a question on this? is it the case they might be is less likely given the fact the settlement would be less constrained by public opinion that they could step in easier than we could? >> i didn't deal with the specific. that's why i got the specific question and i dealt with it generally because i didn't want to get into it specifically that china. but i'm not predicting that likelihood and i would say that all over the world but europeans start off and the germans were

bailing out and no one was even noticing it. in the early days the crisis didn't just start. in the u.s. there is likely was much less political concern about the bailouts. and even in the u.s. if too big to fail became an issue and step back we have had the crisis for a long time. most of them are manageable. most of them are manageable. it was only when we didn't have the authority that we needed a this was just such an extraordinary test that the american public was hurt. >> bob winter. two related questions. you spoke about the lack of criminality enforcement. and i am a stand the positions that you both enunciated. i wonder if you could address

the same question from the point of view of regulatory authority and the of devotee of the regulators to step in and to take action against individuals, executives and board members who are engaged. >> that is very important. because they have argued we can't. then the argument that we don't want to put another big company out of business is no excuse. and by the way coming after the and vegetables as a deterrent. finding the company doesn't involve anybody. so, but here is one. i don't know why. i haven't been there. but here is one factor that i will see in their defense. the securities exchange commission and the commodities commission are both under funded. we gave the cftc new authority to do everything. frankly, again, it is a partisan difference.

when the republicans took over the house in 2010, they decided that the budget was significantly underfunded. they had the money to run this whole industry. but the problem is what they tell me if we begin to get tough on these people, they will mitigate. and this led me beyond what we had. and a couple of those cases can i exhaust us. one of the things i hope we could have done is to get for example the fiscal autonomy that the bank regulators have come and we could have gotten it done publicly. >> there is a woman in the front here. the woman in the front in the second row. go ahead. >> my name is peter ackerman. since in 1980, 70% of all of the mortgages were held and 64.5% of the american people own their own home. today, 90% are held gse and 65%

of all americans own their homes. my question is to the two of you, what are we trying to end? in the interim there have been a long crisis and in what happened in 2008. what are we trying to accomplish in the housing policy? >> that is the question. neither one of us are making the policy. peter, you heard me say that one of the most effective things that we did was necessary to get through the night was putting in the conservatorship. but when we did that -- and i remember talking right as we were doing that and got no -- nothing but support for them and we said and i said that this is a timeout. we can't straighten this out right now in the crisis. but it never dawned on me because no one was standing up and said this is a great system.

the public support for the private profits etc. this is a great system but we still got it and right now because they are making the money hand over fist and all of that money is in the federal budget, there is actually it scored as adding to the deficit to deal with it to get so you have some disincentives. i would say that it could be dealt with, but the other thing is as you said it's not just a matter that it's the housing policy to get tell me why it's fair that someone should get an interest rate deduction on the million dollar mortgage. where does that come from? >> if i studied over again i wouldn't have deduction to vignette unfortunately it is now built in. you couldn't just pull let out. we have had a natural policy that has treated renting as if

it were somehow second. i will give you an example of that. when "the new york times" business executives had one of the most out pages articles about isn't it terrible all of these poor homeowners are living in areas where there's for closure now have to put up with renters in their neighborhood? i couldn't believe what i was reading. i urge you to go back and read this. they talk about the renters are bad to the neighborhood. all of those renters in manhattan. [laughter] but so i think we need to move away from this. here's the reason we are not getting rid of fannie and freddie. there was a brilliant solution in the german constitution after world war ii. people were worried in the parliamentary system about the instability of france and italy where you kept getting the government overthrown by the collisions of people who were anti. and in the german constitution

it says this. you cannot in the parliament overturned a government to the view cannot turn the government out unless the same resolution. so it prevents a collision of the majority in the american congress from getting rid of fannie and freddie. but not together on any one of version. there was an enterprise who want to simply get out of it to the it was a utility to get an interest rate guaranteed. that's not the only example. if you had a two-step should we get rid of the electoral college that he will never get enough people together on the alternative. so that is where we keep saying. seabeck barbara mathews at the regulatory analytics. i had the honor and before that i serve on the committees. my question therefore is international. what did you learn and what would you advise american policy

makers today about american leadership in the financial institutions globally based on your experience? were there any good examples of cooperation? everyone knows the story about this but their must have been some good things that happened that were not told. >> if we read on the brink to explain what happened and how it happened and when it happened, that story is told because i think in many ways it brings out the worst in some people but it brings out the best and some people. there was great coordination and cooperation. and the way that we came together. when you look at the links between the time that lehman brothers went down, and we got the tarp legislation, republicans and democrats to work together to stave off

disaster coming to also had -- this wasn't just that you best. european banks had six different countries coming in to rescue their banks. when the g-7 met and we were dealing with it that weekend, they came together where they have a multi point proposal, which basically said we are going to stand behind, you know, all systemically important institutions. we aren't going to let them go down. we are going to capitalize the banks to the extent that makes sense. we are going to make sure that we have a robust federal deposit insurance. and there was a great coordination and cooperation and communication throughout this. so, the structure -- we were dealing with a 100 years storm without the necessary authorities or the system in the

u.s.. and of course globally the u.s. system was ahead of where we were globally. and so i think people actually came to get there very well. it's just a -- to me as i look back on it with a perspective of the five years, the time i was conservative with a lot of things. i look back with a great gratitude. >> there was coordination then. and we had a lot of coordination during the regulation. because the european market commission was from merrill lynch and he and i talked a lot. and i told him that we were going to the risk retention. he went back to the e.u. and was joining in some retention and said the americans are going to do it. so they did it and when i ran into resistance i was able to say that e.u. did it. they literally did stop each other. but there has been more together.

but one great example of international cooperation now and the media tends to focus too much on the negative that is the tax agreements that are coming forward. there is great progress being made in the multinational on cutting down people's multinational ability to pay taxes to nobody. as far as the other stuff is concerned, yes, we are talking about it because we have this problem and the financial people -- we have some difference of opinion. one of their role models is the teenage child of divorced parents. mama would have let me do that. i will live with that because he won't stop me from doing that. but if i was in england they let me do that. i can go to japan and get away from that. >> i think what you have seen we did it by moving through the opposite.

we have been a good influence on each other and there's been a lot of conversation and it's not perfect the there's a lot less regulatory arbitrage. >> thank you triet i have been serving the chapter talking about housing and about the global financing system. i heard but we haven't talked a lot about the u.s. and china and i think there is a lot of in a balanced between our financing system and china's financing system and we talk about too big to fail and the chinese system based on the effort on the state and the enterprises and that's why the subsidy -- >> you have a question? >> yes, my question is how to

protect the americans middle class ownership from people with cash coming in to buy it from us. we have gravitated to the extreme of the not adequate oversight and creating the enterprises. now we seem to have another extreme that we only ask people to have 20% down and excellent credit scores after all of this crisis. have we made it too hard for people to buy a house? >> there would still be risk retention. i thought the 20% might have been rigid. remember, by the way 20% didn't mean that you couldn't get a mortgage. it meant that he would have to -- who ever lived you that money to buy your home without a 20% down payment had to believe was

a good enough loan to retain 5% of the rest. so, there's risk retention. they can't securitized that consent. but their must not have been any mortgages before 1985 because the securitization didn't exist before that securitization brought it forward in the 80's and into the 90's. we have made it too hard i think to give away the mortgages that shouldn't be given. >> i have two questions. what do you think about some of volcker role and the move to make big banks have smaller? >> we will see it adopted fairly soon. and a whole lot of regulated. but i think they are making progress. they are trying to do it but they were trying to accommodate with the financial and institution said. i think it's going to be a very

solid volcker rule and i don't think it's going to harm what went on. we talk about the british are doing something. so i think that one will work. as for making them smaller, as pointed out, we give the regulators the power to reduce things if they believe that any one financial institution becomes a problem to be even making them shrink in size and by reducing the function, but reducing the principal as jamie dimond pointed out, one reason the banks got bigger is they started asking bank of america and wells fargo can you buy this bank because we didn't want to let it go. they said they had a legitimate complaint. but we did pressure them to buy their merrill lynch.

money answer is this i don't think it is the problem. the argument is we have to much political pressure to anybody that thinks the banks have a lot of political clout didn't watch our legislation. on every issue when there was a dispute between the smaller banks and big banks the smaller banks one. we changed the deposit insurance assessments so the smaller banks and the bigger banks. from this efp we increased the deposit insurance from 100 to 250. i know people have this about the concern in general but i'm not persuaded that the size of the banks alone is the problem. >> by every that my focus right now is on other issues. there are issues of the banks

and it's a complicated organization as etc., etc.. but i take the view that there has been so much focus on this and that it's the ultimate defense as capital and liquidity. and i am all for the federal rules and i think that is a good starting point and dodd-frank require years of the largest institutions have that. so again i am focused on trying to call attention to other things, the shadow banking and fannie and freddie -- >> no one has told me. remember if you are worried about too big to fail with is the size of of which the interconnectedness' and the

complexity is one of the real issues and that's why i've said innovation is great almost anywhere. you can have too much innovation in the finance in my judgment complexity which is why there's too much complexity in the banks with much higher capital requirements against the complex instruments. i am pleased that dodd-frank requires that over-the-counter derivatives to be traded on the central clearing houses and again the transparency there. i'm not discounting it i just want to make sure that we clean up the messes. >> the major complexity is implemented growth. >> mr. frank, mr. paulson, thanf thank you for the time. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] earlier today president obama marked the fifth anniversary of the collapse of lehman brothers investment bank by highlighting signs of recovery from the 2008 financial crisis and warning against fights over the budget in the nation's debt ceiling. the president also spoke today about what he called another

mass shooting in the united states at the dvr by the white house. the associated press reports at least one gunman opened fire inside the building this morning. a number of people killed and wounded imposing a law enforcement officer. the president said the victims were courageous americans who knew about the risks of serving overseas. but they wouldn't have expected such unimaginable violence at home. the u.s. senate meets today at two eastern and we will have live coverage as the senators began with general speeches. we will be looking for reaction to the navy yard shooting and that about four eastern the senate resumes debate on the bill setting up programs to encourage energy saving building codes across the country to wait about an hour later they will set that aside for the date on the judicial nominations to beat the house is not in session

today. they return tomorrow. we were intervenors on the side of the federal communications commission in this case so we were supporting the determination that there was a concern with these bottleneck companies controlling who are the winners and losers on the internet and that they had the right and the legal authority under the first amendment and elsewhere in the communications act to protect consumers and protect competition by prohibiting the use gatekeepers from favoring certain content services and applications over others. >> our position has been that in to oppose the adoption of that net neutrality rules on both policies and legal grounds it as the commissioner mcdowell said, and this is a very important point just in terms of the policy issue there was really no evidence on the

commission itself they didn't make any findings that the internet providers actually had market power. european commission president delivered his annual state of the european union address last week. he said europe is finally emerging from its economic recession and he called for the establishing of a banking union on the continent.

>> [speaking in native tongue] >> translator: good morning. the session is resumed. first item on the agenda is a debate in the state of the union. we have the commissioner with us mr. barroso, welcome. and i would welcome the foreign affairs minister, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. it is a great pleasure for me to open this debate on the state of the union and welcome you all to the session. the the date on the state of the union involving the the commission of parliament. it's an important moment in the life of the european union.

there is a summit taking place today here in strasbourg on the institutions. once a year we come together to have this kind of discussion. it will be quite a lively debate and we talk about the road map for the european union on these occasions. the institutions of the european union, parliament commission we talk in a very transparent fashion we talk in public it is the public domain as opposed to the other entity. the entity that goes to brussels for its meetings kidding and sometimes they stated they are the european executives and often they meet behind closed doors whereas we meet in public session. i think it is a good thing that when we are talking about european affairs it is a good thing to have our doors wide open to have a transparent d date for all citizens are not the european union to listen to and observed.

people in europe want to know who is taking the decisions, where, on what basis and what are the arguments advanced. as far as the date today is concerned there is a premise that we must remember and it's a question of confidence. people have lost confidence in the institutions and that's why we have to talk about transparency. it is what creates a trust and that should be the motive and i very much hope this the date will be transparent and serve as a basis for trust, trust in terms of the way in which the body of the european democracy operates in our work. ladies and gentlemen, colleagues, commission and parliament. i do have one common principal if you like that we all follow with a very broad majority here in the parliament and in the commission as well. unanimously so. we talk about the way in which the e.u. should work and we work with a community that it is a

dialogue. it's consensus. that's how we try to resolve our conflict through the dialogue and consensus. instead of having the strongest ones when we for solidarity between the small and large states come east and west, north and south but as a community effort. the effort means that every one works with a common interest rather than the individual interest. the overall interest prevails. ladies and gentlemen, of course we do also have situations where there's competition between individual nation states and interest but that is the opposite of the community and at that and it's very risky and very dangerous. therefore i would like to put out an appeal to the member states of the european union and to the members of the european council in particular when it comes to the implementation of large-scale common project and we decide with a majority vote we have a long list of tasks

that cannot be resolved and cannot go ahead because of the council on fortunately you have individual interests which are blocking us and stopping us from going forward. that holds particularly true, lady zandt gentlemen, for the decisions that we've taken here for the national perspectives that we decide on democratically with the majority implementation has become very, very difficult indeed and very complex. ladies and gentlemen, we have had five years of crisis now this was the first summer that was relatively calm and we were happy about that. we didn't have one disaster after another week after week. we didn't have any visions of the end of time etc. during the course and that is a jerry good thing. that in itself i think is good news so it has been koln and serene but let's not delude ourselves in terms of the d date. we have millions of people that are suffering the consequences of the crisis.

we have tremendously high on employment figures and we have great poverty. we also still have a credit problem. these issues have not yet been resolved. we take people's concerns very seriously indeed and we have to work up until the european parliament elections. there are problems that are still outstanding and we need to tackle them and show bravery in tackling these issues. tomorrow morning and this is also good news i will have an opportunity to speak about us and the european central bank resenting the banking union. i think we've been able to come up with a good solution between the two institutions. in terms of the future, in terms of supervision and the parliamentary control over the supervision and the activities of the central bank within the banking union and there again we talk about transparency. the transparency that i was referring to leon the citizens want to know what the ec be is doing and the banking supervisor

is doing and what their role is. that is another example. we need to implement this. because the worst thing we have is youth unemployment. young people in europe if they don't have any hope and prospect how can they believe and trust in the european union. ladies and gentlemen, i spoke about the problems already about a financial framework and i expect the of the entities on the commission and council i expect them to make sure to use these to promote growth in europe. the financial perspectives after all it is a program, targeted investment program that is why we require it. i now call the president of the commission mr. barroso. [applause] >> mr. president, also office of the council, ladies and

gentlemen, and eight months' time, voters will judge what we achieved together in the last five years. in in this fight years, europe has been present in the lives of citizens than ever before. europe has been discussed in the coffee houses and popular talk shows all over our continent. today i want to look at what we've done together, what we have yet to do and i want to present what i believe are the main ideas for the political debate ahead of next year's elections. honorable members, as we speak exactly five years ago, the united states government to go over fannie mae and freddie mac, bailed out aig and the bankruptcy protection. these events triggered the financial crisis and devolved into an unprecedented economic crisis and became a social

crisis with dramatic consequences for many of our citizens. these events have abrogated the problem that distresses our government. they have led to an increase in unemployment especially among young people. and they are still holding back the hour households and our companies. but europe has fought back in those years we have given a determined response. we suffer the crisis together. and we did and we are doing it. if we look back and think about what we have done together throughout the crisis, i think it is fair to say that we will never have thought this was all possible five years ago. we are fundamentally reforming the financial sector so that people say things are safe. we have improved the way the government work together and how they return to some public financing is in their economies. we have mobilized over

700 million back from the brink. the biggest effort ever in stabilization between the countries. i still vividly remember my meeting last year with the chief economist of many of our leading banks. many of them were expecting greece to lead the bureau. all of them feared the disintegration of the area. now we can give a reply to those fears. no one has left or has been forced to leave the euro. this in the 28 member states and it will grow from 17 to 18 member states. what matters now is what we make of this progress. we can talk that up or down. do we drop confidence from this to pursue what we have started or do we be little the result of

our efforts? honorable members, i just came back from the incentives and i can tell you that this year we europeans did not receive any lessons from other parts of the world on how to address the crisis. we received the encouragement not because the crisis is over but because it is not over. but the resilience of the union has been tested and will continue to be tested. but what we are doing is creating the confidence that we are over the crisis provided we are not complacent. we are taking our challenge together and we have to tackle them together because in our world of the geopolitical changes, iowa believe that only together as the european union we can give our citizens what they aspire for our interests and press devotees are protected

and promoted in the age of liberalization. so now is the time to rise above the purely national issues and parochial interests and to have real progress toward europe. to bring the european perspective to the date for the natural constituencies. now is the time for those that cared about your love, but never the positions, wherever they come from to speak out for your up to free ourselves. we cannot expect others to do with either. honorable members, we have come a long way since the start of the crisis. in the last year the state of the union speech as stated that despite all of our efforts, our responses are not yet for the citizens or the partners. one year on the fact still us that our efforts have started to

convince. the most vulnerable countries are paying less to borrow and the output is increasing. market trust is returning. stock markets are performing well. the business outlook is improving. consumer confidence is sharply rising. we see that the countries who are most vulnerable to the crisis and are now doing most to reform their economies are starting to note the positive results. in spain as a signal of the very important reforms and increased competitiveness, exports of goods and service of the r. dee% of the economic gdp more than ever since you're not. on your land has been able to draw many from the capitol markets since the summer of 2012. the economy is expected to grow from its third consecutive year in 2013 and the manufacturing companies or rehiring stuff.

in portugal the current account, which was negative is expected to be balanced and sticking out after many quarters. greece has completed a just and three years a truly remarkable fiscal adjustment is regaining its competitiveness and is leaning for the first time in the case a primary surplus that started a program leader is also implementing a precondition for the return to growth. so, my point is for europe, the recovery is in france. let's be realistic and analysis. let's not overestimate the positive results. but let's not also underestimate what has been done. of course we need to be vigilant. even one final quarter doesn't mean that we are out of the

economic heavy weather. but in this group we are on the right track. on the basis as we now see them, we have good reason to be confident. this will push us to keep our effort. we owe it to those for whom is not getting rich and to those that do not profit from the positive fifa limit. we owe this to our 26 million unemployed. especially to the people that are unemployed and are looking to us that want to have reasons to feel hope about europe and about their own countries. so hope and confidence is also part of the economic equation. honorable members -- [applause] if we are where we are today it is because we have shown the results with that politics and policies to the lessons drawn from the crisis. and when i say we i really mean

we. it has been a joint effort. at each and every step, the european parliament may have the rules for one of the most impressive records of the of - work ever. i personally believe this is not sufficiently known by the citizens of europe and we deserve more credit and recognition for this. so let us continue to work together to reform our economies, for growth and jobs and to adapt our institutional architecture and it only if we do so we will leave the crisis behind us as well. if parliament and the commission's matter what we can and must do first and foremost what's become great is deliver the banking union. it is the first and most urgent to deepen our economic union as it is mapped out in the commission blueprint presented last autumn. the legislative process is

almost completed. the next step is the independent evaluation of the bank assets before it takes up the supervisory role to the it out for attention now must come to the simple resolution mechanism. the proposal was on the table. since july 20 and together we must do what is necessary to adopt stelle during this term. it is the way to ensure that taxpayers are no longer are the ones on the front line for paying the price of the bank failure. it is the way to make progress from a sovereign risk and to remedy one of the most alarming and unacceptable results of the crisis increased fragmentation of the financial sector and credit markets even an implicit reorganization and it is also the way to help restoring the normal landing to the economy. because in spite of the a, you

the monetary policy, the credit is not yet sufficiently flowing to the economy across the area. this needs to be addressed resolutely. this is about one thing, growth, to remedy the most pressing problem, unemployment pity the current level of unemployment is economic the unsustainable, politically unattainable, socially unacceptable. so all of us here in the commission and i am happy to have all of my colleagues of the commission today with me. all of those, not only one, but the collective effort all of us want to work with you intensively to deliver as much of our growth agenda, sustainable growth agenda as we can. we are mobilizing all of the issues that we have, but of course we have to be honest not

all instruments are at the european level. some of them are at a national level. and i want to focus on the implementation of the decisions that are most crucial now. usn planet and financing the real economy. we need also to avoid a jobless recovery. you're not therefore must stand up the basis of the reforms. over country's specific recommendations set up the member statements in this respect. there is what can be done at the national and what can be done at the european level. the focus would be also on what matters most for the real economy, exploiting the potential of the single market comes first. we have a well functioning single market and see the economic benefits of that. we need to extend the same to other areas. mobility, communications, energy, finance and e commerce to name the two.

we have to remove the obstacles who have the complete connecting europe. i would like to announce that today we will adopt the proposal that gives a push towards the single market for telecom's to the citizens know that europe has dramatically brought down the cost. the proposal of the strength is guaranteed and lower prices for consumers and present new opportunities for companies. we know that in the future trade will be more and more digital. it is a paradox that we have a mark for good but when it comes to digital market we have 28 national markets how can we grab all opportunities of the future that are open by the digital economy if we don't include this market. [applause] the same logic applies to the

digital agenda. it solves problems and improves the lives of said is the lead to citizens. it depends how well the people in businesse connected and by combining the digital agenda with the the protection and privacy our european model strengthens the interest of the citizens both with respect to internal and external developments about think the proposal legislation on the data protection is of most importance to the european commission. the single market has unemployment to read about in all remaining proposals and the single market act one and two and implementing the connected youth facility in the next few months we leave the foundations for the ideas to come. we are also adopting to the transformation on a global scale. as we must encourage.

that is why must invest in more innovation and technology and science. i have a great space and science in the capacity of human mind and capacity of a creative society to solve its problems the world is changing dramatically and i believe many of the solutions are going to come in europe and outside of europe from new science discoveries, from new technologies. and i want europe to be leading that effort globally. this is why we parliament and commission we have made such a priority of 2020 in discussions on the european budget to be the that is why we use the european budget to invest in skills, education and training and supporting talent that is why we have pushed forward. that is why later this autumn we will make further proposals for an industrial policy fit for the 21st century.

why we mobilized support for the s m e because if you believe a strong dynamic bass is dispensable for the strong european economy. [applause] the last change over the 2020 goals have set the economy on the growth and the resources reducing the cost and creating jobs to get by the end of this year we will come up with concrete proposals for our energy and climate free mark what 2030 and continue to shake the international agenda by fleshing out a comprehensive legally binding global climate agreement by 2015 with our partners. frankly we need the others on board. europe alone cannot do the fight against climate change peery we need a level playing field.

at the same time we will pursue our work and impact on the energy crisis and on a social collision. all of this is part of our agenda you can see all of the rest of this on c-span.org to the we are going live to the u.s. senate as they begin their day with a general speeches and look for reaction to today's washington navy yard shooting. about 4:00 eastern the senate resumesesna debate on a bill se. up programs to encourage energy saving building construction across the country. and about an hour later they will set that aside for the date on judicial nominations to provh refuge and strength. we don't boast about tomorrow, for no one really knows what a day may bring. lord, we ask you to comfort the victims and