having done more than anyone else for health care reform in the united states, he's a great chef and a great friend and we are so lucky to have him. he will be joined by jacob gerson from harvard moscow producer director and founder of the food laws lab at harvard law school and he has work on a book called from court to table. this conversation will be moderated by michael gerhardt. michael is her new visiting scholar here at the national constitution center. he is a superb presidential historian. you may have seen them last year discusses great book on the forgotten president. he is one of the most thoughtful constitutional commentators in the country and i'm so thrilled to have him at my side to oversee all of this great

constitutional content aware hosting. ladies and gentlemen without further ado please join me in welcoming our great guests to the show. [applause] >> thank you all for coming. we really appreciate it. it's a great honor to be here tonight and to have two extraordinary people and scholars share with us their expertise and insights into what's cooking. i have to confess at the outset we won't be able to share food tonight that we will perhaps more importantly talk about the quality food and particularly the reasons why the federal government regulates food and some of the major issues that are rising right now with respect to food regulation. without wasting time i wanted jumper to jacob and have them talk to us about once a federal move government involved in recruiting food. >> to start with the federal government regulates food because the law is almost always

been involved. the bible has a lot in the law. if you look at roman times, the roman times have a lot in the law and basic rovlin are the basic problems we face today which are two. food. he and food safety. they are related but they're not the same. the food. problem is essentially when i buy this thing and put in my body and my getting what i see and how do i know that? when we take a glass of milk at our to tell if it's milk or milk and water or some other adults are and whether it's poisoner safe organic. it's hard to tell by looking at it. that's true for almost all food in its eyes been true for almost all foods. we have ways of addressing that, weights and measures rules, purity disclosure rules today labeling rules safety rules production programs. so much of what the federal government is doing and the

state and local government is doing is trying to fix fix it ft problem which is never fully fix. the food purity problem in the food safety problem making sure we eat is what we want and it doesn't make us sick or kill us. >> that gets us off and running. zeke given all the regular is in suite got what you believe is most pressing issue right now related to food regulation? >> i think obesity has to be at the top of the list. worrying warning about national health policy. what we see is one, two and three a small corner of it and on diabetes alone we spend a quarter of a trillion dollars. wearing about how the government is involved in food, promoting foods and not promoting certain foods is clearly quite important

we have a lot of subsidies for farmers. we have issues through food stamps, wic, national school lunch program is a major way the federal government can impact what especially children eat. labeling laws, the issue of should we change the labels? we have somewhat complicated labels of ingredients and attrition. certainly when i was in the white house we were trying to push for pack labeling. that can be done voluntarily or done by regulation and we have obviously been the affordable care act included a requirement for caloric menu labeling by any establishment that has 20 outlets or more. and again all of it will have an impact on the obesity dynamic so

i think there are a lot of different ways that the government does intersect with what we eat and i think demonstrably it does have a big impact on what her children eat of nothing else. >> jacob in terms of federal regulation waterways that you believe the federal government could do more to ensure people people. >> there are two basic questions. one is making people aware and giving them access to more nutritious food and that's basically an informational problem and an access problem. which foods are in fact the ones we should be getting in my friends and the public health interest communities say we have known that for a long time and all my friends outside of the community -- the part of it really is a thing conveying information to the public in an effective way and allowing us to make choices. even if one has that information

if one doesn't have access to those food products wherever one is it's not going to matter much. so there's a question about being able to get both affordable and readily available healthy food, nutritious food however we decide it is. there's this lingering question which i will come back to later which is even if you have up information and you have the access if your pallet in taste is such that you don't want it then we have a different kind of problem that we need to solve and i think we have all three of those issues. >> i would just say one of my great frustrations having worked in the government is how much we as a country and it's very understandable if you say well we will give people the information they will act on it. everything behavioral economics tells us about human behavior is junk food because information is never enough to get people to

switch. you know this in your life and just to give you a concrete example, people who smoke no more about the ill health effects that you do about smoking. they have gotten that information in their ear. they have absorbed probably more than most people. we have a lot of data about that. it has to change their her behavior so going from information to the right behavior is a very big step that is typically information is necessary but it's almost never sufficient. we over and over again i think when we think about government doing things over and over again behave or pass regulations and laws as if that were easy. just give them the information and they will be free to act. we don't think about how hard it is. i think you made an excellent point, we can tell people what the right food is but if they have grown up with excessively

sweet excessively salty and that is what their pallet is educated to it's hard to change that they purchase with information. we need to think more creatively about what we do and information i think is never sufficient. i know why we do it of course. we are not saying these foods are bad. we are leaving it up to the individual. what we need to do with combat obesity is not going to be a very effective solution. >> i'm wondering to what extent costs isn't also an issue to jacob there is a perception and correct me if i'm wrong but healthy food cost more big if that is correct, why is that and how can we lower the cost of healthier food because i suspect that also influences choices well. >> i want to offer two things. the last study i saw said it

costs $1.50 more a day to eat a healthy diet compared to a less healthy diet. per person. it's about $500 a year and maybe a little bit more. wow $500 a year. a satellite? that's a huge amount of money but for many families it's not that much of the overall budget for their family. it costs $1.50 a year per person to be a healthier diet and people are not doing so. it might mean they don't know that but i'm not sure that's the case at this point. it might mean they don't value those health effects at more than $500 but again that's hard to imagine unless it's a behavior world. or it might be at maybe that they don't like the healthier diet. then she preferred the less healthy foods and the less healthy diet for any number of reasons. part of them publicly are calories when we think about the

government diet or the government marketplace it think it's worth thinking about the government palette that although we have created and young people as a consequence of the policies that we have. we expose young kids to those foods and not others. >> zeke let me turn to young people and talk about school lunches because that's an opportunity for children at that three of them, to make choices. they make on the basis of imperfect information but also the food available in school lunches may not be particularly nutritious so is there a problem with the nutritional value of school lunches? >> under the obama administration we did change the formula on school lunches and made them more nutritious, more vegetables and more fruits and that is very important.

we have data that in fact kids are eating more vegetables. they're not eating more fruits but taking more fruits fruits. >> there are not for her own efforts or vessels of the house. >> that has a positive impact and we know in the past kids were exposed to the school lunch program. they were more all these on average than their peers. it's hard to control for all the variables and the different economic households but in the past, remembering the past a lot of what went into a school lunch was determined by what farmers wanted. a program not run by the people responsible for nutrition or help but run by the department of agriculture. that tells you a lot about what the priorities are going to be for that. so i think because of the awareness of obesity in the country and effort to change it

we have gotten a better formulation on the national school lunch program and i think that's important. had we gone as far as we should? probably not. in the white house we the big controversy over mayor bloomberg wanted to prevent the use of food stamps for sodas. that was viewed as not acceptable. i thought it was perfectly acceptable and it would have been a very important task -- test of whether and factor how much it has contributed to obesity so we have a lot of play in the government. we have a school lunch program with wic and food stamps and s.n.a.p. and implement some people do consume. i think again we all pay for it coming in terms of the food family also pay for coming out. people become obese on those

diet so i think being more, shaping them more with an eye to the health and not just caloric intake is important. >> with regard to school lunch programs do you agree that regulations right now are the right balance or is there some other way to perhaps fix that? >> i think would be better and i think we all agree on fact and they have gotten better than they were. i think that's probably relatively uncontroversial. some of those actions have been a chevy digit different food groups and there has been some controversy there. overall it's a remarkably captive audience. talking about obesity in kids it's an amazing captive audience. they are there eight hours a day, six hours a day and it's about 30 million meals. 30 million kids each day that are fed so that a massive

portion of the u.s. population that we get to decide what they e. we get to decide what they e and they should only eat vegetables or any number of things. that's a big tool that the federal government has. they were equal in the past couple of decades has been the rise of what they call competitive foods in schools which were really around in my school. what are they competing with? they are competing with the school lunch that is provided. those competitive foods historically have soda, sugar, candy and branded fast food for many years in schools and lo and behold if you put pizza burgers and fries were soda next to the healthier option the cafeteria the kids don't want the healthier option. >> that's rather shocking. >> it is shocking. that is getting better and the

new rosa say competitive foods have to meet federal standards. it's pretty late in the process family to think seriously about how the environment is structured. >> what is important again, many of you have restaurant children and one of the things you know is what the feed them as kids -- kids don't go through lots of real radical changes in their food references and you know all those people who sell cereal, sell soda novus and so if they are worried about if they don't inculcate kids in drinking their soda or eating there are cereal they have lost them for a lifetime. so it's a very formative moment in setting the food pallet and food preferences and so i think again i totally agree with jacob, we need to be more health-conscious and how we are structuring those meals and by the way we can all bemoaning the

fact that this is the glass half empty but we have made important strides. we have gotten so this almost completely out of schools. the vending machines in schools so they have more nutrition. think everyone is aware and let's be honest philadelphia has been a major national leader in demonstrating a big difference both in getting that soda suite beverages out of the schools and that can make a big difference in kids obesity rates. this is a city that has plateaued from probably gone out about the data are bouncing back we have turned a corner in the city because of major leadership in the city from the mayor on down on this very issue. we know politically you can actually make a difference in what's in the school and the

impact on kids. we don't have to wait on hold generation to see the impact. >> jacob reduce subsidies come into play? said part of the federal policy as well and the perceptions may be wrong but the subsidies subsidies the federal government gives may be given to factory farms, given to producers of food that are not healthy. to what extent is that a problem that has to be wrestled with in this particular area? >> we had a farm bill in the 1930s. like many of these programs in the great depression the prices fell too low and so what they did was essentially pay people not to grow which reduce supply. if there is too much that the government bought it and that reduce supply and supply goes up

and everyone is happy. it worked for a while and there was a great coalition between the food stamps and snap program provincially in the farm program. it was a rural urban and both groups supported it. what happened over time as those payments started to be done somewhat differently instead of paying farmers not to grow which sounds crazy but isn't if you want to keep prices high we pay farmers to grow more so the more acres you planted the more money you got and they're still a on the price. you have to buy insurance of prices could fall the way down which meant the government was at risk and that the farmers. what happens is you grow up more stuff and that makes prices go down. i like low prices as much as the next person but what we really like are people who use those commodities as inputs for their products. it's a lot of the ethanol

industry in biofuels and corn syrup for example among many others. so now there's a new coalition that wants those crops to continue to be subsidized. not to keep prices high but to keep prices down. as a program that gets renewed every five years. every five years as an opportunity to decide how the cops are going to be planted so if you want different crops planted or more of those obviously the soy farmers won't like it because subsidized soy farming is much. that's clear but lots of other people might. fruits and vegetables are known as specialty products in the farm legislation. those are specialty crops. specialty crops can be a lot more produced domestically and we should favor the spring you than the others. >> is the based on your expertise and study in your experience curious about your

reaction about a common misperception which is the chicken industry essentially has taken captive by food and drug administration. to what extent are they in a sense in the driver seat and we have to maneuver around the obstacles in the sales of their products? >> captive is a little stronger. people talk about regulatory capture all the time. it's a very contentious thing. quarter like to say to people is enough to understand the mindset of bureaucrat. >> it's become a horror story. >> i don't mean that a negative way. most of these are incredibly smart people working incredibly hard often as we are about to enter again another period that the government is going to shut down and you will be forced to not get a paycheck and you know is a little stressful. one of the things that ends up happening i think for many

people who are in the federal government wanting to do the right thing is they have i thank you motivation of minimized incoming criticism. because it's never pleasant. newspapers etc. so one of the things you end up doing as you try to chat these fine lines and you know the meat industry is a lot more interested in what happens in a regulatory standpoint and consumers. someone is taking care of it. they are worrying about mad cow disease over there and they are worrying that my chicken is going to be clean and worried about the fish that i get the fish that's labeled in the food store. but those industries have a lot at stake so they can really push their agenda. fewer bureaucrats anyone to do the right thing i consumers and the right thing by the producers

you end up biasing yourself towards where's the criticism likely to coming from pacs so i think that is what ends up being very powerful. it's hard for someone in the federal government to do some of our big money makers in this country. nonetheless again i view the glass as a little more half-full. we have had a major conversation over the last five years thanks to the first lady and the recognition of obesity. we have talked about sugar-sweetened or in this case corn syrup beverages but drinking of that has gone down. coke is in real trouble.

the american public has heard the message. these are not happened we got to over a year. it's going to take time to break the habits. similarly i think moving off junk food and processed food cereals are another thing. sales of cereals has gone way down. substitute by high protein intake especially in the early morning but these are positive trends that show is verse people will change their diet and second we can push harder on those things. meet is one of these funny things which on the one hand he do want people t protein but protein is really good and you probably should have more to substitute the carbohydrate but it also has some bad effects too.

the same thing is true of dairy. the moderation most things are okay. >> we are also trying to figure out at this point jacob what we are not talking about and this is what seat map of saying. we haven't talked about gmos yet , genetically modified organisms. the fda is not made a distinction between gmos and non-gmos. is it something we should be talking about and this is something we need to study further? were r&b with respect to that? >> to say we are not talking about it is not quite right. there are a lot of voices talking about it. there is litigation over whether the constitution will be upheld if there is that initiative there. a similar initiative failed in

california but it wouldn't be surprising if something came out of oregon. i think those questions are very much being asked. there is a big push at the federal level to pass legislation to preempt those laws and two stops states from mark acquiring gmo labeling. it's a very vocal push and they push is really expensive. should the fda -- ftap doing anything to study? definitely and do we know is a little bit less clear. my reading of the luetscher in the studies is that i'm not aware of any study and i would like to see one that there is the shows there's a concrete physical health effect or harm from consuming gmo products. there is totally sensible literature suggesting what is happen with some of the gmo products will produce environmental harms. that can be scary so if you think about for example roundup

ready products. idget genetically modified seed that you plant that is resistant to monsanto's roundup herbicide or that means you can put as much on their issue want in the plant will be fine and all the other weeds will go down and that makes farming very efficient. yields will go up and all is fine and good. unless using roundup is bad for the environment and everyone assumes that and the concern is that over a couple of years rather than a couple hundred years the weeds that survive are browned upper going to be really strong persistent weeds, super weeds so we will have to ratchet up the next batch of roundup resistance. that process of ratcheting up is a concern environmentally. we are not sure if it hurts environmentally or if it produces revolutionary effects that people are actions about

it. so i asked my students do you like this stuff? now, now and i asked him why they have no idea. it's a common reaction. there is fear and concern. but they can articulate exactly why. we are surely going to study this and talk about it a lot more. >> is the i would agree with what you said that certainly on the hall finding there is no study and again that someone knows of a study of the future about it, there is no study that shows is a problem and no reason to think there should be any problem healthwise from the gmo. i think we need to be upfront and honest about that. the environmental factors are a little more unknown. i would say second it has always perplexed me that we have to get consumers all the information and let them choose. this is one area where the producers don't want to give them the information and don't

want them to make choices and try to obstruct regarding this basic information. on the idea that jacob said most of us feel queasy about it and we would probably avoided if we could produce something said gm on something said not gmo and we were sure we got great the right information we would make a choice on that basis even though it may make the health difference to us. i've always found this idea that they object suddenly to releasing that information on first amendment grounds or whatever grounds. don't regulate it, just give the consumer the information. the last thing i would wind out as i do think in this case personally to the american public is a lot more reaction than the european public. in european public gmos you would think that they were the black plague the way the europeans talk about them. i'm not joking and they are much more into excluding gmos etc..

i have to tell you that has effects which most people don't appreciate in the developing world. they have gmo seed that they can't sell to europe and any of their products. it creates a real problem because the europeans are very very stringent about any contamination so it has a big impact on farmers that she wouldn't think about in terms of restricting their access to markets. .. legislation because this industry dates different laws they prefer one national law to go to the lowest common denominator.

>> as part of the conversation of a negative environmental impact but is thought by the u.n. and produced it is harmful to the environment. would you agree and should that become part of the conversation? >> i agree and i am on record to say that is a big admirer mental issue. there is no question that the that farming is a quirky area in the regulation we

regulate some stuff and not others with the next frontier of the environmental law. >> but we haven't spoken about is antibiotics. to worry about the cows and chickens and though water supply the needs of arrear all recipients not just hormones. part of the problem the data isn't great but other countries have he eliminated the use of antibiotics of meat production here is a big issue i think it was perdue to get those of

antibiotics and now you see a lot of companies though antibiotics production that i think will drive a much bigger segment to respond to what consumers wonder what they think they want. finally we are having a pretty positive impact between your diet and your health you can see even if they don't cook well but demanding of their restaurants to a better job. >> having a conference on friday of antibiotics in food if you want more reformation much for that conference.

and finally. finally we are achieving a long process. and there is a lot of preparation in the '70s with some cause for concern and started a process it was halted over a period of decades. but now the fda has issued a voluntary guideline to reduce the use of antibiotics part of that has been driven by the public and the industry itself. and it's been a long process itself.

so people said ago to my producer we can't get there but not immediately so whether it is no antibiotics or therapeutic purposes is a lot of detail, the. >> so continuing us a discussion of unhealthy food high fructose corn syrup is a serious health issue why can't it be labeled natural? >>. >> i don't have a problem with the not allowing that

or food is horrible with no benefit to take it out of the food is green weaken -- we have to allow it to be in the food. if it causes harm than it is not safe we should not pretend that it is. an example of a general class of problems in the federal government the non specification of the use of label consumers think different things. if you describe a can of tomatoes as fresh what does that mean? high fructose corn syrup is all natural? are again it is clear. but the their terms are not. some lives there is guidance or an industry group for what people think it means

that is part of the of food purity problem. they have taken over every word that they can control to use it to sell. so it is no surprise the work and it got a definitive label but it's not clearly specified and they will use that and that is what they are paid for. >> isn't a surprise without clear definitions. one of the questions is if you took tipoff to say you cannot use natural with corn syrup you can for shirker are we any better off? >> i am not sure that is a positive change just because

it is cheaper and it appears to have adverse effects in an terms of obesity but frankly we should try to minimize that anyway. otherwise that is the unlawful or if it is deemed to be that is illegal and the ftc will have to go to court to deal with that that that is the case if it is fraudulent it is a different question. >> with those attacks of healthy eating and obesity?

>> i don't know but i am being honest. makes no sense otherwise we are against it. you would have thought it was one of the things that is non-partisan. there isn't a lot of disagreement with of the most interesting things from madison wisconsin with pitchers from the historical society. these and not pitchers from the '20s but the '60s and '70s. every kid they are scrawny.

there were just much, much skinnier back and the caloric intake was lower and they're playing constantly outside. >> almost all of these stories or baseball or basketball. it is undeniable with huge economic threats to the country and lots of other items but it seems a less we are ideological there is no reason to oppose that. if we do want to support our small farmers but i am not 100 percent sure with that mentality.

>> the only thing i might add other raw regulation of food and of government get out of my kitchen i think that is wrong because they think it is already heavily regulated in the end the government will status will hold saying is constrained so even at that point for some reason that is confusion so tell me which one to eat i just don't make that makes a lot of sense. >> expose to the point there is no society ever to have

regulation of food division is so central no society has never regulated food even libertarians want to note that it is pure so there is no way to get to that neutral stand point that it is not possible or even a conceptual. >> speaking of the need to rebut warning labels on foods? , because presumably they are addictive? [laughter] >> 70% of chocolate is high predictive and good for you i don't think that is fair.

[laughter] >> i am in favor of labeling and the like disclosure in general. but for each individual person with a different set of things that day care about and then there is a laundry list of characteristics are features where was it produced? blast your or this year how did they get here? all the things he may care about but then we have to choose among them otherwise it is completely overwhelming and useless. >> isn't it likely is that

so much of what happens is substitutes for quality in their view. on not an expert that it could have the same ingredients so why would i end up with this water as opposed to another? if that works its way into the calculation. >> it does a lot. so running surveys some that have the percentage of daily sugar allowance. so on the basis of the brand and the label and the ingredients. >> is a help the?

does it cost a lot? we still piece that out the pages care about taste and cost. i spend a large part of my time so there is a lot of reasons to think the small fraction of shoppers but it is hard to read you don't add up everything they you eat see work for the tertiary manufacturers

association with the hope the fda could step in. you can see how much voluntarily. but this contentious. calories, sugar, fat, calori es, there is a lot of information that depends on your main objective. in those ought to be included. but then to be very fearful of the other summary measure

that also is hard to figure out what is dependent upon what we need to adhere to but it is so high on the national level. >> again about labeling labeling, because that is our theme given the perils of excessive sugar intake wire there no recommended daily allowance it does carbohydrates but why not sugar?

>> it is also described as poison some time. >> data and knowing the reason not to provide that information. there is a political story why we don't and that is true i think politics should be absent absent but it is not absent from politics. fact they have been involved in the industry many years and those with a lot of sugar don't want that on the label because it is incredible how much sugar is in the products. i know this antiqued this yet every day i am amazed how much is on the product.

>>. >> this is a real problem. >> you know, where we are headed. [laughter] >> there other ways to convey that information in the what i have begun thinking about is the what realm of the glycine index of how foods effect of body to have a high glucose law will end then to crash to affect the insulin of the

type two diabetes that as a guide that of control this would have been a very useful label for those are not diabetic to avoid for the long term of of i place in the index i just learned broccoli is zero. that is one way to get that sugar element with regular folks like us laura the millions and millions. >> next question. and then to increase the cost of food.

>> it is true weirded estimating the cost of those regulations trying to figure out the cost them the benefit of the regulations some people think those studies are terrific to think it will cost us more to do than the health benefits is a question to ask. so those are pretty modest usually. to restructure the economy is a big cost but to drive that food costs that. one of the problems they

have you want good eggs healthy, cage free with no antibiotics. so there is free range and if you can do those things then he can be priced as those to our to recover those costs they should be able to. and it might work out okay. because very huge population there is a nutrition problem

but to get our head around the fact the 1930's 20 percent of the household budget went to food but the a.d. it to slightly raise the cost of food to say it will have an adverse effect the really for the vast majority of americans it could be a good thing. maybe it will shift consumption in it might actually be a good thing and not a bad thing so i am a little hesitant to say just raised the food prices.

the we tend to like stuff for a low price. >> high quality of our less for the same price that is a trade-off with high quality food because you don't need 20000 calories a day 2000 does just fine. maybe higher quality is a better deal. we would have less diabetes six genera. >> and other countries the serving sizes bigger but it is just smaller over there. >> also link that up with the opportunity to walk talk

about the al less obesity but the extent to to which of advertising so what about regularly advertising to children? >> of battle starts over that as you might imagine a lot of big media interest. to have positive changes it is a tough road in part because segmenting about market watching much more

than a saturday morning cartoons. there will be a lot of spillover. i now think that is the be all and end all to change kids' diets but the shrike -- the shrek experiment they put it on the onion the kids wanted the onion. [laughter] there are things we can do to make them desire vegetables. to be more creative when it comes to kids once we give

them their taste buds it is very hard. my new year's resolution was no added sugar. and no added candy. ion 10 months into it but it took a long time to change my taste buds. and candy is so ubiquitous it is the force of will in the center of my office there are too big jars of m&m's. every time it is hard to break that. but that is something we have to do for our kids and ourselves. . .

there are important things about the local food movement. you can create local farms and patronize them. so it ist important but yet we have to recognize we're not growing raspberries in the winter.,

so there is limits to how affect youill want people to have more fish and less meat in theo ea midwest will not be local will have to import from thepo coast.rt believe me isis of the board of a farmer's market in washington d.c. as the mission is to provide opportunities for local farmers of level we can do here in philadelphia.fa but there will be limits to how develop that can be if we also want to maintain a nice healthy balanced diet across the full year. >> i agree with all that, i'll just add one thing that can be done at scale in some areas. it's to pair local farms with

schools. it's something that is happening in philadelphia, that's a nice local move, it's good for the local farmers and products and give for the schools. i think in the community to. >> i will say that one of the big hitches for local is the distribution. you have the farmer here, you have have the demand in a city, and the distributors, cisco, and the other ones aramark, they can't do local. it's just not a big enough volume. volume. to get that distribution system working correctly so you can actually get efficiently from the farmers to the markets in urban areas, that is something that i think is a big challenge for most of these global people who grow local thanks. i know a lot of people are trying to solve that problem now. >> so time is at an end but i want to ask each of you again some what of an open question. and you can take it whatever direction you want. we talk about federal regulation.

there's also state and local regulation. i'm wondering to what extent there is room left in that realm and what would be the better policy to take us in the direction you both talked about tonight in terms of state and local regulations? >> i think there is still room and there is a state that has been regulate have elated at the state of local level and federally for long time. by and large that's appropriate. i think i think some of things we are talking about is likely to have the feature whether the state push and then it gets federalize. i think part of the food industry where there's national presence that is just going to repeat over and over. my hunch is there'll there will be a push for more federal regulation and less state regulation. i think that is okay, we get up some of the stuff that we would originally get, just the local

character of food. >> in the end, we are now in interconnected country and i do not think we will have situation where will we have a checkerboard of very serious regulations for very long. it is very hard for industry to work under those conditions and they end up pushing for national regulation. what you hope is in that process we don't go to the lowest common denominator because that disempowers places like vermont, oregon, oregon, california that want to do more. that i think is unfortunate. >> unfortunately we are out of time. i hope you'll allow me a minute or two to say it is rare opportunity for a moderator to say and be completely truthful, when he says, we have been so lucky tonight to have the two best experts in the country, two

of two of the finest people in the country to talk about in credible issues. i want to thank you both for sharing your time and expertise with us. [applause].

schematically shot reagan he was not wearing a bulletproof vests that day but was looking at carter before this. 16 presidents faced assassination threats although not liable to eyeball since reagan. even the candidates like kiwi long in 75 was assassinated and robert kennedy 68 to was assassinated and george wallace who was shot dead paralyzed for life 1972. i cover candidates as well as presidents and it is a long list.

journal financial editor dennis berman and a discussion that covered drug prices, government regulation of healthcare, in the future of health technology. this is an hour. >> so without further do we have loo d >> so much is goingte on inh the world of health care we have been reporting at though "wall street journal" that is going on in the health care sector with farma and around the worldof so we're delighted for the next hour to have this fascinating and timely discussion please welcome bocaccio -- the ceo ofscin

pfizer. [applause]good >> good morning. anything you would like to talk about? [laughter] frontpage of though street journal discussion with 115 or d 20 billion-dollar plus deal. >> it's amazing what you'll do to fill the room. we have an official position that we do not comment on the speculation of potential. if you don't mind, i i will not picking your pocket. okay. >> so without commenting on the specific thing you have been

vocal and clear with your investors about what you feel about consolidation. why should visor, honestly big-company are ready, what is the value in getting bigger? >> we have laid out in the discussions with their investors that we have various scenarios. one is to continue to look for growth, are in-line products are doing well, we have a number of exciting new launches and we had a really good quarter. so we could look at it as a strategy but as a way of facilitating strategies and accelerating if possible return to shareholders. we can do bb, business

development if it will ask valerie value shareowners. or we could also sit tight and decide to do a split, if we decide that was the best or we could do a bbm into a split. we have all whole field of strategic alternatives and we by what we believe will produce the best long-term value. >> so scale is in a poor world in healthcare. you look at health insurance, two huge two huge deals going on right now. if you look at pharma, for some reason you take this deal is a 500,000,000,000 dollars worth of farming deal from 2015 alone. you look at hospitals and see consolidation there. drugstore and see consolidation there. drugstore chains, walgreens and rite aid, the deal broke in the wall street journal as well. what the heck is going on with every part of the healthcare system getting bigger and bigger?

>> i think the pressures on the providers is being driven by changes in the healthcare reimbursement system. that is true both for payers and for the providers. i don't think pharmaceutical industry as of yet is being driven to consolidate. because of the consolidation of the other parts of the system i think the consolidation is being more driven by companies that have the cash and want to look for waste of accelerating their portfolio. i do think there may come a point if we continue to see concentration on the other side, if we do see more governments involvement in healthcare that we have today, that consolidation would be a road you need to take. >> why would you need to take that? >> well because generally when you do business with governments it doesn't work out very well for free enterprise.

you don't get an ability to recover the value of your product, you you are dealing with a monopoly purchaser. that tends to force consolidation to remove costs. to give you so you have more weight in the negotiation. unfortunately, it reduces innovation. it reduces the opportunity for innovation. >> outage you feel when hillary clinton, especially and there are others, in the presidential field when she went after a drug company like yours, not by name but certainly those at your level, what is your response to that? >> well pricing is always an issue, access is always an issue. it is important for patients and consumers to know we are vitally important to the healthcare system. can you imagine going into your dr. or into a hospital and not

having pharmaceuticals? can you imagine doing an operation without modern medicine? you couldn't do it. so we are in a port part of it. unfortunately we are an easy target because we do not interact directly with consumers. we have huge restrictions on our ability to talk to consumers. for politicians and the political moment they tend to try to make news and get votes by doing what politicians do. i think good public policy will dominate. pricing has been an issue in the united states were 40 - 50 years. it always will be. it peaks up at election periods but then it always comes back to what the republic policy is. that is where pharmaceuticals

can't defend on the healthcare costs, we have built-in pricing mechanisms that reduce the cost of pharmaceuticals by eloise. so if you look at price increase in 2015 for the company it was net after rebates about 6%. but if you look at it in a different sense, a sense of what was the cost to society of our innovations, there is no increase. >> what he say that? >> because products have gone, exclusivity which is in the mechanism to reduce price and if you look over the five-year period of 2010-2015 our prices in fact, if you're talking about prices of therapies that were in the marketplace and coming to the market place and have price

increases, was every year will accumulative 4% negative. >> okay couple points on that. it seems from the number i sigh recently, about one third of the revenue increases came from the rate that affected themselves. in terms of the net adding your revenue, morbid is, morbid is coming from the price increase themselves. >> well i don't know. >> well viagra was up 57%. >> well i don't get into specific products. we price them based on value. they deliver. and i would like to point out when we launch a product we do not price it to recuperate the full value to society. if you look at studies that have been done in staten for instance, sten was a very reputable health economic journal, sent had been calculated over a period of

eight decade or 20 years 20 years and created $1.3 trillion of value for the u.s. economy by life savings, quality of life improved protein productivity. >> so maybe you have been underpricing drugs? >> i would say we would never price art drugs for the full societal value. it is an affordability issue. >> but maybe you been under price last two decades? maybe they should have been priced higher. >> according to the benefits deliver to society you can make that argument. i've been satisfied that we have the right pricing policy. it enabled us to fund more investment research, the point i'm tried to make is that we increase prices because expenses increase, because the fda requires a bigger and more lyrical trials and because we have a risky business. and the drugs are adding value

to society. >> but you can lend it in muscle response when a consumer is used to an old product getting cheaper in price, they see now, they see on the news and perhaps they see him when they go to the pharmacy themselves, they see that price going up and up. >> you might be totally right but the emotional response, and therefore the political response is based on their experience with think things to get cheaper over time. >> let me give you two counter arguments. number one, 12 million people use a drug and it got 90% cheaper since 2005. so drugs get cheaper. they get cheaper when they go off exclusivity and that's a bargain for society. we teach huge risk and when they go off patent they get extremely inexpensive. number two, the cost to the consumer of our medication is

really determined by the way society decides to allocate its resources to healthcare. we have comprehensive insurance in the united states, but it is no longer acting like insurance. >> what is it acting like. >> it's acting like a service provider. >> explained that. >> most insurance companies today the risk is taken out. they have reset by the government for medicare, medicaid, large part of the business is really no insurance. the government is saying here is the premiums, this is what you can charge, you have to offer as a premium increase. these are the mandated benefits have to give. here the subsidies. they become service providers for the government. so the incentives are not constructed right. >> how would you construct those

, that's an interesting point. >> i think insurance insurance companies need to have an ability to take risk and's ability to price their product and then award them to ensure the long-term health of their patients. >> their rates get set on the diagnosis of their one-year basis. so dependent they have more cancer patients their risk get changed. but if a new technology comes in like likes a dolly, they can recuperate the cost, i, i don't blame them. they can't recuperate because there's something that says there's no medicine that comes and that is fabulously important , it cures hepatitis c, saves the the economy hundreds of millions of dollars or

trillion over long period of time, but we are not going to change your risk are. they pay for it in that year it is a total loss for them. >> so i think that's a perfect example, every oak year really thought. >> and real change in prices. soon as competition comes and prices dropped 40 percent. it's a very competitive industry speemac@we know very competitive industry. >> at we know i'll come best approaches like the one you describe are hard to measure, there's so many efforts going on both small and large across the country, how do we actually make that happen. is it a political decision in the end? or does it come from the bottom up? if what your sign is correct and it may well be how does it actually occur? >> you have to let the marketplace work. that is what we don't do. we don't have a have a marketplace that works. we have government interfering with the risk card goes off, with the gap between your policy on risk. i think there's clearly a place in government to provide a

safety net. the government has gone way beyond that so there's fears of working in the marketplace. i think that the bottom line. were country that leaves the marketplace with reasonable regulation can produce the best result. or we believe a central government can dictate, and i for one don't believe that works. look at europe and you can see doesn't work. >> why does that work in your? >> look at the statistics for people who get cancer in the u.k. and see what happens. if you get cancer in the u.k. you don't want to be in the u.k. >> you look at the access to modern technology in europe, it's heavy rationed. it's very difficult to get an appropriate for the technology when you have a monopoly

purchase speemac's let's say hillary kling calls yet, maybe she is. maybe she calls up tomorrow tomorrow says let's meet for a drink, you meet for a drink and she says to you, this is set up for a joke but it's not, she says to tell me the one thing i need to know about the president of a night states to resolve the problems you're describing here. what would you tell her #. >> i would say you got to create appropriate regulations, incentives for for the providers, the insurance companies in the pharmaceutical, but needs to intern an incentive them to do that. we also need to make sure the patient has incentive. we don't have that. there is not an incentive for people not smoke, to keep their weight down, not to become diabetic. now some people become diabetic because it's unfortunate, genetic. but a lot

of it is lifestyle. we don't have those type of incentives in the system. >> is it eventually take us to a path, maybe in the near future toward genetic testing and been able to judge whether that person is making behavioral choices or it occurs by genetic outcome? >> sometime in the future but it is not just genetics. there so many factors. i just think you can go so far but if you don't take the drug there has to be consequences. if you're diabetic and have medicine you should can control your diabetes. you have to have skin in the game. >> is in your health enough? >> well, the three difficult, for instance people get diagnose and they need a cholesterol treatment. in six months 50% have stopped taking them. 50% of stopped. >> because? >> because people are like that.

we can understand it. we have no amount of research to try to increase the adherence to medical tatian it's a behavioral question. people who take a means to press and therapies and they stopped taking it. i don't think it's an easy solution but the central government dictating the allocation of resources i interfering with the pricing mechanism. >> left on the government for a second. this is my word and i would use the word insane. for a company of your size to potentially go for a transaction in which it would be tax inverting, in an election year, without commenting on how many exec transaction, you have been vocal about the tax regime and the issue, what is your view on it now? how has visor taken it if they

have inverted across to u.s. shores. >> my view is that i believe this is a country of laws. i think the laws, at lst for congress are clear. i think i have the beauty to move to increase or defend the value of the company for my share holders and i also have a duty to our colleagues. i want them to have a company that that is robust and can grow, and they can have careers in, i feel were at a tremendous disadvantage right now in that race. i have foreign companies have tax rates of 15%, who can invest two - 3,000,000,000 billion more in research than we can.

we are fighting with one hand tied behind her back. your comment to me will this is not the appropriate time, tell me the last ten years ten years when it was the appropriate time. what level of confidence you have that in the next ten years will see rational tax reform. >> you have already been through the process with your potential with too much political throwback on the issue. >> well know, i don't think so. i don't think don't think there is any real political blowback. there is no political blowback in the uk. there are quite willing to have them do that transaction. we just and have no will to sell. it's sell. it's simple as that. we did have a capital market system which would make for efficient transaction. >> are you ready for visor's name to become an election talking point? >> i'm only for visor's name and myself to say that we are doing what we need to do to ensure that we can continue to

innovate, continue to bring cures, continue employment and to be a successful company. the problem is, our tax code is hugely disadvantageous to american high-tech multinational companies that i personally have been to washington in the last two years, i have talked to almost anybody who would listen to me. i have tried to get this is an urgent issue that we need to fix and i have been totally unsuccessful. >> what is that conversation my? >> will they will understand, they say yes we know the tax code needs to be fixed, yet there is no political way to fix it. >> so that leaves you no choice perhaps. >> that leaves me under the assumption that even where there may be political wills it will still be a very difficult

process with no guarantee of a competitive outcome. european nations have a broader tax base. their corporate tax, personal personal tax, and vat. this allows them to drive it corporate rate down to the level of that the united states cannot speemac, chest you you have overseas? >> it fluctuates and depends on where the money is at the time it can range between 20- 50 billion. >> that's lotta money right. arguably, and this is an argument for inversion, with your lower tax rates you can do more investment in the united states. >> yeah, if you are a foreign company, the issue is it is not that we don't as a company want to be in the united states. i think the united states is a fabulous place to do business. you have great schools, great

intellectual property, rule rule of law, most of the time. there is no competitive advantage in the u.s. are domiciled outside of u.s. in fact there's a huge disadvantage. >> ..

we need to have an engine for growth. we looked at a very fundamental way to look at what our success rate has to be and what they are in large margins and what is the cost it will take to bring products forward. when do we fail? how do we fail? do we fail early and often or

late? >> you are overspending, basically. >> we were over spending. >> was there a spreadsheet where you saw and you said oh my god? >> no, this is judgment. the more i get confident, that the new pathways, the new knowledge the culture is right. the scientists are being productive. the more you build trust, the more you're willing to spend. investors are the same way. success bring success. if were extremely successful then we will be successful with our people. >> what made the equation out of whack? >> lack of good leadership. lack of appropriate culture. we've taken a lot of steps to

improve our science base and improve where we are, the competitiveness of our science and a certain element, to be honest, is also very often luck. this is a very difficult exercise. if you picked the wrong area to go down or you make a mistake and you hit a blind alley and you don't know for ten years, you made the wrong bet. so there's lock and there's management and there's judgment, and it just got out of whack. >> was there somehow a cultural, something was out of whack in r&d? this isn't just with pfizer but across the industry that matters is it viewed as mattering more than it should?

>> most people who come to work at pfizer want to make a difference and scientists really want to make a difference and they invest time in their intellectual capital in these projects and it's very hard for them to give up a project. you need a culture that rewards the team that says we want to kill this. we've spent five years of our life on this but it's not going to make it, let's move on. that's part of the culture change. >> saying no. >> right, saying no. we also at pfizer, frankly were late to change the nature of the mix of our scientists. we were heavy in chemistry and we are still probably one of the best chemistry, innovative chemistry organizations in the world as it relates to

pharmaceuticals, but we were slow in new pathways on biology and we were probably in the wrong places. traditionally pfizer put its research sites where it had big manufacturing sites. we had manufacturing sites where we have lots of water in rivers. that's not very conducive to attracting the best scientists. while you may attract the best scientists, but then ten years later you're not still attracting the best scientists. i think our movement to san francisco and cambridge and la jolla offer certain scientists to allow us to be more competitive. >> if you had top phd students from around the world and you want these three disciplines at the top of the list, who would you put there? right now if you were hiring. >> chemistry, biology, fundamental biology, in those

areas. >> define epigenetic's and how medicine is moving? >> my understanding is it's the way the genes will chains change and the proteins in the structure and how they will change based on the signals the body receives. so two people can have the same genes like identical twins but if they have different environments and eat different foods and have different stress levels in different danger signals will all have different outcomes. the genes don't dominate. it's what happens to the genes by outside environment. we may need to call and in a scientist to confirm that but that's the way i can explain it.

>> even microbes in your gut can affect whether you're going to be healthy or not. some people become extremely ill and you have to have some pretty difficult procedures. >> on the other side of the r&d model is a company called valiant. they been under a lot of pressure and observation lately themselves. when you see a company like that, do you think they are good for science? >> i think they are a part of a free enterprise system. everybody has a low in the ecosystem. they certainly push companies to be more efficient.

they used a lot of very sophisticated financial techniques to be able to take out companies who were undervalued. i believe it's a dead-end. there is no research, there is no future. they are relying on underappreciated assets. they are coming in and selling them at close to full value and making some money at it. is it fundamentally helpful for science? no. will the marketplace take care of it? yes. >> so you're saying they're currently operating as a dead-end. >> i'm saying it's a dead-end for research. >> is a dead-end for a business standpoint.

>> eventually run out of undervalued assets. in our business you have to remake yourself every ten years so from that point of view, i don't see that business model is sustainable. >> their use of specialty pharmacies is sort of in the weeds around the distribution network. but it's an important one for them. do you do that?? >> i don't know what their use of specialty pharmacies is. we do use specialty form pharmacies but there's no type of agreement that reportedly, we use those pharmacies to deliver ecology drugs for patients who need a higher level of attention from the pharmacy. >> if you read the reporting in the "washington journal" yesterday they were specialty but really they're specialty was getting the consumers to pay. >> i don't know anything about their business model.

>> fair enough. what is the nature of your relationship? >> frankly i'm not aware of a particularly profound relationship with them. i'm not aware of any contracts or how we deal with them. i'm aware of how we ethically operate in the marketplace and i am satisfied that we ethically use them in the way they should be used. >> so it's not really on your radar. >> no. >> where does pfizer go from here? from the r&d perspective you've had some good success. what's the next iteration? whether a deal or not happens, what does visor in 2020 look

like? >> i didn't talk about vision and mission when i first came in. then later on we started talking about purpose and mission. our mission is to become the premier pharmaceutical company by the end of the decade. we describe that as being highly respected and having people want to work for us. having life-saving medicines and being involved in conversations that can change the structure and the outcome of the industry. and having the right culture. i want people to want to come to visor. i want them to tell their families and their friends that this is a great place to work. >> how do you change a culture of 80000 employees? slowly and you need to get out and talk. you would be amazed at how much

work management is that if you want to change culture you have to talk about it and make sure that you are consistent. we have something called own it which is owning the business. winning the business. >> in a politically correct atmosphere to come out and say no jokes with discussed behavior. you can't ask the local people. yet everybody knows a joke when they see one. no one wants to work for a joke. if you want to attract the best and the brightest, it's your

manager and if your managers a joke you don't want to be there. so no jokes are important in our culture. so your conversation with the lawyers went like what? like well you can't do this this is like putting a brand on people. it's naming them. you can't say you shouldn't be saying people are of this persuasion are that precision. i said all right were not saying you're permanently a joke, were saying no jokes in the discussed behavior. it's a recognition that you should work with someone and tell them if they don't change their behavior we don't want them in the company. >> of course you famously have a coin that you like to share. >> i do not have it with me. >> tell us about that coin. >> part of the problem is in any system part of the problem is to get the people who are

intimately involved in the business to tell you the truth. and to tell the organization what they believe. we have a saying at pfizer which was coined by somebody in australia saying bad news early is good news. bad news late is really bad news. right? so we need a culture where people don't feel intimidated and can stand up and talk. they need to be able to take on the hierarchy of their supervisor. >> what is the hardest conversation you've had with someone who said look you want me to tell you the truth, here's the truth. >> it was thank you, i needed to know that. now we can bring the resources of the company to work on this.

if you knew this two months ago you should've told me two months ago so we had more time to work on this. we had a filing to the fda. first time it had ever happened. i pulled people together and i said what happened. they said while we knew it was a bad file. everybody individually new was a bad file, but nobody spoke up. so that's all we started talking straight talk. get the coin out and say look it may not be your area but if you're uncomfortable with something you have to speak up in the coin is a mechanism. it's a symbol. it's a way of saying the coin is on the table and i'm protected and i wanted tell you you what i believe is wrong about this. i don't think people necessarily know what's on the coin so.

>> got a good prop here. everybody has it. we didn't want to pay for them, but see it ceos like that. so straight talk is what you can put down if you feel your and in an environment where things have not been talked about. the elephant in the room has not been talked about it. you can put it on the table and you can use it like that or on the other hand, on the other side there is an own it where you can tell a colleague, own it. you're not owning it. it happened to me. a very simple example, but i was , it has let's discuss behavior which is very important and no jokes. i was at the christmas celebration and we had a small

instance but it's very telling and we have a carol organization and they were singing and i don't have a voice and i was walking by and they said come on you gotta get up and sing with us we do this every year were volunteers and would be great if you get up and sing with us and i said no and 70 said come on, own it. so i had a go go out and sing. they got me. so this is powerful. it sounds hokey but it's really powerful. people now don't use the coin but i'll just say let's have straight talk or were not owning this. >> where did you get the idea? this idea came from our head of hr. he was a top gun pilot in his career before joining hr and he came up with the idea of using this tool. >> so is that a patent, will ago

on patent soon? >> no this is our culture. it's a permanent competitive advantage. >> so you mentioned were talking about pfizer going forward. you mention they might put up into three parts. there's a lot of different ideas. walk us through that process of how your thinking about that. >> we have two basic businesses in the company. that's a result of being in the business for a long time and doing acquisitions. we have an innovative is nuts that's focused on creating new cures and dedicating a lot of money into research and education as well as discussions and working on guidelines. that we have another part of the organization that is selling products that are patent or about to go patent.

they sell them differently in different markets in the u.s. in the u.s. they go to people in a room and they monitor shortages and needs and prices. in other markets they do it with change field forces and selling on the brand. these are two different distinct differences that need a different strategic set, probably different managers. so the idea is does some of the pfizer eaglets part or is it smaller than its parts? >> in other words is a slow moving products business, is it dragging down the value of the innovative or vice versa? or are we not operationally

being as efficient as we can? or are we taking money from the established business and subsidies subsidizing research? >> some companies don't. clearly innovation becomes established but ours is half-and-half. we have competing strategic visions. so the question is, if we split those up would we unlock value?? >> what's the answer? >> we don't know. >> what will determine the answer? >> we are creating separate

operating units and giving as much economy as we can within visor. we are giving enough information to the street and will start giving them balance sheets. then at the end of 16 at the latest, when i have the ability to do a transaction if i wanted to, we will look at the company and say do we believe these two divisions are working, could they work better outside? is there trap value? and can we realize that value? >> like on wall street, nothing happens for no reason. the thought that flashed in my head was oh my gosh, he's going to break up pfizer. >> no, no decision has been

taken. we may arrive at the conclusion that the sum of the parts is equal to the whole and investors are satisfied with our capital allocation and there are no major difficulties in running those two businesses in the same corporate shell. the decision has not been made. >> and that decision will be made. >> probably in 2016. >> other questions from you? the audience? we have microphones, i think. >> we talked about pressure and pricing and outcomes and a little bit about the questions on marketing and distribution. what about the positive side? we have the health tech industry that's growing really fast in google life science in google lends and sensors that can

technically detect cancer early. does that cause you to think about changing your business model and is that a culture pressure as well? >> you know, i think the biggest change in our business model will be gene therapy. it is coming. they have gene therapy for blood disorders. if blood therapy comes in and it's a one time cure, cure, it's really going to change. lose the patient if he's cured? if you're an insurance company it's a real dilemma. i think what you're talking about will enable a better use of pharmaceuticals. i think their embryonic at the moment but as the become more

sophisticated, sophisticated, i mean their arm no such things as in managed dose. ideally, i would like an artifact that someone could come up with that would be monitored constantly by measuring blood and tell the patient if they can adjusted dose to maximize results and then the dose would become perfect for every patient. we don't do that today. we take averages. then the doctor can adjusted dose through his or her experience with the patient. early detection of cancer cells, i think that technology has some promise but i don't see it as a competition, i see it as a

facilitator. >> you would almost be a real-time monitoring device for cancer, in a way. >> any medication you're taking that you want to measure the parameters on the body. >> how far away is that? i would guess between five and ten. if you're going to pierce the skin, you need to say what's the benefit. you have to have a benefit if you're going to create a potential infection site. you just can't go and say i'm in a measure all these things and see what happens later. they're not going to allow that. they're gonna say you're measuring these things in your invading and what's the benefit. regulatory will slow it up but

as you say, the blood tests are opportunities. >> like to pick up on the previous question. many major industries, whether it's consultation, our d&d, entertainment, you have destructors that are changing the background from a competitive standpoint of traditional industries. when you look at biopharmaceuticals in your sector, do you see, as you look ahead, much this disruption coming up and you think those trends would come from several sectors or from countries who

traditionally don't fall under those umbrellas? >> the disruptor in our industry will be in an ability to take a product to market in half the time. it took us 19 years to bring a product to market. anything, the disruption for our business model is the speed to market. it's a huge creator of value. a disruption will be gene therapy. i don't see the previous issues we were talking about as disruptive. disruption would be political change which will say society is not willing to continue to

support innovation or they don't believe the model we have is right. that would be disruption. i don't see disruption coming from countries that are not highly technologically advanced. >> please state your name. where you from? >> in your talk about profound change, as a result of all the changes, in ten years how do you see the business model changing in some way and how are you preparing for that? >> the business model is changing. there are two parts to the business model. there's what you do to get to market and part of that is what

science you have and how quickly can you move and validate. so we would hope to see it progress and we hope to see the regulatory side catch up. no use of big data, clinical trials,. [inaudible] people only count in the states, which is very unfortunate. they only get hammered when they make a mistake. it makes them naturally

cautious. i feel for their dilemma. we do need society to say we are willing to take more risk and that would change her business model. the science, the regulators, and the communication to physicians. using better technology and better way to get to physicians to communicate the knowledge. >> what's the best idea that you talk about internally to do that? that's a really interesting point. >> which. >> to communicate with physicians. >> their experiencing using electronic methods and webinars and conferences with laptops and phones. some receive messages from the congress. if the representative goes into see a physician it's usually up personal relationship that they develop with physicians because

they're extremely busy. there are some restrictions around what we can say to a physician given the regulatory environment. for example, if we have an investigator who develops a drug and has experience on the drug and we want to talk to 200 physician, if somebody gets up and says dr. i heard this drug could be used in this way and that's not an approved use by the fda, we have to get up and say we cannot answer that question. if we don't, we get sued by the fda. >> can you buy lunch for those people? >> we can take them to lunch, but one-on-one is not very efficient. >> right. >> okay so we publicize and publish all of that. we use ipads now so we can be in front of the doctor and the doctor can ask the question and the question is because it's not in our label, so he uses the iphone and puts the doctor on the iphone to a physician

advisor who can answer the question medical to medical. >> do we need pdm's anymore? >> i think if they exist it's because of the regulations in the marketplace. i'm a big believer in that and i think if you change the way drugs but they negotiate better prices. that has good and bad. if they have a large base of older products and they're making a lot of money on the rebates and a new product comes in, they don't really have any interested in giving the new

product a chance because the not making the rebates on it. so it is a positive and negative system. >> i think we have time for one more question. >> i've enjoyed your talk so far. you are very nimble, that's a compliment compliment. i have a question on washington. the house of representatives has just changed it speaker or is about to. do you feel they would be any more willing to consider some of the tax changes, notwithstanding the fact that the house is still divided and has fractions that will be run by someone who's interested in tax policy? >> representative ryan is extremely interested in tax reform.

but, that being said, said, there is no dynamic scoring and i believe this is the biggest issue the united states has that the budget offers. we cannot dynamically score the impact of policy changes. it's very difficult for congress to craft a policy change that would be very positive for the country and job creation with negative scoring. i think it's very difficult to see radical change coming out of congress. we go into an election year and there are so many restraints where a unless you have a majority in the senate you can't get a bill to the president's

desk and so the fact that one side has majority doesn't really mean anything if they can't get bills through to the president if he ever decides to play hardball. it it makes it difficult to move things forward quickly. to give you an example on dynamic scoring. we have an american act that was passed to your and a half ago. the unintended consequence of the act was, and part of it was to make the prosecution patents faster, and we wanted and efficient way to adjudicate their patents. a consequence was that people were using them to validate pharmaceutical patents.

we worked 14 years to bring a product to market and spent $2 billion and now we don't have the same standards as the civil courts. you have others shorting or taking a patent into patent review and shorting the stock. they're using it away of making money. were trying to get this change. so we go to congress and the senate says if we change it car they said it has to be paid for because of the patents are protected it's going to cost society more money.

you have to pay more money and have it paid for for the score to be zero. i thought patterns were a good thing. i thought patents created wealth. i thought patents were a central part of our society. if patents are being destroyed, we will score positively. our system is so crazy that we have to pay so that we can reestablish the right to have a patent. >> i hope congress gets one of york coins before it's too late. i hope i get one of your coins. it sounds awesome. thank you very much ian read, it's been awesome. [applause]. >> thank you very much indeed.

if washington adopts the node jerks policy we might all be in a better place. >> that was a fascinating discussion and were grateful for you being with us and thank you dennis. thank you all for being here this morning. i want to pay special tribute to our sponsors. thank you for joining us, we couldn't do it without your support. that concludes our morning session and we will be back in january. we look forward to that and in the meantime have a a wonderful day and thank you all for being here. goodbye. [applause]. hour.

>> just going to introduce our moderator for tonight. i am really please to introduce

professor dan. he is a real inspiration and longtime activist for a great many of us on this campus. most recently he has been very active in building the educators for a democratic union, the progressive caucus within the massachusetts teacher association which is the largest union in the state. he has been a tremendous organizing power. so i will turn it over to dan clawson. thank you. >> so here's how the evening will work. i'll give you a brief overview of how the evening will work. i will do a few minutes on the theory of direct actions and some questions to vague about this evening and then i'll turn it over to our panelists.

each of the five panelists have been asked to speak for not more than 12 minutes. i'll give him a time check near the end. the focus for tonight is on direct action. how it operates, what's involved, its effects on the participants in the larger movement, what works and what doesn't, the concerns raised within the movement and by then those on the outside and similar questions. our panelists will focus exclusively on personal stories, specifics, this is what happened on this occasion, this is what we learn from it, this is why it worked or didn't work. the focus tonight is not primarily on the issue that led to the direct action. selfish night we are more interested in resistance and rather than why the war was bad.

we want to know more about what black lives matter rather than how the police treat black people. we are going to focus primarily on non- violent direct action. after the panelists be, we will throw the floor open to people in the audience and we very much want audience participation. you do not have to pretend to be asking a question. you can just make a comment, but just as we are limiting the panelist, we will limit the people in the audience and people can have up to two minutes but not more than two minutes for the questioner. we will collect several questions or comments and then go to the audience for responses and each panelist will again have, not more than two minutes to respond to the set of three

or four questions that they received so they can choose to focus on just one of them. so let me pose two questions to think about tonight as we hear the specific stories and remarks. first why engage in direct action? why is direct action the way we should approach something? so by that i don't mean what moves people to action in the first place but why choose direct action and what does it hope to accomplish? i will suggest three possible reasons to do so, to take direct action recognizing that there are others that believe every action will have a mix of reactions. >> i refused to drafted and be somebody who is asked to go out

and kill other people. i will not do it. that is what this is about. that's all there is to it. second, you could do it as a way of bringing public attention to the issue. the media will not cover it this that if we mount a large demonstration, if dozens of people or hundreds of people are arrested they will have no choice but to cover it that will bring publicity to our issue and help raise awareness. third people do it as a way to change conditions. i don't care whether or not the media covers it. nobody is riding the buses in montgomery until they are integrated. we will keep not riding the buses until we win. so that is a third purpose.

we can do direct action in a variety of ways and it's partly determined by the goal of the action. if the goal of the direct action is to get media attention and in my experience, these days, that is most of the direct action is intended for that purpose. then the action is usually planned by organizers who notify the media in advance, often notify the police in advance, often negotiate the terms of the arrest and how the whole operation will operate. in general, the more people arrested, the more media attention it will get. so they usually want more people to get arrested. if you taking that approach, there may be some tendency to being more likely to recruit people who have some level of privilege, whether that is racial privilege or class privilege or whether they don't have a fixed employment schedule that they will lose if they don't show up for work because it's easier for them to pay the costs in those situation.

none of this is inevitable. i want to emphasize that. that's a good thing. that's what we want the panel to do. if the aim of the disruption, if the aim of the direct action is to disrupt the normal functioning of society in ways that matter to the people with power and that society and uses sustain it until the people with power have to give in, then you have a somewhat different equation. in that case may be the goal is to not get arrested but you can continue the demonstration as long as possible. so especially young people have dozens of demonstrations where thousands of people show up to

protest and they disrupt the flow of traffic. sometimes two or three different groups are in different places and they rejoin later. if it's done properly, you hope nobody gets arrested but you had a successful action in some way. those are two different ways of thinking of it. generally speaking most of the direct actions that we will be hearing about will be in public but that's not always the case. we were talking before the meeting began where some people broke into the fbi office, backed the truck up and stole all the files that were in the fbi office and released all the political files which was a lot of files. those people were never caught. they told their stories to the media long after the event was

over in the statute of limitation was over but the goal was not to wait around to be caught. it was to do it without being caught but was definitely a form of direct action. now let me turn it over to our five terrific panelists and we will take them, as it happens in the order that is on this sheet and that's also the order that were sitting up. table so if you don't have a a sheet yet we are going to get copies and pass them out. i will say the name of the person that's doing it because the sheet has more information than i could do without taking up a lot of time. our next speaker will be randy keeler. >> it's good to be here with you for this very important discussion. to tell you the truth, i don't really, really know exactly what direct action is. i don't know if there's a direct

or correct definition. if there is i don't know it. in my life i've just done what i thought made sense to me in the face of certain circumstances that made sense to me both strategically and ethically. i think loosely defined, i think i've spent most of my adult life engaged in direct action. some of that is in the program you have. i think many of us who first get involved in direct action of any kind, there is a moment in an issue that gets involved. for me the moment was 1966 and i was 22 years old and the issue was the u.s. war in vietnam. i went gradually but steadily

from peaceful protest to out now resistance and noncooperation in a very public way. i turned in my draft card and was arrested by the fbi. i spent 22 months in federal prison as a result. in other years i found that organizing was something that i like to do and i could do and seemed like a helpful thing to do. so wasn't just an active participant, but i spent far more time organizing them. whether it was to stop twin nuclear power plants from being built in the 1970s are stopping the construction which we did not succeed exceed of the

nuclear power plant in new hampshire in the 1970s. a number of things like that. i also started early with my wife. the war was so horrendous in our mind, in so many ways whether it was the korean poverty and abuse and destruction of land, i didn't want to give my body so we have been for text resistors ever since 1976 as a result. we had our first bank account seized and then our wages levied and finally our home in 1991 was

seized and sold out from under us. we had hundreds and hundreds of supporters which was an amazing thing. most of the 80s and '90s i spent organizing two major national campaigns. one for nuclear disarmament and one for the abolition of privately financed campaigns. after trying to recuperate from my exertions, i tried to stop the power plant in vermont. that has now been stopped [applause]. >> the people here have been very much involved in that. now, i'm one of many people,, including a number of people

here tonight, who is trying to determine the role of direct action in this huge pipeline project that wants to destroy major pieces of land through towns throughout western massachusetts to carry unneeded gas that should have never been fractured in the first place for the corporations that want to build a pipeline. that's a whole other issue and i think we'll talk about that in the discussion. so let me just share a few observations or conclusions about things i have learned from the activity i've just described.

[inaudible] direct action can be any number of things. not just blocking or stopping things which again is a a primary activity and i've been involved with lots of things, that can be impromptu speak outs and hanging banners on buildings. you name it. direct action is usually a key factor in political change. it's rarely, in my estimation, unable to do it on its own. it is often a key element of a broader strategy that involves all kinds of other things from neighborhood organizing to public education, using them

media and others. as they said, there is a risk in direct action but the risk is undeniably always almost greater for people of color, to women, to our working class or poor class than it is for myself who are white male privileged people. i think that always needs to be recognized. i want to also say that acts of courage and passion are contagious. they are contagious. when people step out with courage compassion, passion, they take a risk in the mix

inspires other people. it is contagious and that is key to building a movement. it spreads and it inspires. next i want to just mention, some people have told me, why do you bother risking arrest or risking taking time off from work or disrupting family events or anything for a direct action event when you know won't do any good. you can't fight city hall. who will care, it doesn't matter. i want to say that i've heard them many times.

i want to say that no act can ever be said to be futile. simply because we don't know what ripples throw out from what we do. who listens to what. in my own life, i was giving a speech in 1969, just giving a talk. i was talking about the fact that i had been arrested by the fbi and felt it was almost certainly on the way to federal prison for draft resistance. unbeknownst to me there was a man in the audience who later revealed to the public the top-secret pentagon papers. i didn't know he would hear something i said which was what could any of us do more than what were already doing if we were willing to risk

imprisonment. he said when he asked himself that question he knew that top-secret study had to be revealed to the public showing years and years of lies about the war in vietnam. so he did that and he faced a possible 115 years in prison. :

>> >> but you never know down the road. those of the examples i could give. and winning is they keep beecher and should be a strategic focus. we will end when we get enough people if not joining us but supporting us to pressure decision makers to change things to affect other people and i want to

say that people that are so afraid of violence to matter who they are or their cause. if there is the reason to win over others. this is an ethical and spiritual question it coincides with my values to feel good about the actions over the long haul. there is something called the of lot of ends and means. and we don't get what we want but what we do.

>> if we use violence that is the story of the tragic story so that is one reason to think about how not just what impact it had on us. [applause] now our next speaker. >> i want to note what i see as direct action is any number of things sometimes sitting sometimes marching sometimes walking or sometimes just standing. i remember talking with one of miami's sisters -- with one of my sisters and said

what did you want from me? is sometimes a what he tuesday and with me because if you're white this will protect us and sometimes the what you to walk behind me. the person that seems to have the beast privilege has to be the voice. what i think about direct action i think of the different factions and their realized one of the things that keeps me going is the sense of community that i have. what i have done tonight i could talk to for 12 years about the power of community. don't worry i have not. i brought along my sisters the raging grannies are here. because this is one of the things our communities

to, we sing. we pass out song sheets for you to join us because we're not doing a concert, one song so what if we do that right here? so it was about the pipeline that we just talked about. hit it. please join. viewer not seeing the same notes don't worry that is just another way to do harmony. [laughter] ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ [applause] not only was that a nice song in that wonderful rendition but in singing with us become part of the community. some of us are already are but any way that we can emphasize those connections is a good. thanks for singing along. that was just a couple of minutes. i am paying attention. but what i wanted to do was

to look at how i came to this and my real story that i grew up in new orleans for 1943, some of you your grandparents were born about then. in the apartheid south. it was an amazingly horrific time and i didn't know it because i was very privileged. but i had another dimension of my life with my parents who were extraordinarily already quite advanced alcoholics. so where did i turn and find a voice? i found support in the church with the nuns and the

priest who were strong people, carrying people who provided the early seeds of my appreciation of community. not only were they there to nurture and carrying but also the people who were aware of the racial injustice that was happening so through them i learned what was happening in the various dimensions of the involvement and i was there when we took the signs down. in those days we were working for integration be the better not. but it was a step and as i talk to my other friends like the white southerners who also learned how not only did the people of color

suffer, but we did because we bought the lie. and it has taken many years to undo those lies. but those are the release seeds. since then, i have realized we are in this world, where all context matters. is so important with some of the students here and i realize each of us is abetted in where we came from with their own stories. delaying those histories and stories we are informed to participate in what we find ourselves, this present and it is an extraordinary time.

when they were talking about once upon a time when we did activities and actions i remembered to be part of the women pentagon action that was part of "the washington post". and today we have at the regulatory commission protesting and walking out i'm sure you have read all about it. because we don't have a press that covers anything of substance but of a story that happened last week i was in washington, last tuesday, the day after labor day a man was speaking at the american enterprise institute.

somebody thought it was american empire inc. [laughter] dick cheney was giving a the talk god knows what they were paying him. one of these young people tried to give. an interim losses coated pink. iran during his speech he stood up that said a rest dick cheney he is a war criminal. wow. that was amazing. needless to say a man was very upset and went over and started to pull the banner away from her. she did not let it go. finally he fell over trying

to take it away. later in the day, she was sitting down talking about it and she got a call from the press who wanted to know what was her workout exercise. [laughter] how irrelevant can you possibly be? that that was their question. what did you really want to do? they have been horrible war crimes but this 21 year-old intern god bless her but that is why we need to keep doing what we're doing and if we don't make the noise or tell the stories they don't get out.

or have radio programs on the community radio stations and that is where you get your news. but even abc or nbc big networks you just will not get it. this is the piece of news behalf to keep alive to know it is not just a question of where do you get your exercise regimen. that is one of the pieces and the issue for me that i call personalism. i get distracted by numbers and statistics like how many feet toward mm.

i am not a mathematician. but if my friend says this is really bad and i want you to learn about it and stand with me i will do that. and i had the good fortune recently to be offered that kind of invitation by the man who started the school of americas watch we're at the same house and he said by the way tomorrow i'm going to be a busy they are doing terrible things to women there there imprisoning women with miscarriages charging with aggravated homicide going to jail for years we protest with me? if you said this is the protest, would you come to do this with me?

come to the state house i would say i trust you i knew we we're doing i will be there. and black lives matter says we're doing something come stand with us i'll be there. that is the call to stand with one another to be in community. a lot of us are familiar with the martin luther king''. you need to know the rest of the'' because it is not the complete sentiment. it is neutral italy been stored justice when we put our weight on it.

but he was in fact, my brother. [laughter] my next speaker talks about the springfield that no one leaves. [laughter] >> emma member of springfield gore leaves an organization for people and their housing struggles. in 2006 tragedy when dash tragedy stock - - stroke my family is my son was

killed in an automobile accident, four months later led mother passed away. i became distraught and spiraled into depression. it consumed me and i was unable to return to work for cry used up all love major term disability and in 2008 and then quit in, i had access to. i. a. immediately contacted the bank to redoubt in they refuse to work with me in any capacity the only option bush to sell because after years of fighting on my own i found that was not alone

with what the hell of the big bath with there's a premium bid to raise the policies may be in for profit and not for people. the more involved they became with those injustices happening in my community and the underlying system that we allow this to happen people are evicted who could afford to pay a fair rent or recovered from the crisis

and jim got a -- afford to pay -- to them to have compassion and children and adults couldn't be out on this street were working with families that left them a good and notes. >> family was a two-year old child hurt disabled grandparent in her prepared to. i knew it this dimly head dash - - testable -- and

then to see what role like to play to keep the family in their home. although a person could play >> but then i believe the nef is a movement but now

but then to risk arrest and then with the police to be rested. we could be treated differently because their gender or color of our skin. we made it clear sum could be held longer than others based on the same reasons. i was not shocked as a black that was just during the mid-60s and '70s and here we are in the year 2015.

and was not and were those taken by and then to beat neck and head and other family pushed out into the street and the homeless kept me from being scared were nervous. i was ready. the first was called off over a technical error of the bank, the judge with the families filed a motion for a stay of execution. in april, led the bank served a family with a 72 hour notice of eviction. after thousands of phone calls on behalf of the family the bank called of the eviction. finally in may the family was again served with

another 48 hour notice of eviction. after many calls to negotiate, and other alternative the family was told there were no alternatives and they were going to follow through. the awarding of the blockade i was motivated to do what i felt was right to keep the family in their home. i knew i was properly trained and made aware of what i could possibly be facing that day. i didn't care are without a higher risk because it was a black woman or the condition that would face one that was processed in a jail cell program was consumed to make sure another family was not made homeless by degree banks. we gathered at the home that morning as the depiction was

scheduled at 9:00. about 830 the bank attorney kept driving back and forth taking pictures with his cell phone of the protesters gathering that were quietly talking and enjoying coffee at 850 dash share if showed up in the death notice in the left the family met with organizers of no one leaves in the review the paper work. it was announced the bank's attorney had filed a motion that the peaceful protest which had not even begun was impeding the bank and they felt their safety was a risk although they were unable to

schedule the lockout there were asking the state to allow to carry out the eviction without any notice at any date or time the family was to appear at a court hearing scheduled 2 p.m. that afternoon to respond to the allegations made. so they left to defend against the foolish motion. other stayed behind to defend it in case they showed up to carry out the eviction. we were successful to keep another family in their home. recap another child with a roof over her head and kept

aid this elderly couple from being pushed out into the streets. we won the battle but the war against the bank is ongoing and will continue until it is recognized that housing should not be for profit. it is a human right. [applause] >> para last speaker. >> my name is rose i was the member since freddie mac for closed on my home and i am still in my home i am still fighting to keep my home i will even continue to fight

when a judge tells me i have to leave. [applause] through my journey, now a community organizer. i believe in the movement so much 68,000 bailie's the boss their homes in the state of massachusetts they're not eligible for shelters because massachusetts has a law that states if you are a former homeowner and evicted you are not eligible for shelter. so we have thousands of families out on the street which we believe is not correct in springfield we have 1300 vacant homes there is no reason for anybody in the state to be homeless there are they didn't buildings we could occupy to takeover.

so some of my direct actions that i participated the national coalition made up of fannie mae and freddie mac fighters pushing really hard to get policy changed. 60% of the mortgages are owned by freddie -- then the mayor freddie mac. we believe there are three demands of millions of families due to the housing bubble that will never as of equity believe they should reduce the principal to the

current market values of their out of the risk of falling into foreclosure. we believe he should be allowed to rent after foreclosure why make another home vacant and make the property values decrease if you can afford to stay in the house. the banks have a practice to make sure we continue to feel shame by erecting the family from the home of forcibly. i have participated in civil disobedience in washington d.c. where we should down washington avenue in front of the fannie mae offices and from there we drove to virginia to the freddie mac offices and protested. from there we then drove to

the head of the house and we tell the people party in front of his fellow calling for the firing as he was not willing to push fannie and freddie to work with the people. since all direct actions we have gotten significant policy changes. they used to have the arm's-length deal that meant i was not allowed to buy back my home. when you had to sign the deal and would not read to me or anybody in my family, no contact but now

that policy is changed ivan the process of buying back my home. >> caller: and then to and the proposed to build and maintain affordable housing there is the depiction perspective bill to make the banks less is say hello lou that will occupy the property so they have to except the brent.

once implemented as a 90% success rate. but if the bank refuses to repeat so it is able to maintain this the whole -- and also requires the banks

of the now we are in boston pushing for a bill through the municipal authority that will allow musicality is to control and dimbleby is cities and neighborhoods. i am the mother of two young children. so i have to be very careful if i want to remain inactive participant because if i don't come i cannot chaperone? i do talks - - american culture limo laziness

schools countersigned told

the shy. in begin by giving your name. >> my name is very. end and i really enjoyed the presentations that may help to clarify because i am not sure everybody here --.

hagen to your thought. >> review and direct action limited to talking. >> my name is billion so i do remember in the '80s there was a movement that the college against apartheid in selfie africa. it is hard to get the -- visualize now but there was as many 5,000 people in south africa. they say there's numbers in a string if you want to accomplish anything,

apartheid was put out of business so to speak. it ended that part so i don't say that was and when the action but they are all over the world. mitt would be a good idea to put away the high tuitions that people pay for college. when i look at how much they owe, went to college living for years of the debt for petitions and actions and demonstrations against the exploitation. also organizing student

athletes there the most exploited people women and men athletes they get injuries that last for life but they lose their scholarship and don't play anymore. [applause] >> but had the privilege of being part of the resistance studies and that is a new entity where we steady resistance of different forms. and wanted to ask that with my a understanding to have a defining quality that we try to solve the problems ourselves.

going through legislatures in to solve the problems for us. that could be civil disobedience so it is about people power and your understanding of it. thank you. >> this is the last one. >> bid evening. >> i am from ash field zero local pipeline activist. my history also includes activism and anti-war, anti-nuclear arms arms, the anti-war. what i have seen it is about people so how does the panel

see nonviolent direct action to:people of different political persuasions? everyone in your fighting against it basically in the high minority positions of power to to take resources whether land, housing, lives , from us the people. deal is the non-violent direct action cutting across political color boundaries? weld boundaries to bring us together as people who face the onslaught across the board to put us in the position of defensiveness?

>> let's give the panel a chance to respond and we will start reverse order. you can choose to pass if you want. >> a background check that includes credit history, criminal basically a complete background check that has gone to the system will then report back to whatever agency has asked for it. the indian freddie are basically mortgage guarantors' why small banks

back we'll loans so that people can get mortgage loans. darr the entity behind the scenes. most of the time people think even though your statement says u.s. bank really it is just the servicer is it is freddie mac that owns the note until you pay off your mortgage. >> will quickly remind you of the question is this is very brief. the first one has been answered i will skip bit the next with about direct access of high student tuition and student athletes in the defining qualities

trying to solve problems for themselves but the what the panelists think about that if they agree or disagree and to what extent is that the way to cut across the political boundaries to mobilize action? >> i think those were more comments ban questions that'll have any questions or answers bedmate appreciate those for every institution of higher learning to organize and support them. i think the issues raised about direct action coming it is multifaceted on one hand it certainly can be in

europe among the folks in mexico where the people have taken over as part of direct action but we're still may mean the problem. and they think maybe there places where people have taken over were springfield no one believes is the place we can support people taking over how many hundreds of empty homes of people who need homes? that is the perfect place to do it ourselves and not to wait for the mayor of springfield and that would be an excellent action to be involved. the other thing the comments about building a movement.

i don't know if we ever get everybody right away. think of vietnam and how long it took before it became a mass movement so that is just one example but i don't like to use the word education because it as a pejorative connotation and that when people know what is happening to our commonwealth and to the place that we love them if they are not awakened to it than to then you need to do something because i cannot imagine anyone anyone out here that has learned what

that pipeline will do that is not up in arms and wanting to do something to stop it. >> i also thought to warm my heart if there were a student loan tuition and uprising that has happened in other countries and as the father of the daughter who is paying off her college loan 15 years later and hers is not as much as so many others, but did deal

to mitt success. doesn't succeed in a multi pronged strategy but i agree the direct part is that we take some action in their cells. how we struggle with that question we as individuals those of her closest to us if we don't know people other than us who are different from us if we don't have connections of some kind of sympathy or affection or community

operating in isolation to be in the personal contact to build community. >> those student loans. if somebody would pay those job that would be great. with direct action black lives matter has empowered people of color to tap into mainstream media. but with that it is a movement, not a moment i didn't talk about transgendered within those

issues need to be addressed and we need to consciously have these conversations it isn't just direct action but something we continuously need to work on. >> of the question of people power because it is a foreclosure issue we have a model that we use we have this word that is the people power with the direct uprising from the community coming together then we have the shield which we believe every good offense needs a

defense so retry to develop laws to push for more to protect homeowners and then have direct action

>> let's give, i think, president obama credit to this degree that he understood how difficult it would be. he knew the racial -- he tells a tremendous story in the audacity of hope. making a powerful point but he said the white guy leans over him a seat and says, you know, the problem is every time i listen to this date senator i