ot 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 candidates to get lots of small

contributions, not contributions coming from the .04%. sil -- still a filter, but not biased in the way the current system is biased. the thing that matters more than the current system is, god for bid, votes. voters will stop that is what is mattering to the democracy. equal votes from equal citizens. to describe the solution to this problem is not hard. why don't we have the solution? why do we have political movement to push for this solution? political experts tell us is most people don't care about it. most people look at the corruption and they are ok with it or they are ok with it relative to other issues they want to fight about. i don't think that's actually true and evidence comes from a series of studies. the most recently did was in december of 2013. we asked the public how important is it to you we reduce the influence of money in politics. the answer was 96% of americans said it's important to stop the very next question we asked was how likely do you think it is we will reduce the out of money and

politics. 91% said it's not likely. just like most of us wish we could fly like superman, but because 91% of us are convinced we can't, we don't throw ourselves off of tall buildings regularly. we are resigned to our human mortal status and live life the way one would assuming you can't fly from the ground or tall buildings. we don't organize to do anything about it because we don't believe anything can be done. we've added to been franklin's slogan that if there is nothing sure but death and taxes by adding federal government. that means the question here is how do we resist this resignation? what is the strategy for fighting resignation? the problem is convincing people

there is a solution that could actually be adopted. what is it we could do for that? as many of you know because i'm sure many of you were supporters, the beginning of the year in march announced we were going to launch something called the mayday project -- mayday as in these -- as in the distress signal, saying it's a mayday for this democracy. the objective is to be a super pac to end all super pac's. what would it take to run a series of campaigns that would win a congress committed to campaign reform and we would fund that by kickstarting it -- you can't kickstart a political campaign but to fund this amount to run this experiment.

kickstart a certain amount from the bottom up and get as much of it matched the top down as we could. committed to fundamental reform -- the plan we laid out is to run a pilot in 2014 and then based on the fact, when in 2016 and push legislation in 2017 and in 2019, prepared to protect it by passing whatever constitutional reforms would be needed to defend against the supreme court will stop in the first stage, we were able to raise $11 million from more than 57,000 contributors around the country. [applause] with the objective to elect a candidate committed to this fundamental reform. the truth is with that as the objective, the project was a bust. because out of the eight

candidates we supported, only one of those races was really competitive. people look at this and say this demonstrates the public doesn't care. it's not as bad as that looks. if you look at the report of the data we were able to pull from surveys before and after, it shows a significant number of voters are deeply committed and care about this issue, just in the tsunami of the election in 2014, that was enough to -- the tsunami of the election in 2014 was enough to overcome. we lost the bet because we did not prove to the skeptics a system that could scale, so there were no clear path to 2016, which was our objective. to get us to a place were we

-- where we could elect a congress committed to fundamental reform. when we lost in this dramatic way, one part of me was relieved at the defeat because the truth about politics as its run today is that it's deeply dissatisfying and disgusting and most of how it works. the constraints of politics today is almost impossible to imagine using it to educate people in a constructive way about this issue. i've likened it to trying to teach and algebra course by screaming out the various lessons and students are walking through because most people don't want to hear the message while they are trying to watch a patriots game. most people want to ignore it. the method for communicating to them must communicate in a way that is almost impossible to move people. but the other part that echoes a

kind of guilt in how it felt an authentic to the ultimate objective of this movement because it game was an insider's game. you are electing regular candidates to fix the problem with other insiders will stop the problem with that is that we don't believe insiders when they tell us they are going to fix the problem. 80% of americans believe the reforms that have been passed have been designed to help current members of congress to get reelected than to improve the system. we are cynical about the reformers as much as we are cynical about everything else. we have to find a way to stand outside the system that the challenge here is to be authentically outsider in the effort to force change on the inside.

that sounds like a harder problem and in some ways, it is. there was something so appealing about the idea of demonstrating that throwing up a message demonstrating congress should be enough to rally voters and raising hundreds of millions of dollars to win a congress, there was something simple about it even if there was something somewhat corrupt about it. so this forces us to think what's the way to go forward that could force a change on the outside, from the outside, a choice of change. i'm going to describe three elements of that strategy. one element is to make the change plausible. one element is to make congress panic.

one element is to make the issue presidential. first is the plausible. mayday had the idea of electing a congress. the bet was we could demonstrate the power of the message to elect candidates. this was a bad year to make that bet, so now we have two pivot to figure out what the work is that can contribute to the project. what are we doing now? the objective is to figure out a way to turn the army around and to focus it on a much more manageable project of recruiting the incumbents to admit to reform. if there's a majority in congress and those committed to reform, the project is to shrink gap to make it seem plausible that we could actually get fundamental reform.

not necessarily a majority committed to the vouchers but committed to some reform. how will we deploy this? a top secret project that gets announced at sxsw, there's a strategy for a platform to enable the tools of this infrastructure we call the internet, and incredibly powerful ability to recruit targeted actions in districts that convince voters in districts to get their members to commit to reform and we believe it is feasible to get within striking distance by the end of 2015. in march, this structure is announced and we launch a project to bring about a commitment. republicans and democrats both

to this system of fundamental reform to make it seem plausible, but that's not going to be enough. much more interesting is creating panic. this guy, george mason, one of the framers of the constitution, two days before the constitution was published in philadelphia, he noticed a problem. the only way to amend the constitution at that time was a provision that gave congress the power to propose amendments. george mason stood up and said on the floor of the constitutional convention, what if congress is the problem, a system where only congress can amend is not much of a system of congress is the problem. it's the first known instance of "the simpsons" duh.

the framers realized they had a fundamental flaw. they created a second way to amend the constitution. article five gives the states the power to demand congress call a convention, not a constitutional convention, but a convention for a very limited purpose to propose amendments. what is clear is the idea of a convention terrifies washington. it terrifies the seed to imagine this entity that can propose amendments, even though it requires 38 states to have a power called into being by this process terrifies them. the closer we get to the magic number the constitution specifies, 34 states calling for a convention, the more the panic grows.

what is not recognized that right now, there are between 24 and 28 states who have passed resolutions calling on congress to call an article five convention. vermont, california and illinois have, last year, past proposals to call for a specifically related to the corrupting influence of money in politics. as more of these organizations push for more states to join, we will in the next two years get incredibly close to the magic number. i think we will probably get over the magic number. as that happens, congress will respond because historically it has always responded to cut off the convention movement and giving people who are pushing for a convention that they want. we may, through this process get what we want from them even before there is a convention. best example is the amendment

gave us an elected to stop originally there was a senate picked by state legislatures. people didn't like that. they got the senate would be filled with rich people who were corruptly elected. [laughter] they said we should change that to have a directly elected senate. the senate is not going to have anything to do that will stop there is a process for calling for an article five convention and when they got within one state of enough states to call for an article five convention congress sent out the 17 the moment created the elected senate. so, that panic produced reform and that reform was central to bringing about what was perceived to be a solution to the problem and that's the same dynamic we should expect here. the closer we get to forcing a constitutional movement, the closer we get to achieving something of what congress might do. maybe most important immediately

is presidential. in the modern american political system, reform only happens if it comes with the president pushing it, not just the president pushing it, some people might remember, there's this guy barack obama who talked about this problem precisely and once he walked into 1600 pennsylvania avenue and looked around, he realized there was no chance congress would ever address this problem, so he dropped the issue completely. we need to get a congress close to being able to pass it and a president who wants to pick it up and make it presidential. it is not their natural wish to talk about this issue. if you look at the polls related to corruption in government, and

in 2000, it was not even an issue on the top 10 list. 2004, not an issue. in 2008, it was number four on issues american stop president address. in 2012, it was number two second only to jobs. corruption in the way our government functions. and while everyone was thinking about rob blagojevich, and while everyone is singing at the coke brothers -- the koch brothers. if you look at the websites of romney and obama, nowhere in the discussion of issues did they even mention the problem. i had a researcher look at it and is the first time in as far as we can see, when an issue in the top 10 of gallup's list was

not mentioned by either candidate in the address of policy issues a promise to take up. they don't want to talk about this issue. it's too embarrassing to talk about this issue. it's hypocritical, so they will avoided as much as they can. the challenge in 2016 is how to get them to talk about this issue as they go around and engage in the rain dance to convince people to support them about what ever issue they want people to support them for. the challenge is how do we get to turn the table and force them to consider what they'd rather not consider? how do we get them to address a topic they would rather not have to address? that's the objective of the new hampshire rebellion. not rebelling against the government, but rebelling against this agenda the politicians will bring in the presidential candidates will bring. forcing them to say how are you going to end this system of

corruption in the -- by getting people to ask this question again and again in new hampshire. new hampshire is a prime target for this. it is a critical primary election and its a state with an important precedent related to this issue. in june of 1999, john mccain went to new hampshire and made the system of corruption the focus of his campaign and the focus led to him winning the primary in new hampshire. but just before he had done that, new hampshire had a tie to this issue that was much more powerful than the people who continue to talk about it. the tie was this woman -- a woman named doris haddock who on january 1, nine to 99, started a walk in los angeles to cross the country to washington dc, 3200 miles.

she began at the age of 88. she arrived at the age of 90 walking into washington, there were hundreds of people following her, including a lot of congressmen who drove out to the last mile, celebrating the incredible importance she had focused on addressing what was then for her the fundamental issue, the corruption of the system of campaign finance reform. the new hampshire rebellion seeks to revive this by remixing the granny d walk. we did the first instance of this walk across new hampshire in january. she walked longer, we walked colder, a total of 190 miles -- did i mention in january? a walk that totaled 210 people across the course of the walk,

reaching tens of thousands of new recruits in new hampshire who signed up to force candidates to talk about this issue in the primary and reaching a million people in the state and around the state of new hampshire, talking about and focused on this issue. this january 11, the anniversary of her death, the second of of these walks happen. this time, not just one, there will be four rounds converging in concord on the 21st, which is the fifth anniversary of the supreme court's contribution to this mess, the case of citizens united stop the objective is to recruit 50,000 voters to ask this one question -- how are you going to and this system of corruption in washington? the theory is if enough ask that question and if the race is sufficiently competitive, it

creates an opportunity on the republican side certainly and maybe on the democratic side for a candidate to pick this issue up and if they pick it up and make it an issue, there is a chance that it becomes an issue in the presidential election. would that be enough? in my book, "republic lost" i was skeptical it would be enough. i also describe what you could income as the regent data. the idea of this was if it's impossible for people to believe ordinary politicians will really take this issue up, what we need is not an ordinary politician. imagine somebody like david

souter or christine whitman or -- just imagine the voice. a non-politician who committed to run for president with one promise -- that when elected they would do one thing to pass whatever the reform is that person thought was essential and then promise to resign. that's it. do one thing, a regent -- the regent is there while the children grow up. so we are going to force you to grow up by taking away this corrupting influence and the ordinary politician, the vice president becomes the president. the critical thing about this idea is there's no ambiguity if that person was elected why that person was elected. barack obama says i was elected for 44,000 of her reasons, but this is one person elected for one reason and there's no reason for congress pushing back against it because it's clear with the american people said

and there would be plenty of incentive to give that person with that person wants because it's the easy way to get rid of that person. once you give them the bill, they've got to go home and you can get back to ordinary politics as usual. this regent president system, if we could find such a leader to step up and take this challenge, i think would do it and would actually bring about the kind of reform we need. maybe it's possible to do it without but the key is to recognize we need the president in this mix. we need to move the congress, we need to scare the congress, we need the president to lead. three parts to make possible this change. because this change is possible. it takes one statute. i think we need 15 senators to switch place. it's possible if people like you

stand up and focus not just on the simple injustice, the injustice of the corrupt criminal, but the real justice that we've got to bring back to the system, to the equality of citizens which this system has lost. it is my view, it is my life that this boy started me on that we can get back. it is possible. but the key here is an old harvey milk strategy -- it's possible if we give people hope that there is something that can be done. not hope in the sense our friend obama has abused the term, but hope in the sense of what vaclav havel described. here's what he said about hope. hope is a state of mind, not of

the world. it is a dimension of the soul, is not prognostication, it's an orientation of the spirit and an orientation of the heart. hope is not the same thing as joy that things are going well or a willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success but an ability to work for something because it is good. hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism, it is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense. if something does make sense here, it is my view this republic makes sense that the ideal but 225 years of struggling have evolved makes sense here. there is something to hope for

and there is something even to be optimistic about, that if we organize in the way we now have the capacity to organize, there is the chance, not the certainty, the chance that we can restore this inequality of citizenship again, for once, maybe it has never been here then for once, but for all of us, that is our obligation -- the moral obligation, an obligation it can inspire all if it is understood to be something that speaks to the best of our tradition, which is including and expanding and building a democracy. that expands the capacity that we have. thank you very much. [applause]

>> thank you, i'm happy to take questions, eager to take questions which i understand there are mics at both sides. >> sitting in the middle, please come to the aisle, thank you. question over here. >> so thanks for a great talk. my question is related to how do you get everybody and their

individual issues to align with this greater issue, right, whether it's either health care environment, the lists go on. it seems like there is an emotional piece and how do i place my emotional federal reservoir around climate change and intellectually the bigger issue is the first issue, it's hard for me to get emotional about this bigger one and take the same emotion and pour it into this underlying piece. that's my discussion, my question. >> right. so and this is a general problem that people have described around this reform movement for many years. i think the first step is to recognize something about how you can't get what you want. i don't think it's enough to think about how i can't get what i want. i don't think the personal selfish perspective is

sufficient here, even if your selfish perspective is about a public policy that you think is great for the world. i think the other part about it is to recognize why it is wrong and when you see why it is wrong, when you see that it is wrong because it has disenfranchised us. it has taken from ordinary americans a fundamental part of what a democracy is, equal representation, it has taken that away. there is a certain anger that grows with that. think about the protest in hong kong again. that was a purely procedural protest, purely about procedural issues, they didn't have the democracy yet. the very idea that they would be excluded from the first stage of the election was enough to motivate them to say to hell with this, we are not going to accept this as a democracy. and so the conception of it being unjust and wrong was what

motivated as much as them thinking they couldn't even map out from the perspective you were talking about which issues they wouldn't get past, right. it was the injustice, the immorality about that way of thinking about it. i think it's not hard to see why our system is like that. what's hard to do is to get people to be as passionate about changing it, not because they don't see it's wrong, but because they don't see it's possible to change it. and so if you, if we can find the way to link the recognition, heck, i'm not going to get anything anyway, with, and there is some thing, this is insult added to injury. then i think there is a chance to begin to coordinate. now i don't want to convince you to give up your work on solar or climate change. those are incredibly important issues. regardless of what the issue is, i don't want you to give it up. i want you to tithe. i want you to give 10% to this cause.

if you can get everybody to tithe, to give 10% to this cause, then there is enough to imagine this cause taking on the fight that it has to take on. and this fight in the end is actually not as hard as other fights we have taken on and won. for example, racism, which, of course, we haven't won, but we spent a long time making extraordinary progress with a really hard problem because you don't just wake up and no longer a racist. it takes generations to put that out of the d.n.a. of a society. this issue is just the problem of the incense incentives of running a campaign. no they won't lament giving up the world where they sit like a pigeon in a cage and peck on the phone to get the person at the other end to give them the money they need. nobody likes this system.

it's just about creating the incentives where they can see they can win in a different way. so this is not as hard a problem in some very important sense. i think if we can get justice recognition beyond the simple injustice, something beyond the simple injustice, i hope, i think that's the only way we can make the progress happen. you have been fighting for the mic again. >> i don't have any additional questions. thank you, i'm convinced on like the tithe of the 10%. i have been convinced for some time, it was just hard to, not do both, but that there is an emotional piece there and i think there is something great about everybody working together on that underlying piece, so thank you. >> thank you. >> next question on this side. >> hi, i can't think historically of any government that isn't built to protect the

interests of the elite and even in the grass where there was better income distribution, that is where civil rights were certainly not in place for many, many people who lived in this country. i'm wondering if you could address that and whether some of the people's movements in this country, the occupy movements or the current marches all over the country after the shooting deaths aren't a more effective way of scaring politicians. >> i don't think there is a golden history. there are particular periods which worked better, but didn't work better for all issues. even at a time when i think congress was not as captured by money as i think it is now, it certainly was incapable of dealing with civil rights

because of the vietnam power of democrats in the senate from the south. so there is never a point in our history where you can look back and say things were just grand. what do we want to think follows from that point. i do think we can see in our history ideals which still resonate with us, many that we have discarded fortunately like disenfranchisement of women or the failure to recognize the equality of race, those are gone as ideals. but the ideal of this equality of citizenship was from the founding an ideal which we can still collect and use. madison, when he described our democracy, he said we would have a branch that would be "dependent on the people alone." we don't have that now. we have dependent on the people plus dependent on these funders. he went on to say what he meant by the people. he meant "not the rich more than the poor." so that is an ideal that we can use to point to the democracy we should be pushing for.

now, you ask a fair question. are more radical revolutionary changes more effective? and so far i don't think so, not that anything has been effective, but so far i think what we have seen is that when pushed to the extreme like that, this enormously powerful system responds in an incredibly brutal way. we could look at what happened in even occupy east bay or forget occupy. think about the brutality of the response to what aaron did. this system is enormously powerful to deviation. that is what commits me to inside the norm, the morals of the system, we have to use the system to change it. now, i'm happy to be proven wrong and the more radical solution to achieve what we all are aiming for.

i'm not saying that people should give up on the more radical, but i think we need to recognize a path that doesn't require tearing down everything. there is the path. i think it's possible and doesn't require, indeed even invite people to give up fundamental commitments. i could give a version of this talk to a group of republican, conservative republicans and i think find a way to show them as much the commitment of ending the corruption of the system as much as people care about climate change or whatever people on the left would care about. i don't think it is as extreme in the brutality in this system which could be done if we found a way to speak across the divisions and push in a way that

unite it in the way that i'm trying to describe. >> we over here on the right. >> i guess i want to go back to the article 5 conventions that you were talking about earlier. what i get from a lot of the political changes that were promised like financial reform campaign finance reform, we get promised one thing and it works it's way through and by the time it's done, it's gutted of any actual power or real meaning. my question is what does this amendment you're envisioning look like and how do we get the change that we're actually demanding? >> so you're describing the product of a system where money has an enormous influence because it's learned how to exercise its influence over the system. the thing they are afraid of when talking about an article 5 convention, no one knows how to control over that entity. there is no reason to not say

that the entity would not produce fantastic ideas. there is a worry that it would produce terrible ideas. what i described here wasn't the product that the great ideas would come out of that process but instead that that process puts enormous pressure on congress to try to stop that process and it does that by giving the political movements what they want. so the last time we came close was a balanced budget convention calls in the 1970's and 1980's. we became very close. congress adopted a whole series of reforms that responded to that push and stopped the push by that response and so all that i'm saying right now is that we should recognize this as another tool to create the kind of pressure for reform that right now doesn't seem to exist because they're happy to run the

system the way the system has been run for the last 20 years. and the best evidence of that is, we have an election, the first thing that happened after the election is a passage of a bill that basically undoes the financial reform that the dodd frank, critical part of the derivatives, raises the contributions you can make to parties from individuals so you can give millions of dollars to parties that you couldn't before. all of that is done by democrats and republicans recognizing they need to do this to return the favor to those that just brought them to power. that can't change unless they are terrified about the consequences of that. one dimension of that terror is coming from that unspecified power from an article 5 convention. >> thank you so much for your time and all of your work on this issue.

at the crux we need 15 senators and 45 representatives to flip. i think that's feasible and tough in this polarized and vicious political environment. two questions from that, tactically is it better to insulate this issue from the fear-based politics or try to channel those forces behind this issue? second, and more importantly on a more actionable level, to build trust between members of congress to try and bridge that gap, what sort of informal mechanisms or institutions can we establish? exchanging constituent letters to the editor, it may be too california for you, but maybe a group meditation session. [laughter] >> look, i was here for nine years. i can get the meditation stuff too. this is the really critical point that it's hard especially for progressives to embrace that we need more than progressives

to win. that's not to say we have to compromise anything, but to the say that we have to recognize that fundamental reform only ever happens at the constitutional level if it's cross partisan. that's to say i want to get these 15 senators not by saying we're going to kick out 15 republicans and get 15 democrats even if democrats would love that, we only get 15 senators or 10 maybe, maybe it's enough for 10 if we can get republicans to 10 if we can get republicans to begin to talk about this issue. what we know is that if you talk, get republicans in a context where they're not worried about losing the seat to a democrat, to choose between a republican candidate who cares about reform and a republican candidate who doesn't, the reform candidate does better. the strategy that suggests is begin to think about safe republican seats where there is a chance to talk about republicans who care about reform. so one example is dave bratt who beat eric cantor, a completely safe republican seat, a guy who

spent almost no money called eric cantor a crony capitalist those are fighting words for a right-wing republican, crony capitalist is evil. that's exactly what this corruption is, it's the production of crony capitalism. it corrupts government and capitalism. that credible fight complicated by other issues like immigration that people on the left are very upset about, i am too, that way of framing it makes it a credible republican concern as well. i think the only way we win is if eight to 10 republican victories happen around this not because democrats have beaten them, but because republicans have begun to generate their own version of this. this election cycle, the pac supported the only republican candidate in the nation and to propose public funding of

elections. that was a central part of what jim rubin's campaign in new hampshire was about. and that influence has now begun to spread. republicans have talked about introducing a very large voucher bill, a $200 voucher bill which would radically change the way these campaigns are funded. this is the slow progress for things happening on the right. if a slice of republicans, not 40, 50, 20, even 10% were to open up the possibility of that as a feature of their platform then the coalition to win is possible. that's how it's always been. the progressive era, teddy roosevelt is a republican, bob lafollette is a republican. taft is a republican. the progressive movement is democrats and republicans, not just a bunch of democrats.

democrats have very conservative southern democrats who are not progressive in any sense at all. so that recognition of the need to find a way to knit together different political perspectives focused on this fundamental issue is what we have to discover. it is so counterintuitive to us and it's not even clear organizationally, it's possible i often think that the business model of progressive organizations is inconsistent with the business model of winning because the way we want to talk about this issue is designed to make the other side hate us. so we want to talk about it, how terrible corporations are and how evil it is to have money in the system. those may be true statements but if you say that, you may turn off 40% of americans of what you're talking about. is there an authentic and true way to talk about this that doesn't necessarily turn them off. the parallel that becomes more

compelling to me about this is think about the civil rights movement. so the late 1950's and early 1960's, there is a fundamental divide in the civil rights movement. one part, the part we associate now with malcolm x thinks the way to win is to build as much fury american african-americans for their cause as possible. if that includes violence, it includes violence. god knows there has been violence for hundreds of years not against african-americans. that's what it takes, that's what it takes. the other part of the movement which we now associate with martin luther king is the part that says, look, we have to speak so the other side can hear us. if we go out there and engage in violence, the other side doesn't listen anymore. they say let's deal with the violence. if they go out there with nonviolence, engage in a way that celebrates the best of our traditions, they have to listen to us. our parents and grand parents watched african-americans being

hosed and bullied with dogs and beaten on the bridge in selma, they responded by recognizing this was inconsistent with values that they had. they were speaking in a way the other side had to hear. i think that's what we have to do here. we have to find a way to talk so the other side has to listen and hears us and agrees. as i have done this, i have spoken to people on the right about this and there are people here on the right, there is a recognition that this common problem -- this is a common problem. we have a common enemy even if we don't have common ends. we have to find a way to organize against that common enemy and that objective includes recognizing, it's not about beating republicans. it's about bringing republicans and democrats to recognize the corruption of the system. >> question over here on the right. >> i love your speech tonight.

i have been with you for eight months and i'm sticking with you, but i have a question because the first half of the talk explained that i have absolutely no chance of making any change, i'm in the bottom 90%. the top .02% can veto any issue they want to veto. the second half you explained to me that in three or four years we could probably push through the one issue that the top .02% most wants to veto. what you left out was what the top 2% was going to do to stop us. that's also what got left out before the last election. i didn't hear much about it. i'm not going to ask you to fill in that blank. what i'm going to ask you to do ask you why is you don't remove the filter between the top of mayday and the bottom of mayday because i cannot find out what your discussion intellectually

up top and how you make your decisions and i cannot contribute to it. i have tried. you have nice people that deal with my emails, but there is a real strong block just like in our democracy. >> well, let's separate the issues for a second. let's talk about how it's feasible first that the group that is disadvantaged, the bottom 90% or whatever you want to call it, can mobilize the thing which the top might care the most preserve. let me start by reinforcing the intuition that it's a really incredibly hard problem. my friend, jim cooper, a democrat from tennessee, described capitol hill as a farm league for k street, k street where the lobbyists work. what he means, a common business model among members of congress and staffers in congress to become lobbyist.

they make more money, they make tons of money as lobbyists. the annual salary increase was 1,452%. if you're on the inside and you imagine your future as a lobbyist, somebody comes along yeah, we have an idea of changing the system fundamentally so lobbyists can't be paid that much anymore, you're not likely to encourage that reform. the insiders have very strong power to resist that reform. i completely agree with you. it might well be that there is nothing to be done, might well be. so what do you do in the face of what might well be. i get from many people all the time the argument can't be done, so don't do anything about it. that's a really tempting idea

because it's really costly to do something about it. it's really painful. it's really hard. i have got young kids. they're not happy that i'm trying to do something about it. let me tell you, when i look at the temperature in new hampshire next week and this is a nice idea, let's not do anything about it. something you might know when i was a kid, i was a republican. i grew up, but i was a republican when i was a kid. here is what you hear republicans say all the time. we love our country. as i have gotten up and grown up and being a liberal, i hear liberals say it, too, it's not just republicans. we used to chant that, we love our country, love our country. as i have become a law professor and looked at the great parts of our tradition standing next to the terrible parts, but the great parts, i feel that love, i feel that love.

what i know about love and you know about love is what love means is you never give up regardless of what you face. i wrote this at the end of my book, the story of this woman standing before me in a dartmouth speech saying you convinced me, professor, there is nothing that can be done. it is hopeless. there is no change we could ever achieve. as i said in the book, i was terrified it was a total fail because i don't want to produce that reaction in people, but the image that came to me was of my son, my then only son who i love and imagine a doctor saying to you your son has terminal brain cancer and there is nothing you can do. so what would you do. >> you have avoided my question entirely. i agree with everything you

said. >> i have taken the first part which i'm saying what would we do. >> i said that wasn't my question. >> so you don't want me to continue the story. [laughter] >> quid pro quo, great. so the point to this is, should be obvious, the point is if you feel this, you're going to do this regardless we're going to work and you're going to work too. the second part, how do you organize and regulate this one entity trying to help in this project? >> i think we're not permitted inside right now and we will win if you harness the rest of us. >> right. so what i described and dropped the south by southwest project on top of was a process that will invite exactly this project to figure out how we recruit.

i think the only -- there is no justification. the only explanation that i would offer is just understanding the incredibly constraints of executing in a month a project that tried to take on what we tried to take on. there is a million mistakes to learn from. we're trying to learn at least from half of those mistakes as quickly as we can. i eagerly want to find a way to bring in as many as possible. but i also know from the staff that was there, there is only so many hours and only so much we couldn't get it done. i take your question and that i answer it as a pledge from you as a quid pro quo that you step up and be a part of that.

that's exactly what i confessed the shift has to be. it's how to recruit people to do the work person to person as opposed to how do we recruit television stations to do the work and -- yes, i agree, thank you. >> we have time for one last question, but before we get to that, i just want to invite everybody immediately after the program to join us in the atrium for a dessert reception and book signing. we have time for one last brief question. >> i'm a donor to mayday and in 2008 as getting marijuana legalized was a side show ignored, presidential candidates didn't talk about it. and because of the ballot proposition, we now have five states in which it is now legal. i'm curious about how come a similar strategy isn't being used for campaign finance reform so the state has a real system and, wow, this works really

well, we can emulate this in other states and get something on the ground immediately instead of waiting for congress. >> it's a great stat. it's being pursued to push at the state level to create, and the local level, to create the anti-corruption ordinances. they succeeded in tallahassee and they're pushing ones in montana. i totally support this idea. i also believe we don't have time. we don't have time for 40 states to come around to get their locate house in order before we take on the challenge of congress. we don't have time because we don't have the opportunity, a way to address the issues to motivate everybody to want to turn out and do something here like climate change or health care or equality or some way of finding a common purpose, again, these are not things that can

wait. so as much as i am eager to see those things succeed, i would not say that means we shift our focus and not also try to pursue this. we recognize that that might mean those don't move as quickly, but i think as they move together, they feed on each other. i think what we saw out of the victory in tallahassee was an extraordinary revival of the belief in part of the country that there was change possible. that helps us to work at the national level, too. so it's a great strategy. it's just one more complementing strategy we got to be able to adopt. i'm incredibly grateful you would come out and spend your time with this. i'm hopeful that you will carry some of this forward to others and join at least one of these maybe two, all three, and yes, there are some boots left in new hampshire waiting for people to fill them, so come join us if you would like. thank you very much. >> thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by

national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] >> the political landscape has changed. not only are there 43 new republicans and 15 new democrats in the house. one new republican in the senate. there are eight women in congress including the first african american republican in the house. keep track of the members of congress. the congressional page has information there. new congress, best access, on c-span c-span2, and c-span radio. this week while congress is in recess, tv is in primetime. c-span2's book tv features

programs with conversations on torture. on wednesday, it is talking about china's secret plan as replacing america as a superpower. the emerging crisis in europe. on thursday, with david axelrod and mike huckabee. on friday, by your fees of joseph stalin. on american history on c-span3 tonight at 8:00 eastern, interviews with former korean pows. on wednesday, the 100th anniversary of the release of the film, birth of a nation. the showing of the entire film following by a re-air -- followed by a re-air. on thursday, historians debate the central changes of 1970 at

the 2015 american historical association. on friday, japanese internment. american history tv, this week in primetime. >> on c-span, washington journal is next. politics and x breakfast. followed by kentucky senator rand paul, held in washington dc. this morning on washington journal, talks about the president's request for action against isis. then a look at the legal debate surrounding the residents legal request. the heritage foundation.

the tour of the historically black universities and colleges continues. host: good morning. here are your morning headlines. as the islamic state -- the battlefield, president obama will hold a summit on combating terrorism with community leaders in this country as well as foreign ministers from 60 nations. raking last night, a judge blocked the executive actions on immigration. we will begin there this morning with your thoughts on the debate over president obama's executive