how lobbying effects the health care in the u.s. today so thank you for that. >> host: it's been a pleasure. i wish you luck with your book and i wish you luck with kaiser health news and i look forward to talking with you in the future. >> thank you very much and it's good to be talking with you again. take care.

>> good afternoon. [inaudible conversations] good afternoon. thank you. this is not my microphone. i'm not used to it so i couldn't hear it. thank you for joining us for our program with author amy goldstein who will discuss her book "janesville" an american story the my name is renee and i'm the programming and outreach coordinator at the public library. at this time i would like to ask that you turn off for silence all of your electronic devices. also at the end of today's program ms. goldstein will have time for questions and answers

and be available under the skylight to autograph looks. we do still have a few of available if you're interested in purchasing a book and you didn't get a yellow post-it with a number please fill in the back. also at the q&a i just want to make sure we are all going to be on our best behavior. ms. goldstein is here to talk about her book. she is not a politician. and you will get to ask questions like i said. raise your hand at night will bring you the mic and please don't start talking until i have the mic in front of your face. as i said there are a limited number of books. they are $27 and they will be available to purchase after the

program. they are $27 and that can be cash or checks made out to book world. if we run out of books and not everyone gets one you can purchase the book from book world or the bookstore in madison. it's a mystery to me. okay, according the bio and the "washington post" web site she has been a staff writer at the "washington post" for more than a quarter century. social security, welfare housing and the social safety nets of the great recession. she also has been a white house correspondent and covered the

monica lewinsky scandal where they pass for supreme court nominations. goldstein is part of a team of "washington post" reporters awarded the 2002 pulitzer prize for national reporting in the newspaper's coverage of 9/11. and the governments response to the attack. she was also a 2009 pulitzer prize nominee finalist for national reporting for an investigative series she co-wrote with her colleague dana priest on the medical treatment of immigrants detained by the federal government. from the amazon summary of her book an american story -- "janesville" an american story is an intimate account of a closing of the general motors assembly plant in janesville and the larger story of the howling of the middle class.

ms. goldstein has spent years immersed in janesville including lots of time here where the nation's oldest operating general motors plant shut down in the midst of the great recession two days before christmas 2008. her book takes the reader deep into the lives of all the workers, educators, thinkers politicians and job trainers to show why it's so hard in the 21st century to re-create a healthy and prosperous working class. this is the story of what happened to an industrial town in the american heartland. it's not the familiar tale. most observers record the immediate shock but if you stay around long enough to notice what happens next. when a community with the can-do spirit tries to pick itself up. which i think janesville does.

please join me in giving me a while warm janesville welcome to amy goldstein. [applause] >> thank you for that lovely introduction and i'm blown away by how many of you are here. the first thing i want to say is that feels presumptuous to be in front of you talking about your own story which you have been generous enough to share with me. i really say thank you. this has been the biggest work of my career and thank you for helping me to do it. being here today is pretty emotional. i wanted to make clear that i wasn't going to start crying in front of the television camera because i arrived here as a complete stranger and 2011. the people in this room who have

welcomed me into your living room, welcomed me into your classroom in their offices and showed me the files at the hedberg public library. people who have really helped me understand the community and i am so grateful. i can't tell you how touched and humbled i am by the size of the crowd in the room. it means a lot to me. i'm also interested to hear your questions and to hear your take on what i have learned that what i've written because this is after all how i see the story and it may not be how you see the story. i thought i would read you a little bit from the first page of the book. it starts in the day that will be familiar to you. 7:07 a.m. the end of the assembly line. outside it is still dark

15 degrees with 33 in the snow at december record piled up and drifting as the wind reached across the acres of the parking lot. inside the janesville assembly plant the sun was blazing and the crowd is thick. workers are brought to walk out of the plant into uncertain futures stand alongside pension retirees who walk back in with incredulity and nostalgia. they followed the tacos of snakes down the line curing, hugging and weeping. the final is a beauty of black ltd loaded with heated seats nine speaker bose audio system and the sticker price of $57,745 if it were going to be for sale in this economy in which almost no one anymore wants to buy a fancy general motors suv.

five men including one stands in front of the shiny black suv holding a white banner. it's crammed with worker signatures to the last vehicle off of the janesville assembly line the banner says the date of december 23, 2008. it's destined for the county historical society. television crews from as far away as the netherlands and japan have come to this moment when the oldest plant of the largest automotive turn times less. two days before christmas is well recorded. this is the story of what happens next. i thought somebody might be might be interested in hearing about why a journalist who works and lives in washington d.c. would suddenly stop in janesville wisconsin and come back for years. there are a couple of reasons. if my career i've been drawn for

a long time to stories that lie at the intersection of politics and public policy and help explain how ordinary people are affected by both. this describes would have happened after the janesville plant closed in the same tradition. i just got a little carried away this time. more specifically is on the one the great recession arrived at the end of 2007 i was covering a very broad social policy beat for the "washington post" and i had just finished cowriting a series of stories about minors. the government had locked them away in immigration facilities while trying to support them and the bad medical care they were getting. it i've looked after the series is over and both what is interesting now when i became very interested in how the bad economic times were changing people's lives. i started to write a few stories

to the "washington post" about this. i'm going to get read you a couple of paragraphs from ones i wrote out of southwest florida have people who are signing up for welfare for the first time. here in florida is the new face of welfare the middle class and higher after losing job savings and health reliance. some are turning to welfare years after they thought they found permanent work and independence. the county that includes fort myers nearly 40% of the 812 people who apply for welfare in october had never before asked for help. i've got to do what i've got to do to get by tony robinett 33 and five months pregnant said as she sat in front of a black computer terminal in room 110 of fort myers regional center. she and her husband jason opened tiptop tile in cape coral florida 1996. in those years they earned about $50,000.

the business failed three years ago. the building boom collapse. ari wrote that story in december 2008. it turns out to be the same month your assembly plant closed but i did not know it at the time. if you remember back then all these job losses were not in janesville. they were were so many kinds of jobs going away all over the country so i got. focused on them. over the next couple of years i kept an eye on how other journalists were writing about this bad economic time. there are two main kinds of writing that were going on back then. they were stories that were about the economy and the governments response to bad economic times and whether the economic stimulus package that new president barack obama whether congress is doing good or not these were economic and political stories of the fighting going on in congress

over the administration's policies. then there were more political stories in the midterm elections for congress in 2010. i saw a lot of writers focused on the anxiety of voters they vote or anger and apathy. i started to think i didn't really see anyone putting those two things together. i have this idea that you couldn't really understand why americans were angry or were anxious and missy really understood their economic experiences or their fear that their neighbor lost a job and maybe they would be next. i found the study that the pew foundation did in 2009 that looked at 10,000 new stories about the great recession the first half of 2009. it found most of those stories were about the government bailout and banks and the auto industry and other 2000 -- 10,000 stories. how many were about average

americans, 5%. this tells me it's a huge and important gap. it seemed that we all knew the unemployment statistics but we didn't understand what it was like. i can only say i became obsessed with this idea trying to do something about this because i have this impression that something on the mantle was changing in this country about the work that they had always expected to be around. i became obsessed with the idea of finding one community that had lost a lot of its work to do a close-up of what happened to people, to workers and families in the community itself when all the work vanished. i had the idea that if i could focus on one community it could be a microcosm or a metaphor that could help people by looking at what was close-up and one thing to think about what was going on around them.

i became so obsessed about this that i did something i've never done in my long career which is iran to take a leave from my job to try to write the longest piece of work i had ever done in my life. if you think about it if you're going to write about one place that is a microcosm if better -- pretty well. how you might wonder did i end up in janesville where there were these other communities losing work to. i didn't have any family here. i had never been here and i didn't have many friends here but i heard about janesville which i've never heard heard about before in 2009 when i was looking for a setting for one of the stories i did about recession if facts are the "washington post" and somebody mentioned there was a place in wisconsin that was the dig general motors plant. i thought that was interesting but i didn't come here at the time because this had just happened and as you well know a lot of people that worked for general motors were still

getting some pace of the economic paper some people hadn't begun so i didn't come. change the lingered in my mind. as i was getting close to getting started after i did this scary thing of taking time off from my job i kept thinking about various places i could go. something inside me kept telling me that janesville might be the place. why was back? one reason was i needed to find a place that lost a lot of jobs then you definitely qualify. i don't have to tell you thousands of jobs lost around here. they're different figures that looking at the bureau of labor statistics figures in 2008 and 2009 about 9000 jobs left the county. a lot of jobs. if you look at what happened to the unemployment rate at that time in june 2008 when the announcement was made that

general motors would shut down production here the unemployment rate was 5.4%. in march of 2009 a few months after the last of these jobs disappeared unemployment shot up to over 13%. on the job loss side we were a winner, or a loser. beyond that i have the sense that wanted to tell the story of what this recession had done. it's important to me that i find a place that is not in part of the rust belt. i didn't want to find myself writing about an accumulation of economic decay. i wanted to show what a bad -- one bad economic time did. it was an old story i want to find a place where economic trouble was new and obviously the general motors assembly plant had in shrinking a little at and a little bit more and a little bit more over couple of decades.

this clothing with a different thing that nobody had ever experienced. that was very of feeling to me not that i was happy for you but appealing to me as a place to potentially do this writing and talking to people about what was happening in their community. i have the sense that no place is exactly like every place but this much is i thought it would be interesting to find a community to write about where the pattern of job losses match pretty well the national pattern of jobs that one away in the great recession. if you think about what happened nationally the largest portion of jobs disappeared when the manufacturing ended in janesville. a lot of jobs were lost for jobs that paid well but had not required a lot of higher education to get. more men and women lost jobs in the recession. that was from janesville.

i thought this was a community that had a number of the qualities in a lost job that other people in the country would understand. i also had the sense that james breaux might fit into this with the victory. i remember the first time i found a youtube video for a speech that then senator barack obama gave it the exemplary plant and there were 2008. i don't know if any of you remember him coming. i remember the first time i listened to the video saying the promise of janesville is the promise of america. that line gave me goosebumps because i heard that youtube video a couple of years after the assembly plant closed so there was an irony to what the presidential candidate who became president as saying. the sitdown strike of the 1930s in the assembly plant in part of the domestic war effort in world war ii and flint

stopped making bagels and started turning out artillery shells. it had its own big homes and 20 century history so i just like liked that piece of history. of course before i knew anything about this community are met anybody here i had the sense that i might find interesting politics. i thought there might be something interesting about an old uaw towns representative by scott walker and the state governed by congressman paul ryan in a statement by scott walker. it was a -- as a journalist to try to bring my reporting instinct to bear to think about what might be a good setting and i decided i was going to make a visit to janesville. i first came here in july of 2011. i arranged to meet people people and they're they were couple of people in the room per were part

of that that i met in the first couple of days i was here. the first person i met in town was dan who was obviously an old time reporter who by then had left the newspaper and was on the different radio show than the one that is on now and working as an education consultant. they had now been renovated into offices. we talked and talked for a couple of hours, talked about the history of the community and talked about what it was like when he was here growing up and talk about what the assembly plant meant a talked about what's happening now and talked for two or three hours nonstop. finally he said to me would you like to see the plants? i said of course i would. i got in the car with this man i had never known and we turned

left on the elephant and there was the plant. obviously was huge and i had never seen it before. it was 1.8 million square feet closed auto plant. as we were approaching stands at something that surprised me. he said i hate to go by this. i said why? stand up you know him is a tough veteran reporter. he was not somebody who struck me as someone who would be reticent to see something in town. his father had worked at the plant and as a boy he remembered how proud his father was and his general motors wages had let him by his first chevy. this man that i had just met that day said to me the i thought there's something about the community between the

relationship between this close plant in people's sense of work and what life ought to be like and wasn't anymore so i kept going back. for a lot of years. i have met and spoken with many people in town many more people that can fit into a book that has a lot of people in it. that is where my gratitude comes in. i learned from all of you who i met with over the last six years and what i've tried to do is get to know people in town. obviously i don't know if you but trying to get to know people who have vantage point to this 20 people who were at the assembly plant people who were at the suppliers, people who were teachers who tried to figure out how to help kids. the families they could tell were hurting. people who did economic development work that i wanted to understand how this looks

from lots of people's perspective. i was really slow to figure out who would be the main people in my book because i thought i couldn't -- some of you talk about characters and some of you are real people. i felt they couldn't pick who was going to be the main character in the story wanted to tell until i understood what were the choices that different people made and what were the range of choices so i could figure out who might do good examples of each of those kinds of choices. i arrived in 2011 which was two and half years after the assembly plant had shut down and i knew from the beginning i would need to go back in time so i could tell the story from the moment they announced it happened that the town was going to be change. i knew i would have to find people to talk you could go back a couple of beers with me and

explain what life had been like before it showed up on the scene. i also have the sense that i needed to understand the history in this community. i spent a lot of time reading "janesville" and spent time at the historical society because i wanted to understand what the industrial path of janesville had been. i wanted to understand where the pride and the work that was done here came from. i wanted to understand that the identity and expectations of janesville were so i could understand what it felt like when things were changing. i did a lot of historical work. one of the things that struck me when i started showing up and talking to more people that when this plant closed there is a lot of disbelief and denial that it was for real. i showed up two and a half years after it stopped and i ran into

a lot of people who said just wake him is just a matter of time until comes back he does that sound familiar to you? why was that? this assembly plant started making tractors in 1919 and started making chevrolets on valentine's day of 1923. every time a product went away another product eventually showed up. there was no expectation no experience with it not happening again. what i began to see was that people may choices or as they sometimes came to think about a lot of choices that people make when jobs are gone. people began to make choices that a lot of cases i found it took people a while to settle in to what they were going to do. when i finally chose people who would get the heart of the story at or people who made different choices. it could have been many of the

from the community but i have had to pick some people. i want to tell you about some of the people who i chose for the book and some of them are in the room which is really great to see you. one of the families they are an old family in town as you might know. they are one of a couple families in town with three generations of people on the executive committee of the uaw local 95. i got to know dave on, i got to know mike and barb. barb lost her job before dave did and she went to black hawk as a lot of people did. mike tried to find a kenyan job

and it wasn't easy to find one. he decided to go into human resources management. he got a job and make a good go of it at the hat to decide going into management was an okay transmission to make -- transition to make. he helped people from the union side and helped people on the management side. that was a thoughtful transition that was made in town. some of you might know marv will pact who was the employer assistance rep for a quarter-century at the plant. his son matt was at the plant. it worked for general motors for 13 years. his dad retired a few weeks before matt got laid off. i talked to him about what it was like to have this big retirement party knowing they were about to lose work. matt went back to school.

he is doing very well. he thought he would try to go into utility work. he was studying electric power distribution and just before he was to finish up he began to think hard about whether a job would be waiting at the other end and a lot of people like all the families i written about are very financially responsible people. as you all know people who worked at general motors had an advantage that people who were suppliers didn't have. matt became one of the so-called gm gypsies. he took an offer of ft. wayne. he has been commuting there for seven years. to this day he works second shift so he can more or less wake up and janesville three

mornings out of the week. then i wrote about the whitakers jared whitaker got work. tammy would occur here in the front row got work. he started working two jobs. jared did not want to leave his family and the family didn't want to leave janesville. there were a lot of relatives in the area who wanted to move to another part of the country. jared's family decided the best thing to do would be to take a buyout. it wasn't a good eye out for dicamba six months of health insurance and i was important and jared were in -- was working a job that didn't have health insurance at the time. i fell in love with their daughters. i met them when they were high school seniors and they told me

what life was like a few years before that. they were hard-working kids and honor students took ap classes. between them they were working five part-time jobs. other kids in town did the same thing. the whitaker girls were the ones i got to know the best. they had a sense of responsibility. they could see parents were struggling. they were bringing in enough money so the girls began paying utility bills and the grocery shopping every now then. they both went to plaxo. one graduated are ready and she graduated in three years to save tuition money. she is getting her masters now and melissa is going to be an engineer. they're doing great but i'm struck at what it does to a family all of the members trying

as hard as they can to make a go of it really changes life. those are the close-ups that i've taken the story of families they are the main families. i would want this not just to be a story about the workers but i wanted to be about what happens to community and what other people in town to when they see there is more need then had happened in this community before. another person i wrote about was derek eastman who is here. he's the founder of the -- closet. a lot of the schools have closets which are places where kids who need a little bit of help can quietly and privately without a lot of attention get used jeans and prom dresses that people donate, to get food toiletries and school supplies.

i thought that was a really interesting example over source fullness within the school. i also write about mary. her last name is changed and she got married. she cofounded rock county 5.0. i was interested in the local economic development and rock county 5.0 has been going for five years. still going. obviously trying very hard to bring business to town. rob borman who is here today with someone who i got to know well. both was at the job center which was ground zero for where people would have been a loss for the both taught me a lot about what kind of options are available and what kind of funding there

was how people tried to help people find jobs. bob's perspective was invaluable one and seeing who comes in when people don't have work anymore and what their options are and how to get yourself back on your feet when you are trying hard. i also write about a woman who is a social worker. she worked in janesville and she was the co-founder of a thing called project 1649 that most of you probably know about which is an effort that's gone on for years to try to raise money for house unaccompanied homeless kids because there were more homeless teens in the school system. i was moved by" telling me how when she and a counterpart from the bullet school system talk to people about the fact that there were homeless teenagers in janesville. people didn't believe it.

this is not a place where people have homelessness. she has done a lot of good work to help people understand what needs some kids have. there are politicians in the book. tim collins just arrived. nice to see you tim. tim was the head of the task force that then governor doyle appointed. i was very interested in what that ever was and what it takes first aid in the community and the county to pull together in a bad economic time to try to persuade general motors that this was the plant, janesville is a place that general motors should choose when it was going to manufacture the first compact car that gm had made domestically in a long time. think it's fair to say everybody

from the governor on down five janesville had a good chance but it didn't work out. tim taught me about what that ever was like another things about changing account. i got to know people at blackhawk tech. sharon kennedy came back today. i'm really honored that sharon is back to talk about the story that she helped to teach me. very interested in job retraining and with college was doing and how well it was going. those are some people in the story and there are people who i don't know but i wanted to have close-ups to show what it was like for individuals who do the best they can to bring back the economy for a town who lost the heart of its work. getting into these close-ups i want to find a way to show these individual stories i'm telling

were part of the broader truth. a them kind of a nerdy journalists as journalists go. i did a couple of statistical things with help from academics predicted two studies. one was a study of jobs training looking at people who are getting unemployment and a fifth in the area in 2008, 2009 in 2010, what happened to people that gone back to school and what happened to people who didn't. we got data from the states workforce development board. we got data from the college. we found really interesting and sobering patterns. turned out it looked at how many people were working, what their pay was back in 2007 before the

recession and then you look at how things were in 2011 which is when a few years after this work went away people i've gone back to school were not doing as well. i'm not saying nobody was doing as well. mike did great. mike's wife a great so it's not that nobody did well but off balance people just didn't get good jobs and get paid just because they were back in school. that caused me to think a lot and ruminations in the story about why that was and what that says about what kind of jobs you need the community to have free training turn out to be beneficial for broad numbers of people. i became convinced that blackhawk was doing a great job. it had a couple thousand factory workers come back. huge numbers of people were back in school and if you think about it you have worked in a factory

for a long time and you are in your 30s and 40s and haven't been in school for a long time, if you don't have any money anymore, you don't know what is next and you have to start studying? that is a scary thing for a lot of people to do. black hawk i came to think of tried ingenious ways to help the students starting a camp. it became for the people that know how to do computers well. despite all that effort not everybody who went back to school benefited at least not right away. the other nerdy thing i did was to survey predicted this with the university of wisconsin survey center a survey of rock county. i don't know whether you got the questionnaires that we sent out questionnaires about 2000 people more than half the people who got the surveys mailed them back but the survey was looking at

was what were people's economic experiences and attitudes. it was five years depending on when the last system closed down one of the questions was asking people do you think the recession is over? it was five years later. three-quarters said they did not think the recession was over. we asked about peoples personal financial situations. these are not people who lost work. these were people in rock county. their financial system, with the better or worse than five years ago in the session -- recession began. over half said it was worse and just 18% said the financial situation had gotten better.

i was interested in how many households were affected direct week by a loss of jobs. turned out that 35% of people who answered the survey said they or someone in their home had lost their job. think about how many families for affected by the job loss, it was huge. then i developed -- just the people who had lost a job or somebody in their home loss to job and the question was having noticed any of this happening to you? a whole bunch of choices. 75% of people who had lost a job said they were losing sleep. we asked are you having strained family relations? 62% said yes. do you find yourself avoiding social situations?

almost half said yes. the question that i find most heartbreaking was do you find yourself embarrassed or should ashamed about being out of work wrecks just over half said yes. what that said to me combined with all the people that came here today and the people that i got to know in town even when you lose a job when thousands of people are losing jobs, losing work is personal. it's a hard thing. to figure out what to do the hard thing you wonder. even though people can say this was a bad economic time in the corporate decision losing work is a personal thing. i thought i was going to end by

reading a little bit more. this is a chapter towards the end of the story called might drive its by matt will pack two is still commuting to fort wayne indiana. it's about his ride back home. come on get the hell out of here a guy shouted as he burst out the door and walked across the terra-cotta lobby. barely slowing to swipe his i.d. card in the punch clock. friday night at the fort wayne assembly plant the end of the workweek, the end of second shift a nine hour shift with a lucky winner over time so was 11:45 p.m. and this guy was shouting one guy among the 1100 jammers pulling out the factory door to start the weekend. matt will pack reaches lobby at 11:27 p.m. a backpack slung over

one shoulder. he too was walking very fast. friday night ritual. he reaches the chilly night air and a co-worker wishes in a safe drive tonight. they stopped that is 97 saturn but it parks in the same place so you won't have to think about where he left the car when he returns on monday. he pulls himself up from the trump and continue walking fast over to a nearby 200328 -- pontiac grand prix. in the drivers seat is chris aldrich. in the backseat scrunch between him and the poor janesville gypsies both. he tosses his duff one side and slams the trump shut before it gets in on the passenger side. matadors barely close when chris

guns the engine and worse off. turned them off to go. four hours and 35 minutes speeding just a little but. sure they won't get caught. when chris guns the engine at 1154 payment for wayne is not the own essays and janesville time. the clock on the grand prix says 10:54. chris started working in fort wayne on august 17, 2009, 7 months before a map. chris will never forget that day wiping kids want to help them move. he stays in fort wayne. his family left on monday morning when he went to the plant for orientation which was during for shift. he would be back in his apartment by 3:30 this afternoon and he that at the cheap dinette

said that he had just gotten staring at the wall alone has wiping kids back and janesville. one of the worst dealings of life. that was three and half years ago for the grand prix has 47,000 miles on it and now it has 134,000407. on this night there not 10 minutes from the plant about to turn onto route 14 and matt says in a quiet way it's my -- anniversary. chris says we are going to celebrate. matt text it to for going to work. happy anniversary and the reply came back it's been three years? it seems a lot longer. should i keep going a little bit more? three years with vacations factored in as a lot of fridays. this week it snowed 10 inches in fort wayne but the day was

sunny. tonight it is clear so the stars are bright on the drive to the indiana farmland so much lighter than wisconsin. think we will get a double raccoon tonight chris asks? on the stretch of 114 when raccoon ran into the road from the left another from bright. the grand pre-struck them both one with a front tire and one with the rear. you don't get that every week but alongside the roads clear for decorating pitts is lit up by christmas. now west on two u.s. 304 lanes divided which chris paul and matt agreed was a better way to go than the indiana toll road farther north than somebody other janesville other janesville gypsies take on big u.s. 30.

the passengers cleaning their -- craning their neck to get a quick look at the screen. at one time they drove through a giant thunderstorm with lightning bolts along the flat land of longview they could see it shooting straight in the field. no matter the season there's always a bible church with its larger-than-life david and goliath diorama that you can see if you drive by. mats phone rings. it's his youngest calling pastor bedtime. in indiana he said about three hours probably. okay sweetie apple let you go. i love you too. now they are where the stop is always at the truckstop called the pilot travel centers bury some of the janesville gypsies wait until the next could stop the lassonga for the on our line but chris, pollen map like this one for its good snacks and multiple backups. they're back in the car. teriyaki beef jerky for chris

regular jerky for paul and popcorn for a map along with a bag of chewy sour patch kids that he is saving for brianne burke. in this north on the highway 49 in west on the toll road. you are going under the speed limit. you want the tire to wobble off? you know how to change a tire paul says. matt jumps in, you are doing a good job chris. thanks chris says, you're very supportive. now they are past gary and what remains of his still nails on the right. still -- steel mills on the right. now it's population of 78,000 less than half of what it was in its heyday of 1960 nearly west than 2034 and 10 people last.

gary is a perfect specimen of what the rust belt looks like and what janesville is striving not to become. chris drives on. it's almost 1:30 janesville time when it enters alumni. the skyway and the expressway which gets clogged with 14 wins. the dan ryan is easy to cruise along because of the extra overtime later than usual and most of the city is called sandburg. the downtown skyline comes into view. just are that chicago a red car passes with four guys inside. tom is driving chris notes. it looks like all larry and back. more janesville gypsies. matt duss is off joining paul in his slumber. you're supposed to be doing color commentary she says when he wakes up.

it's a good thing matters awake when a little after 2:00 a.m. a tax arrived on the sun. another car filled with janesville gypsies i had. mile marker 28 chrysalis. nine minutes later matt spots a cop. no tickets, can't afford to. he told the officer the church of the works in fort wayne during the week and was driving home. he's excited to get there and see his family. the cop said he and her stance and let matthau. they pass the belvedere chrysler plant the one i wasn't hiring when the assembly plant shut down. when they get to rockford chris says we will be in the driveway in 20 minutes. we are nearly home that says. at this hour to 41:00 a.m. janesville time chris gets

philosophical about his workweek in fort wayne. funny how you count time he says. count how many christmases i have had to spend there, three more christmases. he's coming up on 27 years since he became at gm or in 1986. part of a big hiring wave after janesville survived one of its near-death experiences. when the last day came december 23, 2008 chris was down the plant shooting a video with a digital camera. his anniversary date means chris has three years in seven months until he can retire. matt has 12 years in seven months. when i retire chrisos i don't want to leave you guys thereby want everyone home. maybe that will be my business after i retire. i will be a shuttle guy and i will bring you home. paul wakes up the grand prix of polls off at exit 177. cool your jets christmas to paul i will have a home in a heartbeat. it's just after 3:00 a.m.

janesville time. chris paul santa paula's driveway. after dropping him off chris drives up center avenue crossing the rock river near where the assembly plant stands vacant and then up to matt's house on the north edge of town that he manages to to keep the disease of gypsy. it's a straight shot through town but sometimes they go through town different ways just because it's nice to be home nice to see janesville streets. at 3:20 a.m. chris pulls up the driveway with his dark red front door. dorothy has left the light on in the laundry room. just inside the garage door she and the girls once cried asmat was leaving for fort wayne for the first time. matt hans chris what point l. or bill for gas and oil changes when the grand prix needs them.

what time are you going to be here in the morning? probably a 10:00 on 8:15 the usual. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you amy. that was wonderful and thank all of you for being here. we are going to do q&a now. again she is not a politician. >> thanks for saying that. >> this isn't a forum for opinion. we are going to do questions and answers and the question should be relevant to amy's book because she can't answer other questions. what i will have you do is i'll have you raise your hand. if you have a question i will

bring the microphone to you and again let's be nice. >> thank you. >> i would be fascinated to know how you found the people coming here not knowing anyone. how did you find a families to interview? >> people introduce me to people on the first trip to town and 2011 in addition to spam i met with a woman. i met with dave and mike who are running fake uaw local and said who else can i get do you know? a few more people and a few more people so went like that. i didn't ask people personal questions when i first met them. i waited for a bit to start

that. [laughter] >> in terms of timeline when teaching finish researching and writing your book? >> i was slow to start writing. i researched for three years and during that time i was doing writing because i had to put a book proposal together. i had to by then know at least two many of the main people in book were going to be because i had to sketch out how the book was going to be organized. once i got a contract which was a big deal because i had been flying without a net for a really long time without it. i then was fortunate that the "washington post" gave me another book. when i told you i'd get this thing that i had never done

before i was on the two-year book working full-time for two years. during some of that time i was based in madison. i had an appointment at the university so for several months i was near here and spending a lot of time in town. in 2012 i was here for the 2012 election and here for all kinds of stuff. once i finally had a book contract the post let me take more time off so i work full-time on writing the first draft and that took me nine or 10 months and i spent a lot of time revising. when did i finish? if you think about what i did the last writing, i wrote the epilogue in december.

>> if you don't think that going back to school health, what does? >> that's the question, isn't it? that is the question. i don't think, i'm going to slightly dodge that question because i don't fully have an answer for you. i don't think that retraining is necessarily a bad idea. i just think it's hard to do that in a place where there still aren't a lot of jobs. >> have you ever interviewed anyone in detroit to find out whether or not they have any idea, empathy or sympathy for what they create when they close a plant? >> that's a good question. i tried very hard to interview rick wagner who was the head of

general motors and was himself out of work. within a matter of months after the assembly plant closed. i never did reach him. i talked to some people at general motors and talk to some more locally but where is the personal director in spite of the plant was working in madison for a while. ..

.> >> mostly working on the night shift. what happened to the community after it closed?. >> that's a good question. i know that people from deloitte were working at the plant wasn't just janesville but i did not specifically look of their word differential effects if that is to iraq skiing for those who worked the makeshift living in deloitte one thing i found very interesting is they have always had very separate identities and rivalries i found

interesting that janesville for a long time with him in the was doing better than double eight sarah that point that economic development coalition was formed to market though whole county the little different question than what you're asking. >> data know if you are oh where but it seems to me the person on your cover is this percent right here. >> nice to meet you. i know who you are. [laughter] i just want to say there read rowhouse witches recovery. >> it is very good to me mcpherson said in a pelican all the different versions of the images of you holding

that flight on december december 23rd that morning air looked up who was going to be on the cover of the book. >> what you think your readers can learn about genes will -- janesville themselves?. >> it is good to see you. >> not trying to write a political polemic but help people understand what it feels like to maybe stoke some empathy for that. people can make their own decisions about the policies but i thought there was so much talk about employment but not about the experience of losing worker wanted to do the best i could lead it

does to you. when it goes away. >> did you interview anybody in the town that was not the autoworker and their attitude towards the autoworker?. >> their longstanding views if it was fair that they had better salaries and benefits so i tried to understand those feelings and resentments other people say gm was paid well but there were also philanthropic. but i also thought it was important to get to know people that worked at the elderly is the industry in this community and both went

away during those five years and wanted to make sure wasn't focusing just on autoworkers. >> the lady said to me they make too much money and they are not worth it. >> i am aware that. >> [laughter] >> did you do any research into what happened there? we had a lot of people that died on the line because a lack of people not knowing what to do the union or were

the company coated people or gm people were crippled for life the severance pay out of thousands of dollars of severance pay. >> with affordable housing we all took the hit on that. >> i thought it was is important to show was in jest general motors federal whole cascade so when the assembly pearland boston chef to sell a hundred

people working with you for with the assembly line does to your body so i did not look specifically so i know there is a lot of other works and also disappeared and the claims against these companies that is something better is important that i did not include so let's just say that i tell the story chronologically very

short chapters each from a different point of view. and one of the chapters is focused on the last day and talk all the suppliers going down at the same time because it is important to talk about bill whole universe of work not just general motors. >> attitude questions how many people worked at the gm plant? raise your hand and

is any tour available i have never been through the plant >> get the assembly plant?. >> so they might know better but it is absolutely closed. it is private property the gates are locked. >> i notice we get down to new deloitte there was a plant just east of rockford how that could have been affected by this as well because so rockford had

industrial losses and they were earlier the and here -- they in here but this was of public employs in the region so i don't know how many people were coming up but this was also a huge job losses at the time but will the economy was bad there were lots of jobs going away in town, businesses or restaurants closed because it didn't have the income they had. it wasn't just janesville or the autoworkers. >>.

>> i already read the book but the parts that you left out there were to plant closings you talk about the suburban the you don't make any mention about the isuzu which that was a unique story in itself with the relationship between union and management because that led say the arrangement with general motors with the people from japan. so you are right it was too were three months because i was there until the very end >> that's right. i had to think about how to handle that because there was a very small contingent of people working on that other contract. this book i am a journalist not a fiction writer i tried to make it as true as i

could. i am very honored that everybody in the story let me use their names. some books don't do that there is nothing they did not report that i don't know to be true but with the second closing i decided it would be confusing to say there is a remnant of work that went on but they do know that that happened. >> i was lucky enough to be the seventh of the ip w. burris says the at uaw but many family lost their jobs and made the commute to kansas. were you able to find anything that would be done with the plant and how that will hinder the community's

development efforts because that is a prime chunk of real estate and over the years i assumed before the epa there is not much done to keep the soil clinging or any of the water clean so what can be done with the plant? is a blight. >> a very important question. thank you for sharing your experience not everybody went. in terms of the plant as many had you know, when the plant closed for a long time it was not officially closed the plant on the limbo status called standby in for several years it was the only plant within general motors on standby. their word to the bin spring hill reopened for awhile but this data on standby.

so there is a real difference of opinion depending where you were if that was a good or bad. some people left the plant that union identified thought if the economy gets good enough then it could come back some of the business leadership said this is gone. it is time to move on. so i portrayed this that the people's sense of what the future should be. and last i knew the city of janesville is negotiating with a couple of companies that are not interested in using the property but to buy the property to figure out how to clean it up into

else might want to use that so it is an open question the last guy knew what will happen with the huge tract of land. >> did you interview anybody that went to the drug and coca-cola abuse plant?. >> yes so through one of the subjects i got to know people in that universe but probably what i was interested in was it people don't have that many bin -- so i talk to people older

victims of domestic violence over mental-health director. the county coroner. so it tried to understand different people react to a different trauma they have a different resilience different people find their way forward to live wanted to understand what was happening if the people are having a hard time. none of the more prominent but i talked to many more people in town better part of the story one of the people you were thinking about is who i got to know. >> i will talk guess i think

so bear with me. your story has great significance to this community. and i am really pleased you put so much thought and research into the work but you do and washington post was a supportive of your efforts so i am curious as to go out to tell our story throughout the united states to people here it? it is easy on the easter west coast if you don't see what happens in the midwest do they hear more of that they and what we get the 30 seconds on television or the to call 1 inch buried on page 10?. >> love that question that

is why i spend so much years of my work life to write that story and hope people would hear that but this is a brand new thing i can hold this that is what i love it. for so many years it was a thing in my head and on the computer. [laughter] and k. immelt a week ago tuesday. it is brand new and i am doing a lot of radio interviews winless american in the first 100 days of the trunk administration i was blown away because the post was terrific in kept saying called in with your experience when work goes away your natural resources go away what was your experience? a gentleman called in from florida to talk about how his town lost

an industry that used to be there and somebody called from maine talking the shoe industry went away and another talked-about coal country so they talked about steel so it felt like a radio ballet of people talking about different parts of the country through parallel the experience is. the subtitle of the book is called an american story this is a metaphor if i could tell the story through the people may be evicted help people understand what was going on around them.

>> with bob the dissolution of marriages because the gypsy people developing another life that didn't come home we know several people lost their marriages to that but then i'm glad to show people where janesville wisconsin is in dyewoods the wisconsin and then they finally figured out they would say how close is your nearest neighbor? [laughter] i would say no. the chicago they would say al capone. [laughter]

lavern in shirley. so you put this on the map. thank you. >> maybe that many of them on the map before i came along. [laughter] >> i did just want to personally say thank-you to all the people in amy's book that are or were here some have left banks for during those interviews because of them you could write the story. >> yes people are reading my daughter is one of the twins and people are fighting her finding her it is getting

out there and they're very open about it. >> or you planning a sequel? [laughter] >> the answer is time will tell. [applause] >> it was a pleasure to half of you here there is a method if you need to buy a book make sure you have your

yellow number if you already have a book you want her to autograph there is a line for you as well. we will be out there in just a moment. [inaudible conversations]

. >> this morning i will introduce you to move tim powers who operates bridges federal live in tennessee but she is not from tennessee she is from oklahoma she started her first business there but she

had to leave oklahoma when she ran afoul of the of what it turns out she was engaged in a very dangerous practice of selling casket's without a funeral director's license. before that in the early '80s she was on the executive fast-track growth in the family of hard-working entrepreneurs learning early between hardware can success and now enjoyed a lot of success eventually she ended up at one of the nation's largest funeral companies where she sold funeral services she saw this as a way to combine her drive-in business but help people through work she was very successful in the business after a few years she noticed there was a niche of classic

entrepreneur and in the funeral industry the merchandise was marked up a significant amount like caskets between 250 and 600% so how could i put together a business model to enable me to sell the same merchandise but a much lower cost? so she left the funeral business turned up with another person they spent one year forming their concept online the business plan was to sell everything. all merchandise over the internet to take advantage of drop shifting -- shipping for manufacturers to keep in inventory to keep the costs low and there would pass on the savings to the consumers

and they thought they had a winning business plan and they did but they have a problem oklahoma state law says if you want to sell a casket to consumers you must we licensed as a funeral director and she was not. she could earn a license to require school of two years, complete and internships to embalm 25 bodies in a brick and mortar business a selection room and a preparation room a viewing room and inventory on hand in and of which they're interested in. and then as if that is not easy rational enough a casket is an empty box they

also created a circumstance where an oklahoma based company had to be licensed funeral director to sell an oklahoma the company's outside of the state selling to consumers in oklahoma did not have to have a license. she could taken her business across state lines to kansas and sold caskets to consumers in oklahoma all day long but she did not want to do that per-share wanted to raise her family in her hometown. she thought the law but is wrong and injuries because it enabled a funeral directors to mark up their products to take advantage of people so she stayed and she fought. she was not feel that what he thought this was wrong so

beginning of 1999 they introduced a series of bills every year to remove the licensing requirements for caskets she testified on behalf of these bills and every year they lost for one reason alone that the licensed funeral directors because they would lobby aggressively and every year they succeeded but today in oklahoma if you want to sell a casket as an oklahoma based company you must have a funeral tractors license. they ran into the bottle neck that advocates for the creation perpetuation of a government regulation particularly a license that

restricts the free flow of workers into an occupation to enjoy that benefit as a result.

. . wrawhe david barron, author of "waging war." first up, you'll hear from jennifer keene on life for soldiers during world war i and then michael -- >> all right, folks, let's get going this morning. >> the description of a logistical strategies of each