rson. no question about that. the military really like her. she is there -- their girl. i have had the opportunity to observe this and she gets along extremely well with the brass. whether she is also a person who is constantly learning from her mistakes and in constant development. she is not going to replay, i do not think, the iraq war decision if god forbid, we have another such vote. >> remember you and a lot of people who supported her were doing it -- supported it were doing it based on false information. >> there were a lot of people who got the call right. the same thing applies to her

choosing people which is one of the most important jobs of president has. it is an open question. i am not saying she would do a bad job but in the past, she sometimes has chosen people for their loyalty rather than for their talent. not always but sometimes. >> this has been a real problem with the obama administration is that there has not been a real reaching out to the best and the brightest. he pretty much has the same people who he had on the hill who got him elected. i think through four people basically run that white house. i think hillary who has been a victim of that closed shop as secretary of state, i cannot imagine that she would repeat that formula for governing keeping that small group and

power. >> the white house these days is pretty insular. >> there are people who have been tried in true, they feel they can trust. >> not every president needs people around them the contrast trust. you make a lot of appointments and the batting average in those appointments we do not know. she chose some really incompetent people to run her 2008 campaign. >> her record is much better at the state department. she had some bad air -- better quality people who she did not choose on the basis of loyalty although there was still an inner circle. >> still going back to the white house. >> there is much more for us to cover but we did promise our patient audience that we would

take some questions. if you have a question, please ask a question. i sure you have great speeches to deliver but let's not deliver them tonight. and please identify yourself. we have two mikes. sir. >> could you be specific as possible and identify the differences between hillary and bill with regard to first political elites and second -- beliefs and second administrative capability. >> who would like a shot at that? >> i would say in general, at least during the white house years i thought of hillary clinton as extremely focused in terms of domestic at least, domestic initiatives. certainly with health care and

that priority shifted because her husband and his staff made that decision that [indiscernible] administratively i would give her an a and him a b. >> more analytical than her husband. not as intuitive. >> in terms of their positions on issues and went to compromise which is always a big thing in politics, the reason i would definitely not give her an a is there were moments in the clinton white house when they could have compromised on health care and gotten a bill through and hillary insisted that her husband not compromise and so they got no bill. so there were moments she did not handle that process right. it was too secretive and she did not compromise. >> that was her single failure,

the health care. >> the analytical quality is important. i think she shares bill clinton's pragmatic streak. i think they are very close in terms of how they see public policy issues and they have had this mind meld, part of the secret as why they are still married is they connect on policy. >> not only on policy. >> that is a potent thing. they described -- they have been having this conversation for 40 years. at home you and i might talk about what we see on "mad men" and they talk about public policy issues in their connected on those and they develop great insights that are not really very different ideologically from one another. i think the answer to your question is they are very close on issues, even though they drill down into problems in a

different way. >> different temperament. we have so many people. >> i am hoping 70 is the new 50 and it is not. no one has talked about health stamina, age, and whether one should be seeking the most demanding office in the world at a certain time in their lives. i would be interested in your views. >> and johnson knows this, looking at franklin roosevelt. to a certain degree, you get up there and you know that your health can deteriorate. it is hard to predict. eisenhower had his greatest health problems in his first term and went on to service second. there is no evidence that his age and health problems were detriment. ronald reagan in his first term,

evidenced problems. it was more parent to many in the second term -- a parent to many in the second term. and>> it will be a big issue. americans are very unsentimental when it comes to presidential health. if she has any kind of mishap, bill bradley's campaign against al gore was seriously hurt by him having a little hard issue in iowa. were she to have another health scare like she had, that could be very detrimental. >> i cannot imagine that she would run -- >> if something came up, of course. she would be reagan's age if she is elected. >> i was wondering if hillary clinton ever caused a scandal, not that she would, with that

-- with that, would that affect your differently because she is a woman? >> a personal scandal? >> that is so beyond the realm of -- >> it is a great question. depends on what the scandal is. >> it depends on what the meaning of "is" is. .> she has lived for 67 years without a personal peccadillo that i am aware of. i certainly do not think that at this stage when she is basking in being a grandmother --

>> that financial scandal that carl raised earlier, that could happen and the clintons did have a fairly scandal-prone administration compared to the obama presidency. there were things coming up all the time, fundraising issues and lincoln bedroom issues and so forth that did not relate to sex, that were just financially related scandals, if you could call them that. it is a really intriguing question whether the face that she would present to the public if she was in a defensive mode, if there was a scandal. the white house press corps is always looking for scandal. it is hard to imagine that she would go through eight years with no scandals. again, it is one of the fascinating things about this is that nobody can know the answer to your question because we never had a woman president. >> it is a gender question

generally but we do not know yet. >> i read hillary's book and she considered you and your husband good friends. miss martin. i would like to know could you share with us some anecdotes of personal qualities that we in the mainstream would not know and what surprises. >> she is a very warm person. you forced me to reveal my biases here. but she is -- i would like her to exhibit more of that personal warmth that she exhibited toward me when my husband was very sick.i i think she knows how to be a

friend. there is absolutely relation -- calculation in her continued warmth towards me. it is all about her human qualities. she sat beside me in the hospital when we were not sure that richard was going to make it and just sat there and held my hand and did not -- we did not exchange any words because it was not necessary. that to me was a very strong indicator of the person. >> you mentioned how hillary took over bill's campaign and was in charge. if she runs, would we say bill clinton having that same ability to take over and why was it missing in 2008? >> he tried to take over a

little bit and they had to bar him from the campaign headquarters. his instincts were rusty and he was saying things like comparing obama to jesse jackson and things that were not helpful to the campaign. he is way beyond that kind of nuts and bolts of managing a campaign but he would still, he is so involved and so smart about politics that he would still be involved at some level and the way she manages his involvement will be very interesting to watch. because obviously, he has a lot to contribute, but within certain parameters. and figuring out what this parameters are will be one of the great games of 2016. >> one of the great roles and -- first ladies have played, spouses, trying out the big speech the state of the union

the acceptance speech, the farewell speech. sometimes the spouse who is not leading the country has more of an air for what they hear on the street and the way people will react. i think that that is now interestingly more of a role that bill clinton will play for her and she would probably run by a lot of her major speeches i him first -- by him first and he would say, don't say it that way, say it this way. >> a lot of the good first ladies and now the first gentleman. -- gentlemen. [applause] >> thank you so

good to see you. we are here today for a policy for him against the militia in the coalition effort to talk about the relief and talk about the release of two new fascinating institute studies. if anyone had any doubts, the video released earlier this week of the burning of life of jordanian capture the pilot confirms the moral deprivation of isil. six months into the campaign against isil.com ends with the beheading of the journalist james foley says that the best that we have driven isil out of syria however they control more in iraq than they did six months ago when the war started. airpower alone is going to be insufficient to downgrade and ultimately to defeat i isil. it will have to be countered on the ground and we are witnessing right now the initial stages of this new phase in the campaign. in syria, they created the syrian

opposition that remains a distant and realistic option. meanwhile though and syria iran and the regime are deploying a series of militia to combat isil and across the border in iraq, baghdad in cooperation with washington is working to reconstitute the field and integrate the internal security force. discussed differing these approaches to isil today we had a great panel teacher in michael, philip smith and pj. michael knight is a fellow at the washington institute and the author of the just-released study "the long haul rebooting the cooperation in iraq." philip is a researcher at the university of maryland and the author of the blog has the has the -- hezbollah. they've released his study of the shiite jihad and its effects. commenting on the presentation

we are lucky to have pj who participated in standing up for the defense institutions in iraq and served as senior military adviser for the reconciliation advisor for the reconciliation to the forces in baghdad in 2008. before we start, just a quick reminder to your mobile phones on vibrate. we are live on c-span today apparently. so we will start with mike knight. >> thank you very much for coming today. the colleagues on the panel with me it's an honor to be alongside them.

i'm going to talk today about some of the things coming out about a new study about the long haul, rebooting the u.s. cooperation with iraq and i want to go through the study in detail. i'm going to do is maybe try to pick out some of the key issues and quandaries that come out of the security cooperation with the iraqi state and the kurdish customer back and coexistence of government alongside the popular mobilization units played a significant role in the war so far in iraq. to run through a couple graphics and a study that is available online in a pdf form to download. it is a brigade battle for the iraq he army and the minister

of interior and popular mobilization forces were presented and it demonstrates for one thing how much of the combat power is pulled around baghdad and how few of the iraqi military units are able to deploy over long distances to commence the operation in the second quarter of this year it's good to be very difficult to do that. and also the lack of combat effective in the army brigades with the strength of required to undertake a very complex costly operation and the brigade train and equip program

to build oversized combat capable deployable units that can continue to operate after taking the casualties required in the urban combat. that train and equip program is vital and indicates we are not looking at those old commencing until q4 2015 and some people are even more grumpy about it then that. so yes again on this slide we will see the graphic in the study the iraq he army and yellow, the minister of interior in black and popular mobilization units in red. if you're interested in looking into detail, likewise the have done the same for the peshmerga. to see what it really looks like right now and how it is structured. now on this slide, we see even in the packet should be fairly visible, the blue is the kurdish is the security forces

and the green is the area where the federal government is contrasting. one of the interesting factors is that you can see a thin green line running from the border up to kirkuk that supports the units that are gathering and building for the major observation just south of kirkuk i want to talk about the progress of the war against isil and we will do that and other forms in other forms in the written product. but i will say to reiterate i think the war against isil and iraq -- only is highly winnable and in fact slowly we are on that trajectory now. for many people, the philosophy will not be fast enough, but the direction is in the direction towards cutting them down to the stage that they are a serious insurgent terrorist movement.

unfortunately, today's best case scenario is 2013's worst-case sorry of that shifted over the last few years. so what we are hoping is that in the next year or so we can cut isis down onto what is our worst nightmare and then start again and start working on a way to cut them down to where they were in 2009 when the security operations were the most effective probably and then finally to get them down below that to the hopes that we had in 2009. what i'm going to talk about today more is what if we defeat isis would lose iraq in the process? what if there is another threat out there that is the posing threat by the allies that we are working alongside and i'm thinking here about some of the popular mobilization unit elements who are strongly linked to all of the movements that philip is going to talk

about in great detail. what if we defeat i suspect in that process we lose hezbollah in the iraqi security sector there's a lot going on at what point in that direction. is this the moment in iraq as some people look at a conference in 45 and they say the u.s. government has been realistic and the soviets are going to dominate eastern europe. nothing could stop that. others would have any emotional reaction and this is when we were confined to 50 years of communism left behind the iron curtain. where this is a momentous in the midst of a war the war isn't over yet, but it's time to start asking tough questions

about how it ends, why we are fighting this war to the end who our allies are and how they lacked towards us and other elements in iraq. in the old days afghanistan was the good war. since 2014, iraq seems to be the good war and a syria is the bad war. iraq is a bit more complex. i believe it is a war worth fighting involving the u.s., but it's not a complex or simple or. against isis and iraq is far more complex than many people would believe. one thing that i've noticed

since i started this study and researching and talking to a lot of people just in the data collection. we could win if we defeated isil and hand iraq over to a speed by than iraq he security structure. there's been a lot. i don't think that i've ever heard the arabs have so much hatred toward each other. analyze and iraq at the moment isis's enemies, are remarkably divided and reason for each other. it's sad to see because it hasn't even stopped yet. a lot will say to me what have you got against the popular mobilization units, they are fighting isis and they are fighting and dying.

are they really so bad and don't you hold them to a double standard? peshmerga did the same thing would you criticize them as fiercely? you want to build up the awakening movements and they do all these things in the past and kill americans, too. we need to think hard about these questions. we do have something of an emotional reaction against the popular mobilization units going forward. so let's look into that for a second. you know all these bad guys, they are going to the front line and many of them are not trying to undertake the massacres they are just normal people. i had a similar feeling when meeting a hezbollah in southern lebanon in 1999. but behind them often far behind them there was the

islamic force that i never did meet and they had very different attitude. we became aware of them not being the there not being the target as it was in southern lebanon. there's something under the surface of the prominently shia mobilization units that we need to look at closely. again, to underline the point on the left-hand side we have the ones that look very skerry going forward and that we have these crisp pressed popular mobilization units backed by the iranians.

i would argue for a number of reasons i will come to in a second that those on the left, those on the right are not as cuddly and trustworthy as they look into those on the left in some ways because they are cut off from the major state support because they are not and should -- intricately networked and because they pull in smaller increments because they are divided rather than having the potential to form into one large shadow defense institution that could threaten and overwhelm alternately a defense ministry of interior. i believe those on the right are a bigger threat. likewise look at the bottom. you have a western private security detail taken up by extraordinarily accurate and effective explosive projectile by the groups. there was an iud way back. the kuds force based special groups

as late as june of 2011 if you remember they killed 16 americans. they are much more dangerous than the sunni groups. of the mobilization units particularly in areas to the north like mosul where the moment they are being welcomed in piecemeal but they will wear out their welcome pretty soon. overreliance will lengthen the

war against isis. it's a lamp post in the allah by the massacre and this is not even the images from the most recent of 72. they might be depopulated but nonetheless. there's a bunch of young fighters opening up the flag. what could be wrong with that come in and of itself nothing wrong with that. this isn't smart or helpful. it's an indicator even when

they are not out. the military operations that have counterproductive elements and they are a source of constant friction in the places they are operating alongside. likewise, the second point of these iranian backed militias if not under some form of control but ultimately undermined the strategic independence of iraq. since deliberately they concealed the u.s. designated terrorist since i think 2009 who has been pursued for the various

offenses back to 1983 involving aq. at the front lines taking the senior leadership on the tour of the successes but carefully had been have been in this picture because it was recognized that it might be cost effective perhaps. likewise, the former vice president meeting with the senior leadership in hezbollah and likewise even though it is a bit of a stunned they were attached to it. i wish the information operations were as good as these guys. when we achieve something what do we do, we'd like to fall into the background and it is better that they can take credit for the things that they have achieved. while it is 100% wrong. when the force guys have any

involvement or even no involvement in the operation they get the most senior leadership right there across every media outlet and social media outlet that they can find. i think we need to be doing more to demonstrate what the u.s. and the international coalition is doing to stabilize iraq because we are really on a back foot when it comes to the operations. these guys are ambitious. they are not some kind of a minor small group of concerned citizens etc. they never disbanded. they never get a did a biometrics and most of the movements came in and signed a little piece of paper and it biometrics which the government

now holds on them. they never did that stuff. they just said we might stop fighting you and when they will fight again. but for now we are willing to take the paycheck. they are not from the minority like the sunni. they have a serious state sponsor in charge of mechanized unit capabilities. it's a regular supply. they have the force within the headquarters that are linking them to the drone operations overhead into the air support potentially that's been facilitated in some ways. they are a powerful entity. they are networked into the ministry of interior and of some of the other key iraqi security headquarters.

they are transnational and they meet the link to other aspects of t resistance in the quds force. they will undermine the strategic independence going forward in the luckily bringing us to the solution at the end. i think a lot of the leadership in iraq are recognized whether they are in the political sphere, military men or in the religious. iraqi military doesn't like militia. they don't like having to operate alongside even though they don't recognize that they have not contributed blood sweat and tears to stopping isil's advance. i have to give them back. they deserve the respect and many of them deserve the full respect as fighting men because they've given everything including their lives to bring to a halt that the institution that they are part of into the forces that sit behind these often times we need to look extremely closely.

luckily they vote for iraq rather than be sectarian as an antidote for iran. for instance the iran iraq war is an uprising against the iraqi state. hundreds of thousands serving the front lines. they could become abu dhabi if they wanted to, but they believe in the iraqi state even though they've had a pretty shocking bill from its particularly over the last decade. he recognized even though he did it for his own political benefit that he needed to cut the legs out from underneath before they took the crown jewel. it is being pushed through now

and the iraqis understand they need to do something about this. they need to come find them and demobilize them to say we don't need the national guard division brigade for this in the way of reducing the militia takeover in the key provinces. under the ministry of defense, the administrative control under the prime investor office of the operational control. all these things are built into the national guard law and they need to be. the struggle is the implementation. they need to take all of the bits they like maintained by the government but actually we think that we will keep the rocket launchers in the quds force. that's how they try to play it.

they always do but we need to stay on this and this brings us back to the final point. some of the individuals in the party are trying to keep a hand in the administrative interior. they had in the senior deputy positions likewise the bottom left-hand side running the portfolio i guess you could say the national security adviser again, some conservative elements of the party for conservative as if they don't want a radical change in the nature of the power in iraq. those are the politicians that we keep in the cupboard and bring them out when we want to look acceptable. so we have allies we can work with but the only way that we are going to get those allies is if we outperform iran as a security partner. we can't ask for everything we

want from the iraqis unless we demonstrate that we are seriously committed about going forward and not just until they are gone or liberated but finally we need to do the visionary. it's for the deep lasting security cooperation. the security structure is with the same oil as saudi arabia. package to every state is like losing china in the 50s this is in a small country even though in some people in the administration put it in a small box in their mind. that's not what it is. they need to do more than the

minimum and demonstrate that they are there for the long-term the iranians are serious. they are doing what we used to. they are close air controllers and pilots who know how. they go back to iraq and work and they are doing this really well. they need to start putting the special forces close to the frontline because if we don't demonstrate. they will rely on them as their primary offensive weapon system. they cannot take it that way they will not accept it. it will cause more problems. we need to get headed in that direction and we need a build

up we need to outperform them as a security partner. we have a run walk going on in alexandria virginia may 9, 2015 if you are interested it is www.sicfiraq.org. it is a good cause so support it if you can.

>> okay. without the slides and going to have to try to work with this. what is going on in syria right now? it seemed that we had a jihad that nobody even knew was going on. everybody picked up on isis, al qaeda as a section of al qaeda fighting and this was described as jihad going on inside of syria but people neglected the fact -- sorry about that. back to the main story. people were neglecting this. this is another major jihad that seems to float under everybody's nose. maybe it looked more organized

or it was organic or they were coming to defend this shrine in the back south of damascus. that's all that it was to many people. that a few of the fighters went to serious and they just wanted to defend the shrine, but it's not. it hides something that is much, much larger and we are seeing it in iraq and an ideological spread that iran is trying to push to the absolute ideology. i don't like to use the term moderate shia but they do not be leaving the concept. now we are seeing it on this regional plane and it's shocking not as many people were noticing it. so, there are a few facts about this and i think that unfortunately in the press because it is hard to cover the issue a few things have popped up and i collected quotes from people that i know that for asking about it as i was doing research and one of them said that the don't all fighters come in the sunni. it just lists them as foreign fighters. it has nothing to do with al qaeda. it had everything to do with routing people from iraq about lebanon afghan refugees living in iran sometimes from afghanistan and routed and african fighters and somalia

and one who was killed so this was a large-scale operation talking about tens of thousands of people. another primary vivid media says you know isis uses facebook and twitter. that means you're more advanced. the shia militia groups that are run by the iranians have a far more advanced structure online. nobody has done anything to

take it off or even investigate it. they are doing this quite openly and not hiding it. they are putting up graphic images and they are ones that many of us have written a hash tag about on twitter. much the same kind of material. there is another issue here. i talked about the control of these organizations and the fighters. one of the lions that was given to me by a friend, she probably won't be my friend anymore of all of these groups that are pretty independent if the devil is in the details and it is about a granular look, focus on the importance. a lot of the groups that we are fighting openly stated that the baby leave dan absolute and they just kind of passed below the radar. there is a lot of interconnection. they are being shipped back to iran, not to iraq. they are directly controlled. they are not as brutal and we are fighting the same enemy.

this makes a lot of sense, kind of if you get past the whole narrative structure. these groups cast a narrative structure that says that all of the rebels were muslims who wanted to use others and thus they could be killed. this is the u.s. moderate so-called moderate allies. this is a larger narrative process that they underwent and now it is coming to full force not that i'm saying it's isis doing the fighting but they've got this enemy of theirs. it doesn't necessarily mean that they are your buddies. the other thing is they were

reactionary. they were around for quite some time. i could give you an example of the organization in iraq. they created or helped create from the iraq he refugees that went over in the 1980s to fight saddam hussein part of iraq's government. so they've been around for quite a while. it doesn't mean they are growing at rates that we've never seen before. there is a new crisis that we have in the organization. the other main thing is the breach and this is totally overstated. i can't say how much annoyance that causes me because they are so open about this and how they control these organizations. they have to follow the media and here is the weird thing even if they are not directly controlling the group then beyond that they will try to influence some with cash and

weapons and support and then guess what happens they become another little micro has hezbollah. you can't ignore this top-down strategy because the people are recruiting. there is a top-down trickle-down structure here how many of you in a few decades ago but have said. these are the main issues. why are they going to fight ends. and how did this me to the current events in iraq and of the militia fighting against isis? a religious crisis needed to be

manufactured. and there was a supposed threat against this major mosque and shrine and this granular connection. and they've rebuilt it so it has a nice pretty golden dome. so they get the fighters to go into syria for a justified reason for the justified reason is they were doing the shrine. it wasn't just that. there was a whole conspiracy wrapped in this and if you are looking at the long-term, real long-term problem in this kind of outlook it casts a vision that may be they didn't want to

push for the shrine to be destroyed. they came out and they said america has been trying to push all qaeda into syria. that's been the narrative, so there's that. by doing this move they are executing. it targets a lot of the minorities and â >> would you mind if i ask -- sorry. i'm running dry.

they are pouring out of lebanon. and they have this catholic ally and they put a veneer over them and say we are a lebanese nationalist. christians are not really treated that well. they are playing into the fears of the city and they've been doing this quite a bit with christians and if you noticed they also post this message in up. if you don't align they are going to come in and brutalize

you and going to destroy you. so there's been that other move that has been pushing them in that direction kind of pushing the minority line of sorts. they also pushed the good sunnis as i like to call it so they've actually come out and say we are not against sunnis and to simultaneously make the message that they were not against sunnis. they were not, they were not even muslims and declaring them as enemies as a positive. so there's that other categorization. iran is the protector for the shia in the region they are still casting a message that says that we are islamic and he is for all muslims but they are starting with shia first if you think about it in this sense if

you are trying to form clamps are bound at the enemies it makes a lot sense when you also have the forces in those areas. so, those have been a big thing but then there is this. they tried to minimize the link to this while also trying to say that we have maintained. and it's kind of strange. they don't want to show that they are our geopolitical interests at stake. if they lose their most valuable ally which is lebanese and hezbollah do have to have serious and have that bridge. and if they lost it, that would be no good. i attached a photo in here and this is one of my favorite. it is a direct iranian prophecy. we are fighting here for the shia. that's been the message out they tried to cast it and if we are looking at iraq and how a lot of the fighters

filtered back there what do we see now? we are protecting that's how they are doing it. so we have to look at this and we have to focus on the militia that is going into sending people to serious. there is this terrible guy. there's kind of a gray area when it comes to this and it is kind of a weird thing. when we were there they were trying to maintain the army and this didn't work out so well.

they try to build separate organizations. i tried to look up people that helped form of this group. this network the initial core of commanders, almost all of them were split. one of them who was killed i want to say december, 2012 this is a person that actually served who converted to shiaism in the network and they also rated the provincial headquarters.

so he was in some way related to it. they may have been promoting a lot of other things that they had the direct links. so, going down more, we had the old standard bearers. i mean the good old prophecy that we know so well. mainly that lebanese hezbollah, they were some of the initial force is sent into syria. they were serving as advisors and they were also serving as the direct combat advisers but also hoping to form up the localized militia made up.

when you look at the organization what did he do he also simultaneously with building the process and putting the fighters into syria and building special groups inside iraq and taking some of the members and putting them in there to say now that this new group is formed we are going to send these people to syria. one of the new groups that passed, one of the first was actually the son of a prime corps commander who was killed many years ago celebrated by the organization and his son was somehow killed which believes in the exact same ideological concept which just kind of came out of nowhere in early 2013 and this is kind of the connection that they have.

going past to that, i'm sure again all other people remember these groups are the american soldiers, they killed a lot of coalition forces had also gave her the first into iraq and the interesting thing they would do is go to iran and then take a flight into damascus. they are on the facebook pages which is a sale on their part or was it something else are they trying to promote the case we can go into serious whenever we want, what's going to stop us? initially the intelligence groupings tried to help form a

lot of localized militia. the main one that came out of this it's just kind of expanded out. think of it like an octopus with a million different groups that were associated. could he'd write them off as subdivisions of the network of the battalion underneath the larger army group. i would say yes they are all networked together but they've taken on their own separate names and separate identities in some cases they've taken on their own separate recruitment activities both in iraq and syria. they have their own commanders coming out of that initial network. so, this is kind of the nexus that has formed. so, the prophecy and i actually put it over here and they are holding hands.

he is a guy that helped found. as i went through before one of these special groups that we saw in iraq. but what is he doing now? he is leading a group so you can see through these trails it looks crazy. there's a million links here and there and everywhere. a lot of people ask me how does this make sense for the grand regional strategy? now check this out. but wait, there's more. i try to track down all the different connections and they put out a radical cleric where some of the fighters and people that claimed that they are with them have gone and we have -- i'm sorry if i'm making c-span angry. i keep winning back.

i put in black-and-white the symbol over here. it was formed to route afghan fighters. they put us in the core and then what do they do the minute they got to syria they were fighting and put the patches on and served under the commander and sometimes they have their own sub regimens that all of this confusing jumble. after we splintered 4,000 different ways what did we end up having? they did it again. it's crazy. they did it again. the groups have taken on the last name, tons of them actually and a lot of them even

had connections back. is this a deliberate move, it's possible. if it's not, i really don't know. we need to get the stuff together. but a bunch of these different groups that have done this. all of this is going on in this thread and the movement and the networking and if we are getting down to the brass tacks on this one, when we look at it i think a lot of this is just a little game that a lot of people in the irgc like to play to put the same front and they will say they lost the same

member. it's all a big game so i can sit here and slam i had against the table as i'm looking for another militia group. i followed him since he had his first facebook page. everything about him was this own personality but when you're looking at it or does his presence represents? it was announced in this new group through their organization that he was a commander. that is nowhere near damascus that they are supposed to be defending. then they promoted him as a sadrist, that is a picture of

him after he was killed with the front end you will see him in a shirt in the back. he came back in the spring of 2014 but then he was named as a commander. the greatest thing about this if he had two music videos dedicated and appeared in one. not making this up but afterwards another shift seem to have been. where did it get commented it does appear into thin air? i didn't see anything on the tv media which i read on most of the time. but then they showed him what has the -- hezbollah by showing this it was a new with a new organization that was formed in iraq but he was the secretary general as doctor knight mentioned before it's kind of

the real push behind that. after the pictures he was named as one of their guys. he had a funeral and everything and all of a sudden his name and face spread all over the web. a huge thing i realized when i was doing the research is the recruitment factor online, something i truly belief nobody is paying that much attention to. they have been posting phone numbers and all sorts of things and this is one of the initial ones where they would put up a popular committee member in the imagery that we are looking at. more needs to be done because guess what i called in to these numbers in the audience they called in with me to these numbers and they had conversations with these guys

so it's really not that hard. what did they accomplish? it fits into that narrative that we are pushing isis. they secured damascus hands down. this isn't a republican guard or a magical local syrian militia. this is the allied organizations and i would even describe these as links. they are all part of a unified network and that is how they are developing. while they've done this they've taken a ton of geography and they've been able to construct the new go on front if we think about the move i was talking about before they are infiltration in the iraqi government and also in syria it's not like he can push back against them because they are the main fighting force and then on top of that, building

with narrative of the strength and protection this is huge. when you feel you've are under an existential threat if someone came to me and said i'm going to give you money, the americans are not doing enough for you and they never will. i'm pretty sure that i would take it if i thought that they were going to destroy me. they are playing off of that so effectively. bigger thing there are other breeds all consequences to that group. i heard this question will be magically moderate after isis is defeated? it's like saying you did they drop their weapons after the israelis held out of southern lebanon they most certainly did not. the same thing happened when we pulled out of 2011 to join the

government but they never did. but here's the biggest thing. does anybody know what poster this was? they came out of the february 14 youth movement and put this up for him. why would they put that if you are pushing for serious -- syria or iraq for speaking out against the government of this has become kind of this new cause.

they execute him and said this. if they execute him we will retaliate against them and strike them so now they have a new cause to fight and it will keep going like that. it doesn't adjust to syria. it is going to encompass a lot war. ignoring it won't make it go away. aligning with it certainly won't make it go away because i would say that they have manipulated the process write-down to pettitte. they've done a very good job of it. and i don't see it really going away anytime soon, which is sad.

trying to digest all of that my name is pj, retired military officers started as a infantry and then went in the 80s and went conventional. i'm going to bring it up a little bit and hopefully get through this without a lot of tears because the movements are emotional to myself and those that served on the ground trying to figure out what to do with the information that was put out in the briefings that we would go to and try to figure out how to put it together in a practical sense and give a couple of policy wreck and additions. i think i would start off by saying david asked me to give a small synopsis about the papers. i am in a pretty good conference with mike. it is how complicated even more so but how complicated things are now.

we tend to work in the borders and the nationstate and fundamentals of the regional actors and the fundamentals of the theory of that reactor theory meaning i punch you, you punch me back. what are you doing why are you not punching me back? sometimes we lost. i think with both of the author officers pointed out in the line of the block charts is quite complicated how did you maneuver and we will put out to the crowd today that it isn't new. we have seen these demarcations and lenny before i was in serious in 1982 and in 1982 syrians asked me what i was going to do but never mind.

you get to see these split through. there's a lot of personality involved, a lot of personal interest. at the end of the day, it was who knows why actors do what they do. in 2008 when i was in the negotiations so self set up by general petraeus, mike was with me in the audience back there. he wrote a great article on michael saying how the iranians are the best thing that isis can have. those with the same intellectual brilliance of failure and i mean that, they would come in and lay out these charts about how this guy talked to this guy and he phone

calls and they would sneak a way and the person that was responsible for going face to face with the folks on the side a lot of them in prison and a lot of them not we would look at the chart and go wow. a lot of names and numbers. so who can i talk to? number two, when i'm with them what do i say? glad to see you in bahrain today. there is an essence that sooner or later you have to bring to a practical level. it is how much more complicated the ground is then i think in fairness and i would agree i think that we are fundamentally understanding or if we understand it lets say we do our actions are not on the fact that we do. we are currently embarked to train and equip in order to defeat isis campaign.

that's where the focus of washington is and where americans have been redeployed to iraq to imagine to build up forces to defeat isis. great. but the officers pointed out and i would agree it is first off how do you get this bad? very, very heavy, killed most of our mates in the fighting. they will penetrate anything. they are giving these information, and their information and marching and even the clerics are dressed

up. that didn't happen between the time isis took mosul and the time the news guys got their meaning it had been going on for a very long time to include while we were there. not just since we were deployed. that's the basis and navigate to the basis part and the schisms that are now developing. it's gone from an isis takeover

to a perhaps religious conundrum throughout the middle east. again unfortunate not new industry but in our time new enough. and how do you act? that's the tough question. it's nice to see the charts but somewhere in this world of issue where do you plug into the first possible thing to do? right now we're going to go get isis in mosul. okay but the rest of the general crowd out there as michael pointed out, it's a tactical thing for them. isis is not a strategic issue. i think we need to rise to the of a look at the strategic ultimate was out there. i'm a believer in approaching it from fault line and on the medals. there are certain fundamental

issues in the middle east in any sphere, middle east as well, that exist. one of them i think it's still true of how do we -- one is very much the arab iranian divide, shia-sunni divide, the persian, persian arab history gulf. that is not a small fundamental. might prove in this is when we got to iraq, and my first trip was building a city council and then i went all over iraq with just iraqis for nine to 10 months building the new m.o.d. and the army. i was the main recruiter. all these bad characters, all the ones that are left alive, don't know where they are, most of them are dead or gone. okay. but to a t., you have the meeting room have the meeting revenge of the sidebars where they put aside one on one, to achieve the common thread was no malign party influence, political party. no party hacks. we want technical guys, scientific guys, meaning proper training for the task ahead. military but same thing. so to a t. we did find a lot of skin. the clerics weren't on top of it like they are now. moreover, it crossed boundaries. it crossed boundaries. in 2008 after fighting in basra and baghdad i was a senior military adviser in baghdad, an iraqi division committee came

to us and said, this is what a great day. yes. sadr retired from the battlefield mainly because maliki took the gloves off a bus and the iraqis came forward with us and we did a lot of fighting. special groups did not play in that fight. special groups were being guided from a different place. i think that is the key to understand between the nationalist point of the get to the second. what he said in his speech gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, great americans great iraqi patriot, today's the first day in the battle against iran. this division commander was shia. a sunni would say that anyway

but he said that. this commander by the way is now in the state seeking a sovereignty was given command in the south, i will say where just a few months ago. and wendy got a call from maliki and maliki said i have visitors coming and i want you to put them to work, embed them in your step and they will help you achieve stardom. the division commander, the commander, not division, said who are you sending to my staff? they knocked on the door and they were from -- and the commander said, prime minister maliki? yes. where would you like us to go? and the great patriot shia iraqis said, not here. i don't have a place for you. they said that's great, we love of your opinion but you don't get to decide. this commander got on the phone with maliki and this is a story really by him and i've had

cooperated with the have complete 100 faith. i put him in power in 2003. i got a phone to maliki and for 45 minutes was arguing back and forth single, i can put them in the patrol, have them do food duty but there cannot be in my general staff headquarters cannot be on the streets with my soldiers. maliki says thanks for your loyal opinion. take them or else. two days later i got a call and he was in istanbul. i got very mad at him. what he doing in istanbul so fast? are you crazy? he left his family and everything. that's how immediately took it and the rest is he's trying to work out right now. he didn't think that was the way to go. so i think there is these fundamentals don't fail, i.e. iraqi nationals. the question is, okay, if so how do we work in that, had we operate indicted by the? operating in a religious environment, which is fight in

iraq and syria and in the gulf in yemen all happening under the guise of a religious now break up which is bigger than what we started with, we are going to have a tough time because we work in fundamental ways here on earth. negotiating with bad guys, we never had a problem getting one on one with the bad guy, getting a dialogue with the killer. never had a problem getting along with a killer. sooner or later you could find the ground we could work out something. even with the sadr group i had some neat things happen. but the minute you approach with the opening line, okay, if the winning two more bridges dialogue after the to include saying that we prepared to die for our god today, we have two ways to respond to we were prepared to help you, okay? okay, we are very much so, to include would walk out of this

building. or i can go there. i'm not at that level with all due respect, we are going to have to bow out of this part of the negotiations because i don't speak for my god. this could get rather complicated. now, if you're willing to come down a level or whatever level you want to call it, come up a little, i'm not going to speak to you, let us begin. but at the point of dealing at that level, i don't know where you go. we had a chaplain in one of the units in baghdad, great guy, 6'6" crucial into the reconciliation council have a whiteboard, with committees canopus. i offered that he should take lead of this. you and your guys should be leading, not us on earth. this is not our bailiwick. so number one, the complications are fast. number two, understand the fundamentals. three at i agree with michael, very much so, did in the big

game. game of isis is bad news. those guys, gals, whatever they are made above, are really projecting themselves in a way that we all agree is pretty macabre. not new unfortunately. that's not again. we are not in that game. the united states military is unleashed and allowed to play in the sandbox can do a lot of damage but you got to also understand that is not just information of guys in black with weapons. isis is not i would argue not a formidable, its formal but it's not, it's a structured thing that we could push it out of mosul are out of x. spot in kurdistan to go somewhere and then you will be there for our beckoning with our air power. no. know. understand what it is. philip has done a very good job of helping explained that about pushing isis out of mosul, it's not a bumper sticker. it's not a bumper sticker. we have to be integrated game and it integrated game outlined of course the iranian influence. so people said i don't know

what that means. what do you mean? they get first cut. that's what it means. they are the first ones in the morning, lessons out of me. they get six hours a day, we get 45 minutes with the body in between whatever. no. we will take six hours. and you know what, you can put your office inside the embassy if they so decide. but we're not in that game. and i've seen this time and time and time again. i've done it plummets with a with a teen before christmas the place in the middle east where we show up, what you want to do and we are meeting and just when are you going to play? are you guys going to play? why the keep getting on a plane and leave? the bricks are here, the french are here, where are you guys? okay, hold that thought. we would be back in a few months in the next meeting. you have to be in the game. i also would argue that this is not, this is not a conflict of beef, far away from.

if you don't want to play in this game, we have to adjust the balance between the force protection concepts we have fallen under and the ability to meet face-to-face. you have to ask the question ask the question where did the most you -- shia militia get all this armament under our noses? but what happened since 2011 or pick a date, i don't care common terms of the diplomatic moves? the guys are living out there day in and day out, where was the influence? can we get it back? six hours a day go with by that uphill fight to get the influence that we should have to be back but it's interesting. there's a conundrum, a contradiction. you won't need anybody armed or not armed, shia-sunni, that doesn't look at you as an american represented either civilian or uniformed.

with don kelly is be the power. you are the power. be the power. stopped playing a round. if you are not the power that epidemic you have a real big problem about what's going on out here. for reasons we don't understand but it's your business. whenever you're ready to quit playing possum, come on out. but anytime i got to talk to them because they are here. in their hierarchy of needs, yes, we are alive. so understand the fundamentals, be in the game can understand the complexities and last i would just add, i would agree with mike and also with phil that concentrated in the fringes which it looks like now with the air campaign, the number of sorties, the number of kurdish movement, even kobani as deadly as it was is not where it lies. this fight, this struggle lies in the capitals.

it lies in the capitals of power. our pressure, our priority, as much as enjoying freedom of the skies in iraq right now, i don't know which we are doing in three, lives in baghdad and damascus and riyadh. and i've never been out anyplace at a level that never always wanted to go higher. the first question is who are you and who do you represent? there is no weight when we were negotiating as negotiators for general petraeus at ambassador crocker, the two, three, or four of us that were out. that was the first thing we establish, are you speaking for your grand self, colonel, or have you been former center in a position? because that's what it where it lies. the playground that phillip has so rightly outlined, these guys are being manipulated from a to b. one day they will solve this, next day that. there are reasons for doing things are really at the end of the day i argued not

that complicated. but up top where the real game is where we need to be. and the one or two people that i would never happy to go in with in a closed room and always, always on my game if i had a game as the guys that were doing the thinking, the guys that were doing the information operations, the guys with the mouthpieces, the guys who were the whispers in the ear of sadr and of ex. because these were the good looking guys. they have the nicest clothing and a very intellectually astute, very well studied in whatever world they came from. not my world but their world never mind. they could spend if you were careful to turn this our current. i would want to join by the time i left the room if i wasn't careful. it was going to happen but sometimes, i don't know. the point is that intellect is out there as manipulative as it can be as phillip pointed out and you have to be, first doctor to take an hour worth of

lecture against the great satan. got. yeah, i got it. we are the worst. we are the worst but i know one worse than us. over there. at least we live the school, hospital, whatever. at least we intend to. what they're going to leave i don't know, but you will do what they tell you, no matter what they tell you, for the rest of your life. so this is not easy but these precepts have to be joined in to do. i think you sum up i would argue that mike has done a great job. phil has done something that very few can pull together, and all with open-source information which is actually important to understand the especially today in the communicative world. i would be in baghdad inside the command center of baghdad watching or advising the senior. one of the villains of mosul, the ground forces commander.

he was a great guy, he was a nice man, a decent man. he really was the he just wasn't a classic wartime commander. he hated the fact that divide iraqis which, oh by the way, was another theme throughout the armed forces. nobody in uniform in iraq unless they had -- wanted by anyone in the population of iraq. this is what happened in the turmeric in fallujah in 2003 and the reticence of the iraqi forces to fight in basra in 2008 and the backend. bailey went, forces only move forward when we came on the battlefield and went first. and we lost a lot of guys. that's when they came forth. none of them wanted to tackle this. this is another dilemma i would add. once if isis is defeated, we coming back for a whole nother around a fight because the iraqi forces come under what

if they are nationalist themed, won't want to give it again. thank you. [applause]

>> hello, everybody and welcome to the jccsf. i'm delighted to host all of you for a terrific evening with lawrence lessig. a special thanks to tonight's partners, uc hastings college of law, usf school of law, mac light creative commons and counter pac. our guest this evening is harvard law professor, lawrence less --lawrence lessig. he is known as the elvis of cyber law. one of the country's most influential theorist on the intersection of law, clerk for task culture and the internet,

he's shifted focus to the corrosive power of money on politics. he walked 200 miles for the new hampshire rebellion to encourage citizens to and the system of corruption in our nations capital. the next walk starts this sunday and it's not too late to book a plane ticket and join him. we have flyers in the lobby. they look like this. they can tell you how to participate. lawrence lessig is here tonight to talk about made aipac, the crowd funded super pac to end all super pacs and what is in store for 2015. ladies and gentlemen, please join me and josh -- join me in welcoming him to the jccsf. >> so my computer shutdown and now i have to try to make small talk. what shall we talk about as it

comes back to life? the weather. it's going to be incredibly cold and new hampshire. the high right this and it is six degrees in the place we are starting our walk. i apologize. it's wonderful to be here, back, in san francisco. talking about something i began here in san francisco because i was forced to begin talking and thinking about this.

my dear friends from san francisco, aaron swartz who, the second anniversary of his death is this sunday. and whose memory is vibrant in this community and around the world. but what he was focused on, he often described to me as simple justice. as he talked to people about the simple injustice of the world we find ourselves in there was a growing frustration. one way to understand this frustration is to recognize the way in which we refuse to acknowledge the real nature of

the problem we are talking about. america has been focused for the last year on a range of problems related to race in america -- michael brown, eric gardner, the injustice of the systems that we feel as a system of inequality that gets described as a system of racism, and there is evidence to support the racism. this recent study of the racial distribution of death of 218 deaths involving police tries to map the predicted incidents according to race and you see the predicted incidents for whites are fewer than the actual incidence.

you take this and brought this out to what the actual differences are and as the statistician summarizes, the answer to the question what is the probability we would see a distribution at or more extreme than this one, assuming race plays no factor in police related that's is on order of 10 to the -82. if you are not a mathematician you might wonder what that is like. you can compare it to this number -- 10 to the -79, which is the probability of being hit by lightning, 13 times in one year. which means the probability of 10 to the -82 is a really, really, really small probability, which is to suggest there is a high

confidence in the judgment that the race of the victim is related to the violence. there are lots of quibbles one could have with this study that what comes through in our culture is the view that this manifests a certain kind of racism. that gets framed as if it is the racism of bull connor or the racism of the 1960's. and the 50's, and the 40's and all the way back. there is no doubt in my mind there are jim close -- there are jim crow racists out there but there is no doubt a pattern like this is not reduced by that sort of racism. it is a different racism, maybe a more fundamental racism, a more fundamental inequality. if we were to talk about how to

solve that, we would look beyond the simple image of a hateful person we would look for structure of poverty or the stupid war on drugs. structural problems that require we think of a more difficult task, a task that solving this inequality without focused, picking out the evil of individuals, picking out the evil or outrage, but we don't do that. we can't do that. not because it's hard for people to understand these issues as contributing to these kinds of racism, but the focus on simple injustice, the focus on the outrage, the focus on the difference between the good and the evil in this story pays

structures of media that talk to us about this. it pays the activists organizations that want to rally us about this. keeping it simple keeps the fury going. so while we get nothing done we remain angry and focused on the simple injustice we see. here's another example tied directly to what i want to talk about today. the simple injustice around the institution that is congress will stop -- that is congress. we all know the perception of their confidence in this institution has collapsed. 7% have confidence in the institution of congress. the crown jewel of our democracy according to our framers, article one, congress 7% of us trust.

more than 50% call the institution corrupt. when we talk about it being corrupt, we focus on people like jack abram off -- jack a runoff or william jefferson, people we think of as criminals. there is a quote corruption inside this is the tuition, no doubt. but there is also no doubt that the failure of this institution is not produced by that form of corruption. it is a different kind of corruption, a more fundamental kind of corruption. it is not bad souls engaging in criminal acts, it is good souls engaged in a system that drives to this corruption. if we wanted to solve that corruption, we would have to look elsewhere. look elsewhere from beyond the risen walls, but we don't do that. we can't do that, not because it's hard. our focus is on the simple

injustice, the outrage of thinking of this institution in these good versus evil terms because it makes it easier to organize. it makes it easier to vilify the results you don't like using it simple keeps the fury going while we get nothing done in fixing the problem it represents. the simple injustice. -- the simple injustice hides the real injustice. the real work it's going to take to fix it. if we wanted to think beyond the simple, to understand something beyond the simple injustice, what would it be at least as it relates to the institution i know something

about, congress? what are the real problems here? at the end of august, hong kong discovered something which triggered an incredible revolution in the streets, first by young people and then joined by people from across the city. what they discovered was the method hong kong would be forced to adopt for electing the governor. china had promised in 2007 that the chief executive by 2017 would be popularly elected, but the china's people congress laid out the procedure and as the procedure described, the ultimate aim is the selection of the chief executive by universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly represented nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures. a nominating committee. a committee composed of 1200 citizens, which means about .0

24% of hong kong. what the chinese were describing was this two-stage process -- there is an election where all the citizens and on -- in hong kong would have the right to vote, but there's a nomination process where the select 1200 would have to vote. and you have to do well in the nomination process to be able to run in the election. a two-stage process with a filter in the middle between the two stages and that is what triggered the strike in hong kong because the view was the filter was biased. as protesters describe the 1200 being dominated by pro-beijing business and political elite. as the chairman of the hong kong credit party put it, we want genuine universal suffrage in hong kong, not democracy with chinese

characteristics. but is this particular feature chinese? the answer is it's not unless boss tweed was an ancient chinese profit. because as tweed put it, i don't care who does the electing, as long as i get to do the nominating. we should describe the system tweed was constructing. let's call it tweedism. it has this form -- there's two steps, the nominating process with the tweed's vote and the citizens vote, and a filter in between. that is what boss tweed wanted. in the history of democracy in america, there is a long history of tweedism, most dramatically in the old south

stop it's embarrassing to recognize 1870, america passed an amendment to the constitution that guaranteed to african-american males the right to vote. the perception at the time that was passed was this would be the future of democracy in america, and in fact the future looks more like this. for 100 years -- that's exaggerating a bit. for 95 years, it was the concerted effort to exclude african-americans on the ability to vote to stop no place more ambitiously than the state of texas, which enacted by law and all white primer. there's a general election where all americans got to vote. african-americans, if they got to register. there's a white primary and you had to do well in the primary to run in the general direction

-- in the general election. a two-stage process that excluded in the critical first step african-americans from the system, but the consequence that they had a democracy that was responsive to whites only. that is a profound and indira singh stage of tweedism in america. but let's think about tweedism in the new america. we take it for granted campaigns will be privately funded. funding of campaigns is a -- is an essential step to getting elected to any major office. we have a two-stage nominating process. to get the funders vote, he has to campaign for a, which means you have to raise money for it. candidates spend for congress, anywhere between 30% and 70% of their time raising money to run the campaigns to get them

elected. they do it in things like this where they have parties, where they say for $500, you can come to a reception and 420 $400, a photo up, meet and greet and reception. this is a game that gets played, but they spend an extraordinarily -- an extraordinary time dialing for dollars -- between two and four hours of a calling people they never met, developing a sensitivity and awareness about how what they do will affect their ability to raise money. bh skinner gave us the image of the skinner box were any stupid animal could learn what buttons it needed to push to get the sustenance it needed. this is a picture of the modern american congressperson. as the modern american congress for some learns which buttons need to get pushed to get to

the the votes they need. we develop a sixth sense. what is needed to satisfy the obligation? they become shape shifters as they constantly adjust their views in light of what they do what they need to raise money. one person describes always lead to the green. he was not an environmentalist. this is a two-stage process with a filter in the middle, begging the question is the filter biased? that depends. that depends on who the funders are. we -- here is what we know about who the funders are. about 5.4 million people contributed at least one dollar to any congressional campaign,

which means about 1.75% of america contributed to campaigns. but if you take that 1.75 of america, the top 100 gave as much as the bottom 4.70 5 million contributors. the top 100 gives as much as the bottom 4.75, but it's only less than 2% of america we are talking about. if you look at people who gave $2600 at least, that is about point -- that is about .044 percent, a little less than the amount of people named lester in the united states. that's why i called america lester land. you look at $10,000 or more, that is .008 of -- .008 percent of america.

if you think about the effect of the supreme court decision the super pac. in 2012, 132 americans gave 60% of the super pac money spent in that election cycle. whether it is lester land or sheldon city, the point is we have a system where the tiniest, tiniest fraction of the 1% dominates this first stage in our election process, a two-stage election, a general election where we are all invited to participate and something if you have an id, and not a white primary, but a green primary in america and it you must do well in the green primary to run in the general election. there are people like jerry brown, but you believe and your campaign manager believes you

must do well in the green primary and so you live your life as if you live the priority. the vast majority of americans are excluded from this article first that with the consequence that we are a democracy responsive to the funders and maybe only -- it's a little controversial -- i'm not allowed to show the princeton study. this incredible study was published last year trying to measure the effect of the economic elite on political decisions. they gathered the largest empirical study of actual policy decisions in the history of medical science and tried to relate the actual decisions of our government to the views of

the economic elites and organized interest and then the average voter. they found a graph that is intuitive if you think about what this says -- those favoring a policy change those from zero to 100, the probability goes up. that's the way you would expect it to be -- the more it is supported, the more likely it is to be adopted. something similar with interest groups. the more who supported, the higher the probability it goes up. this is a responsive system for economic elites or organized interest groups. here is the graph for the average citizen will stop -- the average citizen. that is a flat line. regardless of the percentage of average citizens who support something, it has no effect on its probability of being adopted. as i described in england -- when the preferences of the economic elite and the stands of organized groups are

controlled for, the preferences of the average american appear to have only a miniscule, and near zero, statistically nonexistent impact on public policy. this is a democracy where the average voters views don't matter to the probability of a policy being adopted. here is one context in which that consequences quite dramatic. this graph was put together to describe the change in the distribution of average income growth over different periods across our history coming out of recessions. here's the first one we are talking about. the bluegrass represents the percentage going to the bottom 90% and the red are is showing the percentage going to the top 10%. this is showing the top 10% getting 20% in the bottom 90%

of getting 80%. you might have trouble with that or not, but the autumn 90% is getting a's -- eating significantly more than the top 10. here is how that carries out across the next period. the 12 -- the 2009 -- 2010 recovery, the autumn 90% actually lose income relative to the top 10% who gain more. this change, according to hacker and pierson, is tied directly to changes in government policy and changes in government policy are tied directly to the influence of the tweeds in our democracy. this is tweedism. it's not dominated by a beijing political elite, the green primary dominated by a business and economic elite.

it is just as extreme as the story in hong kong. remember, i told you .024 percent is the percentage of hong kong that is to be in the nominating committee. if you ask what percentage of voters maxed out to just one candidate, they gave $5,200, that number and percentage of voters is .024 percent. many would say $5,200 doesn't achieve real influence, so it's worse than.024 percent of the average of percentage of voters, but it is as tiny, it is as distorting, and it is just as wrong. what does it do? what is its effect? a recent book describes america

not as a democracy, not as an aristocracy, plutocracy or clip talker see, america has become a vetocracy. that means it's a system where it is easy now for economically powerful groups to block a change. it is tied in his view to our systems of checks and balances and our polarized political culture, but in addition to those, it's tied to the number of funders who fund campaigns. in a system with a tiny, tiny number, that means a tiny, tiny fraction has the power to block reform because their disagreement with reform is

enough to stop the policymakers from adopting it. this is not just reform on the left, this is any change if it is against organized money whether from the left or the right fails. anyone coming into a room like this has an issue you care about all stop it could be climate change, health care, tax policy, i don't care what the issue is. at the federal level, you all have an issue you think is important. you spend your free time, if there is such a thing a thing anymore, supporting causes that would be about this issue. even if your issue is the most important issue, change on that

you won't happen until we change this corruption first. this corrupting influence is the first issue because it locks the ability of our democracy to control, to steer the direction of our democracy and it stops us from having that control. we are like the bus driver who discover his steering wheel is no longer connected to the axle. so what is the solution here? the truth is, the the solution is not hard to describe. if this is the picture and the problem is the bias filter at this center, the solution is to find a way to either eliminate the filter or to eliminate the

bias. the number of republicans in the spirit of tate roosevelt has become to push -- has come to push ideas like vouchers as a way to fund this problem. every voter gets a voucher think of it like a starbucks card -- a store value card that allows them to allocate a certain amount of money to candidates running for office and candidates can take those vouchers if they agree to limit the contributions they take to vouchers -- let's say contributions are $100. $50 a voter would be about $7 billion. the total amount spent way candidates was $1.5 billion, which means this israel money, but the point is the voucher system would mean money coming from many, many people, not just the .04 percent or the .024 percent. it's not everybody is going to

participate but it's not biased in the way the current system is biased by allocating the funding our to the tiny fraction of the 1% stop democrats have been pushing john sarbanes's -- the government by the people act take small contributions and multiplies them to make them much more valuable. $100 becomes $1000 because of a 921 match, encouraging