americans, and even now there are a number of people who are in public life who will say, 'well, i got into politics because i was inspired by adlai stevenson.' ..

>> [inaudible conversations]

>> welcome everybody to the carter center in atlanta as a juror jury you're here tonight to talk with bob herbert about his new book "losing our way" an intimate portrait of a troubled america" we're on c-span as well so all questions are being taped. bob is a longtime columnist for "the new york times". i am also a columnist for the atlanta journal constitution we were just discussing the duties and the joys in english of column writing. imus your column in the times. what i really miss that you

reported and talked to people in you heard a human voices soar american voices in your column. that is missing with journalism. >> and it shows in the book. >> ordinarily someone in my position how much i enjoyed reading your book. your book may be angry or frustrated or a little frightened but i sense that is okay bayou. >> that is fine by me. that is the point. >> host: walk us through it. >> guest: sure. i left the times is in 2011

and a lot of people have asked to lightness' doing the column. the short the answer is no. i tell people 41 years on deadlines is enough. that is how long i was in the newspaper business. i was a columnist 25 years of "the daily news" -- of "the daily news" and "the new york times". i don't miss it but what i wanted to do was spend more time getting more in depth on the issues that i cared about and i was especially interested in those things that had to do with standards of living in the united states and how difficult it was for people to make ends meet. as the liggett the issue of employment that has been difficult for a long time time, to look at the state

of american infrastructure this abysmal. i was thinking this would be such a great source of jobs when you put people to work but analysts thinking that is the least sexy word in the language and if you talk about that nobody will buy the book. so i tried to tell some stories to make infrastructure interesting and i hope i succeeded to do that. education was also a big issue and i take a strong stand in the book but whatever your political leanings are i think people should understand that poverty is such a big issue when it comes to educational achievement such children

that grow up in families that don't have much money to put food on the table where they come to school hungry in the morning children with illnesses that are not properly taken care of so they come to school under the weather or those that need eyeglasses for those that have not been diagnosed at. they're children who have all kinds of problems in the home nab domestic violence or drug and alcohol abuse. it makes it difficult to learn and to look at the data it is clear that children who come from affluent families in the united states if you compared their scores to others around the world it

is at or near the of very tough it is such a large percentage of those who are poor with the struggles that i am talking about so we need to address poverty. the final issue is the wars that we keep fighting. i am not a pacifist and i was drafted i spent 14 years in in korea. so i understand we need to defend our country. as september 11th 2001 have been relived on the upper side of manhattan that was almost like an attack on our neighborhood. going after those that attack united states of

america was not in favor of the war in iraq. that was 2001 and halted is 2014 almost 2015 and still in afghanistan. read engaging in iraq where air strikes in in syria and my argument is we will never get our act together here at home if we keep fighting for our perpetual debilitating wars overseas. perpetual warfare cannot be the answer. these are the range of issues i try to cover in the book. >> with your technique and in your column period clearly and the book he spent as a good amount of time in atlanta and in that

part you talk about the struggles of the middle class. is there reason you chose atlanta for that? >> it is funny how these things have been. with the "wall street journal" that have a front-page story of roswell not that long after the great recession. i was thinking it would be interesting to take a look get the impact of joblessness at the housing foreclosure crisis with the affluent community. it was not just support having a hard time as a result. is a wanted to spend time there and i wondered if the mayor would even talk to me

he was very kind and is quoted extensively in the book and it was extremely helpful to spend some time there to see that challenges that families were facing. is not that people don't get it. they do. the media has fallen down on a lot of these stories. what i think of as knee-jerk coverage everybody covers the same thing or the same ankle you never get to the heart of the issues that are so important so that is why i was in the suburbs of atlanta. >> host: talking earlier about education and the crux

of your argument is poverty mentioning testing in the superintendent and her motto was always poverty is never an excuse for poor performance among students it would not be accepted among the students or the staff and your point is that is what drives it. >> we can get hung up on the phrases of the corporate style reformers. machel was another one richet not use poverty as an excuse. they would say any child can

learn are you saying they are incapable of learning? absolutely not. i say the opposite that they are fully capable of serving. but the obstacles that they face that we as adults have the obligation to take those obstacles away so the children can flourish. so when the testing regime came in. i am not opposed to testing i went to parochial school. you would have midterm exams, final exams in the test the longfellow way and degraded. almost everyone who went to school is used to the idea to take a test. but we have gone crazy. that we are testing three and four year-old son. even before preschool.

and the obsession where they are so much at stake with the teachers and principals feel their careers are at stake then the results are the be all and end all and it drives everything so of the teachers teach to the test we just want to get the test scores up what you should want to do is of broad well-rounded education to those youngsters in in your charge. that is how you end up with a scandal that you did in atlanta. but it is not limited to atlanta a search of a. with research there were scandals in cheating scandals all across the country. big towns and washington

d.c. there was problems in new york but also suburban communities and rural areas. we just went though little desert with testing in this country. >> host: there seems to be a missing character did you talk about the debates and the issues we struggle with a yen to very rarely is washington mentioned mentioned, congress, democra ts or republicans, the debate at that level does not seem to interest you. i am just guessing you don't think it matters? semi wrong? >> guest: no. i have covered politics and government at every level for so long. decades. and i have become disenchanted with political leadership.

that includes a lefty and the right. rehab the employment troubles with the democratic or republican president this storm comes in off the east coast or the gulf and the results is devastation in a matter which party is in control. and it seems to me that our political leadership has been unwilling to seriously engage the biggest challenges facing the country. some challenges i did not leaving getting to like climate change you could write an entire book. i talk about poverty but that is just one part. there is so much you could say about the difficulties to get ahead.

i have lost faith in the idea that some new policy change will come along in washington to turn things around. there will be an election very soon a congressional election in the presidential election 2016. i am not trying to say it doesn't matter who gets elected. it is important for people to vote but who you elect will not make a major change in the circumstances of most people in this country. that is the reason i didn't spend a lot of time talking about political leaders that when i say is there is more of the burden pulling on our own soap -- shoulders it is important but not enough so i make a strong call for

more civic engagement more ordinary men and women to become engaged with the important issues of our time so if education is important then go up there to volunteer your time to become engaged may be with your local school system or in employment. or something else. if you have more people engaged, you begin to get a momentum from which leadership emerges from the bottom up or the top down. but we can get to some type of movement going to wish it was centered on unemployment but it could be centered on anything but never like some movement that addresses the challenges that became so

strong hour political leaders had no choice but to respond. >> host: the last two lines of your book says if the nation is to be changed for the better ordinary citizens will have to intervene aggressively with their own fate. the tremendous power in the money interest will not be relinquished voluntarily. >> guest: i believe that is true. [laughter] >> host: you talk about income inequality in walk through the consequences and the causes. it is interesting that the historic crius has remarkably coincided with the rise of the movement to make income inequality acceptable and even beneficial.

is there cause and effect? >> guest: i would say. [laughter] if you go back, it cannot be blamed on one party or another, democrats like to say this terrible turn started when ronald reagan was president. i do think there's a lot that was unfortunate about the reagan did fenestration. but if you talk for example, about rescinding of the important regulations to protect ordinary americans and working people take a good hard look at the bill clinton administration. if you look at our economic policies they have favored under direct reckon

republican presidents the interest of the corporate sector and with our financial leaders and that has been the case moving forward so you have this alliance of the but -- the big money interest in the bank's to finance the campaigns and the politicians are beholden level is the young reporter in the 1970's it was illegal and some were caught taking bribes and i will pay you a view supported these policies they said that's not good so we better figure out a way to still do this but stay out of jail.

[laughter] so we essentially they've made it legal to get the money to the politicians and they figured out the way. that is where we are now. but those policies are not the same as ordinary working americans. so some of the results that are so clear enough has gone down over the decades is we no longer share productivity gains the weirdest thing that has happened we stopped sharing productivity gains at the time of the great technological the variances that caused astonishing amount of productivity gains so with those of france's companies became far more e

efficient and they turn to those into profits not some of it into wages and benefits for example, and that has been a pattern for decades. so our corporate leaders get richer and richer the former mayor of miami city left office with $35 billion. he did not even take a salary. you have tremendous numbers of people who are poverty-stricken and homeless. so this was not an accident and policies were established to advantage those who were already wealthy and against the interests of those who had to work for a living and were struggling and once they were in place we just watched the defied get wider

in and wider. >> talk about the importance of a groundswell of citizen action but it is remarkable to me with the great recession of the wall street meltdown that was driven by the greedy and the lack of regulation, if there is a moment that the grass roots movement began, that would seem to have been the inspiration. please see the two-party compromise -- the teapartier a compromise. >> if it is cataclysmic it does not change anything.

>> is interesting i misread what happened because it was cataclysmic and i thought that would result in the kinds of changes that would benefit the people who were hurt most by the great recession and i thought that was one of the great missed opportunities and i have helped then it would pounce on this issue on the restraints on the banks is too big to fail. to break it up like we broke

up standard oil. at the time we were faced with the possibility of into a new depression in. that the banks needed to be bailed out but to provide this bailout with taxpayer money there should be some requirements placed that we bailed them out in credit was frozen at the time there were to make credit available to people who were qualified. that did not have been. then also sending taxpayer money to shore up the failing banks we did give

that to the troubled homeowners those who were paying mortgages then found they were under water or could not find of buyer for their home or they could not get a mortgage with all kinds of problems or read could intervene to help ordinary people and we did not do that. it was a missed opportunity. slow the occupied movement was a missed opportunity. people say it sputtered out the tests they didn't have specific demands or policy goals to achieve the didn't

have appointed or elected leaders. and then to get the country focused. with that ingenious concept of the 1% versus the 99%. i don't think it was up to the occupiers to provide the policy solutions. i thought the public at large at that point shittah said this is an intolerable and these are the things we need to do to change the direction. don't leave that up to a the occupiers.

that is a tremendous missed opportunities to make things have to get worse. >> and in private conversations after i finish the book people would say that the movement could get started i do not think all is lost but i worried it will take another economic disaster may be even more than the recession. it might take something like at to open in the fis to make fundamental changes. >> looked at the data that people don't get any share of the productivity gain in

the era of historic profit sarah and their record high and income inequality the end of the lowe's trends seem to be tapering off. react like is a solid state situation in the is not. >> guest: the "wall street journal" is not the only paper that i read but with a recent story it is a front-page story about the conservative economists have around a the world with the economic slowdown in europe especially but including those of the emerging economies in the united states is doing somewhat better with the employment

numbers that i will tell you if the economy is not in good shape why the fed continues to keep interest rates at zero. cadet was is in good shape do not find those interest rates. there is the couple reasons. interest rates are so low that for people who have money to invest in the fed wants to keep interest rates low and the stock market also to give a boost or a message to employment but

that is the unsustainable state of affairs. it is not a sign of the healthy economy. >> are those problems and other company would solve? [laughter] >> don't get me started on tax cuts. we went to war in iraq and afghanistan and at the same time we cut taxes twice to lead enormous tax cuts that had never been done in the history of united states before that is the absolute no-no. souls all those obligations including tragically the

medical care that we have to give to the tens of thousands of wounded warriors the physical wounds in the psychic wounds we pay for decades we will meet those enormous financial obligations. >>. >> maybe i pushed a daughter of mine every but tom delay said nothing is more important in the face of war than cutting taxes. [laughter] but these days we take that as madness. >> that is the norm. >> use spent time in the book to talk about the impact on children the

impact to pay back college loans in degree reported last year we had 91,000 students in georgia and 7100 fewer teachers them three years earlier. >> how does that compute? >> that means we just fall down on our obligation to educate these youngsters. and why i spent a lot of time with kids coming out of college or to get a foothold on a decent standard of living but i have been so fortunate with my life and i grew up in a period that was the best period to grow up in the united states, other

early postwar years i mitt child of the '50s and '60s. i had so much fun. the parents would say go play you get on the bicycle without a helmet. [laughter] a and ride all over new jersey. but jobs were plentiful. there were jobs all over the place. and then none have these astonishing loads of debt kid's command of college there what to take a year or two off in you could afford to spend a couple of years to decide what you want to

do. maybe two or three different things. and those around the conference table very smart kids and i said to them what type of blood you want to practice? there were a number of those youngsters that said they want to practice public-interest law but they could not do it before the recession. so they can go to a law firm to get started and they had to do that because of the college debt to pay off so they could not practice that kind of law they wanted.

so now coming into a tough economy, it with the burden of the loans to pay off. and makes it difficult to to get a foothold of the adult life. to get married, and start a family, make a down payment payment, it is so much harder than it was for kids of my generation. in this is the trend. >> but what you said there

is those said affect our future the lowe's eric during the same that come after us if you add that it is almost like a generational betrayal we're not the greatest generation but much less. >> not by any means. we have turntables of young people. in it is outrageous. with the infrastructure program you can play all types of people to work.

and it would help the climate. in those without a great deal of trading. and then to weatherize 10,000 buildings. get the troops together. these were young guys know we could put them to work that is one example of the things that need to be done.

we just need to do a. civic i will call you when the microphone gets to you. make it a question. >> i wonder if the human brain to have a disease they cannot take the money with them when they die but to give said dale? the i have seen the university in making 300

times the salary at the people at the bottom but what they do is they outsource the jobs so they don't have to pay health insurance. so those in the cafeteria with the institution of a nonprofit. in somebody else's making 300 times her salary. >> i saw the extremes i got a call from the cannes film costabile from ibm all upset he is in the overflow room with congress. the big corporate jet it is the billionaire. he is around the common people. but do you think there is any way to see this as a

disease? spee make you might be better positioned to. [laughter] to see if it is a treatable disease. but the societal cure is a change of policy so we should not have with the other types of corporations. with the hospital boards for the corporate offices. is to make those policy changes to change the tax policies.

but you will not get rid of the extremist and with the redistribution of wealth you're not supposed to do it unless it is from the bottom up that we have to do with the past 20 or 30 years. >> before you change policy there are values that underlie that. talk about growing up looking after the little guy it was something of respect. end of the values still caged the policies won't

change as well. but that is backwards in the society in fdr used to talk about the forgotten man. in this case it is the forgotten man in the fraud within those that have been cast aside by the economy in the fifth day are working to there is no need for benefits so i do agree you need a change of values. but the values will change if people become more engaged because the more you see what is going on out there.

one of the reasons that they are not concerned about is a cut in the quality of the politicians say it does not resonate. but what does resonate is the term fairness or unfair. when they see something that is not fair they would say i cannot believe she did that. that is not fair. people react that way we should look at what is fair and what is not in our society in terms of the economy. >> good evening.

you gave me a great segue about value. with people desiring to be athletes or celebrities in though little people that would do the infrastructure work to become doctors or lawyers or policeman, how do you feel we can affect the mind set for society to continue to grow to be united as the country? the values are gone paying hundreds of millions of dollars to pretend to be somebody they are not. >> that is a great question and it goes to the heart of the values issue.

the first thing i would say is they need to start in the home. we have seen family structures that are no longer as strong as when i was growing up. we saw a lot of trouble with black families over several decades talking about guys not taking care of their kids but i was traveling the country with the family issues in the problems associated with them a pretended to associate with african-americans are not limited they need to be

dealt with there but if you go to you several of these troubled suburban in communities where the rural communities that have been hit with joblessness in d.c. the out-of-wedlock birth or young and middle-aged men who are unemployed or drug abuse and guys in trouble because if you have guys that are not working bebel get in trouble and to go to jail. so this is a wider problem they and people have acknowledged in a lot of the values issues originate there in the family but beyond that we need to take

a look at the values we're promoting the nikkei's is are interacting and to self-destructive and again in terms of societal changes if you become more a engaged with the issues of our time the values automatically change. if you are more involved in your school system and lookout for the best interest of the children coming your value system is focused on those children and what is best for them. then you are out there in the real world. under no circumstances i trust them to come up with the right set of values.

>> you mentioned in the occupied movement to you have any optimism based there are movements now make even in georgia struggling to catch up to north carolina with the legislatures that are a real problem in the movement for the low-wage worker in there rebellion of the incarceration in led by u.s.. and the climate change and it seems to me the media

will report in there seems to be a downplayed of the tendency for people to fight back. this is there a sign of a verizon -- racing fight back? >> another great question and i talk about some of that in the book. there are a lot of issues. talk about civic engagement and when i indore more people to become engaged to talk about the low wage workers movement. my wife walked in the march for climate change a few weeks ago in new york. so there are a lot of people hard at work on these important issues but we have

had of a critical mass come together with leadership almost with the umbrellas sense that i would like to see any movement around a specific issue to have them all working together. but the more people that work, even if we don't get the focused movement the more that become involved involved, the greater the chance that some type of leadership will be merged to reach a critical mass where those voices from the bottom

can help but be heard. but i talk about some of the great movements of the past. sitting from the 19th century nobody was paying attention to them. they didn't have a publicist and who thought they would manage to succeed? martin luther king was not a big-time civil-rights movement he was recruited there were ordinary people men and women that they with the ride the buses so they

had weeks to establish strategy's and out of that that figure as powerful s. king emerged. lowe's people were not taking them seriously in the beginning it is the same thing back to the early days of the labor movement. what is really important is when you get engaged to fight for something you believe been it is important to be organized. but to ensure the movement is sustained issue will not

have that much success that we will keep pushing. and the remarkable things. >> currently there is a lack of lack of cohesiveness with coverage. with the cnr fox news or msnbc or traditional media.

and u.n. can foreign opinion how they feel about occupy one street or even the two-party -- teapartier. [laughter] so my question is what can we do as citizens to change our relationship with media is something that we all own? how do we change the relationship. >> they give for the question.

that relationship will not change any time soon. media at all our corporatized. is in the low-wage workers who had the serious straight -- strike it is difficult to organize the there trying. that is nothing like the coverage. for those who marched in the climate change but that's rights -- but just look at the politicians with the

changes that we need you have to knowledge the mainstream media don't give that type of coverage you there. therefore you have to keep doing your thing until you get noticed. so then the relationship with fox news or msnbc or cbs so what the heck is is going on down the block with police misconduct? what can we do to make it easier for people to find jobs? or if there is discrimination with housing or employment what can i do

to change a little bit of that? when you begin to build to the critical mass in when the media cannot ignore it any more. if you are too disappointed by the absence of coverage for favorable coverage that will not be helpful to anybody. >> there was a time i could call bob herbert tuesday that is what is going on but those days are gone. it is hard to keep up the fight. to talk about mcgarry they

are on the front page of "the new york times". so what do we do? there is great things happening in the city today. so those that are overcoming incredible obstacles. >> it is a good question been in the early days there were not on the front page of "the new york times". that we don't even expected to get that coverage. . .

that people had to endure in those days. and still the united states, it's still a great country. i say that you know democracy is not in great shape in this country but it's still alive. it's still alive and kicking. you can still vote for the candidates of your choice but you also can go out there and

get your voice heard. the middle class is on life-support but i think that it can be resuscitated. i hope that it can be resuscitated but i do think that you were one of the leaders and obviously we know each other. you were not one of the leaders and a lot of these important criminal justice initiatives in this country over a long period of time. but we can't just leave it to the leaders. i want to get more support for the leaders. i want to get the ordinary men and women in this country to decide that they themselves have to begin grappling with these issues. i think that you know a change will occur. i guess i have to believe that but i have seen, i have seen

through my readings of history and otherwise that there were far darker times and we have managed to emerge from them and i think we will emerge from this. >> we have time for one more question. i believe this john than over here has been waiting. >> you have lived and the struggle for all these years as well and i want to pose a question but i want to make sure i have a premise and that is that the least of us, the poor are not represented. the voices are not there at fox or "msnbc" or anywhere else but the public policy that's being presented by the president, every kid ought to be able to read by the time they start kindergarten or increasing minimum wage and affordable care and gun control which you started out with. we need a jobs bill that will build infrastructures, roads,

buildings everything and get those voices are being heard. i am from st. louis so what's going on in ferguson i think we have these ferguson's in every municipality in the country, the despair and poverty and it's not heard so when we say does that have to get worse we don't even realize how bad it is. and so i want to just share a question that when you say public policy, because i really do think we don't address campaign finance reform and term limits because we are paying these politicians to represent money interest and i will go so far to say even the supreme court is not representing what i think this country was founded on. so i will just post that. >> yeah, i don't disagree except that i don't think we can make our elected officials deal with those very serious problems. they should but i don't think we can make them do it.

i don't think they will deal with campaign finance reform. i don't think they will deal with climate change. i don't think they will give us policy that is going to create millions of additional ngugi decent jobs that we need for this country. the question becomes if that's true then what's the alternative and what do we do about that? i have tossed that question out there to you and i say sit down and talk to your families and talk to your neighbors and talk to your colleagues and the folks that you know at work and say, what is it that we are going to do about some of these issues and by that i don't mean the television or try and pick and choose between candidates where there is maybe not a little more than a dime's worth of difference between the two of them. it means what can you do? don't make the mistake of the missed opportunity that we made with the occupy wall street movement