host: good morning and welcome to "washington journal" for saturday, may 29, 2010. congress is in memorial day recess, and the first family will spend the weekend in chicago before monday's memorial day events. we'll start off the show this morning by looking at political news from capitol hill. the white house offered congressman joe sestak an advisory position if he dropped out of the senate race in pennsylvania. our topic for the phones, much ado about mr. sestak, that's the headline of an editorial piece in "the washington post" today. the numbers to call, democrats,

202-737-0002. republicans, 202-737-0001. independents, 202-628-0205. you can also send us your comments online. the email address is journal@c-span.org. and we're at twitter, that's twitter/cspanwj. first let's look at the "philadelphia inquirer" reporting on the situation there. report defends offer. a white house probe found no embryo operate in the overture by bill clinton acting for emanuel. this by thomas fitzgerald, a staff writer. he writes that president obama's chief of staff dispatched former president bill clinton last summer as an interimmediate air to see whether representative joe sestak would drop his planned run for the senate if given an unimportant but unpaid advisory position, the white house said friday. clinton made the approach as sestak was launching his challenge to senator arlen specter in the pennsylvania democratic primary.

the report reputed by options of service on a presidential or other government advisory board were improper or illegal, and beauer wrote there was no such impropriety. here's how congressman sestak has weighed in. in a statement yesterday, he confirmed the white house account. he said clinton had called him last summer and expressed concerns over my prospects in the senate primary, and he then relayed emanuel's suggestion that he serve on a presidential board while staying in the house. "the inquirer" goes on to report congressman darryl isa from oversight and government reform said he believed the offer was a quid pro quo. let's hear what you think about this. our first call is from pennsylvania from todd on the independent line. good morning, todd. caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call.

it seems to me that the beltway in our nation's capital, you would feel that democrats and republicans and independents, of which i've been for 26 years, would concentrate a little more on relevant issues concerning our country. it seems as though the party they represent presents more of a loyal issue to them than governing on the half of the american people. it seems to me that, including the media and the hard right, that whatever can be communicated to attack our young president is put into play immediately. he is doing a stellar job. and we very much appreciate his attention to detail, the discipline he has not to

counterattack as many critics, and what has happened in the gulf is a disaster brought about by greed and incompetence on the behalf of b.p. and their affiliates, and our president should receive sufficient credit for trying to resolve the problem. host: can i ask you relating to our question this morning, congressman joe sestak, as a pennsylvanian, do you have concerns about this? do you think this was a poor move by the white house? caller: well, when we're talking about the white house, let's talk about emanuel and his special interest. i'm not especially supportive of mr. emanuel. i believe he has other issues that sometimes, as i just mentioned, supersede the common cause, which is our country. i don't think president barack obama was involved in this in any event.

clinton, and to be bipartisan, and i am, clinton and emanuel may have been involved in this because they're both big serpts of specter, who i think has really sort of gone into retirement to the benefit of everybody, including our ex-senator, who i did at one time vote for senator specter. so i think the issue is just blown out of proportion and is, again, involved in an attempt to criticize our young president directly and indirectly, for any and every reason. host: let's go to rick from florida. hi, rick. caller: good morning. i feel there's a -- i think there should definitely be an investigation, the attorney general, if he doesn't do it, then the f.b.i. definitely should. i think there's a pattern here of deception and corruption. it's just common sense and

basic instinct, you can feel the pattern, and one other thing, too, as far as the oil spill, it was like a bomber was -- it was kind of like obama was forced to go down there, he was off on his vacation, and the fact that he was not going to arlington cemetery for memorial day, it's just -- i'm want sure -- i think -- i don't is presidential material, and i think he's corrupt. thank you very much. host: let's go to gloria in atlanta. caller: hello. host: hi, gloria, welcome. caller: thank you. i would like to say president obama 100%. i think he's doing a marvelous job. he has already stated his case that he's been involved since

day one, and i believe it, but they are people who are set up to destroy him no matter what he does, and the media plays a bigger part than anybody. host: gloria, let me ask what you think about the situation with congressman sestak. do you think that was an appropriate move? caller: i think they're making a whole lot to do about nothing. we have more of a crisis with the oil. president obama needs to stay on that, stay focused on that, and this gives the republicans something to talk about, to continue to try to down him. it seems that mr. sestak is not all worried about it. you know, he wants to should not the media, and i think they need to let that go. host: ok. let's look at this editorial piece in "the washington post," "much ado about mr. sestak" some. transparency would have end this had scandal early on.

it says, ok, if all the facts are out, we would agree, nothing inappropriate happened. on the basis of the memorandum issued friday by the white house, the joe sestak job for dropping out of the senate race scandal is a nonscandal, except for the white house's bungling of the episode. the unnecessary coverup, it turns out, is always worse than the noncrime. the editorial goes on to say the talk has been the white house attempt to strong arm or bribe, some critics claim, the pennsylvania congressman to drop out of the senator specter race. the rumor was that the job being deaged was navy secretary, a rumor mr. sestak unhelpfully confirmed by confirming some kind of job offer, but issuing a no comment when asked about the navy post. this never made much sense. president obama nominated ray mabus to be navy secretary in march last year, a month before mr. specter's party switch. they say that isn't necessarily in play. but in fact, according to the report, the white house only wanted to keep the field clear for mr. specter, but also wanted to keep mr. sestak in

his current seat, understandably, given that he had beaten a republican incumbent in 2006. new york, frank is on our independent line. hi, good morning. caller: good morning. i just wanted to say that this problem that has developed with mr. sestak makes me think of one person who had it right all along from the beginning. and his name is joe wilson. he said that mr. obama is a liar, and you know what? the past 18 months have proven him to be true because of the fact that mr. obama feels that when he gets on the bully pulpit, what he says is the truth because he says, it but that's not necessarily the truth. unfortunately, he's doing a bad job for this country, and that's all i have to say. thank you. host: ok. let's go to scott, republicans line in big sandy, texas. hi, scott. caller: ok, we're supposed to believe that the white house has investigated itself and found itself not guilty.

is that right? this man, this president is the least qualified individual to ever hold the office by a factor of 10. and these people that come on still supporting him i believe are the real racists. the only reason they are supporting him is because of the color of his skin. host: ok, let's go to our -- back to -- "the philadelphia inquirer," i wanted to take a look at this, talking about what "the washington post" was mentioning, the way that the white house handled the situation. it says the white house declined for three months to address sestak's unusual claim, except for repeated assurances from press secretary robert gibbs that nothing inappropriate happened. but eventually the furor grew so intense that it put mr. obama on the spot and it had to be addressed. let's go to our next caller.

this is weatherford, texas, brian, democrats line. good morning. caller: good morning. i'd just like to say -- start off with everyone in texas knows that those people in big sandy don't know what they're talking about. i would point out to big sandy that president ronald reagan offered a job, i can't remember the gentleman meas name, i heard it on one of the cable channels yesterday. this stuff goes on all the time. reagan offered the gentleman a for pay position. the job that was offered in this situation was a nonpaid position. there's no problem here. this goes on with every administration. it's just a tempest in a tea spot, and these people need to settle down and think about their lives and straighten their heads out, because they're all wrong on this. thank you. host: ok. and i wanted to make a correction from something i said earlier. the president is attending on monday the abraham lincoln

national cemetery outside of chicago, where he will be in illinois on memorial day, rather than in arlington national cemetery. let's go to our next call. little also in texas, this time in marshall. james, independent line, hello. caller: hello. host: hello, welcome. caller: yeah, i think the whole thing -- i'm 35 years old. i've been around for a while. and this whole thing seems like a big media hype. if they want some arm twisting, they need to remember president johnson. it's a big media hype, and guys say about the color of his skin, no, no, no the reason he's a good president is because he's intelligent and doesn't do with the color of his skin. if he was white, he'd still be a good president. and the people -- he's talking about people out here in texas, this is one of the biggest k.k.k. areas that you've ever seen in your life. if you ain't right and they say it all the time, and they walk around with those little banners, they got to mark that on their mailboxes, you know, i'm k.k.k. and i'm proud of it,

you know, at this mean, it's getting ugly out here, and that's all i want to say. host: let's go take a look at comments that congressman sestak made yesterday. >> congressman, were a wear that this could have been very much a misdemeanor or perhaps even a felony? >> oh, if i ever thought anything had been wrong about this, i would have reported it. >> you've consistently said that nothing inappropriate happened. is it your contention that what president clinton said, bringing up a job in relation to your senate race, would you say that's not inappropriate -- that's inappropriate or no? >> well, i was very conscious that the democratic administration did not want me in the race, and i merely looked at this as just another effort by the democratic establishment in washington, d.c., not to have me in the race. >> was it inappropriate? >> no, president clinton, there's nothing wrong that was done. host: for a different perspective, "the new york post" has this editorial,

setback lesson for new york, and it says that, sure, it's moderately interesting that the designated bulldozer in the attemptedest is a.m. disappearance turns out to have been former president bill clinton, and it's also possible to offering him a job was a crime. so the whole affair bears watching. but we say it again, the obama white house all by itself is pretty adept at shutting down senate primaries. it looks at the race of senator gillibrand and points out that she was appointed to succeed hillary clinton, and it points out that potential opponents were scuttled, including, they say, representative steve israel, democrat from long island, whom the president personally called and asked to drop out of that race. representative caroline maloney, ex-congressman harold ford, democrat of tennessee, with a strong wall street message, could have overcome

his out of state roots, as bobby kennedy and hillary clinton did before him, but as ford acknowledged, the heavy-handed tactics of obama's party bosses carried the day. that is coming to us from "the new york post." let's go to north carolina. norm, republicans line. caller: good morning. host: good morning. caller: i believe this sestak thing is just smoke and mirrors. it's taking our whole focus away from really what's going on. john edwards filled the same gap just a few months ago with his coming out about his boyfriend being the father of his girlfriend's baby, and this oil spill thing, our president didn't go down there until there was a good chance of being over. and there's other smokes and mirrors going on. watch your backs, folks. host: the "new york times"

calls it unintelligent design. they say that there does not seem to be anything terribly unethical about the white house offer, but they do say there's something strikingly unintelligent about it. why would the white house, using a former president offer mr. sestak a job? sister takes about 30 seconds, they point out, to geeling those rules approved in 1993 by president clinton himself. down in elkton, maryland, steve, democrats line, good morning. caller: good morning. i'm the host of democratic talk radio which broadcasts from lehigh valley. host: welcome. what do you think about mr. sestak? that is prime territory for this situation. caller: absolutely. well, the whole deal is sestak is a squeaky clean economic populist, and he is facing a wall street-backed, totally corporate opponent, who actually was a former congressman for lehigh valley.

actually two-fold. one is to take the focus off his record, his opponent. now, his entire political career has been, in my opinion, a scandal. he has totally served interests, which is all about big money. it's all about, you know, looking out for the economic and political powers that be, and they really want -- they're trying to associate sestak with a scandal, and there is no scandal, and they're also trying to spare the white house. this is just politics as usual. it's character assassination by the republicans. not all republicans are like that. a lot of republicans are really decent people. but these republican politicians that are bought and paid for by corporate interests will stop at nothing. there's absolutely no crime. they originally said the daily was for secretary of navy when

there was a new secretary of navy appointed a month or so before this offer was made. it's just distracted. it is a distraction. host: let's see what republican issa had to say about this. >> the rest of the republicans on the judiciary committee are today sending a letter to robert mueller, the director of the f.b.i., asking him to open an investigation in a similar fashion to the one done under the clinton white house, so-called travelgate. we believe that if the attorney general will not, as has been asked of him both in hearings and by the senate republicans, investigate this. at a minimum, allegations made and now confirmed need to be checked by law enforcement officials able to discern whether these or other criminal

codes have been violated. host: next caller is arthur on our independent line in dallas, texas. good morning, arthur. caller: good morning. yes, i just want to say, it's all about that dollar, like i was saying before, the greed, all of them are greedy up there. and honest people that work for a living. the who will idea is to have to you know, sort of setting up there, getting paid eight hours a day, trying to figure out how to rob the next dollar from the american taxpayers, and like the oil spill, for example, look how much -- there's one out there, and that's just one whale.

host: bill clinton is involved in the arkansas race. he returned to his home state ally to deliver a broadside against some of the most powerful interests in the democratic party t. using unusually vivid language to describe threats against senator blanch lincoln, clinton urged voters to resist outside forces, maken an example of the two-term democratic incumbent. he pounded the podium warning that national liberal and labor groups wanted to make her a poster child in the june senate runoff to send a message about what happened to democrats who don't toe the party line. the former president said this is about using and you manipulating your votes to terrify members of congress and members of the senate. let's go to cape cod, massachusetts, republican, tom. good morning. caller: good morning, and may everyone in the country remember what this weekend is about, celebrating and honoring our veterans.

but mr. sestak is a former admiral and a military man, and truth is power. and i believe what my father told me is when you tell the truth, you will tell it over and over again in the same fashion, and there will be no deviation from what you have heard or have seen or what you believe. and in this case, he was offered a job. to me a job is something you get paid for, not a gratuity. and becoming a senator is a very powerful, and in the end, it's a very monetary reward in that you get very many possibilities in your life during and after your senateship. so mr. sestak and everybody else have to tell the truth, and let's not deviate from the truth.

and if everybody does tell the truth, this story will be the same over and over again. but there is, in my opinion, a lot of little nuances that tell us that the truth is not being told. host: pennsylvania, democrats line, linda. hi, linda. caller: hi. i think this is indeed much ado about nothing. this whole story came out months ago when joe sestak was running against arlen speck tempt nobody really cared very much. now that sestak is running again, the republicans see a great opportunity to make this a big story, it wasn't before because they didn't care them. they only care because it's a sestak race, and now they have a chance to bring in bill clinton and start up yet another impeachment trial, and it's just too tantalizing for them to pass up. host: let's look at some of the other news coming out of

washington. the house backs jobless aids, cut health insurance health, deficit worries force democratic leaders to scale back. the senate will take up action after a week-long recess, this from the associated press in the "philadelphia inquirer." the house on friday voted to extend unemployment benefits to people mired in joblessness, but lawmakers cut off help for health insurance. money to assist with health insurance was among the tens of billions of dollars trimmed from programs produced in last year's economic stimulus bill. the 215-204 vote were forced by party moderates and conserve activities unhappy with continued spending to kill $24 billion to cash-starved states and $7 billion for the health insurance subsidies for laidoff workers. this is from the international front from the "new york times," 189 nations reaffirmed the ban on nuclear recommends.

it ended here on friday at the united nations with 189 countries reaffirming the commitment to eliminate all nuclear weapons and setting a new deadline for holding a regional conference to eliminate unconventional weapons from the middle east. let's go to our next caller in maine from prescott. rick, independent line. caller: good morning. yes, my biggest problem is i did vote for change, and i really did believe the idea of transparency in government, and the biggest thing with this, it does seem like it maybe is not much of an issue in terms of what happened, but again, the management of it and the fact that everything had to be kind of done behind closed doors and wide continue here and there, that's what's frustrating to me. this doesn't seem to be transparent. host: this is republicans line. caller: yes, good morning. this subject doesn't really concern me t. probably concerns like the rick santorum republicans who did not support pat tumy in 2004.

i'm going say with two other comments. happy birthday to j.f.k. i believe that he stole the 1960 election, but did he a great job forcing out the marijuana and harry from narcotics in 1962. now one last comment, and we got to get to the root common. one of the many speeches during february 15, 1933, president-elect f.d.r. said during a speech in miami, florida, that this marks the end of southern republicans, and pretty boy charles floyd and associate responded by firing a shot at him, but a woman grabbed the assassin's arm, and the bullet hit the chicago merit. i am sick of republicans and democrats playing f.d.r. we got to get this domestic communism out of our country. host: northridgeland hills, texas. cindy, democrats line. caller: yes, ma'am, i wanted to bring up my point here. first, i believe that this thing is getting a little bit overblown, but i am not a obama

were sent. we're going in our 10th year of a bunch of crap with the politicians, and obama was supposed to be for change, and to me, it's change for the worse. but i think on the republican side, i think they're just trying to cover up this whole thing because there are going to be investigations going on with that, so i think this situation is getting overblown, but obama to me has -- i mean, i've seen, his side with the hillary campaign, the sexism and the racism, and i think they use that had to their advantage to try to draw the politician. the republicans are not putting this as a priority right now, because that's a national security crisis. host: let's go to the "new york times." it says that mr. sestak took it as a sign that party leadership wanted to protect senator specter. he was very conscious of the democratic establishment, but he dent view it as improper.

george from new york. hi, george. caller: hi. i believe it's all nonsense. president obama has done some things that's made me uncomfortable, but he's doing the best he can. it's funny that we just added more jobs. we've got more jobs. we were talking about that, this oil spill is terrible, and i think it's a way to get our country away from that also. but according to what i saw last night on two dmpt sources that i read from, this has happened before. it happened under the eisenhower, it happened under reagan, and so this is all nonsense. when a man says smoke and mirrors, this isn't done. this is well nfpble it's been used before. it's just the hype. don't pay attention to that oil spill, though. we might have to regulate somebody on that. host: let's get the lithes

what's happening in the gulf of mexico. good morning. guest: good morning. how are you? host: good. thank you so much for joining us. guest: they're trying by pumping at a very high rate of velocity, drilling fluid into the well. right now it's not been successful, i don't think. they were cautiously optimistic. yesterday they changed their tune slightly and said that they were going to keep trying until either they were successful or they could see that they were not going to be successful. we did see the chief executive talking yesterday. what is their comment to residents in the gulf area?

guest: i don't think they're speaking too much to the residents. i was in grand isle the last couple of days, and people down there are just so angry and frustrated. there's little exchange of conversation on the b.p. person in that area was wearing a local fireman t-shirt as opposed to the b.p. logo on his shirt. host: talk to us about the president's visit to the gulf region. tell us what he did down there and who was on hand. guest: well, he first visited port, which also has oil come onshore, and he met with local leaders there. he had a long meeting. he was an hour and a half late for a news conference with reporters because he was behind closed doors with leaders. they've been very hard hit with oil. apparently he chewed out billy, who's been very vocal about what's gone right, what's gone wrong.

but i think it was well received. i do. i think this visit was well received. host: we saw images of him actually picking up a tar ball from the sandy shores there. guest: i think the more connection was made with the local leaders who have been very, very frustrated and upset, whether they were getting enough boom which corrals the oil and keeps it off shore. they've been frustrated with how many people they're getting to clean up the beaches, and i think he had a long meeting with them, and i think it helped calm him down. the president promised to put three times the man power on the beach whenever oil rolls in . he also promised that whatever materials they needed they would get. can you talk to us about what officials are hearing on the rig?

guest: i've been mostly covering top kill and what's going on in grand isle. i'm sorry. i just don't know what part. host: one thing maybe you can reflect on us. as the news comes down to the area you're in, how are local people reacting? guest: well, they're upset. they think b.p. was taking shortcuts to make more money. they see b.p. as a very greedy company. they're very angry, because this has happened at the worst time possible. it's the beginning of the fishing season, the beginning of the tour season is may, and it runs through november. there's big fishing tournaments that have been cancelled this weekend. i was down in grand isle wednesday and thursday. there's a marina there with 65 boat slips in it. there was three boats in the slips, and two of those were owned by the marina. they're devastated. this is killing their season. host: what are you going to be

watching now in the next 24 hours or so? guest: i'll be watching weather top kill is successful. i think it's very shaky right now. i think they've had some successes with it. i mean, it's a simple premise. you shoot something into the well that's heavier and faster than the oil leaking out. you try to push it back down into the well. once you get that to occur, then they're going to put a cement plug in it and try to plug it up permanently, but it's proven to be difficult. i mean, it's a mile below the surface of the water. the pressure down there is enormous. it's enormous, and it's all about the pressure. host: the president has tried to emphasize that many beaches in the gulf are open for business. it's not like the entire area is shut down in an attempt to get tourism going there. have you gotten a sense from beaches that are not yet affected if they're seeing a drop in visitors? guest: yes, they are. they're getting cancellations. people are staying away.

they're very, very worried about it. i don't know if you know about this, a quarter of the waters have been closed to fishing. when people hear those kind of things, they're staying away. they're staying away from our area. and it's true. it's not all the beaches that are affected. it's certain sections. pensacola, destin, all of those places, many even in louisiana, they're not affected. host: sandy davis, staff writer with "the advocate," thanks so much for checking in with us this morning. guest: no problem. i enjoyed t. have a nice day. host: taking a look at the "new york times," looking at hearings going on in louisiana, rig official testifies in a system failure. new details emerge about frantic final actionness of the crew aboard the deep water horizon oil rig after it exploded on april 20. an official for the company that owned the rig testified the government investigators that he tried in vain to

activate an emergency system that would shut down the well despite orders from his captain to wait. the official said the procedure was unsuccessful, but showed early signs of success. his was one of many stories recounted to a six-member panel trying to determine the cause of the disaster. the topic we're talking about is congressman sestak and the offer from the white house. welcome. caller: hello. host: can you hear us? you're on the air. caller: hello. am i on the air? host: you are. caller: this is 82-year-old navy veteran who served on two admiral staffs in the korean war.

as a republican i want to commend a fellow navy man, joe sestak, the way he's trying to stick up for what he served an oath to ssh his country, as i served my country too, and my brother served as a commander in the united states navy during world war ii. i went to the naval academy. i was given an appointment to the naval academy, which i turned down, because world war ii is over. but i went on to be granted a commission in the navy in 1951. i served for two admirals during the korean war. and i just have to say, for a fellow american who loves his country, even though he may be a democrat, i love a lot of democrats, but this is one he can truly say i love a lot better than i loved many of the people who are using tactics and strategy which i learned in

college when a nice young guy with politics to get me to step down to the job i earned to a lesser job just because i wanted to be do what he wanted me to do. well, that young man in college, well trained, went on to serve president nixon, is but he went to jail for his efforts. mr. jon ehrlichman, a friend i knew, no longer with us to defend himself, but many of my friends know the whole story. i've learned politics the hard way. i've worked hard. i haven't made much money in my life, but i'm damn proud of my background, my father, who was wounded in world war i, my brother who served on battle ships at the end of the second world war, went on to be an aviator, served for many years, but retired along with many of his fellow classmates at the

naval academy, class of 1945. when they retired en masse, their commissions took their leave, their farther you're from the navy. my brother went on to help start a division at the university of california for air naught sexicks aerospace engineering, so i know what i'm speaking of. sestak is a hero in my mind. i'd love to talk to him. i'd even give him my phone number right now because i'm available. host: well, let's two. thanks for all your calls. democrats line in chicago. hi, doris. caller: good morning. we can see how rupert murdoch directs the media. but the name of the person that ronald reagan and ed rollins

wanted to get out of the way was s.i. they offered him the job of ambassador if he dropped out of the california g.o.p. primary in 1982. nothing happened. it was a nonissue. now, abraham lincoln's cemetery that president obama is going visit is a veterans cemetery. and i buried my husband there two years ago. he was a member it was 173rd airborne, vietnam, and i think my husband and all of them buried in that cemetery are just as good as veterans that are buried in arlington or any other cemetery. so i don't think that's a problem either. thank you. caller: i was on another ship

that was hit by enemy fire and we lost people, so i know what combat is. and c-span is negligent because you still have not shown on your screen the actual wording of the statute which says that it doesn't make any difference whether it's part-time or full-time, whether it's compensated or not compensated, but there is a clear violation of law. these people don't know this. until you show it on their screen, all these people say, well, it's much ado about nothing. well, agree that, of course, you could compare it with the oil spill, it's not. but the point is, it is a violation. and when you bring clinton in, he's the certified liar, a court-certified liar. and he was inclined actually to be for sestak against specter, because he was more inclined to

be anti-war. of course, our war is a situation is what killing people and combovering us all. i'm a navy veteran when i say this, and this is memorial day, and we should learn the lessons of memorial day not to get involved in wars where we have no business. and as far as sestak, he's changed his position so he's not telling the truth now because he wants to go along with obama. host: let's go to defiance, ohio. daniel, republicans line. caller: yes, ma'am. i agree with the gentleman from virginia. as a matter of fact, the statute he is talking about is united states code section 210, and it does make this a federal felony, so the people who are saying that there's nothing here are morons.

it also makes this a punishable by $50,000 in fines and/or 10 years in prison for each and every offense 67 this is against rahm emanuel, the person who made the offer to mr. clinton to make the offer to mr. sestak. the whole point of the matter is mr. emanuel and mr. clinton should be brought up on federal felony charges. host: the philadelphia inquirer says republican lawmakers say a job offer could have violated at least two sections of federal law. elected officials are granted some flexibility. another statute makes it a misdemeanor to offer a job or anything of value in exchange for a political act or to support or oppose a candidate. white house lawyers take the position that these statutes did not apply because sestak

was clearly qualified to be on an advisory panel and because it was unpaid. the legislative history of the law suggests they were enacted to deter extortion. mobile, alabama. eric, democrat caller. hi, eric. caller: howl you doing? i just wanted to say it's very bad. i hate to see all the muscling going on between the republicans, the republicans and democrats. i mean, basically it's a very, very beautiful position, high-profile position, and this right here seems like they're going against something that's really irrelevant, because the democrats are doing their thing now, and right now we should be focused on what's going on in louisiana, here in the gulf coast area. that oil is about to come down here. this stuff right here is just a deterrent from what the real issue should be going on. memorial day weekend, i wanted to shout out to anybody who's had any kind of relative that was in the military, because

without them, we wouldn't have this freedom we have in this country today. i sure appreciate what obama is doing, because obama can do very little that he can do, because b.p. made over $245 billion last year. there's nothing really he could say that the company makes a lot of money. and when you make a lot of money like that, all you can do is just sit back and say, hey, let them do what they can do, and after they do it, they can do it. hey, obama says this and that and follows through, and august you can do is sit back and wait. host: in a photograph of the former president campaigning for congressman sestak back in 2006. let's go to south carolina. andy, independent line. caller: just a brief comment on the oil spill. i'm on my way to louisiana to take some training and participate in the oil spill response. imagine when i get there i'm going to find that a lot of the jobs are geared for them.

i know they want to put people back to work. let's get to mr. sestak. in our concert, we haven't tried, and i'm sure we won't, a government consisting of far less and centrist republican. that would tip the balance to a center of country. we're decades away from being able to do it. what's in this situation is that true, what i think of as true democrats, and people who seem to probably vote on the left side most of the time are being frozen out by the power centrist democrats tied in with this ground, rockefeller and rothschild, and with the clintons and all, they have the power of where they want it, and they kind of want to keep it there, and it's understandable, because they have a plan. but looking at -- i don't know, look at, you know, bernie

sanders, these are the people i think who, combined with some power is really something in this country. you have to wonder if the white house wouldn't like to see the ebay lady over jerry brown in california. i think we can look for this to get real silly as the time marches on here. i think it's very strange. we should try a far less and centrist republican government which is something we've never tried. the idea from the left and the monetary policy from the right i think would bring us stability. host: can i ask you a quick question? you mentioned you're going down to work on oil spill recovery efforts. is this a paid job you're looking for? caller: yes, indeed it is. i had heard something with regard to taking a couple of classes, and then you have to be willing to be deployed in different states. they're going to provide motels. b.p. has retained one company so far to do this work.

now, it's liable to expand, and they're basically stating you need to be ready to go to texas, to alabama, to florida, and to mississippi, as well as louisiana. but the classes currently are in new orleans. i would look for this to expand, especially if they can't get this stop. you may be going to mexico. good grief, you may be going to cuba. i think it's ironic after all of our fears of china, we may wind up trashing cuba's fishing industry after all these years. this could be a little change in world policy before it's over. host: thanks for all of your calls during this segment of the show. coming up next, we're talking about the declining crime rate of the united states with our guest, james alan fox. we'll be right back. >> he was a rock star. >> sunday, speaker of the house, senator, wig party founder, and five-time

presidential candidate henry clay on c-span's "q&a." this holiday weekend, nonfiction books and authors on c-span2's book tv. on afterwards, "perfect storm" author "war: embedded with the 173rd airborne in afghanistan." and a former shell president on why we hate the oil companies. three days of book tv, memorial day weekend. get the whole schedule at booktv.org. >> there are three types of people in this world. there are those that make it happen. there are those that watch it happen. and then there are those that wake up one day and say what the heck happened? >> this weekend, commencement addresses from leaders in the arts, sports, education, and the sciences, at 3:00 eastern on c-span. "washington journal" continues. host: our guest, james alan fox

sarks professor of criminology in law and public policy at northeastern university. thank you for joining us this morning. guest: my pleasure. host: we're looking at the violent crime rate, this just out, the f.b.i. says violent crime rate down again. we're looking at an associated press story that says that the crime rate in the u.s. went down in 2009 for the third year in a row, and the property crime rate fell for the seventh consecutive year. the f.b.i. reported earlier this week. the decline last year amounted to 5.5% for violent crime, compared to 2008, and the rate for property crime was down 4.9%. what's your initial reaction to that news? guest: well, it's obviously get complacent here into thinking all of our problems are over. we don't solve the crime problem. we control it. so&so long as we stop paying attention to crime, it can rebound, as it has been in the past. we've seen budget cuts in crime control initiatives, in policing and crime prevention for youth.

and this could be a problem in the years ahead, because obviously the economy is in a difficult state, which eventually could impact on crime when we spend less money and less resources trying to combat it. host: this trend of the declining crime rate, what does that reveal to you, what does it show about the culture at large? guest: well, many people fully expected with the economy in the bad shape that it is that crime rates would soar, but that's not the case. a person loses their job doesn't just say, well, i'm going to go out and rob someone to make a living. someone who loses their home has their mortgage foreclosed doesn't just go out and say, well, i'm going break into someone else's home. unemployment and crime really aren't connected, but as i said a moment ago, the way that the economy does impact on crime rate in an indirect way is through our ability to fund programs and cost, and we've been seeing some cuts in that area, and i worry about the

future. so let's not get a little bit too complacent here. let's not celebrate too loudly about this wonderful drop in crime. it could be trasatory. host: the information we're getting is looking at 2009. we'll get more information, more details from the f.b.i. as time goes on. but in looking at these initial numbers, we're seeing that there are declines in everything from robbery and murder, aggravated assault, forcible rape. is it typical for all kinds of crimes to go down, all kinds of violent crimes to go down across the board? guest: yeah, it happens. but when you say across the board, sure, it's down for every crime type in virtually every part of the country, every region. but that board that we're talking about here does not necessarily break down this situation by age, race, and gender. and as i research on how the crime rates change with different segments of population, and what we've seen

in the past few years, in this decade, is that crime rates have plummeted, particularly homicide, have plummeted among whites, among adults. look at young black males. we're still seeing a significantly high number, and maybe even growing number, of violent crimes and murders by and against young black males. so, you know, when you hear about crime rates coming down, there are some people in some neighborhoods for whom this just doesn't seem to be a reality. for them, the sound of gunfire is an every night occurrence, also frequent occurrence, and the idea that crime rates is going down is someone else's neighborhood. so these statistics are ago -- are aggregated over all populations. and we have to be careful, because there are pockets -- particularly young and poor -- where crime rates are still high and in some cases, rising. host: what does governments learn from what you're talking

about, areas where there are increased areas, where there does seem to be a system failure? guest: well, that's where we need the greatest deployment of police, but also the greatest investment of crime pleavings funding. we've seen cuts of school programs. we see schools that have inadequate funding. we see kids growing up with inadequate supervision, and they need our support. right now, we have a growing number of at-risk kids in this population, black youths, latino youths, under the age of 10. and these kids aren't going to wait around for the recession to be over to get the kind of services and assistance and programming that they need. we need to invest in these kids by what an authority figure has to say. but we wait. a few more years, till the recession is over and the economy bounces back torque deal with the needs of these kids, it could be too late.

host: when crime rates do go down, do you trace that back to programs that were available in the past? how do you look at the creelings between community involvement and investment in youth and numbers like we're seeing right now? guest: we saw in the 1990's a decline. there were a whole range of programs, from the 100,000 cops program, bill clinton's program, was slashed by the bush administration, and now it's being restored, and that's a good thing. we also saw during the 1990's an investment in after-school programs, the 21st century school project. when we look at the crime rates among youth, for example, the prime time for juvenile crime is in the after school hours, from 3:00 to 8:00 when kids were on their own, parents were working, and when bad things happen when kids are poorly monitor and had supervised. that's why we need things like boys and girls club, which did

such a great job so. we need to reinvest in these programs. now, i understand there's not a lot of money out there, but we found a way to bail out the banks, bail out the auto industry, maybe we can bail out for at-risk youth because we do have an issue there. host: you mentioned that crime has not gone down everywhere. we are seeing from the f.b.i. that the increases in murders were found in cities of 25,000 to about 50,000 people. that went down to 5.3% and also in nonmetropolitan counties. that's up 1.8%. what does that tell you? guest: it's like one day the stock market goes up by 200 points, doesn't mean our problems are over. because the next day it may go down, so when there's a volatility in these numbers, in fact, when you look at smaller communities, the numbers can go up and down. when crime rates go up, it may not be that 2009 is the bad year, it may just be that 2008 was a particularly good year.

this is the kind of issue that i'm pointing out, that there are pockets and communities where violence still remains a problem, and if we just say, well, crime rates are down, down three years in a row, let's move on to other issues where we're going to be ignoring a very difficult problem, a persistent problem. host: let's go to your calls for james alan fox. florida, good morning. caller: good morning. i turned your program on a little bit late, but i noticed that you seem to be placing the emphasis on more government control and more government spending. i've noticed that in the states where concealed carry is legal,

the violent crime rate has dropped precipitously. and in areas like chicago and d.c., where you can't own guns, the violet crime rate has gone up dramatically, and i don't think you making that correlation. guest: i don't think it's necessarily true. let's look at chicago, because chicago obviously has an issue since there's a case before the supreme court challenging their handgun stance. now, there are those who say, gee, chicago, the homicide rate went up in the late 1908's after the ban, the 1982 ban in chicago went into effect. yes, it did go up, but it went up elsewhere. across the nation, we saw soaring homicide rates in late 19780's. you break it down into homicides involving basically crime, criminal against criminal, that's when the numbers went up.

homicide involving family members went down. and in fact, i've done this analysis for a brief i submitted to the supreme court, that in chicago, about 1,000 lives have been saved because of the ban. so i challenge your statistics, it's very easy to say that, and i don't know if people believe, it but i don't think the statistics and the data bear it out. host: democrats line in madison, mississippi. good morning. caller: the first thing, i totally disagree with you. i was born in chicago. unemployment does bring on crime. you can say what you want to, unemployment brings on crime. thank you. guest: well, let me try to respond about that. if you are focused on a life of crime, if you decide that you're going to get rich by stealing drugs, dealing weapons, robbing people, the

opportunity to get a job at $8 to $10 isn't going to dissuade you. so when unemployment rates go up, the crime rate doesn't go up. again, there is a connection through how we spend money on programs. there are some other connections too. for example, when unemployment rates are high, we need to look at these things as embezzlement and fraud and insurance fraud, for example. which can deprow when people are desperate to find money. when unemployment rates go up, crime rates don't go up. i do agree with the caller that one of the issues we have to continue to deal with is a level of hopelessness and despair, people who believe that there's just no opportunity, the american dream is a nightmare. my only opportunity for advancement is not the job

market, it's the gang. one thing about gangs and why it's so appealing is they're always recruiting. even when companies aren't hiring, they are. and i'm you have to be is zpuff loyal and you can advance all the way to the top of the gang. can't say that about lots of other areas of life. host: new york city, ron, independent caller. good morning. caller: yes, good morning. it's just an interesting little fact that i'm aware of, having been with the medical examiner's office in new york city. back in, i think it must have been 1992, there was a very, very cold winter, and the streets of new york were frozen. there was ice on the streets for essentially a month. and during that time, there was a sudden diminution in homicides to the point where we were basically not even being called about any of them. of course, mayor giuliani and commissioner bratton and so on

all wanted to take credit for this, as a result of all of their police controls, but it happened so precipitously. we all assumed the crime rate was going to increase, and it didn't. all of the explanations were never -- were never accounted for that sudden diminution, and it never really picked up after that. .

it was tremendous violence on the street to try to carve out market shares. everyone wanted to be to get the greatest market share and it was survival. and you had gang members fighting each other for business. eventually, the crack market settled down. there's still crack, but the demand was not out of control and crime rate started to climb. so a lot of reasons why crime rates went up in the 1980s and then down in the 1990s to a much more normal and usual level in new york and elsewhere.

>> there is a decrease in motor vehicle theft. and that's looking at property crime. are these numbers surprising? or maybe they're just surprising to people who aren't as knowledgeable about this area as you are. because in this troubled economy it certainly seems like theft, breaking into cars, things like that would be the area that could perhaps increase. >> that's not breaking into cars. breaking into cars and taking contents is not a theft of a vehicle, auto theft. you know, maybe with gas prices what they are and people driving less, the demand for stolen vehicles, particularly expensive ones, may also be off. but, again, you shouldn't just -- in 2008 to 2009, if we take a longer view, we find sometimes when crimes rates drop by a large degree it's

because we're comparing it to an unusually good year. i remember, for example, in chicago, about a year and a half ago chicago had a new commissioner and all of a sudden homicide started going up and people were pointing fingers and saying what's going on? maybe the new commibser is to fault. something's wrong. well, if you look at the numbers, yes, homicide to chicago had gone up but the year against which we're counting, the previous year, was the second best year they had had for two decades. so when crime rates go down sharply for many, many years, a little bit of a bounce back is not to be unexpected. and that's essentially what happened in chicago. in fact, in the following year they went back down again. >> do you learn anything by looking at which crimes are on the move or which have decreased? i completely understand your point about it's also relative and you need to take it not

just year to year. >> yeah. the crimes that are most reliable indicators of the what's going on in terms of crime trends are homicide and robbery. the crime of rape obviously is a serious, it's hard to interpret because to some extent the rape rates reflect not just the commission of rape but the willingness of victims to report rape. and those report rapes are oftentimes low. look at larsni. that's a theft of something worth $10 or $5. so most are low-level crimes. those go up and down having a lot to do with what victims choose to report or not. so the crime that's just the most reliable are homicide and robbery. and indeed, we do see a decline right now. that's great. let's talk about the reasons because we haven't done that too much. we have first an aging population. the country is getting grater,

the babeie boomers are babies any more. and we have more moving out of their crime prone years and into the least. the fastest growing segment is people over a and they just don't tend to commit crimes. we also have large number of americans behind bars. we tend to overuse incarceration as a form of punishment. but we have millions of americans behind bars and they're incapacitated at least while in prison. we also need to give some credit to the cops because they deserve it. we've seen in the past 10, 15 years a whole different approach to policing using mapping and crime information to be strategic about where to assign cops and when to assign cops. and finally technology. it's hard these days to commit a crime without being captured on camera somewhere. so technology like cameras, surveillance, some things like

boston we have a shot spotter which is the acuse tick device which allows the police to determine immediately when and where a gun has been fired, which increases the probability that the perpetrator will be apprehended and the victim will be saved. >> our guest is a professor of crimnoling at northeastern university. you can also read his columns at boston.com. we have a question coming from us on twitter. >> we don't stand a very good shape. our crime rates are higher, particularly homicide rate where it remains two to three times most of our allies and in europe and other parts of the world. and yes part of it is guns. i mean, clearly we're two thirds of our homicides are gun related. but it's not just guns. because if you look at the

non-gun homicide rate, our rate of killing without guns is still higher than other countries like england and canada and japan overall. so if you took all the gun homicides away, we would still be one of the world leaders, unfortunately. >> let's go to oklahoma. joe, republican's line. caller: hello. you need to update your research there, guys. like corruption. let me just give you an example here. i've got a friend who got a ticket in texas. she gets arrested up here and extradicted back down to dallas, texas for one lortab pill prescription. now, that's too much money being wasted on nothing. she's a parent. does that make her kids at risk when her parents have been extradicted for one pill? and crippings is a big issue. -- corruption is a big issue. i've seen on the local news up here where the police departments have been basically

stealing money from the board of education with a ghost employee scams and stuff. or how about your medical examiner of this state? he's selling body parts. now, those are real troubling issues right there. and you're fixed on an issue that revolves around money. guest: i don't know the situation in texas and the medical examiner. so i really can't comment. is there corruption in the criminal justice system? yes. is there corruption in other parts of our society? yes. i am not going to suggest that the crime rate is high in the united states because we're just a corrupt criminal justice system. certainly there are bad people in the system who are doing a bad job. but you know, most of the people who work in our courts and police and corrections do a good job. we're always hearing when a cop is corrupt that is news worthy. when a judge gives a sentence that is too lenient, that's

news worthy. when a criminal gets out of prison and commits a crime, that's news worthy. we never hear things that are right. when a prison gets out of prison ant doesn't recommit, we don't hear about that. or when a cop does the right job or a judge does the good job. we don't hear those stories but they do exist. i don't want to white wash things. the criminal justice system absolutely has problems. but it's also not a corrupt system or bankrupt system, i should say. host: these are preliminary numbers from the f.b.i. looking at 2009. what do law enforcement agencies take away from them? what do they read out of these? guest: well, they read that we can make a difference and they can make a difference. the good thing about crime right now, at least is it's not out of control. we've seen, sure, some cities where crime rates are higher, some neighborhoods where crime rates are higher.

but we know that we have successful, tried and true crime fighting techniques. some of them related to policing, some of them related to crime prevention strategies and neighborhood investments. and we can make a difference. now, could we use more resources? absolutely. we saw, for example, in this decade in 2000s, the number of police officers in cities over a quarter million in this country dropped by nearly 10%. largely related to the fact that the cops program was slashed. now, we have to consider whether that's the best move. cutting police resources, what happened was youth crimes started to increase. may not have been the best idea. host: our next caller up is in new york state, craig, independent caller. caller: hi. i would just like to say as far as crime goes, i know there's specifics as far as murders

going down. i don't believe whether it's the ban on guns is going to make a difference. if someone wants to commit a crime with reapses there's a way to do it. and as far as my main opinion is there may be less people being caught for stealing money, but the people who are stealing are stealing a larger volume of it. you may have people who don't steal $10,000 and people who steal $10,000, but so 1000. so i think mon terrell the crime is actually going up as far as the amount of money and the amount of crime. but, yeah, homicides are down. i don't believe it's because of the ban on gun or things like that. guest: in terms of things like embezzlement, i agree with you. and we've seen high profile cases in fraud and

embezzlement. but those are not counted in these crime stat tiss ticks. the crime rate is homicide, rape, robbery, burglary, auto theft. street crimes where someone writes a bad check, where someone embezzles money from the job, where someone commits insurance fraud by staging an accident and trying to collect from the insurance company, none of those things are included in the crime statistics. they never have been. and that's why to some extent the crime rate, the official f.b.i. crime rate is a measure of certain kinds of crimes and not the ones that the caller was talking about. host: democrat's line, jenny, louisville, kentucky. caller: good morning, mr. fox. can you hear me? guest: i sure can, loud and clear. caller: ok. i've been listening to you and everything. but you know, a lot of our crime with our young people, i believe that if a lot of

families, if they would discipline their children at home and raise their children, then we wouldn't have as many problems as we have with the young people. but people, parents now, seem to just -- i mean, they'll tell their parents to go, they're going here and they end up somewhere else. next thing you know, they're in jail. as far as our f.b.i. and our police department, i think they're doing a fabulous job. i don't believe in cutting when it comes to our police department, they are needed. they cannot just a few do the whole entire, keep up with all this. guest: we're asking our cops to do more with less, particularly since 9/11 we've added another element to the play, which is help with fighting terrorism. and we've also taken and

shifted some resources federally to traditional law enforcement to homeland security. so we really have robbed from peter to pay for paul. we've diminished the ability of cops to pay for the issue. but let me go back to the first thing you raised about discipline. i'm not sure it's really so much discipline as it's supervision. and there are unfortunately too many kids who have far too little supervision and monitoring. if you look at children under the age of six, about 40% of them live in a home where there's either a single parent working full time or in a two career home where both parents work full time. i don't want to blame parents. we're always quick to point fingers at parents. we need to assist families, not assail them. and there's a lot of blame, for example. bill cosby, remember, and even president obama when he was on the campaign trail on father's

day was talking about black fassers not doing their jobs. could there be greater involvement? yes. but let's assist them, let's help single parent families in raising their kids. and that's where you have things like extengeded school hours, after school programs, sparts programs. because most parents are well meaning and would like to have a greater role in the upbringing of their kids. it's just that they can't. they're working two jobs, three jobs, and it's just very difficult. and we need to step in and help them, not blame them. host: do you have an example of the communities that you can share with us where it's not necessarily an effort coming from the government but it's community efforts, church efforts, sort aff that grass roots support helping with the children? guest: i think you can find it everywhere. part of it is private. i mean, when i mention boys and girls clubs, part of it is public.

but there is lots of private support. you have neighbors who are trying hard to volume tier their time in thins like sports leagues. because one or two parents who spend their saturdays or after school hours with eight, ten, 12 kids, they're doing a tremendous service. and it's obviously not a paid service. and then we have of course the clergy in boston and other cities they've done a great job opening up their facilities, their churches, which are there seven days a week even though hardly used on six of them. and their time and their effort, to try to help kids go on the straight and narrow. >> host: our guest, the author of the books, including the will to kill. understanding serial and mass murder. let's go to twitter where we have a comment from jason.

guest: well, that is a very popular theory. it's hard to experiment with that. there are people who believe that we legalize crimes -- drugs and all of our problems are over. some of our problems would be over, absolutely. but it may also create other problems and init would be very difficult to experiment. obviously there are communities, our states that have decriminalized certainly marijuana in massachusetts we have and we're certainly waiting now to see what the impact. i don't expect much impact. but we start dealing with more of the harder drugs there could be issues. and i think there's two sides of the debate there. you look at other countries that have taken a different approach. and i think there's two ways to look at that data as well.

i don't know, and i'm not willing to wait to experiment with that. host: from the f.b.i. website they have a graffer that shows violent crime by the numbers. looking at the regions of the countries west, midwest, south and northeast. in the western area it looks like violent crime went down. and the midwest. in the south and the northeast. do these numbers give you any insight? guest: not really. but let me go back to an issue before. we talk about incarceration. and we have about 2 million americans behind bars. we have precipitously increased the number of people we put behind in prison over the past 20 years. and the good news about that is that it has contributed to lower crime rates. the bad news, besides the cost of such an initiative is that eventually these guys get out. and we're not doing a lot of good things with inmates while

in prison to try to ensure that when they get out they will not reoffend. right now one of the big catch phrases is reentry. trying to set a program so that inmates who are released from prison have support. but reentry programs should begin from the day inmates go into the prison, not just six months before they get out. give you one awful statistic. 20 years ago, there were about 350 college education programs in prisons around america. now there are about 12. in my state of massachusetts, in 1993, there were 2300 inmates who were taking college courses taught behind bars. now there's 300. the reason why is because in 1994 the federal government cut the eligibility of inmates for pell grants for federal financial aid and the colleges doing these programs behind bars trying to provide inmates

with an education, a basic tool that they need, just couldn't do it any more because the federal decided to stop it. why? because americans were complaining. i can't send my kid to college, why should i pay for those inmates? i think that's a little short sighted. and unfortunately we're doing less now to prepare inmates for successful return to the community, doing less in terms of education, job training. and we need to do more. host: charles from arkansas. republicans line. caller: good morning, you say it's not discipline. why do they have very little crime in singapore? why did the crime in australia when the guns were taken back and zwrout laws, the outback area and the rural areas, the crime went up? explain to me why there is very little crime in singapore. caller: singapore is a very different kind of country. the population is different. in terms of demographics,

economic situation is different. and indeed, it is a fairly oppressive legal system. i'm not sure in america we're ready for that. i certainly wouldn't want it. crime unfortunately is one of the prices that we pay for our freedoms. and i think many americans, perhaps most americans, would not like to see a shift in the way that our country is operated particularly in terms of the criminal justice system. where we cane people and punish people. in draconian ways for relatively low-level offending. host: the united kingdom has increased security. they have cameras all over their streets in places like london but there has been a bit of a pushback now with the new administration coming into power looking at privacy issues. can you give us some insight on how that has affected the uk? guest: it really hasn't helped. a colleague of mine, brendan

she will f he and david farington have a new book where they studied crime rates and surveillance in the uk. and found that it hasn't made a big difference. now, are there advantages to having cameras everywhere? yes. not so much in detering criminals from crime. it does, however, help to some degree in terms of apprehension. one of the tools that we have of course in trying to identify who did what is if it happens to be caught on camera. so cameras have a role in crime fighting, but let's not oversell it because it really doesn't deter criminal behavior to any great degree. host: north carolina, democratic caller. caller: i just want to make a comment about one of the issues about the crime and crime rates. i think it's important that people understand that so many

middle-class individuals, their entire life style depends upon crimes. if we were to eliminate crimes, certain jobs, obviously from lawyers to judges to social workers to many other segments of the population that enjoy their middle lifestyle on the basis of individuals in crime or whether or not individuals go to jail. so i think that is also important that that issue is looked at. because until we kind of -- i guess how can we actually attack crime when you have so p many people who are actually enjoying their lifestyle because of the criminal behaviors of others? guest: i have to say it's a huge operation, and many people indeed as you say are employed in prosecuting and punishing and catching criminals. now, i don't think we'll ever

get to a point where we have no crime and therefore these people just aren't needed. that's never going to happen. but let's say that we somehow eliminated homicide, eliminated rape, eliminated robbery. you know what happens? likely what will happen is we would respond very aggressively to crimes that were much lower level. maybe spitting, maybe not buckling your seat belt. there's a famous book that talks about society saying that if we were a society of saints we would find some way to figure out who the deeveyants were and punish them. so no matter where we have, if we eliminated street crime we would still have lawyers because lawyers would find things to lawyer about and we would still have cops because we would be punishing some people for some events. it may not be robbery. it may be something which we now think is relltiffle minor. but in-- relatively minor.

but indeed society changes in terms of our norms and laws. it adjusts. and if we didn't have these very serious crimes, we would legislate less serious behavior and call it crimes. host: mis, welcome. caller: thank you. i somewhat disagree with the basic premise of -- guest: that means you somewhat agree too? caller: right. guest: go ahead. caller: but i always look at crime and consider british petroleum and a whole bunch of corporate crime as violent crime. but to my question. has any thought been given to the fact that police departments manipulate crime statistics? whenever a mayor runs for office the first thing he has

the police department do is to make the statistics go down. and also the fact that federal funds is based on statistics. so there's no funds out there for the police departments now. so obviously they are -- the crime is going to go down. but once federal funds are available, the amount of funds that they can receive, the crime rate is going to go back up. and thanks. guest: sure. is there fudging of data? yes. we've seen examples of crimes that weren't counted that should have been counted. we saw in philadelphia a year or two ago, we saw it in houston, texas. it does happen. a part of it may be corruption, part may be poor recordkeeping but it does happen. yes, on the other hand we see that decline this crime in the past ten years in this country is so ube quit tuss it's hard

to suggest that all the police departments one day got together and said we're all going to shave about 10% off the top. so, yes. you have to take crime statistics not just with a grain of salt but maybe the entire salt shaker because there is sometimes fudging of data, misclassification of data. if they catch someone that may record it one way, if they don't catch someone it may be recorded another way. yet, overaurblings i think that crime, the crime rate is a fairly good barometer, particularly if you look at homicides and robberies indicated before, it's very hard to fudge the homicide numbers. it has happened. there have been cases where homicides have not been counted, and i'll bring up houston as an example again. but for the most part, it's hard to ignore a dead body when it exists and it's hard not to count it. host: let's go to illinois. james, republican. caller: thank you for taking my call. good morning, america.

afe question. first, i want to comment. in the south side of chicago the black on black violence gun crimes, it's so terrible. there's actually been more gun crimes, more murders in south side of chicago than there have been soldiers killed in iraq since the very first day of the war. and that's really terrible. my question is, if we remove the murder rate from chicago in the state nationwide stat tiss ticks, would that drop the murder rate greatly? what do you think? guest: well, in chicago if i recall the number from 2009, i think it was in the high 400s, which would be about 5% of the homicides in the u.s. so if you eliminated chicago numbers, the homicide rate would go down. but i'm not sure you should be eliminating the numbers for one city.

i agree there's issues in chicago and elsewhere. and that's what i brought up before that there are pock oats, there are segments of -- pockets, neighborhoods in which crime rates couldn't to soar. yet other neighborhoods, more affluent ones where crime is coming down so sharply. that overall when you delow it together, crime rates are low. so we shouldn't be blinded to the fact that we still have problems, and we need to direct our attention there. host: what are the challenging in battling violent crime in small cities versus larger cities? where murders in cities 25,000 to 50,000 range? guest: i believe if you go back a couple years, you'll find that those are also places where crime, homicides were going down. now they've just come back up. but in terms of the rate of crime in those cities, the

problems in small and medium sized cities just doesn't compare to some of the big cities. like detroit, as i mentioned before. so again, you shouldn't focus too much on just that one little statistic that here's this one group where homicide rates are going up. in fact, i will predict that next year, 2010, homicide rates for that group will go down. host: you talked about the big cities. but what about those smaller and mid-sized cities? guest: unfortunately, a lot of the crime issues of gangs, for example, have spread out to medium and smaller communities. when in the 1990s when we were very successful in fighting gangs in l.a. and boston and new york and elsewhere, the gangs didn't give up. they found better places to go where the resistance wasn't quite so strong. where the cops, where the police departments weren't large, where they weren't

trained in identifying and dealing with gangs. so a lot of the gang activity which started in the coast, particularly the big national gangs, started to spread out to the rest of america because there was lots of good business in smaller places like little rock and less police resistance to their presence. host: let's go to jerry in alabama. democratic caller. caller: yes thank you for taking my call here. in the state i live in, and i lived in texas and when you've got people on the stock market selling stock like cheney and the boys were all invested down in south texas, they tried to do something about it. but any time you start making money off prisons and putting them on the stock market. isn't there something wrong with this picture? guest: you mean private prisons? caller: yes. guest: i'm not sure that's our biggest issue, the fact that

some people are making money off of operating prisons. we unfortunately had a greater need for prisons because we're sending many more americans to years behind bars, perhaps too many. in fact, if you look at half of the inmates are sent there for nonviolent crimes, we could deal with the problem you're bringing up, which is the need for privatization of prisons by reducing the number of people we send to prison. prison should be for the people who are dangerous, who shouldn't be living among us. there are other ways to punish community sanctions home detention. those who are not dangerous, drug offenders and property crimes. but we seem to be in love with this country with locking people up. lock them up, throw away the key. and there's a price to be paid for that. we also tend to send people to

prison far longer than any other country. our sentences are extremely long. people say oh, i've got 5 years, i only got 15 years, like they understand what it's like to be in prison for 5 years. we've got prisoners now who have been there 20 years, 30 years whose criminal history is a real criminal history who are no longer dangerous, and perhaps we could remove those people and find other ways to deal with those individuals and therefore reduce our dependency on prisons including private prisons. host: our guest james alan fox is the author of violence and security on campus from preschool through college. he's a professor at northeastern university. thanks so much for being with us. guest: my pleasure. host: coming up next we'll be talking about earthquakes. but first, let's take a look at

this week's news through the ice of political cartoonists.

host: our guest, the associated coordinator about the iretsdzquakse hazard. we want to tap your knowledge. of course we have a lot of experience but talk to us about where they come from and how they originate. some of the things we hear about but maybe you can giver us a bit of a primer. guest: earthquakes result from the large forces in the earth

and a lot come from the plates. the sections are very slowly being driven across the surface of the earth. and where those come together or pull apart or slide past each other are very large forces and cause them to jerk as they move. some of the earthquakes are actually inside these plates. for example, the united states all sits on the north american plate for the most part. and we have earthquakes mostly along the west coast where we have plate boundaries but we also have earthquakes within the united states because of large forces acting on the rocks. host: talk to us about measuring an earthquake. we hear about the readings but how does that work and how do folks measure them? guest: we have size momtters around the globe. and we have concentrated numbers of them. what it is is basically a weight on a spring.

when it moves, the weight stays still and we measure the difference in the position of the weight and the machine. it's a little more complicated than that because you can imagine the weight. but in essence we're measuring the vibration of that machine through weights and springs. and these days that's turned into an electrical signal that goes across either the cell network or satellite network or internet comes back. ours is in denver, colorado. and there, we look at those signals, our computers do, and very quickly assess what the location is and the size based on how much the ground shakes and how long. host: talk to us about the earth quakes we've seen in the past six months. we've had massive amounts of deaf station. what have we learned from these earth quakes in the jee logic sense. guest: it really has been quite a six months.

we've had the haiti earthquakes, which is among the worst, in the history of mankind probably number five. we also had the chile earth quake. now that wasn't as big a humanitarian disaster but one of the large earthquakes we've recorded. and we've had a number of others as well. this year there have been eight magnitude seven or above. there's a few things we learned from that. one is that we are constantly reminded by these large earthquakes, especially the news worthy ones, that we live on an active planet, that we live earthquake risk. the two biggest of the year were haiti and chile. and the haiti earthquake was a lesson in what not to do in terms of earthquake preparedness. haiti as a country does not have a lot of background earthquakes.

there's not been a major earthquake there for hundreds of years. they were very unprepared. there was no building code or construction practice that would reflect the risk that exists. when the earthquake happened it was a direct hit on a very vulnerable population. in terms of lessons for the united states, there's not a lot from haiti except there are lot from haiti except there are parts of the world that are extremely vulnerable. and the united states actually does quite a bit of work to try to help areas of the world identify their risk, how much level of risk there is, and help with generate some ideas about how to deal with that. the other eertsquake of great interest is chirl chile. they had a lot of lessons to the united states, and that's because chile is a very modern society. the buildings are built to modern codes just like in the united states. many of the buildings in chile were designed by american firms. and so, as soon as that earthquake happened all of

these codes were tested in a way that they've not been tested in the united states probably since the north ridge earthquake in the 1990s. so earth structural engineer in the country was looking to find out does this work, does this technique work, how does the ground interact with the buildings and so forth. so a very constructive earth quake in that way. host: what about usgs. guest: one is we monitor the earthquakes for the country and report on them with the national science foundation we operate the global net woork and we are responsible for reporting on earthquakes. over the last 20 years we've developed the sophistication of the numbers of things we can report on very quickly. for example right after a large eerttedsquake anywhere in the globe we not only can tell you on the internet or to push to your cell phone what the magnitude and location was. we can also say what the shaking was, how it was

distributed, how many people were shaken, and we're working on products that will also say what's the likely range of casualties and costs. this is providing situational awareness. this is providing a snapshot of the earthquake soon after it occurs so that appropriate response can begin to happen. people know where the shaking was wors, how big a humanitarian problem it may be. or, that it's not going to be a problem at all. this was a big earth quake but way out to sea. host: our guest is the earth quake hazards program associate coordinator with the u.s. gee logical survey. you can join the conversation. the numbers are on the bottom of your screen. we have the graph here from u.s. gs, your website. looking at hazards in the u.s. and puerto rico and has in red areas of the country that are essentially more at risk, more

in hazard. and then all the way going down in the color grid down to white conare years that are not at risk. we see california, alaska, parts of hawaii. talk to us about the parts of the united states most at risk. guest: again, the plate boundaries are responsible for the biggest risk running down the west coast is the boundry between the north american plate and the pacific plate. the san andreas fault runs from california into the gulf of california in mexico. and that fault produces large earth quakes every once in a while, the 19 o 6, the 1857 which was its twin off of what was late tore become los angeles. and that will cause large earth quakes again. up in the pacific northwest we have a small plate that's forcing its way under north america that's responsible for the cascade volcanos, it was responsible for a huge earthquake in the year 1700

that some day will repeat again. that's really our chile earth quake. estimates of what that could be range from 8.5 to 9. as both an earthquake and tsunami of course. and again, there's another large boundry off of alaska that was responsible for the huge 1964 earth quake that caused a lot of damage to anchorage. host: the big question that all of us will ask is how do you get better e at predicting earth quakes? and given the large earthquakes that have happened, does it give us any insight into what we could expect for parts of the country and the united states? guest: we do study earth quakes abroad to learn not only lessons about structural engineering but lessons about how the faults work. and we monitor earthquake faults to see what indications that those faults may give that they are preparing themselves to produce earthquakes.

we've been disappointed in our attempts to predict earthquakes in the short term, to look at a fault and see indications that it's about to go. we have been successful, i think, quite successful in looking at the hazards from a longer term, identifying which faults can produce earthquakes, when they have in the past, how big they're likely to be, how much they're going to shake. that map you showed is the national seismic hazard map, a product from the united states survey. we produce that about every six years and that goes into the building codes. that tells the code makers which parts of the country needs to be made more structurally safer. host: let's go to marshall texas. jane is calling. guest: i have a question. just predicted, i'm calling from texas but i'm from california. and the reason we left was because of the earthquakes. and what i want to understand is why if you can predict all

the earth quakes why like the last five, places you know the fault lines are going through and to the valley why are you still getting building permits? why are they still allowing building permits, places where there's like sar din can's? and they're still getting building permits. and if that sucker hits, they're rolling down that hill and they're all dead. guest: i understand your question, which is a good one. the fact is it is possible to build good buildings near earth quake faults that will withstand strong shaking. the trick is to know what the shaking is going to be and to build the building appropriately. for example, in california the seismic codes are quite strict. california also has a law which defines which faults are active and likely to have earthquakes and within those zones there's

quite severe restrictions on the use of the land, the upgrading of buildings and so forth because those are the zones most likely shaking. the biggest problem we have is in some parts of the world and country we have a rather poor idea about how likely that shaking will be. the other big problem is that we have a lot of buildings that were built in places and with building techniques that did not take into account the real shaking hazard. and those buildings are a problem. the buildings are very expensive to now take and upgrade to a size mick li fit state. for example, the worst example of course is port-au-prince haiti. the buildings have know seismic code at all. they're poorly built for the most part. what do we do about that? relocate people? refit the buildings? rebuild the buildings? those are hard things to decide, especially for a

country that doesn't have a lot of resources. in the united states we tend to have more resources, we can make intelligent decisions about how much to invest in shoring up buildings that already exist, how much to invest in making sure that our new buildings are psych mickly fit and how much to -- seismically fit. and how much to avoid this area because that is just too strong shaking or too likely that an earth quake will cause landslides or the ground will fail when the earth quake occurs. we can make those decisions. host: let's get deeper into the concerns. this is coming from the website looking at california area probability. and the usgs has put it at more than 99%. 6.7 or greater quakes capable of causing extensive damage and loss of life. and this map shows the distribution throughout the state of california the look likelihood of having a near by earth quake rupture within three to four miles.

guest: this study looked at the likelihood of earthquakes of a range of sizes and then it focused on 6.7. and the reason it did that is because that was the size of the north ridge eereds quake in 1994 that caused a concentrated damage in los angeles. and this is looking at the likelihood that there will be a north ridge side or larger earthquake over 30 years, typical home mortgage, a typical adult lifetime or career. and, yes, the number is quite high. it's almost certain that there will be at least one of those earth quakes sometime in the next 30 years. we can't say when or there. there's a variety of places it could occur. in some of those places it's going to be a big problem. if it's near los angeles or san francisco, a populated area, then, yes. if it's offshore northern california, it's in the central valley where there's relatively spars population, it may not be

as big a deal. host: baltimore, maryland. caller: hello. i know this is going to sound crazy. about six months ago, i live in west baltimore and i know that columbia, maryland is prone to small tremors. i felt the ground shake and i live in west baltimore. i talked to someone else also who previously had felt the same thing. i'm wondering if we felt like little tremors, real slight. is there a probability there could be something large in that area? columbia is like halfway between baltimore and washington. i mean, if i could feel it sitting in my basement, i'm wondering in the probability is high or it's just a small shake. guest: well, a couple of comments. one is it's possible to feel small earthquakes even down to magnitude 2, though typically 2.5 or 3 is where they start to be felt by many people. if you think you felt shaking you can go to our website,

earthquake.usgs.gov. or just go to usgs.gov and go from there. and within a few minutes of an earth quake of some size it will be on a map. you can see information about it, its time and size. we even have a feature called, did you feel it? and if you felt an eeredsquake you can fill out a map and contribute to the distribution of shaking. now, your second question was does a small shake indicate that there's a big one coming. it is possible for any small eerttedsquake to be a foreshok of a larger one coming later. it's unlikely, maybe a one out of 20 chance. just the fact that an area has some occasional small eerttedsquakes doesn't mean there's a hazard of a very large one. again, you can go to our website. we have map, we have actually a concentrated page with discussions and map and so forth for every state talking about the earth quake hazards,

talking about the history of earth quakes in the state. you can look at the history of maryland. there have been eerttedsquakes that have caused problems but never really up to the devastating level. we're relatively fortunate in virginia, maryland, d.c. host: how many occur daily worldwide? guest: that's a good question because you have to ask what's the size. in any given year there's anywhere from a dozen or so magnitude 7 earthquakes sometimes more, sometimes less. so one every three days or so on average. there's a couple or three magnitude 5 eertteds quakes every day. every time we step down one level we go by a factor of 10. every day there's many magnitude 4s, you know, you get down small enough and there's millions of them. it's just nobody ever feels them. host: let's go to our next caller in arlington, virginia. caller: i do have some

information about the earthquake, i can tell you because i don't know whether you know of this or not. what happened in, it is a relidge -- religious aspect. mohammed wrote, when you see earthquakes happening frequently, the world is coming to an end. out of five countries, and i will give you the name. the gulf, like saudi, kuwait, most extreme country. and also any mosque, even built by a tooth pick will not be damaged. on tsunami, everything was destroyed. you can see the 9.1 earthquake, but 27 mosques wasn't even touched. not only that, almost 500 people survived inside of the mosques. that's an area -- scenario. so there is no building exempt from that earthquake, period.

and if you don't believe me, read it in the koran that will tell you. if you study it, you go in and you will see it's the truth about earthquakes. guest: thank you. it certainly is possible to build buildings that will withstand earthquakes. those mosques were extremely well built. that was very forte in the great tsunami in sumatra. when we look around the world, a lot occurs around a the eek torle regions. those turn out to be parts of the world in which there's a lot of development, a lot of population growth and so forth. this is an area where we need to use all the information we can to understand where the hazards are and how to build for that growing population in a way that makes sure that the population is going to be safe. not only from earthquakes of

course, hurricanes, tsunamis, and any of the other hazards as well. but earth quake shaking, we can understood what the shaking is going to be. the trick is making sure that the building practices are in place so when that construction is done it can be up to the level of those wonderful mosque that is did not suffer either from the shaking or tsunami and make sure people are safe. host: how much has technology changed in helping usgs and other organizations predict earthquakes and then learn from them? guest: really, the century has been incredible. we look at the 19 o 6 eerttedsquake as kind of the birth of the modern era. that was the first time where we had a large onland earth quake in the developed world that was very well recorded and extensively studied. and the science was kind of primed at that point. we didn't understand why there were these faults and these large forces, but the

scientistses who studied that earthquake and that fault put together the understanding that forces grow along faults and that faults will eventually leap forward, releasing energy that causes earth quakse. and from that point forward, it really stimulated intense study of earthquakes, intense recording. there was systemic installation of size mom ters that gave us indication about how things work. so over the century we have technological advances in the measuring of earth quakes. of course, in the last few decades we have computer programs and the ability to bring back earthquake information quickly and then make models that can quickly analyze them. and then on the other side we had the technology that alluzz us to take that information and turn it into superior buildings, now that we have an understanding about shaking, there will be better construction practices and lots

of examples to build from. host: question from twitter. guest: that's an excellent question. as i said, we can't predict that there's an earth quake about to happen. but an interesting thing is that once an earth quake starts, size mick waves travel out from that fault and what we're trying to do is as quickly as possible gather information from tools to tell us about what happened and then calculate what the shaking distribution has been. if we do that fast enough, we can actually gather information close to the epi center, calculate the shaking distribution, and put that information out before the seismic waves have gotten far away. this is called earthquake early warning and it has been implemented in a few locations. japan has the last two years a national earthquake early warning system. you can actually get earthquake warnings on your cell phone or in a device on the wall of your house that will say shaking in

12 seconds. not -- 9, 6, 3, 2, 1. and allows you to get under a desk. allows you to shut off equipment or whatever. the usgs is partnering with universities and the state of california, cal tech berkeley, to study earthquake early warning. we have an advanced national size mick system in california and around the country and we are studying to see what improvements will be necessary to bring warnings to the united states. i think it could be quite exciting. host: sam, independent caller. caller: good morning. i'm sure as you know i live right here in west tennessee very near the infamous fault which occurred in 18 11 and 1812. i ran across an article that, on the internet that was a letter to the editor at the new

orleans pick yune. there's a gentleman on the flat boat who was adjacent to new mad rid on the mississippi river when that earth quake first occurred in 18 11. and it ended up in the saturday evening post. and reading that was like, it seemed like something of major biblical proportions that occurred. as you know, this area was called the shakes for many, many years. to a couple of questions. you know, i used to carry earthquake insurance on my home here. but as i read the policy, it said any aftershocks would not be covered. and as you know, the big one occurred in i think january, february of 1812. there was very little damage

done. i mean, there was a lot of damage done, bells rung in boston, charleston, south carolina had damage. it was a horrible event. but the population here was so spars that little life was lost. two questions. what about the earth quake insurance in an area like this? and secondly, it's my understanding that the cities of memphis and st. louis, because this occurred so long ago, are not really that readily earth quake prepared in their building codes. guest: very good question. and i'm glad that you brought it up. we're coming up on the 200th anniversary of the new mad rid sequence. these occurred in december, january, and february of 18 2011, 1812. they were very large, located

in that tennessee, kentucky, missouri area along the bit of destruction in the area. there are quite a number of written accounts of it. and putting that, the written accounts together with jeelogic evidence which comes from sand blows, these sand volcanos caused by the severe shaking of the ground that are still visible to this day around the region, gee ologists have put together a pretty good study for those earthquakes. we don't know how big they were. they were probably at least magnitude 7 each of them. some estimates they were quite a bit higher than that. we also can look back in the geologic record and see those sand volcanos from prior versions of these, which gives us the indication that they may happen again. so there's a considerable hazard there. also, the region is subject to many small earthquakes and some of those are large nouf be

damaging even if they don't get up to that magnitude 7 level. we're working with partners to study this area quite well and over the next couple years you're going to see quite a lot of information coming out about those earth quakes that happened 200 years ago and also about the hazards of the region. there's a large earthquake exercise being run by the federal government on how it would respond to such a thing. very interesting area. . .

guest: you do want to have it did to get damage. it takes some looking into. >> our guest, michael blanpied is the earthquake hazards program associate coordinator. there is an article today in the philadelphia inquirer looking at a volcanoes. how related are the earth's movements? we talk about things like volcanoes. there any correlation? guest: there is in a general sense. they are associated with the

plate tectonics movements. iceland is an island that is part of the mid-atlantic ridge. it is the land that is pulling apart. europe and africa are going to the east. south america is going to the west. new land is being created. most of that is under water. it happens to come to the surface. that is iceland. it is being pulled apart. when it pulls apart, it makes volcanoes. very exciting. volcanoes have earthquakes. bacchanals are very disruptive to the ground. -- volcanoes are very disruptive to the ground. we have gotten pretty good at predicting the erection. scientists can place instruments on a volcano, see an increase in the right of earthquakes, and

actually do a good job of identifying want to move away. there has been success in the past 10 or 20 years. host: let's go to south carolina. richard. caller: hello. my question is, we have a fault lines across the earth. do the fault lines expand horizontal we records on the way -- horizontal lee? guest: there are of all different types. it depends on where they are. some faults are growing with time. some are not. for example, the san andreas fault, running on the west coast of the united states, it pretty much goes vertically down into the earth.

the west side is moving to the north, the east side is moving to the south. there's a lot of pressure across that fault. the rocks do not want to move. the plates do. it is a struggle. over 100 or two hundred years, the forces build up until the plate tectonic forces win. that makes the earthquake. there are other places, such as the pacific northwest, where chile, where one plate is forcing its way up over another. hear, the fault is quite shallow -- here, the fault is quite shallow. the trouble with those is because the fault is very wide, a lot of that fault is available to make shaking. that is why those are the places where you can get the magnitude

eight, or even 9.5 earthquakes, the very biggest. the other problem is that the motion, the upward shift, it is under water, and it moves water up, all of the sudden. you have trillions of gallons of water that has been moved up. it has to go somewhere. it causes a tsunami. the shape of the fault, it's location -- it has a big influence on how hazardous and big the earthquake is. host: some effect. the largest in the u.s. was a 9.2 earthquake on good friday in the 1964 in alaska. alaska is the most earthquake- prone state. the expense a magnitude 7 earthquake almost every year, and a magnitude 8 or greater earthquake every 14 years.

the last major one was in 2002. guest: there are concerns from tsunamis and earthquakes shaking. the population is relatively scarce. alaska is being proactive. they operate in the seismic system. it is a modern system. they are looking carefully at tsunami damages. alaska, of course, also has almost all of the active volcanoes in the united states. most of them do not pose a hazard from erupting itself, but do pose a hazard for the ash. host: you also have a list of the 26 urban areas in the u.s. that are at risk. there are places in california, seattle, washington, boise idaho, boston mass. -- boston,

mass.. guest: congress asked the u.s. what it would take to operate the system. the authors of that study looked at the high hazard and the vulnerability of certain cities. the cities of boston and new york, for example, the instance of earthquakes is not that great, but a magnitude five or 5.5 earthquake in new york could be a big problem. that helped us to define where we want to concentrate the system, as we build it out, and where we want to do concentrated studies of urban hazards. we have done studies in seattle, oakland, memphis, and we are working 1 -- we are working on one's forcing louis.

-- we are looking at studies in st. louis. we want to work with the local officials on defining land use practices, retrofit priorities, and so forth that make the urban area safer. host: matthew, in virginia. see, i had a couple of questions regarding technology -- caller: i had a couple of questions regarding technology. can you speak at all to the impact the deep drilling has when they go that deep and the damage that it could potentially extend for earthquakes? guest: it turns out that the gulf of mexico is not very

earthquake-prone. there are occasional earthquakes, mostly located far from the coast. that is one comment. another is that the drilling technology, and generally, can cause some small earthquakes, both the drilling itself, and the changes of pressure associated in drawing fluids, and where they're using the -- in some areas there will inject water. those could cause some earthquakes. they're generally not large. there is probably not a big connection between the gulf hazard and an earthquake hazard. fortunately, that is not among the top hazzard's coming out of that situation. host: you joined the usgs in 1989. did you personally study

earthquakes? guest: i studied them, but i never felt one even wants. when i moved to california, in june of 1989, there was a little shack in the middle of the night. my wife said "that is an earthquake. the next one i felt was the october 17, the world series earthquake. that was my first big earthquake. host: did that give you any insight? guest: it certainly made it immediate. up until that point, it was more of a scientifically interesting line of study. that experience, being a part of the response to this earthquake that effected so many lives, there was so much information

needed -- that changed my thinking about the importance of the work that we do, and the immediacy. every day i have the sense that an earthquake is oming. i do not know where it is going to be or when it is pointed be. the more we get done, the better prepared the country is going to be. there is a real immediacy to the work that we do that comes from this reminder. this year has been a big reminder, over and over again, that the earthquakes are coming, there will be surprises, but we can be prepared. host: but it to orange county, california. mike on the democrats line. caller: i had the experience a couple of years ago, and i believe it was the mohave

earthquake. at that time i was working for a company in honolulu. i called up animal hospitals to renew orders. just by that chance, i had to make a bunch of calls into the area. i called several animal hospitals in palm springs, completely randomly. because of my time frame, i was getting people that were taking care of animals in kennels. three places i called that afternoon ahead one unusual factor, -- all had one unusual factor, the dogs and animals were making a lot of noise and acting agitated. i have no clue.

-- i had no clue. i was living in hawaii. i woke up and there was a newspaper article about the giant earthquake. light bulbs went up. i heard about this, but here was my sample. it was anecdotal. i asked professors who told me. i was curious about what you have been able to compile. i know it is anecdotal. does it not make sense? is it worth pursuing? host: irresponsible? guest: it is an interesting question. animals predicting earthquakes has been around for hundreds of years. the chinese have studied it. the trouble is that almost all of these samples are anecdotal.

most of them come after the earthquake. the example you have essentially talking to people before the earthquake is interested. the people did not know the earthquake was point to be coming. it was not tempered by the fact that there was -- was going to be coming. it was not tempered by the fact that there was just an earthquake. people have not been able to document that the animals know something special. my personal conclusion is that there are always animals somewhere acting bizarre, because animals do, and it just happens to be that some of those bizarre animals happened to be acting bizarre before earthquakes. we have a lot of people that say their dog acted strange. they say this after the earthquake. the trouble is that 99.9% of the people do not say that.

it is an interesting line of question. the other part that gives me pause is that we have studied the earth into great detail, of looking for clues. we have looked shaking, water levels, and gas emissions, all sorts of things. there has never been a convincing demonstration that there is anything the earth is saying it just before an earthquake. we believe we are looking at a level of detective the levee that exceeds that of animals. given that, i am skeptical that there is anything to animal prediction. that being said, i am happy to be proven wrong if someone can bring in a scientific and a sensible study. the world at receive the world of science will to that.

-- the world of science will look at that. host: michael blanpied, thank you for being with us. guest: it was my pleasure. host: coming up next, we'll be talking about military and veteran health with our guest, phillip longman. we'll be right back. >> he was a rock star. sunday, david andjeanne heidler

q &a.ry clay, on c-span's >> but the author of "perfect storm, and his latest book. and, for the former president of shell, and why we hit the oil companies. three days of booktv, memorial day weekend. >> supreme court justice anthony kennedy on the prospect of a new justice. >> it is stressful because we admire our colleagues. i have great admiration for the system. the system works. after the appointment and the confirmation process, if there is a confirmation, the system

will bring us a very good justice. >> with the confirmation hearings for a land taken starting on june 8, learn about the supreme court. the book is available now in hardcover and also as in e-book. >> "washington journal" continues. host: a phillip longman, thank you for being with us. you write about veteran health care. talk to us about where things are, as we reflect on the surface of veterans, and think about memorial day weekend, what is your overall perspective on veteran health care? guest: the veteran health care

administration has come through a difficult period. particularly in the vietnam era, was the worst care anywhere. a remarkable thing happened, starting in the 1990's. but the -- the va went through a quality revolution. time and again, they come out on top in terms of quality, with the best care anywhere. not only that, it has the highest measured rate of patient satisfaction. the veterans service organizations like the american legion have gone from being outspoken critics to very publicly supporting all the is going on with the va. it has become a model. host: you have a piece.

here is an idea, civilian insurance. how are they able to improve their care? guest: one of the things to look at this very advanced use of electronic medical records and information technology. this is something we have heard a lot about in recent years. the va has been doing a lot of that, starting back in the 1970's. we now have an information technology system that was created by doctors, for doctors. it is open-sourced. it has become the world standard. that is one big piece of the quality picture for the of the eight. the other thing that is unique about the va is that its relationship with patients is nearly life-long.

it starts when they get out of the military that often ends in 90's.'s 80's and the va has an incentive to keep people well. it -- if it does not properly manage diabetes, it is on the hook down the line. this is very much unlike the rest of the health-care system, where doctors are typically paid for performing a particular procedure, and the long-term results of that procedure is not figured in their compensation. host: looking at a peace that came out in "national journal" it looks that the worked -- at the work. he writes that the

transformation has produced members and veterans that is overwhelming the military is how the system. host: talk to us about some of the other effects of the trick. he felt it is important to distinguish between military medicine -- guest: it is important to distinguish between military medicine and the v-8. -- of the day. --the va. "the washington post" won a pulitzer prize for pointing out things happening at the walter

reed medical facility. it is important to understand in the context of what i'm saying. the va does not run walter reed medical senator -- center. the va is part of a different picture. it is true that the wars that we have been fighting have presented us with a very difficult patient load. part of it is that due to our success in a rapid medical evacuation, a lot of people in a different war who would be dead in the field, are coming home, often with injuries that take many months and years to treat. we also have the phenomenon of a traumatic brain injury. we have become much more sensitized to post-traumatic

stress syndrome. i think we have a bit of a generation of trade -- change in the percentage of returning soldiers that want mental health counseling. the seven big challenges. host: it reports that the rapid air evacuation system has resulted in the lowest mortality rate compared with other u.s. wars. guest: yes. i have been at the pauly, a unit in minneapolis. it is quite a traumatic thing to be there and see all of the toys for children that they have,

because many of these veterans will be there for many months. they have children. they have to come and visit. i have also come away very impressed with some of the things they're doing. one example is, in minneapolis, the unit is a replica of an apartment. it has a refrigerator, stove, and folks get to practiced daily life before going out into the community to see if you can make a cup of coffee, get the ice cubes out of the ice cube tray. those are things to do when you do not f hands -- when you do not have hands. host: de think that is being -- do you think that is being

transmitted to the u.s.? guest: what you have to keep in mind when you hear about something going wrong, you have to ask yourself "compared to what?" the va is a public institution. when anything happens, it is likely to get into the newspaper. these are not the kind of things that private-sector health system normally have to worry about. just to reemphasize, in every metric of quality that health- care quality experts have come up with, such as how often do you adhere to evidence-based protocols of medicine, how often do harm patients through medical errors, what are your properly

adjusted mortality rates, what do the veterans, themselves think -- the va comes out on top. host: was cut to virginia. you are on with phillip longman. caller: i have had a couple of bad experiences in baltimore and philadelphia with the v.a. hospitals. i had to go in and a saturday morning. they are usually not open. they needed to draw blood. the girl had hurt telephone tucked under her arm. there was blood all over my shirt. she messed it up. when i called the the eight hospitals, they said she

volunteered because she gets paid extra. the biggest problem i see is the union. the v.a. hospitals have the worst show-up time of any group of employees in the pro- government. guest: i am sorry that you have that difficulty. part of the reason i got into the subject was that i lost my first wife, robin, to breast cancer, a lot 11 years ago. what i saw in the corner of the american health-care system that we experienced between her diagnosis and the-caused me to be quite radical about what was going on outside of the va and also to find a sincere effort to

a better way. if you are having a particular problem, i would suggest getting in contact with the american legion, who has people like and oftentimes resolve any particular problem. host: wrecked, auburn. -- rick , you are on the air. republican line. caller: hello? host: please turn down your tv. caller: i have a comment. phillip longman made a comment earlier about the v.a. have been the best -- the best health-care system and so on.

i disagree in the sense that my experience was that as a result of my brother's service in vietnam, he came back with all kinds of psychological problems. on top of that, he developed hepatitis and diabetes, and he visited the va for many years. it never helped him. all they did was provide pills for the pain. they turned him into a drug addict. guest: i am sorry to hear about your brother. it sounds like you were trying to get care during the vietnam era. it is true that during that time it is very difficult. i noticed a distinct difference

between younger and older veterans. younger veterans, who abandon the system recently -- who have been in the system recently, are almost overwhelming in their support. a lot of people have experiences like you and your brother did come back in the day. i would encourage you to take another look. host: what is being done to cover and acknowledge some of the claims that the veterans have having served in the viet nam war related to health care problems that have, and other things set of taken a long time? -- of the fed take a long time -- and other things that have taken a long time. guest: the rules about what you have to prove have been changed very much in the favor of the

veterans. for example, if you are experiencing early onset parkinson's disease, and you served in vietnam, you will qualify for health care, no questions asked. there is a presumption that parkinsons was caused by your exposure to agent orange. there is no need to prove it. host: you reported about someone who had parkinson's disease and was having trouble getting coverage. guest: when i wrote that article, it is before the change in roles. i'm very happy that veterans like him do not have to deal with these problems. ohio --democrats' line, host: the democrats' line in ohio.

caller:. i'm disappointed that men have a bad experience with the nba. -- with the dea. -- with the va. my husband got the best care we could get anywhere in the area. my question is, senator colbern has been very down on the system, and he is trying to financially phase out different areas. i wonder what happened with that legislation. even with private insurance, i would like to see the system except the patients, because it is the best care. guest: i am not familiar with that particular legislation, but i will say there are movements afoot to open up the va to everything who served -- to

every veteran who served honorably in the military. the obama administration has opened the door a little bit more on eligibility. i think should be opened all the way. the american legion, and other folks, are now very much pushing to allow family members of the veterans to be treated. it makes clinical sense. it makes sense from the taxpayer's point of view. va care is more cost-effective. host: there is a story from earlier this week in the "washington post." it reports that some military families are concerned that popular and highly-publicized benefits of the new health-care law does not apply to them.

host: there is a movement afoot to try to change that. guest: it should be changed. civilians might not understand the difference between tri-care and the va. tri-care is an insurance product. the bigger story is that we have just passed this legislation, and mostly what it does is expand access to an already broken u.s. health-care system. we need to spend a lot of time thinking about what we can do to actually improve the delivery system, otherwise they will have a tremendous train wreck when these newly insured folks come in.

the va offers a model for that. you can almost literally download them from the internet. there are companies that will come into your local clinic, install the software, and anyone can be as good as the va. recent legislation does have provisions that will allow accountable care organizations to come in and become a miniature civilian va. from the point of the -- from the point of view of us who are interested in reforming the system, it is like getting the christmas gift you always wanted, but there is some assembly to be done. host: gary, and independent color from jacksonville, florida. caller: -- an independent caller

from jacksonville, florida. caller: because of the va , i have decided to leave the civilian health care system. i suffer from symptoms from the first gulf war. i have something growing inside of my loved. i did not know what it is. -- my lung. i do not know what it is. hopefully, they can figure it out. i hope i am not making a mistake. we need a good patient advocate, someone to fight for veterans. something like that. guest: well, as i mentioned, gary, if you do have any problems, there are various

veterans' service organizations to reach out to. they have people that will try to problem solve. your local congressman, too. i would very much encourage you to enroll in the va health plan. you did not have to use it if you do not want to. you will kick your drugs cheaper there, if nothing else. -- you will get your drugs cheaper there, if nothing else. i agree that we need better efficacy. i have the great honor of addressing the american legion convention last summer. it was wonderful to get a standing ovation talking about the socialized medicine. those are the gulf war dies, -- de gaulle for guys. we more people to stand up for

veterans, including veterans. numbers from "the national journal" -- talk to us about the kind of injuries the veterans are coming home with and the challenges they present. host: i think what is particularly different and new, all wars create horrible casualties, but we have a lot of folks coming back that would have not made it home in a previous war at all. we're talking about a lot of folks who need to learn how to walk without one or more legs and arms. we are talking about folks who have repeated exposure to concussion forces.

for those who are sports fans, they know how much people are talking these days about what it is like to be in the nfl, and have been the constant trauma that comes with playing professional football. a lot of folks coming back from iraq might feel just fine now, but will have symptoms later in life. we do not want to repeat what happened with agent orange, and being in denial before figuring out that these complications are subtle, and sometimes take a long time to reveal themselves. i am more brain injuries. in extreme cases, we know what they are, but a lot of people will have subtle things. host: eugene, oregon. martin is on the republican line. caller: good morning.

i am a volunteer at the va. i work on helping veterans with their medical records. i have been recruited by the states to work on obama's linkage of of of medical facilities. my question is, you say you have a model that can be downloaded by anyone -- my question is, how will we link v thea to the -- the va to the private sector? you cannot use a social security number. the linkage is very, very difficult. doctors have notes in the medical record that are private and not available to everyone my question is, if the country is going to link everyone across the country, va is a great model to start with, but the va is the

va. guest: i am glad you asked that question. right now, there is a project in san diego, where medical records are being combined, making it possible for systems to talk to each other. the thing to understand about the software is that it is open- source. it was written by doctors, for doctors, but anyone with a few screws in their head could easily tinker with it and adjust it so that it is ethical " -- applicable to any software you are using. this is on like doctors not been able to tell how bad a works. you have data being locked in a

black box, and hoping and praying that the vendor will let you get your data back. i think the particular software that the va uses is something that has already been migrated of side of the va. we have hospitals outside of the country that are using the software. there are a whole -- there is a whole industry of people that will make these installations. the software is free. it is not cost less to the implement it and teach your people how to use it, but it is cheaper than paying $40,000 or $50,000 for the software to run a one-person physician's office. it is a problem that can be solved, but we cannot let ourselves get carried away by the claims of price --

proprietary software vendors. host: our guest is phillip longman. let's go to judy, of the democratic line in texas. caller: good morning. i have a question. i have been fortunate enough to be a proud veteran from the vietnam era, and a vietnam veteran from over there. they put our teeth in our moth and our glasses on our face as we need them, why have they now said that it is a certain percentage that you are covered under. to me, that is not fair. i am 62 years old. i need work done on my upper teeth. i live on social security, you understand, and a very small check from the government.

it makes no sense why they would have taken it away from us, when we have had it all of this time. i am partial for john mccain, but he is not doing anything other than shuffling paper. he says he is behind it, and he most definitely is, if he is pushing us out, and we cannot get our coverage. sorry to hear about that. the va has to administer the laws that congress gives them. those are the rules and we are imposing on american veterans. i am all for expanding the system, a growing its to give

access to everybody, no questions asked, who has honorably served in our military. and, taking that model and rolling it out for the population. host: independent in the california. caller: i would like to read a quote. "a veteran, whether active duty, retired, and national guard, or reserved, it is someone that at one point in his or her life, wrote a blank check made payable to the united states of america for the amount of up to, and concluding my life." i think this is something that most civilians should understand on memorial day weekend. my question has to do with vietnam. i am a vietnam area rain.

the one thing i could not do after i got out for five years was tell anyone that i was a marine. it was not that i did not want to, but being. on, and all of the other issues that went on, did that cause some of the problems for us in our early 60's and late fifties and now? we were a frustrated bunch of people. life moved on without us for a long time. guest: i think the answer is yes. as we have come to understand more about post-traumatic stress syndrome, people often ask "here was one guy in a foxhole, and he came back with no problems. the guy next to him came back

with horrible problems. what is the difference?" the key is what kind of service they got when they came home. if no one acknowledged their pain, that sort of isolation is a trader for stress, and complications that go with it, including alcohol and drug abuse, that the army from vietnam's had to deal with. it is very important how we treat these soldiers when they come home. it is a medical issue. it makes people sick when they do not get the support of the public that they deserve when they come home. host: let's go to a republican in dallas tx -- a valid -- in dallas, tx.

caller: i may see our end. -- would spend so much time doing bureaucratic stuff. it would be interesting to see how it we got rid of cpr's , i assure you it would help veterans get better care. i wonder to a heard any stories about that. guest: there are abundant examples of people try to the comment electronic records, doing it wrong, and having the effect of actually lowering the quality of medicine. the va has been working with its system. it is continually improving for almost a generation. it would be a rare person

practicing medicine in the va who would not say that the system is not only the best in class, but dramatically improves health. to show one way it does this, besides avoiding the need medical errors of people treating the wrong patients, giving the wrong drugs to the wrong person, and all the things that are actually making contact with the u.s. health- care system -- one of the things that happens when we digitalized medicine is that you create a gigantic data base about comes. people can go back after the fact and look at which surgeries work, of which do not, which drugs are dangerous, which are not. there was a drug that kills more americans than died in the vietnam war.

it was prescribed for years and years with no one outside of the va understanding this. we jumped on this because we head a few clusters of heart attacks -- because we had a few clusters of heart attacks. that is an example of how while it might be frustrated for doctors to go through this, it is important for the advancement of mellon -- of madison. host: dave on the democrat lynn. caller: i have an observation and a question. my observation is that about seven years ago, i drove to my clinic, which was in jacksonville, florida. the clinic is directly across the street from a modern

hospital. literally right across the street. the clinic that i went into head old couches, two old couches, with old men in wheelchairs' rolled up beside them. there were stains on them. they had indoor/outdoor carpet. you can see the sun and going through. when i got on the elevator, there were stains all over. when i sat in the sitting room, there was an old television with the knob, to enter. you could tell the television was 30 years old they were wonderful doctors. i have nothing to -- nothing but good things to say about the doctors and the nurse. now, by the way, the clinic has

improved. new televisions, a new carpet. my point, and this is my question, why does the average veteran have to drive all of these miles, when we drive by some of the best hospitals in the world? what do we need a va clinic for? why do we have to drive by modern hospitals becks why can we not just go to our local hospital -- hospitals? why can we not just go to our local hospital? guest: i used to think that. why not give all veterans of vouchers. there are people that look at it that way. it is certainly true that the need to get more facilities in

florida, particularly, and throughout the sun belt, and generally. we have a shortage, mostly because we had a lot of veterans move there in the last 20 or 30 years. we have an abundance of facilities in boston. orlando is now just getting his first facility. las vegas is just getting its first facility. i hear you. i know the problems there are in florida. i want to give you a thought that those hospitals that you are driving by, and the way -- on the way to the va, we know that statistically, they are more dangerous. one-third of all the money did they spend it is for over- treatment. you may found that it is -- you may find that it is worth the

trip to drive by these seemingly prestigious hospitals. more and more, when we look closely at what they are doing, there is a tremendous amount of uncoordinated, unnecessary, super-expensive, often dangerous care. when you go to the va you get a great insurance policy. david, on the to idependents line. caller: i came out of vietnam with a cardiac problem. my last examination was outside of brussels, belgium. i have come to the conclusion

that some of the problems of the system has, or some of the big points are primarily handled through the district administrator. in southwest florida, by philip we have an excellent system. -- i feel like we have an excellent system. we have inspectors coming in unannounced all the time to inspect the facilities. one of my questions deals with travel pay deductible. it is $7 when you go to the disbursement office. no one seems to answer why we have this deductible. the other thing is for buyers is went to get a new clinic. the way they account -- the way they account patients, i do not understand. if i go in for four stocks, i am

counted as four different patients, rather than for -- rather than one person making four stops. can you answer why they do it that way? guest: i am not quite sure what you are referring to. i know the clinics you're talking about, but i do not of the procedure. sorry. host: the other aspect, looking at travel vouchers? guest: there is all kinds of silly paperwork involved, predictive getting into qualified for the program, but it is important to remember why the rules are there. some majority in congress passed a law that said that the va has to do things this way. i know it is incredibly annoying

to come up against these kinds of things. the proper lesson to take from it is to get on congress to open up this system, and to stop trying to make all of these kinds of crazy criterion about who gets in, who pays, and such. the point should be that you served honorably in the military. you deserve health care from our society. no questions asked. the end of story. host: jerry, and the penn line, a jacksonville, fla. -- independent line, jacksonville, fla.. caller: does the va trained doctors to deny? i put a claim