privilege. dop do it without regrets. that's the advice i give. >> my final question before i let you loose to go vote. we're at the idea summit, so who are your current load stars in the conservative movement. i said current. >> sounds like i changed them. >> i like the austrians. >> already violated the rule. >> i'd have to give some more thought to that. thst a good question. i'm so focused on classics.

i try to go back and get these things to keep your mind fresh on this and look at how you apply these principles today. there's so many people i hate to give you a list and exclude people. national affairs as an article. national review. the think tanks. cei. i read all that stuff. i like going back to the core and reapplying it to the times. >> thank you so much for taking the time. really appreciate it. >> you bet. [ applause ]

>> just wanted to invite everybody to cocktails. >> that are upstairs. >> miller products are being served. >> please cocktails upstairs and bring all of your stuff with you because this room will be entirely made over for dinner. we look forward to dinner. please join us for that. thanks so much. >> my pleasure. ladies and gentlemen, if everyone could stop socializing

and take a seat. we're about to get started. welcome to the 2015 ideas summit. despite the fact he could speak, looked away from the tv smiled and said i told you so. it's the contention and perhaps the presumption of this conference that we all will be able to look back decades from now and say the same thing. i'll be honest, it's been a tough time for these national

review institute idea summits. memory serves the themes of the last three national review institute summits have been what went wrong, not again and god help us. this one is different. before i do anything else i want to thank the national review institute and especially lindsay craig and her wonderful staff to make this possible. thanks guys. [ applause ] so why are we in a different cast of mind? just on a personal note, i don't like to brag about my personal financial circumstances but i was an early investor in uranium 1. yes, my wife was a little nervous when i decided to make frank justra our personal financial advisor but you can't argue with results. for those of you that like to plan ahead that the next

national review river cruise will be on the eartash very scenic and most beautiful waterway in all of eastern kaszyctan. if someone told me ten years ago that commentators for msnbc didn't have to pay taxes, i never would have signed up for fox. let me share with you by way of opening this event three broad reasons we have to be optimistic as conservatives. one is just the pendulum swings in american politics are always based on which side has blown it most recently. you never get reagan without carter. you never get speaker gingrich without the tragic comedy without the first to years of

the clinton administration. with president obama we're looking at a failed presidency on his own terms. he wanted to restore faith in government and despite all the hectoring on this score, despite all the activism only 23% of people according to a recent pew survey trust government to do the right thing at least most of the time. why not? the stimulus made a mockery of shovel ready jobs and green jobs. weave seen an anemic recovery badly trailing the reagan standard. we have a health care program that hasn't reduced the cost of health insurance. involves massive new spending in taxes in parts of which aren't legal. we seen a disasterous meltdown in our global position. the nation that will almost certainly have gained the most

wi by the obama administration is the anti-theorcracy in iran. when ever this comes to the nation's attention at a time of great crisis we are told in a scolding tone that it's the fault of all the rest of us. on top of all this, joe biden is vice president of the united states. literally. this is a poor record and a significant opening for the right which brings me to my second point. although it's less true than it once was. our ideas are still more with the grain of the american idea and the american character than

theirs are. someone please get the word to donald trump right away. the leading idea was that the state was the vehicle of history with a capital h. the particular interest of civil society and represented rationalalty and progress represented gods marched through the world. obama, if the people can tot trust people to do their job all else is loss.

it's in think with the anglo american tradition of liberty that is still written into the american dna and represents a system uniquely suited to human flourishing. it's a tradition that features an inherent distrust of government and inherenc to the rule of law. finally it is concrete expression in the political economy what was once called

free labor ideology which rests on profound belief in the dignity of all labor and the right to the proceeds of our own labor. that brings me to my third point. that the right is more vibrant than the left at the moment. to which i would answer the venture yeah, probably yes. these are questions we'll take up in more detail at the next national review institute summit which will be held at oberlin. the fact of the matter is that the right has the new ideas.

the presumptive idea is a 67-year-old grandmother who has been at the top of american life for 25 years who's chief challenger is a 70-year-old socialist and the two of them are set to have a fast netting debate over whether their party's animating ideas should have their pedigree in 1965, 1933 or 1789. at the moment, among president obama's hot new ideas are infrastructure spending the minimum wage, job training and head start. all of which were probably among the leading agenda items of any democrat over the last 40 years. these are ideas that have the freshness of the hoola hoop and wage and price controls. at the moment the political and ideology is to muster the

deskend ent of exhaustion. the pea party has been the concrete vehicle for the reaffirmation and we have begun to see real effort to fill in the details of those principles with concrete policy whether it's the entitlement reforms of paul ryan or the health care proposal of richard burr and orin hatch. much of this flies under the banner of so-called reform conservative which should probably be be understood as either a misnomer or a re redundancy

redundancy. as senator mike lee has said it's not enough to have a leader for the ages, which we all hope and wish for without an agenda for the times. we're see that agenda sketched out and we'll hear more about it the next couple of days. for all the confidence of the theme of this conference of course, nothing is inevitable. the lower and the middle of the

income distribution. for a new conservative program to be enacted it will take argument, effort and yes, some lucky bounces. one of bill buckley's favorite themes was gratitude. we should always be part and parcel of the conservative impulse because we are heirs to a civilization that's given us liberty and dignity unimaginable throughout most of human history. none of us have done anything to establish it. we weren't at gettysburg. all that's asked of us is to have a proper attitude of thankfulness for all of this which i think requires concrete expression in a fighting gratitude aimed at defending and revitalizing the system and the

ideas that have been bequeath to us. whether or not we'll be able to say i told you so, i don't know. we will be able to take satisfaction in engaging in this most noble struggle. to say to anyone who sat it out something in the spirit of the french king henry iv rm4iv who wrote to a lieutenant who said we fought and you were not there. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> have you all turned on your

mikes? you have. i work with rich at national review. i am extremely excited to bring you this group. we have ramesh ponnuru. i must have been a year or two younger but i remember him from my youth and i'm pretty sure he wooed me to political right. it's a real honor to get to work with him now. mona charen is a columnist for nr. and opposite of sensitive and thoughtful. i'm kidding is kevin williamson. kevin is someone who is just incredibly compelling story

teller who can think in terms of abstractions but he really gets in the nitty-gritty of what's happening in american life today. you should all feel lucky to be here with these guys. charlie cook is staff writer at national review and he frightens me a bit. he's a foreigner. now a naturalized american but he's dangerous radical who wants to teach americans lost lessons about freedom and i find it kind of alarming some of the time. we're going to get into that now. it's a corridor of knowledge creation and wealth creation. weirdly in baltimore it's a pretty grim place. of course, baltimore has been in the middle of this amazing series of urban unrest.

you've all had things to say and i want to start with you kevin. baltimore's failing because the federal government hasn't stepped up and hasn't done enough. you're from texas and have done a lot of traveling. it seems there are other parts of the country, other cities that are not doing quite as badly as baltimore. >> i think baltimore is almost 900,000 or a little more. it's just under a million people. i wrote this the other day that i think things will probably radically change in urban politics the day in america the day someone walking around baltimore stops and say why doesn't that crap happen in provo. it's a very different sort of place.

houston has really thriving middle class. people don't talk about that much. everyone thinks it's an oil city. the at least unequal place this america is utah. not to go off on this for too long but you've got a real test case here. you've got more than one test case. if these left wing progressive government led, economic planning ways of running the world worked then you wouldn't see serial failures in places that have been controlled by

progressives since the 1940s and earlier. baltimore, cleveland chicago, detroit. in some places this is really striking. i was writing this for a while with the ongoing scandal in public schools in atlanta. how messed up is your view of government have to be when you have your public schools organized as a criminal conspiracy against your children? that sort of thing doesn't happen by accident. this isn't something where someone made a bad decision. then it turns out it's not just a few bad apple situation. we learned earlier in the week there's a similar cheating scandal involving the atlanta police department.

good thing we haven't seen any progress with police misbehaving lately. >> you need the federal government to step in yet part of what i'm hearing is there are some places that work. is your sense that the places that don't work are, if only very slowly and of time learning from the places that do? are citizens responsive in that way? >> i think so. new york didn't become a conserveative place by any stretch of the imagination. there's a reason why that canada and the northern european countries are not where nobody

wants to live there. you've seen some reform in places. philadelphia was a good example of that. they did some smart economic things to encourage some investment redevelopments that made a huge difference. you'll probably see places like that in los angeles. that really polarized racial politics prevents any sort of real democratic -- >> you do see some source of optimism. mona, one thing that was striking about the president's remarks is sure he said tahat

federal investment will be the cure. he did talk about the importance of fatherhood. there are a lot of things to be depressed about when looking at changing family structure yet is it fair to say we're seeing a growing consensus around the importance of two-parent families? >> tuesday was a great day for me because it was the first time in seven years that i felt i had the opportunity to praise barack obama. i jumped on it. i was on twitter. i said a couple of things about some aspects of his remarks in the rose garden were helpful. he said a person who takes a crowbar and goes after store and steals things are not a protester. you're a thief. he said when you set a fire you're an arsonist. you're not a protester. he said what's wrong with the cities and why we have these

festering sores in many cities in america. he mentioned that you have whole communities of people growing up where there are no fathers to set an example. i praised him for that too. i think people who follow me on twitter must have been adjusting their screens. the president reverted to the standard line which is having given lip service and i think it's good that he said it but he then said that the answer was a massive federal investment in inner cities and he took a swipe at the republican congress and said you're not going to get that out of this congress because they don't care about people. when, in fact, for deadcades starting from when i was in diapers the policy of the united states of america has been to

spend trillions of dollars trying to revitalize cities and trying to have urban renewal and spending money on medicaid, job training. there are 92 different means tested federal programs that attempt to lift people out of poverty and the president is deep died in progressivism. he believes that's the answer. people who know best in washington can distribute dollars and that will improve matters. >> there's been many years where conservatives were talking about social issues and it seems as if the left was talking about social issues and using them effectively. do you believe the future will be in the decade or two to come

or do you think the right has some effective way to counter or that people are growing more receptive to the right's message on those issues going forward? >> democrats had a good run with the car on women in 2012. partly because there was a couple of republicans that said bone headed things that played into the democratic narrative and they always have the press. that worked. it didn't work in 2014. they overplayed it. by then it was washed up. people wanted to hear about the economy and other things. it's run its course, but that doesn't mean that republicans will not be victims of other kinds of takes on democrats along the same lines.

>> do you see anyone out there? any conservative who is have been able to arcticticulate a message that's addressing these arguments head on.? >> i think there's tremendous intellect intellectual life. it's being picked up by members of the senate. you've seen some interest in mitch mcconnell who most people say mitch mcconnell he's the old accomplishment type. he's interested in the notion that republicans have leaned too far in the direction of talking about entrepreneurs and not talking enough about wage earners and people who just want a job. they just want a job with good wages to raise their families and be independent and not need

the government. that message is getting through. that's a very hopeful thing because the biggest problem for republicans is the perception on the part of many voters is they are for the rich. >> ramesh, do you recognize that as well? do you see you have republicans starting to talk about issues in new ways. are there opportunities being created by the left in that regard? >> i think the first years of the administration made republicans go very far into opposition mode quite understandably and correctly. those are the years when people were saying republicans were the party of no. the party of no was the right thing to be. i think we saw in 2012 that merely being that was not enough. even if it had been a reasonable strategy the pursue in 2012, it doesn't make quite as much sense when you're in a different

political context. he's been reelected. he's never going to be on the ballot again and you have a different situation. if you recall the am wigsbition on the part of liberals is he was going to be the liberal reagan or the liberal anti-reagan. there are certain parallels and times when you think the republican party might need to be reformed and conservativism might need to be reformed. americans were pretty happy in the late 1980s with how they were been governed and fair minded liberals had to concede maybe reagan had a point about

crime or taxes. i think we're in a different situation right now where you've had liberal political success that's not matched by any kind of popular happiness. people still think the country is on the wrong track, not the right track. i think that that basic unhappiness that neither party has really been able to tap is what creates an opportunity for a conservativeism with a fresh agenda. it marries the publics disposition toward small government and concern about the family, respect for religion. to a practical agenda that explains how the dispositions can be made the work for people in areas like health care and higher education and so forth. i think we're starting to do more of it and i think if we do it's going to be a hard to beat combination. >> rich made a reference to the

staleness. >> let's have universal child care. tell me what you think of that. this could be very politically potent. is it your view that's not going to resonate with the broad middle of americans or do you think it's real threat? >> nostalgia is a powerful emotion. the fact that an agenda is stale does not mean it lacks political potency. if you think about the democratic calls for reviving the labor movement that is entirely steeped in nostalgia.

the story line is everything was great this post-war america. it was a high wage. then ronald reagan came along and destroyed everything and unions have been suffering ever since and so has the working man opinion union union density peaks around 1963. the reason for the decline have to do with the fact that unionized companies were less competitive. the public is less in favor of unions and more and more skeptical of them.

the response is to shut their ears and wish things could be made the way they used to be. we can't have a debate where the right wants to go home to the 1950s and the left wants to work there. as strong as that emotion can be, i think people can see through it if the opportunity is presented. >> there's the sense that say on abortion public opinion is holding the line. there's one social issue where there's been a dramatic reversal

in what was considered a pretty fringed view is now mainstream. tell us about that. >> i think the first structural reason that conservatives win on this is it's the one time ever we get to the say to the other side you can't take this away. generally we're the people who take things away. here social security the democratic party who wants to take the gun. it's a useful line. people don't like their rights taken away from them. i think historically the last 25 years have been fascinating. it's been a great success for the right. if you said in the year 1990 to an average political observer that by 2015 every single state would have a concealed carry rate now perfect but everyone would have one. that washington, d.c. would have its laws overturned and the supreme court would have

recognized the amendment and incorporated it to the states. there would be no assault weapon ban at the federal level. the crime would have dropped if half and gun violence overall would have dropped 75%. people would have said absolutely not. clinton was popular when he proposed his reforms. ronald reagan supported the brady bill. >> how many of you in the room own firearms? a show of hands. you have a receptive audience. >> ronald reagan backed the assault bill. this would be unthinkable.

republican politicians are responding to a grass roots backlash. i think americans felt a little more vulnerable. we've heard a lot about stand your ground. people don't realize in the 1970s and '80s many states got rid of their old laws and they were left at the mercy of prosecutors if they ended up killing somebody or defended themselves. that stopped working. >> there's another element of this. when people are expressing anxiety about the political future of the american right. they point to the fact that america's demographic is changing.

it tends to be white voters who gravitate to the political right. it seems there's a sea change of opinion among minority voters. >> 51% a few months ago of african-americans think a house with a firearm is safer than a house without. it's a remarkable shift over the last 20 years. women, younger people, even hispanics who are less in favor of gun rights are changing their views on this. it is increasingly difficult to suggest if you increase firearm laws more people will be killed. it just hasn't happened over 25 years. this is an example for the right where the facts are on our side. people who really cared about this thing jumped. they took the opportunity and they changed the laws. there isn't much enthusiasm to change them back. one thing i wonder about is the way you're looking at economic policy debates they come to resemble culture debates.

it's been really strikeing. i keep hearing how uber drivers ought to be unionized. i wonder about that. kevin, you wrote a book which you predicted doom and aapock a apocalypse. >> before i hit that just a few things to come up. it's important to keep in mind how much has been established. the election of 1980, the issues, the things that people were worried about on the right were communism which is gone.

run away inflation and crime. we won a lot and we moved onto tax cuts. it stopped being effective because we have so many people that don't pay federal income taxes. we radically improved some things and some things will get radically better still. kids born today 30 years from now will be about 2.6 times as wealthy this real terms as we are on average. i don't think people who are 2.6 times as wealthy this real terms will stand there and get themselves pushed around by someone who says no you can't

have a car pick you up in new york city because we have to have a special rule about there has to be a guy with a million dollar seal on his car to come pick you up and especially yellow car and drive you to place you want to go and it's so important that we do things this way that it's a crime for anyone else to do it. it's absurd. you meet young leftie progressives who talk a good game. they use uber too. it's the new normal. you're not going to get to place where people are going to give up things where people have gotten to the point that they think they can't live a normal life without. what's interesting is fractured entrepreneurial economy is ordinary people are get ingting a new way. the example i've used is the cell phone which 1980s, $10,000

and you have to be a millionaire to have one. everyone has one. it used to be you had to have a chauffeur. things like credit cards and things like that used to offer services. i think it's going to be really difficult to get people bephind this stone age 19th century mind set. we were never good at stomping on that.

you have a world of 3-d printers that you with make anything you want, good luck regulating guns when ever kid can make one at home. >> there are cards your tables. if you have any questions jot them down and we're going to collect them later on. ramesh, the united states has grown more affluent. not as quickly as some would like and yet it's not clear that we moved further in the direction of economic independence. you think the people who are far richer than they were in 1945 would say i'll meet my own retirement needs or i'll handle those various problems. why do you think that is and do you think that might change? do you think people might want to take more responsibility? >> in some respects people are taking responsibility. there's a lot more private retirement accounts.

security are showing you no signs of change except they are getting closer to bankruptcy every year. in fact, the 1980s and 1990s were good decades. everybody who lived at that time understood that. the statistics show that as well. the last 15 years have not been so great. they haven't been so great even when you've had years with decent gdp growth. if you're in the middle of the income spectrum you departments feel that growth in your own standard of living. i think a lot of that has to do with some of the big ticket

items that make up middle class lifestyle where you have not had decreases in the cost of living. there's been a lot of anxiety about paying for college either paying off college debts for younger people, paying for your kids college for older people the cost of health care. if you think about why people say they feel as though they have to work harder and harder to stay in place and they're at a constantly increased risk of falling out of the middle class it's that cost of living. i think that that is in itself a kind of as ominous a sign that is, the confidence that our kids will do better than we did has really plummeted. there's something hopeful in that most of those areas are

concern issues where conservative policies have not been brought to bear. really liberalism has shaped the way public policy handles health care. it has barely turned its attention. >> it's been more reactive. >> these are areas where competition, decentralization accountability consumer choice. if we give them a chance could have real potential to drive value in these sectors in the economy as they do in every other sector of the economy. that gets back to what rich was saying is that our agenda is a better fit for the circumstances we find ourselves in. >> this is a little bit abstract but keying off of ramesh said. one view is you have sluggish economic growth there will be a lot of people who think i doipts want your crazy new distribution

scheme. do you think actually having a growing flourishing economy makes them more conservative or the opposite? >> it is the case that polls have shown that to the disappointment of the left income inequality doesn't rank very high on the list of priorities for the average voter. they're not as angry about it as the occupy wall street people and the democratic party but i repeat myself are. it's just not what motivates

them. if you look at the views of young millenials. who with just voting for the first time when obama ran in 2008 and comparing them with the younger ones just coming up the 18 to 24-year-olds and there are differences in that cohert and one of the things that you find among the younger. that might be something they have to grow out of but there's way to address voters like that and to excite them about the possibilities for government to be reform to give them more opportunities. they are familiar with uber. what they might not know is the

government. job opportunities for example licensing so that for a living. out of my mouth. but let people find opportunities and let them find work. if you can fit that room and appeal to the younger voters. >> it makes me nervous. because of excessive regulation and various other problems then you just have this larger group of people with low incomes who

will find redistribution more appealing. it seems like this vicious circle. why is there a reason to be optimistic. is there a way to break out of that circle? >> it's a commonly made point. i think we should define what we mean by conservative. we all know what we mean by we are conservative of radical ideas. what you're describing is a conservativism of the sort and they want to stick with the presumptions of which they grew up. it always amuses me that you can argue if you wish that the american constitutional and market in 1930 was unsuited to the changing nation. you can argue the depression made it unreasonable. you can argue that the modern world, the industrial world made a constitutional set up designed for an nation out of date. it seems it's not so much that the left today is making that argument as to whatever was

decided between 1930 and 1963 when unions reached the high is now how it shall always be. to an extent you have younger people who have only known that. maybe they maybe they were were conservative when bill clinton was president, because the economy was booming and they are now. if conservatives want to make their point, i think they need to say well maybe we need a third development. maybe, sure, there was a time when we needed change because the country had changed. it's changed again. really, there's no living constitutionalism on the left. they just ossify what they wanted in the 1930s. as kevin said, do you want the taxi system or uber? no respect, but do you want hilton or air b and b? these are important questions. we need to regrainain the progressive mantle rather than the conservative. the people advocating the

radicalism are not onnen the left, they're on the right. i agree it may need to be in more government friendly terms. for now, it needs to be said that the left is the man. not the right. >> hate to correct you on something, but the choice isn't between hilton and air b and b, but housing projects because there's choice in that. >> sure. >> austin seems like a quirky place, where you have a lot of entrepreneurial state. the city just banned e-cigarettes. seems to be moving in a leftward lurk. how do you reconcile those two things? >> you don't. thing about austin they have this dumb sort of motto, keep austin weird, because they think

of themselves as being quirk i can. -- quirky. you should talk about keeping hillsdale weird, because it's different from the rest of the country. austin people are 24 years old, working their first job, feeling like failures because they don't live in brooklyn. it's a perfectly nice place, but it's a second rate place. it's not san francisco. the university of michigan is so much more pc than say harvard is. because harvard doesn't have all that much to prove. austin does. austin is a second-rate place. so -- and i say that as someone who wen tot to school in austin. >> could it be in a city when you have large numbers of freelancers, when you have people who don't necessarily have to traditional 9:00 to 5:00 jobs, they might want more

government as a bull work against the instability, that's part of having the jobs? >> i don't think that's it at all. i think it's true for other koun communities. austin's problem is you have generally well-off young people. they're stupid and insulated. i've lived in the south. >> you're winning a lot of friends, millenials. >> i lived in the south bronx for some years, in the poorest congressional district in the country. i hear people talking about we're going to solve the urban problems with massive federal investment. i want to take them to where i used to live in the south bronx and say, walk around this neighborhood at 3:00 in the morning. some back and tell me what the single biggest problem is. the answer is going to be housing projects which is the last big federal investment we had here. if you're an upper-middle class white person from greenwich or austin or a nice -- sorry charlie. east

he's not from greenwich. you know if you're mona, you get good government services, pretty good public schools. you get police who treat you with a measure of respect and dignity. you've got good public libraries and those things. if you grow up and that's all you know about the way government works, then you tend to think well, i can replicate that other places, which is sort of like people see, well in sweden, they do the welfare state this way. in switzerland, things are arranged this way. let's do that in pakistan. or why not in baltimore? why don't we do that in the south bronx? of course, the difference is -- >> i know ramesh wants to weigh in. >> not on how i rate austin but on the general question of what's wrong with the kids today politically, i think we have to remember, you know, one of the major reasons a big part of the explanation for why the 20 somethings of today are to the left of the 20 somethings of three or four decades ago is that a much smaller proportion

of them are married, white and christian. you have to keep that basic demographic in mind. >> the ones who are are quite conservative. >> that's right. this means a couple things. some of those things aren't permanent. you can get married, and these people are not lost forever. i think the other thing to keep in mind is in addition to making some sort of generational appeal, there is just no alternative to conservatism making in roads of non-white populations in the long run. >> mr. ponnuru and mr. salam are concerned about the shortage of white people. >> i wouldn't put it that way. certainly not on this panel. okay. so one of our questions about higher education, and whether or not there is an opportunity for conservatives to paint them the way the left painted big tobacco, is there a kind of way to say hey, instead of aligning with your professors against taxpayers, could you say, hey why don't you student, you

young person who wants an education, why don't you join with these taxpayers who are concerned about this enormous waste, against a higher education system that's busted and broken. mona, do you have any thoughts? i know ramesh thought about this a lot, too. >> i recently drove around a lot of college campuses, taking my son to visit as all good parents do. and you now see on college campuses, big, banner ads about you know dealing with the high cost of college. it's just everywhere. it's -- everyone is either worried about it or at least considering it. it weighs heavily on the minds of young people and their families. i certainly think that's an opportunity. i think one of the things that technology is going to do is to provide a possible alternative. republicans can sort of get a jump on this.

it's happening anyway. >> of course, you're taking the traditional college tour. you're not asking your son to -- >> a lot of people are still going to do -- many people are still going to do the bricks and mortar mortar, four years. it's not for everybody. the open online courses that are coming, and that will be available -- they already are -- are going to open up opportunities for so many more people than can afford those unbelievably expensive four years in the traditional educational setting. that's one of the reforms and one of the things that conservatives should be enthusiastic about. >> charlie you're a young man. >> i am. >> tell us what you think about this. >> i think one of the groups that conservatives can start to make in roads with, those who don't want to go necessarily to do a four-year degree -- perhaps your son does, as i did -- who nevertheless are ambitious. my own country of birth, we

started to look down on people who don't go to university. to apply social pressure to them. this, of course, does not mean they're not doing well in and of their own right. plumbers in london earn far more than most liberal arts graduates. if they go to a dinner party, there will be an undercurrent of judgment. some on the left reacted to the news that scott walker hadn't finished his four-year degree, which is really -- i mean you cannot make the argument with a straight face that scott walker hasn't done well for himself. he's the governor of wisconsin, for goodness sake. there is nothing wrong with not going to college. now, there's nothing wrong with going to college either. conservatives need to make sure they don't seem they're anti-intelek yule lekllectual anti-intellectual. we have a good number of people saying, this isn't for me. it's important to say to them it is okay for you to go and do something else, maybe a vocation, maybe something more direct. >> i'm hoping for quick answers from ramesh and kevin.

there is something specific about this idea of characterizing higher ed as a corrupt interest group the way people see big toebaccotobacco, or saw big tobacco. do you think there is something to that, as a populus argument, as a way to change the politics around this issue? >> i think they're used cars salesmen. it's the old gmac model, loan someone $30,000 to buy an $18,000 car. you do that enough times it ends up being profitable and the bank makes more money than the car dealership does. partly, it's that. partly, it's this credentialist attitude. if i jump through this hoop i'm guaranteed a comfortable middle class life, which is why so many young people are disappointed. they graduated from college in the worst time of the modern american history. the economy is in free fall, '08, '09, and they're bitter about that. the other thing is and i think it's really a much deeper

cultural problem of the contempt in which we hold non-symbolic labor. people who lay pipes. people who build things. people who do construction. that sort of thing. as charlie was saying, a lot of people make a good living doing that and enjoy it. what's fawnyun u.n.ny is, people are making $32,000 a year hating their lives sitting at a desk. then they go home and watch reality shows of people who build motorcycles. we're watching people do work on television, but we in real life hold people in contempt who work as mechanics and doing fabrication, which is insane. >> i don't think i would so much make our higher education policy about attacking traditional higher educational institutions. i would say that the system we have serves their interest better than it serves the public interest. what is needed is not an assault on those institutions, but the creation and expansion of

alternatives to them. online courses. apprenticeships. vocational educational programs. new forms of accreditation so you don't just have to be like every other higher education institution in order to have access to federal loans. then as all of us i think here are saying, we do need to push back on this cultural message that you have to go to one of those institutions or you're a loser for the rest of your life. which is really cruel for a large number of people in our society. ultimately, i don't think it serves the purpose of liberal education well either. >> ramesh when i was a kid growing up in new york city new york city had akccra moanious racial politics. giuliani was a polarizing figure. the racial climate improved after he was in office though. to many of us, it seems as though, in the obama era, we believe that we would have a

less accra moanious racial politics and it meansseems we have more. there are issues concerning plit brutality that used to be considered local issues, that are now live issues, let's say, in intrademocratic primary battles and much else. are we on the one-way push, that whoever the next president is going to be, is going to be engaged in this style of racial politics? they'll have to respond to it, or do you think this is a temporary aberration? >> great question. i suppose it depends to a large degree on the outcome of the next presidential election. i do think that there is just a general way of thinking and acting on these issues that is very broadly shared on the left. and it's not the way that most of the folks who are on the right think about these things. so i don't think you would have -- i mean, in some ways,

you'd have -- if you have a republican administration, you'll have a racialized attack on the administration as being indifferent and callous and racist and so on. on the particular questions about police brutality of course, that is, i think, very much tied to the fact that you've had this success at bringing the crime rate down. the public's reaction to these incidents would be different if people felt that sense of danger that people in new york city for example, felt every day in the late 1970s and early 1980s. it's entirely reasonable to think about issues differently when you've got a changed social context. but what would be unreasonable would be to discount the progress that has been made and just take it for granted and assume that any amount of anti-police rhetoric or policy can be indulged. i suspect that in a way, the political conversation about criminal justice has gotten a little ahead of the public, in

that i'm all for a lot of criminal justice reforms. i'm glad to see hillary clinton catching up to rand paul and cruz and mike lee on that issue. but it is very important the basic orientation of criminal justice reform be pro-public safety. pro-law enforcement. pro-police. not move off in the wrong direction. >> mona? >> this topic of what goes on between police and black young men is part of a much bigger picture, with what has gone wrong with many aspects of our society. by no means limited to african-americans or minorityies. it's part of a much larger trend of family disintegration. something that moynihan started warning us about 50 years ago. it's only gotten progressively worse. the statistics are just deadly. everyone knows it. your chances of not graduating

from high school, getting in trouble with the law, not marrying, so on and so forth are so much higher. 70%, 80% if you grow up in a home where your parents were never married, which is the case of large numbers of people who live in these neighborhoods. now, it's one of the great tragedies of the obama presidency. which was iconic in some ways and good for america, electing the first black president. but it would have been so easy for him as a married father, being a great role model, to make that a part of his message to all americans. that the importance of family. it wouldn't necessarily need to be aimed at any particular group. just say this is really important for our social cohesion. it's important for kids' outcomes. it's more important than mrs. obama's eat healthy food and let's move campaign. if you really want to improve life for kids, give them a mother and a father. alas, this president did not

choose to do that. >> follow up on that. if you're looking at a figure like barack obama who is admired in the african-american community and other minority communities as well, he has a kind of -- you could argue he has a unique position. a unique ability to make that case. the next president let's say the next president is a republican. if the next president is scott walker, it seems that scott walker saying that hey fatherhood is important might have less resonance. >> absolutely. that's why it's a tragedy obama chose not to do it. he made one or two speeches. he's occasionally delivered this message, but usually it's been to an audience of young black teenagers. rather than the whole country, and making it a really key message of his presidency. >> is it possible for someone who isn't obama to be able to talk about this intelligently and sensitively, in a way that might resonate? >> as long as it's not done as a scold to a particular community, then yes. you have to talk -- and by the way, that is the way to talk

about it because it does affect every single group in america. the move away from thinking about marriage as the essential first step toward family formation is well advanced and it is now only the college educated in our society who continue to follow that pattern. everybody else middle income people down to the poor and high school dropouts the very most it's lost its normative value. >> so i don't want to wear out our welcome. i have one last question for charlie. you have often talked about this idea of conservetarianism, but the right can influence the left. >> in addition to the technological points we were discussing, the basic presumption of the right is that local communities and families

and private institutions and states should make the majority of the decisions. and that only those things that have to be done by a federal government need to be done by a federal government and should be. we are at a stage now in which the left has started to use the states to use itsthem to get its own way. progressives do not believe in a particularly meaningful way in the concept of federalism. they use it to advance their agenda and then once they've won, they try to nationalize everything. i'm thinking particularly, say of the gains made on the left in the marijuana debate, it is somewhat iconic to hear people in colorado, in washington, who are progressives complaining that this big bully in federal government could, at a moment's notice, take away that

referendum referendum. i have heard few conservatives -- you don't have to believe that marijuana should be legalized to make this point. conservatives say, that's what we're talking about. we are not particularly good at this. i complain frequently about how we argue against mandates. a good argument against a mandate is that we do not believe in mandates. what it is that's being mandated is irrelevant. i don't think that the poor should pay for contraception is a winning argument. people who use contraceptions are sluts are not a winning argument. we go to the latter. when it comes to the question of mandates, we can say i'm in favor of guns but i don't want to mandate those on you. at that point the other people recognizes what i'm arguing. the same with federalism. progressives are using the federal system. let's point out to them that this is what we're talking about, just on the things we care about. that's where i think there is an

opportunity here. especially given that they haven't got much traction at the federal government. >> you trade a conservative vermont for a libertarian texas. >> absolutely. >> how many of you would take that deal? >> i think on that point, it's okay for people in different parts of the country to live differently from one another. it's not about nationalizing things. it's fine if people want to live differently. the more we're different in gun control, liberty, unions the more we need to use it. i'd take it with those two states but also with all 50. >> thank you very much guys. [ applause ]

polls in the united kingdom close in less than three hours, as voters elect a prime minister and members of parliament will have a live seemimlecast. here is more about today's election in the uk. >> toby harnden, this is one of the closest in decades. why and how close is it? >> hi, greta. it's great to be with you. it's absolutely fascinating and i'm riveted from afar. covering another election 2016 presidential election, all the primaries, anyway. i think it's so close because

the british public has lost confidence in the major political parties, the conservative party on the right and the labor party on the left. we have five years of conservatives, liberal democrat television governments. i think if you had -- if you could poll vote for none of the above, they would probably win today. what the eve of the election poll was showing was an extraordinarily tight contest, with the conservatives on 34% labor 34% as well. then going down the list and looking at the united kingdom independence passing this new movement, anti-immigration, anti-european. similar feel here. you have the liberal democrats. scottish national party which could be a huge factor. it looks like displacing the

labor party in the traditional heart lands of labor in scotland. what we're almost certainly going to see tomorrow is that no party will reach the magic number of -- there's dispute over what the magic number is -- but 323 seats in a 650-seat chamber. that can get an absolute majority majority. what that means, you're going to have a lot of horse trading. david cameron the current prime minister trying to form a new coalition government or minority government. you're going to have ed miliband the labor leader the opposition leader trying to do the same. trying to get together some sort of arrangement which will form a government. really, anybody that tells you that they know what's going to happen is not telling you the truth. >> toby harnden, what role could the scottish national party play then, given what you're talking

about? if there's no clear majority, then they're going to have to try to build a coalition here. what role then could the scottish national party play? >> right. the scottish national party is fascinating. they're poll inging five or six. only polled in scotland. they could get 48 seats. if you look at the way that works, the uk independence party are polling at 12%, likely to get two or three seats. the scottish national party is socialist, left of center party as is the labor party. there will be a natural alliance, if you like, that you can envision between labor and scottish national party. however, the labor party said it won't go into coalition with the scottish nationalists. what you may get is some kind of loose arrangement, where the scottish national party prop up a minority labor government, a

labor party that has finished second, only the second highest number of seats. but if you add up the labor party seats and the scottish national party seats, that could result in some kind of government. very, very uncertain. it would be very, very vun vulnerable to a vote of no confidence. it could be a very, very unstable situation if you get those two parties in partnership. >> toby harnden, how long does this all take to straighten out? >> well, we don't know. i mean, last time in 2010, it took about two days. you had parallel sets of horse trading going on. you have the labor party talking to liberal democrats. the conservative party is talking to liberal democrats. you have the scottish national party in the mix as well.

in the end it was the toris conservatives in the liberal democrats who agreed to form a government, share ministerial posts, have a shared agenda. a relatively stable arrangement which has lasted five years. this time, it looks like it's going to be much, much less tenuous. or much more tenuous. it could take many days. the big dates on the calendar is may 27th the queen's speech when the new agenda is laid out. some people are saying we could get a situation where that speech of the queen will be when you have a person, miliband or cameron, trying to be the new prime minister, but not sure the queen's speech could be passed by a simple majority in the house of commons. >> toby harnden thank you very much. appreciate it.

>> thank you. just before the polls close at 5:00 eastern time today, we'll begin our coverage of itvs live election night coverage. it'll include interviews in over 60 locations across the uk. studio analysis, social media highlights and a house of commons forecast. itv called this the most unpredictable battle for number ten in decade. a poll suggesting no one party will win a majority, and the outcome of the election is too close to call. c-span's live coverage with itv beginning at 4:55 today eastern time. federal appeals court in new york ruled that the bulk collection of american's phone records by the government exceeds what congress has allowed. the associated press writing that a three-judge second circuit court of appeals panel said the case brought by the aclu illustrated the complexity of balancing privacy interests with the nation's security.

a lower court judge three out the case. the court said the lower court errored. the second circuit declined to block the program saying it's up to congress to decide whether and under what conditions it could continue. the ruling sparked reaction on capitol hill today with new attorney general loretta lynch being asked for her comments at a hearing this morning. two questions. one, are you aware of any significant privacy violations that have occurred since the president instituted these reforms? second has the justice department made a decision yet on appealing this decision by the second circuit? i realize it just came down. >> thank you senator. obviously, section 215 has been a vital tool in our national

security arsenal. but the department has, as you note, been operating under the new directives by the president with a view toward modifying the programits ethicacy. i am not aware of any violations that have come to light. i will seek a briefing on that. should i learn of any, i'll advice the committee of that. if my knowledge changes on that. as of now, i have not been inform ofd any violations under the new policy. with respect to the decision from the second circuit my home circuit actually, this morning, we are reviewing that decision. given the time issues involving the expiration of it we are also and have been working with this body and others to look for ways to reauthorize section 215 in a way that does preserve its efficacy and protects privacy.

>> the lead democrat on the committee, along with mike lee issued a joint statement. congress should not reauthorize a bulk collection program that the court has found to violate the law. we will not consent to any extension of the program. but armed services committee chairman john mccain, according to the hill is very worried about thursday's federal appeals court decision. that struck down the national security agency's bulk collection of americans phone records. he said thursday on fox news as america's newsroom we have to have the ability to monitor these communications, he said. it's pretty clear that 9/11 could have been prevented if we had known about some of the communications that were linked to those who committed the terrible atrocity of 9/11. you can read more at the hill.com. now on c-span3 a conversation with the former chair and ceo of qwest communications

international, joseph nacchio. in 2007 he was convicted of insider trading and served four years in a federal prison, which he said was related to his refusal to provide customer data. last year he spoke at a university conference that examined government and law enforcement surveillance using the latest data collecting technologies. and what that means for america's constitutional rights. i'm very excited about this discussion that we're going to have. it's a real treat, in fact for me to be able to have this conversation with joe nacchio. this is an individual who has a unique perspective from which he understands technology. he understands problems in our criminal justice system in a way that, i'm sure, he wishes he didn't have to understand them. he understands the potential for

overcriminalization. he also understands the problems of collateral consequences. all of these issues are issues which are of great concern to nacdl in one way or another. when i talk about collateral consequences, i talk about the importance of people being able to get beyond the secret sentences and the silent penalties that are part of the criminal conviction. and have their rights and status restore restored. it's from that perspective that i'm very pleased he's willing to share his tiechl andme and interest with us. i should tell you that i was privileged to be introduced to joe just a couple months after he had been released from several years in federal prison. and he began immediately to discuss with us and others the important work -- let's see what's going on here -- is this

pack on? back on? >> the the important work our foundation is doing. you heard from ted already that he was born in brooklyn. he's also -- he has three degrees. a bs in scientific engineering. electrical engineering from nyu. mba from nyu and a masters as a sloan fellow at mit. he spent 26 years at at&t. i think he got up to the third highest position. i also believe joe, that you were in almost every department except for finance and accounting. >> and legal. >> okay. everything but those three areas. in 1997 he went to qwest communications which, at that point, was a startup, with about 400 employees. about a $200 million budget. at its peak, it had 74000 employees and a $21 billion.

he was -- joe was essentially a telecom executive at a period in time which was the birth of the internet and the fiber optics network, which is the platform for which we all now depend upon. he also, at that period of time late '90s, early 2000 was appointed chair of the network reliability and interoperability council. he was appointed by president george w. bush to chair the national security telecommunications advisory committee. he was literally at the pinnacle of his career, highly trusted by the government top-secret clearance, when something happened on february 27th, 2001. an important date, not just for joe, but also it's important to note that that was six months before 9/11 took place. by the late summer of 2001, he

was gone from qwest. he was under investigation by the sec and the department of justice. it wasn't until 2005, ten days before the statute of limitations expired, that he was indicted for insider trading. he then spent 17 months going through a bizarre set of secret proceedings because of the classified information procedures act. at trial, the government pioneered a theory of insider trading that had never been used before. the idea that one could be benefitting from inflated future projections. although he was acquitted on more than half of the counts, he was convicted on a number of them. allegedly finding he had engaged in insider trading from april to may of 2001.

subsequent to that trial and by the way, this was all based on his reported projections that were based upon his expectation of certain government contracts. which eventually did not come to pass. whether or not that related to what happened on february 27th of 2001 that is something we can talk about. his jury deliberated for i believe, six days before they convicted him on those counts. his conviction was reversed on appeal. then that reversal was reversed in a 5-4 decision. his cert petition was denied and he spent four and a half years in prison. joe, we're going to talk about all of this. i want to start out in a different place, based on the conversations we've been having today. as i said, you were there at the beginning, really, of the modern -- of the internet as we understand it. in preparing to have our

discussion, you said something to me that resonated, and i think it will resonate with the folks here. what we were talking about was the cloud and its implications. you said something. you said it's really not a cloud. it's a layer cake. what did you mean by that? >> yeah. you watch these television commercials about a cloud, and it's mysterious. well, there's not really a cloud. there is a hierarchy in the world of telecommunications and commuting about how you build an internet. as the most fundamental layer nothing would work on the internet if you didn't have the world now inter connected with high feed fiber optic networks. above that you have a series of computers. call them anything you want, from servers to end user computers to massive mainframes hiding in somebody's basement. you have these computers inter connected by the fiber optics.

then you have operating systems, telling the computer go to this file and send it here. above that you have what some people claim was invested in the '90s, but it was really the '60s, you have an ip protocol. you have the address on the packets referred to earlier. that's another layer. the higher layer is the application layer, where you actually have something computing and you're looking at the application. now, it's a layer cake because you can't get to the fifth layer and make it work unless all the layers below are robust. if i take some of you younger folks back to pre-history when the internet didn't exist, only 25 years ago, in order for us to get to where we are today the first thing you had to do was get a robust system at a physical layer as we call it of fiber optic networks. that's how we got engaged. that's the company we were building. because our technology was a

generation newer than, at the time at&t sprint or any of the europeans companies, bt any of those folks, we got approached. a truism in information technology, which fwoezgoes back to the ibm mainmainframes, and bell labs worked with the government in world war ii the first user of information technology and the most advanced user of information technology is going to be the defense establishment in the u.s. government. i use defense in the broadest term. i'm talking about anything associated with defense. so they're the first guys in and when we built qwest, or as we went public with what we were building, before we laid more than 1,000 miles of cable, we ultimately did 26,000 in the u.s., we were already engaged or approached to participate. >> what was the -- you were asked to chair this committee called the network reliability and interoperability council.

explain what that was trying to accomplish. >> there was two federal add visery committees of substance for the technology industry. the industry at the time included the telecoms and the microsofts, the syscos people there. it also included a lot of the defense players. the lockheed martins. all of their systems inter related, depending on who we were building it for. there was a concern prior to 9/11, remember when southern manhattan went out of service, all of the country essentially, your cell phones, there was a question that said, in case of disaster recovery, what are the scenarios that could knock out command and control? you knock that out, you knock out everything you're using as a collateral conscienceequence. how would we recover? because of anti-trust concerns i couldn't talk to at&t or

sprint directly, or the bells in certain regards. advisory committees were formed under the national security umbrella and the sec played on that. what we were trying to figure out those days given the existing war, how could we quickly respond to back each other up? what could be critical infrastructure problems? what layer in the hierarchy would you be attacked? i was listening to technology people talking about we have to back each other up. we were worrying about this in the late '90s. america has been in cyber war since the birth of the internet. we just got a lot better and smarter a lot faster than everybody else. these were problems in 1996 and 1997, when you were still using bulky lab tops if you had them. the defense department was engaged in this stuff to defend the nation, and these committees

were there to deal with the questions. the assets owned in this country, in private hands, not by the government. for them to do their job, it's necessary for us to be engaged. >> at the very beginning of all of this there had to be this close nexus between government and the telecommunications industry? >> absolutely. we did a lot of what we call in telecom, special construction for certain customers. because even the national infrastructure by itself wasn't going to look at all the disaster scenarios appropriately. >> at some point you were asked to come on to the national security telecommunications advisory committee. >> right. >> why don't you tell us how that came about. how did you find out they wanted you for this? >> i have to tell you, it's interesting when you're doing a startup company and come out of a big company like at&t. i mean just as a joke the first time i walked into newark airport and had to get on a commercial flight, after flying

corporate jets, i couldn't figure out how to maneuver myself. when you're working for a small company, doing all this stuff yourself, trying to build a company and trying to build infrastructure, trying to hire people and then you have the government come in with overlay overlays, it's a challenge. you do it from the front end. i think somebody said it earlier, the sysco guy, you try to design reliability into the product at the front end. that's what we were trying to do. right from the beginning, we didn't have more than like i said, less than 1,000 miles of cable lying on the ground when i was visited by a three-star general in my office in denver with an unannounced visit. that doesn't usually happen. i had never met a three-star general, fortunately. i had a high number in the vietnam war and beat the draft. bust thing that happened to me. when the general wants to meet you, you say yes. i had this meeting. a few weeks later, i had a top

secret security clearance. we got deeply embedded. 14 years later i was reminded three months ago that i still am guidedest espianage act. i'm going to talk about secrecy in a minute. >> you're not going to tell us who the general was? >> i can't say, i'd like to say because they'd kill me but they did worse than that. you can't disclose and puts you in a tough position. for the skeptics out there, i think a lot of people would say, this guy is blowing smoke. he got convicted, he's a fellon, don't believe what he has to say. that's the position of the

justice department. to answer your question directly we were working and by 2000, we were deeply embedded in what i'm allowed to say is four security agencies. as a result of that, dirk clark a member of the national security staff, recommend i become chairman in the network network -- >> that was the security information. >> right. if the government approaches you, first if you're going to make money for your company, you have a fiduciary responsibility to look at the responsibility. i hate to use "patriotism" because i think it's a hallow term, but if the government says, we want you to work on something, clear you and tell you why. we're going to give you money. what are you going to say, i don't want to be bothered? you say yes. now if you say no today there's other consequences.

>> at some point -- >> i said yes. was appointed to the committee, became vice chair and became the chair. >> you want to tell us about this february 27th 2001 meeting? >> i think there's a lot of serendipity in life. had you just walked into the other room instead of this room, your life would have been totally different. just to preface the february 27th meeting at college when i was interviewing, going to graduate, i thought i was going to a procter & gamble interview. walked into the wrong interview and it was at&t long lines. that's how i got into telecom. 27 years later, i get a call on february 26th from my guy who runs the washington classified stuff and basically says to me in code words there's something interesting. i need your help. that means, get on a plane and come to washington. i land at reagan national. we run over to the pentagon for a non-classified meeting. we drive up to baltimore

washington turnpike, walk into a skiff. it's one of the rooms that, if you're old as me, remember the cone of silence, can't eavesdrop eavesdrop. i'm supposed to meet with michael haden, the head of the nsa at the time. walk into the meeting. should have known immediately when he didn't show up that something bad was going to happen. we have the normal meeting and do all the legitimate work. then a bunch of people at the end of the table, basically asking me a couple of questions. they say they need help on this other project. i'm not a lawyer. i had been in telecom for 28, 29 years. i knew the requirements of the telecom act on privacy. i knew there was this act in '86 that dealt with data communications. i asked the obvious question, and the obvious question you ask when you're meeting with intelligence people, particularly if they're not fbi,

supposed to be looking at foreign intelligence is you ask if they want to be working in the united states. talked about the act this morning. the answer was no. actually, the answer wasn't no. if it was no i would have felt better. the answer was, we don't believe we require it. well that's called in corporate speak, an idiot question. they're trying to determine how much of an idiot am i. to say they don't require it means you shouldn't have asked the question. then i asked the second question, well, if we don't need the warranty, i have executive authority, meaning did it come from the president? the answer was no. i said, well, we'll be happy to help, but you need to show me some authority. i can't participate. that's all i can say. we got blackballed after that. i learned six months later, wasn't until june, the first

contract we thought we had, we didn't get, $150 million. later that year, we lost a total of $700 million in contracts. i get indicted five years later. what i'm told is you're being indicted because your forecast for 18 months in the future has too much risk in it. now, i had been in telecom over 30 years at the time. i never had a forecast that, on business, that the people below me thought was reasonable. they would always want sandbag. they'd always want the lowest commitment to beat it and get incentive computation. i wanted the highest to force the performance. this is what my case was about. with one caveat. everybody who testified against me never had clearances and didn't do government work. i was prevented to bring that up. >> we'll come to that. >> that's the againgenesis.

>> it's been reported in the media you were the only telecommunications executive at that time that didn't turn over customer records. >> well, i -- >> is that what we're talking about here or something else? >> what's been reported in the media. first, in 2006, usa broke a story about the nsa asking the telephone company for billing records. they reported -- and i had nothing to do with this story, nor my lawyers -- that qwest was the only company that said no. that was true but that's not what was happening prior to 9/11. >> whatever this was was something other than that, even though that, in fact, was true. >> we also said no a second time, but there was a more serious question asked earlier. >> now we can talk a little bit about what was different about your case. they had this novel theory, but there was something different about how your case unfolded. why don't you explain what it was that was different about it.

>> to paraphrase, what's a boy from brooklyn in the middle of this for? i knew -- we learned very early that they opened an investigation on us. of course, like any good corporate board, the first thing you do is blame the ceo, and then buy hem outim out of the contract, which they did. i technically resigned, i took a lot of money they offered and left. that's always the deal. four years later they're coming after me on an insider trading charge, which i think is absurd. for those of you who know the sec, they have rules. rule 10 b 5 1. we hired lawyers to design the plan. we got the board to approve it announced it four months in advance. they still said i did insider trader. but you can't -- once you're fighting the justice department they'll come up with a hundred reasons why it was all part of my conspiracy. what was the interesting thing

was, i learned that when i was a target, which was early '05, i wanted to tell my wife, you know, i said, if the theory is they're coming after me on insider trading and the theory is securities fraud, then i'm going to need to tell you why i thought the projections were right. there is a big piece here that was classified information. first thing my lawyer said was, don't tell me anymore more. when it deals with classified information, you don't have attorney-client privilege don't have spousal privilege, and your attorneys can be held criminally liable if they learn classified information from the defendant. you have to be indicted first, you have to be arraigned and then petition the court to grant your layers the same clearance you have so you can tell them your defense. >> is that what happened in your case? >> that's exactly what happened. >> after that --

>> well, after that -- >> explain how you go communicating with your lawyers in the realm of this information that's protected. >> let me loop back. i want to say something to the audience. i've been pessimistic the last 14 years. one of the bright spots -- i said this to norm last night, said it to ted and some others -- was the fact that you people are holding this conference. i think you said it earlier, that you guys are not fighting a legal issue. on the matter of overreach by the federal government, surveillance and over criminalization. i see it as one panel. you are fighting money and power. you are fighting about the way this country is going to go. the only thing i feel optimistic about is i can look around this room and see young people, because i'm not going to be -- my lifetime this isn't getting

involved. you people are passionate about it. it's going to take a ground swell. i think you said it earlier it's going to take a battle on many fronts, the law being only one. let me tell you, when you're up against the department of justice on a normal criminal conviction, you have no chance of winning. so if i was fighting a normal insider trading case i spent $15 million and lost across the board. even when i won, like on appeal, they managed to get a non-bond court to hear it which is rare. then extraordinarily, three judges on the 12-judge panel recused themselves and i get my conviction reinstated, 5-4. you usually know there is a dissenting opinion. all four judges in the tenth circuit wrote individual dissenting opinions. that's how strongly they objected to what had happened on

getting it reversed. i had to go through a 17-month process in sepa hearings. if you think the problems you're dealing with here on the legal surveillance or over surveillance is difficult when the government gets to put an extra level of secrecy on everything, you can't imagine. i was with two nsa whistleblowers yesterday while i was in washington. they were talking to me about some things. one of them was telling me that -- about this guy who said boy, we really wish we could do those things back when they were around. when i what i saw the u.s. government do in the courts would made orwell and the nazi courts be envious. under section 6 of sepa, and i'm going to come back to section 5, which is a key one, even when

the court says, yes, you can bring this evidence forward the prosecutors have to agree what language you can use. in other words they can intervene and say, for example i can't tell you the four agencies i worked with. even in trial i couldn't say it. i could say four agencies. if i wanted to say that i got a call from -- i'm going to make up a name from that genre of time. not suggesting it's true. let's assume i was meeting with the head of the cia at the time. i couldn't say i had this assurance from george, the head of the cia. what i would be allowed to say is, i met with the senior government feshlofficial. you know in front of a jury that specificity leads to credibility. i would think that it's much more credible if i was going to make a claim that i met with george tenant than an unnamed bureaucrat in an unnamed agency. that's what the government agreed.

anything i could say i was involved was watered down. more importantly, this section 4 of sepa. it says even if it's legitimate under the federal rules of evidence, we can keep it out if it deals with national security issues. and they actually used that on me. those of you who are criminal defense attorneys one of the cardinal rules nobody gets an ex parte communication with the judge. government had three ex parte communications with my judge. >> how do we know that? >> matter of fact, this is really good. if you were to call the u.s. attorney who prosecuted my case in denver, he would say, it's all baaolognaaa loeloneybaloney. there are redacted transcripts and everything i'm telling you is in there. >> how did they get released? >> the "denver post" did a first amendment challenge through the 17-month process.

they basically took the position in federal court that said, look, whatever is going on in the courts everything they're saying can't be secret. to broker a deal after my conviction and after my sentencing, i should point out the same federal judge brokered a deal that said, we're going to release all the transcripts but the government first gets to redact the information. if you ever had a boring weekend, you can see that you can read a transcript with an attachment. there's 1,000 out information behind the attachment. most importantly, the "washington post," because they were running in denver at the time when the redact redacted transcripts came out, they got a call from my lawyers. joe, february 27th meeting, which i was not allowed to bring up in my defense, not even acknowledge it existed, they failed to redact it in the

transcript. now, they redacted it in several parts of the attachments but had not redacted it in the transcript. it was the rocky mountain news that thursday that wrote a story about it. on that friday, it was the "washington post" that ran a front-page story. what they basically said was, if you read this guy's sepa transcript, what bush said about this all starting at 9/ 11 is not true. i'm not taking a position on that. but they wrote a front-page story. i went through 17 months. i saw these abuses. i'm going to tell you another interesting fact. i don't mind saying this. my judge who has been removed from the bench shortly after my trial, edward nottingham iii, was ruling for the first seven or eight months balanced. favorably. trying to live within the constraints of the sepa act. there was an ex parte by simpsons. we frequently had besides the

doj leading the case, these guys showed up from washington and weren't required to announce who they were. one guy is in the transcript his senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for counterintelligence. now, the u.s. department of justice to this day denies that my case had anything to do with classified stuff and what was relevant to my defense. so i guess the senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for counterintelligence had nothing to do that day and decided to fly to denver and have an ex-parte communication with judge nottingham, who from that point forward completely reversed his rulings, denied access to a lot of -- we couldn't even get -- denied access to documents, said i couldn't talk about february 27th at all, denied several other motions we made, including -- i'll tell you how

dirty they play, they made a mistake. when the fbi interviews people, you guys know them as fbi 302s the number of the form. there were some classified 302s. we fought for eight months with our hands on what the government had. they gave us one, a mistake on their part, because it had a counsel to one of the intelligence agencies named, her name remains classified who said, yeah, i was in a meeting and they were pretty mad at joe nacchio for refusing them. she said that. so we went back to the judge, filed two motions, saying that i was -- my constitutional rights were being violated by not turning over and letting us interview this witness. now, very cleverly since this was all in a secret court, none of you could see it so they could get away with it, they re-interviewed this attorney. and this attorney came back with a new 302 and said, oh, geez, i was mistaken, i didn't really mean to say that. they weren't talking about joe nacchio and guess what the judge said, the judge said, oh, okay, there is no reason to interview her.

the judge didn't say we got two 302s in contradiction, this is for a jury. the judge -- i want to finish this story, you'll understand why i think you're in a big fight. this judge, after my conviction, after i'm sentenced to prison, gets caught in a prostitution scandal, much like eliot spitzer, which if you talk to people in the intelligence community, they'll believe those guys got caught because of an intelligence sweep, okay. got caught in a prostitution scandal. as the tenth circuit is investigating him, okay, and interviewing some of the prostitutes, a prostitute to the fbi person who is doing the investigation, judge nottingham coached me on how to answer your questions. now, i think for rest of us in a normal word, that would be obstruction of justice, witness

verizon are putting up this big fight to protect our privacy rights. that program is being run out of the pr department. because i bet you today that every one of those ceos has been brought under the cover and has top security clearance. it's not because the government is magnanimous, it's because they're all agents of the government. our danger going forward is that the world is getting more sophisticated and you're up against big money big dollars. besides maybe some altruism that people thankink they're protecting the country. >> let me play devil's advocate.

in which the government doesn't own all industries, isn't it essential there be a level of cooperation between telecommunications and the government? >> it's always been essential. in world war ii, they were tapping circuits going through bermuda, so it's always been there. you have to do it. the question is there's legal ways of doing it and then there's not so legal ways. people who look at the fisa courts, i think i read recently, since 1978 there's been less than a dozen times a fisa judge said no to a fisa warrant, okay, since 1978. if you have a mechanism to get a fisa warrant to do these activities and choose not to do them, okay, even you must believe something's wrong. okay? because judges -- these are hand-picked courts hand-picked judges who always say yes. >> and we heard in the first panel this morning that some of

the standards have been relaxed. congress has moved back. maybe one of the answers is we need to get our legislators engaged. i'd like to sort of brickng is to a close by asking you to look at a couple trends and talk first of all about capacity then the potential for abuse. >> let's talk about capacity. a couple years -- i think three, four years ago i read while i million square foot place in utah for storage. they went in for reck decision to build another storage facility right up here at ft. meade. they're obviously collecting a lot of data. now, i think the panel was on to something very important this morning which is going to -- i wasn't following all the legal inside and outs. you don't need all the data. you need the meta data. if you can get names, addresses, you can build patterns. you do your pattern analysis, a trillion people that you're looking at to, you know, 20,000.

then you go look at the data. why aren't they doing that, building these facilities? the answer is because a lot of this is outsourced and there's a lot of money being spent, okay? don't ever believe the people who the suppliers are finding the most efficient way to do something. they're finding the most profitable way of doing something. when you budget a secret and when all the conversations are secret, and when you play the orwellian game of national news we have a new threat just like they did in 1984, okay, you know you kill osama bin laden, replace him with another guy, replace him with isis replace him with these guys. we're in a perpetual state of war on terrorism. i think the scariest part is how we're inculcating the american public to believe they brought this fight to, quote, the lone wolves so therefore we better look at everybody inside the united states. now, don't get me wrong, there's real national security threats and there's a real need,

imperative, for defense and intelligence agencies to be on the cutting edge and be better than our adversaries. it's an ugly dirty world out there, okay? the bottom line is we will prevail as a society based upon our morals and our principles not based upon we can beat the other guys in the dirty game dirtier. you look at our constitution, it is probably the best political document ever written, okay. and we seem to be able to willy-nilly throw it aside when you have national security issues. i think that's a dangerous slippery slope. >> i think that's a good note to reflect on why we're here, which is to make sure we have at least on the front lines where a lot of these things are litigated aggressive defense lawyers who are able to inform courts, try to shape the law and then advocacy groups like so many you're hearing from today that

can perhaps push for the kinds of changes that will bring us back to the checks and balances that we -- >> absolutely. i think what you -- what you need to think about is you don't want to be in the position of the ethiopians against the atrail italian army in 1935 where they're attacking the tanks with spears on horses. okay? fighting this battle through the courts is only one -- >> of course, of course. >> playing field. it's a much bigger playing field. i wish i had the answers for you guys. >> we'll turn it over to questions. i want to wrap it up, joe, by just making the observation that we all, as officers of the court, as lawyers, we have respect for our system. nobody can really know -- almost -- in almost any white collar case, the issue is always -- comes down to one of intent and whether or not you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone has a criminal intent, that's what a jury is for. >> right. >> so when we reflect on this

case, rightly or wrongly, what seems to have been lacking was the jury being able to hear all of the facts that would make it possible to make that determination. >> and i think that's -- it shouldn't be -- it shouldn't be for judges at all to decide, except in the most extreme case what a defendant can tell a jury. it is up to the jurors to believe whether the defendant is telling the truth or not. up to prosecutors to say no. i think you put a layer of secrecy over that and empower the people to do what they can do, people asked me for a lot of years, why didn't you take the stand? i didn't take the stand in my defense, nor did i elocute at sentencing. you know if i had elocuted at sentencing, i could have had a lower prison sentence because judges like when you get up and say, now that you caught me, i feel bad, i've seen