and havingoil just fall -- having oil. for those watching on c-span, show them the t-shirt. >> a good friend of mine is an artist. he drew this just from my id on the telephone, within a few hours. eric, you can see at the top what it says. the mother has her wings outstretched, and, by the way, one drop of oil can kill a pelican, a sea turtle, and an alligator egg. one drop. i wanted to mention that without putting too many words on it. notice the oil spill is in the shape of what? >> the state of louisiana. >> yes. we are in the process right now of creating another t-shirt that includes the rest of the gulf

coast. with a heavy heart, it kills me to realize that dolphin area, the dolphin island, it is going to be affected. . -- there. >> you are part of the new orleans audubon society. tell us about the fate of four birds and how this will spill is affecting them. >> i already mentioned the brown pelican which is the state bird. they had just been taken off the endangered species list. in the 1960's, they were totally wiped out in the state of louisiana. when a species that lives in one area becomes exxinct, we call that extirpated because they are not really extinct. some live in frida. cannot1960's, and you find and in losiana. in the 1970's, they imported

some from florida and they started testing at the national wildlife refuge which is where the oil is going. after katrina, 12,000 counted nests went down to about 2000. i have not seen the latest data about nests being affected. it is a significant amount. the naonal wildlife refuge is the largest turn nesting colony inorth america. beforeurricane katrina, there were 50,000 nesting ternes. after katrina, their nests went down to about 7000. they were hit hard. the national wildlife refuge is about 7,000 acres. about half of that was destroyed during the hurricanes. we are reaching critical mass. you have seen the video of

birds and fish kills. you have seen the video of the oil the the thing as roof where a lot of our estuaries are. talk a little bit about how this is affecting as going forward for our national audience and those listening. >> even though we are a small state, because of our position at the terminus of the mississippi flyway, it is part of an aerial highway. 100 species of birds migrate from central and south america will ce through louisiana and stop on the coast to refuel. some fly thousands of mile because of this position and because we have 40% of the coastal marshes,. not only seabirds but the sandpipers.

other species, as well. even your raptors like eagles. bald eagles have nested on the coastline of louisiana. i brought this poster because it shows you all of the animals that can be affected by the oil spill. u can see the brown shrimp. this is the most profitable of all of our seafood items. you can see the american oyster which will be affected the most out of all the animals because they are filter feeders. they're bringing in the oil right now. we supply about 35% of the american oyster. the blue crabs. alligators. i do not know if you eat alligator meat, it is delicious. speaking of chicken, i want your viewers to notice this species of fish. this is called the manhattan.

they are related to sardines. 2004, right before hurricane katrina, we pulled in 400 million pounds and most of that with these manhattan pogies. that had just topped anchorage is the number-one seafood tonnage in the nation. right before katrina between venice and empire, that was the number one fish port in north america including alaska. the reason i talked about this, this fish is used for chicken mail and feeds catfish. this is one of the reasons why american chicken is so cheap. literally, the fisherman can put their nest down and catch millions of tons of these fish. they go straight up to

northwestern arkansas and southwestern missouri which is the epicenter of the poultry industry and that is low costo us.. this can affect all of us as far as eating chicken. at this population crashes like the herring after the exxon valdez, chicken will skyrocket. >> on the way out, what would you say to the people around the country that are watching about why it is so important to build the science is there to treat the soil. you can treated with microbes so it will be safe. more importantly, resilient that can hold those islands in place and rebuild louisiana's wetlands. >> everybody needs to realize this is not a state problem. this is a national problem. this is by far the largest disaster that you are going to

see in history i would say. especially if the oil keeps pumping like it is until late august or even longer. we need to do somethi to try and secure the coastline of louisiana. we already lost most of our first line of protection against her recants for new orleans. it is all to win to go away. once a tropical storm comes and washes that oil up into the marshes, we are going to lose miles of marsh that we will have protection. we will lose the estuaries of all of the seafood. if you cannot even begin to think about the problems we have. >> todd? >> we are just given to have to take it day by day. i cannot wait until august. >> dedge, baby, dredge.

we have to protect the esterase and wildlife but also protect us as well from the next hurricane. it is imperative we dredge those barrier islands. the cost is a drop in the bucket when you talk about the destruction that can happen. thank you so much for comi down. >> thank you for being with us. we are with you until 3:00 this afternoon. we thank those of you watching on c-span. we will be back after this.

thank you. thank you all. the words needs to get out. you got a comment that. thank you. >> young, this city's best dry cleaning. family owned and operated. all that is to produce young is not as dry cleaning. it is dry cleaning and restoration. water damage, mold. young's can handle it all. if you have specific items that were damaged by water, mold or mildew, let young pose a dry

cleaning and restoration handled it. >> can you get a little closer? i you comfortable? press down. will the love affair quickly. no later than 230 -- we will get out of here quickly. no later than 2:30 p.m. i want you to spread the word of what is happening with the louisiana restaurant. let people know about how -- the fisheries are going out. making sure every area in which seafood is harvested in louisiana is safe. go for it. i just wanted to tell you predict that is a that tried to tell everybody earlier. come to new earnings. people know exactly what is

going on here. our seafood is almost three punches at one time. it is beautiful. that is good. let me know when. it is incredible how much fun we are having. people are fighting. fishermen and people live along the coast. they are trying to touch all bases. they can get a feel for what is going on down here.

got you.

>> now more inside new orleans. separating the truth from the fiction. welcome to all of you listening and watching on c-span. those of you in new orleans and listening, to not forget, we podcast all of our shows. i want to thank our earlier guests. urning is now is the vice president of communications for the louisiana restaurant association. welcome. i wanted to bring you on the

program because i have expressed that new orleans is open for business. this is a trage that is happening. buthe louisiana department of wildlife and fisheries, when you look at our hospitals division, they are making sure that louisiana seafood is safe to eat and being very proactive and closing areashat may even ve the slightest opportunity to have i will throw it to you now. talk about louisiana seafood. talk about how safe it is and why people should not fear eang louisiana seafood. >> this time aroun with this situation louisiana faces, on very impressed at the state's response, the wildlife of fisheries and the environmental quality have been on it from day

one. they have been communicating with all the affected partners from day one, so i am pretty impressed him. that makes me as a consumer feel even more safe eating louisiana seafood and telling the rest of the world it is safe to eat. >> we have an extensive testing process going on right now with the department of environmental policy, with the wildlife and fisheries. there is nothing harvested that has not been tested. >> absolutely. they are testing as we speak. they are testing an hour early. this is a case where duplication seafood product.pay off for our >> when you look at the majority of seafood is harvested, a lot

of cases are not affected by where the oil inundated our coast. >> the west side of the mississippi river is an open. we had opening and closing of different arees. the majority of our seafood production comes from the west sidef the river in unaffected areas. that means we still have quality seafood in the restaurants. >> for those processing seafood from louisiana that could be shipped anywhere in the world. i mentioned it to the audience that we had to overcome a public-relations nightmare after katrina, people thinking louisiana seafood was tainted. one of the message we wanted t t out was that new orleans is not inundated with oil. our great restaurants are open for business.

we are still here. you can enjoy a great time in your lens, but because of wt the governor has done, becae of what the departments have been so proactive, we are also needing to overcome the bad policing leahy -- bad publicity that seafood is not safe. there is not one fish or byrd harvested and put out on the market unless it has been tested. >> we have been working closely with the louisiana seafood marketing boa, with the mayor's office. this is a collective effort by a number of partners to ensure we don't lose a valuable tourism renue. thiss a lot more than a safety of seafood issue, this is jobs, this is livelihood's.

in addition to the lives and jobs we are talking about in the affected areas, the publicity we are ssying over the world -- this is something we are diligently trying to get ahead of him and we are working with the national restaurant association and the many other partners who are affected, becae those other rest, and if they want to help us and understand a lot of their products come from this area. >> wendy is with us. let's talk about restaurants. we have more restaurants open then we had before katrina. we have more open post katrina then we did before. talked about the vibrancy of our restaurant industry, especially in new orleans.

>> the restaurant industry led the recovery. it was mandatory restaurants open because we had so many first responders in this city. many of the restaurants came back right away. they cleaned out their restaurants and got back to business. this could notave happeneat a worse time because we are on pace -- out of 25 destination markets in the u.s., we are number 3. we are doing a booming business in the tourism indtry, which is booming business for the restaurants. we see people who come here for conventions, we re travelers -- leisure travelers. it connects our culture, there is business down here all the time.

there are reunions and celebrations. restaurants are critical to our culture. >> wendy is with us. we want to get the word out that we are open for business. we are open for you to enjoy your lance, to enjoy it bourbon street, -- enjoy your self. we are open for business. he walked outside and you are not smelling oil. -- you walk outside. this is about 40 miles away from the city of new orleans. >> it is a be a full day, about 87 degrees. we have -- it is a beautiful day. next weekende have three festivals in one weekend. the cajun festival and the creole tomato festival.

we just came off of the new orleans won and food experience. in the superdome we had it 75 -- new orleans wine and food experience. >> a lot of people involved in the tourist industry, we are finally rebounding. a lot of that had to do with the saints great run in the super bowl. they got engaged in the world and sculpture once again. now we are fighting this battle once again. we neeto get the message out that we need your business here in new orleans. >> we are a great dining deal. you can eat out expensively and can stay here and expense of late. -- inexpensively.

we are very walkable. we had segues. we have all sorts of nifty transportation. therere a lot of cultural assets. >> you can still have a fantastic time. on the way out tell the folks again why it's important not just to eat seafood but to come back to new orleans. >> new orleans is an authentic united states destination, from the food to the cultural aspects, to the mississippi river, him to all the architecture and music. we have to come here. >> thanks for being here. vice-president of communication of restaurant associations. we will break andill come straight back to the phone lines.

can watch us you on c-span right now until 3:00, but you can listen live. all of our great pgramming here. it is podcast also. ♪ good luck. he is spreading the message. thank you. >> for those of listening and watching on c-span. this has affected this on three fronts. y coming back from the perceptio we were unde water and new orlean was not the same city

pre-katrina. the lot of you saw the celebration in the streets and felt of five of what this nfl team d and how it lifted us as a community. it is like it changed overnight from the saints' victory in miami. people started coming to new orleans again, not just for mardi gras, but because, we have had to overcome a lot of the bad publicity from katrina. we are fighting on this front to try to make sure people understand not one bit of seafood is being released unless it has been tested. we have been very proactive on that. the final front we are fighting is to fight for the existence of our culture and coastline.

the inundation of saltwater because of oil production on our tlands, they are the first and secondines of defense long before it hits our levee system which is being rebuilt now. all i am asking for is give new orleans a chance. keep us in your prayers, but if you have the opportunity to come down, come on down becae we are tied to the oil and gas industry, the seafood industry and the tourism industry. these are the three big industries in louisiana and we are being strangled on all three fronts. we are trying to send a message to the people of this country about what we are dealing with in south louisiana, what we can do to combat the problem. i will also let you know we know that this will be a fight for

our ry existence. all we want is the people to stand with us as you did in the aftermath of katrina, because five years later the gulf coast is on its knees. we need everybody to pull together as americans, as we have done with every crisis that has affected this country. the assault on our shores does not from a foreign army, but which is is the intrusion of oil. oil that we don't know how this will affect us long term. then when you throw and 9500, we don't know how this will affect our fisheries, the gulf, those who live alonghe coast long term. >> we will get to some of these callers. >> yes.

no doubt. we can do that. we will go at 2:40 got it. ♪ >> n back to inside new orleans. >> it brings different perspectives. >> welcome back, we are here until 3:00. i want to thank those of you that had been watching us on c- span all afternoon. i want to thank the folks from c-span for coming into our studios. to the phone lines we go.

jack is in tennessee. we thank you for holding. welcome. >> you are doing a great job. sitting here on this beautiful lake and i can't imagine what it would be like with oil coming up from the side. it is hard to believe. i have been to new orleans a few times and it is your livelihood, if it is your duty and the people youannot depend on what you're hearing from bp or the government. if your people have the knowledge and ability to get out, i really believehey need to do it, because i don't think they are getting -- we don't need weeks of studies tonow what is going on.

>> the problem is all of this has been vetted. the opportunity we have always had a plan to rebuild our islands back. this had been vetted by the corps of engeers. we are frustrated by the foot dragging of the cot guard and more importantly, the fact that bp seems to be more worried out public relations nightmares than protecting the coastline from an oil spill of at proportions. >> that is true the history of our great country, sometimes the people have to take over to get things done. you have the volunteers and equipment, get this done because we don't have time to wait for approval for all of this. >> we are americans. it is nothing about being radical. we want what'sest for america.

thanks for joining us from tennessee. to connecticut and stephen. are you with me? let's go to bob in arkansas. are you in arkansas? >> yeah. i have some time on the ocean down there and i worked as an engineer offshore for several years. the big thing i think you are missing about this disbursement -- i wked on a platform for about a year and we carried two 55 gallon drums on that? . -- on deck. my job was to turn the pumps on if there was a spill. by that time the deckhand would

have a 55 gallon drum. the skipper would put one engine forward and one in reverse, drive into the spill and chu it up. that -- i don't want to name me rig but they just had a big re. according to the rigman, that there'll wld get rid of several hundred barrels of oil. the reason -- my theory, and i don't ha a card in the game, my theory is you have a company that makes their own disbursement, ships and on their own boats and injects it into their own well.

when you a hauling a product the those land to the reaig only solid handled in bulk monitored is normally just helicopter fuel. when you go to the dock they will fill your tank in bulk. they will tell you how many gallons you are carrying. they will pump it out. you d't measure it. they measure it when it goes in and when it goes out. it is hired by the compa, so a company that cannot tell they are leaking 26 gallons in minute or 550 gallons a minute, that is --do you follow me? >> i followed you. i appreciate the phone call. the problems there is a

disbursement that is less tox that cld have been used. the one we are using now corrects at 950 developed by exxon. another company is the manufacturer of that disbursement. the effectiveness on the louiana sweet crude, is less toxic. that is what we are worried about here. terry in washington. welcome. >> i just wanted to comment that i think you guys are doing real good down there. i would hope that you would stay on task with this. i went to mount saying helens 30 years ago -- unt st. helens. there were hundreds of people

that went to sandbag. what i saw coming down that river was not water. we realized we didn't know how to handle this. that is what an unprecedented the event is. that is what this is. incourage you to take your anchor and pain which i do feel because this is not -- this is a global catastrophe. just take that and channel it into let's move on. what do we need to do? let's think outside the box. we never dealt with this before. it is up to us. we cannot sit around and point fingers at people. we have to get people out there. we have to coordinate people from across the country. if someo will coordinate that

i can guarantee there would be all kinds of volunteers on the beaches. >> we thank you from the call from washington. one thing we have been able to do is we have been able to pull up out of our bootstraps penthouse inhibit a lot of people came down and saw our pain in the aftermath of the biggest man-made disaster. all we want is the federal government to help or getut of the way. bp we don't raham -- we don't need bp calling the shots. unfortunately the federal government is very slow in this process allowing a major corporation to callhe shots. let's bp try to stop the oil ek. let's picture of the federal government protects the united states coastline from demise. we have a lot of great ideas. you would be surprised how many

people called this show here and talk about their ideas on h to combat this oil intrusion. one way is to build this sandbur to detect -- protect the coast line. the corps of engineers and coast guard and government has dragged their feet for weeks. we cannot wait one more minute. we need to build these now. the signs is there to build them and hold thein place with visitation -- with vegetation. if it's not done since you will see a bunch of people on the coastline doing it oselves. there is no timeo wait when we see our culture washing into the gulf. to kevin who is a commercial fisherman. hoare you? >> how are you doing? >> i am probably doing better than you are. for people listening, explain

how your life has changed. >> this wi bring -- shed som light to the rest of the world about how bp is handling their cleanup. the contract at a company -- they are a company taht bp hired to give a hmat class two will be licend fishermen in louisiana. -- to the licensed fishermen. they had been offering these classes for three weeks. i took the class three weeks ago. i have two home ports. on is safe and i also have one somewhere else. they offered us a contract after this -- i showed it t my

attorney and he said i would not si that because they will make you give up your future rights. our attorney general nicked that in the blood -- nipped that in the bud. we never heard a thing from bp. let me try to figure out what the hell is going on. i went to the cmand center and went down -- where iit at? they had a deal set up in one of the churches. i went over there and said nobody knows a thing that is going on. there is a sheriff sitting there and said did you see anyone helping to clean this up? he said yes, you have to go talk to the parish officials because now they have made it that the

politicians are involved of who gets to go to clean up. now it has become a political thing. whereas my party gets to work, but if we don't know you we don't get to work. is not about the money. you ought to see what is going on dowthere. >> i appreciate the phone call from one of our great fishing communities. over 1200 commercial louisia fishermen are out of work and stepped up to the plate shortly after the deep water horizon collapsed and we realized what type of oil was coming our way. less than 300 were hired for the cleanup. this was in the early stages when we could have protected our wetlands, when we could have gotten this started. less than 300 were hired.

we have fishermen that are affected byhe [unintelligible] we have beenold by those involved in the valdez spill, you will see those working on the shore line with hazmat suits. we have fishermen out there had had nothing more than a t-shirt and shorts on. are they protecting? -- are they protected? that is the problem when you let a corporation te the lead cut on the inundation -- take the lead on thenundation of oil on our coastline. all they are worried about is making sure from a public- relations standpoint, the oil is not on the surface so the whole world sees how much oil is coming out. you have not tolds the truth

since day one. it is time for the president to step up and g involved in this crisis, not from the white house, but right here on land in louisiana. give us the chance to save ourselves. to brownsville, texas. >> good afternoon. i am appalled at what is happening. get out of the way. amica is in a terrible situation, but it's happening to louisiana but maybe it will happen to the whole gulf coast. it is a tragedy. people need to move. the president has toive the power to someone who knows what they are doing. obviously bp is not cutting it. it has been over a month.

how long will louisiana have to wait for something to be done correctly? the animals are dying. it is creating a tremendous tragedy for those who live in louisiana and his livelihood is at stake. if louisiana goes down and mississippi and all the coastline, iludi all the way up, if a hurricane comes it will take everything. doesn't that mean anything to anyone in washington? we need to get calling. i already called my congressman we have to band together. we have to get washington involved. perhaps the president will make a right decision in saying this is to has to take care of the situation. erything is going downhill. louisiana and will move everything -- will lose everything. people have worked so hard.

look at what happened with katrina. it is happening because of the lack of federal intervention. >> i could have not -- could not have said it better myself. thanks so much. let's go to dael in california. -- dale in california. good afternoon. we have technology out here we have been trying to promote. i spoke with at rock allen last week. we contacted the epa. -- i spoke with alan. that was $160 million to clean up this 59,000 gallon spill. we are talking into the billions of dollars for a potential cleanup costs, not to mention thloss of the very brazilian

people in your state in the states along the coast. our sympathy goes out to them. this biomethod -- i don't want people contacting our company. we need people to contact their legislators to let them know this is an epa-certified -- the nuers b59 on the contingency plan list. we have paid our dues. we did the formalities of going through the process. . it is several miles outside the coast. clean of the existing wetlands about trampling all over them.

get them out there. get them cleaned up again they will do it safely come in a matter of weeks. we have a 30 a cleanup plan and a 100 a clean up plan. we are ready to jump on this thing. we will take any assistance we can get. to get placement of an order for this technology. > all website that our viewers and listeners can go to? >> bioworldusa.com. adbio.com >> thankkyou so much for your call. to las vegas. hey, rikki. -- ricky.

>> in our middle people have been telling alicea not to drill these oell's because this kind of thing could happen. they've nted t stop the shrimpers and oysterman from harvesting in the way that they do. and then for this to happen, this is what they told you was going to happen, and now everybody in louisiana all of the sudn loves their motion, when you have been talking about drill, baby, drill. well the chickens have come home to roost. >> de you like driving your car? do you enjoy having the opportunity to be able to drive around las vegas? without louisiana andithout the opportunity for oil exploration, you would not be able to do that.

we energize this country. we need this country withur crops and our estuaries. i feel your pain but l me tell you, no one wants the land and water more than the louisiana and. we have a culture from all nationalities that lived in louisiana for decades. they make their living off of the land and the water poured the last thing they want to do is break it, believe me. they nurture it. politicians have sold as down the river and we have been too stupid and louisiana to figure it out. we allowed politicians and a lot of cases to te us one thing and do another, and we've given up our air, our land, in our waters. whether it would be cutting pipeline canals to our wetlands so that we can bring the imported oil to refineries said that we can fine those petrochemicals, so that you have a chance torive your car so that people in new york had a

chance to have heating oil and be warm in the winter. our louisiana fishermen, our louisiana farmers, they ar not reapinthe land. they are not reaping the water. they aren't nurturing it. we werlied to by corporations and by the federal government. it was the federal government's job through the mms to make sure that there was a safe way to drill for oil in deep water. we were told that we had it down. obviously we did not. it is not on louisiana. it is on bp, that is on the other oil companies, and more importantly, it is on the mms and the federal governme for not doing what they were supposed to do -- protect the citizens of this great country. mike is in arkansas. >> i am a first-time caller. you hit it rit on the head. that i was off base. i will take this step further.

after the first couple of weeks , someone saw an opportunity to impoverished the whole southern part of the united states. that might sound like a paranoid statement, but the more i have thought of it, i see no results and no action by our government. this almost seems like it is done on purpose. and bp stock has gone down 17%. who is going the end up paying for this? you're talking billions and billions of dollars. and everyone from louisiana to florida will become impoverished. it is almost like its a st- by-step systematic taking of the money of the middle class. that is what i believe. for that guy to call and to say something like that to the people of louisiana, i don't know where he is coming from. >> hes not educated on the facts of what is going on.

it knew out the people of louisiana, how much we love the land and water and are estuaries, joked, you come from the bayou. you know as well as i'd do it that the people on the bayou understand what they have in terms of the natural estuary. they do not rape it. >> they make their living off the land. and a lot of those folks, you grow up with them, all they know was fishing. all they know is what they have done for generations in south louisiana. and there is a possibility that that could be taken away from them. there's a family business and there is no backup plan. >> joining us is of dr. smith from tulane university. thank you so much for being with us. bp has tried the to kill procedure. they try to do that job shot.

neither work. they are on theirinth procedure to stop the leak in the deepwater horizon. explain the procedure they are going to put together now. >> they're doing basically two procedures with one bit of cleaning up. they are cutting away the wreckage of the drilling riser that belonged to thehorizon, that was bentver and cracked and linking, most famously were you have been watching the rov footage that has been provided. they are going to cut that away and clean up the edge, and then they're going to install a cap over it. that will then feed into of 6.6

625 inch pipe fitting. this is just something to hold things together until the and then complete the relief well. and that this does not work, they have one more trick up their sleeve, which is to move this cap and install on new blowout preventer using that same type stomp. basically putting out on damage blowout preventer on the flow of the oil and gas so that they enclose the ball and stop the flow. >> there was a problem before when they tried the top hat scenarith hydrants -- hydrates freezing three how did they stop that are smart >> first there is a lot less salt

water available. secondly, this is a lot closer to the source. the oil is going to be naturally warmer than it was at the end of the pipe. >> from what i understand in the industry right now, there are different -- each blowout preventer is different. there is not a uniform a blowout preventer out there. how do we know -- and i know that there are a couple of scenarios that bp is looking at to look -- stop this leak -- how do we know that the cap that they are going to use will fit directly on the source right now? >> they have not told me, but i will tell y what i am thinking. in terms of the cap, it is in manufactured specifically for that application. if it does not fit, shame on whoever measured it. as far as the blowout preventer sck, there are different

models but they use a lot parts in common particularly when they come from the same manufacturer. i think they will u the bop from the second relief well, stop drilling that well, and use that as a piggyback unit. there is already one on the drop ship. >> eric smith of tulane university joining us on the program. dr. smith, talk about the two relief wells being drilled right now and how they are approaching the source of the leak and how they are expected, maybe by august, to completely set this off? we hope that this scenario words. ght now with the cap that they are putting on, but that it -- but if that doesot work, what is bp doing to drill two relief wells to stop this leak? >> the relief wells are th only permanen solution and that has always been the case.

no matter what is done over the next -- the last 20 days or so, we were always going to drill a relief well. the idea is to drill -- start about 1,000 feet away from the offending well bore, drill down 5,000 feet into the surface, and then make a 45 degree turn in intercept the bottom of the original well for about 18,000 ft. this the same sort of thing yo -psaw them pumpiig on the top kl it him. it should float into the well bore and produce pressure to eliminate the oil and gas coming out of the reservoir going up the well bore.

then they will use cement just as in the top kill. that fills up not only the bottom of the well bore but the formatn around the base of the well, so that there is the physical blockage that prevents oil from migrating into the well bore in the future. >> the procede that bp is using right now to stop the leak, because of the cutting of the riser, before they can fit that custom-made cap back into place, obviously more oil leak into the gulf of mexico. can you talk about tt scenario and why they did not use it previous? >> i can answer both of those. the riser was never intended for the drilling rig. when the drilling rig lost power, it became a flexed as the

vessel moved around and eventually site. it went from vertical to horizontal on the seloor. a big crimp developed at the top of the blowout preventer stack, and then broken several places. anyone that has been watching the live feed has scenes that pike leaking and spewing oil and mud into the gulf. ironically, it reduce the cross sectional area of the drilling riser. the government inks about 20% is reduced. that is what you are going to lose when you cut off the drawing riser. that restriction.

you turn the ball two or three turns to a sprinkler, that is the analogy. that was included as an option by the government, as i understand it, one of the earlier purchase three try everything else you can before you allow any additional oil to get into the call. >> that is why they are using this an area. professor smith, thank yoo so much for being with your the best scenario that we've sn so far in terms of stopping this leak is the one they're doing now? >> it is an exceptional one. my personal favorite is the blowout preventer stack. you don't end up with any re spillage and now you have the permanent valve you can close. i am going to defo the government and the crew of not only bp but all hole drilling squad workinon this thing. >> preferred eric smith, than you so much for being with us.

from tulane university. we want to thank everyone who has been with us today, too many to go ahead and talk about it on the way o, our friends watching on c-span and for those of you listeni on wist, along the gulf coast all the way to the texas coast, we want the opportunity here in louisiana to help ourselves. give us the opportunity to save our estuaries. give us the opportunity to protect ourselves from the next form, from the inundation of oil on our very precious and fragile wetlands. please contact your congressman, your senator, the president of the united states, allowing us to build this 80-mile san firm that and protect louisiana once and for all, that can protect our estuaries, and protect the culture in this great state of louisiana. for those who live along the gulf coast and have been affected by this already, just know that the need the american

people to stand by us as once again we are on our knees. we finally rebound from the aftermath of the biggest man- made disaster of this country, theelead the failing in the katrina. we ar strong and we will come back songer than before. all we need is the opportunity for government to get out of the way and allow us to help ourselves. we can do it. just give us the opportunity to do it. i want that our friends from c- span for being with us to nine. they'd still all to listen on wist. i will not think the best producer on the planet and all of you in the united states from listing today andeeling the plight of us in louisiana. i'll see you tomorrow, straight up, at 12:00. they have all got to go.

well as the governance issues involved with it. in both of the panels we will

look at the nature of the problem and some of the reforms th our panelists believe will contribute to our problem-solving capabilities. there are many people who are cynical about electoral and governance reforms and david our system is broken and that it always is going to be dysfunctional. but today we're going to hear om a variety of speakers who will p specific ideas on the table for improving our institutional capacity. and at the conclusion of those panels, carolyn lukensmeyer, the present of americaspeaks, and my colleague, e.j. dionne, we'll explain what they think needs to happen in order to improve the performae ofour political system. in addition, i want to point out that my colleague, bill, has put out a papertoday on why institutions matter and his thoughts on changes that could make a difference in terms of improving the performance of our political system. so if you have no yet picked up a copy of, there are copies still available out and haul it and you can get one after the

event. this form is hosted by a number of different organizations that in addition to brookings, we are pleased to welcomemos, americaspeaks, the action center for democratic governance and innovation at harvard, and everyday democracy that i want to thank those organizations for helping us to orgnize this event. we have a broad range of voices represented re today, and we look forward to a terrific conversation. to launch the form i would like to introduce miles rapoport who is the president of demos. he has been the present of demos sends 2001. demos i'm sure of you know, is a public policy research and advocacy organization based in new york city. it focuses on a wide variety of issues, but in recent years its look rticular at questions of economic justice as well as ways to encourage a vibrant and inclusive type of demcracy.

miles has a long history of involvement in connecticut all it takes he has been involved in connecticut politicsfor 15 years. 14 years he served as a state legislator as part of his duties, he chaired the election committee and he also served as the secretar of state in connecticut. so please join me in welcoming miles rapoport to brookings. [applause] good afternoon, everybody. i want to thank all of you for coming to what i think we an excellent discussion of some of the critical issues facing our democracy and what we can do about and how we can work together in the best possible way to do it. i want to thank the brookings institution for hosting us. darrell, thank you very much. and i particularly want to thank e.j. dionne and tom mann who are the people who sort of got this whole conversation going about

what we're going to do together today. i also want to very much thank the other three organizations who are cosponsors, everyday democracy and americaspeaks, both of whom who have in one way or another been leaders of the effort o get genuine civic participation d public dialogue in our country over the last number of ye at also be asked institute at the kennedy school at harvard where aron fung has been a terrific member of our planning team. so i'm delighted that they have been participants from the beginning, and i think that we're going to have a really good conversation today. i esecially want to thank norm eisen though i will introduce short, but coming in and reversing the white house, we're delighted to have a conversation with you as well. therare really two strands of developments that have brought us to today's event. the first is a long history of work in a variety of ways to make our democracy work better. this work has been done overcome him, hundreds of years i suppose

but just in thelast 10 or 20 years on a variety ofimportant issues. there's been work on lowering barriers to participation and encouraging people to vote and participate in the process, and to improve the voting process it sell. there has been work increase transparency and accountability and utilizing technology to open up the whole process of governing. there's been a lot of work on public deliberation to create ways, innovative ways, thoughtful ways of involving the public in genuine constant frustration and about the choices we face. there's been work on campaign finance reform, excellent work, seeking to reduce the undue influence of money in our nation's politics. there's been work to make or democracy more inclusive to work around civil rights, immigration reform, and the clusion of people have been excluded from the process heretofore. there's been a tremendous amount of work on community and national service seeking to engage people on behalf of their

communits and, of course, as a new yorker iould not want to be in washington, d.c., without saying there's been a tremendous amount of work to get d.c. voting rights, one part of our and finish agenda but all of you in washington, d.c., it will come. it will come. in each of these areas as been real progress. i think that you can point, if you're a participant in any of these parts of what i would consider a full democracy movement, you can point to the real progress at the state level, indication at the federal level as well. but there has been a sense i think that many of a share, that in some ways he efforts to make our democracy work as well as we can in that effort we are less than the sum of ou parts, rather than greater than the sum of our part. too often the work that we've done has been in silos, often without knowledge of what each other is doing, often without even an understanding of the language and concepts that are part of the other people who are doing work to make democracy

better. and sometimes even competition for what is the most impornt reform. but we know that in a strong and healthy democracy, it will only be achieved when we have made progress on the full democracy reform agenda. from participation to voting, to evening the playing field. and all of these issues that we have talked about. it is this reality that the campaign for a stronger democracy is seeking to address. in the smmer of 2008, before we know who our next president was going to be, we had a conference in washington that really discuss a whole range of issues, 50 representatives from various groups actually sponsored religion by the kellogg foundation. came together to see if we could develop and articulate a full democracy agenda. we id so with carolyn lukensmeyer as our facilitator. and present it to both campaigns, both the obama campaign and the mccain

campaign. to our, not to our surprise, but to our appreciation the obama campaign, as a campaign, and in the obama administration was president obama s elecd, took up our issues and had-- has been having a real dialogue with us on them. in the summer of 09, an even larger group of people came together,over 100 from a wider number of organizations and groups, and continued the work of oving that agen, discussing with the administration, trying to make real progress. the progress of that meeting was a report which is in the folder that you have. and we're not releasing it today because it's been out but we are sort of wanted to make the recommendations in it real and more resident as we go forward. today there's also been work with federal managers that americaspeaks has led to make them work and talk to each other and governed in a more collaborative and participatory

way. and has been tremendous amount of work on election reform, campaign finance reform in the meantime as well. today, we seek to talk about all those issues, look at where we stand on them, see what the barriers exist, and see if we can make progress. so that firsthand, the continuation of ongoing work on democracy issues, is one of the reasons that we are here. but the second reason we're here, we're also an extraordinary moment in our nation's public life. it's not only a continuation moment as i see it. it's a change moment, even a crisis moment, for our democracy. our country is debating fundamental, enormous economic and social issues, and is at a deep politic crossroads. with have dp and prolonged economic crisis, fight or financial regulation regulation, health care reform, immigration reform, and our environmental future. and yet, at just the moment when we need our democracy to work as well as it possibly can, there are fundamental ways in which it seems broken in simply not up to

the task that history has set before it. there are many issues that are involved here and on the panel so you hear about a lot of the different issues, both with the problems are, where they stand and what we can do and how they relate to each other. we may not agree on every aspect of the sitation we face, but we all agree on the need to elevate these issues to the front part of the public debate. we need energeticdvocacy for organizations and people and citizens, and communies from the outside. i also need real leadership from the administration, from congress, and from people who have the ability at the state and national level to help make things happen. what we hope to accomplish today? no one gabbing can obviously solve our problems or wrap them up in a neat sandwich. it's a wrap. that's it. and serve them as a finished product. but we think we can move the

agenda for it in several ways, and that's what we hope to do. number one we will explore into panels somof the most important issues we face, the current state of play on them and where they can go from here. the first panel on elector and campaign finance reform we will deal with our election process itself. practitioners with long experience and expand the franchise, lowering barriers to participation, creating an even playing field. will talk about where we stand and have these issues can relate to each other. the second panel will connect to governance reform, exploring issues of open government, n the legislative gridlock, finding ways to expand true and positive civic engagement. i think together e will try to make a case, secondly, for a holistic and multifaceted agenda for democratic reform. and try to moe that agenda forward. i think will take some additional steps towards ending the silence nation of the work that goes on on so many of those issues. sharing information about the

efforts would change, giving ourselves as more as part of a more comprehensive effort for reform and hopefully begin to work even more closely in the future. will also develop some common ideas and thinking about how we message, how we talk about these democracy issues in a way that not only brings them togetr, but also resonates with the blic. that has to be engaged in these issues if we're going to make real progress. and lastly, will ask for some next apps from the president and from congress. passing legislation, much of which is up for discussion that will make a real difference. developing and embracing new ways of governing with greater civic participation. what about the idea of a white house summit on democracy issu? we've had a summit on the fiscal ficit. what about on democracy stuffs and what we can do about it? what about engaging and leading on these issues going forward? these will not be the easy things to do.

tremendous challenges remain for all of us who are in the field. but the stakes are too high, the consequences of continued goes our democratic failure to fighting for us not to make every effort that we possibly cato make real progress on these fundamental democracy issues. it's a tall order, but we have no choice but to attempted. and i want to welcome all of you who have come here to participate today. we are starting out. if we go to our panels with a real treat, think him as we begin will hear from norm eisen. let me introduce and properly. knowg has served as special counsel to the president for ethics and government. reform since the beginning of the obama adminisation. in that capacity he has helped lead the administration's initiatives on government ethics, lobbying regulation and open government. his portfolio has also included financial regular tour reform, campaign finance, whistleblower protection and many other reform issues. prior to joining the administration, he was a general counsel for the presidential transition team, and before that

was a litigation partner in the washington, d.c., firm of zukerman stated where he practiced for 18 years. you also was one of the founders of the citizens for responsible and ethics in washington, the organization grew, a government watchdog group that said this is a man who has been on both sides of the inside and outside divide and regulate have a conversation with them. he's going to talk about the administration's perspective on these democracy issues and he will have time for questions and answers. norm eisen, thank you very much for ining us. [applause] >> thanks everyone. it is a pleasure to be here. i think my job description is the representative of the first ever to break down the silos. miles was talking about. of course, this is the first white hoe to have a special counsel who works on both government ethics and reform

issues and has been, i think, a useful perspective to tie those together, and the wayin which the different issues that we are so pleased, youre addressing today, inform each other. i would like to talk today a little bit about the administration's efforts to make our democracy work better. the president, of course, was very eloquent on the campaign trail in constructing his commitment to the american people to change washington. the notion that our democracy is a living and vital entity that, in every generation, needs to change and grow and adapt in order to meet the challenges that that generation presents.

and so that themes of change, which applies across the board is a critical one in the area of, in the areas in which i spent my day, government ethics, lobbying reform, government openness and transparency. and substantive reform issues such as campaign finance reform. i thought that i would jus take a few moments towalk through our experiences, the lessons that we've learned. i think the successes that we have enjoyed very often with the help of folks who are participating in todas seminar, i will tell you that one of the -- not everybody hee agrees with everyone of the initiatives we have taken in these areas. as i look around t room, i see

friends who have been vocal. sometimeprivately. more often publicly. in articulating their disagreement. that, too, is a part of a healthy and functioning democracy. and it is not -- when we talk about the three values that inform our open government work, for example, there's transparency, which is a notion that government should be -- government information, what government is doing should be available to the people. so they and all of you can see what's going on in government. participation, allowing folksin the nation, experts and ordinary citizens alike to participate in the unction of government. and i think the highest value of the three, kind of captures all the three is collaboration, which is actually working together, hearkening back to the

spirit with which our nation was founded. every member of the country having a correct investment and experience, and engagement, with the operations of the country. part of that notion of collaboration is candidly to tell us when you agree and when you disagree. and many of you have taken that virtue too hard in sharing with those publicly and privately, and in the end of the day, of coursehere needs to be, there needs to be an assessment of overall how we're doing. and i'm pleased that we have come overall, the administration has gotten high marks for its efforts in the executive branch. and i'm going to talk about some of them and relive the history of the past 18 months or so with all of you, to the extent that our efforts to make these virtues and the values real in

government. i think and form the ongoing discussion that you're having and the larger mission that is addressed by today's meeting. so of course, the very first thing that the president did is, his first day in office, include commitments into other areas that that we're talking about today. he signed executive order on ethics in front of an international television audience. it actuall was, this was done at a ceremony on january 21, where all of te white house staff were also sworn in. so we had the eyes of the world upon us as we took out old, and then the president signed the

exutive order onethics. among the content of the executive order on ethics with the administration's historic commitment to closing the revolving door in government. as i think all of you know, i hope all of you know, it's been extensively discussed and debated and written about, that this president has asked everyone joining his administration to make a commment not to lobby the administration for the life of the administration. so he is close the revolving door moving forward, historically. he has also set up a first ever reverse revolving door limitations, wherefore lobbyists and non-lobbyists alike, there are ry strict limits on your ability to work on issues that you worked on before coming into government so that the american people can be reassured that

folks who are joining the government will put the interest of the american people first, and not the interest of their former employers and their former clients. this -- these tough revolving door rules would not without controversy. th occasioned a vigorous debate, really a series of detes, which has persisted throughout the life of the administration. it was at its strong as in the opening months of the administration. the debate included whether there should be different rules for for-profit and nonprofit lobbyists, whether the rules as some said were too tough. others thought they were too lenien whether there should or should i be exceptions to the rules, and a variety of other isses. we come and is is one of the themes of migrating to you, robert e my overly long greeting to you, -- probably my

overly long greeting to you. we welcome that debate. and one of the objectives of our rules, and we believe very strongly in the content of the rules. both thought through carefully and the run up to the president taking office. we of course work on them over the course of the campaign, and and intensively in the transition. one of the things that we hope to do with the rules, in addition to having sund, well-founded rules that function as a matter of policy, which we think they do, we think it's critical that the revolving do be closed, was all to inspire a conversationnot just within the beltway, but a national conversation. about how government can be rededicated to the american people. and we think that the roles have done that, is important, it's

important for the american people, not only to know -- important not only for the revolving door to be close, but also for the american people to know that the revolving door is closed. a critical part of our mission of the presidents objective is to restore the trust of the american people in their government. less there was any doubt that thismessage was getting through, i vividly remember several months into the administration, on the front page of the "new york times" there were two articles. one article was a running down the left column, both above the fold. one article was a discussion on the executive order, and the pros and cons of the executive order. and then on the column running down the right side, of the paper, was a discussion about

allegedly improper lobbying contacts in washington. if you had any oubt that the "new york times" was engaging in this great national debate, he only had flip over to page 17 when he put the two stories directly together. so those types of anecdotes bring home for us the reality that we had joined these issues in a great national debate. and this administration is welcoming of that conversation. inde, it's part of the reason are so pleased of this conference, and ones like it. i try to come whenever i can, whenever invited. i have been privileged to appear at a large number of them. so pleased that they are taking place. a second pillar of our reform efforts, in our first year and a half, was also commenced on that first full day in office.

and that took place when the president signed shortly after signing the executive order on ethics, signed a memorandum on open government. and as i think aut the innovaons and i do think the revolving door rules and the other ethics innovations are critical, we're going to talk a little bit about some additional breakthroughs th i think we've had in the area of lobbying regulation, but certainly there is no more, no greater hallmark than the ways in which we have tried to rescue and rebuild and restore governance and democracy, that our efforts in the area of open government. so let me focus on those for a moment. and i will talk not just about the outcome, but also the process. and again,as with our revolving

door rules, the objective here was not just a set of policies in place. that made sense, but also to send a powerful message to the american people that this was not business as usual in government. perhaps the first way in which we tried to do that, we started work right away on our open government plans. and once again, and many of you, many of the organizations and indiduals in the room, were critical really in collaborate with the department in ways that have been, i have bogged about that all of you have blogged about. really extraordinary exchange of government itself. it reflects onur open government webse. and soliciting your ideas. how can government be more open? how can it be transparent? how can it be collaborative? how can t be participatory? wedid that both at a general level, but also on an agency by agency level, had scads of not

just electronic exchanges, but in person conversations. there is no -- we were talking about is an agreement before. there was no substitute for talking face-to-face to folks. that's part of the reasons the president tries to get out of washington and talk directly to the american people whenever he can. and those of us who work for him try to example by hat virtue by talking personally to the experts, the authorities, nd to average folks about these issues. so while we were doing the work of building our open government plans on an agency bagency basis, we decided that we needed in the white house, that we wanted to seize on pportunitie opportunities, both to send a message to our colleaguein government, and also to the american people, that we're ing to conduct our businesin a more open and transparent way.

and perhaps the best known example of that is a decision of the white house to put its visitor access records on a so-called ways record on the internet for everyone in the press and the american people to see. so that everyone in the country can know exactly who is coming and going from the white house, as some of you may know, other administrations have fought for many years to protect just a handful of visitor records havingo do with various task forces that operate in the white house. we resolved open litigation, and announced policy moving forward of posting our visitor records monthly. and i'm pleased to tell you, but as of friy, we put up another batch, regular monthly patch on friday. as we do, we had over 350,000 visitor records available on the internet for everyone to review.

now, why is that important? look, everybody has a right to know who is coming and going, okay? so that is obviously important in and of itself. we thought it sent a very powerful message throughout government and to the american people that the white house was willing to really lead, to take the first step in this new 21st century governance style of being open and transparent. so, and it has been, say, with visitor access, postings have been a big success. they are much visited and then a standard part of the reporting on stores to check the ways record that are on the white house website. of course, it's important in and of itself. it since and port message, but that message of openness needs to spread throughout government.

that is why we have really made a cornerstone of our open government efforts. the open government plans. and here we come and those of you are not for my with the open government plans, pursuant to the president's initial directive, omb, issued a for the directive to all of the agencies to design an open government plan. and we provided a very, very detailed list of the information that needs to go in the open government plan. the idea here is that the cabinet agencies will internalize and take responsibility for, not just the cabinet agencies really throughout government, the agencies will internalize, take responsibility for and implement a seri of steps to open up to the american people, to the particular folks who have a strong interest relationships with thoseagencies, too, among other things, let the world see what is hppening inside the agency, to unleash informaon

that is viable within the agency, to engage with substantive eerts and ordinary folks in the agency's business the agencies concerned, better serve the american people. the process, of all of the open government reports, are now on agency websites. and i just want to say a word about the process because it ally exemplifies this new way of doing business that the president has been so insistent on. we, in doing the government plans, had a very extensive engagement with subject matter experts. and with the american people. folks from all over the country were invited to and did comment on the open governmt plan. and i think our colleagues, i see many of them are on governmental college. i see them in the room will say that the was an

unprecedented level of willingness to listen, a willingness to hear places we could do better come up improving, the places where we could do better. and an ongoing dialogue is continng now about these living document companies open government plans. so they we tried to process that matched our product, and very proud of that. let me talk for a minute about how these two, about a way we combined tese two different streams of thought, the idea of doing more open government, more open governmt but also government that is, that is more ethical. that was in our stimulus lobbying rules. folks may remember that, as a part of announcing the stimus

funds, we had a set of rules to make lobbying related to the stimulus, to regulate it. and there was, once again, we had this same virtue of participation and collaboration. we did something that was very unusual when we announced our first set of stimlus lobbying regulations. we said this is a 60 day trial period. and we are, because we're doing something that is new and different, and having this regulations that goes above and beyond what's required by the lobbying disclosure act, we want to know what you think about it. and we had a very vibrant public discussion about those stimulus lobbying rules. and lo and behold, we actually learned how there were a number of things that were sounded, both from inside and outside of the government. it's also very refreshing to people in government to have an opportunity to comment and tell us what we could be doing

better. and one of the themes that emerged was that we are, and the president has been, vociferous and calling for improvements to lobbying disclosure act to cover more, more activity. and one of the recurring themes we hea was that the initial stimulus lobbying rules that we had come up with did not, that they maintain and unfair distinction between registered and unregistered lobbyists. and as a result of hearing that, we, for the first time ever, wrote down that barrier. and in the final rule that we announced, for every competitive grant for stimulus lobbying funds, whether you're a registered lobbyist or not, the first set of rules was more focused on registered lobbyist, whether you are a registered lobbyist or an unregistered lobbyist, or what have you, all communications, once competitive grant application grant is on

file for steam is lobbying funds, have to be put in writing and laced n the internet. and so we broke down that barrier as a result of having participation and colaboration and transparency in our decision-making processes. we were able to brak down that barrier between registered and unregistered lobbyists for the first time. there are many, many other instances that i could share with you to illustrate our efforts over the course of the past year and a half. currently, the white house is deeply engaged with the bipartisan leadership in congress, and in the reform community. and wth the american people. in the effort to address the aftermath of the citizens united decision, which opened the floodgates for unlimited corporate expenditures in american elections. first time ever. the american people is the place

where the president has shown leership in speaking out against the decision. the american people have responded. polls show that cross parties, across regions, 80% of the american people disapprove of the decision. and we're working with the bipartisan leadership in congress to come up with a legislative solution, moving at a rapid clip through the house at the moment, that will address a decision. i offer this final illustration, together with a theme that i think ties all of these efforts together. in all four of these examples, and the many other examples that i could offer, what the president has done through his leadership is the 10th, is to recognize that there is too much special interest power that is concentrated in washington. weather takes the form of folks writing the revolving door, a of

an excess of lack of transparency so the american people can't participate in the government, too much special interest money in politics or what have you. his ambition is to level the playing field so that ordinary folks, and te public interest, have a fair opportunity to have their voices heard in washington. and so the debate is not donated by the special interest. that does not mean that lobbyists and their clients have no right to speak. of course, they do. the president recognizes that, but the unifying theme has been to balance the playing field out and you create a space in which the public interest and the voices of the publican be heard. we will continue with that effort. we thank all of you in the room for participating in today's discussion, to improve our democracy, to continue the tradition of american greatness. and we look for to working with you in the months and years

ahead on that critical national task. thank you very much. [applause] >> we have time for three quick question. i ask that you ask about something he has said and not something that trannity not touch on in his speech. [inaudible] >> in the case of congressman sosa, open government. [inaudible] >> no. for the details of that, you know, i would direct you to the relays last week, but would not think so. our ambition to in operating as we have, in terms of all of our regulations, has been to accomplish the nation's

business. i think, i will s that as i look around the room, there have been folks have been tough graders, but the great overall have been i. i will remind folks, if you didn't read about it, is sometimes is a little tougher to get the good news out, that a coalition of reform groups, many of whom are represented here, gave us a's or our revolving door policies. days of our transparency policy. and i really think in terms of openness, that what you have seen in this administration is a historic resetting of the paradigm. we think that it is, it really sets an agency by agency basis what we've done with the open government plans real is historic, and we feel real proud of our overall record. >> can you comment on the hiring of -- i write about the financial crisis, hiring of

secretary geithner's secretary geithner's chief of staff from goldman sachs. the question goes to the hiring of the secretary geithner's chief of staff. we have tough rules. we have lived up to those rules and in every instance. i think that the hiing in that case, there were a series of recusals were put in place that have been strictly observed. so i think that we have, we have lived up to our standards in that regard. and, indeed, i think in all of our, in all of our hires, it makes for a lot more work for us when you these tough rules. but we have abided by those, abided by those rules. and certainly that case is no exception. time for one more question.

[inaudible] >> what do you thinkof the adequacy of the obama administration definition of high value data sets? one definition basically which is what the obama administration, or should we subdivide that so the accountability, for example, for third parties regulated like people who build baby carriages, release their data. but distinguished that clinton high data data sets were high level officials in the agency are made more accountable by the data. should we make that dstinction? >> the question, the question about ouhigh-value data sets, which is one of the terms we use in the open government directive. i think, and what the content should be the definition of a high data set. the critical question in high-value data sets is high value to whom?

you are right. notion isthat there are so many consumers of government data that actually the definition of high-value data sets will be multifaceted. so to parents who want to have data sets on nutrition for their children, or on what is a safe car see, that is the highest of high-value data sets. and we include. we also include a number of data sets that are critical to high ranking officials. we try to include data sets that are valuable for researchers, and others. so we have attempted to leave the definition broad enough to capture everyone's, you know, to capture the multifaceted nature of the users of the data sets. i will say in that regard just one last tidbit. we have and confine ourselves to

the every agency needed to come up with three newhigh-value data sets that were machine-readable, which they did. on a timetable as part of the open government plan, but they haven't stopped there. we started data.gov in the early months of the administration. with less than 100 dat sets. today, there are well over 100,000 data sets on dat.gov. so government is releasing data, rapidly across government. and that does com is part of, i think, the dramatic innovation in the area of open government that will unlock tremendous value for the american people from a for american business, for our economy. and we bear in mind all of the different uses of that data in releasing it. >> thank you very much. >> thank you, miles. thanks everyone. thanks for having me. [applause]

>> three quick things. as our first panel begins to come u one is, norm, a big thank you to you, not just for coming today but for all the work you have done. and those of us who are in the field, knows that you're someone who walks the walk as well as talk the talk. so we appreciate it very much and very much to be. let me ask the people, secondly, if the people are standing at the ck, if you'd like to come and take seats. there is definitely room, and much to come. let me ask the first panel to. while they're doing that i wanted a couple of acknowledgments. i just want to make sure that people are aware of the people that put this event together, from aricaspeaks, one of the partners, caron lukensmeyer and joe golden. joe, where are you? regime a. thank you very much. from demos i want to thank

brenda white and also acknowledged having the key and the two key leaders of our washington office were sitting in the back of the room. thank you very much. from everyday democracy, martha mccoy who's here, and pat scully who could make it toda, but s been part of the process ever since. and archon fung from the ash center at the kennedy school of harvard has been a bad as part. and also jane austen a huge amountof logistics work just last week to make sure we get here. so thank you to all the been part of it. perfect timing. and i want to introduce karen hobert flynn. yohave h bio in your pocket, but karen is someone who is the vice president for state governments and state chapters for common cause. she's also a connecticut, a leader of democracy worin connecticut where she and i worked together for going on 25 years. and it's been a delight to work with her and very happy to have

her on the panel. eshoo introduced the panelists. karen, come on up. >> thank you, miles. good afternoon, everyone. i'm very pleased to be that i' like to thank the brookings institution, demos, everyday democracy, americaspeaks, and the ash center for pulling together this very timely and importt event. as miles has said, this first panel will focus on electoral and campaign finance systems d how they can be reformed. they will be charged with discussing the obstacles to governance and will reforms need to be of limited to ensure the u.s. is equipped to face its short-term and long-term policy challenges. we're going to get each panelist seven minutes to talk, andmake their presentation. and afte each panelist speaks, then we will take questions from the audience, and we're hopig

to have some robust participation from all of you. i would like, as miles had mentioned, everyone's bio is in the packets, but i would like to make a brief introduction of each of our speakers in the order that they will be speaking. we first had nick nyhart who is cofounder and president and ceo public campaign. public campaign is a nonprofit nonpartisan organization decated to sweeping campaign finance reform that aims to dramatically reduce the role of special interest money in america politics. i've had the pleasure of working with nick for more than 15 years as he has been working since the early 90s with national and state organizations, legislators and the media, to build a movement for publicly financed elections in cities, states and at the national level. next to speak will be 80 hails who is the general counsel and managing director of the

advancement project. they advance the project is an action tank of policy communications and legal action groups that works on racial justice issues like the right to vote initiatives, border protection, immigration justice, quality education for all and i'll read it in franchise and. he is an expensive civil rights attorney and ordained baptist as any former general counsel on the u.s. commissions on civil rights. next we have claissa martinez de castro who struck of immigration and national campaigns at the ntional council of la raza where she works on immigration advocacy and strategy and manages, manages work on immigration efforts and efforts to expand opportunities for latis engagement and civic life in public poly debates. in the past, clarissa was also the manager of the coalition for comprehensive immigration reform. finally will have jon greenbaum speak who is the legal director

for the lawyers committee for civil rights under law is responsible for overseeing the commiee's effort to seek racial justi in the areas of education, employment, environmental justice, community development, housing and voting rights. for several years, mr. greenbaum directed the committee's voting rights project which, during his tenure, led thelection protection which is the largest nonpartisan voter protection program and by the largest and most significant component of the congressional record in support of the 2006 reauthorization of the voting rights act. so we will start with nick. you have seven minutes, and i will give you the one minute time before move onto our next speaker. thank you. [alause] >> thanks, karen. i'm ging o talk about the current public opinion environment a little bit about how it relates to reform, and also talk a lite bit about the status of public financing legislation now before congress.

but first i want to do something different. how many people in this room, and maybe the government officials can just stay out of this, but how many people in this room think the system of government is broken? regime hand if you do. okay. and how ma people would say it's not? and how many people didn't raise their hands during those -- okay, all right. so maybe three course of the people i think, or to third raise their hands the first time, a very small minority didn't, or wasin the other category. second question, how often do you think politicians base their votes on a legislative bill on the preferences of their campaign contributors rather than on their campaign contributors rather than their actual voting constituents? now, first major hand if you think all of the time, or often they vote in favor of their contributors over their constituents. so all the timeor often is one category. brazier hands if you are there.

thother categories is sometimes or never. so often, all the time, sometimes or never. . .

>> show the permanent unelected infrastructure in washington, the one that belongs to the lobbyist and the industry representation withi the apparatus. the revolving doors remains strong. i thinkyou need to look at the contours of the very, very lengthy health care battle. the ongong financial regulation battle. it's not done yet. we'll see what happens in washington. as far as drilling goes, you look at that and see the unlikely part of the government. and so what do voters think of this? well, it was in the invite to come here, i noted that 86% f the voters, that's a lot higher, somewhat higher than we saw here. i think we're going to talk

about part of that publi sentiment, not about fixed problems and how the government's inclination and how that plays in favor or against the interest of the everyday people in the government. there was another poll, not the one mentioned here, but out of the university of texas that gave insight on how voters rank various influence on the legislative decision making. they are saying who's doing to influence lawmakers vote the most. at top clustered thin a fraction of a percent together were campaign contributors, lobbyist, lower down were the white house, lawmakers fellow members, staff, andtheir own ideology. this is a poll of ordinary voter. trailing was the lawmakers own constituents.

other words, the fact that would most measure the functioning of the democracy was dead last. this is voters evaluating their own voice. in their same poll, when asked how often the contributors views were trumped by constituents views, the question that i asked were trumped, the question that i asked second, it was over 2/3. it was 68%. so here it's about 50/50. the publish view is 2/3 to 18% saying not often or never. so there's a huge, huge difference there beten what people in this room think and whathe public thinks. more recently, we, and i mean public campaign, coon cause, the center for justice and reform organization commissioned the deeper look into attitudes on money, power, and politics, including on how everyday citizens view the public financing solution. we're less than halfway through the research process. i want to share with you some of

the early learning from two sets of focus groups in may that took place. the words being led by drew, from the university of georgia with assistance linda lake and republic strategist. public polling is out there and their own proprietary work for clients. they've intergrated that into pieces of advice. the ajor takeaway with is that voters want to have their voices heard in washington. they think that special interest and lobbyist are taking the shot. this is similar than the university of texas poll, i think wn given the chance to answer, voters will say they want their own voices heard. they haven't given up on the system. there's something they want out of it still that they are not getting that's important to remember. not low self-esteem, they want something and aspire something

better than they are getting right now. in the observations of our research team, there's a number of other things. the rebellion is not from the right or left. voters across the board are dissatisfied. they see it was done with just voters. and they saw a really angry middle. some people say the far left or right. this spans all of the groups. just one quick digression. voters were working to reserve e public voting there. from what i've seen, we needed all of the democrats to support retaining between elections systems. but we also needed republicans. these arizona republican are consertive republicans. they are not the old fashioned '70s or new england republicans. one he things we have to do is hold t legislators. we were able to jerk the

pressure from conservative voters, right, conservative registered republicans o those legislators to keep the system and held the republican votes through grassroots eort from the right to keep the public financing ystemin place. so i just wanted to note that. we've seen the national practice. we've seen it on th issues of money and politics. on the money, it isn't and anti-specialist. you have to work hard. big change works better. small change, people are ready to dismiss quite easily. the problem is not a few rotten apples. but a system that corrupts even those who come to washington with the best of intentions.

only the dramatic change as a chance of producing impacts and results that will allow congress to address issues that affect their lives in their favor. voters believe that politicians and specialist are to cozy. they see legislation as best as a compromise between their interest and the interest of -- sorry. thecompromise between their interest and the broader interest -- sorry, their interest and the intrest of the special to leave. just hold on one second. here we go. all right. so i want to argue the small donor driven public financing is answer ts tme at voter discontent. it turns the current system on its head under the legislature that's currently being

considered in congress. the candidate on large numbers of contribution outside their district and state instead to competitivess in the race has to get large numbrs of small donations. $100 or less within their district. then they get a massive public fund. this means the higher the pressure on a candidate to raise measure money, they will be successful in this kind of a system, only if they expand their base of local supporters. so it turns the candidate 180 degrees, instead of focusing on going further away to find money to keep them in. perhaps the best of interest, instead what's incentivized the kind of behavior that voters want to see. that's increasing the contacts of elected officials for candidates and their constituents. so it drives people in the right direction as far as voters are concerned. it's also a big chang i think there are a number of proposals out there that voters

want big changes. it's something that changes 180 degrees gets the candidates doing what voters want. paying attention to their needs. the other thing it does is it reveals candidates of any needs to court big oil lobbyist or go to wall street for their money. the cozy relationship right now with specialist and lobbyist and candidates is rendered unnecessary in this program. one fina note, this is out there. it's on the table. there are 150 cosponsors right now. it's shy of 60. we have organizers, coalition of informers that generated 20,000 phone calls into legilative offices over the past month. in favor of this, thenumbers are going up.

we've also gotten support from unlikely places, political donors themselves are tired of this are lining up and calling themselves into law makers officeto express themselves. last wor, weneed big change. i think it's up to reformers to think big. because we don't want to let the voters down. so thanks. [applause] >> thank you chair for your introduction to the sponsors of this forum and to nick for giving me a great idea how to start off. i'd like to see hands of the right to vote fundamentals. that's about consistent with what a recent poll said. which show that 93% of all

americans believe the right to vote is one of their most fundamental rights in our society. and yet most americans are surprised to find out there's no affirmative right to vote in the united states constitution. the united sates is one of only 11 nations in the 119 democracies around the world that does not have an explicit affirmative provision in its constitution to guartee the right to vote. that have has severe consequences. right now we have er 13,000 jurisdictions that independently determine whether people will be able to exercise their franchise on election day. and while many people have long ago given up the notion that they are poll taxes and literacy

tests that prevent people from exercising their right to voe, we see a time tax where certain communities stand in line longer than other communities. and this burden on working people ten presents an inequality and an inefficiency in our government that ultimately prevents certain people from having their voices heard by government officials. and actually, that's what really is the point and the focus of the message that i want to share with you today. and hopefully, you will leave with the thought that it is very important for us to guarantee the right to vote that perhaps our election officials have not ne it. because indeed, there's no other way for adult citizens in our nation to share their voices on

the precious rightto vote. dr. martin luther king jr. once said that violence is the language of the unheard. an voting in america is supposed to be the language of our democracy. so if people can't vote or express themselves through he franchise hen indeed there is trouble ahead. every election cycle, and you would hear my colleague enumerate some of the documented difficulties people face. especially in communities of color. most people with disabilities and people who are new voters. who they face every election cycle and every election day we see 1,000 points of fight with

election officials about whether people who are eligible to vote and want to vote but are prevented frm voting because of different barriers in the registration process, eople with felony convictions, the only group of member -- mentally competentdlts in our country that cannot vote, especially of certain state, even after they have paid their debt to society and are now part of the tax paying population cannot express their voices through the ballot box because of senfranchisement laws that keepthem unable to participate. and so in a forum such as this, we attempt to spread the relationships among organizations and leaders within the greater democracy reform, i encourage all of you to consider

that there is this great possibility of joining the many rivers of or many streams i should say of separate movements and efforts to reform our democracy and come together as the mighty river of change through a right to vote initiative, which can fix the problem of too many americans being unable to express their voices in our democracy. i won't be able to cover all of my points. so i encourage you to go to iwantmyrighttovote.or and you'll get special information about what that will entail. i will say this, as you go to difficult states you'll have different laws when it comes to who can vote and whether they can vote. through early voting by

provisional ballots, and again if they have a past felony conviction. the laws will be interpreted differently county to county. and then within county, different bureaucrats will hae different pactical ways of implementing their interpretations and their perspectives on what the law says that make it an e uneual opportunity for every american to vote. and while there are laws that protect the right to vote both in our constitution and as interpreted by federal courts, those rights again have been interpreted differently, circuit by circuit and from time to time. so now we live in a -- a

situation where unless e come together in the form of a movement to build a constituency around the fact that we should not be one of only 11 naions without an explicit affirmative right to vote in our constitution or that we should model something that is big and better than placesthat we often challenged to do more in giving citizens a ight to vote. and so i will make myself available for questions. but there's something that i read and it just stuck with me. and it goes back to the fact of what it really takes to make something big an necessary happen. and it goes back to the fact of

the story that was seized on by a phillip randolph, a civil rights activist and union organer who founded the brotherhood of sleeping capoter. he had an early meeting with president franklin roosevelt early in his administration. randolph asked about the possibility of adopting a policy that would grant the largely african-american porter, rights under federal law. and the president replied tha he will be convincedby randolph of the egitimacy of pushing for uch legislation, but that he eded a constituency that would make him do it. a constituency was indeed mobilized and the railroad labor act came into law in 1934. this is a challenge before us. so let's ope and work and make changepossible. we've never had better opportunity to do it.

[applause] good afternoon, everyone. i was trying t gain weather you should see me better fom my chair behind the podium. my time is ms. martinez. i work on immigration right now in the national campaign which is an interesting mix but it's not so rare. i was working on civil engagement programs for the national council for quite some time. looking at citizenship process

in the latino community. and i would always run into the immigration issue from a civic engagement perspective. in that -- so might as well start looking at those. now since i'm working on immigration policy, it's easy to see how it should not have anything to do one with the other. i'm going to talk a little bit about that. and a couple of other things. but let me take a step back and say that you know, i think to the naked eye we are actually seeing a great deal of political participation in the country right now. you know, whether it is on the tea party side, obviously in my world of immigtion, we continue to see peaceful demonstrations of size unseen

before. and they continue to happen in cities across the country. very division in both the color of people and the lega status of people who are part of those. so actually some people would say we are seeing a very energized time of political participation. and to the question of is governmt broken, i would say, well, you know, let's take a closer look. and i think that political participation and that engagement that we are seeing tells us a lot of things. but i thik that we also cannot talk about government as if it was an attached entity from oursves. because we all contribute to whether government is broken or is functioning. so we can't simply continue to buy into the notion of doing only indictment of government which i always find very interesting how the number one campaign tactic of most politicians is to run against what they are dying to be part

of. just doesn't make sense to me. and the guy that comes after them will do the same thing. so in terms of looking at this participation, i think that two of the broad things that seem to me to be very present in what we're looking at right now, among others, but to me there's two very present themes. one is our need to safeguard the public wear. the space where constructed dialgue that we can engage in meaningful debate about our shared challenges and opportunities. so i think that right now we're seeing a lot of participation, a lot of engagement, but somehow that space for that meaningful and constructive convertion is what seemed to be a little bit elusive. and therefore, our ability to come together to really talk about the problems we need to

solve keeps escaping us while our frustration by engaging and speaking about the problem then grows. and then the othr thing is that i think we're also faced with a time not not -- it's not a strange time to us. we've had this time in previous episodes in our history wherewe also need to work to ensure that our notion of who is deemed to be an mesh is actually usagers as america itself. and so i think that what we are experiencing is growing pains and some of them feel ver painful around both f these broad areas. these challenges, if you would. to me, on the first one o safeguarding the public square, i think one the biggest irons that i see is that again we are participating inways that are

helping rather than uild the public space, they are helping polarize in coming together in finding those solutions, so the irony in that is that i strongly believe thatwe actually once we get down to business and we start trying to identify what workable and effective solutis are we actually have more common ground as an electorate an public. but the poor -- polarizing of the conversation makes it seem we are divided and unable to come up with a solution. immigration can -- can't stay away from that too long. immigration is a perfect case in point. i think that most folks who don't deal as the issue as much would think from the media coverage, nbc had a whole special last week. a nation divided.

right? they had accountable debate, i think it was exactly the sae thing on another station. the irony there is this is an issue where there is a great deal of consensus in terms of what needs to be done. and congress, the public is in a much more pragmatic place than congress is on that issue. but we continue to fail to enact a solution. therefore, the frustratn within the pubic continues to grow. and when there is no response and no action to lead that frustration, then you end up with things like aizona. and there is no surprise in looking at the polls where a majority of americans would support their state doing something similar to arizona, because on the face of the enaction, any action seems better. particularly, if you are not going to be the one paying for

the consequences. if you look at the latino registered votrs, meaning citizens, not unocumented immigrants or not yet citizens, over 70% of latinos oppose the law. they are going to be get stopped and asked for paper. but in the bsence of action, frustration takes oer. and then obscures that notion. in the same polls, even a higher number of people support the comprehensive immigration reform solution than the arizona law. but i think they are getting really frustrated with expecting the federal government to act. so tht's one set of things. and i think that the issue here and i was listening the talk about the elections and what candidates do. in my mind, particularly looking at the latino electorate, it's clear to uswhat drives election is either money or sheer

numbers. and then you make the political calcultions of how those are going to add up. but i think that right now part of what is expecting the process is we have a very shallow system of engaging voters. even with voters are being pursued or supposedly listened to, the rality is it is very shallow, so politicians tend to engage in a pushing your button type of game where aligning certain issues becomes a lot more important and gives a igher payback, even if it's in short lived of up-and-down polling. but you also need to create bogey men or distract it from other things that you don't want to deal with. what it also means to have a system like that is that you are

much less likely because you are driven by elections and winning on elections. you are much less likely to tackle the controversial problems. or the difficult problems. which eans they did worse and worse and worse. and the frustration of voers around them only deepens and deepens and deepens. so, you know, health care is one of those things. financial reform is one of those things. immigration reform. any of these one thing that is we are in the midst of the trying to deal with right now in that all of the sudden we feel overwhelmed and feel that the problem is too big is a esult of those things. so in terms of the second notion about ensuring that who is the deemed to be an american isn't diverse as we are as a nation. let me just say that that is a conversation that we as the country are very intensely

having right now. even if it's often other issues on the base. and there again, you know, we go back to arizona. whether it is through the show me your papers law in arizona or the previous cases we have seen such as in north carolina, a few election back with the local sheriff wanted to get a list for the latino registered voters in his county so he could go door to door and ask him to prove to him the sheriff that they were exhibiting. it's short of -- sort ofwhere we are goi in arizona where you have between 18 and 20 states where it's a goo hing to go in that direction. it is about a lot more than immigration. this is really about who is perceived to be an american, who is going to be regarded as suspicious when they show up to a polling place or to any other thing. and connected to that of who is

deemed to be a american and perhaps in the civic sense, who is deemed to be a citizen, you start lking at some of the other challenges we are facing in terms of who is deemed worthy of being a voter? and so with that we have voter identification requirements which introduce under the guides of immigration and voter fraud that has been largely in existence now, we've been trampling the ability to vote of u.s. citizens. :

because when you think that you five years in prison, $10,000 fine and if you are a mimicry and, it's a pretty steep gamble to try to cast that vote. so we need to stand against those. we. we need tongage in more realistic debate to make sure that the buttons that are getting pushed on us when we react as voters and condone the forward movement of these things, that we take a step back and think about that. and last but not least, for latinos particularly as a building block o a strong electoral bloc as it is for other communities, we go one step back to the process of

citizenship and having a government that really invest in the process of citizenship in the same way that it values the integration of immigrants into american society and that your adoption of these immigrants of america of their country. and right now i'll just leave you with that thought that on the immigrant -- on the citizenship status, we have seen between 1990 and 200 a 561% fee increase of the citizenship application process, a process that is very rigorous, but often maligned and politicized. anyway, hopefully we can engaged a lot more the conversation. thank you very much. [applause]

>> john? >> a good afternoon, everybody. i want to thank brookings and the four other organizations that have been among the leaders in trying to bring us together and workn strengthening democracy. when it comes to demography out voting is an indispensle part tiered 1964 the supreme court perhaps said it best by saying godinez preservative of all other civil right. the fact that we were able to vote and we have the right to the next debate difference in terms of the way government operates beause simply you can change restricting government through the vote and we've seen that have been in the 2008 presidential election and we've al seen that happen in some of the congressional elections that haveccred since. at the lawyers committee, we've done a number of things over the

last several years, working in conjunction with private organizations -- the private part and with other nonprofits to try to strengthen the right to vote, including the election protection efforts, which in 2004 and 2008 we had more than 200,000 calls in each ear to the 1866 our vote hotline. we had over 10,000 legal volunteers in 2008. we've also done things like the national commission on the voting rights acwhere we had 10 hearings across the country had more than 100 people speak to talk about the degree to which dirimination still exists in voting. and then we done other things like litigation, for example, is suing ohio after the 2004 election based on an rp which was an unconstitutional system of administering elections. and the one they, throughout this work, and studied very

close is the one thing, the one area of the process that we saw most needed every form, where most people were getting kicked out of the system than anywhere else was there system of voter registration. and i want to talk about how we can do a better job at registering voters now under the current law and what we can do to change the law to make voter registration nearly universal. so one of the things that we've done under the current law -- most of you are familiar with the motor voter law, otherwise known as the national boater registration act. and you think of it as motor voter because the new picture drivers license you can also register to vote here another provision of that act involves public assistance agencies. so if you're going to go down to get food stamps, you're also supposed to be asked whether you want to register to vote. however, one of the things that we sawwas most public assistance agencies weren't

complyinwith the law. so lawyers committee and some project about a year ago started an effort to increase compliance at public assistance agency. any number of states that led to reaching an agreement to reach an agreement in the some cases we had to sue and the results have been extraordinary. i give you two examples. missouri, we sued them in the middle of 2008 and got an order om the court because they were not offering voter registration at public assistance agencies. in 18 months since that order and then reaching a settlement of the case, over 200,000 people at public assistance offices have registered to vote, which is a 1600% increase. more recently, in ohio, we sued

ohio in 2006 when they fought us for about three and a hlf years and we have to go to the court of appeal that one point. and finally released we met a settlement with ohio. the first four months of this year, over 60,000 people that submitted voter registration applications that ohio agencies and that is -- that's an increase of about 1000%. and if you think about that over the course of the year, that means 200,000 people in ohio, if we keep the same rate over the next four years, that's 800,000 people in ohio. so that's one thing that we tried to do anwe've tried to work on the department of justice to improve their enforcement efforts as well because really that is something that the department of justice has primary enforcement responsibilities and we hope and expect that they'll really start

engaging with us in this effort. the second piece is how can we really improve the system? well, we have an outmoded system of voter registration, where it put the honest on the individual to register to vote. and really in this day and age with all the technology out there, we should be way beyond that. i mean, as it is right now at most, for example, if you use the example again of motor vehicles and of public assistance, you have to provide almost all the information at each of those agencies that is needed for voter registration when you get a new driver's license, when you apply for food stamps. and so, why not have a system of automatic registration, where you take all up frothese agencies that collect this data, do we us that data to

automatically register people to vote. and if somebody doesn't want to vote or is otherwise ineligible, th'll have the opportunity to opt-out. another important piece of that is the idea of permanent registration because we know in our country we are very mobile. people move around a lot. and one of the things we've been told, this is something that was told in missouri and in 2008. about 75% of the registrants were people who were not new registrants, but people would move from one place to another in misery. so why not have a system using that agencies when people move in the same state the registration was with them. and then finally, for those who fall within the cracks, why not enable them to vote -- register and te on election day? and in fact, the states that have the highest participation levels generally in this country are those that have election day

registration. so those are soe ways we can really advance the process forward, has millions more people vote during the process and create a simpler, more effect if system of voting. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, john. we're going to move intothe portion where we do a question and answer. but before we do and wanted to welcome and thank spencer overton who is here from the department of justice for being with us. thank you very much for coming. [applause] we are going to open this up for questions and answers them and give our panelists a chance to make brif closing remarks. we have about 15 minutes for questions. and if we have some folks who have microphones that can take your questionsf you want to raise your hands and if you have a specific questn for a

speaker, you know, please let us know when you do that. right there. the >> thank you for a wonderful panel. if we are suggesting threats to democracy, why haven't we discussed gerrymandering because that gets to the issue of multiparty competitive elections, which are a core democratic rights. >> do you want to take that, john? >> yes, redistricting will be coming up in the next year. any idea of how districts will be drawn is a very important one. i'll tell you from the perspective of the lawyers committee, one of the things that we've really certified for in the redistricting process is redistrict teen that has allowed minority voters to better be ableo participate in the process, which sometimes have been at odds with the idea of

having competitive elections. but i'll tell you that in terms of having minorities being able to elect tir andidates of choice, it really did not come about until there was concerted effort to keep minority communities together in the context of redistrict team. i'm sure others have things they want to say about the issue. >> i would only weigh in by saying yes, that's a very important point. technology will play a major role in ensuring tht people are in communities where they can participate fairly in electing their representatives of their choice. so you will see a lot of groups providing both legal asstance and technological assistance in ensuring that maps are developed that appropriately take into consideration the diverse communities that the census data

will show are mo diverse than ever before. >> any questions? >> i'm waynesburg. this question is for nick nyhart. you say that voters are ready for big change, but it seems to me you have to be pretty select did in the way you pick examples to argue that. first, as one believes in majority rule as a way of solving or picking candidates, the results of the election, you look at the presidential election 2000, where we elected the man with the fewer votes as president. but there were very few calls that the voter level for electoral college reform. and whenever there was has long dissipated a now. it seems to me like a pretty big deal and the president's candid with the fewer votes get the good president. and i wonder why there isn't more voter interest in this sort of thing.

>> i think there is voter interest in a variet of outcomes, that the lawmakers they elect actually represent them. and if you look at the 2000, 2006 and 2008 elections, the research may mandate for change and yet there was an infrastructure in washington that those voters who elected people with drug majorities, not tight aces, there were about to change expected and i think voters are quite as appointed there were a variety of reforms, but they have to be put in terms of voters voices being heard. i think the money go as you watch people talk about the issues, the money staff comes up fast. we did focus groups in charlotte, north carolina and denver, colorado. i sat in on four hours of a video feed of the one from denver and without any prompting at all, the money just comes right out. so i think the voters have seized on that. i think electoral reform is

harder to talk about in some ways because they'll grow colleges is hard for people to understand the 2008 election by people to understand it bettr. but i thin that goal of having voters voices being heard is sot of a rubric under which you can place a lot of other reforms on good electoral college reform in that. and there's interesting work going on right now, the common causes working on with ocular vote to make sure that the person receives the popular vote actually wins. i think that's progressing. karen, do want to mentio not? >> i think that there is -- there is a movement in states to adopt a compact for national reserve votes and so we are seeing that that is and actually believe they will be a vote and not in massachusetts in the next week or two, so we'll see what happens there. but i do think that there are voters that are interested enough to make time to focus on wh we come closer to election time. let me ask anotheruestion as

we -- as we think about some of what nick has talked about about public opinion because i do think the research by drew weston brings up some interesting points that voters want their voices heard and that they haven't given up on democracy entirely. am i just would be interested to hear from the rest of the panel about what kind of lessons learned for some other reforms that that they are advocating for if you're taking a look at some of the public opinion research. jon, do you want to start and then maybe nik. >> i think there's a real difficulty in terms of legislative forms, and returns of getting anything done. because of the way that congress hasset up to act.

and particularly in terms of the senate and in terms of an increasingly polarized body that unless you have 60 votes in the senate, you can't get this done. and i will say tha to my organization, there were some good things as effectively the 60-vote rule in the 2003, 2006 iraq. chor i was talking recently about voter i.d. and proof of citizenship laws. that pass for federal elections in the house of representatives in 2005 but they didn't get 60 votes in the senate. now that we're trying to make older reforms have been, not limited to just coding, what has gotten accomplished in this coress? very litle beyond health care reform, which, you know, a lot

of people considered to be watered down to begin with. so i think that's a real impediment in terms of taking what voters want and actually creating policy as a result of that. >> like to note that also we're going to be talkingin the next panel about filibuster reform. so iant to but not bad for later and also seatmate wanted to add anyhing. >> i do think there is sort of a disconnect often among groups among reformers. and the level of anger that's out there in the public. i actually think the level of anger out there in the public, which goes right to left, left to right. i mean, it's very prod. and it centers on a common complaint to my voices being heard. washingtonsn't listening to me. there's a huge opportunity. i mean, this should be a golden moment for reformers and connecting to that anger for the

polarization is not right and left, it top and bottom. they thought to be an opening. we have reformed sympathetic i think lawmers in the majority party and is certainly a present from me on many issues in the white house, there should not be a better time to actually win reforms over the next two, four, six years that were read right now. i think the key is a mining voters in the mood. people said overnment works and people here were actually warmer to the proposition then people outside this room or outside the beltway. and i think there needs to be a connecting with the kind of anger. and it's rather disputing people whether the government works. we need to say no you're right, how do we make your voice better heard. whether that goes to making sure everybody can go. i mean, it would be against that? i think that's a pretty milquetoast the word. i think we can evolve further

for talk about drinking against a government secret keeping. if you want to get the public going and connect with the anger inhe feeling that's out there, we need to change your language any think we need to embrace the anger and move with it, rather an stated off. >> i think one of the challenges is that people are very frustrated and rightfully so. and there's not necessarily a constructive space for people to gravitate towards. there are negative spaces for people to gravitate towards and there's a reason you go there. i mean, evn if the state allows you only the opportunity to vent, that makes you feel slightly better. you know, and many take a breath of many may realize a little later that it actually solve the problem, but it made you feel better at that particular moment. i took plenty, just ask my

husband. but i think at some point it's like a mutual accountability equation. we as voters also have to be held accountable and it's a shar responsibity. we are engaged in a pig-pong match of elections and politics. i feel these studies about how midterm elections always go against the party that is in the presidency and there's tons of economic church models to look at them and i'm not an economist. so to me, the thing that is the easiest reason is people are over adjusting, ar overcompensating. our expectations are really high with the new president coming and end this is not just this one, but before. and in the midterm coming up just of course because people didn't meet your every wish. and right now i can, just because we are living in a much -- in a much more pressured

world with the economy, with other challenges, that adjustment is happening even with greater force. but at the end of the day, it continues to be a ping-pong match and it doesn't allow us to move a great deal forward. so to me, god, i think is that the kids because i don't necessarily see this as coming from partisan structures, which unfortunately are the more established structures that shore up or that operate the participation system when you think about our dissipation in electoral terms. i don't think we're going to get through that was just having are relying on the structure is because they have a self-preservation interest and therefore the portion of the button for the creation of the boog man continues to happen. i think a big part of voters frustrations is that every

administration that goes by or every congress, which is controlled by one party or the other. all of a suen what was good yesterday as bad today. what was bad today -- whatis bad today was good yesterday depending who is in power. and at the end of the day, the voter ends up in largely a similar situation. i believe that is the case with a lot of folks in th latino community. anso, you start detaching from that system and simply rattling against it and i think that's what we're experiencing. >> just real quickly, we are experiencing beyond anger, beyond indifferent, there's also competition for a voice at the table. and the media, through congress, we have a lot of different strains have been mentioned before. there are people working on campaign finance issues, people working on election integrity issues, free enfranchisement of people with felony conditions. and we have all of these

different strains and the joy i have today in this forum is the fact that there is an effort to bring together all of these smaller streams into a mighty river of he movement to push for reform. >> let's take some me questions. right over there. >> thank you. anton wilson's berth at the woodrow wilson center. this is for mr. nick nyhart. one thing i didn't hear and maybe i missed it is the public opinion on public financing of campaigns. last i looked there is taxpayers don't want their dollars to be used for politicians to campaign. maybe that has changed since. but even if we assume they supported a need to get back, have you shut up a special interest from giving? i mean, is this something of a constitutional amendment and finally an relionship, what kind of example to think

president obama said in public talking of the general election campaign? >> levies are with the last one because i think we form groups all faith that in watching a candidate to attend pro-reform in word and indeed in the illinois state senate, then turn around and say noto the public financing system as presidential candidate. i think it's important to remember the reform committee spoke pretty loudly for years earlier that the system is broken. getting most of him said qite publicly that forcing people, for us in the community same system is broken butou better choose it was not a position we take in the reagan form groups. i think we're pretty clear about that, for turkey pushed them come to pledge support of a system to fix the presidential system to support the system of congressional public financing and he may boast of those pledges. you know, as far as popularity of public financing, the gallup survey which has been asking that question since the late 60's has shown above 50% support for years and years.

if you ask it about a system that actually allows participating candidates not to take any big contributions, the nuers are in from the high 60's to the mid70's pretty southerly again and again and again. if u.s. people completely separately, how do you feel about your tax money be infused for a list of things, they tend to say no. so there is a battle there between the good getting rid of the private money and replacing the public financing and certainly people who are against it will focus only on the site you're going to pay for it do not fit. think in the balance from the polling i've seen, but also realizing experience, the a's win out over thmaze. we can't eliminate to be constitutional. we can't eliminate private money, but you can create a system thawill offer a candidate that route to financial liability and success to a candidate, so robust public

financing system needs to be made effectively the state level state-level recent successful systems in maine and arizona in terms of candidates at the 80% or higher bubble and action in connecticut and mae about 50% in arizona using the system. so you have to make it enticing to use because you need to keep your competing against a private option. there will always be money in the system. our goal is not to eminate the ability of people to express their opinions in an election context by ads, but to give candidates who don't want to run away and alternatives and to create a system in which small contributions, $10, $50, $75 are important. and that what the system does. it makes voters more important in the system. it doesn't cancel out the ability of other voices to act. >> right here. >> thank you for thi forum and it's nice to hear some truly

deep criticism. one thing i want to offer that i think is a real conundrum is basically, we have established a system of governance that was based on inaudible compromises, be it the states or whatever, whatever. we are, for the most part, stuck in that system. that system has established a load of vested interest. and now we're in a position where we have to go to those established vested interest to say we need a change. the two problems are want, the entries are going to be that agreeable. and two, a lot of the changes that need to be made are beyond the understanding of the everyd person because when our constitution was written it was written by a small number of people who did a lot of studies and talk to one another. so how are we going to get out of this mess when we have to go to the same people who a doing it to us to ask them to changes?

[inaudible] [laughter] >> a quick answer in the public financing question. i think the old assumption is . . . . . it's not in their interest. what we're seeing now in terms of people supporting leadership in the majority party, being the leaders on the fair elections now act is that that equation doesn't hold anymore and that if you give a candidate and incumbent -- not allof them yet, but increasingly if you give an incumbent a choice between being able to be financially successful based on campaigning for small donations in their home state versus being on the phone and lovely talking to tal strangers all over the country and being in a compromising position when you have to go to the people who might find you because of where you stand on the committee, that they take the small donor system.

and we're seeing not increasingly because the current system has become so untenable. i think if you look at the whole financial regulation debate coming of lawmakers whore years depended on wall street monday, saying how do i take that money bause i need that money to run? but on the other hand, how do i look good taking any of this money when the public is focused on this issue? also cannot system doesn't work so well anymore for a lot of the accumbens. again, we're not a 50% yet but if the vote were held to maryland house, we would win it and i think the senate is perhaps one cngress away from being able to embrace that. >> now, i think we're going to have to wrap this up and give everybody a chance to make a minute or two of closing remarks. ..

>> we need a constitutional amendment that enshrines te right to vote in affirmative ways. thank you. >> i know it's kin of gloomy. but i do think tht part of seeing so much participation even if maybe it's not happening and what some of us may regard leads to per spect outcomes, i think that part of that participation is a reactn to people feeling like they were shut out of the process before.

and so we might not -- we might feel a need to make sure that it gets to a place where participation equals strong civic society. but i think that when you are calibrating, there's a certain amount of feeble that happens in that process. so we are seeing a lot more people jump in, trying to figure out our they engage. we may over shoot in some places and fall short? others. but i think the challenge is whether we get back to the middle or i would say a balanced center of that participation where we are as citizens are able to hold our elected leaders accountable. and they are able to but they are also able to lead. which i think frankly is a lot of what we are not seeing right now. the equation of facing your calculations on a -- on winning

the election and combined with a very shallow mass of engaging with your voters has led to an inability to lead and an over -- and the over use of being in campaign mode all the time. to where the service to voters and the service issues. again, in terms of, i think, in engagement, we need to look at what are he mechanisms that strengthen democracy and whether this may be ironic. try to move away from the political political -- politicizing structures. rather than the hope for invalued immigration immigration, the same way that voter identification requirements from tked about in terms of who is being prevented from voting as opposed to trying to make sure that we

all have access. so balancing the fact that it's a political process with trying to decouple the politicizing of the various structures. i think it's going to be an important challenge for us. >> a number of us here participated in a conference last summer sponsored by most of the groups that are up there. and one of the things that was really interesting was to hear what was happening in other countries. and to hear about how a lot of other contries that may be in terms of their history of democracy are -- maybe don't have the same history that we do in this country. but they are moving very fast in terms of doing some very interesting things regarding opening up their government to the citizenry in a way that we haven't. and, you know, i really wish

that everybody in the room cod have been at that conference. because it really opens you up going back to your uestion about, you know, we have soquese pat of will. and some of these countries there was the will within the government and usually within the executive branch within the government to create a space to allow for some really robust public participation. >> because i think that my one piece of advice for all of us is both to connect. because i think the things we want, our ideals and values are very much the same. but also to think civic.

every time i see someone going on inside the way and when i step out and listen to voters talk about the political system, i'm wayly encouraged. they wnt a democratic process for them as well as other people. and that's a basic belief that is out there and should allow us to proceed with confidence. the anger we are seeing there, seeing right now is because that process or that ideal is not lied up to. but we share with all of these angry people that ideal and our job is to ive up to those hopes that people have around the country. >> well, i wanted to thank our panel for coming together. and as nick has said about thinking about big, i also think it's important that many of us that work in our individual silos think more broadly and think together. and some of the things that we've talked about will be

discussed further at the governance reform panel that will be taking place in about 0 minutes. so thank you again to our host for pulling this together. >> okay. thank you, everybody for coming back reasonably promptly. the next panel >> the next panel will be led by the --

kennedy school of government. it's taken mebout a year to get it right. but i think i have it ow. his research exams the impact of e civic participation and public deliberation on transparency and public. his book exams two parts of the efforts in low income chicago neighbors, current projects exam the initiatives and ecosystem management, top production, endangered species production, local government, and international labor standards. so he's qualified to talk about pretty much anything based on that list. so this is the panel that's going to discuss the series of governance issued. i'm delighted to introduce archon fung. >> thanks, miles. it's natural and appropriate for this discussion and exploring ways to improve our electoral

system. but it's critical that the discussion does not end there. many americans, especially politicians but also political scientist, policy experts, advocates suffer under the acquaint but illusn that the policies begin and end on the elections. if only we could fix or elections, democracy itself would be healed. if our electorate system works better, we could go about making good lace and policy without worrying about mustering public support until the next election. but this view is pivoting around the ballot box. what happd before election before and after is also critical to the health of our democracy. a healthy democracy requires citizens to take an interest in their communities, in each other, and in the long-term well being of the nation. it requires citizens wh have the desire to inform themselves and social and political

institution to give citizens an opportunity to engage in public life so they come to seek government at all of the levels as something that they own and control, not on alien entit they distrust and even fear. now, posters ask americans whether they think that quote, the country is looking outfor a few big interests or the benefit of all people? today most americans response, a few big interests. because so many americans today do not trust their government or political leaders, electis alone simly cannot secure the legitimacy and man -- mandate what they are meant to do. not just on election day should they prove themselves, but over and over every single day. this nation's coalitions recognized this reaction. some of the organizations in coalition work to strenhen the habits of citizenship by

creating opportunities for young people to get engaged in public service and others organize public deliberations methods. our first speaker, martha mccoy directs an organization called everyday democracy. everyday democracy works with hundreds of communities all around the country to help citizens and community leaders in those communities come together to solve difficult problems such as racial conflict, economic, equality, crime, and educational inclusion. other democric efforts occur aft election day in the law making process and in the policymaking process. opinion polls show that many americans are frustrated even baffled at the inability of those they send to washington to move forward on obviously important public problems. admiral harman at brookings institution will be the second speaker on that panel. he's an expert on congress.

he's written many books on problems, such as edistricting and political parties. today he'll help us under by the legislative process has grown to be paralyzed and hoefully what we might do about it. one slogan from the cold war was trust that verifies. things may have declined in this country to the point at which the slogan is now appropriate not just for americans in the relationship to the foreign enemies but in americans in relationship to their own government. transparency and information disclosures is one way that americans can check but in the large organization upon which so much are indeed trustworthy. campaign finance disclosure, properly done, can help americans know which interest support the political representatives. public budget disclosure can help americans judge whether their money is being spent wisely. greater public access to information about relationships

between regulators and industry, adverse drug reactions, or autoaction reports might help amercans avoid the next bp deep water horizon fiascoes. gary bass directs the nonprofit research and government to government accountability and openness. he's worked on government transparency and will tell us about the remaining challenges creating the government and open society. so let me welcome our first speaker, martha mccoy. [applause] >> good afternoon. it's great to be here with you all. the open government directive that the president issued his first day in office was really hopeful and excitinfor many of us in this room and many people

across the country. the three commitments in that directive to transparency, participation, and collaboration are critical aspects of the democracy reform movement. the challenge with talking about participation in collaboration is that the words get used incorrectly so often that most people don't even know what they mean. the most common misperception is that there is just pr. while good public relations is often a good part of the effective participatory process, it also requires political leadership, analysis, and resources. without that, it's just window dressing and doesn't change anything about politics as usual. unfortunately, the versions end up getting a lot of press. because they might make good

theater or often up some good conflict for us to watch. the town hall meetings o health care reform were great examples on how not to do public participation. in the past decade when most elected officials or candidates have used town hall language, they've been talking about explaining their ideas and taking questions or demands or sometimes insults from others. and the one example, but last summers were not the worst. the worst examples of the last few years, audiences for so-cled town hall meetings were carefully screamed and the meetings were par -- portrays as a meeting with a range of perspectives. one the natural reaction is more civility might seem like an answer. that would be welcome. i think we might all appreciate that at times. but it's not an adequate respoe. lack of civility is actually a

symptom of a structural problem that requires a structural remedy. as they once said, democracy needs a place to sit down. and it still does. we need structured opportunities to hear from people who are not like us, express ourself, work through issues together, becoe informed together, use conflict productively, talk with public officials, be heard by them, find areas of commonality, and then we need to use that participatory process as a basis for collaborating together to have an ongoing voice in the decision making and into solving problems. this does mean collaborating with government. but it also means holding government accountable. it requires transparency at every step. there are some major challenges that any leader who's trying to create good participation and collaboration will have to confront if he or she is going

to help creates the kinds of opportunities that can strengthen our national democracy. first, this isn't the way politics usually work. the power of money makes it very difficult to impement participatory processes, even for public officialswho might want to. that's why campaign finance reform and electoral reform have to go hand in hand with participation and collaboration. second, there is a profound lack of social trust between eople with different views and a major distrust of government. because of the way our media are structured, a sort of outrage industry that i recently read that term. i thought it was pretty accurate has been created. and so the media exacerbates these trends on a regular basis. and as dionne pointed out a few years ago, if the airlines advertise the way most

candidates do they'd be showing the crashes of their competitors and no one would fly. [laughter] >> now, thank you, e.j. now instead of just the candidatesdemonizing each other, there's regular demonizing of the other across the board. the very fabric of our democracy seems to be dissin grating. third, there are large and growing disparities between racial andeth lick groups. we mostly don't talk about these issues as a country. that denial shows in our lack of attention and public will to do something about them. disparities and how people are fairing economically in health care and education and in housing. as a country we don't spend time trying to understand where those disparities are cming from. even though they are undermining

our ability to tackle some of the most serious problems. these disparities get replicated in voting ratesnd other fors of participation. and it also in which forms of partication receive creditability. which further cuts us off from the voices of people that were going to be heard if we're going to solve our problem. i point you to the institute of the study of race who's been mapping and documents many of these disparityies. so in participation and collaboration are carried out well, they have the potential to confront these dynamics and even transform them. we can see that happening in a growing number of local communities of all sizes around the country from very smll to ery large, including tribal communities. a small but glowing number of public officials from different political parties is figure out they need to govern differently.

and there are citizen innovator who are figure out they can collaborate with government, nonprofits, and the private sector to help create these kinds of structud opportunity. one great example of effective participatory process took place in new orleans. where america speaks worked to rebuild the city so that all backgrounds and people in the city would have a voice. or in the south bronx, a community that everyday democracis working with, the faith community hasinitiated ways for residents and police to talk about public safety and mmunity policing and to make regular deisios together about some of the policing that would be happening in the community. now the borough is supportg those efforts along with the police department. some of our partners in the deliberate democracy consortium, a consortium of scholar who are

working to make these parts of the democracy are working on very similar efforts. so the point is this is happening. and it's having results on some very atractable issues. people are meeting in sll groups, large groups, sometimes meeting online, sometimes using technology, they are working with each other, they are building trust, they are working with public officials, and they are having a voice in decision making. i recommend matt linningger's book. at same time, there's a group of federal managers who are innovating in federal agencies to use strong and collaborative practices. such as the environmental protectionagency who's work actually led to the creation of the water shed movement in collaboration with many citizen groupsround the country.

these innovatrs within agencies need more resources. they need more support to be able to take these practices to any kind of real scale. and for more examples of this work, you can tell i'm going to give you reading homework to do. i recommend carr mono's book "investing in democracy." another sign of hope is there's a growing body of empirical knowledge about processes. archon fung has looked at democracy deficits. so it's possible to see what kind of processes address what kinds of needs and results. there's also a growing community of practices, people, and organization that are dedicated who are looking at ths kind of research and using it. there's a growing consensus within this community on the principals that ground good participation and claboration. as part of the open government

dialogue became after the directive was issued, the national coalition for dialogue and deliberation collaborated with others to direct prinipals of public engagement. finally, a growing number of participation efforts at the local level are finding productive ways to tackle racial and ethnic, and disparities among economic groups. these are some of the hardest issues to talk about or do anything about. but people ar finding ways not only to talk about them productively and in diverse groups but to tackle the very roots of the growing gas we are facing and to do something about them. with structured opportunities, people can meet and talk across racial divides, across economic divides, and with public officils and public institutions in school district districts. it's amazing people are participating by the thousands

and tens of thousands. the civil rights is an field that's important component in this work. i'll give you one last reading and recommendation, c -- cathy kramer walsh. she's looked at the democracy and open to cities on people who are doing work with racial equity. we need to build on the practices and knowledge that we have and tap into the growing network of elected officials, noprofit, and practitioners to take this to scale. this is urgent and doable. it is doable. this would offer hope for bridging ou largest divide and helping us solve some of the most critical problems. those of us working on

participation and collaboration cannot do this alone. we need to work with other parts of the democracy reform movement. media reform, electoral reform, civic education, natial and community service and transparency. that's why we are all here today. that's why we are committed to working together to strengthen our democracy. thanks. [applause] >> lest i be misunderstand in the remarks i'm about to make, let me be very clear that i'm very high on the agenda that's being discussed at this conferce. i've been personally involved in campaign finance reform, and

redistricting reform, election reform, i applaud the efforts of those witin the executive branch as reported by norm eisen earlier today on the open government move, on ethics and lobbying reform. and so nothing i say will really go against that. but what i've been sitting here listening and while agreeing i had tis uneasy feeling. i wrote myself a note just before it came up ere. and i said we are over estimating public engagement as it now exists or the potential for it to exist in the future. and we are under estimating the importance of party and ideology in our politics and governance

today. depending upon too deep of a level of engagement by ordinary citizens or under play the critical importance of ideological differences now within and -- i'm sorry between the two parties could lead to us too quickly concluding that all of government. some undifferuated massed, i have to be careful, because i did fight with aphereses on the book on a mass and i think there's agreement tha all government is broken. and it might also lead us to promote in reforms that fail to be enacted or that prove

ineffectual in improving governance. that's the edgethat i want to front you today. now when i'm feeling uneasy and looki for wisdom, where do i turn? to the onion, of course. and last week's offering, i bet 50% of the people, but the title is report:majority of government doesn't trust citizens either. let me give you one quote. they have caused most americans are inform negative oinions and researcher amy rat never. however, over the same time period, the government has likewise grown weary of u.s. citizens largely due to their utter lack of fresight, laziness, and overall incompetee. and the fact that american idol is still the number one show on

television doesn't exactly make our government burst with confidence. [laughter] now one could have viewed the first 18 months or so of the obama administration and the public's engagement and reaction to it by bringing forth that old of americanpolitics. no good governance deed ever goes unpunished by the american people. we used to say that about efforts to reduce the deficit and such othr thing. if you consider the nature of the problems confronting the country in the globe and the possibility of descending into a global depression, if you look

at the objective record of what has been accomplished in the 18 months with the multifaceted stimulus, although we don't call that stimulus, it's american recovery act, financial reform we don't call it that. we call it wall street reform. health reform is really by historical standards really quite extraordinary to sa that government is in grid lock and can't get anything done. it's also fascinating how little the public has come to believe any of that has been on any utility. a vast majorities believe that the financial bailout was a complete waste of money even though most of those dollars have already been repaid to the treasury and the financial system was stabilized. that the stimulus did nothing to increase the number of jobs or

to revive a staggering economy. that health reform institutes a substantial and dramatic increase in government-run health care. and i could go on that -- that the best thing to deal with our problem of unemployment is for government and everyone else to cut back on their spending and then we would be out there. now carolyn is working on a new americanspeaks effort to try to engage and educate the public on some of these matters. but it really is discouraging at times to see the disjunctionture on what's happening at the

public level. but if you will, the public philosophy of good government reformers is to immediately say the problem is inside shington. they are out of touh. they don't know what real ordinary god fearing americans think out there in the ountry. there's los of academics that feel that same way. in fact, i would submit to you, there's a debate that's worth engaging here. one group -- a friend of ours, political friend from stanford has published "disconnect:the breakdown and representation of american politics." this group sees the problem of american politics associated with polarization. it's largely an elite phenomenon, in which political class fails to connect with and

represent the pblic and instinctively wise and frustrated by washington. others say alan bramelwitz who recently published a book called "the disappearing center" see the polarization dynamic deeply rooted in the engaged public. one o's own often exreme views give subs nans and encouragement to their elected representatives to do the very thing that we might say are counterproductive to good government. that's an important, important debate. it seems to me, to have. the fact is one of the more discouraging things is if you really are looking at the level

of nonideological thinking, more pragmatism, more cent trim, you don't find it among highly educated voters, you find it among nonvoters. people who pay no attention to politics. if you look at engaged citizens, they hae moved with the political elite, the washington crowd, in the same way to find the compatibility between the ideology and party. which has set up a powerful form of polarization which democratic changes the way in which our olferring -- governing institution in washington work. it's a long story. andyou've heard a good deal about it and recent months, i don't want to burden you with

it. but it is striking fo anyone who's spent a few decades in this town to see the changing nature of our political parties and how that effects the way in which those in senate do business. the house has become even more major tarrian. the senate of course because of th house of filibuster has bece the place at which we see the routine reqirement of the senate which was never anticipated by the framers of the constitution, and the proliferation of holes that ke managing a very busy with agenda exceptionally difficult. in other words, it's rules that

used to work under a different set of -- a different cuture, a different set of partisan arrangements. now prove extremely dysfunctional. and when something is done, it's not done by bridging the gap. it's actually done by one party en massing enough power to get something done. the only reason obama was successful is because he had so many democratics. and just enough to get some matters done. he tried very hard to reach out to the party. but they decidedt was bst to play opposition politics from the beginning which complicated the matters. i conclude wit this statement. [laughter] there ar two kind of strategies that are usually followed.

political strategies. redistricting. you know, you take the gerrymander and you have lss polarization. but it's 10% or less of the problem. changing theprimary system, californa is giving it a try. starting third parties there's something i don't see much hope. their campaign finance is healthy for reasons quite apart from this. the other side on the governing is, hey, it'll work better with divided government. because then both parties will have a responsibility for governing. i predict if democrats lose the house we will see subpoenas over the next two years and possibility an imeachment process. we can talk about the impornce of soup majority rules which have pushed negotiations to the center and involve both parties. doesn't work that way under this party system. or for bipartisan commissions.

my own view i none of those wi work. but particularly the roots of the problem in washington are to be found outside washington and the country as a whole is going to take extraordinary political leadership to begin to reshape the nature of those parties to allow us to make some progress. thk you. [applause] >> i'm not that opimistic. [laughter] >> i don't know of transparency is the solution. but during the break and sitting here,i just kept repeating transparency, transparency. for those of you who are watching on your pc or tv, what you don't know there are massive thunder, clouds, and for some reason after i kept saying transparency, the clouds departed, the sun came out.

i'm starting to wonder if collectively at the end of the event if we chant transparency, what would happen in government. maybe some change. in any case, i do think that it has en often said that information is the life blood of democracy. if that were true, i would argue that transparency is the heart of democracy. it maybe for the reasons archon described in the opening comments, in the terms of the power, whether you are a family with children who want to know whether to live and you look up to see whether there are toxic chemicals, whether it's the issue of bp and learning that even after -- even after the disaster in the gulf, the government approved more permits not only for deep water drilling but for ultra deep water drilling.

that would ony occur by them making -- them being the government -- making database publicly available for the media and groups to analyze. or you can go to any one of a range of issues, the white house representative norm eisen had raised a host of reasons to support transparency and openness. the first panel we talked about voting irregularities as reason to monitor it. transparency can be incredibly empowering. it is a means for leveling the playingfield. more than that, it is also a vehicle by which the public can make informed decision making. it is also a tool to hold our government accountable. at which transparency, i'mnot talking about press relases here; right. transparency in its greatest

form is access to information. it's also about havingthe right information. if the government isn't collectg information about the recovery act in terms of who is benefiting and yet the goal of the recovery act was to serve those most in need, how are we ever going to reconcile whether the money is being striked. but it's also just simply getting the right data. it's also about government providing the tools to allow the public access in a way that you can use the information for whatever purposes you need. so transparency is a very powerful issue. what is it we want from a public information point of view in terms of transparency in the end? what we really want ideally is a government that has the affirmative obligation to the information. the current model is where we have to go and request information we need to flip that around, reverse it, and it should be the

government's obligation to testify when it cannot give us information. the primary apparatus should be to give us the information. having said this, and starting with miles very first comment today, aye got -- i've got to say that transparency not the most common organization i've come around. groups do not organize around that topics. however, it cuts on every single issue we deal with. whether it's child care, health care, environmental protection, or financial reform. every issue base needs information, particularly government information. it is one of those cross cuting issues, while that's a strike that's also a weakness. because there is no natural base for that. moreover, i would say that transparency is just a fool. transparency is the end goal. you know, it's not.

it is just the tool to achieve what you feel you ne to do. for omb watch,my organization, it's about achieving the areas around social justice. for other groups, it's about more limited government. point being that transparency is not a conservative issue, it's not a liberal issue, it's not liberaltarian issue, it's the american issue. we can work together, whatever the ideological diference that tom was just thinking about, we can work together for transparency, and i would also say it's not a replacement for regulation. looking at the whole ange of electoral pieces, we can get a lot of transparency about the policies. is it changed? we need the laws and regulation of the land to make things right. transparency gives us the vehicle to make our arguments. it is not the solution that, at least in my book.

by the way, a positive thing i should mention before i turn to how the obama administration is doing. one thing i found very interesting about the results that look at overnment web sites, they found that interesting hing for those peoplwho think of government web sites as very transparent, there were people compared to most transparent to those that think they are crummy web site. there's about 54% in trust in government for those who look at it as most transparent. there's bout a 50% increase in regulatory process and so forth. maybe it does have some hope in and of itself. how is the obama administration doing? here we have the president that's the first transparency presiden ever. now there are lots of ways to judge transparency. we could look at say how it was in the last administration. and hen i can safely say we're talking about night and day.

it is vastly different. you have an administration that leads in secrecy in the last one. this administration firmly i to openness. i think the bush -- the bush, the obama administration, it's strategy has been most intriguing. from my perspective, there are three issues. one is policy change, the other is technology, and the third is cultural change. onthe policy change, they had just come up rip roaring, really great with all kinds of policy changes whether it's on the freedom of information act, whether it's the open government, wheher it's about declassification, they have come out with great policy changes absolutely consistent with what the public interest would want. on the technology front, also rip roaring, they came out with media. today, i don't think you can say the transparency and not think of online anymore.

if administration, this administration has permanently engrained that. but it is more than that. think of recovery.gov. data.gov. i don't know how many government web sites there will be, but a lot of them. and the cultural front, they didn't just approach it by putting out a memo, transparency is our message. they didn't just change the policy. they realized it has to change the environment in government. the actual way government operates. and so that extent, i think we're waiting to see the results. but i will say one thing norm eisen and the white house council didn't say, there's a a host for the first time ever that's addressing transparency. reover, thy've been working with agencies through the open government to really create this

kind of energy in government that sort of pushing people up in sort of a my agency is better than yours in transparency. that's very exciting. that's different. now the cultural change is going to take many, many, many months. if not years to occur. but i think that administration has put us on the right path. so again a plus for effort. and the implementation has been far short of what we all want. it's no front where i think we have reason to be critical. the measurements on the open government direive are based on what they wrote their open government directive about. did you do paragraph a, paragraph b, i think we want much more than that. we don't want just simply compliance with the checklist of items. ontop of it, i think they can be criticized as too much planning to plan. how much memos have we said

about let's form another inner agency committee to wrtle with this issue. on the other hand, you now, they are moving forward. now i could keep going with criticism. but i also want to say it's remarkable how much they have gotten done in the short amount of time they've had. what do we want going forward? let me give four quick items. this is from at least omb watch perspective and maybe it goes beyond that. first off, when i said that the open government is too minimalist. what i want to see is no matte which agency you go to, you want consistency and the type of information ou get. i want accountability, i want information about what market was lking about on the purchase and collaboration, i want information about their set up. and if i'm not going to get consistency across from one agency to the oter, i'm going to face the hopscotch kind of

system. one agency is good and the other one is not. i'm not going to have understanding on one agey or the other. congratulations to the white house. why aren't we having that agency? i want to know about the lob byist and other corporate powers. rst off win think the open government directive, we need to have an open floor. : to help the public better see where the government is doing

good things. and we have to have the building blocks, rather than dropping the transparency items. some of us in this room have been working to have unique identifiers established, the common identification in government. you cannot do that without, and to acquire four companies. what can you -- i cannot look to see where the contractors are doing with regulatory reformers. we have to put in place the laws and regulations to have them firmly put information out there. we have to change the apparatus. we have to go back to the notion of we the people. get to we the people is by making sure that you have to do this by making certain that the government

makes itself available to all people, all the time. i do not want to see the government by blogging. thank you. >> all right. we have time for a few questions. does anybody have -- yeah? >> i have a question. you mentioned media reform in ur list at the end of your talks. i wonder if you could just elaborate on that a little bit, please. i ha my list. >> se. and i'm not posinthis as an expert on edia reform, but i think so much of what we have been talking about, especially in the appearance of extreme polarization and how that's playing out on the ground. much of that isn't, while it is connected to the party system,

is a direct result of that. i believe the primary thing that has chand has been the way in which the media are regulated and structured a corporate control of the media. and that has, i mean, there have been whole studies written of this. basically living in a direct line to what we're seeing right now, which is, which is really extreme demonization. and that has a huge impact on how people are proceeding, because how people get their information it's all connected to transparency. and again, i noticed a whole media reform movement, and i'm not going to be able to speak well to it, and i would let you what you have to say. and that's basically what i've been thinking of. >> how about back in the blue shirt? >> bill neal. i write about the financial crisis. i have a deeper question and i'd like you to comment on. some philosophers, john gray and

commentatorsike tom friedman say, would agree we've been living under a market utopian taking, the background and noise of economics and philosophy far to the right. grey thinks it's narrow the range of the public discussion on economic choices. friedman celebrates that coming from a different perspective. the federal reserve, the most powerful economic institution in the world perhaps, is infamous to the whole spectrum for narrowing the public participation, doesn't want to share secrets. and we're setting up a dead panel that also is from president obama which is also going to take the handout of congress. don't you think tt this economic and philosophical direction to narrow the range of policy choices contribute just a little polarization and frustration to the part of voters? and just bring it home a very concrete way. think about the charges and range of options being hurled at

greece and the debtors states in your. it's virtually the washingon census back 10 years later. >> did you really see death panel? [laughter] >> death. [laughter] >> okay, sorry. i thought you -- we were into the medicare commission. listen, i mean, i have been struck, not by the sort of narrowness perspectives on the financial reform. i have been struck by the range. there are a group of intellectual critics who have taken on the federal reserve in a very serious and telling

fashion. the real question is whether sort of policymakers are limited in what they consider to be the legitimate scope for action. i think this, some would argue it's because thy're in the pockets of special interest. i would argue it does mch more to uncertainty. about exactly what went wrong and how to keep it from happening again, what i see the problem is, reverting to sort of ideological convenient positions and stating them with great repetition. it's almost, in terms of the public omain, it's the main now the of public, a public discourse rather than the absence of range. it's goes to the media question, too. ever one is looking for a speaker who will reinforce their

gut feelings, are existing views, or partisanship. party is very much a part of the connection between ideology and media and free thinkers. and i just think it is limited. it's limited the range of what can occur. you know, i believe when caroline and americaspeaks goes out and works hard to get people to come together, and just some of the deliberative polls have done, to provide them information and create the social pressure to actually listen to someone else, then you actually engage in that kind of more open to liberation. do you know how often that happens in the congress today? is not allowed. it's not permitted. i mean, barney frank early on worked with his republican counterpart. but as things moved to a more

visible setting, either in the full comttee markup or the floor, then suddenly they fall back into pre-existing partisan positions. and it just, it diminishes the public debate. that's the problem we have, and the trick is how do we get out of the. >> can't i just added one quickie on that? bill, i want to take one slice of government transparency point of view and look at why i think the public is so upset with bailout. it is a powerful special interest making themselves even more powerful. and what we had a guitar for was the treasury department not allowing us to get the information, which contractors which may have helped cause the problems we face. we are now helping to do with the wars that they had in selling off those wars. you couldn't get that disclosure. if you mentioned the fed, the fed is probably themost secret powerful agency in the world. t.a.r.p. is like a small and compared to the amount of money that has gone out through fed. d we can't get any sense of

those dollars of who has gotten and how much the government is undermining our financial institutions. so transparency is an essential tool to addressing those wrongs. >> just one word. it doesn't necessarily increase public trust in government. let me, let me tell you. i'm all for transparency and, because i believe what you are after is increasing the engage public from a half% to 5%. boy, wld that transform our politics in a meaningful way. but most of his early transparency on campaign-finance, let the public to be even more cynical about the role of money in politics. so it's no panacea. >> i think with time for just one more question. and we have a lot of fans. i will pick at random. the gentleman with the gray blazer and blue shirt. >> that's everyone's. [laughter] >> you were talking about media,

social media. there's a facebook page for every position in the world. and you can have a page that says there gets the israeli actns, and one for the israeli action. but how is that determining what we really need to do to get together? and would it be better if we had term limits for congress again, for years? make the house of representatives for yars, six turns, three terms in the senate? >> no. no, it -- the expense with term limits and state legislatures has en exceedingly negative. immediately, politicians, being term limited start thinking about the next office. you increase the power of those who stick around.

namely, lobbyists working with the legislatures. it's really been quite a destructive process. it also imagines that building experte in the craft of legislating is not important. that simply bringing in the new crowd, whatever their, you know, to go to washington to vote for two years or four years or six years, and then go home, it's somehow going to lead to the kind of serious to liberation that the framers had in mind. listen, that's the anti-federalist sentiment in american plitics. it was present during the founding of the republic. it comesup all the time, but it doesn't offer much, other than a kind of visceral feeling,ou know, by god,hat will keep them controlled in some way. >> we just hava loser.

[laughter] >> i actuall and a half. >> great. i don't know if you've also trust me because i followed american idol for the whole ason. [laughter] >> and i also wanted to reveal that i voted for the loser. [lauter] >> i actually want to go back to something that clrissa said in the last panel which i think was really profound. and it really had to do with how people are activist right now and participating right now. so i don't think we're talking about getting out participation a little bit. i think what we are doing is talking about what kind of policy destruction is actually create the kind of vibrant and inclusive democracy that we're really striving to achieve. and i think what we're really talking about is building some sort of civic infrastructure where people can vent, like a clarissa said but also worked together. i will end with one example. why change it so difficult, and he has shown an example of how

structured guide our behavior. and he showed a slide, cars driving down the highway with a dotted lines, of course in helping us drive in straight lines. and then he showed a slide with all the lines taken out of the highway. and all of a sudden it looks like complete chaos on the road. and he saidsometimes we treat things lik individual behavioral problems that are really systemic. and the example of that would be, okay, you couldmagine all the billboards we would have. drive straight, it's sexy, you know? stay in line, you know? because you'd be trying to get on the higay to keep driving straight. and sometimes think we act about arsenic light until life the way -- civic life. what are the structures because we know we build the structures people come together and they deliver it. so let's build more of them. or, you know, let's build transparency. we know it works.

we are there. so let's build more f it. so that's in conclusion, drive straight. [laughter] >> i think clarissa made a lot of sense, too. listen, i've been -- i've spoken to negative. i'm actually rather upbeat about the state ofmerican politics. i just, just think it's exceedingldifficult in that we have to remr, parties mean something. facts mean somthing. in that we've got to do whatever we can to figure out a way to get beyond the kind of pact of rhetorical they nowadays that so dominate our public debate, and reward politicians and parties who do the right thing. >> i just want to make a couple of comments.

goes question about financial reform brings up two impoant things, not just for financial reform but for democratic reform d efforts to deepen democracy generally. and the first is that its violent important to have a range of ideas on any policy area. not just financial reform. you can look broadly at other places that play with many more ideas about financial regulation and market structure and in the united states. there's a lot of reasons us toward wider range of ideas that is on offer is quite narrow, even now in this period. but that's also true for democratic reform. you can look at other countries, in latin america and europe, and many other places, where the idea is about how to organize democracies are just about much, much broader than they are here. and i think many americans from the very elite to the grassroots have an impulse that the kind of ideas about democracies that were okay, to energies ago, it was good enough for them, it's good enough for them. i think we are to be more

imaginative about the. the second which is especially important in the financial reform sector, but also in others is that one common thread of deepening democracy and strengthening democracy is a need to level the playing field. and there are lots of ways to do that, from campaign fince reform to electoral reform, to mobilizing citizens directly, using their anger as has been suggested in the prior panel. and i think tt that is an important objective, that all of the organizations and advocates and thinkers that speak to deepen democracy share, is the impulse to find very creative strategies to level the playing field. that is not now level. >> three points. first, i think it's ironic that this administration's openss agenda is probably the best kept secret in town. it's really quite amazing tome that they havee