this book? we have all been concerned how contentiousness and vicious the confirmation process has gotten over the years. a first i was trying to figure out how much has changed is it more importantly, like, but looking through the data one of the most obvious things is it is getting more difficult on average for judicial nominees to the federal courts, it

particularly has got much more difficult for the very brightest and the most influential of these to get on the court. just a couple of numbers to summarize if you look at nominee is of the federal circuit court prep although the supreme court, for those who went to the top than law school and graduated of the law review at the top of their class, those nominees took 65 percent maunder to get to the confirmation process then someone who did not go to a top law school. >> even a better way to measure the influence hatter to other judges rely on the opinions that they bright? if anything it is the impact if you look at the federal circuit court judge his

opinions get 20 percent more citation than the average federal judge, if you looked at his nomination about 60 percent montour to get through the confirmation process. if your political opponents think at nominee bill be influential then the other judges will follow their decisions how much harder is it to get them on the bench? the theory is simple. my guess is why none of the lawyers would ever serve on a jury. the answer is pretty obvious what that is the case. you are essentials the import and one vote they will defer to your expert knowledge in he was very good at persuading other people. so they would see if you are

tilting ever so slightly one way or another then strike you from the jury pool because they care that you may influence three or four or five other jurors on the panel. it turns out it is exactly the same for federal judges. talk about circuit court judges our supreme court justices it is just not the judge's own belief but the fact they've made poll other people on their panel to go to a certain way or write the influential judicial opinions that will sway other judges around the country like they are more than one vote and that raises concerns. let me give you a couple of examples in terms of the supreme court nomination

wind was the lead the nomination to the supreme court of period myers. if there is one of you on this that she was strongly against abortion by itself to a particular cause democrats to run to the barricade to fight a struggle as they could against it but if you go through the newspaper articles you cannot find democrats to speak against her but instead to have a number of democrats white harry reid and others that said she would make the ideal supreme court justice but how does that square with opposing the particular nominee? if anything harry admirers was more strongly against abortion and then anybody

else nominated yet she was okay but the opposition from harriett meyers did not come from democrats but republicans. if you look at the leaked stories and news reports with concerns she was not very bright but the types of questions they were preparing for her when she went to the senate judiciary committee, described as the types of questions you would have gotten in law school just to demonstrate they had a very strong grasp they were worried they would not be strong intellectually or to be its influence of the court so even if they thought they thought the same or favored radically against them favor the ideal

candidate. you want a smart nominee on the court the same way they don't want those people to be there. does anybody knows the three most cited appeals judges? >> poster is number one by far harvey wilkinson on senior status at least at the time was number three. poster is in a class by himself not as far but galaxies away but the interesting thing is if you look back to look at the ratings when they renominated cover those three judges got the three lowest ratings of any

circuit court nominee that has been confirmed to since the beginning of the current administration's. 50 votes of the panel is you can be voted as law qualified or unqualified. added 15 votes posner got eight to qualify in seven and qualified they did not get a single qualified vote so even dave look to his opinion for guidance llord did any other thing no one on the panel noted he was well qualified then you have the second worst rating with nine qualified a and six underqualified and harvey will consign it in -- will consume got five unqualified but neither had one member

of the aba panel think they were well qualified. if you go back to look at news stories you can find reporters who would talk off the record with the american bar association it is not the complete the table now well qualified but posner was dangerously brilliant or it easterbrook was dangerously brilliant too smart or too well qualified and that is why that aba had given such incredibly low rates. it is amazing in the book how many'' have probably 40 its opposition to candidates is mentioned how bright they

are but take charles schumer that is not the number one criteria for elevation to the supreme court many will reduce this talent in the legal acumen to set back or brett you to talk about who was on the core at the time who is described as brilliant but those same traits to get him nominated to the supreme court also stopped the confirmation. one of the quotes from posner this is from the "washington post" before "the new york times" a and did an article where it was mentioned they got this information from talking to members of the american bar association panel comity 64 billy a professor of law by all accounts is brilliant.

according to critics coming dangerously brilliant. it is pretty amazing how the judicial confirmation reprocess has changed over time or how conditioned on dash contentious but if anything circuit court nominees are district court nominees it is even more contentious. just to give a rough idea how those nominations have changed over time, if you look at all the nominations from 1900 through 1976, the average supreme court nomination took 20 days between nomination and confirmation almost 80 percent was confirmed within one month and almost 40 percent were confirmed unless they and 10 days.

carter did not have nominations to ronald reagan on end, the shortest was sandra day o'connor returned 37 days but the average is about 77 days aside the over 20 days average to an average of 77 days with confirmation as long as robert bork so it was a fairly dramatic change. i wish to use the numbers before the circuit and district court nominees through the end of the boxes first term last year 2012. esthetic you can see the square is for district court in the you can see by congress how they balance

around for most of the time going up above 100 days for both in 1987 when the democrats took control of the senate went up during clinton then enter bush the circuit court nominations soared well over 500 days during that period of time with a gradual upward trend. one thing to mention his basion lot of discussion in the press about the confirmation rates much of that is long if you look at articles of "the new york times" or "usa today" but they will pick nominations like november or december last year a lot of those can be greatly affected when the

president makes his nomination as the president tends to make them relatively vague in a congressional term. as late as september even. there is no way somebody will get confirmed or even have a hearing if you make nomination during the election a year of june or july is september sova run president tends to make a lot of nominations very laid before each election the makes of looks like the confirmation rate is relatively low but you need to see what eventually happens with those nominees for final outcome. when you do that you get a fairly different results than what you hear talk about in the media.

and looking at it by the president's with the three different types of courts for nomination to confirmation for district court nominees the diamond is for circuit court nominees for the d.c. circuit court that is steve the most important end if you go back to carter and reagan you talk about nominations that takes 68 or 69 days. bush number one circuit court nominations went 102 days and under clinton 230 days under bush number two, 360 days in a then it went down but still of the of with clinton or obama at 250 days in length.

of the more important them more difficult the confirmation battles has been. the nominations tend to be relatively shorter than if you look at the d.c. circuit court the average length of time for the bush nominees to be confirmed was 702 days which is quite a long. obama is 330 but it is quite a bit less or less than half under bush a lot of that house to do during the first two years of the bush of frustration he had the filibuster-proof said that but then a strong majority later. justice spend one minute on this but the question you often have is this lens of confirmation just to a few

extreme case is that took a long time were due to everybody taking longer than it did before? it shows everybody takes longer. how many months first 30 or 60 days or 60 or 90 or 120 days did ministration of carter, reagan, clinton, and obamacare the percentage of nominees confirmed basically takes the longer and longer periods of time to be confirmed. ronald reagan got 43 percent of the nomination is confirmed in the first 60 days for the second push it to a 120 days to get the

same percentage confirmed that is they're pretty large change that occurred in the same thing is true for each president and the percentage that it takes a longer time to get these guys confirm to. confirmation rates the biggest difference from the standard newspaper discussions with the pig the arbitrary dates rather than what finally happens to the nominees. the circuit court in the district court we will just aren't with bats and you can see a decline from carter to reagan and bush number one and bush number to and obama.

carter had about 93% of the nominees confirmed bush never to only had 70 percent there is a huge drop obamacare has gone up fair nature medically up 85% not quite as high under reagan. you could see a huge cage primarily because democrats had complete control of the senate for all four years of the first term. with the interesting pattern that goes on for the district court you basically see it is falling through bush never was and then i the guy has ben happening both parties has been guilty

is the this circuit for a more important than the district court but most that they face higher for the district court said they'd make the decision was let those nominees go through the we will make it particularly difficult for certain ones to get through and it is headed how long it takes the most important people to get through the dead do stories of the debate if you have a democratic president and a republican senate the president will talk about the contribution rates for the circuit court nominee is where the opposition will add the dominees together to say both are right but they

have focused on different combinations and this same thing happens in the opposite direction he kept trying to focus he said the cal bowl my confirmation rate is for this circuit court but democrats said overall it is very good because not because we let all the district court nominees but it would make the average between the two groups look very good even though the most important nominee is also with the d.c. circuit court nominees the decline over time only a couple of people for obama is early but you can still

see the general decline over time with a huge decrease overall but he has three nominee is that look like they have been going through extremely quickly see major radically change those results. let me explain something. why have these nominations become more contentious? its a very simple reason that more is at stake on who gets to be a gesture to reasons number one is the role of the federal court has exploded over the last 50 years 60 years 1960 through now the rate of the circuit court cases per

capita have gone up 12 times faster than their growth of population over that period of time which is phenomenal. if you talk quite that decays whiff that epa, federal election commission dozens of regulatory agencies that did not exist previously case is that would have gone to federal court not even a thought in somebody's mind that are commonplace now if anything the government has continued to grow a of the areas of our lives will continue to expand but what the federal court covers that nobody put have dreamed

it increased the importance of who gets the judge. the other thing is the role that the judge's perceived for themselves say a few themselves as policy makers as to the black letter of the law. as hard as it is to believe 80 or 100 years ago the president used to appoint judges from the other political party. the reason why is they had the belief at that time that it really didn't matter if somebody was a republican or democrat david look at the lot to do their best job to interpret so the last time the president appoint someone from the other party was herbert hoover and what

happened at that point hoover wrote letters to letters around the country to say who is the brightest person we can put on the supreme court? people said benjamin and they said that israel may criteria? i'll put him on the supreme court. kid you imagine nominating from another party but along the smartest with the notion they will all do exactly the same thing when they get of the court so it does not matter if i appoint a republican urged democrats to the supreme court. grover cleveland who is a democrat even with the democratic senate nominee republicans to the circuit court position with the

exact same reasoning to get the brightest people to be put on the courts regardless of their political views because he did not take the matter but obviously today judges our different in terms of making policy decisions. a lot is at stake of the you put it on the court to. that was not always the case. how can we get an idea how important the judgeships are two other positions? so we look at the nominations through the senate will take at the cabinet positions but you get some idea how the senate use of their positions by how much they fight over who

kids to be the nominee that is confirmed to. the bottom line is they want to fight over judicial appointments in over the cabinet level positions that indicate the members of the senate thinks who gets to be a judge is more important than the head of judiciary. for the department of justice. look at the obama district court nominee taking 20 times longer the circuit court nominations to a 26% locker -- launders director to six times. also the rate of

confirmation and that tends to be much higher. there is a difference how the judges work force as a cabinet position the big difference is when he makes a nomination to the court the same day the file is sorted to begin the consideration but per-capita level there could be one months or more to lapse between when the president announces it and it holds hearings. the numbers that would approximate for a when they can get the file to compare that to how long it takes to

get confirmed to an for carter his average cabinet nomination took eight days reagin, 18. clinton 25. and a little bit under nine days with the obama. you can see how it dramatically different that was with 260 some days for obama to get that circuit court nomination through. a lot of someone hedger percentage has fallen with the last administration but overall it is very high. the numbers i have shown with how the confirmation process has changed over time underestimates its for the important reason that

people who would have had their names put in 30 or 40 years ago is not to do what now the brightest people are not willing to duet. people like posner or easterbrook feat aba would not want to give them one well qualified for up to. it to be renominated could be confirmed to. the potential nominees know that when i was at yale or university of chicago i would talk to other faculty members who would tell me they had gotten inquiries from different administrations if they

would be interested in being a circuit court judge. they would say no i really don't want to have to go to the process. they're very bright maybe not as bright as a posner but they know their confirmations would have been very big and their reputation in tatters at the end. so when i did with "dumbing down the courts" was to interview people that had been through the confirmation process. those that were not willing to relive the experience in some who were willing to do so off the record but primarily to focus on those

cases republicans a and democrats who went through the meat grinder what it was like your life was put on hold for initially it was a great hardship and to go through so breaking process for academics almost monthly with a request for information like people at the university of virginia law school would describe how she was spending huge amounts of time to lead to the different requests to put together by democrats on the committee you try to waste your time on playing this fed did not care about. 99% she was convinced it was

filed in a back room someplace but probably the most difficult thing is they could not respond publicly to all the attacks. people were accused of being racist. i'll also have the blurb for "dumbing down the courts" also saying how it changed his kids favored no lugger interested in public life or go into those fields that would get them into the public eye because there's so traumatized happened to their dad here is the up problem of the brightest nominees would be willing to go through their process in

the '70s and '80s but not now said in some sense the graph are the loss of the confirmation ray if they are willing to go for word is 30 or 40 years ago now the rate would be longer even lower than what i could show you maybe even dramatically so. i have talked about who faces the greatest delays and it is generally the smartest people but there are two ways to measure intelligence or influence of federal judicial nominees. where did they go to law

school where are they with law review? to they have a prestigious clerkship? appeals court judge or supreme court justice? the best way but not everybody is citations of their opinions and there is a lot of a different ways i will go through in the book not just by comedies or a judge's opinions but does the supreme court? without judges of other circuits? also other ways to measure the influence. just to give you an idea how large this study is, the largest previous study

remotely similar i had done that looked at 84 circuit court nominees and sent over to registrations. there is a problem when you looked at so few period over a short period of time you cannot just tell those two are idiosyncratic or is it part of a trend? also interesting patterns maybe this is where we cannot talk more about but the aba come after you control for that quality or how well they did or what appointments they did come you'll find the averaged democratic nominee would be ranked as well qualified of the members of the group and

well qualified by the minority -- a minority. so most of the panel would vote for republicans as qualified. but that under estimates how those three teams are because they do a cute little sayings the you only see with the large a number that's to give a couple of examples every once in awhile a the president will appoint somebody 60 years of age. if he is a republican he would get a very high aba rating that seems off from his actual accomplishments but but the reverse is true

for democrats. very old they nominate -- have not nominated somebody as old as republicans have that there would get the unusually low aba rating but if you are a young democrat you get a high rating. why? why race to a good rating that will only be on for seven years or so? at the same time why not give the republican a high rating because the raises the average if economic to harm from their perspective for 50 years. we will be around for a long time in to save your worst culprit weighty for those republicans but i that is the imbalance because they

use the bias ratings when you flip between who is the president and the senate. a republican senate they are not that bias it defeats for those individuals because of the same party that congress plonks to the press did a president with the democratic senate then they applied to give them something to hold onto but if you have a democratic senate who was to give a high rating in those of the come out with a large sample to look at.

>> you can see how large this is with 342 circuit courts nominee use fees are all the people that were nominated during that period of time. i have the other data office through the desolate area earlier period i have news, the searches route with the political affiliation with the confirmation i have very detailed the information on their paper trail. we also hear if you publishes what matters but that is not the case there really is house march fed

guy is and i have detailed information with the journal articles are which types are when they wrote books i know the number of op-ed pieces they wrote and if we have time we will briefly go through some of those things. the aba ratings have citations and opinions and i also have the old almanac of the federal a judiciary. first came across as the chief economist but one of the need to say this is they go and asked so lawyers will hold three jack different to questions. via how was it conservative, liberal, it did he have good

temperament? smart? >> survey dated they you could make survey comparisons you should now work otherwise. but for a couple of reasons is a possible that nominations become more contentious overtime because the president has appointed more extreme nominees in terms of a political views? for those changes that we have seen. one graf will give you an idea for using the almanac and i will concentrate just on the black column a percentage of lawyers that practice before federal judges nominated under carter, reagan, a first bush and clinton and second bush.

i don't have it but i can see that is for those who practice before these judges who believe they are politically neutral. the percentage but it has been increasing dramatically over time rinaldi were near 60 percent of the lawyers think they are politically neutral so what seems like that would explain why the confirmation has become more contentious. also how difficult is it to confirm nominee use the which the top ted law school and got of the review? in the white-collar and shows zero the black columns

show you neither. let's just look at republicans. reagan, bush, it did each of these cases is you pnc that confirmation rate for the republican nominees that are the brightest for those that were not as bright. almost 98 percent of reagan's dumbing down when i sent this to some earlier papal legate offended when i use these terms of up --. [laughter] but there is 86% then george h. w. bush cover this is amazing.

89% of his nominees got confirmed but only 33 percent from the top law schools that did well, confirmed to. of that is a dramatic difference is the second bush is not quite a dramatic difference. but the clintons they dropped weather carter or clinton in horror obama. index just make a general statement in a generally says smarter nominee is that have bought hard time but white democrats fight strunc her. >> jim will make a big difference over time because >> jim will make a big

difference over time because you have people from the break-in enthused a share bid you and who are in their '70s and '80s you will begin to see a shift in the intellectual balance to swing war two's said democrats and republicans. but look at the confirmation rates but of those nominees top-10 in review but the black column is for those who did either. in each of ministration in the smarter nominees took along their time. third of its lead clinton's case the others were

one-third as long. i am assuring a graph comparing one thing at a time. you have to be careful obamanomics year the elections so that will a fact -- a fact -- effect for that but there other factors that could be similar. the empirical work why i try to have his detractors race to underage the background of the judge if they went to law school or previously served as a justice i have a

confirmation reprocess the year of the nomination rather the first or second or third year and then i will quickly point out the data in the unique way with the bar graphs but compared to carter after all the at their factures the at this second bush and his at. >> best ages a and hispanics have h seemed to matter the older you were that easier at the time you had to give to the process it is the

prefect because why fight hard against an old comedy that will not be fair that long? you can see the big thing is party patrol at the same party controls the senate that by itself will reduce the length of the confirmation process by 43 percent if you ever get a nomination to a certain court if you get appointed during the fourth year that increases the life by about 73% if you clerk for the supreme court justice that increases the length by 41%.

there are other things i could show hugh and when night tell this to lawyers but from the almanac of the federal judiciary is the temperament tuesday weighed the information in a given to them? are they consider it? >> effect to be rated fair rather them for it increases by 24 percent if you have a great team of good that increase is by cedras said it. the harder it was of that process.

i have all the data of publications to pick up the paper trail but in general they do not match -- matter that much i even asked of breakdown for a couple of things that did matter between republicans and democrats say increased but both republicans to wrote books they had a longer confirmation process and then between republicans and democrats if you are a republican thinking about one team to be a federal judge please don't write the op ben. [laughter] it does the seem to matter if you are a democrat but republicans, it takes 17 percent longer.

to summarize and if you compare circuit and district court nominations to control the presidency in the senate or if you have the clerk ship or log review and it has done worse over time with bush but district court not this much is going on and where they occur to law school. >> aba rating was significant. and in felt vitter period komer republicans are ignoring their preachings so they have left.

brendon nomination but to raise black but they had a big impact but the recent by thomas had a tough appeals court confirmation and then a difficult supreme court nomination because of the fact he is very bright. but getting people to change their position i did half

their professor but he taught it to 25 the minister is this city of federal judges also played almost four harrison said this was one of his tour is three smartest people i have ever had in the federal a judge. so let me summarize before we take a couple questions. as more is at stake we have much greater battles for confirmation. that raises the question what can you do to stop this? that basically you have to say how with the terms of the nominee? there is a cost to that.

people a room there around 10 or 15 years you will see variability there is a cost to having the supreme court change his position there are problems with that but if there ted years or 30 not as much at stake i am not sure if that is a preferred -- preferred option but to make that less important if you head back on the massive growth of the regulatory agency is cori before the court then you have wes battles over who will be there. at the very time the federal government with the

importance is decreasing so with those questions ryan with those regulatory issues. let's get the tax code over time or the epa and how much and under in a detailed a and complicated the regulations are then they were. footage of. at the very time we are demanding the judges make more complicated decisions

talk about tens of billions of dollars of that decision there is a reason why they would nominate to the supreme court to say who is the smartest nominee of their? not only did hoover nominee to the supreme court even though they were a democrat but cardoso was actively campaigning against hoover in 1928 but that it did not matter because he did not think it mattered in terms of political views who was put of the court but in terms of how smart they were but even before rehab of the illegal complicated questions that is a loss that we face now and some

question that has been lost with the political debate that i appreciate the federal society to have me talk about "dumbing down the courts" and i am happy to sign books after words did take a couple questions. [applause] >> unfortunately we have a hard break but we have a couple of questions? >> did you find any evidence anecdotally? correlating with a republican in view on abortion and? >> i do not have their views on abortion per se but i

don't think abortion had a lot to do with it. i know their political views i has surveys of these nominees conservative or liberal. as they give you an example with period myers probably the strongest in more public views of anybody that nominated the supreme court. and you look over time really before their resonate discussions with the changes that were occurring. >> did you find any correlation with religion? >> i have data of the religion of the nominees.

so it was systematic like the more man would take a long time but the jewish would take a relatively short time but mormons, part of that was that there were not a lot compared to the other religious groups and a couple of cases where a a democrat a dent and and there's held them up. >> does your data suggested these trends are politically and responsive as american voters are demanding these battles be happening or does this spring from the blind to the governing philosophies? . .

now you are opposing counsel who thinks that radio talkshow hosts might be on his side politically on the case you might want to have him on. there's not as -- nothing rational or irrational about those two positions in no mistake that's occurring and i don't think there's any more mistake in terms of politicians opposing people that are there. the issue is there something fundamental going on here in

terms of what is at stake. let me give you when the last analogy on this and that is a lot of people go and complain about how much campaign expenditures have increased over time. well, let's say we were 100 years ago and the federal government was still 2% of gdp. would people be willing to make large contributions to the campaigns? no. reason why they make such large contributions to the campaigns is because so much more is at stake now with not only larger spending by the federal government but the massive regulations that are there. so it enters much more. back then who cared who their senator was? the guys 2% of gdp. how much can he affect most people's lives? now it's a massive amount going on. it's 25% of gdp plus all the regulations which may affect everything in people's lives. and so with more at stake people

donate more. so in some sense they are fighting more and you are asking how voters care. voters demonstrate in there to me since how much they care and i would imagine they care just as intensely for the exact same reasons whether their political opponents get somebody on a court weathered via circuit court or district court or supreme court. >> you one more question. [inaudible] >> it's for the tv. >> professor lott if this trend continues say 20 or 30 years and you did get less intelligent and i won't say dumber because anyone who will get through will be reasonably intelligent but closer to the average intellect. i think we as practitioners know laws have gotten more competent and it's getting to the point where it's so complicated and it is to that point that it's

impossible to comply with all the laws. >> we pass that a while ago. i'm sure we have come a long time ago. and that wouldn't be better to have the judiciary more in tune and more close and intellect to the person who is being judged? the judge understands gosh this is something ridiculously complicated and you were charging this person with violating this law. i can't even think of it so bye-bye on due process rights. do you think it would be harder for the government to impose this massive complex of the honest when they don't have the intellectual capability on the bench to do so? >> i guess there are couple of points to make here. one is things have gotten worse and i think they will continue to get worse in terms of the confirmation process because the federal government is still growing. just over the last four or five years we have seen massive growth in the size of federal government over the last four or five years both in terms of

spending and in terms of regulatory agencies. there's a whole new massive regulatory agency dealing with consumer protection and regulation of financial markets with dodds frank and other things that we didn't have recently. more is at stake and if you look at the history if anything over the last 50 or 60 years i haven't seen it updates. from time to time the growth may temporarily slow down. if that continues your concern i think is valid. now, you have two possibilipossibili ties just because the laws getting more complicated doesn't make the judge is going to say i'm not going to take a guess on what it should read. it may simply be more randomness in terms of the decisions that the judges make and my guess is that's going to be the most likely outcome. i don't think i've seen over the last four or five administrations the quality of new judges have been falling.

it's really dramatic if you look at citations to judges opinions by other judges now versus ones who were nominated for either administration's ago how much it has fallen over time. other judges don't think the new guys are as smart as previous judge's order. and so i don't see that as being related in any way to evidence that these judges are saying it's too complicated i can't figure it out i'm just going to throw the case out. i haven't seen any evidence of that and i don't see any reason why i expect that's going to be the case in the future. maybe smarter judges realize better than the dumber ones how much more complicated it is. so anyway thank you very much for your time. [applause]

under the new consultations test of national immunity. a lot of americans don't realize that. they think of it as the second war of independence so it makes it seem as if it creates the impression that the british were about to invade and regain their colonies but that was not part of it. september 10, to 1813 was the date of the battle of lake erie and it was the day the british came out to attempts to break through in the american blockade. the battle was very hard-fought. it kind of spend a large part of the day and maneuvering into position. the british were cited as dawn

about 10 miles away. the wind was very light out of the southwest. the british had the weather gage that they could keep on course and maintain an upland position. perry was forced to beat the weather to get out of his anchorage. by 10:00 in the morning for hours into this they were not able to get clear of rattlesnake island the island that encloses the harbor at put in bay and the wind shifted and went flat for a minute. he had the wind from the southeast and outs in the british right in their face. he could sail out to make them. perry is closing in at 2.5 to three knots in overtaking the british squadron. after an hour and a half of this preparations and now they are just waiting and waiting to get enraged. the british initially have an advantage in range because the

detroit their largest ship is armed with long been so perry starts taking some hits and decides to turn right for the british line. and close them running downwind towards it and this exposes the ships to fire. kerry figured if he could endure this for 20 minutes a half hour of the most he could get in there and once he closed in he would have such fire superiority that he would be able to defeat them. it didn't work out that way because jesse and duncan elliott who is second in command decided to -- and one spirit gods and close range the position of all the ships stayed static for the next two hours. if niagara had closed in a believe the battle would have been over in half the time with half the casualties. as it was the british ships could concentrate on lawrence because niagara was out of range and the other vessels were still so far bad.

perry ended up in this position even though he had a stronger squadron because he jumped in with both feet and he wasn't supported by the second command in doing so. he ends up where the british could have fire superiority on him and in that little space of a quarter of a mile. and the lawrence crew became decimated over the next couple of hours. they showed an amazing courage and determination. in the lawrence they stick it out as the casualty rate gets up to 75%. every gun has been knocked off its carriage on the starboard side in every line has been shot away on the rigging. perry could not maneuver and he cannot fight. he is stuck. he is helpless. the ship is a shattered wreck. the men have blood dripping on them from the planking and he is facing an inevitable surrender.

just then, just then the wind comes back and fills in the afternoon breeze and fills in fairly strong from the southeast again. it blows the smoke clear in the ships start moving. the british line is faster. they respond and go it. the lawrence turned back because their sales are more shot of and then as the smoke clears and the british alliance starts moving away perry looks around and he realizes that niagara was sailing for the head of the line putting on more sales and starting to speed up. he doesn't know what elliott is going to do but he no elliott has been useless so far. is determined to jump in a boat. he takes for men and takes his flag and jumps into his cutter and has himself rode over to the niagara. they have two role like hell and

the british have shifted fire to the boat in everyone gets soaked gets over to that niagara and gets on board. we don't know what is said to me and he elliott that elliott does take the boat because perry volunteer to take the boat and round up the lagging gunboats, the smaller vessels that were strung out behind. then takes the niagara and orders even more sales set and orders another downwind turn. this time is going to cut the british line. at this time the officer in detroit is not the captain. the captain is downloaded but the junior officers seized the niagara starting to sail towards them and he tries to maneuver where turn the ship's downwind to keep his rod site bearings to prevent from being -- and when he does so clean charlotte which was their second largest vessel together with the

detroit area to clean charlotte is basically out of control because so many of her rigging lines have been shot away and they rammed the detroit. the two ships get stuck together this makes them helpless to maneuver and right at this moment the niagara sales across the bow in a range of a half a pistol shot which is basically the length of the boat. so just right on top of them sales in and port and starboard and fires at the detroit. this is as they sail across the bow one after another. they fire in the space of 10 seconds over 600 pounds of hot metal roaring down the deck because the guns have been double shot. they have large iron on top of

the cannonball to 32. this is probably at least half of their casualties in this one broadside. as soon as niagara crosses base throw the sales back to stop the ship and then they rapidly reload and fire and another other broadside at this point the british has devastating casualties they are taking. they can't respond anymore and they surrender. their flag has been nailed to the mast in anticipation but in the event they had to so they and depth waiving a tablecloth on their surrender was accepted. the book is intended as an overview. the first chapter is really an overview of the entire war. it's a very concise book. it's from a sailor's point of view. the one thing i have to offer other historians generally don't is i have the experience of sailing the type of vessel for a

long time and knowing and thinking about how that affected the action or the reports of the battle and first-hand reports when someone mentions something about the wind or that the direction. i can know what the consequences of that are and i've can look at it as how will this affect the action further? that is what my contribution is, writing about it from the siemens point of view to fill in that gap in understanding of what the options and of the commanders were and what couldn't they do and what they could do and that helps analyze the choices a little better. for more information on booktv's recent visit to erie pennsylvania and that many other cities visited by our local content vehicles go to c-span.org/local content.

be as a young child they faced racial discrimination i did not like it. i asked my mother and my father and my grandparents and my great grandparents why segregation come to why racial discrimination and they would say that's the way it is. don't get in trouble. don't get in the way. but in 1955 when i was in the tenth grade, 15 years old i heard the voice of martin luther king jr. on the radio and the words of dr. king inspired me to find new ways to get in the way. in 1956 with my brothers and sisters in some of my first cousins we went down to the public library in the town of troy alabama trying to get library cards, trying to check

some books out and we were told by the library and that the library was for whites only. on july 5, 1998 i went back to the county library in alabama for a book signing up my book walking with the wind and hunters of citizens showed up and they gave me a library card. [applause] walking with the wind is a book of faith hope and courage. it's not just my story. it is the story of hundreds of thousands of countless men and women black and white who put their body on the line during a very difficult period and a history of their country to end segregation and to end racial discrimination.

sasha abramsky is next on booktv. he talks about the chronically poor and the working poor in america and how their lives have changed since 2008. mr. abramsky says the level of inequality in the u.s. today hasn't been seen since the 1920s. this is about an hour and a half >> thank you everyone for coming tonight. really appreciate it. i want to thank the society foundation and demos for hosting this event. i also would like to say thanks to rich benjamin that looks out for us fellows. that is a little self-serving on my part but so be it. thank you very much.

what we are going to do is sasha and i will have a conversation for a bit and we will open the floor to questions and then after that you guys can just buy tons of books. we lied -- we like that part especially. sasha congratulations and if we can just get to it. you mentioned just before we came on that we were talking about not surprisingly poverty and it's amazing that we are even talking about it. it's an issue that has tended to be off the table when we are talking about public issues and public policies in the united states for the longest time. it's getting back out on the table now and sasha is giving it a much bigger nudge with this book so we appreciate it. to start, give us a picture of poverty in the united states and how big of a problem is this? how many poor people are there

and who are these folks? >> i will do that in one minute but before i do want to thank open to people for putting this on for facilitating all of the work of the many of years of this project. i'm not going to go through the list of names but everyone at the open society everybody demos and everybody at the nation books a huge thank you for your support for this work. most importantly though i want to thank the hundreds of people around the country who share their stories with me and that segues into your question bob what is poverty today and what does it look like? i found it absolutely fascinating. i had assumptions and i think we all have assumptions about what poverty is. we all tend to oversimplify it. we have been told for years and years and years of poverty is basically a set of stereotypes. we don't think of it as a set of individuals. weiss think of it as a set of feelings. our culture talks about the undeserving poor. it talks about drug addiction

and it talks about mental illness. we have a whole series of cultural images of what poverty is in this country and usually the people who perpetuate those stereotypes are people who don't spend time talking to people about what poverty really is and what it means in their lives. this project took many years and i went to food pantries and two churches. i went to community centers. i had a whole bunch of people in many states around the country who thought it was important to get the stories have and to have their voices and faces made real. i went to rural hawaii. i went to urban philadelphia. i went to the lower ninth ward in new orleans. i went to suburban stockton in california. i went to communities and lost vegas where every house on the surface looks like a mansion, 3000 square feet and maybe swimming pool and every single house on that block was in foreclosure and every single resident is in bankruptcy.

i went to detroit and how many people have been to detroit. it's quite extraordinary. it used to be one of the biggest most important cities in america it has got tens of thousands of vacant lots. it's got two to 3000 urban farms within a stone's throw of the downtown skyscrapers were a band is being reclaimed by people that are so poor that they don't don't -- doing subsistence farming. when you asked the question what poverty is to me it's as complicatcomplicat complicated as modern-day america. you can't reduce it to those seven hotspots that miles was talking about and that michael harrington identified a half-century ago. he talked about appalachia and the mississippi delta. he talked about certain native american reservations and he said here's where poverty is concentrated. if you go around america today yes there are still hotspots. if you go deep into the mississippi delta there or are

extraordinary levels of poverty. you go to some of the reservations of the colonials in the southwest and again you sea levels of poverty that are almost unfathomable but the poverty is also in new york. there's a lot of talk this week about the scale of poverty. almost half of new york residents are struggling to pay their bills. you go to suburban los angeles. you can find people who had jobs they lost their jobs and now they have jobs again but those jobs pay 1/2 to one third that they used to get paid and they don't come with benefits. i think when you talk about poverty in this country what we are talking about as modern-day america. we think of ourselves as socially mobile and it's fundamental to our self-image as a country. we are upwardly moral book -- mobile opportunity based country. unfortunately they look at the data america today is less socially mobile than almost every other first world country.

what that means is if you were warned into poverty in america you are former likely to stay in poverty than if you were born to poverty and let's say sweden germany or canada or even greece or portugal or any of the other bankrupt peripheral states and the european union. if you fall into poverty you lose a house or you had a health care emergency that poverty is far more likely to cripple your future than other first world countries. i think today poverty is a central part of the american narrative and it's almost entirely by the political classes. it's this invisible crisis. to me that with them motivation for the book making something visible that should have never been allowed to become invisible. safieh think a lot of americans have a misunderstanding of the scale of this problem and just how many people really are poor in the united states. can you give us a better sense

of that? villa. i think one of the reasons it's so easy for people to ignore it is poverty does tend to in a sense make itself invisible. a lot of people i talked to say one of the collateral consequences of losing income is we lose the ability to participate publicly paid you can afford to go to cafés and you can can't afford to socialize and public gets socializing in america tends to cause a little bit of money and when you are literally counting pennies and literally juggling do i buy food or school supplies , go to a philly prescription or pay rent? toilet my telephone or gas bill go at that point you can't afford any luxury. you tend to make herself invisible and you pull back and stay in your house. you go to work in and you come back and you can't afford to go out to lunch with your colleagues or you can sit in your cubicle. it becomes his progressive marginalization. one of the results is if you do not live in poverty it's still

fairly easy to pretend that you don't see the poverty. it's out there but if you don't choose to look to a degree you can still ignore it but in the natural effect when you look at the numbers we are not talking about 1 million 2 million or even 10 or 20 million. one in six americans 15% of americans live in poverty by the government's measure of poverty. i say baby governments on the issue because the fairly adequate measure but one in six americans are poor. most of our social safety net has been shredded. welfare is a pale imitation of what it was 40 or 50 years ago. access to benefits programs has been massively reduced. the one area where it's still relatively intact is food stamps. at the moment unless the republicans get their way in which case it won't be intact. at the moment food stamps are pretty much intact.

so the numbers on food stamps serve as a proxy for the number of poverty because if you are poor with few exceptions the primary exception being if you are an undocumented migrant but other than that if you are poor in america you qualify for food stamps. there are 47 million americans on food stamps. that is a staggering number. 47 million americans by the governments own measure are now so poor and are struggling so much that if they didn't have food assistance they would be malnourished. that is extraordinary. the idea that we cannot talk about this is even more extraordinary. the idea that we went through an entire presidential election campaign last year and neither candidate made a major speech on poverty -- actually one candidate talked about 47% of the population. [laughter] but with that exception neither candidate addressed the problem.

obama started to and made it very interesting speech at the 50th anniversary commemoration of martin luther king's "i have a dream" speech and he did talk about poverty and he talked about the fact if you are going to do deal with the issue of social justice you had to tackle poverty in america so obama is now talking about it but the question is is very political momentum behind it that will result in programmatic change and the energies of the state being focused on this issue? probably not unless people like you and me and everybody else who cares about this issue pushes it because the default is if you don't push it is easier not to talk about it. it's easy to pretend that it doesn't exist. >> from my perspective on a most shameful aspects of this issue is for a while the united states if i understand it correctly led the developed world in child poverty.

i think it's now number two surpassed only by believe it or not romania. i think it's one out of every four american children are poor and one out of three african-american children. talk a little bit about child poverty and the impact of poverty on the lives of children in this country. >> you are right. we are in this sorry category of having more child poverty than every of the country from romania. presumably at some point where romania gets beyond this legacy they will end up with less poverty than us because almost every other country in the world puts more effort into tackling child poverty. it's seen as a basic measure of social equity and in america we have met this problem faster. in the 1960s we put some

effort into tackling child poverty and we had to put in more effort in tackling the poverty of the elderly. we generally ignored child poverty. if you go back 10 years to the beginning of the century child poverty stood at 16% and that was seen as staggeringly high. 10 years later its 22.5% so just under one in four kids of all ethnicities and all races are poor. that is an average. you are absolutely right that african-american children and latino children have far higher poverty rates and i think he said 303%. if you go into some cities it's 16 persona sent. new orleans 66% of african-american kids under the age of five live in poverty. in detroit it's over half. parts of philadelphia again 60 to 70% of kids live in poverty.

what does that mean? it means very tangible things. it means not least of all him those kids are going to bed hungry and those kids are waking up hungry and those kids are going to school trying to get an education hungry. some of that is alleviated. we have the school lunch and breakfast program that is fairly functional and puts a lot of people who would otherwise be hungry into some kind of food security. there is a problem. it doesn't exist in the summers. there has been a lot of academic literature about the education when kids regress educationally because they are not in class and the other thing happens in the summer is that poor kids get hungry. a lot of localities have recognized that and these institutions have a horrible sounding name. some are feeding programs and summer feeding programs are places where low-income kids can go to get meals. parks and community centers.

sometimes the federal government steps in with money. a couple of years ago the federal government stepped in to some pilot programs to feed 10,000 low-income kids who would otherwise go hungry in the summer. here was rush limbaugh's response on the radio. he went out for the program because the quote created once and little waives and serves people who would never have the work ethic is when they were young they got free food. it's extraordinary. if he was a kid in a school he would be called the schoolyard holy. he is a guy with a massive platform and using his platform to build -- beat up on hungry children. i think it's isolating to say he is a free tiffany tran lets ignore him. the natural fact a large part of the political process is based on that idea. the last part of our political

writer is based on the idea that if you use that government service even if you are a kid you are somehow morally polluted and corrupted. you are soiled goods and i think that's a scandal. for me when i think of child poverty i think of the kids that i met in east los angeles. they were teenagers mainly children of immigrants and they were in an honors program being tracked for college. the first and their families to go to college. i spoke to this class and one after another they told me in the wake of the 2008 collapse the parents had lost their jobs. these were immigrants doing janitorial and domestic work. they lost their jobs in one after another they told me they had gone into foreclosure or if they were renting bad and kicked out. this was the choice these kids were facing. do i pursue my college dreams and that means for many years i can't financially help my parents or do i give up my

college degree to drop out of school and by a dollar an hour job at a fast food restaurant to support my parents? to me that's the story of child property. it's not about wanton waifs and serfs. it's about kids caught in an unpalatable situation and those are the choices note child should have to make great. >> how did we get in this fix? didn't just happen with the great recession. this problem was building in the years before that so what happened? this is an extraordinarily wealthy country and the mayor of the city is personally worth $27 billion. i can't get over that. he has been mayor for 12 years but i'm still wrestling with it. but there are all kinds of wealthy people in this country. it's a rich country so how did we get in this fix where there are so many people struggling and we haven't even talked about

people who are just a notch or two above the official poverty level. what happened? p1 of the most interesting interviews i did with the policy expert who is with harvard school of government -- marshaled dance. he spent years as a community organizer and built these ideas of narrative storytelling. he's a very interesting guy and he said look if you understand the problem is being poverty you are missing the point. poverty is a symptom. the analogy is poverty is the miner's canary. in the olden days before they were high-tech gas monitoring equipment if you were a minor you go down with your team and take a canary a little bird with you and if that bird suddenly stopped chirping and drops dead you know there's gas in the mind and he would run. it was a warning sign that something was wrong. this is what poverty is in modern america. it's a symptom of a much more fundamental malaise. then he started talking about

inequality and he started talking about the fact that increasingly we are two societies, a tiny sliver of people with huge access to resources huge ability and then everybody else. ganz said society developed the inequality that america has developed over the last few decades that are committing collective suicide. historically you cannot build democracy because once you have inequality at this level and a few people monopolizing vast amounts of resources that democracy itself ceases to be accountable. if you have access to money and you have access to power and if you have had no access to money you have no access to power. i think the story of modern day america, poverty is the symptom but the real story is that over the last 40 years we have developed a level of inequality no other democracy has.

the way our country looks economically would be familiar to our great great grandparents who lived in the gilded age which was also the age of taking photographs of tenement slums. it wouldn't be familiar to the people who grew up in the great society and it wouldn't be family to the people who grew up in the new deal into a large extent it wouldn't be familiar to the people grew up in the beginning of the 20th century and the progressive era. we we are allowing a degree of inequality to develop in the name of a regulation that is going to absolutely extraordinary long-term implications for the way our politics not our economics but the way our politics functions. a large part of my motivation for the book is to explore the politics behind inequality. the part to the book which is about solutions is about changing the political discourse to make it unacceptable to allow this level of inequality to keep

pestering. >> there are two groups that i think about. even when people are talking about if they don't talk about it. the first or the group at the bottom, folks living in deep poverty, the folks living in deep poverty and then they're the folks i mentioned a notch or two above the poverty line in the near poor. can you talk a little bit about those two groups? >> that's an important question because poverty in america sometimes hard to identify. i have traveled all over the world in their places where poverty is so absolute that there's no mistaking it. if you travel to the slums of bombay for example you see a level of poverty that is absolutely a mistake of both visits absolute. you are tripping over people who literally have nothing. poverty in america sometimes more subtle. most people in poverty have something.

their poverty is relative rather than upset that there's a group of people who live in what is called deep poverty. that is a statistical term that means they live at half the poverty levels of the poverty level is $11,000 a year if you're in deep poverty means you are earning below 5.5 for 6000 a year. it turns out 6 million americans live literally with no access to cash. they don't have jobs and they don't have savings they don't have bank accounts. they don't qualify for welfare programs like tennis or they did qualify but they time-limited now. 6 million americans including millions of kids have no access to cash so they survive on food stamps which is a non-cash benefit and survive on charity. they survived occasionally on the black market economics but they have no legitimate existing cash -- access to cash. they are literally hand to mouth. an example is a woman i met an

undocumented migrant working as a domestic home helper. i talked to her about what she had three she started crying after a while because what she had was nothing. she had a couple of dollars. she had hand-me-down clothing that her employer had given her. she was theoretically paid $7 an hour but she worked 24 hours a day which is illegal obviously but she was basically on-call 24/7. if you actually worked out what she was actually earning is probably $2 an hour and she had not a thing to her name. i met migrant farmworkers in el paso texas who lived in this community center. it was literally on the border. you have the rio grande and the border crossings and you have ninth avenue and then you have this community center. hundreds of migrant farmworkers sleep there because they have nowhere else to live. they sleep on the floor back-to-back end at midnight they get up and a 1:00 in the

morning they collected the street and hang their possessions on plastic bags in the trees on the street and they get bid out for labor contractors. they are put in the backs of trucks trucks and they are sent out to farms in texas and new mexico and they do a days labor and come back with $20 or $30. it was the off-season and he was working and the one thing he had was a portable black-and-white television. he had to ponder it as he had no money. that is absolute poverty but then there another group of people who are one notch up for that. they might work for a company like walmart. walmart pays above minimum wage. but donald does the same thing. they paid 1 dollar or two above minimum wage. all well and good but they spend a huge amount of lobbying to keep the minimum wage low. the minimum minimum wages and stuck at $7 per year. before that it was stuck at $5 an hour. two years obama made a

commitment to raising the minimum wage to $9. congress has no intention to raise minimum wage. diabetes and cancers suffered a heart attack victim came into the interview on a walker. she works full-time at walmart outside of dallas. nonunionized, earns before taxes about $1800 a month. does have health insurance through wal-marwal-mar t but they take deductions. is encouraged by the company to spend $300 a month buying walmart stock. it is useless for her. she will never be able to retire. it's very good for walmart getting employers to buy stuff. i said to her what do you eat? i'm supposed to be healthy food but i easily take dinners from walmart.

i can't often afford them so i get a bit hungry. she was too sick to take the bus to work so she had to pay your money gas money to drivers to work at walmart. to me that is near poverty. these are people who according to walmart are a couple of dollars above minimum wage but no way you shake it are they doing okay. they don't have any economic security and their millions of workers all over this country especially in the south. there's a lot of poverty concentrated in places like texas. all over the country they are workers in that situation. one of the things i thought the most stunningly disingenuous about the last election campaign when rick perry was running for president before he forgot his third point, one of the things he touted with the idea that even in the midst of the recession taxes created jobs. it's actually true if you look at the numbers.

texas is doing quite well. it has far lower than average unemployment. it did create jobs during the recession but he forgot to mention one other number which was even the texas at 7% unemployment while california had 12% unemployment two years ago texas has one of the highest poverty rates in the country so how do you square that? the only way you you can square it is up an awful lot of people working full-time jobs in texas are in poverty. turns out when you analyze it that is what has happened. texas has such a deregulated workplace it functions as a maca doria. come to texas and pay your workers a polling wages create the most awful workplace conditions and do it with the blessing of the texas legislature. it's a hell of a way to market your state but that is how rick perry did it. that is what near poverty means to me. >> now i'm going to try and channel rush limbaugh's listeners. this is scary.

if i get trapped in your somebody help me out. why should we care about these folks? life is tough for an awful lot of people in this country. why not just let the poor people fend for themselves? >> those poor people are our neighbors and relatives and friends in that could conceivably beat us because we live in a world of economic insecurity. as a gale political scientist he wrote a great book and called it the great mystery ship to be analyzed how in the last four decades a huge amount of risk worn by corporations has shifted onto individuals. if you go back to 1980 most workers had defined benefit pensions. the back end of a 35 or 40 years years -- fast-forward to today almost no worker has a defined benefit pension. the same thing happened with

health care. tremendous number of workers lost health insurance. every measure if you look at what has happened in the last 30 or 40 years if you weren't ordinary american if you're in the middle you are appearing more risk than you used to bear. and if you are at the top you are appearing less risk than he used to bear. your taxes have gone down. if you are a corporation of benefits obligations have gone down. by every measure there's a transference downward so when the rush limbaugh appeals to audiences and says you don't want to care about those people first of all it's stupid but second of all its bait and switch. what i'm basically saying is -- what he is saying is don't pay attention to the real problem because the real problem is complicated and involves thinking and pausing and analyzing. just do the easy thing. the easy thing has always been to look for somebody worse off than you and basically say i'm

not like them. i'm better than them and i don't really care about them. why should we care quite we should care because we are a society. there is such a thing as a social compact that but we should also care because realistic and we all have a stake in this. there's a self-interest to caring about this in ultimately there is a self-interest working on policy issues and working out a way of discussing this it takes us beyond the sound bite. if we don't do that, if we don't rethink the way we approach inequality and if we don't rethink the way we approach what kind of wages we pay workers and what is acceptable for large corporations to pay workers at the end of the day that cycle of inequality continues and coming back to what i was saying earlier if we define ourselves as a democracy we cannot let this kind of inequality less. all the way back to pericles. to a .5000 years ago they were

already writing and talking about the dangers that inequality post to a stable political structure. there's nothing new about this. this is a problem that has existed for thousands of years. what is new at the moment is the american political process and ability to grapple with it. >> poverty is often seen as a problem primarily of nonwhites especially african-americans but also latinos. a couple of questions. one is the extent to which this is true or not choose and to what extent has this prevented us from really engaging or grappling with the problems associated with poverty? >> there is no doubt about it that we do think of poverty as being something other people experience.

while it is true that the disproportionate number of african-americans and latinos live in poverty is also true and absolute numbers more whites are in poverty so if your measure of why you should care is does it affect my group in sydney that is a crazy measure but a lot of people to measure that way, if that is your measure by any way you calculate if this is an issue that affects every ethnicity every race and affects every geographic region in this country. so if you were going to craft policy responses you have to craft policy responses that are going to get into all that different communities or different regions. so you will find concentrate pockets of poverty in african-american communities latino communities but you most certainly are also in the white communities. it only takes a little bit of

energy and a little bit of effort if you're a journalist if you're a policymaker if you're a commentator it only takes a little bit of effort. all you have to do is get in your car, to drive somewhere and turned to people and you will find the scale of poverty. so i think the implication of looking at it as something that only affects other people or other groups in a sense it shrivels the imagination. what it means is we are not thinking about the scale of the problem but as a community we are not thinking about ways we can get together to solve those problems. i think one of the things that we need to do as a society is to have an honest conversatconversat ion about who is in poverty and without poverty means and what can be done about that poverty. >> you no, you talk a lot in your book about ways we might again to get out of this fix

compat these myriad problems associated with poverty. so give us a sense of some of the major most promising proposals that you suggest. >> you for me this has always been a political question more than an economic question. a lot of conservatives say well they can't afford to fund our social safety net. we have overspent. it's increasingly the mainstream republican narrative. we have to slash and burn everything because otherwise our country is going to sing. a lot of people talk about greece. we are going to become like kris kris -- greece or we have become like greece and to me there's a medical analogy we could use here. greece is a small country with very profound economic problems

genuine economic problems. it is run out of money not being the least of them. winfrey spends money is basically spending loans from the european union. completely out of cash. they medical analogy would be a disease like cancer that is eating it away. the american body body politic does not have cancer. it's got anorexia. we are choosing not to nourish our public infrastructure. we have got a political narrative didn't play that basically says it is wrong to fund health care. wrong to fund public works programs properly. we could do it. we are a 17 trillion-dollar economy. we are by far the largest economy in the world. we have by far the most billionaires in the world. we have a tremendous amount of money that could be used if we chose to use it. if we chose to raise taxes on certain groups.

if we chose to raise taxes on certain corporations. if we chose to readjust maybe two to 3% of our gross national product a few hundred billion out of that 17 trillion. we have all of the wherewithal economically to create a viable war on poverty. how do you do that as of this is a political problem you have to change the politics. we have had 40 years of people saying government doesn't work and it can only deliver lemons. if government can only deliver lemons why give it more money to develop that are grahams? it seems to me that the way you break out of this destructive cycle is the first thing you do is to push a few programs that are going to be universally popular that you could implement and you could work and in the working which shifts the discussion about the role of government in the same way social security did in the 1930s. so i actually have a whole bunch

of solutions but i start with two quite good ones. i'm sorry about this but i'm going to raise your taxes i hope you will bear with me while i explained why. no apologies. you guys are going to play a little -- pay a little more of my plan gets implemented. i'm glad to advocate for something called an international operationoperation al fund. it does not exist right now but should exist and it's going to be aligned on your income tax. it's going to start off as being one quarter of 1% paid by employees and employers. the average wage in this this country median wage is give or take roughly $30,000 a year so a quarter of 1% of $75 a year. not a huge amount of money and here's what that money's going to do. it's going to create a pool of cash that is large enough that the government could access it to give every single child in

america $5000 to be put into an education fund and used for higher education 18 years from now. over 18 years the $5000 by almost any realistic measures going to grow quite considerably. maybe $20,000. it's not going to fully fund someone's higher education but it's a whole bunch better than going into the student at at that the people have at the moment. what about the people don't go to college? why would they have an incentive to buy and? their pool of money if they don't go to college is kept until they retire and the backend of their working careers added to their social security payments. since people don't go to college tend to earn less over a lifetime they tend to have lower retirements. if you boost their retirement everyone has got a buy-in. so you start a quarter of 1% and you familiarize people with that and show that works. over 10 years agreed to increase that to 1%.

if you have the 1% blind item tax paid by employees and employers you could give every american child that birth $20,000. that money would almost entirely fund the higher education at the backend. since social insurance model like social security but for education. the second way i'm going to increase your taxes i'm going to have another line item in your taxes for a public works fund. because a huge number of people who thought they were in vulnerable to unemployment found the 2008 the jobs were not secure. they lost their jobs or they lost their hours. they ended up with 14 million people unemployed in millions more jobless not even looking for work anymore. and we spent tens of billions of dollars through the stimulus the american recovery act basically indirectly trying to prop up the labor market and it may be saved

3 million-dollar -- 3 million jobs. we want to create a foot public works fund that makes a pool of hundreds of millions of dollars. to be released in the event of unemployment emergency so that money is there. we have already funded it through a tax lien and the same way you by houston fire and car insurance. we have already thought a universal public works insurance so the money is there to prop up the labor market in the event of an employment crisis. two relatively small additions to the tax code that would create a universal buy-in. i don't know if you could do it. the political climate on taxes is so toxic it would be a hard sell but it's a realistic plan precisely because it's ambitious. if you get people to buy into the idea that 21st century government is capable occasionally delivering a catlike instead of a lemon i think you have change the political debate. i think you have rendered last

post and the people of arguments like rush limbaugh or the koch brothers. i think if you can do that then you can have a much more holistic antipoverty initiative. >> why have we not done more? we know where the republicans are coming from and where rush limbaugh's listeners are coming from but what about the democrats and what about barack obama? here's a fellow who supporters love to tell you was a community organizer. white house people in the united states that might otherwise think would care about this issue, why have they not done more? >> i think it comes back to the previous answer that taxes have become so toxic and sewed distrusted distrust of government has become so pervasive so we almost resort to a knee-jerk response. government back, taxes bad but

it seems to me it's more nuanced than that. government can be good and they can be bad in taxes can be good and they can be bad. it depends on what they are used for and whether they are used well. it seems to me we have gone through a cycle and you can trace it to many different causes but let's say watergate is a fairly decent starting point. they're a series of events late 60's early 70's which utterly corrode public faith in the good of government and not just people who are helpfully questioning but it turns us into a nation of cynics. i think you can sort of identify a series of key processes over the last 30 or 40 years where confidence in government just wanes. another recent example would be the government response to hurricane katrina and visually in the most visceral way possible you see the government failing. you see the parish government

failing and you see the state government in louisiana failing and the federal response being absolutely inept. that was televised all over the world and people saw that. if berger collapsed confidence in the ability of government to do good. you see that in the interpol numbers. almost nobody has confidence in the ability of congress to do anything. almost nobody likes the way congress works. it's a little bit -- even then there is tremendous public distrust and tremendous public anger. a lot of the anger justified and a lot of that distrust justified. ..