urban or suburban area spends about $70 a year an extra car repairs because writing on potholes and substandard roads. these things at the it's a silent tax. there's a way to deal to do a large infrastructure package that would create jobs, booster economic productivity and help working families. that's a different question than is that is the package that congress is going to neck of the president is going to propose. there's a win-win to be had. >> host: from "usa today" yesterday, for those listening in the car, maybe stuck in traffic or preparing to head out for the thanksgiving holidays, this is a story of the opinion page point that americans spending 6.9 billion thankfulness hours in traffic are presently some of this will help ease traffic congestion. the question is how to pay for it. one of the issues is the federal gas tax which is not been raised since the clinton white house. this is according to the

congressional budget office. 18.4 cents a gallon for diesel tax and just over 24 cents a gallon for regular gas. it is indexed for inflation since 1993. the last time it went up the gas tax would be about 29 cents a gallon. should that be an option? >> guest: i don't think so. let me explain why. i think most projects, most of research projects are by nature state and local projects. the problem with the gas tax, it doesn't actually go to do the things we think it goes to do. a lot of the money is diverted e to projects that are, you know, it's like things, nothing to do basically like portal bridges and bike paths and things like this. that being said, one of the things we could do is to vote, turnout, pushpit investment when

new projects state and local government and develop the trust fund money for maintenance, means, i tend to think again,g the funding should be user fees at the state level. but if we're going to be having some federal money used we could use that money that we collect and develop it, make it specifically for maintenance. i think it's a long shot. a >> guest: there some things we agree and where the facts are little bit different. the first issue exactly right, the gas tax meets the on the table. every year we lower the gas tax by keeping it flat. you can use the price of inflation.me g i remember gas in the '90s at 1 dollar a gallon. today it's $2 a gallon. we global in most places.e that would be a doubling of the text of you to keep it at the same share of the gas which is decent proxy for how much the highways and bridges and roads cost. t essentially we've had 50% tax

cut we have cut the number of rows. we haven't cut the number of drivers. we are using the same amount of wear and tear and degrading our nation's capital stock. when you degrade your stock of overtime useful your economy. because all these costs. most of the money does go to state and local governments. the vast majority of this money is the fault of state and local governments with federal oversight at low levels about, you know, a small number of things but which road is built, whether you do wit with potholer any breach of whether you, you have a ribbonng cutting, that'sa sign that the state and local level for almost all of those fund. we can debate whether state or local politicians make wise choices, whether they prioritize maintenance and whether the federal government ought to step in more and push for maintenance. that we may find some common ground on but it's a myth that washington is making progress. this mostly goes to the state and locals. the last point is there some

problems with having this completely the fault of the state and local level if you live in a statement another state. states compete on this. anyone who's ever driven through new jersey will remember new jersey has the lowest gas price. why? they compete with other states. they get more gas pumps in the state. if you're an american living in california or texas or florida you can go to another state to fuel up. if you're a different type of american you can have the situation. the last point is states and localities are incentivized to underinvest relative to the nation as a whole. think about infrastructure lasting multiple generations, iw don't know if my children willof live in the state of maryland. i hope so. it's where i live but they can live anywhere. current residents willdents underinvest because they don'tus see the future generations using the same amount of infrastructure. on a national level i think we can all present our families will continue to be in the united states and at a national

level we can set priorities and set the right level ofrategy investment. a default with strategy will fundamentally underinvest. >> host: aaron klein is a senior fellow at brookings. his work available online at brookings.edu. and veronique de rugy who was at the mercatus center at george mason university, works available online. what is that organization? >> guest: university-based research center and the focus on economic issues posted if people want to follow you on twitter? >> guest: it is -- time when we will get to your calls. our two guests will be to, and react we will start with richard, philadelphia, independent line. >> caller: good morning. the question comes to michael i think i heard make reference to a cyber infrastructure plan. and how that difference in say

world ever stuck it relationship to -- [inaudible] would be an alternative or one of the same? the other thing i'm wondering is paying for it. i understand it's like 30% of, these are held by federal government. when you talk about privatize it, selling it is a way to pay for, privatizing and paying for this infrastructure, but specifically cybersecurity and cyber infrastructure.fi is that a part of this discussion now? before was about roads, bridges and things like that. >> guest: i think the cybersecurity, there's no details yet and i think considering hacking that's happened at the federal level, there is some investment in infrastructure cybersecurity infrastructure. .com is always in the details.

i think, you making something, like the decisions that politicians in the making whether the federal government or at the state government, very often the incentives are not to invest in the states that we should be investing in. even though the federal government gives money and so the same i would say the same can happen at the cybersecurity level, where there may be need but it does mean is going to translate into actually politicians designing a bill that will address these needs and to go back to the road issue. so yes the federal government may not be giving, telling states what to invest in. there's a ton of the strings attached to this money, but the question is like what kind of ii incentives have local and state politicians, so much of the money they take, they use, they don't have to actually justify to the taxpayers in the states.

it creates this incident to we st poorly, this is why we see. we see this happening over and over and over again. >> host: pennsylvania on the democrats want to thank you for waiting. good morning. >> caller: good morning. i am very interested inve veronique de rugy's comments about other spending can be controlled. when fdr began his work to build a stronger economy and to build roads and all the things that he did in the '30s, he was able to control about the infrastructure spending. and with the states sort of moving to do whatever they want to do with the funds, it doesn't seem feasible anything is going to happen unless there are some incentives to control that spending or influence this penny. i'd like to know more about how that can be done given our

current state and local structures. thank you. >> host: thank you for the culprit let me put more of a number on the table which is $20 trillion which is what the national debt is now approaching. so how does congress and the white house pay for all of us? >> guest: i think this is what, kind of have a more user fee type structure for paying for a lot of these projects would be good because it does control, does prevent the white elephant that projects that we see because when you actually have to raise the money, you have to justify. the people you raise the money from who are come if you like using the roads, are likely to hold you accountable if this cost overrun and to keep going back to them for more money. i would like to say i think this is a very good question but i would warn against trying to make straight comparison between the experience of the 1930s and what we have now. when fdr actually started

building roads it was a great need for road projects. we can't say that this is the case right now. there's a real need for maintenance but it's not, the return on the roads is nothing like it used to be. it used there are studies that have actually compared the return on these investments, and showed that it is the case. the other thing is like at the time when you talk about jobs which i think is the wrong way, it's the wrong goal when we think about what kind of structure projects to put in place. when fdr, the kind of roads that were building were not high skilled labor as right now, the kind of labor that is being needed right now to build a can of how we. there was a lot of ways that it could tap into people who were low-skilled and we've noticeded like we see this during come in 2009, that it was, there wasn't

a lot of people who were used who were from the unemployment line or light coming from a completely different sector, to. build highways maybe with two exceptions you actually need a skilled labor, people of been trained at this and you can have this shovel-ready project kind of idea for things that require a lot of skills. >> host: let me get your reaction and put on the screen the american society of civil engineers. what america's infrastructure grade is right now, a d+. p.s. bandit investment costs $3.6 trillion. when we talk of infrastructure $3 do with energy? >> guest: , poor, levees andbo dams, schools and roads, waterways, hazardous wastes, rail, bridges, drinking water. it all of these areas the highest grade as you can see on the screen is a c+ desperate a

couple different things to our infrastructure is degraded because we have not investigated. we have been cheap and living off the investments of the pastb i agree use of these are the way to go. yet we cut our user fees every year and we drive more.cut th a quarter of the nation'san bridges are structurally deficient or obsolete. a quarter. one out of every four. there's an amazing amount of infrastructure that can be devoted to maintenance that we will not do unless we invest more. there are a lot of big projects and big ideas. they may not be the interstate system. they may be dredging our ports deeper battle for next-generation of container of container ships so that we can have more international trade. they may be a network of the? >> guest: system so we can really urban congestion which sucks billions of hours of everybody's lives at huge, tremendous cost but there may be different types of infrastructure targeted to different areas. next-generation air traffic control so we can move our

planes faster and reduce congestion at airports and getwe everybody moving, especially on busy holiday weekends like this. if you understood how degraded our nation's air traffic control system were today as you were getting on your plane you would be shocked. plaintiff to put a safe. we've had one of the safest aviation records of the last 10 years but we are running out ofd 1960s technology which can beav updated to great benefits. there's been a big cost-benefit study by the need to be some federal investment. there's a way to bring privatete capital which is a subject we haven't talked about which is something that ha that is touchn the trump plan to bring in to try to create a more efficient, wise investment and also generate more capital at work te great revenue. doesn't work all the time. the last point i want to raise, the biggest threat to our national debt right now is a run with tax cut.. there are lots of different types of ways to spend and

invest. transportation with large infrastructure one of the areas where we take money directly from user fees and spend it directly back on those months. in a way that is accounted for at a higher level than everything else in the federal government. for every dollar cut you can either cut programs or you can raise debt on our kids. i would be much more focus on the deficit conversation when it comes to whatever the tax proposal is an realize this ever such a plan put forward by the president does not pay for itself, those numbers do not add up but there is a path to do that if we want to make the same sacrifices that our grandparents made and pay for things. >> host: "the wall street journal" putting together what it is calling waiting infrastructure spending t the china leading the way in overall infrastructure but most nations reducing what they've invested except australia. canada, japan, the u.s. all with

a decline from 2002 through 2015. a couple of tweaks one from deplorable this is real question how does congress not pay for this like the flint, michigan water scandal? you're asking the wrong question. another comment this is the past decade was spent more on infrastructure in iraq and afghanistan than in the united states. finally, a question, what about national park facilities many of which were built by roosevelt civilian conservation corps. what about that? >> guest: i think there's a confusion about again like this conversation we're having. there's no doubt some investment in infrastructure would lead to growth, would improve our lives. however, there is an assumption that's completely wrong that every, that infrastructure summer has some superpower to grow the economy. that's only true in cases, in cs

specific cases if implemented the right way. the political incentives in washington and in state capital and local governments are such that are often is not the case. i would argue, for instance, even congestion, it's not as if i would not want to spend much less time in the car at the idea that it will turn me into a more creative, innovative person that will then boost the economies is probably very questionable. when you look at the numbers, let's even imagine by reducing congestion, when you've reached this miraculous number of $80 billion, what it means is basically of growing the economy about half of 1%. it's kind of like there's not

enough thinking in terms of cost-benefit. and so it's kind of like it's always sounds good. we always postulate that infrastructure, names like widely infrastructure will grow the economy, we need it. but the things we need are rarely the things we invested, and incentives are so bad take the idea they have to be, the role of the federal government needs to be, is part of the problem. >> guest: you're talking that infrastructure like we have done it. we haven't. i think that tweet made a good point. we spent a lot of money in iraql and the debacle of a policy, president bush, who was inherited a large surplus from president clinton and squandere it with tax cuts and bad policy. we've seen president obama who

inherited a debacle from president bush, who is leading the economy with employment, unemployment at 5% or under, is leaving with a budget deficit about two-thirds lower than what he inherited. that we don't know which direction we're going to go. i hope it's going to be good we didn't try infrastructure. we've been cutting these tags is a living off the investments of our parents and grandparents. we have the opportunity to build something to do two things. one is to maintain some of those investments that we have run down as the other tweet said from the park service and prior generations of areas where they can invest in. you can run a cost-benefit analysis.skep i'm skeptical, i'm a mathematician at heart. numbers income numbers out. numbers on the page don't make math. what's the cost-benefit of a national park of yellowstone

what i don't know. i don't know before the to do. i know it's beautiful. i know it's a national treasure and a now i want to preserve of what children. and i know that infrastructure in the park service has been under invested in years in part because we pursued foolish of federal policies that rate of our national debt and hopefully we will not make that mistake again. >> guest: you are making my point, which is washington and a lot of governments, a lot of legislature in the states, local level, make decisions based on politics or care to interest groups are make investments in a way that are different from what efficiency would require. for lack of a better word. what is the solution to actually, what is the way to make sure that we get the kind of investment that you are talking about? i think it's like you can't

point out the fact that the government, and by the way, there was almost $50 billion in infrastructure in the stimulus bill which didn't do at all what it was supposed -- post but let me stop you there and let him answer your question. >> guest: so you're exactly right that come and i'm glad you said number for the recovery act. the obama stimulus, which was about 6% infrastructure. it was about 800 billion. it was mostly tax cuts and aid to the state. very little infrastructure. there's a narrative that the statements was about an infrastructure which didn't happen, about 6%. we didn't try it before. we built an interstate system that worked. we electrified america.ly 6%. network. we brought telephones and electricity to rural america which probably would not passed a cost-benefit test. if we had this in the '30s and

attacks will pay on a phone line, a couple bucks a month which add up, it would've been a cost-benefit to bring given economic activity to produce in rural america if it is cost-benefit test in west virginia still be without electricity or telephones. but we did because we realized america is brought to a lot of individual states. the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. today we could do big projects modernizing our nation's at traffic, improve freight rail. improve ports, all these things that improve commerce. i think a lot about traffic ticket in this holy season. americans on friday will be online on cyber monday buying things. those things don't just magically show up to your door. the more efficient you can make e an amazon delivery truck or ups or fedex, the cheaper the good are you can buy online. these are tangible economic

benefits. maybe someday they can use drunk? -- use drones? >> a system that's modern enough to handle different types of traffic. we can invent a new future or default into the state that's an antigovernment point of view that we can't do anything great together in our current box. >> aaron klein is director for the initiative on business and public policy at the brookings institution and veronique de rugy his was with george university research fellow and they are talking about trump, congress

and infrastructure spending. comments from viewers including this. no federal investment in air traffic control, the our companies reap the profits, they should pay for infrastructure improvement and another comment from mary who says we need to keep up with the rest of the world investing in our own infrastructure is a sound investment. tom from chattanooga, good morning >> good morning. i agree with the lady. we get the money for the states and they absolutely spend it on everything else instead of our roads and things like that . and make bicycle paths, making walking paths. we used be an investor of state. now we are more like a terrace and all this brings people in. if the state would spend the money on fixing our roads and then the other projects, i have called and complained and they changed their number where i cannot even encounter them again. >> tom, thanks for the call. >> i think it goes back to, i

think you haven't answered, how do you change the incentive? how do you change the incentives in government, not just the federal government but also state and local government so we end up spending money like it would actually returnsome benefits for people . there was a recent debate between mary summers and robert baer where both of them agreed the most efficient thing the government can do, and they didn't make it clear whether it was federal government or state governments but they said the incentives are just not there at all and i think we also have to be very careful about comparing capacity which is not a big network of infrastructure bills. of course the returns were huge and of course it seems clear that it was worth choosing the federal government to do it. we're in a different position and i think this collar is

right. this is what, a $6 trillion question. there are a lot of debates about how much maintenance we need to do because the people that made that list, so i don't trust, they are a special interest group but there is no doubt that how do you change the incentives? so the government, the politicians will ... and i argue, and one of the points that i make is an idea that it has to be, the federal government has to be so involved that it is adding to a problem that exists in every government level so there are two different questions here and there's a contradiction in the frame which is how do you create those incentives, government shouldn't create those incentives. somebody has to create the incentive so theanswer to

your question as a couple. you need to bring in , i agree with you, more cost analysis. i don't think you should be slightly devoted to a formula but i don't think we any do any record-keeping on that. to is you need to enforce state and local government to get local tax dollars to explain where they are going and invest and why. at some level, states can make good or bad choices and they are ultimately accountable to their choices. the color up to be angry with his government in tennessee. on the other hand, it's not as though the states have enough money to fix all the potholes today. we are under investing in the system so they should be keeping the most efficient. i can tell you that economically, the most efficient places are where the people drive most but most legislatures are district and as such they are overrepresented in rural areas so are you going to use

money to satisfy your constituents or are you going to use money to satisfy the formula? particularly in those areas. one solution is to bring in more funding we can attack more of these problems. the second is bring in private capital. allow private investment where they get some of the returns and some of the benefits and the external spillovers that,. a lot of these interstates create great rest stops that are giant moneymakers. the state and local government operates that were the highway administration operates that.that's inefficient. we did a great deal with the owner of dunkin' donuts to give them skin in the game to keep the road up to shape but then gave them the returns from the rest stops. there are a lot ofgood private public partnerships that can be brought in . >> there are a lot of good incentives that you and i could find some common ground in. the problem is whenthere's not enough money to go around to do the basic things , when you are depleting our capital stock with tuition is getting worse and we are moving as

your other personsaid to countries abroad for making those investments . >> he actually devotes the federal money to maintenance instead of a lot of the other things they do you. >> so i don't know when you say a lot of the other things, the caller mentioned paths. bypass take traffic off the road, particularly in congested areas. we spent something like 1/10 of one percent, it's this great friend something that people like to point that the money is going away and when you ask, you say out of $1000, attend have gone there. why are we talking about $.10 out of $1000? let's talk about the $990.90 when in point of fact, you want to get into the $.10, it achieves a lot of the goals in a more cost-effective way.

the best way to reduce ingestion is to reduce the number of people driving. >> this is the 60th anniversary of the creation of the highway trust fund it into place by dwight eisenhower and it was set up in large part to face the infrastructure of america's roads and bridges and established in 1956 as a way to finance an accelerated highway program including the construction of the us highway system. it does consist of two accounts, the highway accounts and mass transit accounts, primarily funded by those fuel taxes we talked about earlier as well as transportation related excise taxes. >> i wrote a piece on this in foreign affairs. it was the national defense or state highway system. it was sold to america after 50 years ofchina , actually 200 years of china having internal improvements in the giant debate on american history about whether the federal government ought to have a role. that was actually ending the area of good healing when john quincy adams and president quincy adams supported it, president monroe vetoed an internal improvement act because he

took the position the federal government was unconstitutional, the federal government to build infrastructure, they call the internal improvement at that point in history. eisenhower succeeded because he sold it to america about our national defense. if we wanted to have military convoys and eisenhower took a military convoy across the country during the first world war in 1990 , they said we can't, america in 1950, this is not the idea we could be fighting the pacific and atlantic at the same time because we just had so if you think about american history more broadly, we've always, and i agree, part of infrastructure as this great way to grow our economy and debated whether it should or shouldn't do it.sometimes the debate has focused on paralysis. other times we made giant investments like president eisenhower and i think we are much better off. >> absolutely. what he saw there was that if we didn't do this, other countries would. we were way bigger than

germany. they were able to produce and move their goods much more efficiently than we were. in 1941 if you are fighting wars in both oceans, you had to move something that was being built in rochester new york. you needed to deploy it in san diego california. that was a huge supply chain. that was a month to move those america, 70 years ago to now, it's not the same thing. talking about other countries, other countries just privatize their air traffic control massively. they've privatized their airports. you can go, chris edwards , he's followed this very closely. let's do some of that ourselves. you may be right, we are stuck in this holding pattern and thinking in a way that is not productive and talking about mass transit, i agree with you. so many of the numbers we put out there or wrong. we never control, when we are

about to invest, we never learned from the fact that many of the cultures that are sold to the taxpayers at the federal or state level have made promises that are not fulfilled in terms of increasing ridership which never happens. it's like there's a lot of studies about how the number one thing is it's this massive overestimation of how investment is going to increase ridership for mass transit . but we never seem to learn and so i think it's like no one can debate that this massive crossover has changed the outlook of every investment we make. so i think, how do you learn the lesson and try to make sure that we don't keep doing this over and over again. we do learn from other countries and learn things that work. >> we welcome our listeners on c-span radio and able from

george mason university and the brookings institution and bill, from mount airy maryland, good morning . >> caller: donald trump throughout the campaign has talked about the wall, putting that in. i didn't know if that would be considered an infrastructure improvement and what grade that might get or lack thereof of a wall like mike garnier but i think he alluded to having mexico pay for it because of the deficit. that we have with them in trade. i didn't know if money could be, you know, if we start working better trade deals with these countries or gaining efficiency to govern waste or gaining efficiencies in different programs like the department of education or irs or things like that could that money be shifted towards not only a wall but other growth projects, whatever, related infrastructure?

>> you want to follow up on that? >> that's interesting trade and restricting immigration will actually improve our economy. and if mister trump, or president-elect trump wants to build a wall, then there's no way mexico is paying for it. i can't quite see how that would happen. but i think that there's been a lot of attempts to border protection which doesn't quite work well. >> here's what donald trump said as he declared victory in the early morning hours of wednesday . >> working together, we wil begin the urgent task of rebuilding our nation and renewing the american dream. i spent my entire life in business area and looking at

the untapped potential in projects and in people all over the world. that is now what i want to do for our country. tremendous potential. i've gotten to know our country so well, tremendous potential. it's going to be a beautiful thing. every single american will have the opportunity to realize is or her fullest potential. the forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. [applause] we are going to fix our inner cities. and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals. you're going to rebuild our infrastructure. which will become, by the way, second to none and we will put millions of our

people to work as we rebuild it. >> john, america's infrastructure, that is our topic with our two guests and more of your calls, mark in orlando florida. >> good morning. listening to this conversation for the last 15 minutes, there are two things. i think. first is that, you know, donald trump is a salesman. infrastructure talk was top so now we are going to get millions of jobs, people getting rich again , we're going to get things built and the second thing is the quality of the conversation that i've listened to, i only wish that we had the same conversation about the pentagon and the f 35 fighter and the cost-benefit analysis of all the money we spend on

defense. >> thanks for the call. >> i think that's exactly right. we hold infrastructure to this accountability that it has to be paid for and user fees and this or that and i'm not against thatbut we got to understand we do a lot of other investments . the national defense is more than 50 percent of discretionary spending. we're talking infrastructure is extremely small relative to national defense and more than 10 times what we spend a year in national defense then they spend on all of our roads, bridges, buses combined. and that's a choice we make and that choice comes out of washington. orlando is a great example of a city that benefits tremendously. we could make our airtraffic control system a little bit better , make our airports better, qualities doing some

work in terms of private public partnership, you have a situation where there's tremendous economic gains if you can bring in a more of the private sector with proper oversight but it's important not to sell it is a magic elixir, the idea that transplant would pay for itself is not accurate but i agree with you, we should apply the same scrutiny on some of our other areas because i will tell you that america, where you are from his more international tourists per capita than any other city in america. there's a lot of cities that could benefit from increased trade, from increased movement of people domestically and internationally. i think we agree and people do move , it gets easier. you have to wait in line for ever to say to with this, i don't want to do it. >> both hillary clinton and donald trump wanted infrastructure but that doesn't mean they will succeed. let me ask you quickly about the politics behind all of this.

barack obama wanted to do many of the same things donald trump is now talking about, republicans are bucking him on this. there's the issue of unions and the races that will be paid for. any construction projects taking place, now you have republicans controlling the house and senate and will these republicans go along with the president when they didn't go along with a democratic president? >> the politics is clear that yes, there are ways to sway them. i think infrastructure has this system like being able to get this super boosted boost to our economy and there's some of that that is true in the long run if you invest the money well. but going back to president obama, one of the things that was interesting, the rationale for putting this in the stimulus, the odds the need part, putting america back to work and to the theory jeffrey, will they be able to return greater returns you would have to see basically the money spent quickly which the system

right now, the regulation system, all the rules that are in place make it very hard to do an investment that is quick, timely and targeted. the other thing is that it would require, i mentioned it before, to take people off the unemployment line. not very much of that is done. in fact, capital workers were shifted from other projects which is not necessarily the best way to grow the economy. at the forefront is the idea that infrastructure partners can boost the economy is not correct and again in the long run it is possible but it has to be done right. >> the three words about how you want to do this. you ought to invest, not spend area that is make decisions where you get the biggest bang for the buck, not the money out the door. you need to do more of it.

you need to do it wisely. if you invest more wisely, you can fix america's infrastructure problems. i think there is slack in the economy, there's a tremendous number of working age men who drop out of the labor market. a lot of them have lower skill.somehow in 2006 many of these people were employed building houses. they have the same skill set in the housing bubble, you could build lots of roads and bridges there. in terms of republicans and democrats in politics, it would be sad to me if one group of people would oppose an issue because of the name of the president out the door and then support the exact same idea coming out of that president whether republican or democrat. it happens more than it used to.we used a little more consistency, we've gone down the road that way. that being said, i don't want to be guilty of the same thing. if president trump proposes a smart infrastructure plan, some of these ideas that have been out there that have been rejected, and they're supported , or the cost of

getting in the infrastructure bank is a trump bank, it's the same policy in the same program that i think that would be a good step forward abc news reprinting an ap story and this is the headline, trumps tasks, boosting infrastructure full of potholes. there are issues we are talking about on this wednesday, diane from indianapolis , good morning. >> good morning. i'm listening to the whole c-span. my question is, and this is not a democratic publican or independent, as far as your infrastructure, i see where small businesses, corporations, they are going to invest in the private sector. they are going to definitely benefit. now, as far as producing the jobs, because this is primarily what this whole campaign was running on area

what i'm hearing tend to shift more towards skilled workers. now, where does the unskilled workers benefit because it seems like, through the whole tyranny from 2008 to date, it's that the unskilled workers are very unwilling to go get training to improve their skills to be marketable so that is my question is that i still feel certain parts of the american population will not benefit even from the infrastructure without improving these skills. >> diane, let me jump in, thank you for the call.

>> i actually did a deep dive on this in the treasury department working on infrastructure policy and the answers are interesting. according to our estimates about when you build infrastructure, about 60 percent of the jobs go to construction. another 15 percent go to manufacturing and then the remaining 10 percent to 15 percent, closer to 15 go to wholesale and retail trade, these are the categories of employment. 10 to 15 comments roughly equal between wholesale so you get 90 percent of the jobs between infrastructure and instruction, manufacturing and wholesale and retail trade. for a job mix, those three areas tend to be dominantly middle-class jobs and i'll define that as 2050 and 76 percentile. sometimes the middle class can get a little hokey. i think there's a tight definition of middle-class and if you look at those jobs, they do tend to move more towards areas that have lower skills, lower employment and be a little

bit male and female which match up more with where more of the unemployment is in america. i make one point about geography that's important. if we're going to invest more wisely and we're not going to build roads where we don't need new roads, we may not be building roads in every american community. the problem in america may not be that we need another lane of interstate 4 in montana. so some of the workers may need to move. i think there are questions that are less than the amount skilled retraining although that's important, i don't mean to minimize that a lot of location. we built over dan and it wasn't as if there were tons of workers sitting in rural nevada going gosh, i wish somebody would build land here. i think if were going to tackle this problem well, people are going to have to move around and have a little bit more flexibility on that side of the labor market but i think that skills match up a little better than you think. let's go to helen in barton maryland, good morning. >> good morning. i would like to ask one

question. the state lottery, state to state, that money was supposed to go to help roads and schools.and i have not seen any of that and i would like to know where that money is going. >> first of all, it's a state decision by definition of the lottery. maryland, a lot of the money went to the stadium. i think the maryland medium authority, a lot of the money was passed there and a lot of that went to cameron yard and to raymond stadium . to help them load back from cleveland. and it different states do different things. i know education is a common source of lottery funds but you should also think money can be a little bit fungible, particularly at the state level. you can state money for a and they move it around a little bit when you look at the decisions that are made at the state and local level, and especially constrained by

accountability which is very often the case, you see that the flashier projects, they may not be the most effective or the highest returns. you see a lot of investment in structure like giving a new stadium rather than investing in a classroom. you see the same when like, all these investments and promises of economic growth and building new stadiums , it may sound great when the ravens are going to move back or whatever, i don't follow sports. please forgive me but what you find out with the studies afterwards and that it doesn't give the retirement return on investment. the thing i will say about infrastructure is the way we think about it is often as a leading actor but in fact it is a great supporting role. it's what the economy is already spending. you make it but also when

areas that are spending, this is where you use the money. you need the money to help expand that economics so the idea of investment and it's so often the case especially at the federal level that there are ideas that they are going to invest in self structures and build structures and roads in declining areas. i think that's a good idea and that alone will bring economic growth. and we need to break that cycle. you're right, ribbon-cutting is the way i would ask, that's fulfilling to politicians and not those kind of things. >> i agree with you entirely about expanding in one of the things when i worked in congress and we passed a new transportation law i rejiggered a formula not to fund transit on today's population but to fund it on the future population because

what you want to do is build the line before people, and after because it's much more expensive afterwards and most efficient . but in order to do that, you need a federal because the state bydefinition can't fund the future . it's too small today. when you reallocate between existing and future and we do a lot of funding based on censuses which are every 10 years and black and we ought to do more funding based on the future but that actually calls for a greater federal role to make some of these tough choices and on ribbon-cutting, i couldn't agree with you more.it disappoints me in my hometown of silver springs maryland, we built a new ansi center and it was a debacle. the spending didn't work, the promises of economic development were not due to federal investment but due to local people and the voters voted all the same local people back even though they lived with it. i think to hold to greater accountability ultimately is in all of our hands and it's in our hands in the bible belt where you have to make a decision to hold people accountable for the promises they made.

>> aaron klein who is an economic studies fellow at the brookings institution and again, if they want to follow you on twitter how can they do that? >> aaron decline. >> george mason university's michaelis center, if they want to follow you. >> they can do so at to. >> come back again and let's talk about it in the next few months, i appreciate it. >> coming up today on c-span2, next it's a program on the future of policing in the us then a program on the dakota pipeline access issue in north dakota. later the family research council host an event on teaching the history of western civilization. join us tonight for a look at how the trump administration might approach biomedical innovation, healthcare and drug pricing. watch that at 8 pm eastern here on c-span two. and on our companion network c-span, segregation in us

history, columbia school of journalism hosted a discussion on the topic. coming up at easter and again, that's on c-span. >> here are some of our featured programs thursday, thanksgiving day on c-span. just after 11 am eastern, nebraska senator ben sachs on american values , the founding fathers and purpose of government. >> there is a huge civic mindedness in american history. but it's not compelled by the government. >> follow that former senator tom harkin on healthy food and the rise of childhood obesity in the us. >> for everything from monster pittsburghers with 1420 calories and 107 grams of fat to 20 ounce coke and pepsi's, 12 to 15 teaspoons of sugar, eating is an

epidemic of childhood obesity. >> at 3:30, wikipedia founder jimmy wales talks about the evolution of the online encyclopedia and the challenge of providing global access to information.>> once there's 1000 entries i know there's a small community there. there's 5 to 10 really active users, another 20 to 30 that they know a little bit and they start to think of themselves as a community. >> a little after seven eastern, and inside look at the years long effort to repair and restore the capitol dome area eight, justice elena kagan reflect reflects on her life and career. >> i did my senior thesis which was a great thing to have done, it taught me an incredible amount that it also taught me what it was like to be a serious historian and sit in archives all day every day and i realized it just wasn't for me. >> followed by justice clarence thomas at nine . >> genius is not putting a two dollar idea in a $20 sentence. it's putting a $20 idea in a two dollar sentence.

without any loss of meaning. >> just after 10, and an exclusive ceremony, president obama will present the medal of freedom, our nation's highest civilian award to 21 recipients including nba star michael jordan, singer bruce springsteen, actor sicily tyson and philanthropists bill and melinda gates. watch on c-span and c-span.org or listen on the free c-span radio app. >> c-span: where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. now a panel discussion on the future of policing in america. a member of president obama's task force on 21st-century policing join the former new york city police officer and

prep professors from the university of chicago and morehouse college to discuss policing and race in america. from chicago ideas week in mid-november, this is just over an hour and five minutes area . >>. [applause] >> good afternoon. before we start, i know gabriel had you all with each other and if you want to give out or give a shout out for the chicago cubs while you are here, you can do that as well. well, welcome and good afternoon and welcome to what we expect will be a very lively conversation about the police force of the future. you know the names of the cities, ferguson, baltimore, baton rouge, charlotte, chicago, dallas, bourbon st. paul. the list can go on. also. those are a few of the cities in recent years that have pushed the issue of policing,

the often deadly interaction between police and those they serve and the safety of both police and communities front and center. there's no question that the current state of policing is an emotional and a controversial subject that we are wrestling with all over the country. consider just some of the small phrases that get really big reactions. law and order. stop and frisk. black lives matter. blue lives matter. so that's the backdrop of the conversation that we are about to have this afternoon. most police officers do the job that we asked them to do, to protect and serve our communities and they do it quite well. but no matter what your perspective, there is a building consensus thatneeds to be change . that the police force of the future must be different. what we asked police officers to do beyond enforcing the

law, how police are trained, how accountability is assigned, which policing methods they use, all of those are up for debate today. so this year, reportedly more than 700 people have been killed by police officers in the united states but it's a disproportionate number of them are people of color and we are here today to discuss why those exceptions are so numerous and to propose solutions and we have a little over an hour to do it so you know, we are going to get started. we've assembled a group of experts with very diverse opinions and backgrounds to talk us through this key issue but i'd like to introduce them and bring them to the stage. first up, craig futterman, professor of law at the university of chicago law school. it was his freedom of information act request that led to the release of the deal of the shooting of luck lawn withdonald in 2014. craig ? [applause] just right here.

second one, right there. and we welcome next eugene o'donnell, a former new york city police officer, now professor of law and police studies at john jay college of criminal studies in chicago, welcome. [applause] also joining us this afternoon, doctor cedric alexander, safety director of the cad county georgia, he is a clinical psychologist and past president of the national organization of black law enforcement executives. he's also a member of president obama's task force on the 21st century policing.

[applause] and finally, mark lamont hill, a journalist, television host, professor of african-american studies at morehouse university and author of the new book nobody: casualties on america's war on the vulnerable from ferguson to flint. [applause] >> gentlemen, thank you and i expect he will hold nothing back. i'm going to start off with some news that was made yesterday and there is an organization of police chief, the international group of, association of chiefs of police and when you talk about racism inside policing,

it's a very delicate issue, especially as many rank-and-file police officers, to present accusations of systemic racism by groups such as black lives matter. i think it might have surprised a few folks yesterday during the meeting of the association of police chiefs when kerry cunningham, the outgoing president of that group apologized for historical racism by law enforcement and cited the role of police as enforcers of racist laws such as jim crow, called it a source of today's mistrust to minorities and police officers. jim, i'd like to also address that. if you think this is a step that police departments should be taking, i know some folks at the meeting thought it was a step that went too far. mark, i'm going to start with you. >> that's a great question. thank you all for inviting me in. this is a question i wrestled with because i was trying to look at these instances

violence and then look at the historical underpinnings. one of the things i continued to come back to is this idea that we can't think about racism in the context of policing early at the level of intention. if we continue to look for the rabbit, foaming at the mouth racism, we will find some, we will find walter scott getting shot in the back in chicago and those things but what is far more important is the number of people who are victimized by a system that by design and by its structure hits some communities at the expense of others. look at the psyches of officers, and as citizens and how they understand race. if you look at a law study out of stanford where this idea that black children are seen as older and more guilty than their white counterparts. that needs to being 12 and

being read as 20. that doesn't mean police told more 12-year-olds today, that means that might be part of the scott psychology. the question is, does the policy help, absolutely. it acknowledges there's a structural issue that we all must be accountable for even if you are the quote unquote good officers. finally i would say we've been using the bad apple model to think about police officers. there's a bunch of good apples and there's a bad apple. that might be the wrong way to think about this because it pushes everything to the level of individualism. i'm saying the barrel itself that might be poisoned. there might be something in the barrel that renders all apples bad, it might be a problem so let's think about this in a different way. >> how do you think about it ? >> it's great that he apologized and certainly someone who is representative of the largest police organization in the world,

you see international association chiefs of police, it was a welcome apology. however, i don't think it's going to change very much. to be perfectly blunt. it is great to have the apology but what is really going to be profound if we are going to police across this country are going to apologize where it's past deeds is that it also have to come locally.and i think local police officials in their own respective communities need to have the courage to do what we saw the president of iac d do the other day because that's the real test, that's where the real apology in that neighborhood and community, where historically we all know policing has been utilized over the years,

particularly going back to jim crow, civil rights, have been utilized by government to keep people oppressed, suppressed and i think what's going to be really important is for us as law enforcement officials to go back to our own communities and make these apologies for the things we could have done better over the years and then promising to do something really a lot different and great as we move forward cheryl o'donnell? >> icp was made by the fbi director who said the police is in an irreparably damaged state and that's absolutely correct. nobody wants the job at this point. nobody feels they can do the job in america.

the commission 50 years ago says you should have a four year degree, one percent of the apartments have that. chicago can't even answer 30 credits. chicago can't even ask for a filing committee trying to get police officers going forward. these are real issues, we need to get into substance. how to go forward, were sitting in a city where 10 people were shot yesterday. who were killed, once 13. one homicide reclassification is a 16-year-old kid whose body was found burning area and the victims and the communities have been silenced by the active suggestion, top cops have been totally silenced. nobody talks to them. everybody can do their job better. nobody's an expert. they wouldn't do it for five minutes. but the community is on the ground is utterly silenced in cities like chicago and baltimore and philadelphia, hundreds of thousands of people leaving the city's in disorder and fear and crime and asking for more police productivity have seen a collapsing police productivity as an elite, self-appointed elite has decided to have a conversation that does not connect with people which was irreparable damage, not only

do we have a collapse of recruiting, we have an exodus at the moment from big-city police department. people areflying out of the new york city police department. 90 percent of the cops today, they wouldn't recommend that job to anybody . there was a cadre of young people thatwanted to be police people . the institution could not survive three years and more than probably $1 billion of negative, incessant, a factual, on contextual lies, lacking in nuance coverage of what the police did and they couldn't say i think to talk about forward, not to go back. we need to talk about a post policing america. we are simply not going to find the people you want in a police uniform to do the work. you may find somebody if they

have a department of employment. it's not going to happen in the department of police. unless we as a society come together in a unified way because i do believe this is a very unifying commonality, you get on the ground and you talk topeople , you will find out there's a tremendous room for police enforcement. they remain one of the most distinct professions and it's ironic they are being bashed incessantly by lawyers, politicians and journalists. five percent approval rating of those professions, police are almost in the 60s. but a bigger time to have a conversation, how do we reimagine public safety with a shrinking role for the police? >> craig futterman, lots to take in there. the silence of the police i would guess has something to snap up at i guess let me start with your question, the apology.

i think it's a good thing. i think it's a step in the right direction. but also, there are risks, it's not the same risks my colleague are talking about when we're talking about apologizing for the path. i think there's a risk of saying that was then and this is now. that yeah, that's stuff that happened then and should never have happened. we acknowledge that and i think it's important to acknowledge it but i think it's even more important to acknowledge some of the things that mark was talking about which are present day racism and not just the virulent stuff but also the present day reality that all too many black and brown folks and lower income folks have had to address. and i think that's the first step in terms of looking forward, to me the first step

to move forward is, it begins with acknowledging the reality on the ground and i think we may have different ideas and views as to what thoserealities need to be . based on where we set but i also want to say to you and everyone here, being one of these professor, lawyer, civil rights folks, that i come from, i'm a fan of police. i am not one of those, we need to get rid of law enforcement. and one of the reasons why i'm hopeful and why i'm hopeful for 21st-century policing, it begins with the creative energies and activism of young folks around the nation that force us to reckon with their and acknowledge the realities. but i'm also hopeful because i meet every day to and i know about the thousands of officers out there who hate

this as much as i do and i think we need to move toward a time where we are empowering those officers and a vast majority of those to feel comfortable stepping out. and just one point, in chicago we would not be having this conversation in chicago if someone from within law enforcement hadn't had the courage to give me a holler and they know about what happened with paula,. we wouldn't be having this conversation today but the sad reality is that person can't be known. they put their life on the line. they put their family on the line. they put their career on the line by stepping forward. when i have conversations with police officers around the united states, i will hear stories like that where officers forward but then i asked the question and it's rare that i've been asked this and i say so many people will tell me good stories about police officers who

made dramatic changes in the department and who exposed corruption but when i asked, can someone give me a story about a happy ending for the officers who stepped forward, i get a lot of silence. >> i want to talk to you, the big thing that happened after ferguson was that the president decided he needed to have a conversation about policing and he informed his task force which you are a member of and one of the things that was recommended was about collecting data to really find out what's happening and i wanted to know what is your kind of frank and unvarnished opinion about whether the white house's current push for this kind of data collection and share more data about the use offorce , use of guns or weapons against suspects, is that really going to produce good national numbers and you

have a police force across the country that is so diverse? there are one, 1800 police departments across the country? 18,000, sorry about that. so all with different ways of collecting, and this is voluntary. so do you expect really to have true numbers about what is happening across the country? >> what's critically important is we have this conversation and one thing we talk about ad nausea during the creation of those task force recommendations was to take a look at data. and how much, because what we don't know, we cannot measure. and until we know the number of shootings that are taking place, the number of near

misses that are taking place, the number of charges that are being brought against police officers, you take all this information as relates to policing community interactions, traffic stops, whatever the case may be and the more information that we have about a particular agency, the better description we have that agency is because you try to think about it anecdotally, you can't do it.you can't measure it with your eye. you have to have hard science, our numbers to look at so your question, with 18,000 police department across the country, and the government is not going to mandate, at least not at this point, mandate agencies to take part in this, because that's going to require resources and money and training and so forth but a lot of departments that once to the end of the curve, a lot of the departments that have the money in order to do

this, to gather this data and use the latest technology that is out there and it's being developed, i think you're going to see a much better police department. because when you can take a look at what it really is that your officers are doing every day, look at that information, analyze it and what you are doing good, you can say we are doing good and the things we are not doing so great at, these are things we need tobe in good faith . >> go ahead i agree. you need data. to expect people to make sense of numbers without any kind of data collection is troubling at best. but there were two questions embedded in your question. one is should we be collecting data on police, yes. i can't think of any good

reason. there's no reason we shouldn't count the number of people who get shot, why would we not want to know that? but there's a second piece to that question which is it helpful and doesn't make us pull towards a different outcome after mark let me back up for second say i come out of the abolitionist tradition. i'm imagining a world without prisons, i'm imagining a world without police so i'm always skeptical of any reformist gesture because it makes us think prisons and police as an institution are salvageable and i'm say they're not so let me say a priori before any internal investigation, i ate down with that. however, i do think that to the extent we're going to keep track of police, we have to do that. the problem is, if police are responsible for collecting the data and classifying categories which has historically been what we done, we are asking police to continue to police themselves even empirically and that makes me skeptical. we hear all the time, you mentioned earlier the reclassification of murders. when there are numbers games being played, how we classify

homicide, there's always ways to reclassify numbers whether it's funding or make them look like crime is going up, down, etc. so the higher stakes we attached to numbers, we see this in education all the time. the more we make people who are vulnerable and say these numbers will dictate your future, your outcome, it almost invites dishonesty with the numbers so what am i suggesting? i'm suggesting some sort of greater oversight. two things. one, it should be mandatory. i can't imagine a police department meant not being forced to keep track of the people they shoot or officers that get shot or the traffic stops they make. all these are things we should be able to know. people say we don't have money, the war on drugs produced a bizarre amount of militarization of police . they haven't had a murder in decades and they suddenly had military grade equipment. we found money to militarize the police department. we can find money to do qualitative analysis.

it's a lot cheaper to do hlm, then it is the biotech but let me say this in regards to what mark is talking about and he's on point with a lot of things and i don't think for me as a police administrator, if i have the ability to collect data, i don't need to be the one to examine it. i need someone who understands it and someone who can tell me what it is that we need to do different because he's right, i can look at and skew whatever i want to. i will say love, let it me interpreted a different way but when you have a group of people who are outside of your organization that you are working with that can collect the data, the data goes into a mainframe somewhere and you can look at it and you can discuss and talk about the things that we can do very differently, that's really important. because you know, the whole key is the more transparent we are as a police agency, i think that begins to release some of this distrust that we

are constantly hearing. we are going tohave policing in this country, that's not going to change . and at least probably not in my lifetime, mark is younger than i am. >> not that much but probably not in mind. but it would be wonderful if we lived in a place where we didn't have to have prisons, we didn't have to have police but the fact ofthe matter is that today , as we know we do so how do we operate the system we are in in a way that gives unity across this country. a better view to their local police and we need to have some influence into how their services are delivered to them by their local police. >> i want to ask you because i don't want to get too far into the weeds on this but when you talk about 18,000 police department, of course the big police department are

going to be doing this but when you talk about the smaller departments, what kind of thing are we going to be seen with them? is it going to promote more transparency? and is it going to make policing more effective, what do you think?>> we're in a country now where facts matter less and less every day and if you want to hear good example, put this police dialogue and the great example is the media decided approximately three years ago, you can almost pick the day that this is going to be an issue.police force is going to bean issue and they were goingto run with that issue, particularly when they can racialized that issue. how unequivocably , provably , the fact that many more white people are killed and police.the fact that we live in a nation where there's so much gun violence. the fact that city after city, if you took a murder map and planted the murders on the map in the philly,

baltimore and chicago, there are whole neighborhoods you couldn't see anymore. the fact that within a year or two, some streets and some cities where people are murdered has a whole other neighborhoods . the fact that police are put into that situation, the fact that the law is favorable to the police in these situations in a way that's very hard to change. you could go on and on with that. we want in fact to have an other casualty, not that we aren't on real issues here this is been a media campaign that really replicates the blogosphere. >>

and you talked to people, a large number of people would say the police are always killing people, so if we are waiting for data and i know people think the data representation is only on the right, we have to get politics out of this and see what really works for public safety and we also have to talk about victims and we need to acknowledge that in police department after police department shooters are shooting and not getting caught and if the cops are going out catching the shooters we will have even more officer involved shootings and in a lot of cities, this city in particular, you have a police department in name only. they get there when they get there and i did see the other day and i had an african

american woman whose son was murdered in the city and she's not part of an elite and when the police were being bad she said i don't turn to politicians and lawyers when i need help. i turned to the police are quite -- we have to have a real nonpartisan substantive, board thinking conversation about how to secure communities. get the politics out of it. take the parson political blinders off and see what's out there. >> what do you think about that? i mean, you investigate look at cases of abuse and, is this something that's a media storm that was created or something that people need to take a look at? >> i couldn't disagree more. i couldn't disagree more, i mean, in the same way right now, we have presidential candidates saying this is all a conspiracy,

a media conspiracy by the "new york times", a media conspiracy by the elites or with anyone who disagrees with us and i think seriously attitude, this as against of them mentality is the last thing we need at this time because if we once and i do believe that we need police and if we want to have affected police, we got to have some trust and trust doesn't come unless it's earned and so if we are going to have a conversation about reality being blind to data, i don't to see, i don't want to know and also with the same fbi director saying in the same breath that it's a national disgrace that if you ask how may people were killed last week in america we could shrug our shoulders, so it's more than just encouraging the 18000 law-enforcement agencies to collect information, it's

actually requiring it and requiring in a standardized way. that's how we have informed conversation, public conversation about what needs to be done, not just knee-jerk stuff and i will say this, i mean, back to data and to think because human data matters also. i spent the last four years talking with black high school students about chicago, their everyday experience with police and kids who are in school and what i'm told by now thousands of hours that we spent with kids would break any human being's heart and we have got to do something better because as he knows we have some neighborhoods and chicago less than a 20% clearance rate for murder, violence and not surprisingly those neighborhoods are the same neighborhoods, we went to look at data where we see the greatest numbers of complaints with police abuse.

scenic-- >> they are not solving crime. >> how about being honest? you were just arguing about this, i do want data, i don't want transparency c mike i never said that. i said it won't matter. >> see, the truth doesn't matter. my point is the truth is where we need to start. we want to fix this. if we care about our safety and our communities, this is what you said, we need honesty. not just honesty on one side or the other, but actually-- let's collect and look at what the data says and also lets talk to the people who have been most excluded in the conversation, i mean, so why are police having difficulty solving cases? it's the kids who i talk with, none of them trust the police.

none of them are going to the police even when someone close to them gets hurt. something is terribly wrong and unless we do something-- we don't the vast majority of black foes distrusting police. how do we solve a crime? >> maybe we should. if we begin from the present mess that police are trustworthy than sure we don't want to create a world where we don't trust police. if i say i don't trust politicians no one will say well you should. at some point there are structural questions that we have to raise and to your point and i was listening carefully, i think we don't want to estimate the value of media, but citizens at raising issues. media did not want to talk about dead black kids anymore than politicians did or anyone else. when trey vaughn martin was killed-- that's the first moments.

>> let's be clear that was not a police officer. it was a vigilante. i know ms. clinton-- people are mixing and matching. that person is not a policeman. >> i was making an argument. what i was about to say was when trey vaughn martin was killed that was the first big moment poster rodney king where that media was talking about gun violence and death. that then started a wave of activism where blacklight's matter began those movements began to discuss police violence and by the time august night, .14, when mike brown died suddenly there is a movements. it took months for us to hold police accountable for trey vaughn martin. police would not bring charges that it was a #campaign. wait a minute, he's black, he's young, he still matters and you

have to do something about this, so was calling police to do a job-- [inaudible] >> let's abolish the police, that's great if your children are not being killed. police abolition is a great argument if you live in a compound or a dormant billowing-- building. coming people left this city because of police abuse and i'm not excusing abuse. it's in the millions because of the collapse of public safety. >> that would have to be data collection-- >> these cities have hollowed out and if you-- >> i have an argument i have not been able to finish. >> i apologize. >> so, so, so the first thing is i think there is a movement here the second thing is the question of race.

i don't think it is some kind of hocus-pocus by the media to raise the question of race. based on your percentage of the population for black folks-- >> what percentage are homicide in the big city? almost every single victim in a big city in a city like this you would not find-- you would have to go for a long time to find why to victims in this city. >> let's make a commitment to one another. lets me make my arguments. >> go-ahead. >> i have not been able to make that argument yet. so, i promise i will be fast. i think the question of race has to be raised. proportionality of police involved shooting and crime. which neighborhoods are policed or over policed? when we talk about stopping for us, that's a racer driven argument when you look at where

stop and frisk happens. that's a race targeted policy. they didn't say let's go find a black people, but the very notion of this order, which is the predicate for stop and frisk and for once the other? broken window policing, is that the perception of crime and studies show it's been linked to poverty and race, so i think those-- finally, abolition. we are here to talk about big ideas. my plan is not to-- this is a long-term dream. and 1619 it was impossible to imagine a world without slavery. then we get to 1863 at-- [inaudible] >> let's engage in on the ground policy that can on the one hand stop some of the pain people are feeling. i'm not in a gated building. i'm out here doing violence

interruption with mild body. at the same time, this cannot be the end again. >> what about policies that keep people safe while we talk about karl marx, what keeps people safe on the ground? >> but, that's not-- no one is mentioning karl marx. that's a straw man argument. you can do both. you can release of things on the ground-- for example, a civilian review board. >> let me ask you this because doctor alexander we will let you get in. you were part of the navelgazing , i guess, part of the task force of 21st century policing. >> lets me talk about this from a police administrator perspective as one of the chiefs

and i listen to colleagues here and they talk about things very differently and they talk about things differently based on what their experiences have been, but one of the hardest things to talk about is policing and whose right, who's wrong, who's hurt, who's on first, who's on second and it's merely because the whole introduction of policing into communities of color have been wrong from that exception. there's never been any trust and here getting goes back to what i was talking about moments ago where police have crossed of this country using to suppress groups of people and keep them in their place or keep them on this side of the tracks and so as we move through the decades and centuries, some of that

better, but it did not change and a whole lot of places and we know that in many communities across this country people don't trust police because police have betrayed communities also in which they have policed. and they have asked people to be witnesses and a turnaround at ease them in in a different kind of white that put them out on front street, so a lot of people don't have a reason to want to tell who shot johnny down the street even though they know who did it. they want to, but there is a fear because there has never been any trust whatsoever between policing and some of the horrific things policing have done the innocent people period over the history of policing and you don't have to go back a long time ago to know this, so, so, so we are in this place where-- it's a something mark was talking about and this is where

it gets complicated is that in many communities that are struggling, really the south side of chicago or houston, regardless of where it is, you have people there who don't feel connected to police for a variety of different things and some of it is based on their own experience. some of it is based on stories and myths being told in all of those things, but i think one thing that we have to be able to do if we are going to advance policing, we have to understand that when a predominantly african-american community says that chief alexander, i have a lot of crime in my community, i got break-in, robbery, drug sales and i have young black people killing each other at night and i need police presence

, so i put police presence down there and when police get there they go down, hopefully they are not violating people's rights, but then real tough situation and the go down and they arrest someone's friend or cousin or knees or nephew or son or daughter and the argument the next day is that there are so many policed down here, so, i mean, you can't have it both ways and, and he gets to a point where i hear where we don't want to over police, but if i'm not there present, visible then me suppressing any crime or trying to keep other people from getting hurt becomes more difficult, but if i put too many police in there and they start to interact with people in the community who are not doing what they are supposed to be doing and they are breaking the law than i can get complaints and i'm not saying that officers are

right all the time, but many times that they are there, they are literally trying to do their job, but people have their perceptions about what their local police department is not doing, so no one sitting around this circle here is a wrong about their experience or what their perception is. it's just that we all see it differently because it's so convoluted and so complex because-- because those communities want me in there, they want the police and their. the police is not the result of a bad economy or poor education or those things that drive this crime. that's not the police officer's fault. they are just the ones who have to respond to the outcome of all these social things and when they do they generally end up often times with some negative interaction that may take place, sometimes the officer is right and unfortunately, there are times when they are wrong.

>> i went to talk about officer buy-in, but craig want to let you to respond first off. >> the first thing and i'm going to come really on the heels of director alexander is if you lie to folks you will not get trust, so my point and mark was responding, i'm not advocating for people to trust police because that's the right thing to do. i'm saying there is a real objective problem and police cannot be affected without trust, but the only way and here is how you solve the problem is to be honest with people and not lie and also by being accountable, fundamentally accountable to the community, sir. so, when i talked about and talking with kids and for the last few years spent a lot of time in a high school five blocks from where i teach at the university of chicago and among

the things, i mean, and it's like there are two different constitutions that apply. of those the constitution that applies in lower income black and brown communities in chicago and elsewhere in urban areas of the us and then there's the constitution that i teach in my law school classrooms about you don't get stopped unless we have a reasonable belief that you committed a crime or that you are armed and dangerous before i search you because part of what and this-- new york, chicago makes new york in terms of stop and frisk until recently-- chicago put new york to shame in terms of stop and frisk. when i say to kids and, i mean, so these are everyday kids who live with the ever present possibilities of it being a stop and search and treated like a criminal and every kid also knows that every kid from the south side of chicago also part of the reality is, well, we are talking about everyday experiences and also as know

someone who has been being, arrested and some blood even been been shot killed by police, so they know that routine encounter has potential to escalate. every kid we talk to talks about this as an everyday experience. so, the vast majority of our kids in chicago, black kids in chicago high schools tell me this and then i interviewed 200 kids wear my own daughter attend -- attends 45 blocks from the school we spend time and not a single kid other than my daughter who deserved it-- that's a different story, different panel, had ever been stopped or searched by police and so until also when-- and i guess the biggest thing that kate kids taught us was that there's not going to be this trust until and unless they see policed departments stand behind

those good officers who smile i treat them with respect, but who don't stand behind the officers who abuse them and the reality in chicago and to many places across the nation is that there's been a lack of police accountability when please officer abuse their powers. that's what the data shows. >> talking about a law school class, that's terrific, but let's acknowledge certainly in new york, a city that once had 20200 murders-- >> [inaudible] >> you get to the airport and you don't have a fourth amendment; right? anyone who knows the fourth amendment knows the reality is those who helped tear down policing in america need to own up to the fact that by doing that they have helped to create issues and have caught lies and their children dead, no question about it because police are not out there anymore.

the bad guys know it and in fact, there are people in prison or will end up in prison because they weren't intercepted when they were carrying guns and this is a serious conversation that should be having in the community. in philadelphia, when they had the mayor's race michael nutter was running for the mayor and there was more stop and frisk in african-american communities than anywhere else. it's perfectly fine to talk about in a law school setting. the reality on the ground is lives are being lost all over the place. shooters are not being caught. do the police want to go out and get a shooter at 4:00 a.m. and have an officer involved shooting? people have to understand that the false setting is to do nothing. i was doing research and a police superintendent in chicago in 1872, if in doubt do nothing is basically the advice.

we have police apartments like that all over the country that are basically not their. >> do you agree that police are doing nothing because of the ferguson effect or-- >> you know, i think there may be some cities where that may be more of an issue than others. i mean, i can speak specifically to my community and say no, but i can look to a couple other communities across the country and say that very well could be the case. here's the thing about stop and frisk, stop and frisk you went totally unsupervised and if you don't have a probable cause or reasonable cause to stop someone, you just can't stop me because we are the two black guys walking in the street. you understand what i'm saying? what happened with stop and frisk, yeah, crime went down significantly. a lot of bad people were taken off the street, but also people like myself and mark, right scott violated, so how did that

leave us feeling? totally against the police. here's what the president of the united states says-- >> you can call him barack. >> no, no, i did not mean that. >> it's cool, we all heard it, barack. >> we were just trying to get their. >> so, here's what the president of the united states said is that we have to bring down crime , but we can't do it by raising public resentment towards the police. we got to find a way to do both and the only way you do both is it goes back to what he was saying and what i have been saying religiously that you have to have community engagement and trust and relationships. we can go back and change what has happened, but going forward we got to figure out, how do we

create in our communities that have so much distrust for the police at this moment, who have lost so much legitimacy in communities across this country, how do we get that back and i am -- >> that can happen in a manner that's in a structural issues that produce these things. for example, i agree if you stop and frisk everyone in america court in new york you will catch more guns than if you don't. the question is at what cost do we want to do that, so how do we strike a balance or how do we imagine a world and again, this is not an academic argument. there are countries that do this. they don't have guns away the united states do your catholic also imagine a country where there are not as many guns. that's not dreaming, that's saying investing in jobs in head start and after school programs and the arts. these are things we can do to

get rid of that, but we also have to imagine those things in connection with the future of policing even if you believe in policing, which i doubt even if you believe in policing in your long-term and short-term goal the radical reform comes from changing the relationship between policing and the community. where i am in philadelphia, in the code, by the way not a gated community, one of the things we do is watch programs. a neighborhood watch. we also do conflict resolution with young people and gun buybacks. we do those things because we have a greater trust of what we do in our own community and we police ourselves. that becomes the goal, so for me that is also a future of policing and when you go to first-- [inaudible] >> look at a town like ferguson, it's 20000 people, 16000 citizens out of 20000 people,

that's unconscionable and that's not because police decided we are going to give everyone a ticket. of not trying to make the police the bogeyman, but when you have a system-- [inaudible] >> it's a racial thing. somehow black people-- you go to trap the court in a major city? you be like white people are really good drivers. only black people here, so you have to look at the race dynamics and think about the structural piece that leads to a town like ferguson turning policing to tax collectors and turning citizens into vulnerable people. >> we are going to go to the audience in a moment, but mr. o'donnell, went to ask you a question because we've been talking alive at the community and how they feel about police. what we have heard from you is that police are full of

resentment, also. so, if you look at the 21st century and all of the recommendations it provides to say this is how we need to have police and community working together, is there anything that police buy into and have you get them to say, this is okay or these are things that we think need to be changed? >> we have an abject political failure. political people have failed so badly for 70 years, but the highest respect for doctor alexander, but that report made community policing a panacea. chicago has had community policing for 25 years and also had 22000 murders, so you have to look and say what do police need to do to involve getting consent-- offenders. it said adversarial job, which is maybe why we have not lost our appetite for this.

what mark is talking about is right, we need to talk about involving the communities and offloading responsibility, mental health, addiction, drugs. we need to look at noncustodial arrest, civil enforcement, strategies that don't involve police wrestling around on the ground with people he cuts for all the talk we have heard from summary people i've yet to hear anyone tell me how the police can make an arrest of a resisting person without using force. a core issue that they deal with. they are charged with using force. there's plenty of videos online to watch police officers being murdered now you can see how fast a half and then you can see how unscripted it is an that there are no markets queensberry rules. it goes from cordial to homicidal and a second, so we need a serious conversation. i think all the action, the big thinking should be shrinking the

police role. they have a big service role and that's most of what they do. in suburban america that's what they do. in urban america they have false setting for lack of gun regulation. we have to figure out a way to shrink the role of the police and really it's a democracy issue because the bloggers have taken over and by the way the idea of this immediate conspiracy, donald trump is getting votes because people do believe that the media is dishonest on major publications. we have to, face-to-face with that, that there is a perception that the media picks up issues, hammers them and i can personally tell you they are not all involved with the nuances and the particulars. they want the visceral, emotional and the divisive. they want the racially divisive, let's face it. >> that's why the task force is says justine a lot of this data collection come forward to we can get rid of that and see what's really happening on the

ground. levy go to the audience. we have about 10 minutes here where folks-- we have a lot of folks. a person will come by with a microphone. come to the aisle. okay. come down to the il, people with microphones on either side their. let's start over here. >> hello. i thought the superintendent of the police department speak and brought up a lot of issues that you did. on curious what you also think of it. what are the tactical initiatives you can do on the ground to strengthen the trust between the chicago police department and the community? are there any current grassroots initiatives or initiatives in place and are there more ideas like body cameras, obviously and more transparency is good, but

it sounds like-- >> not body cameras. it's inevitable, but inconsistent with getting people into the police profession you want and is causing more police officers to get injured and causing more people to be arrested. it's an elitist in an industry formulation shoved down peoples throughout without debate who actually, i believe, gives people what they want. cameras would never have been on their list. critiquing of the police will be our conversation. >> how does it create more danger for police? >> for anyone who has been in an unscripted argument, forget about physical, or take-- conversation, how fast can they deteriorate? the whole part of the conversation is that police are equals. police cannot be equal. if police are equal they lose the upper hand. by the way, anecdotally there is a huge problem.

people are getting pulled over and they are saying hello-- who the hell are you to pull me over they're not making requests. they are making demands. >> lets me have you address the question, though. what is being done here in chicago to create a better atmosphere? you say body cameras are not it. is there anything happening here that will make things more palatable to people? >> i'm going to hit the big things that, i mean, one, it starts with honesty and i think there is a revolution or could be a revolution. the jack is out of out-of-the-box. you can't put the check back in the box. one of the things that was exposed in chicago and it's not just a chicago issue, the reality of the code of silence from top to bottom in that department, so this means in terms of what needs to happen in

things that are happening in beginning at least to happen in chicago, but they need to go further from where they have gone and put in place a real regime of accountability. that's how you build trust. that's how also, you improve safety. the other thing and i guess this is it just a chicago thing because i say there are good examples of where we have seen not just in suburbia where police department have taken different tactics and i challenge the notion that community policing has gone for decades in chicago, if you were here you would know that's simply not true. there's been talk about community policing, something utterly defended in chicago from's-- from way back when, but i will say because i actually believe in community policing and i've seen what it can do. one example far from just-- so on the other side of the country richmond, california, i used to

live in the bay area next to oakland california and when i lived there-- i didn't live in richmond, i lived in oakland. at the time was one of the the per capita murder capitals in the united states. no trust between police and we were using the same kind of tactic with street teams, lack of accountability. you had a guy who came in from of all places fargo, north dakota. fargo as in from the cohen brothers movie fargo. chris magness and at that point fargo, one of the safest middle sized cities in the country then , not as much now and chief of fargo moves from fargo, northcutt decoded to richmond california and implements the same policing he implemented in white communities and it worked. he had police officers, putting the more experienced police-- we

will have to fight the unions on this, also. we will have to put the more experienced officers in the robust communities. they are going to get out of cars and make relationships. they make points not just for dusting up the dope boys on the street, but for resolving a conflict without the need for arrests and more points for doing the difficult things that takes more relationship building than it does to break up eight dope corner. >> north dakota would applaud you. >> let me just say it worked because-- the last point on richmond now, 10 years later violent crime went away down and trust when-- trust him police went ready. there was not a police shooting in richmond, for 10 years after he took charge. >> was it a real estate resurgence like in new york?

>> let me ask you this-- i went to have you touch briefly, but i won't have you do it about the changes with the oversight committee in chicago, but we will talk to that if we can. we have a person over here. >> we will answer faster, i promise. >> i am the harvard high school band counselor. those are my kids. >> that's called becoming a man. >> i have to make a couple-- first of all you terrify me. the guy in the pink tie, you terrify me. when you said the first thing, which was apology is acceptance -- is a step backwards that's the same kind of logic i hear about the united states government not apologizing for slavery. i'm not sure where you're coming from--

>> give me a question. >> cool, cool, cool. the second thing that scares me is when you say there is no reason for-- you know what i'm saying-- i don't understand-- i run into a cop a couple days ago-- >> question. >> i said we protect our own. that's the culture in the police officer and i was her by that-- scared by that. like, like, like cops look at us and think how do i protect you guys, what do i do for you. what are your thoughts on restructuring this fraternity that we have right now where they don't look out for communities, but for themselves? >> real quick because i know other people went to get in. i never said it was backwards-- we are going backwards and apologizing for things that have

had-- happen in the past, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't apologize for things that has happened in the past. would you consider a police career? >> what? >> would you consider a police career? >> i like to dream bigger. so, i don't think so. i don't think so. my question to you, again, how do you restructure the fraternity of police? how do you redefine who they care about? >> if you don't mind. >> i need to if you are going to answer whoever answers do it in 30 seconds. >> so, so, that's a great question because there is the perception that you have police here that has their own fraternal organization that is in many ways separate from the community and i think what we have to continue to do is for people like you and for all of us to bring up the fact because as we recruit better and begin

to train better, we have to help our officers understand that police community and community is police because neither one of us will function without the other. you can have good public safety if you don't have community involvement and you can have good police officers if you don't have good community involvement. it takes both of those in terms of working together, so that's a lot of older school thinking, here's what you don't hear about are the police officers out there every day who do-- you just don't hear about it, who do take issue with get in front of and even testify against other officers who are doing things that are wrong. we just don't hear about it as much as we hear it in the other direction, but that's a great question. we are getting there and that is what we have to do better is to make sure that you and i, me

being a police officer and qb asic-- citizen that we are really partners. >> the only thing i would add is that i think we need greater oversight. there are 18000 police departments. we need civilian complaint review board's. we need mechanisms where people outside the police department are assessing, judging, making analysis of police department actions. it doesn't mean that, you know, joey the pitcher becomes in charge of what the police department does, but joey that butcher matters well and we have to make sure we have oversight and police resist that at every turn. we all do. if you asked me about professor oversight i would say no, also. the power needs to be restored to the community and that people. to your point we have to take

away some of the jobs we have assigned police and we had to stop criminalizing poverty and mental illness and all the things that turn into these structural problems. if we are going to have police long-term then it needs to be minimized role and it needs to be community policing itself to every extent possible. >> i think we are just about out of time. yes? >> she's like hell yes. >> thank you for all that's participating in this conversation, trying to "policing: the force of the future". thank you to our panelists. thanks to all of you in the audience. good afternoon. [applause]. [inaudible conversations]